Chapter Thirty Three

Aaron

It’s already ten minutes past nine in the morning and Aaron is getting a little annoyed. Last night, Sy told him and Arma to be ready for him on the hour and to not piss him off by being late. He won’t say anything to him, of course, but it was a little underhanded of him to make it sound like he’s not the kind of person to show up on time. He knows damn well how serious the two of them are.

When it’s Don, and not Sy, that finally shows up, he looks a little grumpy. He’s shifting around in his flight suit, as if it was a waste of time to even put it on. There’s an unusually large thermos of coffee in the crook of his arm and he’s awkwardly trying to pour some into his mug. Don plops the thermos down on their computer terminal and takes his time before acknowledging them.

He suspect Don is probably not very excited to train a couple of blanks on how to fly from scratch, like it’s below him. Apparently he’s not the only one around the place that’s annoyed by Vaun pushing him and Arma to the front of the line, and giving them their own shiny new ship on top. The two of them have had to put a lot of people in their places over it lately.

Don saunters up and stands in front of them for a moment, brushing at his white beard. He straightens up when he notices Arma is taller than he is, barefoot. “We’ve got the big mission coming up in a couple days, so we’ll be keeping the training wheels on for now. I know you guys like to push through things at robot-speed, but I kind of need to stay alive for the next few days. We don’t exactly have any beginner shit for you to learn on coming up anytime soon.”

He already knows how the day will go, and so does Arma. Thankfully, she only shares the same look with him, that Don will be eating his words by the end of the day, and doesn’t smart back. He knows she’s losing her patience with the way people presume to talk to her. She thought teaching Reese his lesson in front of everyone would have gone a little further than it did. Fortunately, he’s already proven himself in space, but he has the same confidence in Arma as himself, so he gives Don fair warning on her behalf.

“To be fair, Mr Wood, you’ve seen how well I adapt on the fly, and I know you’ll want to start us out with some pretty basic stuff. That’s fine. Just keep a… flexible game plan in mind.” He turns his eyes towards Arma for a second and then back to Don. “You don’t have to worry about me, but she’s gonna give you a run for your money.”

Arma gives Don a polite smile, a nod, and then pats him on the side of the arm. “You get that coffee in ya now, k.”

He can tell by the silly smirk hiding under Don’s moustache that he knows he’ll be eating his words by the end of the day. He only glances over their ship they’ve finished building and then heads into the next bay over where the main big shuttle is. While Don talks about the most mundane concepts of the shuttle flight, they remain quiet and patient, not pushing him along. Thankfully it doesn’t take any more than fifteen minutes to about piss him off.

Don turns around to face them and abruptly stops. “Gol-damnit you guys. I’m not gonna talk to myself all day.”

They only stare back at him blankly with their hands in their pockets. “We were kind of hoping you might, you know, teach us some real stuff, the old-school stuff that we can’t just look up on our own.”

Don scratches the top of his head and looks around as if he’s been set up or something. “Alright, looks like we’ve got a couple of super A-students here.” He scruffles his hair and chuckles. “That’s good you know there’s a difference. Here I was thinking you were the other kind of robots again. Ok, lets climb on in here and get you sorted out.”

When he and Arma stop at the rear airlock, he hold his arm to the side, to let Don go in first. Don only shakes his head while taking a gulp from his mug, and wags his hand for them to go in first. His cheeks bulge with a mouthful as he wipes his moustache off on the shoulder of his suit while pointing at Arma.

“Go ahead and take the front seat. Britney told be all about you two. Don’t be shy. Show me what you’ve got.”

He can’t help but grin back at Don. While she’s climbing in, he gives her a little pat on the butt. “This is Don’s baby, so don’t mess with any of his console positions. He’s probly got em where he want’s em.”

When he climbs in, the shuttle is almost completely dark inside, like usual, but they’ve been inside it a few times now, with the other techs. Arma is just as excited as if it were her first time again. He can still see her big smile beaming back at him when she turns back around from the front seat. He loves seeing her excited like this. It makes him remember that he’s got a whole new life ahead of him, and it’s better than his last one.

Don is pleasantly impressed with how fluidly both of them take their places and go through powering everything up. It only takes a few switches, but there’s no hesitation, or any hunting for the right buttons. Arma knows what she’s doing. As if they were already seasoned pilots, he expects they can probably do it just as well blindfolded, or in a real blackout. Instead of walking them through anything else from the beginning, he decides to let them keep going, to see if they choke on something.

“Alright. Say we’re on the platform with a couple hundred tons of holy shit parked underneath us. Give the tower our status. Is this shuttle ready to launch?”

While he and Arma tap away at their screens and talk to the shuttle’s onboard controller, Don puts one leg over the other and glances down at his wrist communicator. Arma keeps her eyes forward and doesn’t look back while going through her checks. She’s very literal about it, not even considering what is obvious or not.

“Control, we have no readouts on fuel load, temperature, or pressure. We are showing a non-contact on the control couplers, checking remote backup… negative.” Her head moves about as she looks at other status lights and screens.

While she’s doing her thing, he opens up the simulation system and loads the launch setup so that the correct readings will come across. As he updates statuses, he pretends to be the tower correspondent. “Sorry for the delay there. Fuel has been charged, please latch and confirm.”

Don quickly leans forward with a confused look on his face. He pulls his screen towards himself and mirrors Aaron’s display, to see what he’s doing. He’s put Arma in a simulation, so that she can actually confirm a launch as it would go. From the back of the ship, he can hear the clamps locking down. The red flashing indicator that would show a failure is blinking orange instead, as an acknowledgement.

Arma confirms everything that he’s updating. “Seeing all systems ready on your end control. We’re good here. Please confirm.”

Don forgives that they aren’t giving him the individual status updates he was expecting, but is nonetheless intrigued to see them going about it as if it were an everyday launch. He decides to play along and throws them a curveball to see if they can figure it out.

“SSS shuttle three, we’re seeing a discrepancy in your scheduled weight. Our load cells are showing that you’re a good four hundred pounds short. Please advise.”

Quickly, Aaron looks at the only few things with readouts that could possibly cause a weight discrepancy. He knows the crews have been prepping the shuttle all week, so he considers what they might’ve done. “Air is good, fuel is good, coolant is good… Ah, looks like we forgot all our ammo.”

As if she were actually disappointed, Arma leans over in her seat, with an elbow on the side rest, and props her face against her hand. “Yeah, sorry bout that.”

Don turns on the virtual canopy windows, to better light the inside of the shuttle. “Looks like you’ve been doing some simulation work. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone make up their own environment on the fly like that though. How many of em have you two done?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Pretty much all of em. We maybe skipped a couple that were pretty obvious. We mainly did all the fun ones.”

“Fun ones?”

Arma looks back enthusiastically. “Yeah, you know, the ones that get really in depth, like the dark asteroid one that beats your ship all to hell and you have to fix it without backup power.”

“That’s a five hour module. No one’s even done that one.”

She genuinely looks surprised. “Really? We did it in like three hours while we were waiting for Britney to sign us off.”

Don looks over at him as if alluding to him that Arma is abnormal. “Well, I guess we’re done here then. Out… both of you out.”

Neither he nor Arma say anything while they crawl back out the rear airlock. They don’t really know what the deal is. Don didn’t sound mad or anything, but with him, it’s often hard to tell. They were supposed to have the entire day with him, and it hasn’t even been an hour yet. As he marches back to the other bay, where their own ship is, they follow after him. Don walks all the way around it and circles back to where they’re standing in the middle of the floor.

“This things, like a hundred percent ready to go then?”

He and Arma look at one another and then back to him, shrugging their shoulders. “Well, yeah, for us it is. It doesn’t have life support, at least not the kind you guys need. Only we can fly it.”

“So you’ve done launches, landings, bail-outs, and all that?”

“Yeah, but I mean, none of it was real.”

Don looks like his mood has finally lifted, as he flattens his moustache out with his fingers. “Sy said I was gonna need my suit, and insisted I just put the damn thing on. I suppose he saw this coming, didn’t he? Honestly, there’s not much else I can do for you when it comes to the shuttles. You’ve just gotta get the feel for it now.”

Arma looks a little annoyed, as if she’s been shorted. “What, now we gotta get in one of those big spinny things?”

Both he and Don laugh at the mental image of it. “No no, ha, he means we’re gonna fly something Arma.”

Her eyes pop open immediately, as if she might actually be nervous. She wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot with a real flight yet. She’s been waiting for it, for sure, but now it’s suddenly happening. Don looks at the two of them a little more closely for a second, making sure both of their flight suits are up to par.

“Alright, lets, uh, head on out to the hanger eh.” He squints at her, a little apprehensively, and then to Aaron. “You guys don’t have to… like… pee first right?”

She looks at him questionably, not quite understanding what he’s talking about. “Nooooo?” Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Aaron impercieveably shake his head. “Nope. We don’t”

Don chuckles, “Good, and it’s probably safe to say you can’t shit your pants then either.” He points his thumb behind himself. “Lets go.”

After he and Arma follow Don up to the main hanger, they hop into the rear facing jump-seats on the back of the little black military jeep. They make sure to hold onto the sides real good. Alexis told them Don likes to zip around in the thing like a crazy person. The skinny little wheels on the old jeep chirp on the smooth pavement as it lurches into gear. The puttering sound of the old underpowered four-cylinder puts a smile on his face.

Right before they zip on out through the main bay door, the Jeep screeches to a stop. Sy moves to stand in their way, holding two standard rifles out at them, one in each arm.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Don snaps at him as if he’s stupid or something. “Where goin to the jet! Where ya think?”

“Not without these you’re not.”

“I’ve got a dozen of em in the hanger!”

“You got any between here and the hanger?”

He leans back to look at Sy and subtly pats his hand on the automatic in the chest rig on his flight suit. Arma turns her long waist nearly all the way around to give him an absurd look too, showing that she has her pistol too.

Sy doesn’t care. “No one comes or goes without a rifle Don. That especially includes you. I don’t care if it’s just down the block.” He drops the rifles down to his sides and, but then lays one of them between him and Arma. “I’ll let you skate this once, cause you’ve got the super killers in the back. But keep a damn rifle in your jeep.”

As they speed off, Don holds his hand up and flips Sy the bird. It makes them laugh. The old-timer still has the sense of humor of a teenager, and he drives like one too. It’s a quick trip to their hanger out on the space-sector airstrip right down the road. Like usual, he haphazardly parks it outside the man-door, and leads them into the hanger.

While Don hurries along with nosing the tilt-jet out onto the tarmac with the little tug, he and Arma gawk at the thing. He thought he’d be used to looking at that mesmerizing pitch black by now, but it still strains even his artificial eyes. He understands the shape of the thing, but making out any real features is not easy.

It’s making him nervous merely looking at the thing. He remembers completely destroying the first drone he bought a few ears ago. It was hell trying to fly the damn thing. This crazy aircraft is pretty much the same setup, but with huge powerful jet engines instead ten dollar electric propellers. If they slam this one upside down on the ground with Don inside, Sy will probably not be bringing them back.

As if it were merely a car, Don punches the button on his key fob to open the rear door of the jet. The ramp drops all the way down so they can walk in through the back of it. He was wondering if Mikel and Alexis had been exaggerating about the thing, but they were not. The two thirty millimeter chain guns they had mentioned are mounte inside it this time, and they look like they could rip apart just about anything. He doesn’t understand why he hasn’t seen this thing on the news. He’d surely have remembered it if he had.

He was expecting to have to bite the bullet first, but instead, Don has Arma sit up front with him in the co-pilot seat. It seems he’s starting to take a liking to her. While Don straps himself into his seat, she watches his every move and does the same for herself. In the back, there’s isn’t really anywhere good for him to sit. It’s either in one of the little fold up jump seats bolted to the wall, or in a standing harness at one of the chain guns. Don notices him looking around, but continues to talk to Arma.

“This jet is the closest thing to the feel of a shuttle.” He plucks the flight controller off its charging base on the dash, clips it to the retracting lanyard above his waist, and holds it out in both of his hands. “As you can see, we’ve got the same style remote control here, as you’ve got in your shuttle, or pretty much anything else on this planet. Like in your shuttle, it transmits optically, so it can’t be jammed from the outside. Has a backup cable too, if you need. We use remotes like this so you don’t compound your movements when you get bucked around, like in one of those little skid-steers.”

She looks down at the controller, making sure the buttons are all the same. “Does it move the same? I’ve probably got some habits using the one on our shuttle by now.”

“Pretty dang close, except for the gravity part. Once you get used to flying in space, this thing is what’ll feel weird. It’s almost like when a car always pulls to one side. This thing’s sure as hell not sluggish I’ll warn you.” He lets go of the remote and lets it zip right back to himself. “Don’t let this thing bust you in the chops either, it’s not a cheap piece of shit from Smekov. It’s got some weight to it.” He picks at one of his front teeth that looks like it had once been broken in half. He looks back at Aaron. “And don’t let it smack you in the boys either.”

Aaron laughs at the thought of it. “Well, it was nice of whoever designed me to not carry that over. The… boys, are just for show.”

Arma look up, not exactly sure what they’re talking about. “Huh?” Then it dawns on her. “Oh, heh, quite the show.”

Before Don’s eyes pop out of his face, he interrupts. “So… I noticed the lights on the controller turned red when you let go of it. What’s that do?”

“Oh, yeah, if you let go of the controller, the jet’ll slow to a stop, right itself, and maintain a hover. If there’s no response within ten seconds, it’ll begin dropping down to land, or return itself to the airstrip, depending on this toggle here. It also depends on a couple of things like where you’re at, fuel, all that. It’ll also call home and give someone the opportunity to take over remote flight too. This thing’s got all kinds of emergency safety stuff.”

As he fires up the engines, he grins at Arma and then sheepishly looks back at him. “Sorry, you’ve gotta strap yourself in back there. And I mean strap in good. You’re big ass can’t be flying around back there while we’re doing maneuvers. We’re gonna be having some fun up here.”

As soon as Don is given the clear to take off from the tower, he slams the Jet into a hard vertical ascent. The damn thing pulls as hard as Valeri’s little truck does. Don keeps things basic for the first twenty minutes, going over the gages and alarms on the dash with them. Once they’re out in unrestricted air space over the coast, he really gets the thing moving. With four tilting engines, the stout aircraft responds like a kite.

Don starts them out with some hard accelerating and stopping, to show them what it’s capable of in terms of ground combat support. While he’s getting warmed up, he transitions into barrel rolls, vertical loops, and other fancy dog fighting tactics that will smoke most anything else out there. It’s not a civilian purchasable aircraft, and is still a competitive military aircraft.

Arma is just as entertained by watching Don’s face as with looking out the front window. By the time he’s done showing off, he looks like he’s about to pass out himself. Having had enough, Don lets go of the controller and lets the jet do its thing. Like he had told them, it thrust brakes, bringing them to a stop.

Don points to the second remote on the dash in front of Arma, so she’ll clip it to her suit and take over. “Remember, if you get yourself in trouble, just let go, and it’ll come back on its own. I’m still your backup either way.”

With a nervous face, she looks him in the eyes, pretending to be apprehensive. She’s already knows the controls by second nature, and Don’s flying has only made her more enthralled. She gives it an experimental jab on the main paddle to get a little feel for it. The quick heavy roaring response for the engines makes her feel like a god with eternal power in her hands. She takes a calm breath and focuses. The pull of the lanyard on the controller comfortably keeps her elbows at her sides.

When she send the jet at almost full throttle into a downward dive, Don latches onto his shoulder straps, and forces his head against the back of his seat. From the look on his face, she knows to not push him any farther than this, so she eases up on it and only does some modest maneuvering back up to altitude. He can’t scorn her for doing anything he already encourage her to do, but he’s a little ruffled. After she’s had a few more minutes of fun, she brings the jet to a hover on her own and then lets Don switch back over to his controller.

The two of them have to call back to him and promise that they’re not going to move while he unstraps himself from his jump seat. He was sure he was going to pull the rivets on the straps right out of the wall during some of what she did. He doesn’t get that rollercoaster feeling in his core, like when he was a man anymore, but that same urge to brace himself was intense.

While he switches seats with Arma, he plainly declares that he won’t be doing any crazy shit. Don is visibly appreciative. When she straps herself down in the back, where he was, she spreads her heels out wide and firmly holds onto the harness belts over her shoulders anyway. She doesn’t trust that he won’t mess with her.

Either he doesn’t have the same confidence she has, or he is simply wiser, so he eases into his maneuvers. Instead of a sudden plummet, like she did, he only rolls on the throttle and starts his flying by banking hard into a few turns. Don eventually has to prod him into maxing the thrusters out on a couple of moves, not letting him off the hook without at least couple rolls and a cobra maneuver. A bar light indicator in the dash, which is normally green, creeps into the orange when he does it.

Don points out the status bar and calls back to Arma. “This thing is wired with strain gages, load, and inertia sensors all over the place. You can see how hard you’re pushing the frame at any time. If you see it getting close to the red, back it off some, unless it’s life or death. If you go past red, somethin’s gonna break, I promise you that.”

Instead of taking the controls back when he’s done, Don has him fly all the way home and handle the radio calls between them and the tower. It’s a formality they need to know and follow on the airstrip. He isn’t licensed, and neither is their jet, but it’s a concession they get for being the unofficial security force for the space sector.

After they land, Don is acting a little bit stiff from all the fun. He’s more than glad to have had some real fun for once, but he hates admitting he’s getting a little old for pushing himself like that. He knew better, but that’s not usually enough to dissuade him on the spur of the moment. Don even has him push the jet back into the hanger with the little tug, finding it a little nice to have some help around for once.

Arma feels a little bad for likely being the one who strained his neck like that. Don admits that he may not be all that old, but he, Sy, and Vaun have been burning the candle at both ends for a long time already. It’s time they think about giving up on doing all of the heavy lifting themselves. He’s starting to agree with Sy on handing things over. The trust is there, and now the skill is too.

No one but Vaun and Sy have ever been allowed to drive Don’s little jeep, but he lets Arma do it on the way back. It’s like she’s become his new favorite person all of a sudden. As she leisurely drives them back to the main base, he tells the two of them a few more stories from back in the day. Rather than cooking things up to sound exciting and adventurous, like Vaun and Sy often do, Don does his best to paint as bleak of a picture for them as possible. The others never did let on to how often they thought it was surely the end for them. Don makes it sound like the three of them came back from nearly half of their missions without any cabin pressure.

While Don mainly focusses his ramblings towards Arma, his mind drifts back to his life on the outside, when he was a simple robot fleet coordinator, living alone in a small apartment. Sometimes he forgets there’s a world of people out there that have no clue what’s going on in the world around them. No one has any clue what SSS actually does.

Most everyone on the outside, including the investigators, believe that they’re nothing but a mafia with its roots corded deep into the very foundation of the space industry. In a way, it’s true. Their enterprise has always been about power, money, intimidation, and control. They tell themselves that if it weren’t for them, someone worse, like the Lions Group, or illicit industry giants like Smekov would take their place. Things could be a lot worse.

Sy has made it plenty clear that it doesn’t matter to him that they’re immortal, and can have happy lives that go on forever. What he wants, is to reach farther out into space than ever before, and do it for his country. It was never just a job to any of them.

There’s no room for even a sliver of complacency while they’re contracting in orbit. The entire orbital system is in their hands, not only for their continent, but the whole planet. Compared to the collateral damage they can cause, their little ships, and their little company are hardly worth anything. He and Arma haven’t been handed a shiny new toy, to just do their jobs. The space security yoke is being placed on their shoulders, and the burden of all the guard’s futures will be theirs to bear.

Don looks back at him, with a little bit more serious of a face. “I bet none of you knew that Sy and Vaun are better pilots than I’ve ever been. Honestly, I’m scared as hell every time I have to go up without one of them. Sure, I’ve mostly been the guy up front, but that’s cause it’s easier. The second seat is the one that matters the most. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve had to carry the real weight while I simply did the flying. My only saving grace was that I was always the best mechanic.”

Arma looks at him sympathetically. “Have they ever had to take over flying from the back?”

“Oh, yeah, quite a few times. We’ve all had to take over for one another. One time, we all got hit by a spread of debris. Left us stranded in high orbit for three days. I caught the least of it with a hole all the way through my thigh. It was small, and it only took some clotting powder and tape to patch up. Sy ended up with an arm tourniquet on and off for a day while Vaun did some improvised surgery on him.”

When Arma stops the jeep in the hanger, Don look around, to make sure no one else is listening. His face has gone ashen. “You think Sy is a pasty fella, you should see him with half as much blood. You want to know what pressure is, spend a couple days in and out of one of these tins cans after it’s been peppered all to hell by orbital debris.”

Arma is grimacing, but Don keeps going, even with his eyes welling up. “It wasn’t worth all the money in the world when I spent two days outside in the dark, trying to get us home, all while I could hear my brothers screaming and begging inside, trying to keep each other alive.”

After Don turns and steps out of the jeep, he and Arma glance at one another again. “But that wasn’t the last time you guys went out there was it?”

Don doesn’t shake his head, smile, or anything. He looks down at them with as straight of a face as ever. “No, it wasn’t, and it wasn’t the last time we promised ourselves we’d never go up there again.” Don’s eyes go back and forth between his and Arma’s knowing the two of them love one another. “It’ll be easier knowing you’ll never lose one another like that. Believe me when I say we need you to keep this place alive.”