Aloft (Petronaut Tales) (6 page)

From across the testing grounds, Sir Tomas gave Iggy a nod.  She inserted the ignition pin into the socket and gave it a twist.  The two propellers buzzed into life, creating modest downdrafts that sent dust and flakes of grass swirling through the air.  Iggy shielded her eyes and ignored the dirt and petrolatum fumes that wafted into her nose.  She hustled away from the machine.  This inaugural test wouldn’t be a manned one; they were going to stay nice and far from the concept vehicle as they sent it skyward for the first time. 

A length of wire traced a shining line from the jump pedal all the way to where Ensie and Tomas were standing.  Ensie unspooled the last half-meter of wire from the long steel reel and snipped the end off.  She wet her lips as she wrapped the thin length of metal thread securely around the base of a wooden handle.  They needed a way to depress the jump pedal from a distance, without having a person physically in the pilot’s seat, so Ensie had rigged up a temporary pulley system behind the thin pedal.  A loop of wire was draped over the pedal and fed through the pulleys back to their vantage point on the ground.  Yanking the wire would pull once on the pedal, launching the Flicker on its first jump.  The force of the pull would also remove a pin from the wire apparatus and safely detach the wire from the machine so it wouldn’t yank the handle out of her hands before it went skyward.  It was low-tech, but all they needed for the test.

Sir Tomas held out his hand wordlessly as she finished tightening up the wire on the handle.  Ensie opened her mouth, but couldn’t think of an articulate way to give voice to an idea that had been bubbling up in her head for the past forty-eight hours.  So, with a swallow and a nod, she passed her boss the handle to a machine he barely knew anything about.

Iggy trotted up to their vantage point behind a low wall of sandbags.  She looked across the grounds at the Flicker a hundred meters away. 

“All clear,” she said, raising her voice a little over the high-thrumming of the propellers.  “On your mark, Sir Tomas.”

The ‘naut didn’t say anything.  His face looked bored as he squinted against the wind and dust that was brushing against their suits.  He grunted as he gave a sharp pull on the handle.  It happened so quickly Ensie was still looking over at his profile when the Flicker took its first leap.

She swung her head back to the test field and looked up at the great bug in the sky.  It caught the sunlight fetchingly as it reached the apex of its jump. There was a tall measuring pylon a safe distance away on the field, with easy-to-read notches marked up to twenty meters in glossy black paint.  The Flicker made it up to about four, as far as she could tell, just a few degrees off of a vertical leap.  It sank back down at about half the speed it had gone up, as the deliberately weak propellers gave just enough lift to struggle against gravity.

Ensie frowned.  That was faster than they wanted the Flicker to descend.  When it was jumping forward and not just straight up-and-down, as in this test, the aerodynamics of the shape would help it glide and catch some additional lift.  But adding on a pilot’s mass would probably cancel that out.

As calculations ran through her head, the Flicker touched down with a clatter just to the side of its launch-off point.  The articulated skis bent at their hinges and took the landing nicely, like a barefoot child who thumps down on the soles of her feet, then curls her toes down a heartbeat later for stability. The machine skidded a bit before coming to a stop.  Its motor purred its high-pitched purr as the air swirled around it.

Iggy whooped with pleasure.  “What’d you think, Ensie?  Four meters?”

“Think so.  At least!”

“Someone turn that off,” Sir Tomas said, dropping the wooden handle to the dust.

Some dirt brushed into Ensie’s face and left an acrid taste in her mouth.  Ensie rubbed the back of her hand across her lips and trotted towards the Flicker without acknowledging the order directly. 
It’s not as if it was an order to me, anyway.  He couldn’t care less who does the work around here, as long as he gets the credit.

She looked over her shoulder as she reached the Flicker.  Iggy and Tomas were in conversation.  Their ‘naut was staring straight at the ground as Iggy tried to draw him out, her gestures looking especially animated against his stillness.  She couldn’t hear what her senior tech was saying.  His mouth may have been moving.  It was hard to tell.

Ensie sighed as she clambered into the pilot’s seat, reaching out for the keypin.  She twisted the metal stick and pulled it out of its slot.  The propellers’ keening slowed and quieted, and the ranine box below the chair made the whole craft sag a few centimeters as it depressurized.  Ensie felt the machine relax beneath her as she sat in the chair, the safety harness swinging against her ankles.  The seat was a good size for her.  She lifted a finger and tapped it against the rubber-coated handlebar, like tapping the side of a glass fishbowl.  The entire training field stretched out in front of her, flat and open and inviting.

She stuffed the keypin in her pocket and slunk away from the machine.  The engine went dead behind her.

Ask him.  Just ask him.

“As you’d know if you’d been reading my reports,” Iggy was saying as Ensie rejoined them, “we were hoping for something closer to five-and-a-half meters on a straight jump with no pilot’s mass.”

“You didn’t get it.”  Tomas crossed his arms over his chest, pursing his lips at the ground.  “Sounds like the problem’s in that ranine box.”

“It could be the box, or it could be the limiters we installed on the props.  If we dial them back, the lift would be a little higher and the gliding a little smoother.”

 “I’m sick of all the back-and-forth on this burning thing.”  He pressed his toe into one of the sandbags like a sulking toddler.  “Just pump up the box so it gets high enough.”

“Well, hey, sir, thanks for the confident leadership, but what if that’s not what it needs?”

“You want it to pass five point five, that’s the easiest way to do it.” 

Iggy put her hands on her hips and started to sputter at him.  He raised a finger to stop her.  “Don’t kill yourself for this thing, tech,” he said.  “It’s dead on arrival.  You honestly think that the future of personal flight is jumping around on a foil-covered shrimp?  This thing’s never going to catch on.”

“If we execute the design badly, of course it won’t.”

“When we’re going up against the latest thrust packs, trust me; this thing’s going to look bad no matter how many hours you waste on it.”

“Thrust packs?  You’ve seen their tests?”  Ensie chimed in.  “Dame Guernsey, right?”

Tomas sighed and nodded.  “Spheres yeah.  Now that’s a project that’s going places.  If I weren’t stuck with this damn thing I’d be slitting throats left and right to pilot in their demo.  As it is, I’m pulling strings to be Guernsey’s alternate.”

“Spheres, Tomas.”  Iggy clenched her teeth.  “Can you pay attention to
your
job for thirty seconds?  We just had our first successful jump test, and all you can do is whine about how another ‘naut’s project is shinier than yours.”

“Somebody’s got to put my career first.  It might as well be me.”  He turned on his heel and started to walk back towards the Aerial compound.  “Crank up the ranine box and call it a day, techs,” he shouted over his shoulder.

Iggy narrowed her eyes and turned her back on him, swearing skillfully in at least three languages.  As Ensie watched him go, she saw an opportunity peeking out through the crack of an unexpected open door.  She took a deep breath and hustled after the ‘naut, her flat shoes skidding on the dusty ground.

“Sir Tomas,” she said.  “I… there’s something I wanted to ask you.” 

He didn’t look at her or change his stride in the slightest as she paced him behind his left shoulder. 

“It’s a little irregular, but I thought—especially if you’re interested in being open for the thrust pack demo—it might be something you wanted to hear.”

He couldn’t hear her at all, as far as she could tell.  His sharp-featured face was pointed right towards the workshop door.  She brushed her palms over each other and forced the words out of her mouth. 

“I might want to try flying the Flicker.”

“What do you mean?” he said, not slowing down.

 “I mean, in the demo.  If you wanted, I could try being the test pilot.”

That actually stopped him.  Sir Tomas frowned.  He looked up into the sky, tilting his head.  “Did you really just ask me that?”

Ensie looked at the ground.  She laced her fingers together as he went on.

“What in the flames is wrong with you?  You’re not trained for flight.”

“The Flicker’s a concept vehicle, sir.  Nobody in the world is trained for it,” she said quietly.

“Junior techs don’t run Expo demonstrations.”

“In Parade squad and the Civics, they do.  In Recon, the whole squad demos together.”

“When was the last time the Recon squad did anything interesting?” he sneered.

She looked up at his profile, not knowing what to say.  He was staring back at the workshop door.  The lines in his face were deep and dark.

“I don’t think you could handle it,” he said.

Ensie felt a little unsteady.  She locked her knees together to keep from shrinking away.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir,” she said.  “And I’d love the chance to prove that I can.”

He glanced at her, eyes landing somewhere around her waist.  There was no breeze now that the Flicker was off, and Ensie’s forehead was beading with sweat.

“Did Iggy put you up to this, junior tech?”  Tomas asked, with real curiosity in his voice.

“No, sir.”

He nodded slowly.  “You understand how funny it’ll look to the other teams if I let my junior tech make the demo flight.”

“But if you’ve been suddenly called up for the thrust pack demo, they’ll understand.”

His eyes shifted back and forth as he thought.  His thin lips curled up in a smile. 

“Oh, Chatty Ensie.  It’s a thrill to show off for the crowd,” he said.  “Awe is a tangible thing.  Being the focus of all that excitement and all that anticipation makes you feel… powerful.  Important.”  He put his hands on his hips and laughed, looking up at the sky again.  “I doubt you’ll like it, but… burn it, you know?  Everyone should feel that way once in their lives, and who knows when you’ll have that chance again!”

She pressed her lips together and made herself shrug pleasantly.

“I’ll talk availability with Dame Guernsey,” Sir Tomas went on.  “If I can swing my way onto the thrust pack project, your little wish is granted.  You can leap around on the silver roach as much as you like.”

Despite his best efforts, her heart started beating with excitement.  “Thank you.  Thank you, sir.  It’s a real honor.”

“Spheres, tech,” he snorted.  “If you get this excited about doing other people’s chores, come iron my shirts sometime.”

He turned his back on her abruptly and went walking towards the workhouse.  “Be sure you juice up those ranine coils,” he said.  “Four meters?  That’s a flaming embarrassment.  If you’re going to be a real Aerial for once, I want to see you grab some air.”

A real Aerial
. 

All his insults washed past her.  Those mumbled words lifted out of the sentence and hung in the air long after Sir Tomas was gone.  Ensie Thalanquin brushed the sweat off her forehead and felt her body quivering as the anxiety of the moment drained away.  She rushed back over to the sandbags, where Iggy was glowering at the Flicker with her arms across her chest.

“What was that about?”  the senior tech asked, preoccupied.  “Did he have anything else to say for himself?”

“Actually,” Ensie said, “I’ve got some news.”

Cooper relaxed into the kiss.  Both of her hands were touching his face, with her palms cradling his cheeks and her fingertips gently stroking the place where his too-long sideburns began.  Her lips were soft and wet and endlessly fascinating.

Ensie lifted involuntarily onto her tiptoes as his hands tightened around her waist.  One palm held her in the small of the back, and the other drifted up her spine to where her bra clasp would have been, on another day.  Chest to chest, thigh to thigh, lips to lips, she felt his size and the weight of his body against her, around her, over her.  She leaned into him with all her might, smiling through the kiss as he shuffled a step backwards to get his balance.  She ran her teeth over his lower lip and drew one hand down to his chest before lifting her head away.

“Good day at work?”  he rumbled, a grin on his dampened lips.

“I’m a real Aerial,” Ensie said. 

Tears sprang into her eyes.  Cooper’s smile went upside-down with concern and he stooped over to bring his face to her level.  Ensie patted his chest, trying to smile at him, but a thread of sobs pulled its way up her throat.  She began to cry, the quiet sound filling the close air of the back office at Upforth’s Hydraulics.

She shuddered quietly, ashamed and frustrated by the little noises coming out of her mouth and the hot tears pooling in her eyes.  Cooper’s hands shifted up to her shoulder blades and folded around her like a warm, thick quilt. 

Through her tears, Ensie had the presence of mind to press her calf against the still-open door behind them, sliding it gently closed.  It was after hours, yes, but Upforth or any of the other employees could easily have wandered through the hallway at any moment with all the Expo work left to do.   Cooper smiled and shook his head. 
I wonder what it’s like to be that smart
, he thought.

“Well, this is real sexy,” Ensie snuffled, wiping her eyes on his collar.

“What happened?”

She took a deep breath and let it out in a slow stream of air, willing the spasms in her chest to settle down.  Ensie looked up into his face.  “I’m going to fly the Flicker.”

His eyes got wide as she told him everything about the morning’s test, and the brief-but-momentous conversation with Sir Tomas. 

“Upforth loses interest in projects all the time,” Cooper said, marveling, “but I can’t even imagine him backing away from a chance to take the credit.”