Partnering Up- a short science fiction story

HALL OF CONSPIRACIES
RAVEN HANGAR

Isabel Kalishnikov

My patrol in the RavenClaw. All the school. All the training. The work. My dream was about to come true. I hadn’t felt this kind of euphoria since before my spiritual crash. Nothing could bring me down. Nothing.

“Hey,” said TarFace. “Your co-pilot is coming out. There he is. Now listen: This guy is only temporary. Okay? He’s just a fill-in. So don’t stress out about him.”

“Why would I? What’s wrong with him?”

“What? Nothing,” TarFace replied. He smiled. “He’s good. He’s been a temporary fill-in at co-pilot for a long time. He’s a solid, B-level alternative.”

“Temporary? Alternative?”

“Okay, I’m off to do pre-flight.” TarFace turned on his heels and waved over his shoulder. “See you in the sky.”

I watched TarFace walk to his co-pilot. They slapped hands and smacked each other on the shoulder the way guys do. They shared a laugh before focusing on their Raven.

My temporary, alternative co-pilot floated across the hangar like a shadow over towards me. I held up my hand to slap his. He stopped and looked me. Then he looked at my hand, hanging in the air. He blinked a couple of times. But he left my hand hanging.

“I’m WarChild,” he said. He was a wisp of a man. More like a boy. His voice was slight, kinda timid. He seemed kinda weird.

To be honest, everyone seems kinda weird to me.

“I’m BangWay (apparently).” I replied.

“BangWay?” he asked. Then he muttered to himself. “Great. Bang way. That’s just the name I want my pilot to have.”

“I didn’t pick it. It was all Speerman. Sooooo, shall we do the walk-around, or what?”

“There’s no other reason to meet you,” WarChild said kinda’ icily.

I brushed it off and looked back at RavenClaw. He was gleaming. The angles of his wings all curved in distorted directions. When looking at him up, his wings stretched this way. The speedvane overhead stretched that way. The nearer booster block angled away from us.

We walked under the wing, visually inspecting the primary functions; seeing every flap looked flush, every thruster port looked tightly closed, the landing serifs looked sturdy. We walked to the back ramp, checking the seals along the outside edge of the ramp. No visible cracks on any of the gaskets. The struts responsible for lifting the ramp to closure all looked straight and greased.

“Primary check look good?” I asked my new co-pilot.

“You’re the pilot.” He sounded sassy. “You tell me.”

There was no reason for him to treat me like I’m a rookie. I mean, I am the rookie. But that’s no reason to treat me like one. This is my moment of victory. There is nothing else I want to do with my life than fly a Raven. This can’t fall apart. I can’t fail. I am not going to let this guy ruin this. But I can’t be confrontational. I have to make this work.

“Looks good to me,” I said. “Look, every preflight on every vehicle I’ve done requires consensus from the co-pilot.”

“Yes.” It sounded like he sighed when he said it. “I’ve green-marked every thing we’ve seen. Okay?” He started to turn.

All of the sudden, I grabbed his arm. I surprised myself as much as I surprised him. I hoped the words just came out of my mouth as fluently.

“WarChild, are we in this together?” I asked.

He sighed and then forced a fake smile. “Yes. Why wouldn’t we be?”

I let go of his arm. “I don’t know. But I take preflight very seriously. So we need to be able to communicate effectively.”

“You got it.” He said.

“Say my name.”

“Okayyyy? You got it, BangWay.” He whipped his head away and walked around the side of the ramp. “Let’s open mic each other. I’ll do the visual on our Secondary preflight check.”

“Copy that,” I said, testing my helmet mic.