Safety Tests (3 page)

“Sorry, LaDonna,” I say. “Those are the rules.”

She bows her head. “One more chance?”

They all ask that. As if I’d risk my job for them. As if I really want someone who freezes when something out of the ordinary happens to pilot ships in the tight traffic routes that spider out of Earth’s orbit.

“Sorry,” I say. “You can try again in thirty days.”

It only takes a few seconds to get back into the confines of the dock. She has to reverse the actions she took just a moment ago, but I don’t let her. I take control of the ship.

“Thirty days.” She chokes out the words. “I don’t know if I can make it for thirty days.”

I hit the docking controls, and the ship slides into place as if it’s never left.

“Sorry,” I say, not sorry at all. “But I don’t make the rules.”

I used to say,
See you then
, but I no longer believe I can make it another thirty days. Sometimes I doubt I can make it another hour. Today, though, I can make it.

One more test and I’m done. For a whole twelve hours. (And fifteen minutes.)

***

I go back in and immediately glance at the waiting area. Only the sleeping woman remains, head tilted back, mouth open, small snores emerging at regular intervals.

Real pilots can sleep anywhere. I’m impressed, even though I don’t want to be.

I’m also impressed that Connie has taken pity on me and hasn’t added four more candidates to my pile. She could have, given the four she dismissed this morning.

I don’t thank her, though. Instead, I pick up the last candidate’s info screen and actually peruse it. I should do that with every candidate, but I don’t, and then I pay for it, like I did with LaDingdong.

This woman’s name is Iva, and she’s here for recertification. What a surprise. She’s flown cargo for decades, preceded by some classified military stuff. She went private for five years, and then a spectacular personal implosion—involving name-calling, food throwing, and a refusal to take her client wherever he wanted to go. (The report states [probably because the report writer can’t resist] that she would take her client anywhere he wanted provided it was hell. Because he belonged in hell, and nowhere else, and she wasn’t about to inflict him on the good people of the universe.) That made me smile. It also made me like her.

I didn’t want to like her.

Such behavior would have gotten her disqualified from any public and/or corporate job, but she worked for herself. She did lose her license for a while—that food-throwing thing led to a near-accident with a really expensive ship—and that lost license led her here.

She had to retest for everything and of course, she was passing with stellar grades. An easy test for the end of the day.

“Iva,” I say, and she sits up, the kind of awake soldiers have when aroused on the battlefield—hair mussed, eyes sleep-covered but alert, body ready for anything. “You still want this test?”

“No,” she says. Her voice is deep and sarcastic. “Who wants these tests? I’m told I need it.”

Oh, God, I like her. I don’t want to like her. I want her to be as impersonal a candidate as Buff Guy or LaDingdong. I want to be able to flunk her for picking her nose at the wrong moment, for farting indiscriminately and pissing me off, or for putting her hand on my knee and trying to flirt with me. I want to feel nothing for her like I feel nothing for all the others, not even a sense of duty.

“If you don’t want to take the test, that’s fine with me,” I say in my most dispassionate voice.

“That’s not what I meant—ah, hell.” She shakes her head, runs her hand through her badly cut hair, and stands up. “Yes, sir, I am ready for the test, sir.”

“All right then,” I say. “Let’s go.”

***

She’s going for a cargo license too, and technically I should take her to the same ship I used for LaDingdong. But that ship’s old, and Iva’s experienced, and chances are that she actually flew that type of ship before.

So I take her to our newest baby, a repossess with every bell, whistle, and gadget known to man. There’s not one, not two, not three, but four shadow controls on this thing, and it took me nearly a week to figure out how each part of the ship worked.

It’s gold and sleek and moves like an eel in water. If larceny actually lived in my soul, I’d steal this son of a bitch and use it to get me out of here.

Only if I do that, I’d have to leave my very comfortable bed behind, and I’d be on the run for the rest of my life, neither of which really appeals to me.

We stop in front of the dock and Iva tilts her head back, looking up at my beautiful baby.

“You’re shitting me, right? Do you know how much this thing is worth?”

It unnerves me that she does. Maybe I should’ve taken her to the older vessel.

“You want the test or not?” I ask.

“Stop asking me if I want it,” she snaps, then sighs. “I’m sorry.”

I want to tell her never mind, that attitude isn’t an issue, but it is. That’s one mark against her because no one likes working with a mouthy pilot, particularly one who went off the deep end and lost her previous job due to some creative insubordination. Except me, of course.

“Yes,” she says somewhat meekly into my silence. “I want the test.”

Then she walks around the ship like she’s done it all her life, which, I suppose, she has. Hands clasped behind her, inspecting not the dings (there are a few) or the small scrapes, but the actual equipment, from the life pod releases to the outside engine access to the docking clamps.

A true professional.

When she reaches me, I sweep a hand toward the ship, indicating that she should board ahead of me. She nods, and does. It takes her the required minute or so to figure out the entry mechanism for this thing, and then she strides inside like it’s her ship.

If, of course, she meant to go to the sleeping quarters instead of the cockpit. Her cheeks are just a little red as she turns around and heads in the correct direction.

I follow closely, watching her absorb the ship. She’s never been inside it, nor has she been in a ship like this, but she’s acting like it’s not new to her. Her head moves slightly as she takes in the paneling, the extra monitors on the walls, the closed doors.

Then she turns left into the cockpit as if she’s done it a million times before.

By the time I get in there, she’s in the pilot’s seat, strapped in, and examining the controls, hands on her lap, just like she’s supposed to.

I expected her to be hands-on already. I’m a little surprised she hasn’t touched anything.

Either she’s taken some refresher courses or she flunked a previous test way back for moving too quickly. I’ll vote on the previous test. Pilots like her don’t take refresher courses.

I sit in the co-pilot’s chair, noting as I do every time, how very soft and plush it is. Would that I could always run tests out of this ship. I almost—almost—shut off all four shadow controls, but I don’t. I don’t trust anyone that much.

“I’m going to release the controls to you,” I say, of course, not mentioning the shadow controls.

She nods and listens as I speak to the folks on the Traffic Desk. Then I tell her to take the ship gently out of here.

I’m not sure which route to take—the fast ones to Mars or the standard cargo test routes to the Moon. It’s a shame to make this beautiful ship do something standard, but she hasn’t signed up for a racer license. She signed up for cargo and a renewal at that.

“Here’s your route,” I say and punch Route Three on the control panel, just like a co-pilot/navigator would.

She nods, eases this ship out of the docking area with an ease I haven’t experienced in years. Not even this morning’s other retest, that male pilot I complimented so highly, had such a nice touch.

The ship unclamps and floats out as if no one controls it at all. Only real pilots know how hard that is to do.

We have an actual cockpit window on this ship, and she raises the metal curtain. Suddenly the cockpit fills with ship butts, running lights, glare, and three-dimensional nightmares. The Moon looms in the distance as if it were really our destination.

I can see the routes as clearly as if they’re marked. They’re not, of course. They change as the station’s orbit around the Earth changes, but I’ve done this so long it’s like there’s a map of the trajectories in my head.

There probably is, too. I can see which ships are a little off-course, which ones are traveling too fast for their route, which ones are not certified for the station itself.

She doesn’t seem distracted by the ships at all. She waits until she’s the required distance from the station before engaging the engines. Her hands on the controls are firm and delicate at the same time. She’s clearly used to hands-on flying. I wonder if she ever uses the automated system.

We ease forward, out of the first protected zone around the station. Speeds here are regulated just like everything else from engine burn to communications chatter. The tiny robot deflector ships hover near the bays, ready to knock some ship aside if it gets too close to anything.

Farther ahead, through the second and third protected zones, ships move faster, some of them actually speeding their way to Mars.

But no one speeds here. Six ships surround us, all heading on different routes for different things. L&R learned long ago that we should have only one test course running per day, because any more and the stupid candidates might bump into each other (literally).

Add in the private pilots (some of whom are real doofuses), the folks who should have Sectioned out long ago, and the pilots from countries with regulations less stringent than ours (and who aren’t allowed to use our space station), and the first protected zone is the Wild West—ships moving every which way on trajectories not assigned by any standardized route.

I count at least three inexperienced or just plain inept pilots out of the six. One ship keeps turning on half of its running lights, then turning on the other half, never both at the same time. A another ship slides from one standard route entry to another as if the pilot can’t decide where he’s going, and a third seems to be on yet another attempt at docking with the station.

Iva manages to avoid all of them with an ease that would lead any passenger to think there’s no trouble at all. She seems to be able to do complicated equations in her head, adjusting for this, adjusting for that, working the three-dimensional space in a way that most pilots never learn.

Then she translates all of that math, all those spatial relations, into her fingers with a gentleness that I’m not even sure I can attempt.

We head toward the Moon at a pace that feels unnaturally slow.

I run Iva through the paces—a turn here, a pretend crisis there—and she does even better than I expect.

Then we begin our return. I’m going to ignore her attitude mistake, and pass her with the highest possible grade.

At least, that’s what I’m thinking until I realize we’re heading too fast into the high traffic around the station.

“You’re coming in hot,” I say.

She ignores me. Or maybe she didn’t hear me.

“Iva,” I say with a sharp twist on her name, “you’re going too fast.”

“You desk jockeys,” she says and that pisses me off. I am not a desk jockey. If I were, I wouldn’t be sitting here, feeling my heart rate increase.

“Iva,” I say, keeping my tone level, “slow down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I can handle it.”

She narrowly avoids the ship with the running lights problem.

“You know that handling it isn’t an issue. You’re not allowed to come in too fast. It’s too dangerous.”

“I have the skills,” she says.

“Skills aren’t a problem.” I try not to raise my voice. I want to sound calm, even though I’m not calm. “There are rules.”

“Of course there are rules,” she says.

Warning: Your speed violates the safety protocols for the nearby space station
.

We triggered the station’s automated warning system. I glance at the controls. That means there have to be robot deflector ships nearby.

“I
hate
rules,” Iva says.

“They keep us safe,” I say as I try to contact the station. I can’t. She has taken control of communications.

The robot deflector ships line up outside our ship. If I can see them, she can too.

“One of those things hits us,” I say, “and you automatically fail.”

“I won’t fail,” she says, deliberately ignoring me.

“I’ll have to flunk you,” I say.

“Of course you will,” she snaps. “All those stupid rules. You people and your stupid rules. This station and its stupid rules. The licensing board and its stupid rules.”

She’s supposed to be slowing down. She’s supposed to be easing toward the station. Or to be accurate, easing toward the docking ring. But she’s heading directly toward the station. That’s why the robot ships are crowding us. They assume we’re an out-of-control ship. They’ll nudge us off the path to the station, and then everything’ll be fine.