Going Ballistic

by Dorothy Grant

  "We run pax?" That was met with an eye roll.

  "'Course not; we're strictly cargo by the regs. Just some of our baggage is self-loading." At her snort, he leaned forward and explained. "Out here, in the small communities, if you want a nice ride, you trek down to the bigger villages to get a ride on the airline's schedule. If you don't, or you can't wait, you contract a cargo pickup and drop-off." He shrugged. "As long as they've got cash in hand, what do we care?"

  "Gotcha." She nodded. "What kind of cargo do we move?"

  "Whatever needs to. Anything from food to flowers, horses to high end art, furniture to fuel cells." He paused. "Those suck."

  "Yeah. Rig a vent system every time, or something built in?"

  "Depends on the plane." He reached over and tapped her ops manual. "You've got to know your systems cold, 'cause you never know when you're going to have to run a pressure system off it. Or a full stasis pod, hauling someone's carcass to the trauma ward. If you last? After your first couple flights, we'll take you out, you buy the beers, and we'll tell you about some of the hairier loads and excuses for landing strips around here."

  She nodded, and would have bet all the money in the accounts she couldn't touch that they were running a lot more off the books than that, with pilots who wouldn't snitch. "Look forward to it. If only so I don't have to figure it out from scratch when I get 'em."

  "Good girl. So, grab us a couple waters out of the fridge, and tell me, how far have you gotten, and have you ever flown one of these before?" The chair creaked alarmingly as he leaned back and swung boots up on the table, hooking his hands behind his head.

  The fridge was right next to him; she got waters for them anyway, and handed his over unopened. "This model? No. C-21s and C-53's are just close enough that it's more a matter of puzzling out what it has compared to one, and doesn't compared to the other."

  He cracked the seal, "Such as?" As she ran down systems, he drank his water. When it was finished, he tossed the empty bottle in the trash without even turning his head to look at it first. "Heh. Well, I could sit here and quiz you on it all day. Or we could go fly one. Which sounds more fun to you?"

  "How bad's the weather?" She quirked an eyebrow at him, and drank.

  "What's it matter? We're cargo pilots, we go anyway." But he winked, letting her know he was joking. Mostly.

  "Yeah, but you asked about the fun meter. There freezing rain aloft?" She bared her teeth in something faintly resembling a grin at him. "Tornado warnings where we're headed?"

  "You, girl, have a nasty, suspicious mind. Which is good; with some of our clients and cargo, that'll keep you alive and in one piece." He grinned back.

  "What, did you forget that horses bite?" She looked at his hand, and back at his face.

  He laughed, and swung his feet off the table, sitting up with a thump. "Takes more than a damn horse to get me. Now, Two Springs Fork, they got themselves cattle, and let me tell you just how much hell a cow can kick out of a plane when she gets unsecured…"

  "They flew in a cow? Are they mad?" She couldn't imagine why they wouldn't just truck it in.

  "Twelve of 'em. You'll meet Bessie's descendants up there. In fact, you'll have to buzz the runway to get the damn things to stop grazing down the middle." He stood, and waved her in the direction of the door. She put the books up first, and followed him out. "Which is part of why we only go up there in the day. You don't want to run into a cow at night; the plane won't survive the encounter. And if you do, you'll have a permanent hatred for cows."

  "Don't have to be a pilot for that! Knew a man once who grew up raising 'em. Said he was a carnivore not because he liked plants, but because he hated cows." That got an amused snort, and he waved her out first into the hallway.

  21

  "What’re we flying today, Marv?" Rock stuck his head in Dispatch, and then eased in when it was clear there was enough space for the rest of him.

  "Oh, sheep." Marv looked up from his piles of slips of paper and computer screens.

  "What d'ya mean, oh, shit? You can't tell me that's valuable enough to haul." Rock eased out of the way so Michelle could follow him in. At Marv's alarmed look, Rock said, "Fresh meat, meet Marv."

  "Sir." She nodded, as there was no way she could get close enough to shake hands.

  Marv nodded at her, and looked back at Rock. "Not shit, Rocks-for-Brains, sheep. Wooly white and black things that go ‘baaa.’ Six of 'em, though I really ought to count it as twelve, since they're all certified pregnant."

  "Huh. Sheep. Okay, do I need to get her a little Bo-peep costume and a what-d’ya-call-it staff with the hooked end?" He hooked a thumb at Michelle, and she shook her head at him. Marv didn't even look up, or rise to the bait.

  "No, they're crated, because those hooves can damage decking. They're not sedated, so don't pull any stunts. We get docked for loss in transit, and these things are stupidly expensive." A paper printout of weight and balance came off the printer, and was shoved into Rock's chest. "There. You do ewe."

  Michelle tried to smother a laugh as she got out of the way so Rock could exit. The ramp was eye-wateringly bright after a couple days indoors doing nothing but ground and sim, and she was glad to have a large and easy to follow target while stumbling the few steps forward until her eyes adjusted. Rock jammed a cap on his head, hiding the bright silver hair, and put on his sunglasses even as he pointed her at the right plane among the busy confusion of the ramp.

  They didn't approach the cargo right off; instead, she did the preflight walkaround under his supervision, and checked the fuel by hand and eye, as well as implant. The low-level cargo planes didn't have much in the way of neural-net linkage; they were designed to be flown by people who couldn't afford implants. Michelle fumbled her way through a checklist she hadn't used in years, and though her ears burned under the measuring look, Rock didn't say anything.

  When it came to the cargo itself, there was a worried-looking woman triple-checking their tie-downs, and making soothing, cheerful noises at the sheep. Rock took the opportunity to point out all the cargo attach points, and check them himself, and make sure Michelle did, too. She looked around the bulk of him to see the sheep’s owner staring at Rock with a pale and rather scared expression, and starting to back away. That was going nowhere good, so she stepped clear and projected cheerfulness. "Hi! I'm Amber. I'm the copilot. Are you the… um, sheep farmer?"

  The woman jumped at the sound of her voice. She turned, and perked up at the sight of a normal-sized friendly human. "Yes! I'm Jen. I'm the shepherd. Where am I riding with my girls?"

  "This is a seat, here. It folds down and locks, so you'll be right with them. Do you have earplugs, or do you need a spare headset?" Michelle got her into the plane, taking care of her while Rock buttoned up the back.

  "Oh! The gentleman who checked my cargo in already gave me some. He always does!" Jen held up the package of disposable earplugs.

  "Good, good. You may want to put those on before we fire up; it's a bit noisy. So, um, what kind of sheep are they?" She eased between the front seats to get into hers at Rock's emphatic pointing. Clearly, keeping customers happy was going to be her bailiwick.

  "They're eight-way crosses. At this point, I can't call them a breed anymore." Jen grinned at the crates. "My best non-breed bred girls, and they're all bred with rams from a completely different gene pool."

  Rock rumbled from the pilot seat, "So, they're mutt mutton?" Jen froze a little at his voice, then burst out laughing as the words penetrated.

  "They certainly are!"

  "Here, put on the headset here. That way you can talk to us in flight, when we're not busy. Once we start the preflight checklist, we'll have to cut you off until we're in flight, I'm afraid, so we can concentrate, but until then…" Michelle made sure Jen was buckled in properly, then donned her own headset, and once the avionics were on, said, "All good back there?"

  "We are! The girls are fine."

  "Yay! Okay, give us a bit here to get up and runni
ng. I'm going to cut you off, so if you need anything, tap my shoulder, okay?" With a smile and a nod, Jen settled back. That let Michelle concentrate on the checklist Rock had pulled up; he was running it more by memory than paper, and she had to struggle a little with the different switch placement to keep up.

  Engines started, and clearance gotten, they switched over to ground and started the short taxi. For all his size and prosthetic hand, he had a very light, deft touch on the controls she could admire. He put it on cockpit isolate for the engine run-up and takeoff, and she stuck to the checklist, keeping an eye on the gauges. Taking off was a lot louder, shakier, and slower than what she'd gotten used to.

  After leveling off, she said, "I'm going to have to change my sight picture on the flare."

  "Yeah; don't try to land this thirty feet in the air. My back already hurts enough." He grumbled, but when she looked over, she caught the hint of a smile on his face. "I might let you take the controls en route on the way back, but landings and takeoffs are all mine."

  "You brought me along to be cabin crew, didn't you?" She teased. "And a shoulder rest."

  "Heh." He didn't take his eyes from scanning for traffic, but said softly, "You have a good touch with the pax."

  "Not my first nervous flyer. Speaking of, ready for the cheerful chatter?"

  "Go ahead." He flipped the cockpit isolate switch off, so Jen could hear and speak with them.

  "Hey, Jen! We're set up for cruising up here, and it's going to be a pretty calm day, not very choppy. When we get closer to the mountains, we're going to get a little turbulence, but it's not half as bad as a rutted farm road, so you'll be fine. How are you doing back there?"

  "I'm good, thanks. And the girls are doing okay, so far."

  "Excellent! Back home, I knew a farmer who had merino sheep. Very proud of them, and their wool. Why are mutt mutton better out here?" She put a smile into her voice, since Jen couldn't see her face.

  "Oh! Because we're just starting to raise sheep on these plains. The grasslands aren't quite up to supporting cattle, but they'll be fine for sheep. We're looking at both meat and wool for domestic use and export. Purebreds are very, very good at one thing, but these will be useful for both." Jen made a chirruping noise at the sheep who couldn't hear her, then sighed. "Also, these girls are much more likely to thrive as we encounter new challenges, especially since terraforming left a lot of native plants up here that we've never seen how sheep react to, and the weather patterns are going to be a bit tricky with the ongoing weather sat mods."

  "Ah! So what breed are you hoping to get when you get the hang of sheep up here? And how are you going to avoid the overgrazing issues?" That was enough to keep Jen talking for most of the flight, as they approached the mountains, shot the pass, and flew over the high plains on the other side.

  Michelle didn't even recognize the airstrip when they first approached - it looked like a section of pasture that was long and thin, and freshly mowed. Only when Rock set up the approach did she realize… "It's just her farm?"

  "Yep." They touched lightly, and as smoothly as could be expected, taxiing up close to the gate at the far end as a truck came down to meet them. Once the engines were shut off Jen barely paid any attention to the pilots at all; her entire focus was on getting her girls out of the plane safely and over to the barn, where they'd acclimatize with shade and shelter for the first few days.

  Rock shook his head as the crates were left by the runway and the sheep trailed up to the barn, and said, "All right, we'll preflight again; doesn't hurt for you to get the practice in."

  "Yes, sir." She shook her head, and turned back to the plane.

  "What are you grinning at?" Rock's eyes might be hidden by sunglasses, but she could see his expression perfectly clearly.

  "After all these years, I finally had a literal herd of pax." She grinned at him, and he grunted.

  "Just for that, you get to fly her on the way back." Even if his face was still locked in a scowl, she could hear the amusement in his voice.

  22

  They took off, and Rock coaxed the plane northward, running parallel to the mountain chain. She looked out at the rugged land below, and said, "Are we going for a different pass?"

  "Yeah. Folks out here get everything airdropped, or pack it in on mules, and they have to build the roads out to where they want to go. So when we get a paying customer for one leg, I take the longer route to see if anybody's got a flag out for loads they want to go in. Saves the gas and wear and tear of hauling out twice, and they just settle it up when they land in town, or after they sell their cargo and are headed back out."

  Michelle nodded. "Got lots of places in the Misty Isles like that, but they're usually by boat. Planes are if it's urgent. And if the weather is good enough." She paused. "Usually it is." Her mouth twisted at a memory.

  "Yeah, I’ve flown in that 'three miles and clear', too." Rock snorted. "You'll get that here in the winter. Don't try it until you get better, or you'll ball up the plane."

  She grimaced. "No thank you. I don't know this terrain; I'll leave that mistake to the last pilot before me, and learn from him!"

  He grunted agreement, and an easy silence fell in the cockpit as she brought up the onboard map. "These checkpoints - the farms we fly?"

  "Some. Some are for other things. Some are surprises for any assholes who steal my database." At her surprised noise, he shrugged. "You get competition everywhere."

  "Guess so." She ghosted him on the controls, until he leaned back.

  "Your plane."

  "I have the plane." She nodded. "Where to, captain?"

  "Heh." He shook his head. "Ain't nobody called me that in a long time. Straight on, 'til I tell you otherwise."

  As the miles unwound beneath them in rock and brush and stretched of native earth grass competing with the alien blue-green still clinging to the highland meadows, they stitched between farms, and stopped to pick up several crates of eggs, a bunch of hand-thrown pottery, two gigantic bags of wool that Rock had to help the farmer move, and a tightly-rolled bundle wrapped in canvas from a particularly twitchy old guy on a strip with almost no farm. Unlike the others, the old man was twitchy about her, not Rock. They had to walk away from the plane, and she watched Rock making calm-down motions with his hands several times as they talked before the man walked away and came back with his small bundle.

  After they left, she said softly, “I'm not going to ask, in case I shouldn't know."

  "Mac's a hunter. They're furs. He's not too fond of people. Give it a few years, and you'll be all right." Rock shrugged, a rolling motion that, in the small cockpit, moved against her from shoulder to knee.

  "Furs? Huh." She shook her head. "That makes perfect sense, actually. High-value, light, easy to export. Other than the bloody customs fees and regs."

  Rock gave a distinctly sour grunt. "Feds hate the places like this, where people are on the margins of their rulings, and standardized anything doesn't fit. But they need the money to keep their central populations pacified. Nueva Terra joined as a junior economic partner, but every year the cost of market access keeps going up, and the regs keep piling higher."

  "If they don't stick the leaving now, they might not be able to afford to?" She had wondered; out here, the idea of a war seemed completely unreal.

  Rock grimaced; it made his usual scowl seem mild. "They should have picked the Imperium. We… They don't pretend colonies are equal while bleeding them dry."

  Michelle drew a long, deep breath, and let it back out. "I suspect they will. May have already."

  There was a silence in the cockpit then, anything but easy. Rock cleared his throat, and pointedly didn't ask. "We'll be shooting that gap."

  "Got it." She nodded, and banked the plane gently to line up. "Do we go rules of road to the right, or down the middle?"

  "Right. This one has traffic that's not always squawking and talking. We're known, though, so we're pretty safe." He was silent a moment, then added, "Some passes, you
always take the rising air, no matter which side it is. Greater risk for traffic, but better than hitting a downslope wind you can't out-climb."

  "Amen." She patted the control panel by habit, and added a little throttle in, picking up a little speed in case she needed to convert it to altitude in a hurry.

  They landed as the sun was sinking low over the ocean, glittering across the rippling waves, and the breeze was still ripping onshore, carrying the heat of the day high. Rampers were there to help unload the cargo; where roads didn't go, communications did, and there were already arrangements to take each piece to its destination. After buttoning up the plane, they headed back across the ramp together. Rock put a hand on her shoulder, slowing her down to a stop, and spoke in the fading light. "Now that we're away from a cockpit voice recorder, just what have you seen the Imperium get up to?"

  "The locals asked the Empire for more than just their accident investigation team, I hear." She didn't look at him, then, staring out at the ocean sunset across the plascrete and grass. "Might have crossed paths with a certain cabin crew. Might have heard the board was asking about current transponder codes…"

  "They're buying Imperium air defenses? Thank God." He was silent a long while, and finally shook himself like a dog shedding water. "You happen to mention that to anyone else?"

  "Been too busy keeping my head down and learning aircraft systems." She replied, honestly, and his snort this time was as good as a smile.

  "Well, I'll have a talk with Russ. I bet we can put in for the contract on defense emplacement, and see if we can steal a march on a competitor or two around the field." He squeezed her shoulder. "You did all right today, girl."

  "Didn't do much, just kept the pax happy." She shrugged, but the compliment felt warm and fuzzy, like a good drink going down.

  "Trust me, that was plenty. Damned if I know why that woman's scared shitless of me, but she always is." He waved a hand in invitation to the cargo building, and they started walking.