Rebellion in the Shadows

“Push through Reconist. Come on push through.” The Privy Master that was running next to me didn’t seem winded at all. That, more than his words, bothered me. Not enough to make me run faster, but enough to make me want to throw my water bottle at his head.

“Push through what exactly?” I asked through gasps. “I am running, not moving a couch!”

“You got jokes? Hey everyone! Select Master Guardian Prime Reconist Talaya Hatawti has jokes! What do jokes equal?”

“More laps,” everyone replied in the same irritated tone. It was zero-five-thirty. Once again, I had started the day with no coffee and a bunch of grumpy Privy Masters.

I picked up my pace to get away from the one that wouldn’t leave me alone. My thin, flexible shoes met the identical material on the course. They had a track here so we could all run as a group. It was supposed to raise morale, but all it managed to raise was my nausea. Half those damn people didn’t take their deodorizing pills that morning and smelled like old, wet socks.

My harasser, Santeeg, was still on my tail. He was grumpier than most of the instructors and lacked any sense of humor. His uniform was disgusting with smears of dirt and what looked like ketchup near the collar and his greasy pale hair was too long. Dark circles puffed under his eyes. Maybe that’s why he’s so grumpy, I thought. He must need a shower and a nap. For some reason, a picture of him cuddled with a stuffed scherlot on an air bed popped into my mind. The thought made me laugh.

“No laughing Reconist! Come on, pick up the pace!” My smirk stayed, but my legs kicked up faster and I left him behind.

Notawa was in the changing room waiting with water and a towel. Several others scowled at the sight of her.

“They already posted your mile time. Excellent job.” she said. I scooched by her to get to my locker. I typed in my code and it opened with a beep.

“They hate me enough. Can’t you, I don’t know, let me get my own water?” I whispered.

“Mentors are meant to encourage and teach! I can’t help it, this is my job.”

“Fine. Encourage with a digicomm from now on. I can hydrate alone.” I slammed my locker door and walked past more whispers. The word “spoiled” slipped into my ear followed by another round of giggles. That was it. I jumped around to face them. It was Su’jee with a few of her friends.

“Listen here you little jerk. If I was truly spoiled, they would do whatever I wanted. And if they were doing whatever I wanted, your insignificant flat ass would be on the first drone back to the town of Northern Punkville where you came from.”

“I’m not from Punkville.” Su’jee said. I stepped closer, right into her face.

“Of course, you aren’t. I made it up. It’s a mythical place where all people who are assholes come from.”

She shoved me away and Notawa jumped between us.

“That’s enough! Talaya, you’re going to be late for your tour of the hangar bay and airfield.” The mention of the tour snapped me out of my blind anger, but she still had to pull me away from the short girl.

“She’s not worth the hassle anyway.” Notawa said as she glared at the girl. We walked out of the changing area. I was holding my clean uniform in my clenched fist.

“Holy Tau, I don’t like that girl,” I said.

“Su’jee tends to be on the rough side.”

“Next time I’m just going to punch her in the nose.” I went to the other side of the room and put my uniform on.

“No, you will not. It would get you kicked out of the Space Academy,” she said. She was standing a few feet away but turned with her back to me while I got dressed.

“Like I really wanted to be here anyway.” I had half mumbled it, but she heard me. I finished buttoning my uniform blouse and we left the changing room for the airfield.

On the way to the Airfield, we passed Kirtis in the hall.

“Your face looks a lot better,” I said. My attempt to be friendly was ignored and he kept walking without so much as a nod my direction.

The airfield was one of the things I had been looking forward to. It was 1,000 times as big as any other hangar bay I had ever been in. In a normal day with my old unit, Whyla would pick me up at the landing pad by my house then we would fly to grab the other three members of our unit. The flight plan would be handed out over coffee and we would go on our way. Each of us would have a list of places to go, people to pick up, or supplies to drop off. Other times, when it would get slow, we would patrol the skies. In all my seven years as a Reconist, I had only broken up two fights with defensive spray, saved a burla from the top of a two-hundred foot conifer, and helped put out one fire in our standard issue T150 drone.

The Space Academy didn’t even have T150 drones. They were being refitted throughout the globe and turned into autopiloted package drones. No, the Space Academy had the T550s.

It was a much larger, much sleeker, and a much faster drone. The airfield and hangar bay were locked down. Without Notawa, I couldn’t get in without Notawa’s clearance. My fingers tapped against my pants when I heard one of them turn on it sent my arm buzzing.

High heart rate.

I swiped it away and tried to hide the smile that was working its way from my gut. While I was content to hide my excitement, Notawa grinned from ear to ear.

“I think you will really love the new stuff we have here,” she said, turning to the blinking light beside the door lock. The face scan beeped at her, then asked for her four-digit passcode.

The heavy metal door clicked open and I followed her inside. The giant hangar bay was loud with the cacophony of drones warming up, flying in and out of the entrance or being moved. A Coordinator ran over with a headset for each of us. It linked up with my calcumat and the settings for a perfect fit loaded onto it. The visor came down, the foam cushions inside inflated a bit, and the microphone moved away from my mouth.

“Test?”

“Loud and clear! This is a closed channel so no need for formality,” Notawa said. She took me around the hangar bay. Our first stop was dedicated to the plane that was taking up more than half of the entire hangar bay.

“This is the 4-5-2, the largest plane in the World Flying Force.” She stopped near the giant plane and I continued for her.

“Developed by the Collaboration of Engineers in AE 3510. With a fuel range of twice the circumference of the planet, and capable of holding twelve hundred passengers or up to ten T550s. I know all this. Can we skip to the good stuff?”

“You don’t want to see the D40’s, or the Condor-99’s? Or the new automated R-T150s?” she asked with a disappointed glance.

“No, I want to see the new drone.” Those other planes were garbage as far as I was concerned.

“Fine, let’s go.”

We walked over to one of the drones that was warming up. It was perfect. The four blades on the top rotated at a slow speed to get the engines prepped for flight. The shape was different than the old model which were more rounded, but the new ones were slimmer and more angular. Sharp corners covered the outside.

“These new T550s are still in their testing phase. The Flying Force has ten in their possession so far. They can go up to 580 miles an hour and have a max ceiling of 15,000 feet,” she said. I ran my hand over the smooth surface, ignoring the short hair billowing out the bottom of my helmet in the downdraft of the propellers.

“Why such a short ceiling? That’s lower than the old ones.”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

I noticed what looked like attachment clips along the back. “That’s weird.” I said touching them, “What are these for?”

“It’s a test vehicle, so there will be some strange attributes,” she pointed to the front, “Did you see the control board?” She hopped into the cockpit. These drones could fit eight people in them as opposed to four like the old models. Before I jumped in behind her, the small radar bulb under the nose caught my attention. It was encased in a thick heavy glass. Battle ready.

“What the hell?” I said to myself. It would be pointless to ask about it, Notawa didn’t seem to know a lot about the test drone.

“Come on Talaya,” Notawa said from inside.

I sat in the comfortable pilot’s chair. The foam cushion conformed to my body conformed to my body with a “swoosh” as I plopped down.

“Obviously, here is the cyclic, the altimeter, the airspeed indicator, variometer, heading indicator, turn and slip, and the attitude indicator. But, on these new models there is also an upgraded tablet with a radar, and an accessory function control.” I was only half listening while she pointed to each of the instruments in turn. My hand was on the steering cyclic. The thrill was already there. My stomach was flipping at the idea of flying this thing. The controls looked the same as the old drones, but the tablet was different. Anything on the old T150s was controlled by my calcumat or the control board.

“Ok so, to fly it, just link your calcumat, do a face scan, punch in your four-digit code and we can go.”

“Woah, wait a second, we are flying this thing? Today?” I didn’t even try to stop the giant smile that spread across my lips.

“This is your T550. It has been assigned to you,” she said.

“No way.” I whispered under my breath. My eyes were wide, trying to take in everything around me.

“Yes way. Now, normally you would be in here with you partner. You would be the pilot as the higher ranked, and he’d be the copilot.”

“Wait, who is my flight partner?”

She looked confused. “Second Reconist Kirtis Xanbuhly FFP.” The addition of FFP at the end had my attention for a moment, I had no idea that Kirtis was a Flying Force Police member, it wasn’t on his dossier I had browsed through at training.

“What? I thought that was just for Physical Conditioning?” The one thing that could ruin flying, was having a crappy copilot. Especially one that was hellbent on getting revenge for a broken nose.

“No, it’s for all facets of training.”

“Nope, no way. I quit. Take me home.”

She pursed her lips and said, “That’s a touch dramatic.”

I threw my hands in the air and said, “That guy seriously hates me.” How could I be expected to share such a beautiful aircraft with a jerk like that?

“Forget him for now. Let’s take this thing out. Switching to Command Tower Communications.” She hailed command and got us cleared for take-off.

When I tried to ease up on the throttle, the drone responded by jumping ten feet in the air. My stomach lurched.

“Remember this is a much stronger, faster, lighter machine. Move into everything slowly,” she reminded me. I was lucky I hadn’t hit the top of the hangar bay. The Coordinators were laughing at me from the ground and directing me out the door.

I tried it again, easing the throttle as slow and careful as I dared after almost crashing. We shot forward, but at least it was controlled. Once we were out of the hangar bay, I shoved it as far forward as it would go. My smile only got bigger with every gain in altitude.

“This is amazing.” My shout crackled over the headset as I shot through the sky.

The force threw me back into my seat as the engines worked together in perfect sync, blasting us through the air. It responded to the lightest touch. We swayed across the sky until I was brave enough to do an entire loop. My stomach dropped into my feet, then flew into my chest.

“Talaya, let’s try to keep it under 400 miles per hour, since we aren’t wearing flight suits,” Notawa said. She gripped onto her seat like we were going to crash any second. Her face was as green as the grass thousands of feet below us.

“No way, this thing wants to go full speed. It’s not my fault.” I turned the cyclic again, sending the drone into a four hundred mile an hour corkscrew farther into the clouds. After four or five spins, I leveled with the horizon just below the max ceiling.

“You don’t seem to have a problem with the controls,” Notawa said. She spoke like she was afraid to open her mouth.

“Doing OK there, mentor?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

“Yep, just peachy, but I am flying us home.”

“You’re a pilot? Why did I think you were Admin?” She didn’t answer. Her finger reached over and flipped the copilot switch.

“No way am I puking on this uniform,” she mumbled.