Insertion by Chris Kennedy

Author:Chris Kennedy [Kennedy, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beyond Terra Press
Published: 2021-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

“Ready to go?” Hrensku asked several days later as they walked out to the interface craft for Bowden’s first launch to space at the controls.

“Yeah,” Bowden said with a chuckle. “I finally just got readjusted to gravity again; must be time to leave.”

“Just so. Such is the life of an interface pilot.” He glanced at Bowden out of the corner of his eye. “Is that what they have planned for you? To be the Lost Soldiers’ interface pilot?”

Bowden shrugged. “I don’t know what they have in store for me.”

“There must be something you Terrans are planning. To need these qualifications all of a sudden speaks to there being something going on.”

“Maybe.” Bowden shrugged. “If there is, though, I don’t know what it is.”

They put their gear in the craft and did the aircraft’s preflight while the loadmasters finished stowing the cargo. Although there wasn’t going to be anyone else on the craft with them, they were going back fully loaded with medicinals, food, and other stores for the habitats.

The preflight was fairly normal—a small leak to be fixed and a couple of bolts to be tightened—until they got to the cockpit. The landing gear lever was missing the round ball-like attachment on the end that was used to grip it, leaving just a metal post sticking out of the instrument panel.

Bowden got down on his hands and knees and searched the cockpit but couldn’t find it.

“It’s not necessary,” Hrensku said after five minutes of searching. “We’ll get a replacement at the spin when we get there.”

“That isn’t what we’d do back home,” Bowden replied. “If something was missing from the cockpit, the aircraft would be down until they found the missing item.”

He looked up to find Hrensku looking at him funny. “Down?” Hrensku asked. “Where would it go down to?”

Bowden chuckled. “Not physically down. The word in that case means ‘not flyable’ until they found the missing piece. We didn’t want it to get into the controls and bind something.”

“In this case, it is all right,” Hrensku replied. “The piece is big enough that it couldn’t have gotten into anything.”

“Where did it go then?”

“Who knows? Maybe someone took it as a souvenir.”

“A souvenir? Why would someone take that?”

“Who is to say?” Hrensku shrugged. “This is the only craft, though, so we either take it or we don’t go flying today. And, if we don’t hurry, we’re going to miss our launch window.”

“Okay,” Bowden said slowly, not feeling entirely comfortable with it. Navy procedures were typically written in blood. If there was a procedure that had to be followed, that usually meant the reason for implementing the procedure was because someone had died. He shook off his misgivings—there really was no place for the knob to go in the cockpit; perhaps it had gotten loose and someone had taken it before it fell off.

They strapped in, fired up the craft, and taxied to the runway. They stopped just short of it so the maintenance crew could arm the RATO—the rocket-assisted takeoff—bottles.

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