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7
This Was Not Going To Be A Fun Flight Through Time
Mimi
ThefirstthingIdid was check RATS' roster on my tablet computer. Right there, at the very bottom of the list of Interns, was my full name for all to see. Mimi Blossom Wylde, M.Sc in Chemistry and Biology, Ph.D (accredited) in Physics. Physics, I guessed, for the study of Time. There wasn't a science that I knew of that studied time travel, so yeah. Physics it was.
Not my strongest science, but then, I was the only Intern —or Surgeon, I checked —who had a legitimate degree from a reputable university. Yes, my masters was obtained at Auckland University on the other side of the world and in a completely different time, but Crawford hadn't listed that under my profile.
What he had listed were the papers I'd written and acclaims I'd received, alongside the actual degree I possessed, thereby outstripping any other Intern on the list for qualifications and peer review standing. My appointment as Intern was also backdated to one month after I started at RATS.
And when I checked my bank account, the one RATS had set up when I signed on as a Novitiate, I noted I'd received back-pay to reflect that date. I'd officially been an Intern for several months now it seemed and didn't even realise it.
I snorted at that and then flicked back to the roster again on my tablet's screen. Jack had always joked that once you were paid by RATS at a particular level, there was no stopping the machine. He'd been referring to my appointment as Novitiate and the first pay I had received.
"There's no go going back now, Miss Wylde," he'd told me. "You've been paid, an official acknowledgement of your position in the scheme of things. It can't be reversed or taken back. You are, for all intents and purposes, a Novitiate at the Royal Academy of Time Surgeons. Congratulations."
For all intents and purposes, I was now an Intern at the Royal Academy of Time Surgeons.
I was under no illusions, however, that Dr Crawford would have done this as soon as he had in my time here, if not for Parliament interfering at RATS. The Chief Surgeon was about to be cut out of the loop, his second in command was under house arrest. He had other Surgeons he could trust to a certain degree. But Winchester had nearly suffered a mental breakdown recently, Bauer was a rule follower, Holt was lower down the totem pole, and the others pretty much right there with him.
Not to mention Bryan Fawkes was not our Bryan Fawkes and therefore, there was a gap in upper management that Anderson would readily take advantage of.
I had a thought, then, and quickly turned my attention back to the rosters, locating Fawkes with ease. He'd been reinstated. Surgeon. Not third in command, as he and Winchester used to be, but higher up the list than the others. I didn't think Crawford trusted him completely, but I knew damn well that the old man did not trust Anderson to do the right thing. A renegade Surgeon like Fawkes could just be what RATS needed.
And when I delved deeper into the rosters, I found out that Crawford had assigned him as my flight crew Surgeon. I was flying with Fawkes. He hadn't put Harding back with him. Harding, from the look of things, was Surgeon-less due to Jack being under house arrest.
Oh, sweet mother of time travellers, Jess was going to have kittens, or rottweilers, at my name on the flight list above hers. In fact, Bryan and I were slated as the next flight crew flying. We'd rotate out as the rips occurred and both Orions were used alternately, but for the first trip, it was Bryan and me. And the first rip was likely to be in response to Sergei Ivanov.
Crawford had done his best, I realised; rather impressed, really. He'd couched it all in credentials and qualifications and time served; Bryan's time served being just about as long as Jack's, if you cared to forget he was out of his own reality. Wisely, though, Crawford hadn't removed reference to this Bryan not being our Bryan in his official profile. Anderson must have known our Bryan had been killed. I thought perhaps he hadn't been aware of the new Bryan, but regardless of all of that, he would know a Bryan Fawkes suddenly appearing out of nowhere was not normal.
Now, the record showed that this Bryan had passed all psychological tests and been reinstated, as RATS could not afford to waste experience and skills such as those of Dr Fawkes. Regardless of what universe he was from.
I wasn't sure if Bryanhadpassed his psych tests, but I wasn't going to question it either. We were at war. Not just at war with Sergei Ivanov and Lunik, but at war with our very own government. At war with Mr Anderson.
I silently thanked Crawford for his efforts. It would either work or it wouldn't. The first rip alarm would tell. There, at least, was a modicum of hope.
As night had fallen and I didn't want to risk being confronted by Harding if she'd cared to check the rosters recently, I decided to skip dinner in the mess and ate my last doughnut sitting on my bed, quite forlornly. It reminded me too much of Grumpy 3.0, standing just outside my door somewhere on this dorm level.
I looked at the door as I swallowed dried doughnut down and then once finished, dusted my hands clean and pushed my dresser in front of it. It screeched and groaned as it skidded across the floor, and then, after much huffing and puffing, I stood back and assessed my efforts.
Good enough, I thought. Grumpy hadn't come knocking on my door to find out what the ever-loving heck I was up to, so I took that to mean he wasn't hovering outside my room and jumped in the shower.
Just before I climbed into bed, I checked the dresser again, considered moving it back where it belonged in case we got an alarm in the middle of the night, thought better of it, and tried to get some sleep. It took a while. Maybe as long as an hour and a half, but I finally fell asleep, only to be woken by an emerging rip alarm and my comm unit bleating what felt like twenty minutes later.
Blinking open sleep encrusted eyes, I palmed the comm and mumbled, "I'm up."
"Category One Rip, Doctor," a voice I didn't recognise announced. "It's in Russia."
"Of course it is," I said, and sat up. "On my way."
The line cut out before I could ask who the dispatcher was. I guessed I'd find out shortly. Or not so shortly, I discovered once I'd dressed in a flight suit and had to push the extremely heavy dresser out of the way. It took longer than it should have and left me feeling rather flushed by the time I emerged from my bedroom into a dimly lit hallway.
I was now officially late. Picking up the pace, I jogged down the corridor in the direction of Dispatch, only to come face to face with my doughnut-stealing nemesis who had been rudely woken from a snooze and had clambered to his feet, pistol drawn in case that gentlewhoop-whoophe could hear meant RATS was being invaded.
"It's just an emerging rip alarm," I told him and made to move past his bulky body.
He blocked the hallway. "Novitiates aren't allowed out of bed in the middle of the night," he snapped grumpily.
