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8
His Funeral
Mimi
TheOrionfelttoofull. I'd been the fourth member of a flight crew before, so it wasn't a new situation for me to have four people inside an MPCV. But this time, it felt as if there was no room to breathe, and we were rubbing elbows, and someone would have to stand in the bathroom to make it possible to do our jobs.
Of course, it had nothing to do with there being four people onboard the Vehicle and everything to do with who those four people were.
Grumpy 3.0 was a big guy. Six foot six and built like a brick outhouse, the dude was also heavily armoured and armed. He had a long-nosed rifle on a strap over his shoulder, two pistols, on the outside of both thighs, a long, curved knife strapped to his chest, and what looked like a can of mace, a taser, and a couple of throwing stars on his belt. Even if he hadn't had bulging biceps and oversized pecs, he was covered in so much kit that he was almost double his normal size.
I eyed all that hardware warily and then tried to slip past our overseer, whom I still hadn't identified. They looked all the same to me, anyway. Same dark suit, same dark sunglasses, same short back and sides haircut, same superior attitude. He didn't bother to get out of my way, making me have to contort around his slimmer but no less intimidating form to get to the Intern's chair.
It was rude and obnoxious and the flight hadn't even lifted off yet. I could see exactly how this was going to go. Not only would they question — and threaten — everything we did, they would make sure we knew how insignificant we were and how little power we had over them.
"This would go a whole hell of a lot easier if you left some of that illegal crap behind," Bryan said as he checked coordinates at the command chair.
Grumpy said nothing, just stood with his thick arms over his bulging chest, a scowl on his hard face.
"The guard is here for our protection," Mr Unknown-Colour explained.
"You can't use 23rd Century weapons in contemporary time."
"Says who?"
"Says me and I'm in command of the Vehicle."
Suit Guy snorted loudly. "I don't think so."
"You know how to fly this thing?" Bryan asked.
Suit said nothing.
"You know how to enter the coordinates? Check they're legit and ain't gonna take us to a time and place that could mean we don't even know what hits us? Know what to do in an emergency? You up on all of that?"
Still nothing.
I'd managed to get past the oversized Idiot and bend almost double to get around the stilted Suit and was just attempting to buckle my seatbelt. Over. Under. Left. Left. Right. How did it go again?
"You know how to buckle into a seat?" Bryan asked, flicking a glance toward me and shaking his head in bemusement.
Got it! I flicked hair out of my face and smiled winningly at him. He huffed out a breath, trying not to laugh back.
"Check these, Doctor," he said. He handed me the coordinates, and I got to work. I'd checked a fair few coordinates by now and watched others do it more times than I could count. I had no trouble checking these, as if I was a fully qualified member of the flight crew.
Oh, hold on. Iwasa fully qualified member of the flight crew.
"All clear, Doctor," I said, handing them back to him.
"Thank you, Doctor," he said, taking the tablet and swiping the coordinates onto the Vehicle's console computer.
All this 'doctoring' was going to go to my head, but I knew why Bryan was doing it and I was on board with his plan. The more Suit and Idiot realised we were qualified for this schtick and they weren't, the harder it would be for them to get rid of us.
And the fact that we were having to think like that at all was a sure sign that things were pretty bad at RATS.
"You better sit down," Bryan told our watchers. "It's not always a smooth flight."
"It better be a smooth flight," Suit said. "If you attempt to harm us by jolting the module, there will be consequences to pay."
