Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 06

Mischka's expression after she'd been told was a little odd-looking as she stood there in a bit of shock and disbelief. She kept asking if it was really happening.

As she came to comprehend it at last, she stood there for a moment with a strange little smile on her face.

But it only lasted a moment and then she burst into tears and almost fell into the arms of her friends, her coolness and all sophistication gone as she wept.

-------------------

One of the first things that they all did was to go shopping, and Ryan dropped some money at Taela's insistence for some slightly custom-made clothing for Mischka, so that she'd have something to wear.

In her case, a lot of Velcro was required due to her wings and her tail.

Ryan took the opportunity to have things made for Shorty as well, since he faced the same issues.

About half of the people who saw Mischka walking around in the commerce section appeared uneasy, but neither Mischka or Taela cared very much.

Taela admired the ease with which her friend just knew her way around and not only with respect to knowing where the clothing stores were. She was very savvy and smart and her confidence was something that Taela wanted to develop in herself, now that she was in a place where there were actually people to interact with.

And of course, Mischka knew places where one could buy great food.

Shorty loved her for that.

He also came to regard her as someone who he could learn from, since she understood what he'd have to do when they started looking for fugitives. After a long discussion, they changed their crew positions and Taela and Shorty would handle defenses such as jamming and decoys, though Taela was also going to handle the communication traffic as well.

There was still something a little wrong with that, but they registered themselves as a light freight and bond company and that required some courses. Shorty was reluctant about it until Mischka told him that he didn't need them, since his position had more to do with the craft.

Ryan also had basic extra seating installed along with cryo stations and restraint anchors.

Their first trip out to try to work together as a crew went well enough, but then there had been no threats to their craft and no fugitives to look for. He was just wanting to try Mischka out in the left seat.

Mischka proved that she was as good as her word. Even before the doors to the bay had fully opened, she had the craft up in a low hover and was retracting the gear.

Outside, there was little to be seen but heavy snow blasting past in a swirl which indicated a strong crosswind just outside and Ryan had looked over, about to suggest that she let him get them outside before she took over what had to be a new thing for her to pilot, since he doubted that anything which she'd flown in her time of flight training was much like this craft in any way.

But before the thought had gotten to his lips, they were gone, out through the opening and climbing.

"She feels great," Mischka smiled as she nailed the sharp right turn to join the traffic pattern.

"Listen in while I get us clearance, Taela. You don't need to be fancy with the controllers. You just gotta tell them what you want. All they're interested in is that everybody goes with the flow. I've already filed with them, so they know what to expect."

She made the call and requested clearance around the back side of the small planet, since it was uninhabited. When she heard their acknowledgement, she banked right again to leave the pattern - not that there was really any other craft in it at the time.

"The speed limit here is 240 knots," Ryan reminded her. He watched Mischka smile, though she didn't turn her head, "Check the panel."

He looked at his displays and he was a little surprised. The wind was buffeting them slightly, and that meant that it was gusting and as changeable as he'd been told in the weather report that he'd requested.

He looked at the perceived wind direction and speed which his sensors guessed at and he blinked.

As hard as the prevailing wind was trying to toss them around ...

He glanced over at her hand there on the throttle quadrant, watching the tiny continual adjustments that she was making. He looked over at her eyes and she wasn't even looking at her displays at all, and yet ...

He looked at his own displays.

239.6 - like it was locked there.

There was a mountain out there, Ryan knew, but before he could mention it in case Mischka wasn't aware of it, he felt the upward surge as she lofted them over it to roll them over and down over the other side, rolling again to their new heading.

"I have something," Taela began.

"I know," Mischka smiled, "Shorty and I are hooked up now. We figured it out between us. I know what he knows and it goes the other way too. Look at our tails."

Taela and Ryan looked. Shorty's tail was lying beside him, pointing forward and lying on the floor. Mischka's was lying behind her seat and they were spiraled around each other tightly for about a half a foot.

Shorty was grinning and he let out a quiet sort of squawk in acknowledgement, already making changes to cause their craft to fade in the view of another craft which might be seeking for them, based on Mischka's instructions to him in his head.

It likely wasn't that they were being sought or tracked, other than a need to keep up a continual check for other traffic nearby, but there was only the one craft out there, so ...

They passed each other miles apart and then Mischka spread their wings as she pulled up and rolled them around, slowing as she did. An instant later, the wings slid back and they were accelerating.

Fifteen seconds later, they were on the tail of the other craft, just a mile back after she'd pulled back on the power.

"Monitor the traffic channel Taela," Mischka said, "We'll see if they're aware of us hanging on back here. I'd like to sort of creep closer to see how close we can get before they notice us and yell, but I know we're legal at this distance and I don't want to get written up."

After more than a minute, she peeled them off and headed off in the other direction. "Good enough, I'd say," she smiled over at Ryan. "That was plenty long enough to do just about anything that we would have wanted to do to anybody."

"How can you do that?" Ryan asked, amazed, "I wouldn't have even dared to think of flying the way that you're going here."

She smiled, but didn't look over, "To say it a little gently, you're human - which I really like about you. But you're not a creature made to fly.

Humans have found ways to fly by surrounding themselves with hardware. Even so, it's a foreign thing to them. I'm half human, but the rest of me - in fact most of me, other than I guess part of my head and all of my heart is something which was made to fly.

This big-assed tool of yours that we're in is just a high-speed extension of what I am, and I just fit into it better, that's all."

-------------------

Ryan was hesitant to make that final business step and he held back.

When asked by Taela, he said, "Mischka told me that there are runners who the system would just rather see as having fallen off the list. They're the ones which are ranked and wanted dead or alive.

As far as I can tell from asking people in the business, what that means is that there's often a preference and it's not 'alive' if they're given a choice. A lot of those ones pay huge, since they're basically asking you to hunt somebody down and kill them in as legal a way as you can.

It's a lot cheaper for the system in the long run.

But a lot of those ones have their own ships and crews to make their gold out of robbery, kidnapping, and things like that. We can't just float over and knock on the door to ask them to surrender. They'll likely shoot first."

He put his arm around Shorty's shoulders, "We need to improve the stuff in Shorty's office and then we need to get him trained better."

Shorty looked up at Ryan nervously, but then he felt Mischka's hand on his as she reached over, "I'll teach you everything."

For the first time that either Taela or Ryan could remember, Shorty's face showed an expression of hopeful confidence without the usual air of uncertainty to it that they'd always seen there.