Those Magnificent Women in Their Flying Machines (Heat 14 preview)
It's that time of year again. Heat 14 is going to be released at AnthroCon and I have a story in it. Here's a little preview to whet your appetite.
This story is set during World War II and took inspiration from the Women's Airforce Service Pilots.
You can find the product order page (with details on all the stories, comics, and poetry) at http://swp.im/p/h-14.
The tarmac crew scrambled as the plane came to a lurching stop off the runway. They were bouncing with energy and excitement: a new squad on a new post on their first assignment, and they were working on a brand-new model, the Douglas C-54 Skymaster, so fresh off the factory line that if you leaned in close you could still smell the acrid punch of the welds. There were probably less than four of them in the whole world at that moment. The crew was rocking on their heels, waiting to hear how she handled. Maybe the pilot had served on the front lines in Britain and had a good story or two about fighting the Luftwaffe to share over some beer.
The door popped open and the tarmac crew looked first with excitement and then with shock at the gorgeous arctic fox vixen who hopped out, dressed in a flight suit with helmet, goggles, and gloves tucked under one arm. They exchanged unsure glances, but one among them, a wolf with an ego as large as the C-54 itself, stepped forward. "Hey there, girl," he said, smoothing back his fur with one hand, "can you tell us when the pilot will be out?"
The vixen fixed him with a withering stare. "She just got out." Behind her, three more women were disembarking, a bobcat, a bear, and a fisher. The vixen looked at the bewildered expressions on the crew and shook her head. "Damn, you're new, aren't you? Okay, let me explain. We flew the plane. It flew fine, but I'd like you to check the left aileron before we go back into the air, because it felt a little off. I don't have any stories from the front because they don't let us fly out there."
The wolf, realizing all the questions he had been prepared to ask had already been answered, opened his mouth to ask a new one that had just occurred to him.
The vixen's finger covered his lips and she dropped her voice to an icy whisper. "And no, I am not interested in going to the bar with you. I am not interested in you, period. Understood, corporal?"
The wolf nodded once and stood otherwise as still as a statue as the four women walked off, until a ferret on the tarmac crew slapped him on the back and chuckled. "Good one, Casanova."
* * *
The long drive to the isolated corner of the base where they worked gave the fox's emotions a long time to stew.
"I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, Alexa," Patricia, the fisher, offered. A noble effort, but doomed from the start. Once Alexa got into a mood, she made plans, and once a plan was made, however stupid, she would follow through on it until success or utter failure (more often the latter) met her. The three other women all remembered the Incident far too well and had vowed never to speak of the matter again. All they could hope to do now was distract her before she could come up with another one of her schemes.
"He didn't even realize a woman could be a pilot," Alexa muttered under her breath. "This is pointless. We did this so that the army would see how useful women could be, and they're relegating us to shuttling planes from one out of the way base to another, out where no one can see us. We need to be out there, on the front lines, getting so many kills they can't possibly ignore us."
The bear spoke softly. "Your application got rejected again?"
"Of course it did," Alexa muttered. "'A woman's place is not on the battlefield,' they said."
"Have you asked Gillian for help?" the ferret offered again, eternally hopeful. "She's well respected by the chain of command. I'm sure it would improve your chances."
"She'd say no."
"You haven't tried. And it's not like we know her that well. She might say yes."
* * *
She said no.
To be continued in Heat 14...