#captain brown

Knock-knock. “Hey, Svenson, you up yet?” 

In his office at the World Aeronautical Society and making a last minute review of the documents he’d been sent in advance by their incipient visitor, Adam Svenson rolled his eyes and hit the button on his desk to unlock the reinforced door. “One of these days you’re going to find a joke that’s actually funny,” he remarked as Steve Blackburn strolled in. As per usual he had his hands shoved deep into his pockets simply because he knew it would irritate their ex-military commander who couldn’t yell at him about it: while the WAAF had very strong opinions about hands, pockets, and how long one could be in the other, the WAS, a civilian operation, didn’t. 

“ ‘Find’ a joke?” Steve grinned as he finally took his hands out of his pockets so he could drag one of the visitor’s chairs around to Adam’s side of the desk. 

“Yup,” Adam scooted his chair over to make more room. “There’s no way you’re bright enough to come up with one of your own.” 

“Ouch.” Steve faked a wince, plunked himself into the chair and pointed at the open file on the blotter. “Thoughts?” 

“Plenty of them.” Dropping the banter, Adam flicked through a couple more pages, then shut the file and drew across a clean notepad and pen. “My first one is ‘why’. You?” 

“Same.” Steve straightened up. “I don’t follow their logic. Why would a new security agency want a couple of test pilots? I mean, I get why they’d be looking at you, Mr-I-Cleaned-House-And-Saved-My-Organisation, but why me? If they want pilots, why aren’t they tapping the military for a couple of their people?” He waved a hand at the file. “Sure, they’re talking about wanting a range of people for a range of situations, but that’s gotta be recruitment-poster talk, right?” 

“I don’t know…” Adam frowned, picking up the pen to fiddle with. “I’ve been hearing rumblings about this new outfit for a while, if it lives up to the promise, it could be a good thing.” 

Steve grunted. “Yeah, but there’s a lot riding on that ‘if’.” 

“There is,” Adam agreed, idly tumbling the pen between his fingers. Truth be told, he needed a change, and he was more than a little hopeful that this ‘Spectrum’ organisation might be the opportunity he needed. Flying was his first love, it was what drew him to WAS in the first place, and while he’d discovered he really enjoyed the thrill of the cat-and-mouse game of counter intelligence, he’d learned a lot of it on the fly - and had to unlearn a bunch of it too, when he found out some of his mentors had been subverted by Bereznik. It meant he had gaps in his knowledge - gaps that he knew had cost people their lives. 

Just as the clock on his computer changed over to 0900, there was another knock at the door and a muffled call of “Chief? Your visitor’s here.” 

“Thanks Branson,” Adam said, reaching out and hitting the button again as he and Steve stood up to greet this ‘Captain Black,’ escorted up by one of the security team.

“Good morning, Captain Black.” Adam said as he leaned over the desk to exchange handshakes with the tall, somewhat gaunt-faced man with curiously grey-brown eyes. He was vaguely familiar, but for the life of him he just couldn’t place the man.

“Good morning Chief Svenson, Mister Blackburn,” Black said as he shook hands with them both. “Thank you for seeing me.” 

“You’re welcome, take a seat.” Adam gestured to the remaining chair. As usual, Steve was doing his thing of letting someone else take the lead on the talking so he could sit back and observe. Most people, upon hearing that Steve was one of the lead test pilots, immediately assumed he was one of those brash braggards depicted in movies and discounted how intuitive he could be about people. It was something he’d used to his advantage plenty of times and a trait that almost got him scooped up into the security division as well, but he’d fought tooth and nail to stay with his planes. ‘Not that it kept Steve from helping,’ Adam briefly reflected. The way Steve could strike up a conversation with someone and be their friend inside five minutes never failed to amaze him, and he’d taken full advantage of it.

Once everyone was seated, Black nodded towards the closed file and the blank notepad. “What questions do you have for me?”

That got a surprised blink and glance at each other from the two WAS pilots. Neither of them had expected that approach, and they both had to recalculate their initial assumptions about the man. 

“First one, and the biggest: why?” Adam gestured to himself and Steve. “Don’t get us wrong, we’re flattered, but why us? Getting people seconded from the military, the USS, and WASP would be much easier than trying to recruit from outside all of that.”  

“It would be,” Black agreed, “but we have enough of those. Your names were put forward by the selection committee because we need to be a well-rounded organisation, we need people who can talk to anyone, people who are adaptable, resilient, tenacious, and cunning, people who can move from the briefing room to the board room to the flight deck and everywhere in between. Two pilots who can ‘fly anything with wings, rockets, or rotors’ - as per your commander - one who is a 3D chess master as a hobby and the other who earned a full Harvard scholarship at sixteen fit that bill."

Steve looked at Adam for permission, then when he got the nod, sat forward to address Black himself. “That’s a very pretty recruitment speech, but what’s the real deal?” He jerked a thumb at Adam. “Him? Makes sense. He cleaned house and survived three assassination attempts. Guy’s not just lucky, he’s skilled. Me? I know I’m good, but,” he waved a hand towards the airfield, “you can take a stroll out there and find a dozen good pilots who are hungry for anything the world can throw at them.” 

“Yes, I could, but that little speech is one example of why I fought the CIC to get you on the roster,” Black told him, a small, curiously stiff smile playing about his face. “You know how to observe, how to ask questions, when to ask questions, and when to simply let the other person speak. You’re both chess players in a crowd of poker players, literally and metaphorically. Gentlemen, the fact of the matter is that we need people who are proverbially swiss-army knives, and piloting is a skill gap that you two fill that others don’t. Our base of operations will be at four-zero angels.” 

That got a very different look between the two WAS pilots. 

“Forty thousand feet?” Adam was the first to speak, needing clarification. “How?” 

“Classified.” And Black was ever so smug about that. “But what I can tell you is that she’ll be the first of her kind, and shakedown is scheduled for next year.” 

“Okay, not that I’m not really, really tempted by what has to be some sort of sky-base,” Steve leaned forwards, elbows on his knees, “but I’m still not sold on your answer. Give me more.” 

“Because I’m betting you need a change.” Black answered. “You’ve both done sterling work, you both want to keep flying - and I would lay money down on you wanting to get away from the desk and back to the field, Chief Svenson - but you don’t want to go commercial, you’d like to continue in this sort of work, but WAS is tainted for you now.” His eyes softened. “You’ve both lost good friends because of Bereznik, and you want to keep others from experiencing what you have, but you’ve got no idea how to do that without losing the sky and getting locked away in an office somewhere, processing paperwork and sending emails but not actually doing anything of real, tangible value. Yes,” he waved a hand towards the airfield, “I could walk out there and take my pick of skilled and eager pilots, but what they’re hungry for is the thrill, the adventure, and the adrenaline rush. What you two are hungry for is the challenge and the ability to make a change for the better. The thrills along the way are a side benefit.” 

“...we can’t give you an answer straight away, Captain Black,” was what Adam said at last. “We’re going to need to think about it.” 

“Of course.” Black said as he stood, recognising the dismissal. “I’ll need to hear from you within a week.” 

“That’s reasonable,” Adam said as he also stood and pressed the buzzer on his desk to summon back the guard. “Benson will see you back to the gate.” 

“Thank you.”