The nine of you shuffled out together, and one of your comrades (apparently a native of the city) lead the pilots to a bar. The RAF crew were under strict orders to stick close to a Soviet counterpart so you could translate (and presumably so the Brits wouldn't get lost), and you couldn't get them too drunk, but otherwise this was a great chance to show off the wonders of the your country to the capitalist. So within a few minutes of the cold you were back inside somewhere warm and getting drinks, and the conversation was a lot more open then it was in earshot of your officers.
Turns out the Brits were still flying a biplane fighter, the Gloster Legionnaire. It sounded a lot like your I-16s, with 4 guns and good turning characteristics while being too slow to keep up, but one of the pilots let slip they might not be flying it much longer. Rather than upgunning to larger weapons, they'd just ended up bolting two more guns over the nose when their initial firepower hadn't been enough, that still wasn't doing it. You shared the tale of your incredible engagement against the invader's observer and how devastating the heavy machine guns could be, but they didn't seem too impressed, arguing more tracers in the air was better any day.
"Only takes one bullet in the right place, and that's easier with a lot of bullets." The Canadian pilot, Theo Macdonald, said confidently, which got some laughs.
"Or you could fucking learn to shoot!" The blond woman, Ariana Williamson, said, getting an uproarious laugh from the table that turned some heads around the bar.
"How are you guys engaging so often? We mostly missed them on our patrols." One of your comrades, a Ukrainian named Josyp Mykolovych Yaroshenko, asked. He'd apparently been posted right down at the Korean border and had been in several large battles.
The British pilots shared a quick knowing glance, then Theo said. "Carrots. We eat a lot of carrots."
"Gives you great eyesight." Another pilot, James Hawkins, chipped in. He was from London, and some of the things he said actually seemed to strain your newfound translation abilities, feeling more like just noises than meanings. It had briefly been explained that, as best as they could tell, the translation effect translated intended meaning and could even handle subtly, idiom, and metaphor, but wouldn't work if a person was deliberately obscuring the meaning of their words. Was that what he was doing?
You all pressed a little longer on the eyesight thing before dropping it, and pretty soon the conversation started wandering altogether. None of the RAF pilots had any rubles, so you'd all graciously decided to cover for them, and it had apparently been something of a surprise for the Brits that you had money at all. That got you comparing salaries, and the argument that erupted there, while fairly good-natured, showed the gap between your worlds.
"Alright. Lemme get a napkin. So you make what, 24 shillings a day, 168 a week, yeah?" The other VVS woman in the team, Bessonova Natalya Ilyinishna, had been studying math before she signed up. "That exchanges to... 420 rubles a week on the dot."
"What did you say you made again?" Ariana asked smugly.
"80 rubles a week." You volunteered.
"33 shillings and change." Natalya said immediately.
"Blimey. That wouldn't cover rent where I'm from. Barely cover food." James said, astonished. "Ain't exactly gonna have a nest egg at the end of your tour, huh?"
Somehow you knew 'nest egg' meant 'a fund of money for hard times' despite having neither the economic nor linguistic context, while still understanding each word as meaning 'nest' and 'egg'. It hurt your brain to think about it.
"Yeah, but we don't have to pay for rent. Or for food, unless you want something special." Josyp explained. Everyone had an allowance for a certain amount of staple food per day, but unless you wanted to survive on turnips your whole life you probably wanted to do at least some work.
"We do have to pay for booze, though, so slow down." You joked.
"Yeah, well I ain't paying for rent or food while I'm in anyway, so I'm going to have a nice tidy sum when I get out. Might get my own place, and it'll belong to me proper." James said, clearly boasting a little.
The argument continued a while longer, and you started to notice one of the RAF pilots, the other woman, wasn't really talking much. The tiny little Scottish woman who'd said maybe ten words total during the meeting. She was just sitting uncomfortably in her seat, opposite end of the table. Now, as a proud member of the VVS, you weren't going to just sit by while a woman was in distress, so you quickly switched sides of the table and talked to her directly.
"Hey love. You alright?" You asked.
"I'm fine." She muttered. She didn't look fine. Maybe a bit overwhelmed.
"Hey, you want another drink?"
"No. I think I need to step outside." She muttered, sliding out of her chair.
You glanced over at the rest of the group, drinking and laughing, and you really wanted to stay with them, but rules were you weren't supposed to let the RAF pilots out of your sight. Duty was duty, even if it was babysitting capitalists.
"Alright, cool, grab your coat." You said, doing the same.
The two of you shuffled out onto the street, hands in your pockets to ward off the cold. The sun had finally set and the streetlights were flickering on, and she looked at them with something like wonder. You couldn't help but ask why.
"We've been blacked out since the war started. Nowhere back home is inland, you know." She said.
You hadn't thought of that. You pointed across the street to a tea room, figuring if nothing else you could bond over that, and within a few minutes you were sitting near a fireplace, relaxing.
"I never caught your name." You said.
"Cait McRath." She said quietly. You could barely hear her.
"Hi Cait. Not much for bars, are you?"
"No." She said simply, looking down into her tea.
You had a feeling you and her had very different reasons for avoiding bars. Not that you didn't like a drink, but you preferred it in places with dance floors or stages. Especially places where you could hit on girls and they'd be expecting it. There were still a lot of people out there still not caught up with the twentieth century: while the USSR had decriminalized homosexuality in 1922, just two years after you were born, the cultural impact was a slower burn and communities only realized crystallized when the German scene started picking up international steam. You'd been a big ol' gay as long as you could remember, but you didn't have any Russian publications about it or anything. Instead you had smuggled copies of
Die Freundin and
Garçonne annotated and translated in scratchy pen marks, filtering down from older girls to you throughout secondary school and being passed around girls of that inclination. Probably not appropriate reading material for a fourteen year old, but it also gave you words for who you were, summaries of the scientific papers that said there was nothing wrong with you, symbols you could identify with. And
stories. Proof you could be happy.
Cait, though, she probably just liked quiet, or maybe she was intimidated by all the people.
"Chin up, Cait. There's plenty to do in the city."
"I think it's a little late for sightseeing." She said.
"Yeah, probably. I mean, we could swing by Lenin's tomb, if you want to stare at a concrete slab with a dead guy under it." You said. She looked puzzled at that, but shrugged.
"Yeah, alright, perhaps not. Um..."
You cast around the tea house: places like this usually had a community board where people could stick ads, directions, stuff like that. Finding it, you walked over, studied it, and came back with a few pieces of paper (you'd put them back when you were done, of course, you weren't a savage.)
"You ever been to a cabaret? There's a few options here." You said, laying the sheets on the little table. "It's like, variety show theater things?"
She studied over the options, and you watched her eyes as she glanced over each one. You remembered after a moment that she couldn't read them, so you started describing each one for her. It was an off-night, a thursday, so unlikely to be terribly busy, which made it a good bet for your quiet comrade, and it was the sort of night where new material got tested out. The Moscow Art Theater was namedropped by about half the sheets, which was a good sign.
"I like that one." She pointed. The Bat: the poster claimed it was a rebirth of Moscow's first cabaret from before the revolution. You got the address, got directions from the hostess, and the two of you were out the door. A few blocks later, you paid the cover entry into cozy little club, descending the stairs inside. There were small tables, a little bar in the corner, and a show underway. It was far smaller than the club in Petrograd you'd been to a few times, and despite that it was almost empty, with maybe a dozen other people.
The presentations went by snappy quick, and were clearly a bit experimental. A comic did a routine that was pretty political, poking fun at wartime policies that Cait had no relation to and which you'd missed in your time in uniform. Fortunately, things picked up with a snappy set of songs on piano with a
very pretty singer, two classics and one you'd never heard before you assumed must be new. There was a living doll show (a sort of play which incorporated frequent tableau scenes) and a minimalist little play which was
fascinating. Three characters trapped in a small room during the revolution, none of them sure of the loyalties or politics of the others, it was incredibly tense despite its short length. The variety in the acts kept you from getting bored (you had trouble sitting through most movies, nevermind stage plays) and Cait was clearly enjoying herself. You'd also gotten more to drink: the place was a little pricier, but you still had a lot of your bonus from your successful mission so it wasn't a big deal.
In downtime between two shows, you decided to get to know the other pilot a bit better.
"So how'd you end up in the RAF?" You asked.
"Always wanted to fly. My dad was an instructor and he taught me. He was in the last war, got three weeks training before he went out, all his friends died." She said, voice flat.
"Holy shit."
"Yeah. He taught my brothers because he wanted to make sure they were safe if they got called up for another one, and I wanted to learn to, so he taught me. Course my brothers went to uni so they're probably safe, but I signed up first thing out of school. Then all this started." She explained it all in a calm, slow monotone, and it left you feeling kind of awkward. You were starting to get a feel for Cait, and she mostly just seemed... depressed. Sad. A bit morbid.
"Me too. I learned on a trainer the university built. This is weird, but I guess we're pretty alike, huh."
"I guess." She said. "I haven't flown over any alien planets."
"You haven't flown over any alien planets
yet. Only a matter of time, huh! So what did you do to get recruited to the super special squad?"
"I'm the leading RAF ace." She said quietly.
"What?" The incongruity of it smashed through your brain like a hammer.
"I have eight kills and six probables." She continued.
"... fuck me. That's a lot." You said. "How do you manage that?"
She shrugged.
"I aim for the cockpit." She said, voice steady, affect flat. "When they don't know I'm there."
"Christ."
A waitress came over to refill your drinks, looking at the two of you a little oddly as you continued your bilingual conversation. You'd learned your tiny companion was
terrifying, but she was proving a little impervious to your attempts to get her to open up about anything else. There was a universal question you could use for this situation which had served military types from the beginning of history, though the modern age required some adjustment.
"So... Cait. Got a boy back home, then?"
She shook her head. "No. I've never. What about you?"
Oh hey wait no she wasn't supposed to turn it around like that!
"Well uhhh... No boys, exactly..." You said nervously.
"Oh."
There was a long, excruciating pause.
"You're gay, then?" She guessed.
"Yeah." You said, studying her face closely. She didn't immediately freak out. That was good. You weren't really sure how Britain was doing on that front.
"Huh." She looked down in her glass, staring at the bubbling liquid inside. "That's... how is that?"
"That's a weird question. How's being straight?" You asked, a little defensively.
"I... I don't know. I... I don't." She started stumbling over her words, clearly embarrassed, face flushing redder than you thought it was possible for a human to be.
Oh.
Oh.
"I'm guessing you don't know because you aren't straight, huh." You said flatly.
"... I don't know." She repeated helplessly. "I just thought I liked planes more than boys."
"Well, I definitely like planes more than boys, so we continue to be very similar." You joked. "It's okay."
Finally,
finally, she smiled. Slowly, a bit pained, but she did. It was lovely.
"Well, I have a way we could find out, one way or another." You said. She looked at you, clearly a little grossed out, which,
ouch, but that's not what you meant. "No, jeez. I'm talking about professional help."
She was clearly rather confused, but she followed as you lead her to the bar and rapped your knuckles on the counter.
"Hey barkeep, any girls working here?" You asked.
"We don't got a license, but around the corner there's a place. Little red sign. It's great, go there myself." He replied.
"Awesome, thanks." You replied, grinning. "You up for it, Cait?"
She looked
horrified.
"You're talking about a
brothel." She said, aghast. Her voice got really small and high-pitched as she said it, her words blending together into a jumble.
"Yeah? Go in, see if a girl catches your eye." You said nonchalantly. "Get your answer, you know?"
"I... but... um... I'm... it's... illegal???" She mumbled.
"No... why would it be?" You asked, now equally confused.
"... laws and stuff! And like... it's messed up. I don't wanna just... it's..." The poor girl was apparently completely beyond words.
"Is this a religion thing? It's cool if it's a religion thing." You said.
Cait sank into a nearby chair, gesticulating silently as she tried to put the words together, and you sat next to her, curious. Finally, she managed to squeak something out.
"
I don't want to exploit anyone."
Bleh. You didn't even know how to start with this.
"Okay, clearly some capitalist bullshit is happening here." You said, sighing. "Look. There's nobody there who doesn't want to be, and nobody's gotta do anything they don't want to. But that includes you, so I'll drop it, alright? Just thought I'd help."
You left her to think for a while so you could get another drink. Fucking
capitalists. Here she had a chance to get eased into the sexual exploration she
clearly needed pretty badly and she was getting hung up on the fact that money was changing hands. And not even her money!
Exploiting, like there was a difference between turning screws and getting screwed when back in her country there was somebody was taking everything you made and giving you a tiny bit back as wages. She really needed to get her priorities in order.
When you returned to the table, she looked at you nervously.
"If I come along, is it okay if I leave if I don't want to be there?" She asked.
"Sure." You replied. Why wouldn't it be?
---
The briefing the next day started way too early and you'd stayed out
way too late. It wasn't even accurate to say you were hungover, more like you were still feeling some of the drink you'd spent the last of your bonus on just a few hours ago. Cait was fun once she loosened up a bit, though you suspected she'd probably not gone much beyond cuddling with Zoya. Ah well, she was new. She'd get over herself.
You were squinting against the light coming through the window and trying not to think too much about how much you really wanted to sleep as the briefing dragged on. You had the gist of it: the Brits had been engaging a lot more frequently and had a technique for finding the Invaders as soon as they showed up (Carrots, of course), so it'd be a lot easier to launch this mission from the UK. Which is what was going to happen. They were going to put you and your planes on a train and ship you across the continent and the English channel so you could fly through a portal and kick some Martian ass.
God, you hoped it was a sleeper car.
====
The next mission is going to be portal assault!!! that said, I want to determine some complications, so will two people please roll me 1d10?
- Mission at night.
- Scramble to attack.
- Huge enemy force.
- No allied support.
- Fighting over a city.
- SECRET
- SECRET
- Terrible Weather
- Opening Patrol
- TOP SECRET
Also, Tina is goin' to Britain. Can the United Kingdom handle her? The answer is no.
(
Also thanks to @FrangibleCover for helping me with a tough spot, and thanks to @Jeboboid for creating Cait and volunteering her for the Storm Divers.)
