Intelligible sentence structure is one of my main faults, and one I am constantly struggling to improve as much as I can. I can’t afford the luxury of having someone professionally edit my work, which is part of the reason why I put them up here as WiPs. This way I can get pointers if my writing is confusing, or outright wrong, from people such as yourself.
Now, for the fun part. Forgive me if I come off as a contrarian, but I enjoy debating these things so I can internalize and correct my behaviour. Otherwise I just keep doing the same mistakes all over again.
“Uh-huh. Fly me where I came from, huh? Nightreaver is German, Icarus is British. Why not fly them out of here too? Would solve a lot of their troubles, (wouldn’t you? / wouldn’t it?)”
Both would technically be correct, but I understand the source of awkwardness. Although to serve the purpose as written, I could make it clearer that the latter sentence refers to Aurora, not the act of flying people off.
Caracal said, shifting [and shifted] out of the doorway (how do you shift out of a doorway?).
Towards your first point here, I’m using the past progressive (I believe that’s what it’s called) to define that the act of speaking and the act of shifting happened at the same time.
To your second point, shifting does have meanings towards the acts of moving; moving quickly, changing place, altering from one position to another. Yes, I could substitute the word for the plain old “move”, but that doesn’t serve to describe the intricacy of the motion.
There’s a lot more rules, intricacies and pitfalls in writing in a past tense, I recognize this. I could write all of the story in present tense and avoid most of the weirdness that happens in the English language, but I find it intriguing and an opportunity to learn what works and what doesn’t.
In the case of this story it also serves as a narrative pacing element, since I have the intention of switching to present tense later on.
Good luck!