Chapter 3
The tarmac detonated into motion around us. Pilots sprinting. Fuel trucks shrieking. Ground crew materializing from three directions at once. The noise was a physical thing, a wall of sound and urgency, and Vance was suddenly holding a bleeding woman against a live munitions payload while a combat scramble screamed over his head, and he made the only decision his training had prepared him for in that exact configuration.
He shoved me hard against the landing gear strut to pin me down.
My cracked ribs hit the hydraulic housing. The pain was the color white, total and absolute, and for one second the only thing keeping me upright was my hand locked around the strut itself. I tasted copper. I kept my eyes on Vance's face and I did not go down.
"Get on the ground!" he shouted. He was already reaching for the zip-ties on his belt, one hand moving to my wrist, and I was calculating whether I had the physical capacity to resist him without making the rib situation significantly worse, when I heard it. Heavy boots at a dead run, coming from the direction of the hangar, and a voice I had known for three years cutting through the siren noise like it owned the frequency.
"Vance! Get your damn hands off her!"
Master Sergeant Roy Decker, my crew chief, hit the edge of Pad Nine at a full sprint and closed the distance in four seconds flat. He was fifty-one years old, built like something that had been pressure-tested for three decades, and his face in that moment was carrying an emotion that existed somewhere between fury and complete disbelief. He knocked Vance's hand off my shoulder without striking him, a precise physical intervention that was technically within the bounds of authority and left absolutely no room for misinterpretation.
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Vance stumbled back a half step, his hand going to his radio out of reflex, his mouth starting to form the words that would summon backup.
"Stand down," Decker said, and his voice had the specific quality of a man who has spent thirty years making aircraft ready for combat and has no patience remaining for anything that stands between his bird and its pilot. He pointed at me without breaking eye contact with Vance. "She's the only pilot cleared to fly it. The only one on this base. Right now, today, with this airframe's current configuration. You understand what I'm telling you?"
