Chapter 4
"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?"
Vance's hand dropped away from the radio.
He looked at me. Really looked, for the first time since he'd crossed the tarmac. He looked at the way I was standing, the way my hand was still on the strut not for support but because I had placed it there with intention, the way my eyes had not left his face through any of it. He looked at the aircraft itself, at the pre-mission posture of the ground crew beginning to converge on the pad now that Decker had cleared the obstacle, at the live weapons configuration on the pylons that did not happen for aircraft that were not going somewhere specific to do something specific in the next very few minutes.
I watched the sequence of revision move across his face. It was not a comfortable thing to watch.
The siren kept screaming over everything. Sector Four. Troops in contact. Immediate launch.
I straightened up from the strut. The ribs sent their objection through every nerve available to them and I noted it and set it aside, the same way I had been setting aside every physical objection my body had made since the vehicle went over on Route 7 and I had pulled myself out of the wreckage and started moving because moving was the only option that was going to get me to 802 before the window closed.
I looked at Vance for one more second, long enough to let him understand that I was not angry at him for doing his job, and long enough to let him understand that we were done here.
May you like
Then I looked past him toward the cockpit and I said, "Start the engines."
Decker was already moving, turning back toward the jet at a controlled sprint, calling ground crew positions over the noise, and the pad came alive around me the way a flight line comes alive when a scramble is real and the aircraft is hot and the only thing left is the pilot in the seat.
