Alisha climbed out of the bag, put on her boots, and approached the colonel to offer her assistance.
He smiled as he relinquished the stove. “Glad you survived your first deep freeze. The meter shows it dropped to twenty below last night.”
“Below what?” she asked, hoping he didn’t mean below Celsius.
“Freezing,” he clarified. “I speak in Fahrenheit. I’m an old guy. That was the measurement we used up until—”
“I know what Fahrenheit is, and you’re not that old.”
“Twice your age,”
“Yeah, but I’m just a kid,” she said, repeating a claim her Gramps constantly made.
***
Logan wished he could see her as just a kid. It would make his life easier. In his eyes, she remained a desirable young woman. Determined to see her differently, he ruffled her hair as one might a small child’s. “Well, kid, pour us both a strong bolt of coffee and let’s get the hell out of here.” He turned his attention to gathering up his string alarms.
“Those weren’t necessary,” she said, staring at the strings. “I was too cold to run away. You couldn’t have pried me from your side with a crowbar.”
Logan smiled. She’d obviously spent time with her grandfather. There wasn’t such a thing as a crowbar anymore. It was called a pry bar. After the Terror Wars ended, politicians removed all racially offensive words from every language on Earth. While the attempt originally had popular support, the list of words that some race, sex, or religion found offensive had quickly grown out of control. In the end, people just spoke as they always had. The only lasting impact was on the schoolchildren. Schools took great effort to teach the new generation of minds only non-offensive words.
He perceived a change in her mood. Odd how he knew. She certainly didn’t look any different, but somehow she was sadder than she had been a moment before. He replayed her last sentence over in his mind: “Those weren’t necessary…” She was upset over the string alarms.
“Coffee’s ready,” she announced, and poured him a cup.
“Thanks, tastes—” He took a sip and choked.
“Vile!” Alisha finished his statement, and looked back at the package.
“Let’s just skip the coffee and get the hell out of here.”
She nodded in agreement. She rolled the bag up and returned it to the closet. Grabbing her backpack, she looked around the room. “Anything you want me to carry?”
“Yeah.” Logan finished typing on his palm pilot. Aiming the device toward the printer on the counter, he waited for his printed document. When the paper slid out, he signed it and handed it to Alisha. “Carry this.”
When Alisha saw it was her learner’s permit, she beamed with happiness.
He smiled. “And, Alisha, the string alarms weren’t there to keep you in; they were there to alert me if we had intruders. I’ve determined nothing will keep you where you don’t want to be.”
Chapter 13
Alisha wanted to perform a perfect vertical climb during takeoff that would knock the colonel’s socks off. Unfortunately, the colonel had chosen a site that posed neither challenge nor obstacle to overcome. Even the saddest first-day flyer could take off from this flat spot.
“You first,” the colonel said.
She’d just have to make her own challenges. Slipping on her slats, Alisha pointed to a thirty-foot palm tree. “That tree is a brick wall.”
She tossed up her air catcher. As it expanded in the wind and pulled up her windcatcher, she tightened the front panel toggles. A moment later, the windcatcher pulled her straight up, then she soared past the palm tree. Not only had she cleared the imaginary brick wall, she had done so with ten feet additional clearance.
She side-tacked to slow her ground speed while she waited for the colonel to take off.
Given his catcher was standard design and he carried an additional hundred pounds of equipment, he didn’t try to replicate her vertical lift. She hadn’t expected him to. He had far too much confidence to feel challenged by a young girl. His takeoff was steady and straight—just like the man.
Suddenly his voice spoke in her new earpiece. “That’s your normal takeoff?”
Alisha waggled her toggles, causing her catcher to shrug. “Showing off a bit for my new commander, I guess.”
“I want to get a better look at that windcatcher of yours. You seem to have made some considerable improvements to it.”
He had now caught up with her, so Alisha stopped tacking and resumed normal speed; however, she watched him rather than where she was going.
“Alisha, you’re facing backward,” the colonel said. “Is that intentional?”
“I wanted to see your takeoff.”
“Well, I’ll pull back so you can right yourself.”
As a courtesy, Alisha waited for him to slow down and put more space between them. Then, with a long pull of her right toggle, the catcher dipped and swung in a hard, tight turn. Instinctively she released the toggle and resettled her catcher so she now faced forward.
“Impressive,” the colonel’s voice said in her ear. “How much radius do you require for that maneuver?”
“The tightest I’ve done so far is about a hundred feet, but I’m sure I could get it tighter.”
“I’m definitely taking a look at your windcatcher.”
His response annoyed her. Yes, she had made improvements to the windcatcher during the month she had taught herself to fly, but he should give her some credit as well. She had skill, just like Gramps.
***
To Logan, Alisha’s flying seemed surreal. The maneuvers she did with casual ease were not possible, or so he had been taught. Maybe that was the problem: the Corps’ current training actually prevented flyers from reaching their full potential.
He didn’t want to believe it, but watching Alisha, he had to consider the possibility. Sure, she’d started with natural talent, but within a single month of self-training, she had exceeded the skills of their best flyers. Hell, she’d exceeded what was thought possible.
Her abilities couldn’t be odder if she had arrived in a spacecraft claiming to be from a superior alien race. He only hoped the key differences resided in the modifications she’d made to the windcatcher and her slats. Those differences could be shared within the Corps. Pure flying ability wasn’t transferable. Although just seeing her maneuvers were possible might encourage their talented Ryders to stretch a bit more… or get them killed.
Logan recalled her stall-out over the Cully. Not a single Ryder would have survived such a crash. Yet, Alisha had walked away with just a few bruises. She had seemed perfectly comfortable collapsing her catcher and skydiving down to her targeted bank, re-engaging the catcher to act as nothing more than a last-second airbrake. Her actions were so contrary to Corps training that no Ryder would’ve conceived such a maneuver.
Alisha’s voice spoke in his ear. “Can we land in the compound?”
Land in the compound? He would’ve declared it impossible, but obviously Alisha didn’t even think it difficult.
“No, land in the field on the south side,” he replied.
“How about the roof, then?”
“Follow orders, Alisha.”
“Yes, sir,” a contrite voice replied.
Logan sighed. If he wasn’t careful, he’d crush her spirit and drag her down into mediocrity. Maybe he could give her a little challenge.
“Pull back and let me land first. Then I want you to hit the exact center of a circle.”
“Which one, sir?”
“Your choice,” he replied, pleased to hear the perkiness return to her voice.
As they came up to the landing field, he was just about to remind her to pull back when she suddenly seemed to stop mid-air. Her halt took him by such surprise that he almost fumbled his own landing, but once he’d verified she remained airborne and looked fine, he pulled his act together and chose the last circle of the nine blocks to land on.
Once he was down and his c
atcher contained, he moved off the circle, just in case she wanted to land on it. Unfortunately, he didn’t think that would be a possibility. She was too far south now. She must have misjudged the wind or lost concentration watching him land. From her current position, she’d miss the entire landing field.
“Who’s the flyer?” DC asked, suddenly appearing on Logan’s left. Logan glanced back and noticed the rest of the crew making their way down. Damn poor time for Alisha to miss her mark.
Suddenly Alisha’s voice spoke in his ear. “Now which number shall it be?”
He was about to advise her to give up on the numbers and just land when he realized, somehow, her windcatcher could move crosswind in a true-north direction, putting her on target to hit circle one.
DC pulled out his wind monitor and checked the wind direction. “Wind is true to west. How the hell is he flying north?”
Logan watched Alisha come in low and fast—too fast.
“Shall it be one?” her voice asked just as her slatted feet touched the center of circle one, then pushed up, bouncing her into the air only to land again, this time on circle two and then three.
“He’s going for the wall,” DC said with happy anticipation.
Logan worried about the same thing, but a long pull on her right toggle turned the catcher in a sweeping one hundred and eighty degrees. She headed back toward the second line of circles. Again, as her voice counted off the numbers, her slatted feet touched down in the very center of each circle. Performing a final sweeping turn, she came in, hitting seven and eight.
Logan heard DC curse and run for cover, certain she’d crash into her audience once she’d touched circle nine.
Logan held his ground. He had told her to land on a circle, and he had confidence she’d do just that. He had absolutely no idea how she would do it, since her speed was much too fast to stop, but he stood his ground.
As Alisha bounced up from circle eight, she pulled hard on her back toggles, bringing the catcher to a complete stall.
Logan considered that a bad move. In two seconds, the tether lines of the catcher would yank her down hard as they collapsed downwind of her current target. By his approximation, she’d go down like concrete approximately seven feet from the circle.
Two seconds later, the tethers tightened and the harness snapped back. However, Alisha continued forward, having pulled the emergency release on her harness. She hit the center of the circle and used the right edge of her slat to bring her to a stop, just as a skier would do.
Most of his crew burst into cheers and quickly swarmed the amazing flyer.
“You have got to be Philly’s fairy flyer!” Ginnie exclaimed.
Alisha looked confused, but smiled as she retrieved her windcatcher.
The flyers followed her like a pack of puppies, pushing each other out of the way to get closer to the object of their interest.
“It is you, isn’t it? The flyer that went down on the Cully?” Philly asked. “DC insisted you’d taken a dunk, but the colonel said you made it out.”
“Well, I almost took a dunk, that’s for sure,” Alisha replied, smiling at Ginnie, who had helped her fold her catcher.
“Thanks,” she said once she had her catcher safely in her pack.
“I can carry it for you,” Ginnie offered.
“I got it, but thanks. What’s your name?” Alisha asked.
“Ginnie.”
“She’s our dog,” DC said as he pushed Ginnie away.
Logan hated the expression and had told DC on several occasions to drop it. That DC would bring it up now pissed the hell out of him.
Logan walked over to Ginnie and pulled her back into the circle of puppies surrounding Alisha. “Ginnie’s our newest recruit. She shows a lot of promise. I think you two will get along well. Just don’t let her do all your chores for you, or you’ll get fat and lazy like DC here.”
Logan met DC’s angry glare with a slight smile.
“Is she going to be a member of our squad?” Ginnie asked with happy excitement.
Logan hesitated. He didn’t want to promise anything, at least not until Alisha passed the ethics test. “We’ll talk about it at dinner tonight. Right now you have a surveillance run.”
DC took his cue and barked the crew onto their circles. As he counted off numbers, each took off. When they were all in the air, he took flight, yelling so loudly that Logan could hear him clearly without the use of an ear mic.
“He’s your captain?” Alisha asked with trepidation.
“The Corps promotes on merit. He’s my best flyer.”
Logan could tell DC hadn’t made a first good impression. He would have tried to assure Alisha he’d grow on her with time, but he doubted Alisha would ever like him. DC was a sexual tomcat.
Logan chucked her under her chin to remove her frown of worry. “Stop fretting over DC. You’ve got a four-hour test to take,” he reminded her.
***
Alisha almost told the colonel she didn’t want to become a SkyRyder if it meant reporting to his captain. She recognized the creep as the guy who’d raped and killed her best friend, Betty. Only one look at the bastard’s eyes told her running away would be exactly what he wanted, and unless she went back to Flatland, he would hunt her down and make her pay for her showoff landing today.
No, at least here she would have some protection. He couldn’t rape and beat her to death under the watchful eyes of the colonel. Plus, her gramps wouldn’t survive without better healthcare.
Thus, with determination and hope, she began the grueling four hours of psych tests to determine whether she could be a SkyRyder. Her success was more important than ever with DC lurking like a gargoyle in her future.
In what seemed to be the twelfth hour of tests, the colonel finally declared it over. “Have a shower and a nap, if you like. It’ll take a while for the computer to assess the results.”
Chapter 14
Logan hated to wake her; she looked so peaceful in sleep. The test took a lot out of a person, which was why cadets couldn’t fly for twelve hours after taking it. He hated that she’d have to undergo this again in a few days, but before he put his career on the line, he needed to be certain she would pass.
He smiled as he read her assessment. She not only possessed the face of an angel but the soul as well. Her scores for character and honesty were the highest he’d ever seen, despite her activities of the last month. Thank God she’d crashed on the Cully two nights ago. Another month and he might not have been able to pull her back from the precipice. And after the moves he’d seen today, he knew for damn sure the Corps needed her skills.
He’d still take grief about her former career, but no hiding it. Everything came out in the official psych test.
She yawned and opened her eyes, then pushed herself up. “I didn’t pass.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you look very solemn, as if you’re the bearer of bad news.”
“I am solemn. I’m wondering how much trouble and disruption my new recruit is going to cause me.”
“I passed?” she asked.
It was unfair to tease the poor girl any further. “You passed with flying colors.”
She jumped off the bed and threw her arms around his waist.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you! Can I go tell Gramps?”
The girl constantly baffled him. Why was she hugging his waist? He was stern and gruff, untouchable, and that was the way he liked it. Or at least it had been the way he liked it. Honestly, he rather enjoyed her arms around him.
Still, he forced the contact to end by untangling her from his waist and gently setting her back.
“As a trainee being considered for a spot in the Corps, you have no leave.”
***
Alisha tried to hide her disappointment. She didn’t want him to think her ungrateful, but she needed Gramps to know the good news.
“I’ve a meeting in Capital tomorrow. I’ll stop by and let Daniel know,” he said.
His kindness caused tears to swell in her eyes. Except for her gramps and her street friends, no one had ever tried to help her, and here was this great colonel, with a thousand things to do, and he’d offered to let her gramps know.
“Those are your last tears,” he warned. “SkyRyders do not cry.”
“Yes, sir.” She wiped away the tears. “SkyRyders do not cry,” she repeated with as much severity as she could muster given she had never been happier in her whole life.
The colonel smiled and ruffled her hair. “The squad’s back from training. Ready for formal introductions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when they ask what you’ve been doing for a living?”
“Retrieval, sir.”
“Good girl.”
***
After giving her a moment to pull herself together, Logan escorted her out to the squad gathered in the commons.
“I’m pleased to introduce trainee Alisha Kane.”
“Awesome!” Ginnie exclaimed.
“Trainee? What does she need to train on?” Philly asked.
“Everyone comes in as a trainee,” DC snapped, then slapped Ginnie on the back of her head. “Looks like the dog will have some company.”
Logan ignored the remark for the moment and continued introductions. “You’ve met Ginnie Dyson. She’s been with us for a little less than a year. Next is Washington Jones, going on two years now. He’s our right-wing spot man. Jersey Brown, also two years—she’s our field medic and left mid-wing. Philly Abrams, three years, left-wing video and spot man. Ollie Simpson, lieutenant and backwing. Finally, DC, captain.”
Alisha had stepped forward and shook hands with everyone until it came to DC. With DC, she only gave a nod. Logan sighed. If she thought knowing the colonel meant she didn’t need to show the captain respect, she’d soon discover the error of her ways. While Logan certainly did not approve of some of DC’s tactics, as long as the squad performed, he would not interfere with the chain of command.
He wished he’d given Alisha a bit of advice on the matter, but the idea she might insult the captain of his squad within five seconds of introduction had never occurred to him.
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