Damage Control (Valiant Knox)

by Jess Anastasi

  He shook his head, shifting a little nearer. “I’m not laughing. At you anyway. I am finding it funny that my manly pride wants to know if I’m being dressed down, when I’d planned on doing all the lecturing.”

  Oh, so now he had a sense of humor? She hardened her fluttering emotions against him and deepened her frown. “Since technically nothing happened, no one is lecturing anyone. We’re just mutually agreeing to stay away from each other. Or, failing that, we’ll strive to maintain a platonic, if not distant relationship.”

  “Mia, you are clearly too practical for your own good.”

  “There is no such thing as being too practical. And after this, we’re not going to talk about it again, either.”

  The doors to the transit opened, and Leigh shot her a smile that bordered on intimate, making her heart skip.

  “Good-bye, Recruit Wolfe.”

  He backed out of the transit, then headed toward the gym. She walked out at a more sedate pace, feeling far better now that they’d reached an agreement about how things should stand. Next time she saw him, he would just be Captain Alphin and she would be doing everything in her power to pretend like he was simply a commanding officer she didn’t know one single thing about.

  The messdeck echoed with dull chatter as Mia looked over the breakfast offerings and decided she couldn’t eat anything other than the meager fare she’d already picked up: black coffee and a few pathetic slices of cold toast. Despite spending an hour in the lap pool, her lack of sleep was still making her feel unsettled, without much appetite. However, after she found a table and sat down, she forced herself to eat, because with training starting today, she’d need what little energy the toast provided.

  And most of that energy would be expended mentally, trying to put Captain Alphin firmly in the past and forget she knew anything about him. At least she now knew he was on the same page, which should make it that much easier to get on with things.

  Someone sat down across from her, and she glanced up to see one of the other female recruits, Kayla Dawson, picking up her fork as the rest of the seats quickly filled around her.

  Mia shook her head slightly and forced her mind on the here and now—away from things she’d vowed to move on from—as the recruits around the table started up a conversation about what they might expect in the coming days.

  “Captain Alphin needs to get that stick out of his ass.” Steve Robinson sat a few seats down from her, a huge plate of bacon, eggs, sausages, hash browns, and other food piled in front of him. “Who does he think he is? Just coz he’s the Captain of the Fighter Force.”

  “He’s your CO dumbass,” Kayla put in. “So unless you want to spend FP training wiping the floor with your face, you better kick the attitude, Dogmeat.”

  A few of the other recruits laughed at the nickname given to FP trainees who got picked on by the instructors, while Steve glared at Kayla. Mia examined her toast. She needed a bit of Kayla’s spunk. Out of all the recruits, Kayla was one of the few sure to get through the next few weeks and make it look stupidly easy.

  Steve grinned and elbowed the guy sitting next to him.

  “Looks like Kayla will be the dumb bimbo who gets all hot and bothered over the CAFF this year.” Steve guffawed at his own remark. A few of the guys near him threw in some lewd comments, but Kayla half turned away from him in her seat, sending him an obvious snub as she calmly sipped at her coffee.

  Mia rearranged the bread she’d ripped up and slouched in her seat, a guilty blush creeping up her neck. The position of Dumb Bimbo Getting All Hot and Bothered Over the CAFF might have already been filled. God help her if someone like Steve Robinson found out. He would make her life a living hell if he got even a hint that she’d gone mushy for their CO.

  She busied herself shoving another bit of her unappetizing breakfast in her mouth while the ribald banter between the guys continued. After chewing the half mouthful and gulping down some coffee, she pushed the plate away and stood.

  “Are you heading to class already?” Kayla asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Thought I might as well find a decent seat and start reading through the material we’ll be covering today.” She’d always liked getting to class before everyone else, choosing her seat and sitting back to watch the other students and teachers trickle in.

  Kayla stood, then sculled the dregs of her coffee.

  “Sounds like a great idea. I’ll come with you.” She slammed the mug down, which cut off a lewd story Steve had been telling. The two of them glared at each other and then Kayla moved around the table to walk next to her as they headed out of the messdeck.

  “Mia, right? I’m Kayla,” she said, holding out her hand.

  Mia shook it as they exited into the corridor. “Yeah, I’ve seen you around campus at Ophelei UEF Academy. I was glad to see a familiar face at the first line up when we got off the Farr Zero shuttle yesterday.”

  Kayla glanced over her shoulder, then leaned closer to her. “I heard Steve and his buddies came from the Ackerly Academy, you know that all-boys school only the rich and potential elite soldiers make it into? That’s why he’s such a jerk. The soldiers who come out of that place are always jerks, think they’re God’s gift to mankind just coz their families are cashed-up and got them into some special school.”

  Mia grimaced. Well, that explained a lot. Everyone knew the reputation of Ackerly. Most people called the graduates Ackerly Assholes. Not to their faces, of course, that’d just be asking to get punched. Or court-martialed, since a good portion of the UEF’s senior officers were Ackerly alumni.

  “Remind me to stay off Steve’s radar,” she muttered more to herself, but Kayla nodded an agreement.

  “He’s a typical jerk. Pulling your strings to get a reaction. If you just ignore them, they get bored and move onto someone else.”

  God, she hoped she could calmly ignore Steve if the guy decided on her for his next target.

  They reached the designated ready room where they’d be spending a good chunk of time learning the theory behind the fighter jets before they got any ideas about flight-time.

  Mia went through the hatchway ahead of Kayla, but stopped short just inside the door. Kayla brushed by her shoulder and continued past, walking over to drop into a seat in the second row from the front.

  Toward the back of the room, Captain Alphin stood chatting to one of the other instructors. He glanced over at her, but in the space of a breath had returned to his conversation, all but looking right through her.

  She blew out a long sigh of relief and continued over to sit next to Kayla. What had she expected? Long, lingering looks? A flinch? Some kind of manly blush? Stupid, but she had been thinking that somehow, when she saw him again today, there would be some kind of silent admission of the agreement between them.

  Except this was much better. Treating her as if she didn’t exist was exactly what she needed to put them both back into their respective places, where they didn’t socialize, didn’t know each other outside of the platonic teacher-student roles, and certainly didn’t ever, ever get up close and personal.

  She picked up the datapad that had been left on the desk she’d chosen and tapped the screen to life, forcing her distracted thoughts to focus on the day’s reading. The room filled up, recruits chatting excitedly as they took their seats. Would they be so enthusiastic in another twenty-four hours once they realized the odds stacked against them and the hard work they’d have to slog through in order to come out on the other side?

  The following weeks would be a test of mental and physical endurance, putting their minds and bodies through a number of rigorous challenges. Every year, successful recruits numbered about a quarter of those who started out, if even that. Truthfully, she didn’t like her chances of making it to the end. She knew her own strengths and weakness. But she was determined to push herself as far as she could before becoming a washout.

  Captain Alphin and the other instructor, Sub-Lieutenant Sebastian Rayne, walked to the front of the class. Ra
yne stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out an ear-splitting whistle, cutting off the noise with eardrum-bursting efficiency.

  Captain Alphin took a few steps forward, stopping just in front of the lectern, and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “I really hate having to use Sub-Lieutenant Rayne to get your attention, recruits. Having my eardrums perforated puts me in a foul mood, so I’m not going to say this twice. When any instructor is standing at the front of this room, there will be silence. If I have to get Rayne in here to use his superpowers, I will be pissed off, and you will pay the price.”

  Captain Alphin nodded at Rayne, who saluted and then retreated toward the back of the room.

  “What a pompous hard-ass,” someone muttered behind her, followed by a ripple of snickers from a few other recruits.

  Mia turned her head far enough to see Steve had sat right behind her. Great. Just what she needed today—commentary from the a-hole contingent of the group. Steve saw her looking and flashed her a suave grin. Maybe some women would find that smarmy, rich-boy charisma attractive, but the prospect of him trying to charm her made a shudder trip down her back.

  “Is there something going on over there I need to be made aware of?”

  She turned her attention back to the front and found Captain Alphin glaring in her direction. Well, not exactly her direction, he seemed to be doing a really great job at looking through her still. No, that scowl seemed more directed at Steve behind her.

  No one answered, though a few of the recruits who’d laughed shifted in their seats, until the CAFF turned his attention to bringing the screen at the front of the room online.

  “So, apparently you’re all here to become fighter pilots. And the first thing a pilot needs to know is their ship or jet, and I mean from the inside out.” Captain Alphin typed on the remote datapad, bringing up a couple of diagrams on the large screen. “On the datapads in front of you, you’ll find schematics for the currently deployed V-29 multi-atmospheric fighter jet, as well as basic launch protocols every pilot must adhere to before each flight.”

  Captain Alphin set the datapad down on the lectern and then faced the room again. “We’re going to head up to port level alpha, where, if you didn’t already know, the fighter jets are housed in bays alpha-one to delta-eight. You’ll get the chance to sit in a fighter jet and see the inside of a machine for yourself. After that, you’ll have two weeks to memorize these diagrams and protocols, as provided on the datapads. There will be a final exam before your maiden flight. If you don’t pass the theory, you will not be continuing any farther with the program, which most definitely includes flying any jets.”

  A ripple of exclamations and quiet groans resonated about the room as Sub-Lieutenant Rayne and Captain Alphin led the way out of the ready room, recruits falling in behind them.

  “Since the test in a few weeks is all about brains and not brawn, it’ll take out Steve and his crew, if they don’t fail at something else before that,” Kayla murmured from where she walked next to Mia.

  “We can only hope.”

  Something tickled the back of her neck and she flinched into a half duck, before turning. Steve stood not a step behind her, conceited grin firmly in place.

  “Were you ladies talking about yours truly?”

  Kayla scowled. “Yeah, we were trying to decide how long we’d have to put up with seeing your annoying face before you washed out.”

  Despite Kayla’s insult, Steve’s grin didn’t budge.

  Mia crossed her arms. When it came to guys like Steve, ignoring them was always the smartest way of dealing. But even though she’d given him her best cold shoulder, he closed the distance to stride beside her. She trained her gaze in the middle of Captain Alphin’s back as an icy, uneasy feeling washed through her.

  “And how did you make it into the fighter-pilot program, sweetheart? It’s cute, really, that you think you can cut it.”

  An angry flush rose up her neck, but she clamped her lips together against saying anything in retaliation. Steve was a classic bully, and no matter what she said in return, she’d somehow come out on the losing end.

  As the group reached the transit-porter and squeezed on, Leigh spun, his sharp gaze landing on her, almost as if he’d felt the weight of her constant stare. His attention shifted to Steve beside her for a split second, then focused on her.

  Something hot sparked in his eyes, his gaze lingering just a little longer than it should, before he turned away from her. A storm of tingling warmth rushed her, stealing her breath for a long second.

  Common sense returned like a cold shower. Her plan of staying detached around him was going to work so well if she had a mini-meltdown every time he met her eyes.

  “So, what do you think?” Steve asked from right beside her.

  Somehow, while she’d been in a mental free fall over Leigh’s heart-stopping gaze, Steve had moved into her personal space and had apparently been talking to her.

  “I’m sorry?” She took a big step away from him. Well, as far as she could get, considering the crowd jammed into the transit.

  “Tonight, after messdeck, you and me, and a bottle of prohibited vodka…?”

  She almost threw up, right onto Steve’s incorrectly laced boots. “Is that supposed to be romantic or something?”

  “No, that’s meant to be two people getting together to blow off some steam in the best way possible. Naked.”

  Gag. Lucky she’d been too tired to eat much of her breakfast.

  “Sorry, Steve, but I’ll be studying after messdeck tonight.”

  Steve shrugged. “Another night, then.”

  Before she could correct his assumption that she would ever want to go anywhere alone with him and a bottle of prohibited vodka—let alone get naked—he’d moved off to stand with the other Ackerly a-holes.

  Kayla eyed Steve as she might a rabid animal. “I get the feeling he’s one of those guys who thinks when a girl says no, she really means yes, or maybe just needs a bit of extra convincing.”

  Chapter Seven

  Leigh strolled around the far end of the fighter jet, nodding at Lawler, who was waiting for another recruit to finish their allocated five minutes in the cockpit to study the controls firsthand.

  While many of the recruits took the morning’s activity seriously, learning as much as they could, others still seemed to think this was some sort of high school field trip where they could goof around and slack off. Well, if those recruits hadn’t found an attitude adjustment by the end of the day, he’d be more than happy to provide them with one.

  He stopped and glared at one of the morons in question. Steve Robinson would not make it through this program, of that Leigh had no doubt. He saw the guy’s type every year—overconfident, self-serving imbeciles who thought the world owed them and they didn’t need to lift a finger to find success. Robinson was one of those guys seasoned soldiers knew to stay the heck away from because he was likely to get himself, if not someone else, killed.

  Right now, said moron loitered a few steps away from Mia and another female recruit. He didn’t like the way old Steve had been hanging around her all day, but clearly it was none of his business.

  Maybe if he and Mia had met under different circumstances, he could have started something with her. She might be beautiful, smart, intriguing, and a million other things, but too many people relied on him to lose his sanity and choose a woman over that.

  “Robinson being a d-bag again?” Seb stopped beside him, folding his arms over a datapad and holding it against his chest. “We’ve got to make sure we wash that guy out in the next session. You know he asked me before how a guy gets special items and privileges around here? Like, what, we might be running some kind cryztal-lab or bootlegging operation out of echo-ten bay?”

  “Idiot,” Leigh muttered, shaking his head. He cut his gaze away from said idiot. Instead, he glanced at Seb. “Where are we up to?”

  Seb lowered the datapad and touched the screen, bringing up an alphab
etical list of the recruits. “Almost done. Next recruit in the jet will be Wolfe, Mia.”

  “I’ll take this one.” The words fell out of his mouth before he’d thought about it, and he immediately wanted to take them back again. Goddamn it, what the hell had happened to his careful self-control? He wasn’t impulsive. Yet the last three days had seen him slip off the straight and narrow several times.

  Seb nodded and got distracted by some recruits who were messing around too close to a bench fitted with many very expensive, state-of-the-art tools. As the sub-lieutenant went to herd the rowdy children back with the rest of the class, Leigh strode closer to the nose of the jet, where Lawler oversaw the recruits who hadn’t taken their turn…plus a few hangers like Robinson, who apparently had nothing better to do than pester the others.

  “Recruit Wolfe.”

  Mia straightened to attention, stepping forward. “Sir, yes, sir?”

  For some reason, her very correct response smashed right into the memory of her whispering his name last night, and he faltered a step before stopping.

  “You’re up next, Wolfe.” He cleared his throat, since his voice had come out husky, and definitely a decibel lower.

  Mia’s gaze caught his in a way that seemed too knowing. Could she see how her mere presence agitated him? Worse, could other people see the way she stirred him?

  He trailed a step behind her, over to the side of the fighter jet, and waited while she climbed up the side and lowered herself into the cockpit. Once she was in, he scaled to the top and then looked down, forcing himself to focus on the familiar controls and not the gleam of Mia’s golden hair or the slender line of her neck.

  With a few short directions, he showed her each instrument and then went through the prelaunch protocols. Every so often she would ask a question or interject an observation, which told him not only was she damned gorgeous, but he’d also been right when he’d guessed that she had a decent brain in that head of hers.