by Susan Grant
“Go with the Goddess,” he replied.
They bid each other farewell, their fists over their chests.
“Eight Ball Five, this is Raptor One.” Hawk’s voice burst over the radio. “Request permission to rejoin.”
Behind her oxygen mask, Kelly grinned ear to ear. “I see you, Raptor One. Permission granted.”
Streaking across the sky somewhere over western Texas in a Space Force F-91, she eyeballed the display in the cockpit of her fighter. The icon representing Hawk’s Raptor closed the distance between their craft with breathtaking speed.
It was incredible what the sky warriors’ craft could do. Usually Top Gun didn’t mix Raptors with Triad or Earth aircraft on routine training flights. Thus, she and the sky warriors never got to fly together. But today she’d known there was a rare chance to be in the air at the same time as Hawk.
He’d said he’d find her at the end of their separate missions.
He’d even asked for clearance to do so from the controllers. Playing by the rules. Good boy.
And then there he was, rising into view off her left wing, flying in side-by-side formation with her in his magnificent Raptor. He saluted with two gloved fingers. Mr. Too-Cool. What a hotshot. Sunlight glanced off his silver helmet and dark visor.
She loved flying the F-91, the Space Force’s newest fighter, but she’d give just about anything to take a spin in a Raptor one day. But she wasn’t allowed. Sky Mates could go, yes. Regular Earth folks, no. But they could have a little fun in their individual jets, couldn’t they? Maybe his fancy Raptor wasn’t so hot.
Not as hot as its pilot anyway.
She banked away from him, grinning. Catch me if you can.
He was on her tail in an instant. She yanked the control stick toward her lap. G-forces mashed her into her seat as she climbed, spinning skyward, the few puffy clouds in the sky whirling. She ended her climb with a playful cloverleaf maneuver before she turned serious, banking hard as she dived.
Hawk remained tight on her ass through loops and rolls and every evasive, combat-tested maneuver in her arsenal. Still she couldn’t shake him. Not that she’d expected to. But it was fun trying.
She leveled out, her respiration and pulse elevated from the mental and physical workout. She still had some fuel left to play with, so when Hawk pulled up on her wing again, rocking his wingtips, the signal to follow, she did.
His turn.
It wasn’t a lot different from when they made love. It didn’t matter who took the lead, they both won in the end. While they awaited their DNA results, they sneaked in time alone whenever they could. When they were together, it was fireworks. As lovers, they’d tried just about everything. It put to rest any question about whether or not Hawk was wild in bed. Talk about maneuvers—no position fazed him. He’d taught her a few new tricks she blushed thinking about.
With the grandeur of Big Bend below, she concentrated on trailing his Raptor. Up, down, every which way. She remained with him even as the G-forces increased. Her suit inflated automatically as it was designed to do, squeezing her lower body to keep the blood from draining dangerously from her head and causing her to black out. Even so, she sometimes had to help out the G-suit by squeezing her lower body muscles. She kept a firm grip on the control stick as she clamped her powerful thigh muscles and abs to counter the heavy forces on her body as she chased Hawk across the sky.
Driven by her natural competitiveness, she stubbornly refused to let him shake her loose. He liked to say they were in sync. Here there was no mind-speak the way there was on the motorcycle, but there was synergy nonetheless. She could anticipate his moves. It allowed her to stay with him. If their craft were more evenly matched, she’d win this dogfight.
Or at least she liked to think so. Hawk would ask for a rematch of course, and she would indulge his desire to be the superior pilot. In the meantime, she’d make him work for it.
Laughter spilled out of her. This was a fucking blast. Was he being easy on her, or was the synergy thing really allowing her to keep up? Although she was sure that with a flick of a throttle he’d be halfway to Jupiter if he wanted.
She couldn’t wait to see him on the ground and rib him and then kiss him for not sending her home in shame.
She juiced the throttles until she was practically snuggled right up against his tailpipes. Knock, knock, guess who, Hawk? The thrusters were rimmed in a bright blue glow, downright mesmerizing when up close and personal like this. The huge engines were designed for space battles, not atmospheric encounters, but they still performed better than anything Earth had.
“Mind the wake,” he cautioned her over the radio. The backwash from a Raptor could be powerful. It generated a vortex that could exceed the capabilities of another craft, causing it to go out of control.
“Roger.” Wake turbulence was always something to consider. Luckily, most modern fighters had more than enough thrust to counter the effect. She felt little more than a rumble in Hawk’s wake, but she backed off all the same. No use pushing it—
A sudden, jerking spin wrenched her so violently she grayed out from the whiplash. Caught in the Raptor’s vortex, she was pinned to her seat. Lights flashed. Alarms beeped. Both engines had crapped out on her. Her nimble fighter jet was now an uncontrollable sixty-thousand-pound hunk of metal.
Instinct and years of training helped her focus. Fly the jet. Restart the engines. But her limbs flailed like a rag doll caught inside a clothes dryer times a thousand.
Then, as unexpectedly as it had caught her, the Raptor’s wake spit her out like a tornado coughing up a hairball.
Her jet wasn’t spinning any longer but her head still was. How low was she? She squinted through her visor. Waves of vertigo made it hard to see. The blurred digits on her altimeter spun the wrong way. Down, down, down.
She might have to eject, but her brain must not be working right. Her hands could only fumble with the handles. How long before she cratered in a field somewhere?
Too soon. Too damn soon.
Chapter Twelve
“Talk to me, Goose.” Dee trotted alongside Kelly’s gurney. Her worried eyes were riveted on her friend being wheeled to the emergency room.
Hawk kept pace on the other side, gripping Kelly’s cold hand. Seeing her fighter spinning out of control would be forever seared into his brain. After witnessing that, he didn’t want to ever let her go.
“Ha ha, Rainbow, good one.” Kelly was finally conscious enough to smile, but she kept her eyes squeezed shut.
“Everything’s spinning,” she’d told Hawk after she climbed down from the cockpit, taking a few unsteady steps before she’d staggered and fell. He’d been there to catch her, lifting her into his arms, her head lolling. With several other pilots ready to assist, he’d roused her and kept her conscious until emergency crews could meet them.
Seeing her so dazed, her lips colorless, left him feeling unimaginably helpless. As much as he fancied himself as her unverified Sky Mate, he couldn’t bridge the divide between their minds.
He thanked the Goddess she’d survived the ordeal.
She’d gotten the engines restarted and regained control of her fighter. He’d flown off her wing the entire way back to Webber. She assured him she was fine, but with a mate’s protective instincts, he remained close.
While she was still in the air, he, the controllers, and even Colonel Miller had won her promise that if the aircraft grew unstable or she felt too unwell to land safely, she would abandon her craft.
“It was just a little wake turbulence, geez,” she’d radioed back. “You sound like a bunch of old ladies.”
After flying back to the base without incident, she’d set the jet down with nary a bounce. Hawk wanted to drop to his knees in gut-wrenching relief when her tires finally kissed the ground.
The medics steered the gurney away from him. Hawk stood powerlessly next to Dee as the emergency room doors swung shut in their faces.
At the hospital, the staff ran tests an
d scans and gave Kelly medications that eased her headache and vertigo.
“You suffered a TBI—traumatic brain injury,” the flight surgeon told her. He wore a white coat over a flight suit.
Her insides wrenched. A brain injury? Pain behind her eyes spiked all over again with her kick-started pulse. Was this the end of her flying career? Would she be grounded for good? Hunched over in bed, she scraped her hands over her face and kept them there.
“Fuck,” she mumbled.
She was so angry with herself and embarrassed by what happened she couldn’t even look at Hawk or Dee, who had kept her company for hours. Sure, she was eternally grateful she hadn’t gotten killed or wrecked an expensive jet, but all her scrambled brain could think of was the shitshow the doctor’s words had unleashed.
“It sounds worse than it is,” the flight surgeon said, his voice calm. “We used to call it a concussion. Yours seems to be mild. The MRI and CT scans don’t indicate bruising or bleeding in your brain. You’ll fly again.”
Kelly let out her held-in breath. Like her aircraft, which was still in the hangar undergoing an inspection but appeared to be undamaged, she might come out of this unscathed.
She dropped her hands and scrunched up her face. She wore sunglasses to help with her sensitivity to light, a symptom of her injury. “When? How long will I be grounded?”
“You lost consciousness only briefly, so that’s a point in your favor. However, because you did black out, you’ll need to complete a full neurological evaluation and another CT scan before I can get you a waiver and back to duty. That’s routine protocol for mild TBI. Expect to be out of the cockpit for two weeks, more or less, while the paperwork clears.”
“That’s all?”
He held up one finger. “If the tests are okay. And if your symptoms don’t worsen. I want to keep you here a little longer under observation. If all looks good later, I’ll let you go home.”
A group from the squadron dropped by to see how Kelly was doing.
“Hawk will do anything to win a dogfight,” she joked with her friends with a semiapologetic wink at Hawk.
“Yeah, he deployed his secret weapon—a ride in a Vitamix,” Karma said to much laughter.
“Crackers was shaken, not stirred,” Dee chimed in.
And off they went, the Terran pilots and Dee, launching into a joking, lightning-fast word match in a mix of QT and English of which half the meanings flew over his head. When he wasn’t wincing at his role in the near-mishap, he smiled at their warrior’s dark humor.
The Solos visited next, somber and much better behaved. While Dee had remained at Kelly’s side all day, when they arrived she begged off, saying she had a class to prepare for.
Shoulders hunched, Falcon watched forlornly as Dee hugged Kelly goodbye. He’d never seen Falcon react to a female in that way. If not for the fact the Solo’s matching was a top priority, Hawk would have encouraged him to make his feelings known.
But as his commander, he remained silent on the matter. No good could come of Falcon pursuing the pretty redhead. A Sky Mate pairing must always take precedence.
Now only Hawk remained in Kelly’s room. He sat on the edge of the narrow mattress, her hand in both of his. He was certain she felt low about being grounded temporarily—he certainly was. Most of all though, he was thankful she was alive. Not wanting to be accused of being an old lady again, he did his best to keep from fussing over her and instead tried to think of ways to keep her distracted that didn’t involve sex in public places.
The flight surgeon popped his head in the room. “How are we doing?”
Kelly answered with a woozy thumbs-up. “Peachy, Doc.”
“Sleep and rest the next few days. Those are your orders. I’ll allow you to be discharged, but I’d feel better if someone was with you the next twenty-four hours. To be on the safe side.”
“I will stay with her,” Hawk said firmly.
“Looks like you’re in good hands, Crackers.” The doctor smiled and continued on his rounds.
“Crackers…,” Hawk repeated to himself. Everyone called her that except him.
“Yes?” She peered over her sunglasses and squinted.
He smiled at the way she’d answered automatically to her call sign. She was so damned cute. “Tell me how you came to be called Crackers.”
“Can’t. Fighter-pilot tradition says the story behind a naming must be told over drinks.”
He poured two cups of ice water.
“That doesn’t count.”
“I don’t drink alcohol. Disallowing the substitution of water doesn’t seem very culturally sensitive…”
She laughed hard, and it did his heart good to hear it. Then she held her head in her hands. “Ow.” And he felt awful. “I’ll tell you the story. But—warning—it may leave you speechless.”
“The tale is that exciting?”
“Brace yourself.” She sat up, wincing a little. “My last name is Ritz. There’s a famous snack brand called Ritz Crackers.” She approximated the shape with her thumb and curved index finger. “They’re salty disks made mostly of flour and baked until golden brown. The brand uses the same spelling as my last name. Thus, I am Crackers.”
She was named after a snack food? He tried to hold in his laugh.
“See? You’re speechless.” She lowered her sunglasses. Humor danced in her dark eyes.
“I’m disappointed.”
“I always meant to concoct a better story, but it’s against the rules. What about your call sign? How did you get to be called Hawk?”
“Its story is just as uninspiring. Hawk is a shortened form of my given name, which conveniently sounds like a species of raptor in your native language. Hakkim is my only name, in fact. On Sky’s End no one has surnames. We are one people. One family. Our unity has allowed us to weather the worst of times,” he said with pride.
“On Earth, we tend to notice our differences. Sometimes we celebrate them, sometimes we don’t. It’s messy, chaotic, and can be violent. But we’ve managed to survive a very long time—and accomplish a few good things while we were at it too.”
“Now our very different homeworlds have aligned.”
Her dimple was back. “They say opposites attract.”
“Like us?”
She smiled at their twined fingers. “Being opposites may be what attracted us, but now it completes us.”
Hawk left Falcon in charge and spent the night at Kelly’s house, sleeping over until morning for the first time. And it was all they did—sleep.
“Must I keep reminding you of the doctor’s orders?” he asked in the morning, chastely kissing her on the nose when she sleepily reached for him and found places on his body that were bound to lead them to trouble.
A while later, sitting at her dining table, she decided she’d never been happier, watching Hawk cook breakfast in her tiny kitchen while he grumbled about her “primitive Terran food preparation devices.”
The morning was mild. They spread a blanket on the back lawn and ate there. Hawk lifted his face to the sunshine as if drinking it in. His skin sparkled a little, and she suspected he also sparkled on the inside. He’s happy too.
High overhead, a four-ship of jets roared over. She watched them with longing. “It feels weird being home.”
“You must rest.”
“I feel fine. I’m not dizzy. And my headache is almost gone.”
“Who’s resistant to recreation now?” he asked with a smirk.
“Humph,” she said. “This is enforced inactivity. I don’t think it fits the definition of recreation.”
Hawk fought a smile and studied his folded hands. “Kelly, you’re like a wild bird. You don’t take well to being caged, your wings clipped.”
With those few words, he proved he knew her better than anyone else.
After they ate, they showered and ended up on her couch. A show played on TV, which neither of them paid attention to. She sat sideways, propped against the armrest with a pillow behin
d her back. Hawk was stretched out, his head in her lap. She was fixing his hair, untying his braids, running a comb through the clean, damp strands, one braid width at a time. Nothing she had planned to do. She’d just started doing it.
It filled her with a good feeling she couldn’t describe and helped soothe some of the jagged edges of her anxiousness over being grounded.
Hawk looked so content, his lids heavy. One big hand was curved around her leg. “Preening.” “Huh?”
“My parents would do this for each other. I’d see them. It struck me as intimate. A quiet moment for themselves. Their time.”
She thought about that as she wove a new braid. His eyes closed despite the gentle tugging. A sigh of sheer pleasure rumbled in his chest.
“Preening,” she said. “I like that.” And it did feel intimate, an almost instinctive thing to want to do for him. She imagined his parents being like birds of prey high up in their aerie, mates in their nest, gently attending to each other.
Hawk feels like my mate.
Had her current situation put that at risk? What if this crazy Sky Mates thing actually happened and their DNA was found to be compatible? And then it couldn’t proceed because of what she’d done? The upcoming neurological evaluation could go south. The scans. What if she never flew again and she lost Hawk over it?
Her heart skipped some beats. “I’m worried, Hawk. What if this wrecks everything?” She squeezed her eyes shut. “God, I was so stupid. Arrogant. I shouldn’t have flown that close.”
He pushed upright and twisted around. “No, it was me—I’m to blame. Not you. Our craft were mismatched. I didn’t realize how much so. But I should have. Knowing you were in trail behind me, trusting me. I should have taken care to not hurt you.”
She reared back at his flood of words and clear guilt. “I’m not fragile. I’m not made of glass.”
“No, you are not made of glass.” He lifted his hand to cup the side of her face. Tingles showered through her like fireflies set free. “But you are flesh and blood. You’re not immortal, and neither am I. We don’t have forever—none of us do. What happened yesterday reminded me of that. We tend to put off what we can do today. I have been guilty of it with you, that I know.”