Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(92)

“You remember the way of it?” She ignored Jake’s sly comment. Kendall had watched her settle in but hadn’t said a word. They traded surreptitious smiles that were just the beginning of a whole conversation they wouldn’t be having in front of Jake. She pulled on a headset and adjusted the microphone. Her helmet was in her closet covered with six months of dust, so this would have to do, though it felt ridiculously light.

She cycled up the simulator. One more flight. Just one more. She didn’t bother reaching for the manual, even after six months, the steps of the engine start-up procedure were still a part of her nervous system. The turbines lit off with a simulated roar through her headset. Falling into his copilot role, Kendall fed her engine temp data and RPMs as she continued down the list flipping the Blade De-icing switch to auto and all the other twenty steps of engine run-up.

The Black Hawk cockpit in the simulator was so real that she could almost believe it, if she weren’t in civilian dress. She was the only anomaly in the space. The radio and comm gear ran between her seat and Kendall’s, with all the engine controls and electrical system mounted in the ceiling above them. The main console stretched side to side at chest level. At the center, a few key instruments that needed no electricity. Altitude, attitude, and compass would all keep working even if everything else failed. Above them, a large shared screen that might show terrain or weapons status depending on the mission.

In front of Kendall and her were two large glass screens each. The screens had a couple dozen modes so that the displays could be customized as needed. She toggled through the settings using the switch on the collective in her left hand and set up for standard flight information.

Above the console was a wraparound windscreen that showed Fort Lewis airfield, realistically enough to believe she just might be out on the tarmac, sweating in the last heat of the setting sun before a night flight. Down by her feet—foot—was an additional view of the terrain below, just a projection of pavement at the moment. She couldn’t feel the right rudder so had to visually check that her foot was on the pedal…it was. She could even get some feel of how much pressure she was applying through her calf and knee.

She called the tower for clearance to depart. Jake Hamlin answered from his control console at the back of the simulator. She eased up on the collective with her left hand and nudged the cyclic forward to get a little nosedown attitude and forward motion. She talked her way out of the flight pattern until she was up over Puget Sound.

Lois was flying. It was only a simulator, but she was up and flying. Her eyes were burning, she had to blink away the incipient tears. She didn’t want to brush at her eyes; Kendall would notice when she had him take the collective to free up her hand to do so. Instead, she blinked hard and banked right so that she’d have an excuse to look out the side window away from him. The simulator’s pistons canted the cockpit to match her control motions and the video projected on the windows showed the land rotating below her.

Kendall and Jake left her alone and just let her fly. She shook it out a bit, testing her reactions, testing her foot. The control wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The nerve sensations coming up her right leg were different, but she learned to interpret what they were telling her fairly quickly.

Jake threw a small thunderstorm up on the screen, not much more than a squall line, and she climbed for safety and rode out the turbulence. Her gut informed her that her tail rotor control of the rudder pedals wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. Maybe she could get a civilian job, flying tourists around or something.

After she took them “back to the field,” landed, and shut down, she had to just sit there for a long time before she remembered how to breathe. She heard Jake shut down his control station and head down the stairs. When Kendall peeled her left hand off the now inactive collective and held it in his, that’s when the pain really began to flow. It took everything she had left in her to keep the tears on the inside.

? ? ?

“I lost so much.” Lois hadn’t really been functional after the simulated flight. She’d let herself be led by Kendall. Down the stairs, to his car, back to her apartment. There she’d simply handed him her keys, and he’d let them in.

She’d kept her composure through delivery pizza. Held it together while they spoke of nothing at all really. At least not that she could remember.

“Well, I should—”

“Will you stay?” She could hear his “it’s time to leave tone,” and she really didn’t want to be alone.

Kendall looked at her as if not quite believing what he was hearing.

“Okay, I know I’m a bad bet. I’m”—to hell with the WTU’s words-to-avoid list—“crippled. I’m an emotional train wreck. And I can’t promise I won’t be a worse one tomorrow.”

“I could sit with you—”

“I’m no longer an invalid in a hospital bed.” She stopped herself before it turned into a shout. Getting to her feet, she clomped away from where they’d been sitting ever so carefully on opposite ends of the couch. She came to a stop facing the unlit kitchen, her back to Kendall. Taking a deep breath, she braced her hands on the counter for support but didn’t turn as she spoke.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’ve been stuck in my head the whole damn day. I finally get that you liked me…”—she thought about last night’s dinner and kiss—“like me. I don’t know why you never said anything. I can’t figure that part out. I was single. I never slept around in the unit or much outside it. Why two years—”