Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) (41 page)

“Dibs on the troll!” she announced.

“Not good at all,” Lee muttered back to Danny.

“Five-One, meet the Renegades,” Ryan gestured to the newcomers. “This is Link Baxter, call sign Jester; Hamish Lunley, call sign Wulver; Danny Tucker, call sign Hurricane; Evelyn McKinsey, call sign Northern Star, and finally their squad leader, Lee Summerston, call sign Daredevil.”

The group nodded as their names were called.

“Hey, Chief, how do we stand?” Ryan asked over his shoulder to Wyatt, who broke from the Mako to join them. He was followed by a second member of the engineering crew, a heavy-set man with short, dark hair and round facial features.

“Chief Wyatt, my man!” Tino said gleefully as the duo approached. “How’s life up here in the dungeon?”

Wyatt shrugged. “Could be better, could be worse, but somebody’s gotta keep quality wings under flyboys like you, right Tino?”

The young pilot laughed. “I’ll tell you right now, folks,” he declared. “Chief Wyatt here is the best wrench in the fleet. You get shot down in one of his machines and you can pretty much bet your last paycheck that it was because of piloting error, not equipment. No crap-wagon Phantom is ever gonna be more prepped than our birds. Chief’s just the man like that!”

Wyatt gave an awkward smile.

“Oh hey, Chief?” Tino added. “A bunch of us are headed down to the OC after duty tonight to blow off some steam over cocktails. You interested?”

Wyatt shook his head. “Thanks, Tino, but I’ve got a lot of work to do here.”

“Oh c’mon, Chief!” Tino pressed. “You know Debbie from the 42
^nd
has been asking about you. She’ll be there—”

This drew a scowl from Layla, and Tino backed off.

“Anyway, Chief,” he finished. “Offer stands if you change your mind. OC, 19:00.”

“One other thing, everybody,” Ryan noted, pointing toward the second crewman. “This is Petty Officer Jued Aston. He’s Chief Wyatt’s #2 here on the flight deck, and his right-hand mechanical man on the Mimic project. You’ll be seeing a lot of him over the next few weeks.”

For whatever reason, Aston seemed to care less about any of this, offering a weak nod of acknowledgement that barely recognized their presence in the room, much less their role in the project.

Not sure what to make of it, Lee shot a look to Danny, who shrugged.

“Chief, we good to go?” asked Ryan.

“Yes sir,” said Wyatt. “I’ve got five Thresher Betas fueled up and ready for launch whenever you’re ready. One, two, and three are set on the catapults, and four and five are prepped and ready in bays Alpha-1 and Bravo-2.”

“Excellent. Hit Squad, let’s take these probies for a spin, shall we?”

“
RUAH!
”

Before any of them could say another word, the Hit Squad grabbed their respective trainees and escorted them to their designated fighters. Naturally, as Lee was the team leader, it made sense for him to be paired off with Ryan; meanwhile, Blazer took Danny, Scar took Hamish, Layla took a visibly nervous Link, and as fate would have it—though Lee would not, given a choice—Tino waltzed off with Mac.

Ignoring the world’s biggest “told ya so” look from Danny, Lee climbed into the cockpit of the center fighter and couldn’t help but notice that while the Thresher Betas were similar in most ways to their standard Thresher counterparts, with their fixed triangular wings, narrow bodies, and single-engine tails, they were wider than conventional fighters due to their status as training ships. This meant their cockpits had to seat two occupants instead of one, and taking his seat behind the captain, Lee strapped his oxygen mask over his face and surveyed the dashboard in front of him, complete with flight stick, foot-pedal controls, and the full spectrum of instruments comprising everything from navigational to weapons systems.

“Alright, listen up,” Ryan ordered through the radio in Lee’s helmet from the chair ahead. “Once we’re in the air, your station will act as a mirror of mine so you’ll be able to see, hear, and feel everything I do with regard to the controls. Instrumentation, stick controls, pedal controls… you’ll experience all of it so that, when we put you in a Thresher of your own in a few days, it hopefully won’t be so… well,
alien
to you.”

“Could I actually fly this thing from back here?” Lee asked.

“If something happened, then yes,” the captain chuckled. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet, okay?”

Taking hold of the small silver buckles beside him, Lee strapped himself in and began to get acclimated with the array of flickering instrument panels, gauges and monitors that surrounded him in a U-shaped layout.

“Flight, this is Katana. You got a copy?” Ryan asked, flipping a pair of switches in front of him.

“Copy Katana,” a familiar voice responded, and Lee turned to see Reiser sitting behind the glass in the flight control room above. Feeling a slight tremor through the stick as the Thresher’s engines hummed awake, Lee snapped his eyes ahead as the fighter’s glass canopy slid forward to seal them inside.

“Five-One, sound off with radio and instrument check,” Ryan continued—the engines’ hum now building toward its explosive climax. “Katana copies in the green.”

“Blazer copies, green.”

“Scar copies, green.”

“Layla copies, green.”

“Tino copies, green. Rock n’ roll, boss!”

Lee’s lip twisted beneath his mask.

“Flight, Five-One is green across the board,” said Ryan. “Standing by for pylon authorization.”

“Flight is green,” Reiser called out. “The pylon is yours. Have fun, Captain.”

No sooner had the words left Reiser’s mouth than a violent burst of inertia rocked Lee’s helmet back against the headrest, as the fighter’s afterburner exploded in a fiery blue blaze against the catapult, sending the craft barreling toward the launch tube ahead, the scene around them roaring past the canopy at blinding speed. Feeling the intense rumble of the thrust and landing gear through his seat, Lee’s hands clenched tightly around the chattering stick between his legs as, within seconds, the thunderous jarring suddenly gave way to the smooth, gliding sensation of flight as the Thresher shot through the launch tube exit into open space.

“
WOOOHOOOOOOO!!!
” Lee bellowed in exhilaration as the jet swooped in a wide, circular pattern to the right, returning the view ahead to the Praetorian’s exterior and the bright blue sphere of the planet behind it.

“Not a bad way to travel, is it?” Ryan smiled through the comm.

“
Hell no!
” Lee exclaimed, still fighting to catch his breath from the single largest adrenaline rush of his life.

As the fighter winged its way around the massive flagship, Lee looked out over the breathtaking starry scene around him and was absolutely beside himself. Granted, this was the same view he’d marveled over from the Milky Way’s bridge before, but seeing it through a viewscreen and having it just inches in front of his face through a canopy were two entirely different experiences.

While the ship continued its effortless joyride—sweeping and climbing, dipping and diving through the cosmos—Lee found himself in a virtual trance of thrill.

“Hey Daredevil, how’s it look out there?” Danny keyed the comm.

“You’re never gonna believe this, Danny,” he crowed in awe. “Seriously man, you have
got
to get up here!”

“You sound a little starstruck back there, Summerston,” Ryan called from up front.

“I won’t lie to ya sir, never in a million years could I have ever imagined I’d be seein’ this… not from up here, anyway.”

“Makes sense,” said Ryan, and it dawned on Lee how starkly different the captain was in the cockpit, versus his strait-laced demeanor back on the ship. He truly was in his element out here, and Lee, for one, was quickly coming to understand why.

“Well, enjoy it while you can,” said Ryan. “Once the rest of your squad gets out here, there won’t be much time for stargazing. On that note, I hope you didn’t eat a big breakfast.”

“No sir, I oughta be alright,” said Lee. “Besides, I’ve got a pretty good stomach for stuff like this.”

This drew a laugh from the captain. “Is that so?” he said, an audible coyness in his tone. “I’ll remember you said that.”

Lee’s eyebrows knit above his mask. “These things do have inertial dampeners, right?”

“Sure they do,” Ryan assured him. “All of our ships do. Just remember that it’s a little different experience out here in a fighter than what you were used to on that cruise-liner you came in on.”

“Different how?”

Ryan simpered. “Let’s just say you’ll feel it a bit more in the corners…”

****

“
OH SHHHII—
” Link’s voice slammed back into his throat as Layla ripped the stick hard right and down, sending their Thresher tumbling into a violent, free-falling barrel roll as a terrified Link howled in agony.

“So much for not bein’ brutal,” Lee snickered, watching the fighter spiral out of sight through the canopy.

“You gotta admit, he kinda had that coming,” said Ryan.

“Yeah but, he
just—
”

Lee’s defense was cut short when the stick in his hands tipped hard left, sending the fighter into a steep, counterclockwise loop before leveling out into an all-out, rocket-propelled sprint through the stars. For a moment, he thought he might lose what little breakfast he had eaten this morning, but he managed to collect himself and avoid the awkward experience of puking all over his CO.

“Still with me back there?” Ryan asked.

“Right here, sir,” Lee panted.

For the next hour, Lee watched helpless from his seat as Ryan graciously fulfilled his promise to “rip, grip, pull, and utterly bodyslam” him into a oblivion with a series of high-intensity training exercises designed to acclimate him to the rigors of spaceflight; some going up, some going down, some going left or right, and even a few that tore his body in multiple directions at once.

Still, Lee hung with him, and as time wore on, he gradually felt himself becoming more and more accustomed to the sights, sounds, and physical sensations of his new environment. The turns came a little easier now—the rolls and pitchbacks a bit less disorienting. The stick and foot controls felt more natural. Even the telemetry in front of him—which had looked like ancient Greek an hour earlier—was slowly coming back to him: pitch, roll, yaw, drag, lift… he knew these things.

The same couldn’t necessarily be said for every member of the Eight-Two, however, and if Link’s latest profanity-laced tirade against his instructor was any indication, Lee guessed that it might be a while before everyone got on the same page in a cockpit.

As the Thresher exploded into its final maxed-out run of the session, Lee was feeling nothing short of exhilarated. The pure speed alone was intoxicating, and by the time it was over, he wasn’t sure he really wanted it to end, though he wondered who else in the squad would share his enthusiasm.

Once the first session finally drew to a close, Lee and Ryan’s fighter taxied off the runway and came to rest beside those of Danny and Hamish, both of which were already undergoing service for the next run.

“How’d it go, bro?” Danny asked upon seeing Lee exit his cockpit to join them on the deck.

“Honestly, the first few minutes were a little hairy,” said Lee. “But after we got into it… I dunno, man. Stuff just started to make sense to me, ya know?”

“Coolest crap I’ve ever done,” Danny agreed, “to be sure.”

Lee peered over Danny’s shoulder at Hamish, who looked a little green. “How ya doin’ over there, Big Man?”

“I just need a moment is all,” Hamish managed, clutching his stomach.

Just then, the trio turned to see an almost euphoric Mac emerge from her Thresher and throw her arms around her instructor, who was all too happy to oblige her physical display of exuberance.

“Huh,” Danny chirped.

“Shut up,” Lee grumbled.

“
Oh my god!
” Mac shrieked as she raced toward them. “Was that not the single most
awesome
thing ever?”

“Hey Top, if the 82
^nd
doesn’t want her, I think we can find a place for her in the Five-One,” Tino raved. “The girl’s a natural. I couldn’t shake her!”

“Glad to hear it,” said Ryan. “But how about we give it a few more sessions before we start handing out roster spots, alright, Tino? Suffice it to say, nobody blew chow in any of my birds, so from where I sit, that’s a good start across the board.”

“You might wanna hold off on that assessment, sir,” Danny said, watching the fifth and final Thresher come to rest on the other side of the hangar.

As the canopy opened, a sweat-soaked Link fought frantically to escape his safety belts before vaulting over the ladder—nearly face-planting to the deck on his way down—and launched into a life or death sprint across the hangar bay toward the nearest trash can he could find.

“Nice flyin’ with ya, Tiny,” Layla gloated, blowing him a kiss to add insult to injury.

It took a moment, but after several excruciating seconds of intense vomiting, a small, pale hand rose from behind a wall—shuddered with a final, anguished heave—and extended its middle finger.

“Given that I’m not cleaning that off of his dash, I’m guessing they handled okay?” Wyatt asked, drawing a chuckle from the captain.

“Handled great, Chief… thanks,” said Ryan of the Threshers. “We’re gonna break for lunch, then head back up in about an hour.”

Hearing Link manage a groan behind him, Wyatt pursed his lips.

“You sure that’s a wise idea, Captain?”

****

“Chief Wyatt seems like a pretty good guy,” Lee said to Ryan, still buzzing over his first experience in a fighter as the two squadrons left the flight deck for the mess hall.

“The best,” said Lt. Commander Hastings beside them. “Nobody takes his job more seriously than Kristofer Wyatt, nobody. He goes above and beyond to make sure we, as pilots, have everything we need out there. There’s no detail he misses and no job too trivial for his attention. If it’ll help keep us alive, it’s done. That’s the Chief.”