I was rudely awoken from my daydream by several loud noises.

A thud of today's mail being dropped on my desk, the cheers of some of the pilots, and the roar of fighter jets outside.

My name is Christina Dallam and I'm part of the administrative staff at Heierlark Airbase, near the border with South Belka. I do the oh-so-exciting behind the scenes work that helps the airbase function. Every day the mail gets dropped on my desk and I get the honour of sorting it to each squadron's pigeon hole. The loud pilots in the next room are from the members Wolverine Squadron who are stationed here, bragging to other squadrons about the new F-15s that'd been received by the base. Once the jets are painted in their grey-brown colour scheme they'd be ready to use. The loud roar of fighter jets was from the 108th Tactical Fighter Squadron of the 5th Air Wing.

They consisted of four light fighters, F-5E Tiger IIs. The four were flown by exceptional pilots, each due to become instructors of different groups within the squadron. They'd be stationed all over Osea.

I rolled my chair over to the office window to catch a glimpse of the four. Number One of the squadron flew out in front, Major Bill Flannigan, call sign: Anaconda. He was an instructor for the instructors, teaching them to teach. Numbers two and three flew next to each other, close behind Anaconda, and number four flew behind, completing the diamond formation. Number four was Lieutenant Gerry Bolton, known in the air as 8-Ball. Number two was Captain Jack Bartlett, and number three-

I almost fell off my chair as it was pulled back towards my desk. I was spun around to look right into the eyes of our team leader, a large woman from the capital called Veronica.

"Miss Dallam!" she boomed, "there are over fifty items of unsorted mail on your desk. You may ogle your flyboy once all the mail is sorted", Veronica loomed over me as she spoke; she got huge satisfaction from belittling others. It worked. I couldn't look her in the eye when she did that, although she was right about one thing.

"Yes, Veronica. Also I got back to those people at Sand Island; an instructor will be coming over to evaluate the 108th's performance on Thursday…" But she was half way out the door by the time I'd even mentioned it. I sighed and spun in my chair back to my desk.

My desk was covered in mail. Envelopes of all sizes addressed to various squadrons members, the odd postcard from family members of pilots… and in the middle of it all was one package about the size of an A5 notebook, perhaps a little smaller but thicker. There was no address on the package. I focussed on the other envelopes.

Before long I'd organised all the envelopes and packages into squadrons, ordering them alphabetically by name within each squadrons. I reached for a pen and crossed off today on the calendar. Tomorrow was my 30th birthday, the big three-oh. Number three of the 108th had promised to celebrate it with me…

The clock struck 7pm and the office doors flew open. In marched the 108th. I managed to slip the last set of envelopes into the 56th squadron's pigeon hole before I was swept off my feet, literally.

After one desperately out of tune rendition of "For he's a jolly good fellow", amended so that 'he' became 'she', I got to return to the ground. Captain Bartlett spoke first.

"Yo kid, Happy Birthday!" he exclaimed, patting me on the back.

'Kid' had been his nickname for me ever since I started 6 months ago. I was only 10 years younger than him, "I'm not a kid anymore, Jack, I'm almost 30".

The Captain hated being addressed by his first name unless it was an emergency, unless it was his closest friends. I felt a familiar arm reach across my back as its hand came to rest on my shoulder.

"Yeah, Jack, be nice to my birthday girl" a man laughed.

I turned my head to my left to see number three of the 108th squadron; Captain Alfred "Wrestler" Armstrong, my Alfred. He was three years my superior, younger than Bartlett, but he'd earned the position of Captain a long time ago, having joined the OAF - Osean Air Force - in 1993. He was tall with died jet black hair, handsome, and he was mine.

I put my arm around Alfred and stuck out my tongue at Captain Bartlett. He grinned back.

"Bartlett, Bolton, let's leave Alf and his girl to celebrate her birthday", Major Flannigan spoke. He'd been silent up until now, except for providing the bass line with his deep baritone voice during my birthday song. Bolton groaned and Bartlett had to drag him away.

As they walked out the office door and into the adjacent corridor, Alfred called to them, "Don't worry, I'll join you guys later. And cheer up Bolton, it's chicken nugget Tuesday, remember?"

We laughed as halfway down the corridor we could hear Captain Bartlett roar with excitement, "Yes! I freakin' love nuggets!"

Bartlett's woops of delight faded as they walked away. Alfred slowly turned back to me, "yo Christina, you still worki-" He was cut off as I kissed him.

He kissed me back for a bit before stopping to say, "Tina, someone might see us!"

"Oh relax, everyone knows". We'd been seeing each other since my 6th week at Heierlark airbase but there was still debate to what classed as official. Alf was the one who worried about it. We'd been seeing each other for almost 5 months. He kissed me again.

The clock struck 7:15pm. Somewhere a door opened and we stopped, looking around for the source of the noise. It was somewhere in the corridor a few doors down. False alarm. We laughed.

"Oh, hey, Alf, this strange item appeared on my desk today, I don't suppose you know what it's about?" I reached for the thick brown paper package and handed it to him.

Alf held up the brown package. I glimpsed an upside down line of writing on the other side before he rotated it in his hands to read it himself. He raised an eyebrow and read it.

FOR HIS EYES ONLY