Chapter 1 - "Preflight Check"

Author's Note: This is a continuation of the one-shot I wrote for the Perv Pack Smut Shack's "An Officer and a Gentleman" contest. Thanks to the lovely ladies of the PPSS for hosting that contest, as it lit a fire under my backside and inspired me to finally write something. If you read the one-shot and that's how you found this story, welcome! I do hope you enjoy where we go from here. If you haven't read the one-shot, it's by no means necessary to do so and you might actually want to skip it, or it'll spoil some of the surprises further down the road.

Thanks to the lovely laraisawkward for agreeing to beta this hot mess, and for being a great friend who always makes me laugh and who tweets smutty pictures on a daily basis. If you haven't read her stories, stop now and go read them. Seriously, go now – I'll wait.

There's a link on my profile page to a blog I set up that has pictures of the airplanes in the story, as well as how I imagine Edward and Bella.

This story currently has an "M" rating because I swear like a sailor on shore leave when I'm not around kids, and because there will be sex later.

Things I own: Way too many books about airplanes, a bunch of model airplanes, and a lot of really cheesy songs on my iPod.

Things I don't own: Twilight or the C-17 Globemaster III.

Aduentas Fortuna Juvat = "Fortune Favors the Bold," Motto of the 366th Air Expeditionary Fighter Wing

Song for this chapter: "Leaving on a Jet Plane," by John Denver

http://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=f4hsC0nRvZM

High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

BPOV

"…as you can see from the chart, it is critical that we perform to cost and schedule…"

I felt a fog settle over my mind as the speaker droned on. Honestly, these monthly "All Hands Meetings" the vice president of our division insisted on were like corporate-sponsored torture. I needed to pay attention, though – this was important.

"…as we move into the second quarter, our focus is on value-added processes…"

Oooh! "Value-added." I think I have that on my card.

I looked over my bingo card, and sure enough, there it was. I checked it off and saw that I only needed one more square and I'd have bingo.

Come on, suit – I just need you to say "synergize" and I win.

"…we will configurate the block design such that…"

A few seats over, I heard someone cough, "Bingo!"

That exclamation was immediately followed by a soft, but vehement "Dammit!" from my coworker and best friend, Rosalie Hale, who was seated next to me. "Who won?"

I looked down the row to see Eric Yorkie, one of the Flight Test Engineers, being quietly congratulated by a few other engineers as the speaker continued to lovingly describe his charts.

"Yorkie," I replied.

"He seems to win an awful lot," she said. "If I didn't know it was mathematically impossible to cheat, I'd beat his ass."

I snickered, "He may very well enjoy that."

We went back to pretending to pay attention, resigned to the fact that we had to sit out the rest of the meeting, even though our game of Buzzword Bingo was over. Unfortunately, regular attendance at these kinds of meetings was part of our jobs.

Rose, Eric and I were among the thousands of engineers who worked for The Boeing Company. Boeing built a number of different kinds of airplanes, but we all worked on the C-17 Globemaster III program. The C-17 was a cargo aircraft flown primarily by the US Air Force, although the air forces in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Qatar each had a few airplanes, as did NATO. Most of the time we really enjoyed our jobs – almost everyone we worked with really loved airplanes and we had all gone from building model airplanes as kids to working with the "real thing" as adults. But every couple of weeks, we had to attend some management-mandated meeting that bored us to tears.

The bingo game had been spawned several months ago after another meeting just like this one. Seth Clearwater, an engineer from the Flight Controls group, had decided we needed something to occupy our time, but that would allow us to look like we were paying attention to the speaker like good little engineers. He had written a computer program that chose words and phrases from a list of "management-speak buzzwords" that we seemed to hear repeatedly during these meetings, and randomly placed them on squares laid out in a traditional bingo card format. Before each meeting he printed up cards for each of us. The winner of each game not only earned dubious bragging rights, but had their name removed from the weekly drawing to see who was going to bring in baked goods on Friday morning. The weekly drawing was the result of another of Seth's computer programs – it randomly spit out one of our names on Thursday, and that person had to stop at the bakery on the way into work Friday morning to pick up donuts, bagels, muffins and other assorted pastries. Winning the bingo game meant Eric would be getting free breakfast for the next four Fridays, guaranteed.

"What word did he win on, anyway? Configurate? Is that even a word?" Rose asked.

"Sure it is…just like strategery."

She shot me a nasty look and I refrained from giggling. Sometimes I liked to provoke Rose just for laughs, but today was not the day for that. I knew she'd had to skip lunch because of another meeting and then she had come straight here. She was probably hungry, and therefore cranky. I rooted through my bag and pulled out a chocolate chip granola bar and handed it to her.

She smiled at me in gratitude and whispered, "Thanks Mom," before she began to discreetly eat the granola bar.

I knew she would forget to bring anything to eat.

Rose and I had been best friends for years. We met as freshmen at MIT. At first I had been intimidated by her – she looked like a supermodel, and by the end of our first multivariable calculus class it was readily apparent to everyone in the room that she was brilliant. In fact, if she hadn't sought me out I wasn't sure that we would have become friends – I would have been afraid to approach her. But seek me out she did. There were so few girls in most of our classes, that what little information was known about us tended to get passed around like urban legend by the boys in an attempt to learn more about us. So when she approached me at the end of the second week of classes, I wasn't surprised that she knew who I was; I was, however, surprised by how much we had in common.

It turned out that we were both military brats – Rose's dad was a pilot in the Navy, my dad had been a pilot in the Air Force. We sat in the cafeteria after dinner one night and talked about growing up all over the world, moving every few years, changing schools, and making new friends. We had both been fascinated with airplanes from the time we could talk, and couldn't remember ever wanting to do anything other than build them. We bonded over the strangeness of being one of such a small number of women at the school. I was sure that Rose would be used to all the attention, because of her beauty, and told her so. She told me that she had four older brothers, and that they were very protective of her. When they realized that boys were starting to notice her, they started putting out the word that any boy caught with her would have to deal with them. As a result, the boys at her various schools had avoided her. She wasn't really bothered by it, though – she saw how stupid her own brothers were in regard to the girls they dated, and figured that they had actually saved her a lot of trouble. Now, of course, her brothers were nowhere in sight and the boys were swarming around her like sharks. She said that she just wanted to focus on school, though – coming to MIT had always been her dream and she was determined not to mess it up.

I understood that perfectly – MIT had always been my dream, too. And while I may not have had boys swarming like sharks, I had been on the receiving end of more male attention in the last two weeks than I had been in the sixteen years previous. That was the big secret I divulged to Rose that night – I was only sixteen. I had always been a good student, and my mom was an art teacher who was very dedicated to the idea of supplementing my regular school education with "enrichment activities." As a result I had skipped two grades and graduated early. I was worried that Rose wouldn't want to hang out with a kid like me, but she took me under her wing – saying that she had been on the receiving end of overbearing older siblings' "care" for years and was looking forward to being the older one for a change.

In the end we took care of each other, and after working side-by-side to earn our bachelor's degrees, and then our doctorates, we had come to Boeing together nearly three years ago. In some ways Boeing was just like MIT – there were very few women, and it was a thin slice of nerd heaven. On the plus side, we had real jobs, which meant we were no longer living on Ramen noodles cooked on an illegal hotplate in a dorm room.

I realized I had been daydreaming when Rose nudged me with her elbow and said, "Check this out – they're actually talking about something interesting."

I looked up and saw that there was a new person at the podium. I recognized him as a member of the company's Recovery and Modification Services – or RAMS – team, as everyone called them. He began showing pictures of a very damaged aircraft – the landing gear had been completely ripped off the airplane, and there were gaping holes in the metal skin.

"Is that the one at Bagram?" I asked Rose. She nodded.

A couple of months before, one of the Air Force's C-17s had veered off the runway at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan while trying to land. The damage was extensive, and Boeing had sent about twenty specialists to Afghanistan to repair the airplane to the point where it could be flown back the US so the complete repairs could be conducted here at the Boeing facility. The speaker was now showing pictures of the "repaired" aircraft and explaining what they had done to "fix" it. They had raised the airplane with cranes and installed new landing gear, but it still had big holes in the skin on the bottom and sides and looked just awful.

The RAMS representative asked if anyone had any questions, and another engineer asked the question that I'm sure many of us were thinking.

"No offense to your team – I'm sure they've done a great job and all – but you're seriously saying that that airplane is flightworthy? It's ready to come back here?"

The RAMS guy said, "I know it looks bad, and it is. But really, there's not much more we can do out there at Bagram. It will fly, but it's going to be a challenge, and there are going to be a lot of restrictions on the flight. As a result, it has been decided that two of the Air Force's test pilots will bring the airplane back. We honestly don't think anyone else is qualified to fly the airplane in this condition."

I looked over at Rose, and she appeared to be as surprised as I was. They were sending one of the flight test pilots? We worked with all of those guys on a daily basis, but none of them had said anything about this. They were more than just coworkers – we considered most of them to be good friends.

The meeting was adjourned, and Rose and I stood up to walk back to our offices. Eric Yorkie, Seth Clearwater, and a few of the other engineers we worked with regularly came up to us.

Mike Newton, another Flight Test engineer, asked Rose and I, "Did you two know they were sending two of the test pilots over?"

Rose answered for both of us, "No, this is the first we've heard of it."

Eric said, "Well, you know sometimes those guys know things that they can't tell us. They might have been ordered to keep quiet about it until it became official or something."

Eric had a good point, actually. We did work closely with the Air Force test pilots, and spent time with them socially as well as at work, but ultimately they were military and we were civilians. Inevitably there were things that they just couldn't tell us. All of us Boeing engineers had top secret security clearances, but some information was on a "need-to-know" basis, and apparently this had been one of those things that we didn't need to know.

Seth added, "I'm sure they'll all be at the party at Carlisle's tomorrow – we can ask them about it then."

Another good point – Colonel Carlisle Cullen, the Air Base Wing Commander who was in charge of all the test pilots we worked with, was hosting a going-away party the following day for one of the pilots. Captain Peter Quincy had received new orders, and was transferring to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. He,his wife Charlotte, and their son Elijah would be leaving in a few days, so Carlisle and his wife Esme were getting everyone together one last time. Surely all of the pilots would be there to say goodbye to Peter – we could get some answers then.

The following afternoon we were greeted at the door of the Cullen's house by the oldest of their four children, their son William.

"Ladies," he said with a smile, "so glad you could make it. Why don't I help you carry those dishes into the kitchen."

I stifled a giggle as he took the pie plate from me and the dish of deviled eggs from Rosalie. At fifteen, William was already over six feet tall, with his father's bright blue eyes and his mother's delicate features. I was certain that these traits, combined with his sweet nature and inherent charm, had many of the girls at his high school in a flurry. For the last several months, however, it had been readily apparent that he had an epic crush on Rosalie. She pretended to be completely oblivious and treated him the same as all of our other friends' children.

We followed William into the kitchen where he announced our presence to Esme.

"Mom, Rose and Bella are here. Don't you think they look lovely? And look, they brought food." He turned back to Rose and I, "That was so thoughtful of you."

He beamed a bright smile at both of us, which quickly dimmed at Esme's words.

"That's Dr. Hale and Dr. Swan to you, young man. Now take these steaks out to your father at the grill."

As William skulked out of the kitchen, Esme looked at us apologetically. "I'm sorry about that – I overheard him asking Carlisle last night for advice on how to talk to girls. I assumed he had a crush on someone at school – I never imagined he'd be trying to chat you up."

"Oh, Esme, it's fine," Rose answered. "He's a good boy. If it makes you feel any better, my brothers all went through similar phases, and they turned out more or less okay."

"Thanks," Esme replied. "He is a sweet boy and I really can't complain – I'll just have to have Carlisle remind him about "appropriate behavior." Will's right, though – you do both look lovely and it's very thoughtful of you to bring something."

She looked at the dishes we had brought. "Deviled eggs and lilikoi pie? Thank you, they look delicious. Would you mind taking them outside? Everyone else is out there - I'll be out in just a minute."

Rose and I made our way into the backyard, where we found the majority of our coworkers, along with a number of spouses and children. Rose was immediately accosted by our friend Alice Whitlock.

"Are those deviled eggs? Can I have one?"

We watched as Alice stuffed an egg into her mouth, and then began to chew and hum simultaneously.

"Mmmfff…..so good," she mumbled around a mouthful of egg.

She met our raised eyebrows with a smile and, "Shut up, I'm eating for two, you know."

"We know, sweetie," I replied. "I'd ask if you were having any morning sickness, but I think I already know the answer to that."

"No, I feel great. I always do, you know, until…" she trailed off.

Rose and I pulled her into a hug simultaneously. Alice was married to Captain Jasper Whitlock, one of the test pilots we worked with. High school sweethearts who had gotten married right after she finished college and got her teaching certificate, they had been trying for the last year to have a baby. Alice had no trouble getting pregnant, but she had had three miscarriages in the last twelve months. Everyone was hoping that this fourth pregnancy was going to be the lucky one for them.

"Okay, I'm not going to be all emo, especially when I've got gossip!"

"Oooh, excellent – just let us go say hello to Carlisle and then we'll find a spot in the shade for you to dish," Rose answered.

The three of us made our way over to where Carlisle was manning the grill.

"Rose, Bella, so glad you could make it! Alice, you're positively glowing. There are some drinks in the cooler over there, and we should be ready to eat in about fifteen minutes."

We thanked him, and then went to get drinks and find a cool spot to sit and talk. It occurred to me that William hadn't fallen too far from the charm tree. He was definitely his father's son. Carlisle was one of those guys that could charm the socks off of you without even trying. He was completely dedicated to Esme, and although I'd personally witnessed women all but throwing themselves at him, he never encouraged them in the slightest. He was very handsome, with a kind demeanor that drew people in. Not just women, either – men, small children, housepets – no one was immune to his charm. His charisma, combined with his talents as a pilot, had served him well in his career.

As soon as we had gotten comfortable in three patio chairs in the shade of a jacaranda tree, Rose turned to Alice and ordered, "Okay, shorty – spill."

Alice leaned in conspiratorially. "It just so happens that I know all about the pilot who's rotating in to replace Peter."

That certainly peaked our interest. The arrival of a new test pilot was always greeted with a combination of excitement and trepidation. The test pilots had the authority to approve or reject all of our proposed design changes – if we got someone easygoing with a technical background, it would make the lives of every engineer in our division easier. If we got someone who liked to throw his weight around, metaphorically speaking, or who was just difficult to get along with, it would make our daily working lives far more complicated than they needed to be. We already had one such pilot – Captain James Hunter. He was an excellent pilot, but as a human being he left quite a bit to be desired. He was smarmy and arrogant and Rose and I both suspected that he enjoyed making us jump through hoops unnecessarily – either because he was bitter that we had both refused to go out with him, or simply because he was a jackass. Carlisle kept him on a relatively short leash and didn't allow him to make excessive amounts of trouble for us, but he still waited three times as long as any of the other pilots before making a decision, and was always asking us for "more information to help him make his decision." He had about six months left before he rotated to another assignment, and we couldn't wait to be rid of him.

Alice continued, "His name is Edward Masen, and he's a Major. He was a year ahead of Jazz at the Air Force Academy, and they were on the baseball team together. He majored in aerospace engineering, and after flight school he flew F-15 fighters for a few years. After that he was on the Thunderbird team for a couple of years, and about six years ago he requested training on the C-17. Oh, and he's single. And cute."

"Good God, Alice, do you know his shoe size, too?" I asked.

"Not definitively, no, but I have met him several times over the years and he's got big feet. And really nice hands. I think you'll like him, Bella."

"Oh, Alice, please don't. I know you love to play matchmaker –"

"I won't try to set you up with him, I promise. I know you have this thing against dating people you work with."

Rose interrupted, "It's not like a rule or anything – she just told Yorkie and Mike Newton that so they'd stop asking her out. They still follow her around like a couple of puppies though."

"Oooh, so maybe she would consider going out with Edward then," Alice replied.

"Excuse me, but "she" is sitting right here and can handle her own love life, thank you," I interjected.

"Sorry," Alice apologized. "It's just that you're our only single friend and we want to see you happy."

"Sweetie, I am happy, and when the right guy comes along, I have a feeling I'll just know."

Thankfully, Rose chose that moment to change the subject. "So, Alice, you seem to have more information than the CIA – what do you know about the Air Force sending over a couple of test pilots to bring that busted airplane back from Afghanistan?"

"Oh, yeah – Bear's going. He's meeting Edward at Bagram and they're going to fly the plane back together. Jazz just told me this morning – apparently it was all hush-hush until it became official."

I felt my stomach drop. Captain Emmett "Bear" McCarty was not only one of my favorite pilots, he was just about one of my favorite people, ever. He was a huge mountain of a man whose appearance was intimidating until he smiled at you and you realized that he was just a big teddy bear.

Flying that airplane all the way back from Afghanistan was going to be dangerous, no matter who was doing the flying. I knew that the test pilots were the best qualified to do it – only the very best pilots got a chance to be test pilots – but I'd never seen an airplane so damaged. From the pictures they had shown us yesterday, it barely looked capable of getting off the ground, much less being flown halfway around the world.

I looked at Alice. For her sake I was glad Jasper wasn't going. I really liked Jasper and I was glad he wasn't going to be put in harm's way any more than his job usually required. But I didn't want Bear to go, either. Truth be told, I didn't want anyone we knew doing something so risky.

Rose knew what I was thinking without me having to say a word. "Bella, I know those pictures looked really bad, but they wouldn't clear the plane to fly if they weren't sure it could make it." She and Alice looked at each other and then back at me. They both appeared to be searching for something to say to calm me, and I knew they knew I was thinking about my dad.

My father, Charlie Swan, had been a pilot in the Air Force. He flew fighters and bombers and had been decorated numerous times. Two years ago he and another pilot he was friends with were out flying the experimental homebuilt airplane they had built in my parents' garage when there was a mechanical failure and the plane crashed, killing them both. I knew firsthand that even the most skilled pilots weren't invincible. Bear was an excellent pilot, but there was already so much wrong with that airplane. If the smallest thing went wrong…

As if he knew that I was worrying about him, Bear chose that moment to appear with Jasper.

"Ladies, why the long faces? I'm here now, what are your other two wishes?" He winked at me as Jasper shook his head wryly and sat next to Alice, putting an arm around her.

Rose and Alice both smiled at him, but I feared I looked as stricken as I felt.

"Bella, what's wrong?" Bear was immediately serious as he looked closely at me.

"I…I'm just…" I hesitated – was it fair of me to burden him with my worries?

Rose apparently had no such qualms. "She's worried about you flying that busted-ass airplane all the way back from Afghanistan."

His eyes softened as he said, "Bella, honey – I understand why you're worried, but you know those RAMS guys are the best. This is what they do. Trust me, I wouldn't fly that plane if I wasn't sure it was ready to go, and I have every intention of checking it out myself when I get there."

"Bear, I've seen the pictures. That's not an airplane, that's metal in the vague shape of an airplane."

"I know it looks bad, but they said most of the damage was to the bottom of the plane, the landing gear and some pipes. The wings were completely untouched. Besides, I'm going to have our new pilot with me – he's even going to be pilot in command. Not only does he outrank me, he used to be a Thunderbird. I promise I won't do anything stupid. I promise you I'm coming back."

"You'd damn well better," I answered with a little sniffle.

At that, Bear put his hands on my shoulders and said, "You know what we need here? A little music to lighten the mood." There was general groaning in response to this statement – Bear was a ham who would break into song at any given opportunity.

"All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go," he began singing.

"Oh, hell," Jasper said while covering his ears, "it's John Denver."

"I hate to wake you up to say goodbye."

"Bear, you watch far too many cheesy movies," said Rose.

Bear continued to sing, undeterred by the comments.

"So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me, hold me like you'll never let me go."

Alice clapped and giggled, "I love this song!"

"'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, babe, I hate to go."

Yes, the song was cheesy, but it was just what I needed at that moment. I hugged Bear and whispered in his ear, "Thank you."

He whispered back, "Anything for you, little sis."

Question: Have you ever invented/played any games to make your job more interesting? If so, please share!

Author's Note #2: A lot of things in this story are drawn from my real-life experiences working on the C-17 program at Boeing. The C-17 is a real aircraft flown by the US Air Force, as well as other military forces. I no longer work at Boeing, but I still have a lot of ties to the C-17 and military community, and I would never write anything to either endanger or embarrass any of those people. The incident with the airplane at Bagram Airfield is in fact a true story. However, the details associated with that incident, and everything you'll read in this story related to the aircraft will be public information. I held a security clearance for more than a decade and take that responsibility very seriously – nothing you read here will be either classified or Boeing proprietary. I don't mean to get all heavy – in general this is going to be a pretty light and fluffy story. I do want to be clear, though, that I have the highest respect for those in the service and would never do anything to endanger any of them. Thanks for reading!