Hello readers, so here is related content to "The First Dance", where Percy is invited to the AirForce academy after gaining considerable renown in the aviation community for heroic actions during a mission over Africa. This never actually happened in real life. It turns out that he might have bitten of more than he bargained for because a certain gray-eyed pilot cadet comes crashing into his life at terminal velocity.

Location: Shepard AFB, Texas, USA, 1978

Percy Jackson

The past four months had passed in a blur, ever since the incident. Countless Interview requests from Nation Television channels and newspapers. His mother and sister were being pursued by the press as well before he had even returned stateside. It had gotten so bad that the NYPD had gotten involved and several No Contact Orders had already been filed with the courts. It had all begun with a heroic-looking picture on the New York times of him climbing out of an F4 Phantom 2 with his RIO, a pilot in his own right called Charles Beckendorf or Little-B, on the deck of the Enterprise. Another popular was the victory roll with the flairs on the upwind leg before landing.

He had gotten a promotion, the word was they didn't know what metal to pin on his chest but the word of a Navy Cross had fallen, and he had gotten bumped up to the very top of the Navy Fighter Weapons School's waiting list. He had suffered through a long list of debriefs, and even interrogation, and had explained his tactics and decisions to more people than he could count. What had hit him hardest was that soon after returning home his high school sweetheart, Rachel, a photographer with the National Geographic, had broken up with him after the first details of his mission had become public. She knew what happened when you dropped six thousand pounds of ordinance on someone and couldn't forgive him for the lives he had taken.

The New York Times had published that he had killed more than fifty militia members along with a depressing amount of civilians on the ground during his bombing run, additionally to core elements of the SAM batterie. Who pur a primary target like a missile batterie in the middle of their camp?

She had even been upset over the two Nigerian aviators who had hadn't survived the fight.

Why she could be angry about the latter part Percy did not understand. He was a combat aviator and when he took off on a mission, he was looking for a fight. Judging by their tenacity, his Nigerian counterparts had been no different. It had been a mutually consensual affair and they had simply lost.

In fact, this was the first voluntary appearance he had agreed to. Three days ago a woman from the flight school at Shepard AFB had called him and had asked if he would agree to be flown down to Sheppard Air Force Base for a few days to talk to flight instructors, analysts, and war planners about his experience.

There was such a thing as collective experience in the aviation community and despite feeling little more than disdain for the Air Force he had agreed.

So here he was, sitting stiffly in the lobby as he waited to be picked up. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt and white uniform pants. His rank markings were switched into his right sleeve and name plack, a few citations, and his wings were pinned to his chest. A black briefcase lay on his lap.

He had arrived half an hour early, so the wait had been somewhat expected.

"Good afternoon, Lt Jackson," a voice finally greeted him. Percy looked up and saw a tall, dark-haired woman in an airforce light blue button-down approaching him with a brisk stride. The ranks on her shoulders identified her as a Lieutenant Colonel and the wings pinned to her chest as a pilot.

Percy rose to his feet, snapped to attention, and saluted stiffly.

"At ease," she greeted him and returned the salute, and they shook hands. "Thank you for coming down here, Lt. We really appreciate it. I am Lieutenant Colonel Minerva Chase, but around here everyone calls me Athena. The official part begins in two hours. Could you in the meantime do me a favor?" the woman asked, leading him further into the office building.

"Sure," Percy agreed, seeing as he had nothing better to do.

"We have a small handful of young women a month away from graduating," she announced. "What is your opinion with women in the cockpit?"

Percy glanced over at her, not sure if he was walking into some kind of Gotcha situation.

"No, Ma'am. I can't for the life of me think of a reason why a qualified woman would be less suited to service in a cockpit than a man. Though I wouldn't want to trade with them in a POW camp."

Athena nodded as if this were what she had expected. "Certain parts of my service aren't happy with the idea of women in the cockpit and have been giving the class a hard time, my daughter among them. Some of our instructors have been less than forthcoming in sharing experiences. Would you be willing to sit down with the cadets and answer some questions about your experiences over Africa?"

Percy nodded, "Yes Ma'am. It would be my pleasure."

Again Athena looked pleased but not surprised, and something told me that this wasn't the kind of woman he wanted to piss off.

"We will head there now then. How is the family doing? I heard a few unfortunate stories? Paparazzi sneaking up onto your mother's fire escape to get a picture of you? That is low, even for those bottom feeders."

"It's been rough. My mother is holding up, my sister is a bit scared though."

The dark-haired woman nodded slowly. "Perhaps the DOD will learn from this and handle it better in the future" Athena mused.

Percy grinned. "They could have just asked..."

Finally, they stopped in front of a classroom door and Athena led him in."Room, atten-SHUN!" someone yelled the moment Athena's highly polished shoe crossed the threshold. As one seven young pilot cadets jumped to their feet and snapped to attention. Judging by the maps and charts, it looked to Percy like they were preparing a flight later that day.

"At ease, pilot cadets," Athena replied.

"Ready for your evening flight?" she asked the class.

"Yes, Ma'am," one woman replied.

Percy froze in the doorway as he locked eyes with her for the first time and it was as if time stood still. Startling gray eyes. That was what struck him first. Eyes as gray and intense as a typhoon that seemed to look deep into his soul. She was pretty, very pretty, with long golden blond princess curls secured in a regulation ponytail, symmetrical features and high cheekbones, and fair complexion. In fact, she looked strikingly similar to Athena.

"Lieutenant?" Athena asked, looking back at him.

"Ahm yes," he stammered, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry. His cheeks burning.

"Someone isn't crowd proof!" one woman whispered loudly and there was a small choir of giggles.

"Girls, this is Percy Jackson from VF-84. He's the Navy flyer we have been hearing off so much and has agreed to brief us on what happened, what lessons he took from real combat, and what he took away from the fight."

They all looked at him expectantly, and Percy desperately searched for words. One would think that after spending the past few months recounting and analyzing his combat sortie with intimate detail.

So instead he rose to his feet and cleared his voice. "Ahm so, hi," he began and tried to look anywhere but into those gray eyes. "So yes..." he began and was only met by expectant silence.

"The sortie in question took place on the twenty-first March of this year. Now some background before we get to the details. On the 17th of March, approximately nineteen hundred hours, an Aeroflot IL-62 was shot down by an unknown SAM system after taking off from Lagos en route to Paris. At the time, we did not know, who had shot the liner down, more what weapons system was employed. One hundred seventy-two lives were lost. Now, at the time both the Government and rebel forces blamed each other for the incident. A day later a South African military aircraft was also shot at during an overflight, only they had an RWR on board and identified the target as an SA 2 missile battery. Later that day it was confirmed that rebel units had captured or acquired these missiles, and were threatening to shoot at any aircraft overflying their territory without any further warning. On the twentieth of March, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to establish a no-fly zone. In line with UN commitments, the USS Enterprise, and her battle group were deployed into the Gulf of Guinea to enforce the No-fly zone and to locate and if possible destroy any anti-air assets the rebel forces might have acquired," Percy finally rattled down his memorized script, trying to ignore that gray-eyed girl. It wasn't easy for she was looking at him with the intensity of a targeting radar.

Of course, it was she who raised her hand.

"Yes? What is your name?" Percy asked.

"Lieutenant Annabeth Chase, sir," she replied. Chase... of course, she had to be his host's daughter. "As mentioned it was a Soviet aircraft that was shot down by soviet hardware. What was the kremlin's stance on this?" she asked.

Percy cleared his voice. "For once Washington and the Kremlin were on the same page. It was the Soviets who pushed for the No-fly zone. Otherwise, the Soviet military was not a factor throughout the mission due to a lack of assets in the theatre of operations. Bear in mind this operation was not performed with the content of the Nigerian Government, so they, on the other hand, proved a considerable air asset."

Annabeth only nodded and scribbled down a few notes on a piece of paper.

"So, on the twenty-first USS Enterprise initiated SEAD operations as part of the freshly launched Operation Sledgehammer. The general strategy was to begin by sending out small fighter formations to see if we couldn't get the SAM sights to go active which would hopefully allow us to localize, identify, and finally Wild Wiesel them. We kept CAP to a minimum in an attempt to minimize any possible escalation with the Nigerian air force."

In a burst of dark humor, he added, "That part didn't work out for us though."

His mild joke earned him a few chuckles from the audience. "So, now to the mission."

SEAD mission: Suppression of Enemy Air Defences. Apart from the obvious, destroying them SEAD can and does include anything from simply giving the air defense system something else to think about while other allied planes do some other shenanigans. Or force the air defense systems to keep its radar off altogether out of fear of having the radars destroyed. That last one is especially a big deal today with Radiation Seeking Missiles like the AGM-88.

Well, I do trust you folks enjoyed yourself. Looking forward to writing the actual mission. Until I do, I have to read up a shit-ton on the mighty F4, because I am actually not personally familiar with her. Do leave a review if possible.

Henry James Locker over and out