A/N: So, it's been a solid month since I last updated. Sorry to keep you all waiting, but here's Chapter 14! Much thanks to dorizard for reviewing, and to the few who have since added this story to their favorites or alerts.

Chapter Fourteen: In a Brown Study

Hal knew something was wrong the instant he pressed the button to engage the afterburners. Ensconced as he was in the cockpit, the sound of the Peregrine's engines was but a low buzzing to his ears — comparable to the hum one hears when inside a moving car — conducted through the vibrations running along the frame of the aircraft. But to anyone outside the plane, the action of the afterburners should have produced a sonic boom. Hal, of course, couldn't hear that the roar of the afterburners was nowhere near what it should have been, but he could feel the sudden interruption in the rhythm of the engines. The constant vibrations hitched and became choking sputters as his instruments started fluctuating.

"Not good," he muttered. "Mission control," he said into the comm., "we have a problem."

"What's the problem?" Carol had a tense edge to her voice.

"I can't be certain, but I think the plane's experiencing fuel starvation." The cockpit shuddered as the engine spat and coughed some more. "Yeah, definitely fuel starvation."

"Captain Jordan, can you regain control?" Col. Walters' tone was clipped with underlying concern, but calm and authoritative as only a seasoned officer's could be.

Hal quickly glanced at his instruments. He was losing altitude fast, engine pressure was approaching critical levels, and in a matter of seconds he would lose all power.

"I'll try, sir."

"Understood, Captain. Be careful."

The first thing Hal did was to try to relight the engines. When that failed, he gripped the steering yoke firmly in both hands and attempted to guide the shaking plane on its involuntary descent. The plane fought him, its engines straining alarmingly; he gritted his teeth as he wrestled with the controls.

And then the engines completely died.

Hal did not panic. An aircraft did not immediately stop and drop like a stone when its engines failed; it would keep moving on its course, gradually losing height and speed, but it was possible to control the descent and safely land the plane. Hal was an experienced pilot, and he'd had to deal with system failures before — not just on flight tests, but on actual U.S.A.F. missions. He was confident he could save the Peregrine.

"Peregrine to mission control," Hal addressed them. "Engines have failed. Initiating forced landing."

A warning blared, and Hal's eyes whipped to the temperature gauge; it was rising sharply.

"Shit," he swore. The engines were overheating; and without fuel to power the turbofan, he had no way of cooling the system.

"Hal, what's going on?" Carol demanded anxiously.

"The engine's overheating. It might not hold out until the landing. I'll try to bring it down, but I can't give you guarantees."

Hal kept one eye on the temperature gauge as he expertly guided the aircraft down. The Peregrine dipped, looking graceful even as it sank lower and lower to the ground. By contrast, its engine temperature climbed higher and higher with each passing minute. The vital component now was time; if the Peregrine could land before the engines combusted, there might still be a happy ending to this flight test. But if the temperature passed the critical point while the plane was still in the air, even the most skilled pilot in the world wouldn't be able to save the Peregrine. Hal wasn't even sure whether he would be able to eject in time if it came to the worst-case scenario.

He sincerely hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

Hawkgirl's unexpected reaction caused a bit of a stir among her fellow Leaguers, but a pointed clearing of the throat from Batman indicated that the meeting still had to continue. Most of the heroes took the hint, though a few were a bit reluctant to simply resume.

"Shouldn't we go talk to her?" Flash asked, already halfway rising from his seat.

"Feel free to do that after we're finished," Batman told him.

"But —"

"Flash, she likely doesn't want company right now," Atom said reasonably. "If she says Star Sapphire's crystal would work on her, she's got a very good reason not to want to talk about it."

Wonder Woman and Black Canary exchanged significant glances, both thinking along similar lines, but said nothing.

Superman chose that moment to interject, "Okay, so Diana, Canary, and Vixen are all able to fight Star Sapphire…" He paused. "What about Batman and Doctor Fate?" he asked, looking at the members in question. "After all, you've already proved that her crystal can't touch you."

"Certainly, if I'm needed, I will be there," Doctor Fate assented readily, "However, I feel that at present, I am of better use studying the crystal."

"What he said," Batman concurred. "I'll work with Flash, try to isolate his emotional state at the time of his escape."

"Joy," muttered Flash under his breath.

Superman glanced around at the other men in the room — Aquaman, Wildcat, and the Atom. "Are you sure none of you might be immune to the crystal like Batman and Fate? I'd volunteer myself to help the ladies, but I did lose my planet."

"Superman, we can handle Star Sapphire," Wonder Woman said confidently before any of the males could speak.

"Yeah, relax, Boy Scout," said Black Canary. "Your chivalrous concern is noted and appreciated, but we can take care of ourselves."

"Well, if you're sure…"

"We are," Vixen affirmed.

"All right, so the three ladies will be on standby to take on Star Sapphire the next time she's sighted, while Batman and Doctor Fate work with Flash to figure out how to free the victims," Superman summarized.

"And the rest of us can handle any other issue that comes up," Wildcat added.

"A fair arrangement," Aquaman acquiesced. "Have we completed the discussion? There are some matters in Atlantis that require my attention."

"We're done," Batman confirmed. "Meeting adjourned."

Carol fidgeted anxiously as she waited for further information about the Peregrine. Walters and Hardy, experienced pilots, were alert and tense, but not overly so, and Hardy had yet to even say a word. Carol tried to copy their composure, but it wasn't taking.

The technicians were meticulously tracking every bit of data being transmitted from the powerless plane, but without access to the aircraft itself there was very little they could do to help. Aside from performance readouts and altitude measurements, there was nothing they could tell Carol about how the situation was unfolding; and the Peregrine itself was out of sight of the observation tower. Hal gave them occasional terse, but calm reports, but Carol knew most of his attention would be on controlling the plane. Thus far, nothing particularly troubling had occurred; aside from the rising temperature of the engines, the Peregrine's descent was proceeding smoothly.

Then came the statement she had been dreading.

"Temperature's spiked!"

"Abort!" Walters commanded sharply. "Jordan, abort mission! Do you copy?"

At that instant, all readings the technicians had been getting from the plane vanished. Debbie Darnell, who had been watching the radar, reported that the Peregrine had also disappeared from their instruments.

"The plane must have exploded," Hardy surmised, speaking for the first time this morning.

Carol had her hand over her mouth in horror. "Hal…"

"He would have ejected," said Walters confidently.

"Only if he had time," Tom Kalmaku murmured bleakly.

"Captain Jordan is one of our best," Walters reiterated. "And he's escaped worse situations before. Until we find his body, his death is not confirmed."

Carol finally recovered her wits. "Darnell, send a chopper to the Peregrine's last known location," she ordered. "Scan for any signs of Jordan."

"Yes, ma'am."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Carol knew Ferris Air was screwed where U.S.A.F. was concerned, but all she could think of right now was her worry for Hal.

If you die, Hal Jordan, I will never forgive you.

There was a platform on the Watchtower that was referred to as the 'crow's nest', because it was literally modelled after one — only, instead of looking out over sea as a regular ship's crow's nest did, it overlooked the main monitor womb where most of the station's main operations took place. The crow's nest provided not just excellent sight of the many monitors in the control hub, but also a breathtaking view of Earth.

It also happened to be one of Hawkgirl's favorite places on the Watchtower (though whether that was because of the view, its avian association, or a feeling of being in charge, no one had quite figured out), so it was the first place Flash looked after the meeting. Sure enough, the lost Thanagarian was perched in her usual spot, leaning against the railing overlooking the vast window that revealed the deep blue-green planet the station watched over.

"Hey," Flash greeted.

"Hey," Hawkgirl returned, without looking away from the Earth. Her voice was calm and composed, but her face was pensive — and Flash couldn't get out of his mind the dejected look on her face when she'd said Star Sapphire's crystal would target her.

"So, uh…" Flash fumbled awkwardly, wondering how to broach the topic. While she didn't come close to Batman's level, Hawkgirl was still a rather private person by nature.

Flash had suspected for a long time that she had her own past, but although he and Hawkgirl had been friends since before the League, he knew next to nothing about said past.
Nevertheless, he still counted Hawkgirl as one of his closest friends in the League, after Hal, and the most important thing now wasn't her past.

"Are you okay?" he inquired sincerely.

Hawkgirl shrugged. "More or less."

It was clearly meant to be a noncommittal response to get him off her back, but Flash was flexible enough to take it in stride and stubborn enough to run with it. "More more or more less?"

Hawkgirl shot him a pointed glance.

"Look, Shayera, I don't care who you lost that makes you think Star Sapphire would get you," Flash told her candidly. "I just want to make sure you'll be okay. Trust me, getting trapped in that crystal is not fun."

"I'll bet." Hawkgirl met his eyes seriously. "Are you really okay?" She'd only learned about the crystal incident just before the meeting this morning.

"Hey, weren't we talking about you?"

Hawkgirl smiled sadly. "We were. But I know how you feel about your uncle, Wally." She'd been the one to deliver the news, as she'd been the only one aboard the Watchtower when Wally woke up from his coma — coincidentally just a few seconds after Barry had perished on Earth. Hal, Iris, and Linda Park had been the ones who helped Wally most through his grief, but Hawkgirl had been the one to hold him when he broke down after first hearing about Barry's death.

Now it was Flash's turn to shrug. Hawkgirl understood, and said nothing, and for a while there was silence. Wally reflected that if he'd been talking to Hal instead of Hawkgirl, the Green Lantern would have tried to get him to talk. Hal didn't do too well with emotionally-charged silences — if he couldn't get someone to talk about their issues, he usually tried to steer the conversation to other subjects. Hawkgirl, on the other hand, understood that there were times when words were simply not necessary. In a way, the three of them — Flash, Hawkgirl, and Green Lantern — had been the secondary trio to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman's trinity. Which leaves J'onn alone out of the Original Seven, Flash realized; but then, the Martian had always been the most solitary of the League's Founders.

"What was it like?" Hawkgirl asked suddenly. "In the crystal?"

Flash did not respond immediately, turning instead to look at Earth's shimmering form.

"It was…conflicting," he confessed. "It kept showing me Barry, and all the good times we had together, like a trip down memory lane. And there was…something — I don't know what it was — but it kept trying to soothe me, to make me relax into the memories and enjoy being with Barry again. It was trying to make me happy. But some part of me knew something wasn't right, knew these memories were supposed to hurt, so it was like I was being pulled in two different directions. And then I started vibrating, and next thing I knew I was out."

"So you got to be with Barry, in a way," surmised Hawkgirl.

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, it was more like a dream, and it hurt when I came back to reality and realized it wasn't real — but for a few seconds, I was happy." Flash glanced at her.

"Why did you want to know?"

Hawkgirl exhaled slowly. "Because I don't think I'll ever see my lost love again."

Flash stared at her, not only because of her admission, but because he had never, in five years of knowing her, ever heard Hawkgirl sound so sad, and he didn't know what to say. Fortunately, she spared him the necessity by speaking up again.

"I had a fiancé back on Thanagar. We were both in the military, but not the same unit — I was in espionage, he was in special forces. We were stationed at the same base, and since his unit mostly worked off information gathered by my unit, we saw a lot of each other, and eventually we just…realized we'd fallen in love. We made a betrothal pact the day before I set out for a reconnaissance mission."

"Wait," said Flash. "Was that the reconnaissance mission? The one you were on when you got into the accident?"

"The same," Hawkgirl confirmed. "The wormhole generator overloaded and I couldn't get out before it blew up. Next thing I know, I'm on a planet so far away from home I barely know enough to recognize its name."

"There's no way for you to get back?"

Hawkgirl shook her head. "Earth's technology is too primitive to travel the kind of distances that wormhole generator manipulates, and no one here has the slightest idea where Thanagar is. Even I'm not sure which direction the wormhole went through."

"You never thought to ask Hal? Thanagar has to be one of the planets protected by the Green Lanterns, right?"

Hawkgirl smiled a sad smile. "Thanagar is an advanced militaristic planet with a healthy sense of paranoia and an isolationist policy, Wally. We put up a planet-wide cloaking shield decades ago, to prevent interference from the Green Lantern Corps, among others. The Green Lantern of our sector would know Thanagar is in their domain, but they wouldn't be able to get me there. Only a Thanagarian would be able to do that. And my colleagues think I'm dead, so they won't come looking for me. I'm stuck here, Wally." She sighed heavily. "I haven't seen Katar's face for six years. I barely remember what he looks like."

"It's not worth it, Shay," Flash said sympathetically, immediately understanding, now that he knew her story, why she'd asked about the crystal. "The crystal shows you a beautiful dream, but it's not real, and you'd waste your life trapped in there with an illusion. K—Katar, was it? — wouldn't want that for you."

"I know," she admitted. "Barry wouldn't have wanted it for you, either."

"I know he wouldn't," Flash conceded readily. "Even seeing him alive and well in the crystal, I knew." Then his eyes widened and his jaw went slack. "I knew," he breathed.

"Wally?"

"That's how I got out!" he exclaimed. "I gotta tell Bats." He zipped off without another word, leaving Hawkgirl to gaze at Earth and wonder what Katar would have thought of the planet she now called home.

It was nearly four hours before Hal Jordan was finally located, in a small thicket of shrubs and rocks about four miles from where the Peregrine had crashed and burned. He was bruised, grimy, and scratched, but most definitely alive, and was waving both arms enthusiastically to flag down the search chopper. Carol, Colonel Walters, and Hardy (whom Carol had finally learned was a Captain, like Hal) were all on the helicopter, having joined the search personally when the first and second sweeps had failed to discover any trace of where Hal had landed.

"Well, it's about time," Hal said lightly. "It's hot out here."

"Oh…you…" Carol glared at him, so relieved that he was alive and so annoyed by his flippancy that the combination of the two was rendering her momentarily speechless.

Col. Walters, on the other hand, seemed to appreciate Hal's lightheartedness. "It's good to see you in one piece, Jordan."

"It's good to be in one piece, sir," Hal returned cheerfully.

"No doubt," Walters chuckled. "Are you injured at all?"

"Nothing a day's rest wouldn't cure, sir."

"Marvelous," Walters said genuinely. "Come on in, Jordan — I'm sure you'd like to get out of this heat, and get cleaned up."

"Yes, sir," Hal agreed, climbing into the helicopter. "Hey, Hardy."

"Hello, Jordan," Hardy greeted with a wry smile. "You're one lucky bastard, aren't you?"

"Nah, it was a simple ejection and parachute landing, nothing I haven't done before."

"Lucky the ejector didn't jam, like it did in Ecuador."

"It did, actually," Hal admitted, causing Carol to turn and stare at him in dismay. "Took some doing getting it to work right, and the trajectory was very unpredictable."

"It seems that more than one thing wasn't quite right on this project," Walters said neutrally. He wasn't addressing anyone in particular, but Carol knew the statement was meant for her. Hal knew it, too, because he immediately shut up and threw Carol an apologetic look, which she ignored.

It was a fairly tense ride back to Ferris Air, and Walters only spoke again once they landed.

"Jordan, if I'm not mistaken, you were supposed to report to base this afternoon after the flight test, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir," Hal confirmed.

"Take the day off. I'll see you on base tomorrow evening."

Hal saluted. "Yes, sir, thank you."

"And Ms. Ferris…" Walters turned to Carol. "Consider our contract terminated, effective immediately. I'd involve our respective legal counsels to negotiate the cessation of our working relationship, but I'm sure you're as keen as I am to put this whole business quietly behind us."

Carol had known this was coming, but her heart still sank. "Yes, Colonel."

"Good. Then I'll have my superiors send over the necessary paperwork for you to sign within the month. On behalf of the United States Air Force, I thank you for Ferris Air's work for the last ten years, and I regret that our partnership has to come to an end this way. Good day to you." He nodded politely and marched off the helipad, Capt. Hardy on his heels.

"I'm sorry," Hal said earnestly once his superior had left. "I tried my best, Carol, I really did, but the core temperature shot up so fast —"

"It's not your fault, Hal," Carol sighed. "Once the Peregrine started having problems in the air, the contract was bound to be broken, whether or not you managed to save the plane." Her face softened as she met his eyes, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder. "I'm just glad you're okay."

She left without giving him any opportunity to respond. Hal watched her go with a frown, noting the dejected set of her shoulders and the frustrated lilt to her walk. Ferris Air meant the world to Carol, and its long-standing agreement with U.S.A.F. had been one of the company's greatest achievements. Hal knew there had to be about a hundred things running through Carol's mind at the moment, chief among them the concern about how this would impact Ferris Air's reputation and where the company would go from here.

Hal, however, was occupied with a different thought. The flight test situation today had been exceedingly similar to the circumstances that had downed the first Peregrine. Both models had tested well all through the development stages with no hiccups, both had been reviewed and examined thoroughly to satisfaction, both had been checked over before their respective flight tests with nothing amiss…and yet both had come to utter ruin due to an unexpected and inexplicable engine malfunction midway through the flight test. Hal didn't believe in coincidences, and his gut was telling him that something was off here. He'd been wrong about a lot of things in his life — his ability to be a Green Lantern, his worth as a hero, his place in Carol's life…but one thing he was absolutely sure of was that Ferris Air was not to blame for either of the Peregrine disasters. Once could plausibly have been an unlucky freak incident, but twice meant sabotage.

With grim determination, Hal decided then and there that he would find out who had sabotaged the Peregrine.

Because there was one more chilling similarity between the two plane failures.

Both were meant to be piloted by him.

A/N: Hal's in one of those periods when everything seems to be conspiring against him somehow. Anyone ever felt that way?

As always, reviews make my day! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the current happenings in this fic and your predictions for what might happen. I'll try to get the next chapter up before the end of the month.