A/N: I almost meshed this and the next chapter together, but I thought 6.5k was enough for one chap. Once again, I know very little about AF training but I did all the research I could--which, unfortunately, wasn't a whole lot. To answer kitten's question, yes, Danny is still a virgin. To respond to Life's constructive criticism, I appreciate your honest opinion and thank you muchly for the compliments. To everybody in general: the complexity in that last bit had me worried about yoos guys, but it seems like most of you picked it up (at least the important parts) no problem. Yay for clever reviewers!

Mars

By JadeRabbyt

"I really looked up to him back then, but now that I think about it, it's possible that he was a sociopath—you know they're supposed to be able to live normal lives, and you never know they're rotten until they turn on you? I guess he might have been too good to be true."
--Taylor Gypsum

Danny arrived at the training base with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a dark green uniform that stuck to his chest in the summer heat. He had his letters of recommendation and the things he'd learned in school, how to command and how to lead and how to take orders from others who knew more and had seen more than himself. For experience, he had a year and a half of service in the reserves, learning there to put his education into practice. Arriving in a shuttle he'd taken from the airport, cramped in the sweating metal box with ten or twelve others, he came now as one of many whose dream it had been to fly. Most of the kids in the shuttle with him still carried that dream, though an outsider never would have guessed it to look at them. All wore the same dark green uniforms with button-closed pockets over their hearts, black boots that made their loose pant legs bunch at the calves. They had caps of the same color on their heads or in their hands, wagging it back and forth in their tired fingers. They slumped back in their seats or huddled forward, chins in their hands, staring out the wide fiberglass windows at the rolling desert beyond.

A cracked cement sidewalk ran alongside the road, and every once in a while they would pass somebody. Often the somebody wore shorts and a t-shirt, sandals over feet which were either bare or wrapped in sweat socks. Hearing the shuttle's diesel roar behind them, the traveler would turn his head just enough to recognize it, catching a glance of its plain black form. Then he'd ignore it, smiling to himself at how such a common thing could be such a mystery. Military shuttles passed through town regularly on their way to the base, but few recognized the emotions, aspirations, and rich lives of those inside. The noisy buses were a mystery. It passed the walker in a cloud of dust and diesel, and if he craned his neck, raising up on his toes or spending the effort to jump, he'd see a handful of uniformed young men, hot in spite of the shuttle's air conditioning, speaking little or not at all, looking for all the world like real-life models of children's toys.

Toys did not dream, but these kids did. Inside the shuttle the air crackled with tension. They all pretended to rest, but their heads buzzed with questions and apprehensions. The most relaxed of them, a man with his hands on his stomach and his feet stretched out—cap resting atop his face—couldn't help but consider the times to come. None of them had ever flown a jet before. All of them had seen diagrams and photographs, and most had gone through some kind of preliminary training, but none of them had actually been allowed to sit in the pilot's seat. Smaller craft, certainly. Commercial jets, naturally. But a real military jet—that was something new. Their fingers itched for the controls and the opportunity. Those who slouched repositioned themselves every twenty minutes or so, their butts having slid too far down the seats, and when they did move it was with quick, irritated gestures, shoving themselves back up and settling resolutely into their chosen postures. The driver watched the farce in his mirror, glancing up from the road from time to time. Sometimes the kids talked, sometimes they didn't, but whenever he made an airport run there was always this same air of forced, impatient, ambivalence among his passengers. He found it funny, in an innocent way.

Lately though, the kids had been even more uptight than usual. In the old days, the late nineties and early two thousands, there hadn't been much at all for them to worry their heads over. They'd fidgeted a lot more in his shuttle back then. It was all naïve anxiety, no significant worries at all. They wanted to know if they could cut the mustard. They wanted to know for sure that they could be the heroic girl-magnet flyboys they'd always wanted to be—not even their training could beat those dreams out of them, a fact which made the wrinkled, paunchy, wizened old driver proud. In those not-so-distant days, they had a good chance of keeping their hands clean. Not anymore, with this stuff over Taiwan. Everybody had their collars tight over this thing with Taiwan. The driver had tried to sort out what it meant exactly, why the Big Reds were trying for that industrial island now, but it was difficult. The talking heads said many things about world conquest and strength and armed force and greed, but the bus driver couldn't sort it out, and privately he didn't think anybody else could either. He suspected it was something with ideology. If China wanted Taiwan for itself, that was its business. If Uncle Sam wanted a free Taiwan, then that was his business. The talking heads could debate dollar signs all day, but in the driver's opinion, God only knew what made perfectly decent people try to kill each other. He sure couldn't understand it. Then again, that was probably why he was still a bus driver, or 'personnel transporter.'

XXX

Danny watched the base approach through the shuttle's windshield. They had gone through a small town half an hour ago, but between there and the base up ahead he hadn't seen anything but a few wooden structures scattered on the landscape. He guessed the problem was noise. He wouldn't buy a house next to an Air Force base either, considering the roars of the supersonics. Of course, he wouldn't buy a house in the desert, either. If he ever wanted a permanent place to live, he'd probably go for an apartment in the East, anyway.

His new home the base loomed up ahead, a sprawling complex of gray and white buildings, rounded hangars, and wide blacktopped spaces. Air shimmered in the distance over a black stripe of tar which must be a runway. He couldn't see any planes. They were still too far away to make out anything in detail, but it was obvious that the camp was alive. Cars and trucks rumbled between the buildings, filling wide parking lots and milling around the pavement. The base looked the size of a small city, and all of it had to be occupied if they were to provide housing for everybody. Danny worried about the number of planes and how often they would let him go up. Of course, before he could go up there would be a ton of prep work, exercises, and miscellaneous nonsense like that. That would be alright, he supposed. Danny was good at nonsense. He had gotten a minor award for his proficiency at nonsense back in the ROTC. Eventually he'd make it, but it was difficult for Danny to wait when he'd practically memorized every layout he'd managed to get his hands on.

Danny could draw and explain circuit diagrams. He knew enough to teach a class on flight theory and application, on the benefits of the various wing designs and how each plane's construction suited its chosen purpose be it a bomber, a fighter, a fueler, or a freighter. He knew about the cockpit and communications and the rudders and the engines, he knew nearly enough to build a small civilian plane from all the technical manuals he'd read through, but they were going to teach it to him all over again once he got to the base. No matter. He'd get there eventually.

When the shuttle stopped at last, Danny piled out with the others and listened to a brief sermon from an officer who ranked them. He told them about the duty, tradition, and bravery associated with those who passed through the aptly-named Rockfield AF training base and ordered them to live up to it. The heat made them all sweat, and the speech didn't last long. Following check-in at the office by a frowning man with prickly short-cut hair, Danny set out in search of his room. With the help of a map and several posted signs, he managed to find his way without too much trouble.

The complex was every bit the hive of activity it had appeared from the shuttle. People marched in lines or stood by with clipboards, scribbling mysteriously. Others stood less formally by the buildings, exchanging funny stories or describing something or other that might need fixing or replacement. Just about everybody was in uniform, although a few people dressed in shorts or casual shirts. Those looked like visitors, and like Danny, they kept their eyes open and wondering. Unlike him, they did not have a place here. Even though Danny was unfamiliar with the base, and although he watched the big trucks and vans rumble by with startled curiosity, just like the every other new arrival—he felt perfectly natural being there. Things fit into place. Some gave orders, and others followed them. Many of those in uniform walked quickly and without distraction, recognizing their friends with short calls before continuing with their jobs. Few lingered. People with a purpose don't need to linger.

Danny reached his building and used a key to unlock the door. He found his room and dumped his stuff inside, letting out a slow breath as he surveyed its bare white interior. A bed, a dresser, a trash can and some shelves. Perfect. The people looked perfect and his room was perfect. In a strange way, it was like he'd come home. He needn't have worried about his transfer here.

The voices of his peers drifted down the hallway. Danny left his things and followed the sounds to a door down the hall which gave in to a small break room. They welcomed him and accepted him with garrulous joviality, and Danny fit in without a hitch. They were like him in ways that others weren't. They had control and dedication and they took things seriously. Danny was not as loud or opinionated as the rest of them, but they were still clearly his people in spite of that. They were ready for action, no matter that they didn't know quite what that action was, exactly. Danny's unique experience told him that expectation and reality frequently had very little in common. It disappointed him that this outlook set him apart. He laughed quietly as he joked with them, but he kept his ideas and his suspicions to himself, remaining a passive sounding board to their voices, participating when necessary, remaining quiet when socially acceptable. They were amiable people, and they shared his work ethic and taste for flight. That was more than enough to have in common. Already this place seemed like a good dream.

XXX

The classes came and went, and Danny managed to learn much he hadn't known before. They did lots of outdoor exercises and in-class studying, and the on-site library was peerless in its resources. Danny spent much of his free time in his room, studying, but the guys would, as a team, drag him out and into town for some fun. Most of the time, 'fun' meant 'bar.' Nobody was an alcoholic, but the loud atmosphere and close, human feel of the bar leant itself to merry-making and jolly social congregations which Danny did manage to enjoy. He'd talk with the others about the planes or gossip about instructors as he sipped something non-alcoholic, and he made plenty of acquaintances, but no really close friends. He didn't have time for them, and even if he had, he didn't see a need for them.

XXX

"So why do you want to be a pilot, anyway?"

Danny looked up from his stack of papers. He had a folder full of copies of technical papers recommended to him by others, the whole stack topped off with a thin book on flight theory. The ambush took him by surprise. Walking beside him was Taylor, who slurped coffee from a styrofoam cup.

The sun still hung weakly in the evening sky, and the air had cooled enough for such odd conversations to seem almost normal. "What?"

"A pilot. Why did you want to be one?" Taylor was one of those people who probably wouldn't last longer than five years. He asked too many stupid questions and, while he obeyed, he wasn't the best at taking orders.

"What's your interest?"

Taylor kicked a pebble and glanced at Danny's books. "I don't know. You just strike me as kind of a weird guy. The rest of us, we're formal and rigid and all the rest of it, but you're the guy everybody wants to be."

Danny couldn't imagine why.

"You're like everybody's grandfather's best friend who was out there on the battlefield with them. You're focused and devoted, but you still know how to have a good time. You're cool and everybody likes you." Taylor paused, laughing a little. "I'm sorry. This isn't exactly a typical question. I was just wondering if you had a secret, some kind of super pill or something that the rest of us don't know about."

Danny couldn't come up with an answer to that one. He remembered being a little distracted early on in college. High school had been the beginning of his model building, but that hadn't contributed anything significant to his attitude. There was something else that had happened at the same time he'd started work on the planes, but when he tried to pin it down the memory flitted out of his reach. He let it go. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I guess I'm just a natural." Danny considered what Taylor had said, about the others looking up to him. In a weird way, it made sense, though Taylor was definitely exaggerating the effect. "I do my best. That's all."

He wasn't satisfied, but he let Danny alone. Danny continued on to his room, wondering about the forgotten memory. He knew it was there, but he couldn't get it down. It was the weirdest thing. In the back of his mind, something told him that it was better left forgotten, and the moment Danny opened his latest reading material, even the memory of the memory escaped his grasp, replaced with flux diagrams and the winding calculations of fluid dynamics.

XXX

"The Chinese are gearing for battle. Everybody knows it." Greg sat in the lounge, one arm thrown over the top of the couch cushions. His pointed nose stuck in the air as he leaned back. "Satellites don't lie."

"People have been saying that for years, and nothing's happened." Steven moved a rook on the chessboard. "Check." Across from him, Danny mourned the imminent loss of still more pieces.

"Yes, but that was before Taiwan sold us those amazing engines. You remember that? Those things are fast. And nobody saw that coming."

"I thought those engines were just a myth," Danny muttered. He had to watch his bishop. It was the only thing between Steve-O and his king.

Greg smiled at the plottings of the chessboard. "That's what everybody wanted everybody else to think. But those things are hot. There's this guy on the internet says they're nuke-powered."

Steven smirked. "That's just ridiculous. You can't shield the pilot from radiation well enough for nuke power to work."

"If they found a way to make a shield work, it could take us into space."

Steven looked up at his opponent. "What was that?"

Danny shook his head. "I don't know. Just an idea." He couldn't say where that particular remark had come from. He glanced at the sky from time to time, but not with any serious interest.

"Here's another thing everybody knows: NASA is on its last leg." Greg crossed his legs on the couch. "Space? I think not. It's the military applications that China's worried about."

"I miss NASA." Steven sighed. "That Mars probe was great. Do you guys remember that? It was late nineties, or somewhere around there." They remembered it, alright. Danny made a move, threatening a rook with his knight. Steven grimaced. "Rats."

XXX

The jets shone in slick, brilliant perfection on the airfield. The birds perched elegantly on the pavement, waiting for the platoon of trainees making their way towards them. Danny had seen the old jets in movies and had of course studied the more recent models in books and filmed documentaries, but these crafts were amazing. The transparent glass of the cockpit fit snuggly between two metal plates, like a skylight. The nostrum flowed into four wings alongside the body, two on top, two on bottom, each with smooth projections hanging beneath them, the vented engines. The metal shone a smooth blue-black.

"I'll take each of you up one at a time. As you were told back in the briefing room, you'll have an opportunity to practice several basic maneuvers before landing. Any questions?" There were none. The officer nodded. "Good. Gregory Spalding, you're first."

The rest of the class watched Greg and the trainer climb into the cockpit as another instructor stayed with the main group, reviewing flight maneuvers, proper communication protocols, and preflight checking. They'd had it all memorized for years, and none listened with more than half an ear. After a moment of watching the two heads bob in the cockpit, the jet rolled onto the runway. The engines glowed orange and heated white, the jet leaped forward and escaped the runway, having run along no more than twenty feet of pavement before taking off.

The class had learned enough and seen enough not to be surprised, but few among them were unimpressed.

The jet buzzed gloriously into the sky and made a simple turn, flew level, and remained in the air for a pitiful ten minutes before touching down. Greg jumped out of the cockpit looking like he'd won the lottery, but he didn't say anything. Not only would a comment have been unprofessional, but it was unnecessary besides.

Danny waited his turn as the others went up. He watched how their planes moved and guessed at the momentum and at the centrifugal force of the turns, trying to think how he should fly. It would be hard to tell until he actually got the controls in his hands, but Danny didn't think they would give him any trouble. The things could turn on a dime, and they were perfectly balanced besides. Technology had come a long, long way in ten years.

At last it was his turn. The instructor called his name and led him up to the jet, its engines still hot from the landing. Danny climbed into the cockpit with the instructor behind him, meeting a host of familiar and unfamiliar buttons, levers, and view screens. The instructor's voice crackled in Danny's ear through his helmet. "This is a special training plane. The buttons you know, work. The ones you don't know have been deactivated and are used for more advanced techniques."

"A dummy plane." He should have remembered that sooner. These machines had become so complex that you couldn't learn them all at once. You had to take them in parts.

"Correct." The instructor ordered him to proceed through the pre-flight checks, and Danny grasped the handles which controlled altitude, tilt, and speed. The slightest twitch to either of them sent electrical impulses shooting along the electrical wiring and into the complex ailerons at the wings and tail, and probably several other places as well. Danny hadn't had a chance to study this model. The material he would have needed to do so was all classified. Instead, Danny situated himself in the firm black fabric mesh of the pilot seat, adjusting to the feel of the it as the instructor crackled in his ear, monitoring Danny's pre-flight adjustments, making sure the student didn't accidentally blow something up. As destructive as they were the jets were delicate. In the hands of the wrong idiot, they could blow themselves up.

Danny completed the last of the checks and eased the big bird into gear, feeling the engine rumbling beneath him as it worked to turn the classic rubber wheels. A roar signaled the ignition of the bright wing engines, and the instructor gave him the okay for takeoff. His hands shaking almost imperceptibly, Danny punched the buttons that ordered the jet to fly.

The acceleration slammed Danny back in his seat and for a moment the asphalt beneath him raced away unbelievably, the whole craft vibrating, then he was in the air and flying faster than he'd ever flown before. The sparse desert clouds flew up in his face, and the jet handled like a dream—the controls were almost too delicate. The slick military jet split the air like a hot knife through butter. Danny had to restrain himself from trying anything fancy.

"You remember the basic turn."

"Yessir."

"Do it. Make a single pass directly over the base."

"Yessir."

'The craft', the instructor had called it. Dummy plane or not, that seemed like an unnecessarily vulgar name for this glorious modern miracle. Danny adjusted the controls, feeling the plane react as an extension of his own body, tilting it into a curve that put them at a near right-angle to the ground, pressing his butt and spine against the seat before continuing straight to make a single pass roughly a thousand feet over the top of the base's control tower.

"Nice work." The instructor made him do a couple more turns, some tighter, some looser, operating at different speeds, but Danny was ordered to land much too soon in his own opinion. Pouting silently, he brought the plane down toward the runway, angling the nose up, letting the two back wheels touch down before bringing the nose in line. The jet bounced once or twice, but they told him it was definitely one of the better landings performed that day.

XXX

"Did you learn this game from a pro or what?" Taylor shook his head as Steven snatched his queen off the board. "I'm starting to look like a noob, here."

"You strike me as the kind of guy who would be better at checkers." Steven smiled, clasping his hands behind his head and kicking his feet out under the chess board-bearing table. "Chess isn't for everybody."

"I didn't say I was a moron." Taylor contemplated his next move, but things didn't look good for him. He'd already lost a handful of pawns, a knight, and a rook, and now that his queen was gone it was only a matter of time before Steven mated him.

Greg watched the board through half-lidded eyes. "See, that's why I prefer the couch."

"Because you can't fail if you never try?" Steven guessed. A couple guys playing pool overheard the comment and chuckled.

"Noooo," Greg answered. "It's because I'm storing energy to spend later on things that matter."

"Hm." Taylor moved his pawn to back up his remaining rook. There was something to what Greg said. He may be a couch potato in the break room, but he was a terror in the sky. Next to Danny, Greg had distinguished himself as the best pilot in the group since they'd first begun to practice. "Hey, anybody know where Danny is? Is he busy with homework or sneaking back to the airfield."

"Neither. The man got himself busted yesterday." Steve killed Taylor's pawn with a knight. "Check."

"That so?" Taylor whistled, ignoring the game for the moment. "What'd he do?"

"They told him to do some fancy maneuver and he did it wrong," Greg explained.

"Really? Just that?"

Steven crossed his arms. "He did it wrong on purpose. He thought he knew a better way to do it better, but now he's got mess duty for three weeks."

Taylor winced. "Ouch."

"Well, that's what happens when you screw with the brass." Steven smiled. "And speaking of people being screwed…"

"I know, shut up." Taylor ran his hands through his hair and returned his attention to the chess board. "I'm thinking."

XXX

The food might taste alright, but the kitchen smelled like a biochemical weapons factory. Lumps of eggs in huge vats and the sticky frying of bread on the big stove's hotplates—it made Danny's face sweat and his eyes run. The gloves, far from being an aid, almost seemed to make things worse. It was better than leaving streaks of skin across the three-hundred-degree hotplates, but only just barely. He grabbed a tray of fries from a salter and dumped them in a service bucket.

The men in line looked up briefly as Danny emerged from the kitchen and deposited the fries, then grabbed the tongs and served themselves from the fresh batch. One of the looked a little longer at him, recognizing his face. Danny braced himself.

"How the mighty have fallen, eh Danny-boy?"

"Very original. That's the eighth time in two days, Desmond." Frank Desmond sneered at him and continued down the line, following the counter with its trays of French toast, waffles, sausage, eggs, and sour fruit. Danny went back to the kitchen for more of the foul-smelling stuff, checking the thermometer on some sausages. The grease crackled and bubbled. A drop of it leaped up and stung his chin. Danny caught his breath at the sharp sting and wiped it quickly with the back of his glove, smearing grease and burnt food remains across his face. As Danny simmered with frustration, one of the regular help chuckled.

"It takes a while to get used to it. Go ahead and wash up at the sink. I'll cover for you."

"Thanks." Danny went and did exactly that. He could hardly believe this. One stupid mistake and it was hell-on-hotplates for an entire three weeks. They wouldn't even tell him why what he'd done was wrong.

XXX

Jacob snatched a rag off the work bench and wiped his grease-blackened hands. He frowned at the air intake mechanism, tangled in a nebula of its own dissembled parts on the metal mechanic's table. There was a malfunction in the thing somewhere, he was certain. Where the malfunction was, now that another problem entirely. Jacob stalked back to the desktop computers and tapped a few keys, bringing up the jet's report of its own ailment. The computer said that the air intake had been palpitating like a human heart attack, but that was impossible because the intake elevator screws were adjusted properly and working perfectly. He'd just finished checking them. It was either the computer's problem or the computer sensor's problem, and it was Jacob Zeev's paid work and duty to determine which it was.

The malfunctioning jet in question squatted behind him, the whole lot enclosed under the protective aluminum dome of a hangar. He'd torn up a couple panels in removing the defective air intake, resting them on the tarp draped over its wings. Jacob climbed his ladder and ducked into the cockpit for another look at the jet's computer. The jets might look smooth and sophisticated sure enough, but in reality they were an even larger pain than the older models. The older models had big struts and moving parts that crapped out. With these, it was always their state-of-the-art computers that broke down, and when the computers broke down, the moving parts could break if the fail-safes managed to fail. He chewed the end of a screwdriver as he started work on the cockpit console. The hardest things to fix were those that were never supposed to break.

"Hello? Mr. Zeev?"

The sound bounced up to him, filled with anonymity. Jacob sighed; he didn't need this, but he had better see what the guy, a trainee from the sound of it, wanted. He lifted his head from the cockpit, peering down at the hangar's cement floor. "Yeah?" The kid didn't look like a trainee. His tangle of black hair fell just within the requirements for length, and he stood roughly six feet tall. Well built, just like all the pilots, with sharp blue eyes that could be seen even from this distance. "Something I can do for you?"

"I want to know why I'm not supposed to execute a half-open twist from over two thousand feet."

Jacob pushed up his goggles. "You want to know what?" The kid had a yellow stain on his shirt.

"They said you were the one who'd have an answer for me."

"I'm the senior mechanic for this outfit. Not a kindergarten teacher." Jacob stuck his head back in the cockpit. He had work to do. "You perform your maneuvers like your commanders tell you and you won't need to worry about any half-open twists from over two thousand feet."

"That's what everybody else has told me. They gave me three weeks' mess hall duty for doing that stupid maneuver at three thousand feet. Nobody can tell me why a lousy one thousand feet makes such a difference. They told me to dive, and the twist was the most efficient way to do that."

So that would explain the yellow stain. Mess duty. "It's important because you went against your training. If you'd listened to your betters and done it right, you wouldn't have to flip pancakes." These flyboys. They didn't have the brains for all the details, and if they couldn't listen to orders then they were going to get killed. "Get out of here. I've got work to do."

Jacob heard no more, and he assumed the kid had scrammed. He flipped down his goggles and began to adjust the computer. The air intake would have to go back in so he could get some more readings, but first he had to make sure the computer was calibrated properly. Unscrewing the main panel, Jacob popped open the jet's control console and glanced at the hideous tangle of wires beyond. At least the designers'd had the decency to make the CPU easily accessible in this model. He could feel in his gut that the digitals were off, but there was no sense in being quick with something this delicate. He had to know for sure.

"Is the computer giving you zeroes?"

"No." Finally. He'd requested an assistant five minutes ago. "The main computer's alright. It must be one of the sensors. I'm just getting ready to reinstall the alterior air intake. Go ahead put it back together for me."

Jacob plugged several testing devices into the cockpit's wiring and put the relevant circuits through their paces. One of the numbers came out slightly inaccurate, a result of normal wear on the computer. Jacob adjusted it with a gadget, setting it back within its proper operating range. The glitch wasn't enough to account for the whole malfunction, but it was a good start. No sense in keeping sloppy electronics. Jacob pulled himself out of the cockpit. "I've got the computers lined up. How're you coming on that—" Jacob stopped and swore. "Kid I told you to get out of here. You want another three weeks in mess hall?" The cheeky squirt grinned up at him. He'd been working away on the air intake, doing God only knew what damage to the machinery.

"You said I could take a look at it."

"I thought you were—" Jacob stopped and clenched his teeth. This kid would be lucky if he only got another three weeks. "You're in big trouble, pal."

"I've put it back together. Come down here and have the desktop computer check it out."

Jacob laughed. "Not a chance." He jumped down the ladder and brushed the kid out of the way. What he saw on the table stopped him dead. The device had been completely reassembled, freshly greased and adjusted besides. Jacob masked his astonishment. "It only looks pretty on the outside. I bet its guts are mangled like a meat-worker in a hamburger grinder."

The kid stepped back from the workbench, meeting Jacob's eyes. "Go ahead. Plug in the sensors and let the computers check it out."

Cheeky nail-biting troublemaker. "I will, and then you and me are going to talk to the commanders."

"Fair enough."

Jacob was almost impressed. He seemed pretty sure of himself for an insubordinate twerp. Jacob took the wires from the desktop computers and attached them to the connections on the air intake. Loading a test program, he gave the device the orders the jet would give it under typical flight conditions. The parts moved, the tiny vent flashed, and the thing worked perfectly. "I don't believe it." He licked his lips. "I don't believe a word of it."

"I didn't say anything."

"How did you know how to fix this? I know you guys can fly well enough, but how—"

"I used to build planes when I was a kid." The trainee brushed a spot from the shining metal of the device. "I studied blueprints in high school and kept working from there. This just happened to be one of the things I learned about."

"Just happened to be?" Jacob smiled and raised an eyebrow. "This is a pretty archaic little gadget. You must have an encyclopedia upstairs to have known how to repair it."

The kid was breathing easier, now. He leaned back against the workbench. "Most of these alterior air intakes operate on the same basic principles. It's not a complicated device."

"I guess it isn't." Jacob laughed to himself. Maybe he should have retired after all. He knew kids were good at computers and electronics, but this was ridiculous. "What did you say your name was?"

The kid smiled. "Danny Fenton."

"Call me Jacob. You can't execute a half-open twist from over two thousand feet because it tips the gears the wrong way. Those toys of yours are designed with different gears for different altitudes. The designers have it down so that the engine adjusts itself to operate at maximum efficiency for progressively higher altitudes, and a half-open twist makes it chafe. It's like grinding gears on a stick shift."

"Oh." Danny nodded. "Thanks."

Jacob took a last look at him. Danny Fenton stood up straight, with good posture, but then so did all the others. He had a hard look to his face, but there was intelligence in his flickering eyes. It might be nice to have him around. Jacob could appreciate a guy who was prone to questions. The only problem with them was that if you didn't answer their questions or give them reasons for the orders, they were liable to go screw something up. Just like this Fenton had done. Jacob would rather inform such people than fire them. "I suppose I have room for one more assistant in here, if you'd like to know the details of the matter."

Jacob got a kick out of watching Fenton's face change. He was trying to be professional, but the widening of his eyes gave away his cartwheel-flipping excitement. "I get off around five."

"The bulk of my work comes in around five. See you then, Mr. Fenton."

XXX

"Is that grease on your hands?" Greg sniffed as Danny collapsed on the couch beside him. "That is grease on your hands. And you smell like a machine shop. Is mess duty really that bad?"

Danny laughed. "Actually, no. I got a side job helping out old Zeev with mechanics."

"That's unusual." Greg frowned thoughtfully. "How is it? I think Steven said it best when he called that guy an old codger."

The chess board being abandoned, the fashionable thing to stare at was the lip-chewing players at the pool table. "I can see how he'd give that impression." An understatement, Greg thought. "He's a little rough, but he knows every bolt of those planes. A couple more weeks with him and I'll be able to build a jet myself."

They were both quiet for a moment, Greg meditating on the couch, Danny catching his breath and thanking whoever had decorated the place for such a soft couch, both of them listening to the plastic sound of colliding pool balls. Only six people were in the rec room today. There was Greg next to him and the two at the pool table, and behind them, a couple people were playing cards. Poker, from the sound of it.

Greg broke the peace with a casual comment that hit like a sledgehammer. "I hear we're being shipped out soon."

Danny almost jumped off the couch. "What!"

"Can it. I don't mean right now, soon. I mean a year or two, soon."

"Why? Wait, let me guess." Danny paused, leaning his knuckles against his forehead. "Taiwan."

"Bing-go," Greg intoned. The pool balls clacked on the pool table. "They're gearing for war with the Reds. What do you say to that?"

"Should be… interesting." Danny tried to imagine himself in the middle of a dogfight. In his mind's eye it looked clean, himself zipping around like the world's greatest hero, but the shadow of reality darkened the mood considerably. He knew the U.S. jets well enough to fear whatever anybody else had developed.

"Interesting." Greg bobbed his head. "That's a good word for it." He ran a hand over the soft, well-worn fabric of the cushions. "I'm sure going to miss this couch if we do get shipped out." They both knew that the couch was the least that would be missed, but neither pilot could help feeling a little excited—a small burst of fire that settled like a hot coal in the chest—at the prospect of testing himself in actual combat. "It's probably nothing." Greg leaned back with pretentious ambivalence. "You know how rumors fly."

"Like jets?"

Greg smiled. "You got it."


A/N: I think we all know what'll happen in the next chapter.