'Javelins?' Honor's eyes lit with pure delight, and Tankersley grinned at her. The Javelin advanced trainer was a deliberate technical anachronism: an old-fashioned, variable geometry airfoil jet aircraft with no counter-grav but incredible power. It was small, sleek, and fast, and the Academy instructors had always insisted flying it was even better than sex. Honor couldn't quite agree with that now that she'd met Paul... but she was willing to admit it was the next best thing.
'Javelins,' Tankersley confirmed. 'And,' he added enticingly, 'they've agreed to midair refueling if we decide we want to stay up a while.'
'How in the world did you swing that much flight time? There's always a waiting line for the Javelins!'
'Ah, but I was able to conjure with the name of a famous naval officer. When I told Kreskin Flight Control who I'd be flying wing on—after, of course, swearing them to strictest secrecy—they could hardly wait to roll out the red carpet.' Honor blushed, and he flipped the tip of her nose with an affectionate finger. 'So how about it, Dame Honor? Game?'
'Bet your life I am!' She scooped Nimitz up with a laugh and set him on her shoulder. 'Come on, Stinker —we've got an appointment to pin back someone's ears!'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Honor slammed the throttles wide and rode the rudder pedals as she hauled the stick back into a near- vertical climbing turn. Twin, screaming turbines shook the air-frame, and the artificial nerves in her rebuilt left cheek shivered with electric fire as acceleration squeezed like a fist. The sensation was strange but not really painful, and she watched the icons of the Heads-Up-Display on her flight helmet's visor shift as her vision tunneled.
Paul was 'it' in their game of gun-camera tag at the moment, and her lips drew back in an acceleration- flattened smile as she shot away from his aircraft. She'd caught him napping this time, and she waited, watching the HUD and counting seconds. His nose flipped up and he committed to a pursuit curve... and she reversed her turn, slammed the stick forward, and pitched into an even steeper dive that had her floating against her harness straps as she howled down toward the distant sea.
No simulator, no small craft with its grav generators or pinnace with its inertial compensator and impeller drive, could match the sheer, wild delight of a moment like this. Honor's flight computers were simpleminded and minimal, for the Javelin had been designed to be one thing and one thing only: a pilot's aircraft—and her whoop of triumph was an eagle's shriek as she pulled out.
She roared into the north with wings swept for maximum speed and Paul in pursuit, and Saganami Island, site of the RMN's naval academy for over two and a half Manticoran centuries, grew below the aircraft's needle nose like a sunstruck emerald, rich with memories as she shot toward it at Mach six.
Honor was no stranger to salt water. She'd been born within sight and smell of Sphinx's Tannerman Ocean—in spite of which, Ms. Midshipman Harrington had found the Academy took some getting used to. The twenty-five percent lower gravity had made her feel wonderfully light on her feet, but Saganami Island lay at the mouth of Silver Gulf. The deep, glittering inlet which linked Jason Bay and the Southern Ocean was just twenty-six degrees below the capital planets equator, and Manticore was near the inner edge of its primary's liquid-water zone while Sphinx lay barely inside its outermost limit. The fact that the Academy was on an island had helped, yet she'd taken weeks to adjust to the unending, enervating warmth.
Once she had, of course, she'd gone overboard in enjoying it. She could still remember the hideous sunburn she'd managed to inflict upon herself despite all warnings. Once had been enough, especially when poor Nimitz— still grappling with his own adaptation to the change in climate—had been forced to endure it with her via their link. Chastened but wiser for the experience, she'd explored her new environment with more caution and soon found that sailing tropical waters was just as much fun as roaming the colder, rougher seas of home. And the updrafts had made hang gliding almost as glorious as, if less excitingly treacherous than, those of Sphinx's Copper Wall Mountains. She and Nimitz had spent endless hours of precious free time soaring above the gulfs magnificent blue waters with a fine disdain for the emergency counter-grav units native Manticorans insisted on hauling along just in case.
Her disdain for counter-grav had worried some of the instructors, but hang gliding was a planetary passion on her homeworld. Most Sphinxians made it a point of honor (as silly, she admitted, as most points of honor) to eschew artificial assists, and Honor had been a qualified glider since age twelve—which might have helped explain her finely developed kinesthetic sense. Honor always knew where she was in the air, with an unerring instinct a Sphinx albatross might have envied... and one that had baffled the Saganami instructors.
The RMN maintained a vast marina of small sailing craft, and every midshipman, regardless of eventual specialization track, was required to qualify not only in sailplanes and old-fashioned airfoil aircraft but in even more old-fashioned seamanship as well as counter-grav. Critics might sniff at the requirement as a throwback to the bad old days when starship captains navigated the grav waves of hyper space as much by instinct as instruments, but the Academy clung to the tradition, and Honor, like most of the Navy's better shiphandlers, firmly believed it had taught her things and given her a confidence no simulator could—which didn't even consider how much fun it was!
At the same time, she had to admit that her own natural ability in the air, and her confidence and delight in proving it, had landed her in trouble more than once.
She hadn't meant to be wicked, but Ms. Midshipman Harrington's tendency to ignore her instruments and rely on her instincts had reduced certain instructors to frothing incoherence. Senior Master Chief Youngman, who ruled the marina with an iron hand, hadn't given her much trouble once they got to know one another. Youngman was from Gryphon, but she'd often vacationed on Sphinx to enjoy what she called real blue-water sailing. Once she'd checked Honors abilities in person, she'd made her an assistant instructor.
Flight school had been another matter. With the benefit of hindsight, Honor shared Lieutenant Desjardin's appalled reaction to her blithe assertion that she didn't need instruments, but a much younger and brasher Honor had been furious when he grounded her for a full month for ignoring weather warnings and instruments alike on a night sailplane flight in her first term. Then there'd been her mock dogfight with Mike in their second form that, she admitted, really had gotten just a bit out of hand. And, of course, there'd been that unscheduled aerobatics display above the regatta. She hadn't known Commandant Hartley was winning at the moment she crossed his sloop in the run up to the ancient 'Cuban Eight,' but she still thought he'd been more miffed than the offense had required. It hadn't been her fault Kreskin Control had failed to designate the regatta's course restricted airspace. And it wasn't as if she'd inflicted any actual damage, after all; she'd cleared his masthead by a good forty meters, and he was the one who'd decided to go over the side.
She giggled as she remembered Hartley's thunderous rake-down, though neither it nor the legend-inspiring heap of black spots that went with it had seemed humorous at the time, then checked her HUD again as a threat warning pinged. Paul was still much too far away to tag her with a camera lock, but he was closing the range. She watched his icon trade altitude for still more speed, arrowing down to intercept her flight path, and smiled as she adjusted her fingers on the stick and reached for the air brakes. He was good, all right, but she'd been airborne long enough to get the touch back, and she doubted he was expecting... this!
She chopped the throttles, popped the brakes, and slammed forward against her harness. The suddenly extended spoilers slowed her as if she'd just dropped anchor, the wings automatically configured forward as her velocity fell toward a stall, and then she made it still worse by yanking up into a climbing loop. The Javelin hung on the brink of a spin, warning hooters bellowing... until she snapped the brakes closed and went back to full burner on her screaming turbines. Sheer, incredible power pulled the Javelin through, and Paul's plane was suddenly in front of her as she half-rolled to complete the Immelmann. She'd had to bleed too much speed to get behind him, though, and he almost outran her... until he pitched up in a sudden climb of his own.
Honor grinned wolfishly and followed him into a climbing scissors with the throttles wide open. She felt herself graying out and bared her teeth as she hung on to him.
Their aircraft were identical, but a Javelin could exceed any pilot's physical limits, and her gee tolerance was higher than his. She used it ruthlessly, clinging to his tail, wracking in tighter than he could manage, and then her own camera pipper suddenly ringed his icon on the HUD.
She squeezed the trigger, pinging him with a radar 'tag' and capturing him on the scoring chip, then broke
