“There ain’t many pilots who wouldn't cry for momma while making a landing in high orbit.”
Noodle and Squawks looked at the newcomer and exchanged a look that said, “Who the hell is this guy?” But between the newcomer coming to Coda’s defense and his thick southern drawl, Coda immediately liked him.
“It's Tex, right?” Coda asked.
“Yeah.”
“I take it you had your first flight?”
“Naw, not yet,” Tex said. “Not in the Nighthawk, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I've flown other ships. Made some hands-on landings. They ain't fun.”
“No, they’re not,” Coda agreed.
“You mind if I sit?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” Tex slid into the seat Uno normally occupied, a detail that didn’t go unnoticed by Noodle and Squawks. Tex must have felt their uneasiness, because he offered them a kind nod.
“So,” Coda said, interrupting the growing silence, “you've flown spacecraft before?”
Tex stabbed his food paste and shoveled in a bite. “I'm a puddle jumper,” he said, talking around the mouthful.
“A what?” Squawks asked.
Tex swallowed. “A puddle jumper. A bus driver.”
Squawks’s confused face made it clear he had no idea what the man was talking about, but he shrugged, apparently not interested enough to figure it out.
“You flew transports?” Noodle asked.
Tex pointed at him with his fork, nodding. “Marines, mostly.”
“On the front?”
“Where else?”
A quiet appreciation filled the table.
“Then why'd you leave?” Suddenly interested again, Squawks asked the question that was on all of their minds. They all dreamed of getting to the front and making their mark on the war, even if each had his own reason. To leave that behind was like walking away from a winning lottery ticket.
“Same reason I joined the fleet the first time,” Tex said. “Wanted to fly a Nighthawk. My folks thought I was crazy. Told ’em I didn't want to wake up at sixty-three and regret not following my dream. ‘You won't have to worry about waking up at sixty-three,’ they told me. ‘You won't make it to thirty-six flying one of them things.’ Well, the way I see it, I've already made it to thirty-six, so I don't have to worry about that no more.”
Coda grinned. “My mom said something similar when I joined up.”
“Mine too,” Noodle said. “They wanted me to go to school. Get one of those advanced robotic manufacturing jobs Captain Hughes was always talking about. I couldn't do it, though. The drones were just too damn cool.”
“They never did it for me,” Tex said. “I was actually in the strike fighter program before they shut it down. Had a chance to be one of the first drone pilots. But like you said, I just couldn't do it. I wanted to fly. So when the opportunity came again, I couldn't pass it up.”
“But the front…” Squawks said.
“Ain’t as glorious as they make it out to be,” Tex said. “’Specially for a marine transport pilot. I'd be on the same shit planet, eating the same shit food, sleeping in the same shit housing, staring at the stars, wondering where my life had gone wrong. You don't know how good you got it here.”
“I think you’ve been roughing it for too long,” Squawks said, stirring his meat paste with a disgusted look.
Coda laughed with the rest of them. Still, he couldn't help but feel that Tex was right. The food wasn’t that bad—and whatever Commander Coleman was packing into it was working. They were only about halfway through their training, and he was already working out with twice as much weight and had more than tripled the distance he ran on the treadmill while dropping his per-kilometer time by a third. He'd thought he was in great shape before, but any remaining baby fat had disappeared. Even Noodle, the skinniest person in their squadron, had noticeably filled out.
But it was more than that. Coda had no way to confirm it, but he felt as though his reaction and processing times had improved too. Not to mention his recovery periods. Every day, he was growing faster, stronger, and smarter. To top it all off, they were being trained by the great Commander Coleman himself.
Yeah, Tex is definitely right. The members of the Forgotten don’t have it bad at all.
That night after their evening debriefing, Commander Coleman told them that because the squadron had shrunk by half, they no longer needed four barracks, and ordered them to reassemble in Barracks One and Two.
Coda groaned. Even though it had only been a day and a half since the other pilots had left, he'd started growing accustomed to the extra space and relative privacy.
At least I'm in Barracks Two and don't have to move.
Tex was one of the first pilots to make his way into their barracks. He pointed to the open bunk once occupied by Uno. “You mind?”
Something told Coda that the older man hadn't connected with any of the other pilots in the squadron, likely because of his age and unique background, but he was still reluctant to give up Uno’s place in their quartet so easily. To Coda’s surprise, though, Squawks answered first.
“It’s all yours,” he said. “But only if you promise to tell us some stories from the front.”
Tex gave him a small laugh and nodded. “Deal. But I ain’t gonna promise they'll be interesting.”
25
Ready Room, SAS Jamestown
Alpha Centauri System, Proxima B, High Orbit
Tex was the first of their newly formed quartet to fly after Coda, and the older pilot was what Squawks called “a real hoot to listen to.” Every increase in speed and high-g maneuver was accompanied by a hoot, yee-haw, or woo-hoo, and it got so bad that the commander had to tell him to cut the chatter. But that night during their group evaluation, Commander Coleman hadn’t been able to keep from smiling with the rest of them.
“Tex was obviously meant to be in the cockpit,” Commander Coleman said. “And his excitement is infectious. But if you’re going to hoot and holler, Tex, do so off the radio, and make sure you don’t miss a critical order.”
“Yes, sir,” Tex said.
“But I’m glad you’re having fun.”
Noodle went up after him, and the slender pilot earned high praise from the commander, even if Noodle secretly believed he didn’t deserve it.
“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to throw up or wet myself,” he had said after the flight.
“When?” Squawks asked.
“During
