“Great speech, sir,” said Ax, elbowing Rubeo out of the way. “One of your best. Morale-boosting, us against the world, we’re all in it together. Nine on a ten scale.”
“Only nine?”
“You haven’t had supper, I’d bet.” Ax winked at him. “Sandwich waiting for you in your office.”
“You’re going to make somebody a fine wife someday, Ax.” Dog raised his eyes to scan the rest of the room. Smith and Rubeo had decided to retreat. There were only a few people left in the small auditorium. Two lieutenants and a captain, holdovers from the previous commander’s staff, were waiting respectfully a few feet away. Everyone else seemed to have someplace else to go.
Just as well.
“Every base need a good wife,” said Ax. “Of course, we may be put out of business any minute. And if we’re not, there are half a dozen people with shiny stars on their shoulders who want your job. I’ve had three offers already.”
“That’s all?” Dog took a step toward the waiting officers, but Ax stopped him with a subtle raise of his hand.
“She’s over there by the door,” said the sergeant, gesturing behind him.
Dog turned and saw her, sandy brown hair that managed to look alluringly feminine despite the military cut, sleeves rolled up to reveal well-sculpted forearms, hands on trim hips, fierce green eyes.
Her mother’s eyes.
The rest – such as the captain’s bars and the hard gaze of a pilot old before her time – might be traced to her father.
Him.
Dog took a deep breath, then began walking toward her. she took a breath as well, obviously tense.
“Breanna,” he said.
“Daddy.”
They winced simultaneously. Dog started to lean toward her, intending to give her a peck on the cheek. He stopped. She leaned up, then stopped. For a moment, neither one spoke. Then they both spoke together.
“I didn’t –”
“I wanted –”
“Tell you what, Captain,” said Dog, “let me go first.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Her eyes met his, and for a moment he almost asked how her mother was. But he’d already decided that was out of bounds.
“You’ll be treated like any other officer on the base,” he told her.
“I would expect nothing less, sir.”
Dog nodded.
“I was hoping to introduce you to Jeff,” she said. he noticed that she lowered her gaze as well as her voice.
Dog didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t approved of the marriage.
He hadn’t disapproved either. He simply hadn’t been consulted.
“But Jeff’s not here yet,” said Breanna. “He wasn’t due until next week. But he’s coming tomorrow.”
“I see.”
Dog frowned, wondering if he shouldn’t have his daughter removed from his command. But that would undoubtedly hurt her career – she was among the Air Force’s top-rated test pilots. And if Dog took pride in the fact that he had never done anything to help her career, he also was loath to hurt it.
Everyone knew she was here when they offered him assignment. Maybe they didn’t think it would be a problem.
More likely, they didn’t think Dreamland would last.
“Orientation flights first thing in the morning?” she said.
“I expect you to be among the first pilots off the tarmac,” he said.
“I intend on it. Wait until you see the Megafortress. Even you’ll be impressed.” Her frown turned into an impish grin, something the typical young flier might betray at the thought of a good joke. Then it morphed into something else, somebody barely familiar – the grin of a three-year-old playing hide-and-seek the day after her birthday. “At some point, I expect to have some personal face time,” she told him. “Have you found an apartment yet?”
“I’ll be on base,” he snapped.
Breanna’s face changed back to stone, eyes focused on a blank spot in the distance.
“I understand, Colonel,” she said. “No favors, please.”
He didn’t want to be mad at her – hell, if she were anyone else, he’d be joking, taking her under his wing. She was one of the future’s bright stars, the kind of officer he wanted working for him. “We’ll have dinner, okay?” he said softly. “Once I’m oriented.”
Either his words were too low or she simply ignored him.
“It was a hell of a speech. We’re pulling for you,” she said, turning away.
“And I’m pulling for you, Bree,” he said.
Dreamland
8 October, 0530
There was no prison like the human body. It clamped bars stronger than titanium steel around your chest, your legs, your head. it held you every waking moment; it mocked you when you slept. If infected time itself, poisoning both past and future.
There was no future for Captain Jeff ‘Zen’ Stockard; there was only now. He sat in his wheelchair, long fingers wrapped stiffly around the spokes of the wheels, hard rubber against his palms. He stared directly, eyes fixed on the closed door of the HH-53 as the big helicopter skirted the fringes of Nellis Air Force Base, rumbling toward Dreamland. The helo’s crew chief sat on a narrow bench seat a few feet away, having given up his attempts at starting a conversation.
Zen hated conversations, especially with strangers. There was always pity in their voices. The only thing worse was conversations with friends. He preferred not to talk at all. He preferred to be left to himself. He wanted …
What he wanted was to be able to walk again. He couldn’t have that, so he didn’t want anything else.
He’d worked tremendously hard the past eleven months – nine actually, since most of the first two were spent mostly under sedation, in and out of operations. He’d built up his arms and upper body. He’d been in reasonably good condition before the accident, but the workout routines were a revelation. Zen welcomed the pain; he drove himself into stinging bite of exhaustion, as if weariness were a physical place. He pushed weights around. He learned to swim with his arms and chest and head. He discovered the different balance of a body that couldn’t use its legs.
The humiliation was the hard part. Needing someone to open a door for him. Needing someone to lift him into the cramped backseat of a van. Needing someone to help him with a thousand things he used to take for granted in the course of a day.
Getting past the humiliation had been his first goal. He hadn’t totally accepted, but he had at least gotten used to it.
Getting back to Dreamland was his next goal. And here he was, seconds from touching down.
It hadn’t been easy. Zen had had to call in every favor, and lean heavily on his family connections besides. He’d had to find a service lawyer who knew the Disability Act and could wrangle and bluff its language into places were it didn’t belong.
Worse – much worse – he’d had to play the pity angle.
His lawyer, an Army captain wounded in Panama, was also in a wheelchair. Louis Whitson wasn’t so much an inspiration as a slap in the face. “The bottom line,” Whitson had said one morning when things looked particularly crappy, “is this: We use whatever we can use. Pity, fear, ignorance, stupidity. If it’s to our advantage, we use it. Bottom line.”
Like almost everything Whitson said, it was useful advice. They found a sympathetic Senator and an important Congressman. And an Air Force general whose brother had been confined to a wheelchair since he was
