First Strike

to produce the best possible on-board popcorn was a continual source of contention among the squadrons.

She stared at the door for moment, almost overwhelmed by her emotions. VF-95—her squadron. And now she was back. For a moment, it felt entirely too audacious to be entering here with her duffel bag, as though she were pretending to be something she was not. In one part of her mind, she was still the young, scared plane captain who worked on the flight deck.

Nonsense. You’re a pilot. And, by God, you’re just as good as any of them. She shoved the door open and stepped in.

She stood at the back of a large room filled with comfortable high-back chairs. They were covered in brown leatherette and numbered about forty. Forward, to the left, there was a small desk with a telephone where the squadron duty officer stood his watch.

The compartment was about a third filled, the scent of the popcorn almost overwhelming. Aviators, most clad in flight suits, were engaging in horseplay and ragging on each other. A junior officer at the back of the compartment was fiddling with a VCR. He looked up as the door opened and was the first to spot her. A broad smile spread across his face.

“All right!” He stood and made a beeline for her. “Ensign Shaughnessy — sorry, it’s j.g. now I see — not that that makes any difference — you’re just in time.”

“For what? To see the movie?”

He shook his head, his pleasure unmistakable. “Junior officer in the squadron is responsible for the movies. Until now, that was me.” He handed her a VCR tape. “And now it’s you. Any questions, call me. I’ll be in my stateroom.” Shaughnessy stared down, bewildered, at the tape in her hand. What, was she supposed to run the movie now? Before she’d even checked in?

“By God, it is you!” a voice from the front of the room said cheerfully. “I saw the name on the orders and damned near wet my pants.” The owner of the voice, a tall man with a powerful build and a huge grin on his face strode toward her. “Airman Shaughnessy — welcome back.” She stared at his hands that clasped hers and pumped repeatedly. “Hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? Save any more pilots recently?”

“Not — not recently, sir,” she stammered, suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer force of his presence. She didn’t remember Bird Dog Robinson as being quite so tall, and quite so… well… such a hunk. Maybe it was because, as an enlisted technician, she had known that the rules against fraternization prevented him from ever being a possibility. But, now, now that she was an officer… well, she shoved that thought out of her mind, and looked up into his broad, smiling face. “It’s nice to be back, sir.”

Bird Dog dropped her hand, and threw one arm casually around her shoulder. “Oh, hell — don’t start on the sir shit. You damn near kicked my ass when I was a lieutenant and you were an airman — and rightfully so. It’s Bird Dog now. So, how does it feel to be a pilot?” he asked, leading her toward the front of the room. Before she could answer, he turned her around to face the rest of the ready room. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is my good friend Lieutenant j.g. Clarissa Shaughnessy. Back when she had a real job as a plane captain, she saved my ass. Help her get settled in, folks. This one’s a keeper.” He turned back to Shaughnessy, and asked, “They tag you with a call sign in the pipeline?”

“Sort of,” she admitted with a sinking feeling.

“Sure did,” the officer she’d first run in to said immediately. “She’s ‘Elf’—we all know about Elf.” He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the ceiling. “And the word was, the Elf is nobody to fuck with. Don’t take your eyes off her for a second, folks — she nailed more of us in Flight Basic than anyone else in the pipeline. Yours truly included.”

“Then, Elf it is,” Bird Dog said grandly. “Welcome to VF- 95, Elf.”

“Thank you, sir — I mean, Bird Dog.” She glanced at his leather name tag on his flight suit, and her eyes widened. She looked back up into his face, awe in her eyes. “You’re the XO!”

“Yep. Just goes to show you, even the Navy makes mistakes sometimes.”

“And who’s the captain?” she asked.

“Well, you just won’t believe this shit,” he said, grinning again. “I never thought I’d see the day, and you can believe he rubs it in every chance he gets. You remember Gator, right?”

She nodded. “Of course. He was your RIO. So, he’s the skipper?”

“Never lets me forget it. He’s been pushing me around since he was just a lieutenant commander, and I listen to him now just a little bit more than I did back then.”

“But he was XO before, so it must have been—” She broke off as a sudden silence filled the room.

The normal pipeline for aviators was to serve one tour in a squadron as XO, and then fleet up, as it was called, to command of the same squadron. This resulted in a continuity of command that helped mold the squadron into a tight fighting force. There was far less disruption at change of command in an aviation squadron than there was in a surface command.

But that wasn’t the way it had worked out in VF-95. Gator had fleeted up — but a year earlier than he should have, and Bird Dog had unexpectedly been detailed as the XO. The reason was that Commander Joyce “Tomboy” Magruder had been killed in action.

“We don’t talk about that much,” Bird Dog said finally.

Elf could have kicked herself. Of course it would be considered bad luck to talk about the loss of a commanding officer — she should have known that. And if she’d been paying attention to what was going on in her own prospective squadron, she would have known that Gator was the skipper. But somehow, in a rush to finish the pipeline and the sudden change of orders to report to VF-95, she missed that one little bit of information. She had been in transit when Tomboy was killed.

Not killed. Missing in action. There’s a big difference.

“You find your stateroom yet?” Bird Dog asked, breaking the silence.

“No, I just came in on the last flight.”

“I’ll show you where it is.” A woman in a flight suit stepped forward, and held out her hand. She was blonde, but that’s where her resemblance to Elf stopped. Her face was hard, her hair slicked back and disciplined. Elf saw shadows in her eyes, a ghost of — of what?

“Hi. I’m Lobo, your sponsor.”

Another legend come to life. Shaughnessy had read everything she could find about the only female pilot to have been taken prisoner of war and successfully rescued then returned to flight status. And now, to meet her in person, well…

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Lobo said wryly. She stepped back, and surveyed Elf’s figure and extra small flight suit, noting the twist of muscles in her legs and the hard slope of her shoulder muscles that bulked up the flight suit. Elf saw a flash of recognition and approval in Lobo’s dark eyes. Lobo nodded. “You’ll do.”

Bird Dog laughed. “If I looked you over like that, I’d be facing a court-martial for sexual harassment.”

Lobo shot him a dirty look. “With all due respect, XO, you’re a poster boy for sexual harassment. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get Shaughnessy settled. Come on, Elf — let’s find your stateroom.” Lobo turned on her heels and left without glancing back.

“Go on, Elf,” Bird Dog said, his voice amused. “We’ll catch up later.”

Elf followed Lobo down the passageway and to the berthing office. She signed for her key while Lobo waited, and then they went down three ladders to the deck her stateroom was on.

“The first thing you do,” Lobo said, “is learn your way around the ship. You need to be able to get out of this compartment and to the flight deck with a blindfold on. And you need more than one route in case the first one is closed down.” She waited, expecting a surprised remark. When none came, her brow furrowed briefly, then her face cleared. “That’s right — sorry, you do know the drill, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lobo. Just call me Lobo.”

“Lobo, then.”

Lobo turned to leave. “I’ll let you get settled in, then. I’ll be back in twenty minutes and we’ll go grab some late chow. Then we’ll catch up with the skipper and the rest of the people you have to meet, as well as the CAG. Plan on being spiffy for the next two days. After you’ve met everyone, you can grunge around in flight suits all the time like the rest of us. Until then — first impressions, you know. See you in twenty minutes.”

Elf surveyed the compartment, astounded by both the size and the disorder. Officer berthing wasn’t anything like what she’d experienced as an enlisted sailor. Then, eighty women of all ranks below chief petty officer were