Scavenger's Mission (The SkyRyders Book 1)

by Liza O'Connor

  “I’d like to believe it’s that simple. However, I’m afraid if I sent my cadets out and said, ‘Look, this little girl can do it, so can you,’ all I’d have at the end of the day would be a bunch of dead and crippled cadets.”

  Logan wasn’t listening anymore. MAC had just sent him notice of his new captain. He smiled as he read Alisha Kane’s name in dark caps.

  Chapter 25

  Alisha awoke to a loud voice. She stared in confusion at her surroundings for a moment before she remembered where she was. Noticing the time, she pushed herself up from the bed, hoping she hadn’t missed dinner.

  As she entered the living room, she discovered the source of the yelling. Riley was pacing back and forth, talking on the phone with great excitement.

  He stopped when he noticed her standing in the doorframe. “Hey, your Sleeping Beauty is up. Want to tell her the good news yourself?” Riley carried the phone over to her. “It’s Logan.”

  “Hey,” Alisha said into the phone, wishing he could be here with her.

  “You kept your word. You did me very proud.”

  “I passed, then?”

  “You more than passed. You set a new standard with your flying today. I can’t wait to see the video.”

  “It was harder than I thought it would be.”

  “That’s because you didn’t take the general test. You took the captain’s test.”

  “Why? You only asked for an exemption to take the general test.”

  “After seeing your arrival landing, MAC decided to upgrade your test. According to Riley, it’s never done that before. But then no one has ever eased across the tarmac a foot off the ground. Evidently MAC thought the general test would be a waste of its time.”

  “And I passed the rest okay? I realized that I made a terrible error on the regulations. My book is four years old, so I hadn’t studied the new regs at all.”

  She could hear the colonel chuckling. “Your reg scores are very acceptable, Alisha, and when you reassess next year, it’ll give you something to improve.”

  Alisha’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish you were here to celebrate with me,” she whispered.

  “So do I, but I can’t leave the squad with DC untethered. You understand that, right?”

  “Of course I do,” she assured him, trying to wipe the tears away before Riley or Anna noticed.

  “Hey! Ryders don’t cry!” Riley bellowed, and took the phone away from her. “Damn it, Logan, didn’t you teach her that Ryders don’t cry?”

  Don’t tell him that! Alisha screamed inside, but there was no saving herself now. He had told, and was going on about it as if her weakness was the colonel’s fault. Her stupid crying had ruined everything! The colonel had been proud of her, but no more.

  Her new misery guaranteed more tears. Her only hope was to cry in solitude. She retreated to the bedroom and buried her face in a pillow.

  ***

  Logan tried to shut Riley up, but over the phone, he had little control over his belligerent friend. “Leave her alone, Riley. She’s had a rough two days.”

  “Ow!” Riley complained. “My wife just struck me.”

  “Good, now put Alisha back on the phone.”

  “Can’t. She ran to the bedroom. Don’t worry, Anna’s gone in after her. She’ll make it all better.”

  “Damn it, Riley!”

  “She’s fine! I don’t know why she burst into tears. She held up like a seasoned soldier during the tests, cool as a cucumber. Do you know she went to sleep during the ramp-down of the psych test? The purpose of the ramp-down is to reduce the stress the test causes, and it helps—I can tell you from personal experience—but we’ve run over a hundred Ryders through this new program, and no one has ever felt relaxed enough to fall asleep. Maybe it was you. Did you say something to make her cry?”

  “No, all I said was that I wished I could have given her the good news in person.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Don’t act like you know what goes on in the female mind now. You were clueless before your marriage, and you’re clueless now.”

  “But you’ve got it all figured out?”

  “No. I just don’t go around saying ‘ah’ like I’ve got some insight into the area.”

  “Well, Anna tells me women cry a lot when they believe they’re suffering from unrequited love, while men just get belligerent and angry.”

  The comment pissed Logan off sufficiently to make him hang up the phone.

  ***

  When Alisha heard the door open and close, she begged the intruder to go away. Instead she heard footsteps heading to the bathroom, then water running. A moment later, Anna sat down beside her on the bed.

  “Sit up and put this on your face.”

  Even though she said it nicely, Anna’s voice held firm authority, indicating she expected to have her words obeyed. Slowly, Alisha sat up, took the cold, wet washcloth, and placed it over her eyes. To her surprise, it did help. The heaving sobs stopped almost instantly.

  “I didn’t plan to cry,” she muttered.

  “That’s something women do. And Ryders or not, we’re still women.”

  Alisha sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s true.”

  Anna laughed. “I didn’t mean that as a bad thing. I think it makes us better than our male counterparts. And if the price I have to pay for being better is that once in a while I leak a little water from my eyes, then so be it. At least we aren’t bottling up our stress like the men do.”

  Alisha looked up in surprise. “I wasn’t crying because the colonel couldn’t come to celebrate.”

  Anna stroked her hair. “Never thought that was the reason, although it would be disappointing enough to trigger the release. You’ve had two class-five stressful days back to back.”

  “What does class-five mean?”

  “Like in hurricanes and tornadoes. Class-five is the worst.”

  “Yesterday was awful,” Alisha admitted. “But today was kind of fun…”

  Anna laughed and hugged her. “Don’t ever tell anyone that you thought the captain’s exam was kind of fun. They’ll think you’re a total liar.”

  Did Anna think she was lying? “I don’t mean it was all fun. My knee hurt at times, and I hated the first catcher, and then there was a whole batch of regs I knew nothing about…”

  “It’s all right, Alisha. I know you had fun. I watched you fly. Your double somersault was an expression of absolute joy.”

  Alisha smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, that was the first time I’ve ever done a forward vertical climb.”

  Anna shook her head. “Well, you just surprised me again. I was blown away when you did it because I had thought it was impossible. Now I discover you made your first attempt during the captain’s exam.”

  “I didn’t know it was the captain’s exam, and I wasn’t actually trying to do a forward. I was only going for a vertical lift. However, the modifications I made in my catcher last night enabled me to push it forward, and then with the added effect of the slats…well, I was as surprised as you were with the results.”

  “Your descent on that little surfboard thing—”

  “I just call them slats. Normally I wear two, but with my knee hurt, I only put on one. Wearing one was a little awkward at first, but I adapted well enough. With two the descent is more controlled. In a strong headwind on a sandy field, I don’t think I’d actually have to reopen my catcher. I expect I could release my harness at ground contact and just keep skiing forward.”

  Anna seemed intrigued. “From the ground point of your descent, how much forward gain can you make?”

  Alisha shrugged. “Depends on my altitude when starting the run. At two thousand feet with a hundred-mile-an-hour wind, I should be able to go about two hundred yards. Three thousand should get me another fifty yards…”

  “That’s all?”

  “Air’s thinner up top. You do more falling and less riding forward. Your biggest gains are in the last few hundred feet.” Alisha gave her a sm
ile. “That’s where your nerves get tested.”

  “I didn’t see any problems with your nerves today.”

  “Well, I’ve got it down now…mostly. When I first tried it, even though aerodynamically it made sense, it was really hard to let the catcher go and just ride in on the slats.”

  “It reminds me of skiing.”

  Alisha nodded excitedly. “That’s what made me think of it. I saw this documentary about the old winter Olympics, and they showed these skiers who would hurtle themselves off a ramp and then just hang in the air, except they actually weren’t hanging. They were moving fast and down but in a controlled fashion. What really caught my attention was at the end they didn’t take a dunk. Rather they converted all that downward momentum into forward speed.”

  “Didn’t they have a downward slope to help that conversion?”

  “They did, but some would soar so long that they were past the slope, yet they still managed to set down, because their speed was slower by that point. The trick to doing it while skyryding is that you have to have a hard, fast headwind.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Then you engage your catcher at the last moment as a break.”

  “Like you did on the Cully?”

  Alisha looked up in surprise. How did Anna know about her crash in the Cully?

  As if reading her unspoken question, Anna laid her hand on Alisha’s arm. “The film was submitted in defense of DC’s charges that Logan brought an untrained, unfit candidate into the Corps, which resulted in her injury.”

  Alisha huffed with anger. “If it will protect the colonel and help get that bastard out, then show it to ever needs to see it.”

  After several moments of silence, Anna replied, “When I joined the Ryders, my first two years was at Fort Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. I was doing well, ranked second in my class. Then my captain got promoted, and this real bastard came in to replace him. Day one he tells me MAC got it wrong and my flying skills justify no more than a private first-year position. From that day forward, I was a private. The next year, when I was slotted for MAC reassessment, the captain took me aside and told me I had better make sure MAC gets it right this time.”

  Alisha sighed. The same thing had happened to Ginnie.

  “So I made sure MAC got my assessment right.”

  “You dunked it?”

  Anna smiled. “Hell no! I flew the bejesus out of it. MAC made me a captain, and I was out from under the bastard’s thumb just like that.”

  “I would’ve loved to have seen his face.”

  Anna laughed. “It was priceless. He was utterly stunned. You know, he’d been calling me private for so long he had actually forgotten I held the rank of sergeant.”

  Alisha laughed, then sobered. “He’s doing the same thing to a girl in my squad, except she dunks her tests.” Alisha paused. “We are talking about the same bastard, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, we are,” Anna assured her. “Unfortunately, there are a few more of them around. With my looks, I seem to bring out the worst in men.”

  “Except for Riley?” Alisha definitely wanted Anna happily married.

  “There’s no bad in Riley to bring out. The man’s like Logan. Good to the core.”

  Alisha appreciated the compliment of her colonel, but still, it made her nervous. What if Anna tired of Riley? Would she set her sights on the other good man?

  “Alisha, I don’t know how to say this, but I know from personal experience that terrible things happen to women under DC’s command. If anything has happened, if you need someone to talk to, a shoulder to cry on… I’m here for you.”

  Alisha felt like shit. Here she was thinking about how to keep Anna away from her colonel, and Anna was reaching out to help her recover from an event that, had it occurred, would no doubt have been a life altering trauma.

  Alisha took her hand. “He did tell me what was going to happen, but he never got the chance. The colonel allowed me to stay in his room.” Alisha stopped when she saw Anna’s expression alter slightly. “It’s not like that. The colonel and I didn’t do anything. He just let me sleep there.” By the furrows in Anna’s brow, she knew her new friend didn’t believe a word of it. “It’s the truth!”

  Anna sighed. “Unfortunately, it’s not a believable truth. When it comes out that you were sleeping in Logan’s bed, it will support DC’s claims of sexual favoritism.”

  “That’s so wrong. Especially when DC is the one who turns the female squad members into his personal concubines.” Alisha stopped and looked up. “Wait…I can prove that the colonel and I haven’t had sex.”

  “How?”

  “I’m still a virgin. They can tell that medically, can’t they?”

  Anna’s eyes rounded in shock. “Yeah…they can.” She picked up her tablet and her fingers tapped rapidly for a short while. “And there you are—a virgin. No one would ever expect a twenty-one-year-old Ryder to be untouched.”

  “Well, until a month ago, I was an overprotected debutante, so it wasn’t unnatural.”

  Anna choked. “A debutante?”

  “I know—it’s hard to believe a debutante could do anything beyond arrange a dinner party. They’ve got to be the most worthless, helpless, whiny group of females on the planet.”

  “I suspect you weren’t a very good one,” Anna teased.

  Alisha laughed and collapsed back on the bed. “I was the worst debutante since the beginning of debutantes. No one could have been more ill-suited for the role.”

  “How did that happen? I mean with your grandfather being a Ryder and all?”

  Alisha rolled to her side and propped her head up. “My Grams came from high society, and then my mother married back into it. She managed to cover the tainted generation of blood pretty well—except for one painful reminder.”

  “You.”

  “Yeah, I clearly have my grandfather’s genes. There wasn’t an ounce of Anderson or Whitman inside me. Mother used to jokingly tell people I must have been switched as a baby by fairies.”

  “Had to be pretty rough growing up in that environment.”

  “When we lived in Capital, I’d skip dance lessons and sneak over to visit Gramps every day. When we moved to Flatland, my only consolation was the time I spent in the wind tunnel.”

  “The wind tunnel?”

  “Yeah. Since Flatland is completely and utterly devoid of even the tiniest breeze, they have wind tunnels where, for a hundred dollars, you can don an extra-large flight suit and float about on an artificially created vertical updraft.” Alisha shrugged. “Sounds lame, I know, but when you live in Flatland, it’s the closest thing to flying you’ll ever experience.”

  “I wasn’t thinking it was lame at all,” Anna replied. “In fact, I was thinking it might be something to investigate installing here. One of the many things that impressed me today when watching you fly was the control of your own body under high-wind situations. A high-wind descent on those slats would terrify any other flyer.”

  Alisha considered this. “I think the wind tunnel helped me in several of my maneuvers. I’ve never really thought about why I can do stuff, but the techniques I use in the descent maneuvers are clearly from the wind tunnel.”

  After a knock on the door, Riley stuck his head in. “I hate to disturb you ladies, but I’ve done all the watching I can with dinner. If we want something edible tonight, then I need my cook back.”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “Never learned to cook.”

  “The colonel can’t even turn on a stove,” Alisha confessed in return.

  “There, you see,” Riley said. “I can at least turn on a stove.”

  Alisha watched as the two playfully sparred. Their words weren’t much different from those of her parents, but the meaning was completely the opposite. They bantered with light teasing and true love. At her home, the words had been endless slights and utter contempt.

  Chapter 26

  During dinner, Riley told her stories about her grandfather and then oth
er stories about the colonel. Since she knew most of her grandfather’s adventures directly from the source, the ones about the colonel were of greater interest.

  “Has he ever partnered up with one of his flyers?” Alisha asked suddenly. At the look on both Anna’s and Riley’s faces, she realized her question was inappropriate. She flushed and resumed eating, wishing she could take it back. Hopefully, after a moment of silence, the conversation would resume and the question would be forgotten.

  That was how her parents had handled matters at home. Whenever an impertinent question had flown from her lips and taken form, they had simply ignored her. She could still remember the last question she’d asked. “What if I don’t want to marry David Bowan?” The looks of shock and disgust on her parents’ faces had soon faded back into their bland, bored façades. The question had never been answered, and she knew never to ask it again.

  To her surprise, Riley did intend to answer her question. It was just taking him a while to sort his thoughts on the matter.

  “Logan is a lot like me in that regard. He never cared for frivolous connections—too much trouble for too little pleasure. I was absolutely convinced I’d die an old bachelor, and I saw peaceful solitude as my reward.” Riley reached out, captured Anna’s hand into his own, and brought it to his lips. “And then MAC sent me a new captain, and Lord, I wanted to pull the program’s plug. In walks the most incredibly beautiful woman I’d ever seen and announces she’s my new report.”

  “You must have been very pleased,” Alisha remarked.

  Anna laughed while Riley corrected her assumption.

  “I was livid! How the hell was I supposed to run a squad with such a distraction as their leader?”

  Anna shook her head at the memory. “So he reads me the riot act and orders me to cut my hair.”

  “And she smartly replies that regulations do not require a flyer to cut their hair.” Riley reached out and playfully wrapped her thick, long braid around her neck. “I wanted to wring her beautiful neck with that braid.”