Scavenger Falters (The SkyRyders Book 2)

by Liza O'Connor

  While Logan didn’t reply, she was certain their mics were working since he had followed all her directions. When the alarm went off for three thousand feet, he reengaged the catcher. The jerk in the harness was considerably harder than she expected, and she cried out in pain.

  ***

  The force that slammed into Logan’s chest almost knocked him unconscious. He struggled to remain focused. What the hell happened? Alisha never mentioned anything like this.

  “Alisha, are you hurt?” he asked.

  “Just bruised, I think,” Alisha replied. “I’m not sure why that pulled so hard. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he lied, as he tried to pull the chest strap away from his ribs. He hoped to God he hadn’t broken any. That would be a disaster right now.

  “Let’s call it a successful lesson and head on down, Colonel,” Alisha suggested.

  “I said I was fine,” Logan snapped. There are men dying every hour…I don’t have time to be dallying about.

  “It’s not your call, Colonel. It’s mine. Head on down.”

  He sighed in frustration. Somehow, she could tell how much pain he was in. Unless she had been lying about her own injuries… Maybe Alisha was hurt and just didn’t want to tell him. He descended as fast as possible, only slowing down during the last three hundred feet. He landed as softly as he could, but when Alisha’s weight shifted and the chest strap pulled tight against his ribs, the pain was excruciating. He was amazed he could remain standing.

  He unsnapped the harness as quickly as possible and stepped out of it. He allowed Alisha to fold his catcher as he struggled to breathe. He watched her movements, trying to detect if she was harmed.

  “For a moment there I thought I’d made a grievous mistake,” General Powell bellowed as he joined them on the field. “Did you lose your concentration, Logan?”

  ***

  Alisha was in no mood for the general’s barbs. “No, sir, he did not! That descent was my fault. I failed to anticipate the impact of having me on his back. And before you inquire why we’ve stopped the lesson, I also failed to anticipate the G-forces involved when reengaging the catcher. The harness is not sufficiently padded, and we will not resume lessons until I get it fixed.”

  The look the general gave her was nothing to Logan’s. Clearly, he was not happy with her announcement that lessons were aborted pending repair of the harness.

  “The harness is fine, sir,” Logan said.

  Alisha stormed over to the colonel. She unzipped his flight suit to his waist and lifted his shirt, exposing a vicious-looking welt across his chest. “This is not fine, Colonel. You have been seriously hurt.”

  Logan pushed her hands away and zipped up his flight suit. “I am fine, sir,” he said to the general, ignoring her altogether.

  General Powell was not happy. “Colonel Kane has command over training matters.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Alisha said. “Colonel Logan, I’m ordering you to report to the field medic for a full exam.”

  The colonel glared at her. “And what about you? Are you going to the medic as well?”

  Alisha was going to reply it was hardly necessary since she really was just bruised. However, that wasn’t her best course of action in this situation. “That goes without saying. Neither of us are in a position to be taking unnecessary risks at the moment.”

  Logan was furious, but he stopped arguing and headed off the landing field. He dropped his catcher at the equipment shed and then headed on to the medic.

  She waited on the landing area until he disappeared from site then headed to the shed. Jack soon walked beside her.

  “I really don’t want to get in between this pissing contest, but you did agree to go the medic as well,” he reminded her.

  “And I will, but Sandy can only examine one of us at a time, and if I go now, the colonel will insist I go first. I know there’s nothing wrong with me, but I’m not so sure about Logan. He took a very hard stop.”

  When she arrived at the shed, she ordered the soldier to bring out both her catcher and the colonel’s. The ground soldier in charge, Sergeant Franklin, had no problem providing hers, but he balked at giving her Colonel Logan’s. For security reasons, he could only release a catcher to its owner.

  Jack came to her aid, and the catcher was handed over. Evidently, two colonels superseded the rights of one.

  Alisha pulled out the harnesses of each and studied them.

  “What are you looking for?” Jack asked.

  “Differences…something that would explain why I don’t have any difficulty with reengaging my catcher, yet with the colonel’s catcher, it almost snapped us it two.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a harness problem. That sounds like a catcher problem,” Jack noted, sitting down beside her on the floor.

  “You’re getting your whites dirty,” she teased as she continued to study the harnesses. “The catchers are the same. I personally performed every modification in the Colonel’s catcher. It’s not the catcher. It’s got to be this harness.”

  Suddenly a possible explanation came to her. “Stand up,” she ordered.

  “Alisha, I don’t care about my whites.”

  “Good, because I’m about to make them worse. Stand up and strap into this harness,” she instructed as she unhooked the harness from the catcher and held it out.

  Jack did as she asked without protest. When she had pulled all the straps tight so that it fitted perfectly against him, she ordered Franklin to attach Jack to the harness tester.

  “We don’t test with live soldiers, sir,” Franklin protested. “We use three-hundred-pound dummies.”

  Alisha looked at Jack. “I need you to do this. A dummy can’t tell me if it hurts or not.”

  Jack paused. “Are you expecting it to hurt?”

  “No. Or I wouldn’t ask you to do it.”

  He scowled, then walked over to the pulley used to regularly test the harnesses. “Looks like you’ve got a live dummy today, soldier.” Jack did not look particularly happy as the pulley yanked him up into the air with a half G-force.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Not at all,” Jack said with mild surprise.

  “Good. Lower him down and do it again with an added G,” Alisha instructed.

  Jack gave Franklin his nod of approval. Again, he declared he was fine. At four Gs he felt a slight discomfort, but no bruising, and certainly no rib-crunching pain.

  “It must be when the harness is adjusted for a second person,” she concluded. “It must shift the distribution of force.”

  Next, she loosened the harness and climbed in behind Jack. With the soldier’s help, the harness was retightened. “Does the harness feel different?”

  “I’ve got a beautiful woman wrapped around me, and you’re asking if the harness feels different?” Jack replied, causing the soldier to smile.

  Alisha playfully hit him on the head. “Focus!” she ordered. “Does the chest strap feel different now?”

  “A little higher, maybe,” Jack admitted.

  Franklin agreed, noting there were traces of dirt on the colonel’s white from the prior tests which indicated the strap had been positioned an inch lower before.

  “Are you willing to try a half G-force?” she asked.

  Jack sighed. “You’re determined to make me be your macho hero, aren’t you?”

  She leaned forward and replied in his ear so the soldier couldn’t hear. “Actually, I’m depending on you not being macho. I want to know every little discomfort you are feeling.”

  “Depend upon that,” Jack warned her.

  The test stopped with the first run at a half G-force. While she wasn’t injured, the pain was sufficient to stop looking for the problem. Clearly, the addition of a second person to the harness destroyed its ability to properly distribute the G-forces. This was not good news. It meant that their plan to carry the student on their backs for a first run wouldn’t work.

  Surprisingly the solution came from Franklin.
He held out her harness. “Try clipping your harness to his side clips. Thus, you aren’t actually in his harness and won’t be impacting its ability to distribute the G-force.”

  Alisha looked up to Jack. “You willing to try it?”

  Jack looked less than thrilled, but he agreed to try it again.

  Alisha wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck to stay in position while Franklin clipped her in. While Jack didn’t seem to mind, she knew once this got out, she could kiss goodbye anyone believing her and Jack weren’t lovers.

  After the half-G test, Jack announced with clear relief that there had been no pain that time, only a little added pressure on his back. At G1, he complained about her strap buckles, so she shifted them so the actual buckles sat almost on her shoulders instead of across her chest. At G3, he complained about the zipper of her flight suit, so she stripped out of her suit and ran the last test in nothing but her polypropylene underwear. Jack had no further complaints, but he did have a concern.

  “Okay, we’ve determined if you strip down to you skivvies and wrap yourself around a guy’s back, he’ll survive the G-force of reengaging his catcher. But Alisha, don’t you think he’s going to be a mite distracted?”

  Franklin laughed and nodded his head in agreement.

  “It’s not my intention to fly in my underwear,” Alisha replied. “And if my flyers are so easily distracted, then they shouldn’t be learning this maneuver anyway!”

  Chapter 30

  While Logan had agreed to report to the medic, he hoped they would be too busy to give him an exam. His plan looked promising when he saw one of the Broadtown nurses at the desk. She looked harried and ill-tempered, but brightened up when she saw him.

  “Colonel Logan! What can I do for you, sir?”

  “You look a bit busy today.” He leaned on the counter, careful not to wince from the excruciating pain the casual effort caused him.

  “We are. The day after the Broadtown battle, and except for the severely injured, this place was empty. And now, almost a week later, the place is full of stupid soldiers, too macho to seek help on a small injury. No, they’ve got to wait until they’re sick as hell with infection before coming for help.”

  “I’ll mention it to the general. I think we can put a stop to this problem,” Logan assured her.

  “That would be great,” the nurse replied. “So how can I help you?”

  “Well, I was just on a rough flight with Colonel Kane, and in order to get her in for a checkup, I promised to let a doctor look me over as well. But seeing as how busy you are, why don’t you put down that I was examined, and we’ll just let Sandy get on with the real injuries.”

  “I think we can do that,” the nurse said. “Doctor Culp is swamped today.”

  Logan smiled. Now all he had to do was stand up without screaming in pain and walk out of there. He managed not to scream, but had the nurse not had her head down writing, she would have noticed a grimace of pain as he stood. As the pain cleared and he could see again, he realized Sandy Culp stood on the other side of the counter, listening to the nurse explain why the colonel was supposed to have an exam, even though he really didn’t need one.

  “Well that’s thoughtful, Colonel.” Sandy walked around the counter and took his arm. “But let’s go on and make an honest man out of you.”

  “Sandy, I don’t need an exam. I’m fine. You’ve got real sick people out here.”

  “I’m tired of sick people,” she said. “Especially those who are sick only because they were too pigheaded to come for care when the problem was minor. I’d like to examine a nice healthy person for a change.” She corralled him into an exam room and handed him a paper gown. “You can change behind that screen.”

  “Sandy, I don’t have time for this,” Logan said.

  “Well then, stop wasting time. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish.”

  Logan sighed, realizing he was not going to win this battle. “Sandy, I may be a little roughed up. But it’s vital that my flying status remains clear. So please, do not overreact.”

  “Colonel Logan. I have had a long and trying day, and it’s only eight in the morning. Now unless you want to see my bad bedside manner, strip down to your shorts and let’s get this exam going!”

  The second she saw his chest, any hint of a pleasant bedside manner was gone. She told him to lie down on the exam table as she poked and prodded. When he complained over her rough handling, she just gave him a glare and walked out of the room.

  It hurt too much for Logan to attempt to sit up, so he remained prone on the table and waited. A moment later, a technician came in and set up the sonar equipment. Logan wanted to see what it showed, but he couldn’t reach the monitor to turn it.

  However, the first thing Sandy did when she returned to the room was to turn the monitor so he could see the screen as well. “Congratulations, Colonel. You win my macho idiot award of the day for having the most serious injury that didn’t warrant medical care.”

  “You’re overreacting, Sandy.”

  “Am I? You’re a medic. Do you see two cracked ribs, or is that just my over-active imagination?”

  “They do appear to be cracked,” he admitted. “But sonar isn’t always accurate…”

  “You’re right. It sometimes misses things. So maybe you have three or four cracked ribs instead of two.”

  “Sandy, I can’t be grounded,” he warned her. “I’m in training.”

  “Exactly what training breaks your ribs, Colonel?” she demanded and sat down in a chair beside him.

  Logan could see she wouldn’t be going anywhere until she had the whole story. Thus, he explained the maneuver and how the accident occurred.

  “And you think Colonel Kane may be injured as well?”

  “It’s possible. She said she was fine.”

  Sandy snorted. “But that doesn’t mean a thing with you Ryders. So when is she going to drop by? Two weeks from now when she needs medevacked out on life support?”

  “If she’s not here by the top of the hour, you have my permission to call the MPs and bring her here by force for her exam.”

  “I’ll do that,” Sandy warned. “Because this nonsense has to stop. Here I am yelling at some dumb-ass private for not coming in to have a laser blast sealed. And there you and Colonel Kane are, the heroes of the West Coast, showing them what a real Ryder does when faced with injuries. Do you have any idea what would have happened to you if you had tried that stunt a second time?”

  Logan didn’t reply.

  “You would have died, Colonel. The impact would have probably sent one of those cracked ribs into your lungs, but even if it didn’t, the pain would have certainly caused you to black out. Now I’m not claiming to be an expert on flying. However, I am certain that being conscious is a mandatory requirement. So unless you thought that Colonel Kane could bring you down safely, then you were and still are one flight from death.”

  Logan swallowed hard. He had almost killed Alisha. She had no ability to control the wind-catcher from the back of the harness. In either scenario Sandy had just presented, he would have killed them both.

  “I’m grounding you two days from regular flying to give those ribs a chance to mend. However, I’m putting a fort-wide ban on training for Maneuver 3.”

  “You can’t do that, Sandy.”

  “I have no choice, Logan. You’re about as healthy and strong a specimen as I’ve got in this fort. If that’s what happens when you do it, then it’s not safe for anyone.”

  “Sandy, I recognize it isn’t safe. But we are in a war. We have to take chances.”

  “I don’t,” she replied.

  “MAC will side with me on this,” Logan warned her.

  “I’ll do what I have to do, and you do what you have to do,” she told him and stood up. “I’ve got to get back to my ‘really’ injured patients now.”

  ***

  This day just keeps getting worse, Logan concluded as he pushed himself
off the exam table. He waited several minutes for the pain to subside and then gathered his clothes and slowly redressed. The ban on Man 3 would have to be removed, but to get MAC to do that, he would need to show it was either his fault or his halter’s. He was hoping it might be his halter.

  Slowly he made his way to the equipment shed. He wasn’t expecting anyone to be there, except for the sergeant manning the counter. He surely wasn’t expecting to find Alisha wearing nothing but her poly underwear in the presence of Jack and the sergeant.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Logan demanded. It was bad enough to flaunt her partnership with another colonel, but this was way over the line.

  They all looked like stunned rabbits in headlights. Finally, Alisha spoke. “Colonel, we’ve good news!”

  He grabbed her flight suit from the counter and threw it at her. “You’re out of uniform.” He then noticed the harness on Jack and turned to Franklin. “Soldier, why is my harness on Colonel Sparkes?”

  “We’ve been running tests,” Alisha explained. “Trying to find out how to prevent the G-forces from being so hard.”

  Logan ignored her. “I asked you a question, Sergeant.”

  “The colonels requested your equipment, sir,” the sergeant replied. “I know it was against regulations, but I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Well, you were wrong,” he replied. “A hundred demerits.”

  “Colonel!” Alisha yelled, storming up to him, still wearing nothing but the skin-tight polyprops. God, it was almost worse than seeing her naked.

  “If you’re angry at me, then take it out on me. There’s no reason to punish good soldiers.”

  Alisha was filled with that righteous passion of hers. “The sergeant knowingly broke a regulation, Alisha.”

  “Because I ordered him to! So take back the demerits!”

  “You’re still out of uniform, Colonel Kane,” Logan warned.