She could feel Ethan freeze on the controls. She wiggled the cyclic slightly, and he flinched. Not enough to affect the flight, but enough that she could feel it through the controls. Then she felt him resume controlled flight. The whole interchange had lasted no more than a second or two, but when flying NOE—nap of Earth—at nearly three hundred klicks, errors were typically measured in tenths of a second.
Abby gave him the moment to say he was sorry, which he did by not saying anything. And she replied the same. They’d flown together long enough that much of what needed saying didn’t need to be said.
“Who the hell is flying that thing?” Abby felt the itch between her shoulder blades like a hard-driven knife blade, which must have been what snapped Ethan’s attention out of piloting mode—he got a little intense and hyper-focused, even by her standards. “I thought the Collaborative Combat Aircraft were still in basic flight testing. Someone please tell me that isn’t an armed autonomous AI drone flying beside me.”
It must be the Anduril YFQ-44 by its standard inverted-T tail and thin wings. They weren’t even through the first flight test as far as she knew, yet the long thin fuselage of the aircraft flying beside them matched the specs she’d been studying for the fun of it.
“I could tell you, but that might spoil the fun.” Mr. D-boy. Mr. I’m-too-cool Delta operator. They were cool…and scary as could be.
“Go ahead, spoil the fun.”
“There’s a 24th STS dude embedded with our Delta team. Never told us why he was here. Guessing that’s why.”
They were the Air Force’s contribution to the Tier One teams of Joint Special Operations Command. The Army contributed Delta and the Navy stood up DEVGRU, which everyone except the Department of Dense knew as SEAL Team 6. The 24th Special Tactics Squadron were definitely good guys to have around. Whether you needed a precision air strike or someone to run a couple hundred supply flights per hour into a recently captured airport using nothing more than a handheld radio and an apple crate to sit on, they were the guys.
“Turns out he’s not the one actually flying it.”
Abby could hear the tease and refused to rise to the bait as she watched the CCA slide into formation to the side where she’d lost the Little Bird…and a little ahead.
Derek waited.
She didn’t have time for a guessing game in a combat situation, not even during a simulated one. Unless it wasn’t a guessing game. The STS dude wasn’t here to fly it, which meant he was only here as a safety pilot to monitor it in case the stupid thing’s brain went kerflooey. It wasn’t a nicely useful drone—the damn jet was flying itself. Using its own unknown set of programming and misconceptions.
“Well, isn’t that just Jimmies on an Italian?”
“Who on a what?” Ethan had given up asking long ago, but Derek fell for the trap.
“Jimmies, you know, those sprinkles on ice cream. Chocolate ones are the only real ones by the way, just in case you ever buy me an ice cream.”
“O-kay.” Not being stupid—Delta meant he was very, very smart—his tone said he knew he had one foot in the trap. “What’s with sprinkles on a person?”
Her trap snapped closed in her thoughts with a bright snick! “An Italian, or an Italian Ice to the uninitiated, is called a snow cone in the more heathen parts of this fine nation.”
“Heathen. Like any state that isn’t Vermont?”
“Downeast.” She slashed at him. “The great state of Maine. Never insult me like that again.” Then she heard his chuckle over the intercom. Yep, he’d already paid her back for her trap.
“Yes ma’am,” he sassed her. In her peripheral vision, where it wasn’t blocked by her helmet, she saw his hand sweep up into a sharp salute. “So, having an experimental Air Force CCA horn in on a Night Stalkers’ training mission is about as logical as chocolate sprinkles on a snow cone. Got it! But if that’s the case, how do you explain my team being here?”
“What do you call a moose with no friends?” She let him stew on that while she looked again for whatever was flying overwatch from somewhere above them. Until the CCA showed up, this had been a strictly Army operation. No longer. Which meant that in addition to one of their own Gray Eagle drones, it could be any of the standard sentry birds—a Navy E-2 Hawkeye, P-8 Poseidon, or the like. Except those would show up clearly. Yet another drone? If so, it was a stealth bird without even a hint on her extremely sensitive threat radar.
“No matter what I say, I’ll be wrong,” Derek finally conceded.
“It be alone-some.” She gave it her best Downeast dry tone. Mainiacs were prone-some to tacking some onto words in the strangest ways. At least according to anyone from away—those who didn’t have the God-given gift of being born in the greatest state. To her ear, it was a quantifier of more, or less, but a little more than less.
“So, my team and I are here because…what, we don’t have any friends?”
“Oh, the man is sharp.”
Ethan laughed, and Derek joined in with that good chuckle of his.
“We still have our uses.”
Abby glanced over in time to see Derek make a gesture to the men behind him. Seconds later, a request came up on her visor to permit a data link.
“That you?” Certain things you didn’t mess with, and letting strangers into her helo’s systems was one of them.
“STS,” Derek confirmed.
