They assumed she was just another F-16 trainee: quiet, normal, and easy to miss. But when 18 enemy jets flew over the border and the sky became a battlefield that no one was ready for, she told the truth she had been hiding her whole life. They said that Lt. Alara Quinn was the kind of pilot you never saw. Not because she wasn’t talented, but because she wouldn’t shine where others wanted her to. At RAF Lossiemouth, a windy base on the northern tip of Scotland, fighter pilots were shaped by the wind from the North Sea and the sound of afterburners.
Most of them proudly displayed their confidence. Most people wanted to be seen. Alara wasn’t one of them.
She looked more like an engineer than a fighter pilot because she was 5’3″ tall, stood up straight, and moved slowly and carefully. She didn’t bang the doors of the lockers, brag about her barrel rolls, or laugh loudly at the bar like the others did. She kept her dark auburn hair tightly braided, her flight suit spotless, and her talks short.
People rarely noticed her when she was there. She slipped through it like a shadow that no one cared to chase.
“Quinn flies clean—too clean,” one teacher said during an evaluation. “A safe pilot.” Good skill, but no instinct for fighting.
They were mistaken, but they didn’t know it. Alara has spent years getting better at the skill of not being observed. Their childhoods differed significantly from Alara’s.
Most pilots grew up reading adventure books and getting sports scholarships. Alara, on the other hand, grew up in naval base hangars with her father, Commander Nolan Quinn, one of the most decorated F-18 pilots in the U.S. History of the Navy.
She learned about thrust curves before she learned how to multiply. Before she learned the capitals of the states, she memorized radar signatures. Before she could drive a car, she could draw a diagram of a high-G vertical loop.
But Commander Quinn’s best teachings weren’t about machines. They were about staying alive.
“Kiddo, anyone can fly fast,” he would add. “Anyone can make noise.” But a true warrior understands when to stay hidden, unreadable, and unpredictable.
She took in every word. When he perished in a training mishap over the Adriatic Sea, Alara erected a shell around herself so tight that no one could see the fire inside. She stopped pressing. She stopped showing.
She ceased doing things that showed she could do more than what the Air Force expected of her. She did as the book said. She flew within bounds. She never, ever showed anyone what she could really do.
Her father had advised her, “Don’t reveal your full potential until the sky turns dark.”
The other people at Lossiemouth just thought she was normal. The one who doesn’t talk much. The one that is easy to guess. The one that doesn’t hurt.
On the morning that everything changed, they couldn’t have been more incorrect.
A subdued gold haze covered the airfield. The sun had barely risen beyond the horizon, casting a warm light over the runway and turning the dew on the tarmac into tiny mirrors. The North Sea wind brought the smell of cold iron and salt.
Alara had her helmet under one arm and her checklist under the other as she walked. She always moved with purpose, and each step was part of a beat she had known her whole life.
The dawn light slipped across her F-16C Fighting Falcon, tail number Q-423, making it look like liquid gold. It was waiting on the ramp. She put her palm on the nose of the plane, which was something she did before every flight.
“Good morning, girl,” she said softly. “Let’s stay alive for each other.”
Captain Rowan Beck, her wingman for the day, jogged across the tarmac like a marching band. Loud, sure of themselves, and always eager to show off.
“Quinn!” He yelled, already grinning. “Don’t fly like an accountant today, okay?”
Alara offered him a polite nod that he couldn’t read. “Please don’t scare the refuel crew again,” she said in a calm voice.
It was intended to be a straightforward patrol. Routine and predictable—this was the kind of mission where nothing ever happened. They would fly north to the Icelandic Air Defense Identification Zone, look for strange radar activity, and then come back before lunch.
She enjoyed missions like that. They didn’t make her tell them anything.
She moved in the cockpit with a grace that went unnoticed yet was difficult for others to replicate. She strapped in, ran her hands over switches she had remembered long before flight school, and listened as the engine came to life with a deep, familiar growl.
As the canopy went down, she saw a reflection in the glass: calm, focused, and in control—just like the pilot she wanted everyone to see.
The controller said, “Falcon 2-1, taxi to runway 0-6.”
“Copy,” Alara said, her voice calm and even.
Next, Beck’s voice came through. “Quinn, try to keep up.”
She didn’t bother to answer because she already knew something Beck would never expect. Today would not be normal. The sky would want everything she was hiding today. The world would finally find out who she really was today.
And no one, not a single person, was ready for the storm she was about to start.
The patrol started out peacefully, which was strange for a place where tensions were high like a tempest under the sea. Lieutenant Alara Quinn held her F-16 steady at 28,000 feet. The rugged shoreline of northern Scotland curved below her.
Captain Rowan Beck flew lightly off her right wing, as he always did, and tapped the top of the speed envelope.
“Falcon 2-1, the radar appears clear. Do you have anything? Beck asked.
Alara looked over her multi-function display. Nothing but the typical sounds of commercial flights and far-off sea patrols.
“No,” she said in a calm voice. “Sector is clear.”
But there was something wrong with her chest. She had learned to trust a weight and pressure in her chest over the years. Her dad used to call it the “Sky Whisper,” a soundless warning of an impending conflict that was not yet visible.
Again, she looked at her instruments. Still nothing. Then the whisper turned into a roar.
A harsh, strange, and urgent tone went out in her cockpit. Several long-range radar contacts were detected, moving quickly at a high altitude and closing in rapidly.
“Alara, are you seeing this?” « Beck’s voice had lost its cool.
She didn’t have to answer. She could already see the shape of the menace on her screen. The contacts were spreading out, maintaining the appropriate distance from each other, and moving along a line that they should not have crossed.
The emergency frequency flashed up before she could use the radio.
“Falcon 2-1, Falcon 2-2, be aware that we have unknown planes entering UK airspace. “Count… wait… count 18. 18 planes, repeat. You need to look into it.” Don’t provoke.”
Eighteen. Not two, not four, and not a test run by a foreign patrol. This was a group of strikers.
Beck swore under his breath. “Who sends 18 fighters into British land?”
Alara didn’t answer. She was already looking at their signatures: high-energy climbing arcs, aggressive vectoring, and formation discipline that made her think they were well-trained combat pilots.
As they flew down from 38,000 feet, her radar clearly showed the shapes: Su-27 Flankers. These were not the export variants, which are fully combat-capable. The attack wasn’t an intrusion; it was an incursion.
“Lossiemouth Control, Falcon 2-1,” Alara sent. “We have confirmed the identities of 18 enemy planes. Su-27s, with all their weapons. They are quickly getting through the ADIZ. Asking for help right now.”
The answer was short and strained. “Reinforcement scrambled.” Nine minutes until ETA. Don’t engage unless you’re being shot at.
Nine minutes. Nine minutes was both a long time and a death sentence in air combat. The Su-27s had already shifted formation because they were hunting.
You could hear Beck’s breathing over the radio. “Quinn, if they put us in jail…”
“I know.” Alara’s voice was calm, but her heart was racing.
They were both jets. They were two high-performance fighter jets facing off against eighteen jets designed specifically to dominate the sky. And not even Lossiemouth knew the truth: they were relying on a pilot they thought was just okay.
Alara switched on her left display. Threat lines came together. The altitude went down. The lead element pointed directly at them.
“They see us,” she replied in a low voice.
A second later, her RWR screamed. Lock on the missile.
“Stop!” Beck yelled.
But Alara was already on the move. She threw her F-16 into a vicious Split S, ripping down in a way that would have made most experienced pilots pass out. The G-forces made her vision blurry, but she held up well.
She focused on tightening her muscles, maintaining controlled breathing, and keeping a sharp mind. Make a full commitment. You don’t hesitate; the opponent does. Her father’s voice.
The missile flew above her head when she leveled out, and it was too high to fix now.
Beck’s voice broke in disbelief. “Quinn! They got fired! They really did fire!»
That meant that the terms of engagement had altered. Alara switched to the tactical net.
“Lossiemouth Control, Falcon 2-1. We are being attacked right now. Repeat: under attack. Can I defend myself?»
The answer came right away. The response was immediate. Protect the homeland. No weapons allowed.
Alara felt something change inside. Something she had kept locked up for years. The shadow moved out of the way, and the flames moved in.
“Copy,” she murmured, and her voice became icy and firm. “Free weapons.”
Beck struggled to keep up with her, but Alara was already speeding up. Her F-16 cut through a tight spiral climb that didn’t obey the rules for how the plane should act. She knew how to obey the rules; she just didn’t do it.
She leveled out above the first wave of Su-27s, put the lead plane right in front of her, and fired.
“Fox 3.”
Her AMRAAM shot forward like a spear of white fire. The pilot of the Su-27 tried to brake, but Alara had already seen the action coming before he even touched the stick. The missile hit him right in the side, turning the plane into a flower of fire.
One down. Seventeen more.
“Wow, Quinn, how did you—” Beck couldn’t finish.
“Stay on your guard,” she urged. “I’ll make the pack smaller.”
The words came out of her mouth not with pride but with clarity. It was like she was finally becoming the person she had always been.
Another lock. Another tone of caution. Two more Flankers dove toward her in a pincer, and their missiles were already leaving trails in the air.
Alara lifted up high and then turned her jet into a rolling scissors. The horizon faded into blue and white stripes. One rocket lost its lock right away. The second one chased her through a corkscrew dive, only 20 feet behind her.
She went back. The missile went too far. At the same time, she slid over, latched onto the nearest Su-27, and fired her second AMRAAM.
Two down. Sixteen more to go.
Beck stared in disbelief. “Quinn, what are you?”
But she didn’t answer since something else was going on. Something far more harmful. All sixteen of the fighters left their previous grouping. They were all coming together around her.
Every radar spike was aimed at her. Every hostile missile queue lit up for her. The peaceful woman, the one they believed was ordinary, was the same menace that every pilot had seen.
Beck’s voice broke through the quiet like a plea. “Alara, there are too many of them!” Get back!»
But she couldn’t do it. Not when they were only a few minutes away from the Scottish coast. Not when the nearest reinforcements were still too far away. Not when the sky told her to tell everything she had kept secret.
Alara took a deep breath. “Rowan, get down low and run south.” I’ll pull them away.
“That’s suicide!”
“No,” she responded in a calm voice. “It’s commitment.”
Her father would have been proud of how she stated it. Then she sped up and drove right into the middle of sixteen combatants coming at her. The pilot they thought was normal was gone, and the warrior she really was took her place.
The sky became a pack of wolves.
When Alara broke formation and charged straight at 16 enemy fighters, the sky changed. What had been a planned intercept turned into a wild hunt, and she was both the hunter and the hunted.
The Su-27s all acted at once, narrowing their spread, switching their radars to lethal settings, and diving and climbing to encircle her in a three-dimensional cage of speed and firepower. The configuration would have worked on any normal day and against any normal pilot.
But Lt. Alara Quinn was not a normal pilot. Not today. Not any longer.
When the Flankers rushed toward her, she flipped her F-16 upside down and sliced through the first layer of enemy planes. Under the pressure, her wings shook. Missile trails shot over her canopy—too close and too swiftly.
One hit the turbulence on her left wingtip, making the jet shake like a dog shaking off water.
“Alara, they’re everywhere!” Beck’s voice broke up on the radio, and the plane was still flying south at a low altitude, just like she had told it to.
“Keep going,” she said in a voice that seemed oddly calm. “I know where I want them to go.”
And she did. The wolf who leads the pack selects where the chase will go.
The first two Su-27s dove after her. She let them get ahead for a second, then she turned so hard that her vision went black. The heavier Flankers couldn’t keep up with the quick move; they went too far, too wide, and too sloppily.
Alara didn’t think twice. “Fox 3.”
Her AMRAAM shot up, hit the closest Su-27, and blew up against its body. The explosion turned the lower clouds orange. Another predator was descending from the skies.
Three deaths. Fifteen left.
The second Flanker tried to get out of her line of attack, but she already knew how to do it. She could still hear her father’s voice, as she had studied it years before. As soon as her father climbs up to get away, he dives beneath, rolls behind, and then chokes his opponent in the blind spot. It’s not instinct; it’s science.
She did what the memory told her to do. The F-16 dipped, rolled, and lunged. A quick burst from her gun tore through the Flanker’s right engine. The jet turned into a fireball that spun down into the frigid sea.
Four deaths. Fourteen left.
“Alara, you’re crazy!” “Beck yelled. “”Get out of there!”
But she was not paying attention. Not because she didn’t care, but because she couldn’t hear anything else apart from the map of threats in her head.
Her cockpit was full of alerts, such as missile lock, radar spike, altitude warnings, and G-force limitations that were all screaming red. But none of it got to her. She had been preparing for this world since she was a child. She had kept the world hidden for long enough.
Her radar suddenly showed six locks at once. Six Su-27 fighter jets are approaching like a pack of wolves.
Alara pulled the jet up, not away, but straight up. Up, up, up. The F-16 rocked fiercely as the engines roared at full power, pushing the plane up to heights that the airframe detested.
The air got thinner. Her controls got harder to use. A less experienced pilot would have crashed the plane and died in seconds.
But Alara didn’t stop. She climbed until her attackers fell behind, unable to keep up with her vertical movement since their massive airframes couldn’t handle it. Their missile locks started to blink and then go out.
Then, at 43,000 feet, she shut the throttle, flipped upside down, and let gravity seize her like a fist.
She jumped. The earth fell down. The clouds turned into lines. Her jet turned into a silver spear.
The Su-27s chasing them struggled to get their paths right, and their formations broke apart, leaving them in pairs that were easy to attack. Alara grinned, which was a rare and fierce thing. It was her time now.
She shot her last medium-range missile toward the duo that was closest to her. The AMRAAM hit the lead Flanker head-on, destroying it in a blinding explosion. The wingman turned right, but she was already rolling left, going under his nose and into his blind spot.
He died in a two-second cannon blast. Six deaths. There are still twelve left.
The last Su-27s knew what they were up against: a pilot who didn’t obey the rules, a pilot who didn’t hold back, and a pilot who fought like a creature destined to fly.
They modified their plans and stopped using coordinated attack patterns. Instead, they went back to sheer instinct and ferocity. They came at her from all sides, seeking to overwhelm her with speed and fire.
“Alara!” Beck yelled again. “Reinforcements are four minutes away!”
Four minutes. For most pilots, four minutes against twelve enemy fighters meant death. It was time for Alara Quinn.
The first pair came down from above and slashed at her. She shattered below them, and their speed took them too far. She drew up hard, got neatly behind one, and let loose a cannon discharge.
Seven deaths.
The second pilot got scared and rolled too hard, losing too much speed. She took advantage of the chance, made a sharp spin, and shot again.
Eight kills.
But the troop of wolves kept going. Three more Flankers came roaring toward her from the northeast, and missiles were already leaving their rails. She plunged, reduced the throttle, and then rolled quickly between two of the contrails that were coming in. The missiles flew so close that she could see the shiny metal fins that guided them.
“One minute to the coast,” she said quietly. She couldn’t let any of the fighters past. None.
The following The The Su-27 flew too close and was overly confident, approaching the tail of the F-16. She pushed the F-16 into a negative-G pushover, causing her body to press against the harness. Then she flipped into a vertical spiral dive. The Flanker tried to follow, but it couldn’t.
At the bottom of her dive, she accelerated, executed an inside turn, and fired her weapon.
Nine deaths. Then ten. Eleven.
And then, just as the last fighters were getting back together, the radio went off. “Ranger flight in the area.” F-22s are fighting.
Finally, Alara’s breath came out. Her body shook. She had almost run out of bullets and petrol, but she had done it. She had held the skies all by herself.
As the Raptors flew by and destroyed the last Su-27s, Alara just turned her F-16 toward the coast. The exhilaration slowly left her muscles.
Beck’s voice came back, shaken and respectful. “Alara, you saved the whole Northern Corridor.”
She didn’t answer since she wasn’t thinking about winning. She remembered what her father had said to her once: “When the sky becomes a wolf pack, become the wolf they never see coming.”
And today, she did.
The trembling had ceased by the time Alara reached the coast, but her hands were still shaky. The sea transformed into dense pine forests and interwoven meadows. The runway lights at the NATO air station in the distance looked like a line of constant stars.
Her fuel gauge was lower than it had ever been in training. The caution light turned yellow, a silent reminder that she had stayed in the conflict long after any reasonable pilot would have left.
“Quinn, this is Approach.” State of fuel and status.
She took a breath, which stopped her voice from shaking. “Come here, Lieutenant Alara Quinn.” One F-16. Fuel is vital. All guns are equipped with Winchester ammunition. Yellow hydraulics. But holding. Request immediate straight in.”
There was a break. Not the normal clipped professionalism, but a pause like someone had just put their hand over the microphone to look at a screen full of figures they didn’t believe.
“Quinn, straightforward and direct. You are the first to land. Emergency vehicles are on the go.
She almost burst out laughing. Twelve Su-27s had been trying to murder her a few minutes ago. Now, the major worry was fire trucks with flashing lights.
The landing itself was almost boringly uneventful. Muscle memory kicked in: flare, settle, spoilers, and brakes. The jet touched down on the ground and stayed there. The lights on the runway seemed blurry for a second as she rolled out, but they cleared up when she blinked hard.
Beck’s voice crackled across the radio, weaker than before, and said, “Welcome home, Alara.” “You’re really ugly on the final, but I’m glad to see you.”
She drove off the runway and followed the marshaller’s laser wands to the fierce shelter. She could feel something was odd even through the leaves. It wasn’t the normal small group of security and maintenance workers.
The whole edge of the ramp seemed full. The ramp was filled with ground personnel, pilots still in their flight gear, and staff officers who typically only came outside for ceremonies. Whatever had happened up there had already spread through the gossip.
Alara turned off the engine and applied the parking brake, and the familiar growing whine stopped. She sat there for a bit with her hands on her thighs and her helmet still on, listening to the hot metal tick. Her legs felt like they were carrying too much weight.
When she stepped down from the ladder and her boots hit the concrete, the world appeared too bright and loud. Floodlights, diesel engines, and faraway sirens all hit her at once.
Beck was at the foot of the ladder, waiting for her. He had a helmet under one arm, and his hair was flat from the sweat. At first, he didn’t say anything. He merely came up and gave her a quick, powerful hug, like the type you give someone who almost didn’t come back.
He whispered in her ear, “You’re crazy.” “And I’m still here because of it.”
She pushed back and tried to grin, but it didn’t work. “You know you owe me coffee for the rest of my life.”
He shook his head, and his eyes kept looking for her face, as if he needed to be certain she was genuine. “I’ll buy the whole cafe.”
The crew chief walked around the jet with a flashlight behind him. There were no big holes or wires hanging down, but the paint was chipped off in long stripes where shrapnel had hit the fuselage.
The sergeant in charge of maintenance whistled to himself. “Ma’am,” he murmured, looking up at her. “Whatever you did out there, this bird looks like it flew through a meteor shower and didn’t care.”
Before she could say anything, a dark sedan pulled up and stopped in a way that only a driver who lived his life by orders could do. A colonel exited the vehicle, followed by a security guard and a pilot wearing a flying suit adorned with an unfamiliar patch.
“Alara Quinn?” the colonel asked.
“Yes, sir.”
He looked at her for a moment, not furious or impressed, just judging her, as if he were rethinking all he thought he understood.
“Medical check, then talk. Now.
The travel to the operations building was calm. Beck tried to get her attention as she was being led away, but the look on the security officer’s face made it plain that this part of the night was going to be too much for him.
The base hospital said she may go back to work. Blood pressure was high, but the risk of G-LOC was low, and there was no concussion. She was okay physically. She was uncertain about her mental state.
The debriefing room seemed colder than it should have been. There was a giant screen at one end and a long table with too many rank insignia for her to feel comfortable. The colonel sat in the middle. A citizen with silver hair and intelligence insignia was on his right. On his left was the Raptor flight lead, who logged in as “Ranger.”
“Lieutenant Quinn,” the colonel said. “Sit down.”
She did, with her hands clasped to hide the shaking. He motioned to the technician in the back. The lights went out, and a moving radar diagram appeared on the enormous screen. It showed blue and red symbols, heights, and speeds.
She knew right away what the shapes were. Her battle. Her sky.
The colonel didn’t say anything for the first few minutes, which included the first merge, the missile launches, and the tight twists that looked impossible in two dimensions.
“Stop,” he said. The symbols stopped moving. “Here,” he continued, pointing to the screen where twelve enemy planes were coming together to attack one F-16. “Lieutenant, tell me why you turned toward the threat instead of away from it.”
“Running away would have let those jets get to cities that still look safe on the map.” Because Beck was pulling three fighters behind him, he wouldn’t live long enough for the Raptors to get there. Because…
The terror was less than her father’s speech.
“I figured that if we tried to pull back,” she replied slowly, “at least half of that formation would get by us and hit targets farther inland. Our intercept line was too narrow. Someone had to keep them at the edge.
“So you chose to be that person?”
“Yes, sir.”
The officer in charge of intelligence leaned in. “Lieutenant, do you know that during that 11 minutes and 40 seconds, you did things that are not normal for a pilot at your level of training?” Your last evaluations said you were “solid, conservative, and in need of confidence.” How do you explain this difference?»
There it was. The question she had been waiting for since the first missile left her rail. She could be lying. She could say luck, instinct, or adrenaline. She could act like she didn’t know what she was doing. Or she could finally come out of hiding.
She said, “My training evaluations are correct for the version of me I chose to show.”
The colonel’s eyebrow went up a little. “Go on.”
“My dad was a fighter pilot,” she said next. “He flew combat missions long before I was born.” He made me study every significant air-to-air fight we had records of when I was a kid. He taught me about tactics, energy management, and strategic thinking. I flew situations on homemade simulators until I knew what a turning fight felt like before I even sat in an actual cockpit.
«And you concealed that from your instructors?» the Raptor pilot asked with genuine interest, not accusation.
“Yes, sir. My father used to say, ‘Never reveal your complete hand until the stakes are life and death.’ He believed that if you spend your whole career displaying every trick you know, your adversaries will study you before you ever meet them. So I learned to follow the syllabus closely. I gave the Air Force what it expected. But I kept the rest quiet.»
The room sat with that for a beat.
«So what changed today?» the colonel inquired.
She thought of the twenty red signals crossing the line on the radar, of the vacant square of sky where reinforcements were still minutes away, of Beck’s breathing over the radio—the edge of anxiety he’d tried to mask.
«Today,» she whispered quietly, «the stakes become life and death. This is not just a theoretical scenario or a future war wargame. Right now, over our coastline.»
The colonel and the intelligence officer looked at each other, and then the officer said more softly. “You understand you violated standing instructions, Lieutenant. You were advised to keep distance and await support.»
“I understand, sir.” And if those movements hadn’t worked, if you’d been shot down, then I would have perished trying to keep them out,” she added, firm now. “But if I hadn’t stopped them and they had gotten through, I would have had to deal with it. I don’t know how to accomplish it.\
Again, silence. They played back the moment when the last enemy fighter broke away and tried to run. This moment was when the hunters finally recognized they weren’t in charge.
The pilot of the Raptor viewed the video with a faint, almost unwilling smile.
“You know what we observed from our side?” he said. “”Four F-22s racing to a fight we thought we had lost, and one F-16 cutting through a formation that should have eaten you alive.” When we arrived there, the whole enemy cargo was running away.
He looked at the colonel. “Sir, with all due respect, this isn’t a case of discipline. This is a case of capability.
The colonel put his hands together and looked at Alara as if he were seeing her for the first time.
He finally said, “Lieutenant Quinn.” “I’m not going to act like this is easy. You didn’t obey the rules. You put an asset at danger that we can’t readily replace. But you also stopped many enemies from getting in, protected your wingman, and killed more enemy planes in one battle than some squadrons do in a year.
He thought about it for a while.
He went on, “Officially, this will be recorded as a successful joint intercept, and no more information will be made public.” “Unofficially…” He looked at the Raptor pilot, who nodded once. “There are people in this room who go on missions that you will never see on any briefing slide.” They want to know a lot about what you did today and how you accomplished it.
Alara’s heart started to race again. But this time it wasn’t fear. Hope and responsibility were sharper.
“Sir? What did she ask?
The colonel continued, “After we finish the formal investigation, you’ll get two things: a note in your file saying you disobeyed a direct order and an invitation to a program that doesn’t really exist.”
He leaned in. “The hunters broke today, Lieutenant. Not only up there in the sky. He tapped his head and said, “In here, too.” “You challenged our perceptions of what a trainee is capable of doing.” Now the only thing left to do is decide what you want to do next.
Alara sat up straighter, forgetting for a moment how tired she was. “Whatever it takes to stop them from doing that again,” she stated.
And for the first time since she got there, everyone at the table smiled.
It was too early the next morning. Alara didn’t remember falling asleep, but she did recall waking up to a quiet knock and a note that said, “Report to Hangar 12.” Classified Clearance. 0800 is on the dot.
The public base map didn’t show Hangar 12. When she got there, the colonel and the Raptor pilot from the night before were already there. There was an airplane behind them that was bigger than an F-16 and sleeker than an F-22. It was clearly an experimental plane.
The colonel said, “Lieutenant Quinn.” “Yesterday wasn’t luck.” That was proof.
He went around her cautiously. “Some pilots obey the rules. Some people go beyond doctrine. A very small number of people actually change the rules. You fall within the third group.
The pilot of the Raptor stepped forward. “We fly missions that need the instincts you showed yesterday. Not anger, but clarity and determination. We want you.
Alara’s heart raced. “What kind of missions?”
The colonel grinned. “The sort we don’t talk about. This is the type of person who makes decisions before the news breaks.
She let out a breath. Steady. All set. “When do I begin?”
Alara was alone on the tarmac in a new flying suit weeks later, before dawn. There were no unit patches or name tapes, only a black triangle with a white border on the bottom.
The Obsidian Line was the name of her new squadron. The squadron’s focus was not on being attackers or defenders, but rather on prevention itself.
Her customized plane sat in front of her, silent and ready to attack. It was a machine made for pilots who didn’t need to read instructions to learn how to fly.
Before she left, Beck wrote her a message that said, “You didn’t just save my life.” You modified what can happen. Fly for all of us.
Alara put the letter aside and got into the cockpit of her new plane. She didn’t feel like a trainee disguising her skills anymore. She felt just like the colonel had said: a pilot who could change the shape of a battle before the enemy even knew it had started.
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