Pins and needles.
Nerves.
Vishnu, it was like he was sixteen again, a place Yan hadn’t seen in three decades. All wound up with excess energy and nothing to do about it but stand in the hallway and watch. Her E-2 fighter finally came through the lock shield and settled on the flight deck.
She was the last one home, of course, coming in even after Devilfish, the two of them flying escort for everyone else.
Those that were coming home from this.
As battles went, it had been a relatively bloodless affair. Yan still had nightmares about the lethal mosh pit known as First Petron, when Jessica’s strike carrier Auberon, and her flight wing of professionals in top-notch equipment, had shredded an Imperial flight force and a bunch of motley pirates in home-built sleds.
This had been nowhere near as bad, physically. He just hadn’t been sure his nerves would take it. Yan had given up caffeine hours ago because it was just making his jitters worse.
But she was home, finally.
Safe.
His buddy, ’sander Hummel, popped out of a hatch down the hallway and gestured Yan closer.
“Deck’s clear,” the flight engineer pronounced, then turned and went back to his business.
Yan made it a point not to run across the space to where her fighter had finally settled. Walking briskly didn’t count, right?
He noted that her ship had been hit at least once by something hard enough to go through her shields, but not hard enough to do more than blow off some panels and kill the secondary power APU and some communications routing hardware.
He hadn’t realized until now just how close he had come to losing her.
And then she was there, popping out of the side hatch, taking two strides, and throwing herself at him. She still weighed next to nothing, but the impact staggered him. And she had taken off her flight helmet before she debarked, so he could kiss her now.
da Vinci.
She held on like he was a life jacket in an Aivazovsky seascape. He just luxuriated in the feel of her lanky body pressed up against him.
Finally, she seemed to breathe.
“Miss me?” she leaned back and asked with a sarcastic grin.
“Maybe,” Yan responded.
“I need a shower, a meal, and a nap,” she announced. “As soon as the debrief is done, you’re scrubbing my back.”
“Can do,” he said, mostly at a loss for words.
There were so many words to say, but this deck was absolutely not the place to share them with her.
She was clean. And fed. And curled up in his lap in the big, comfy chair. Not quite asleep, but more than halfway. Yan let her warmth and weight center him.
She leaned back enough to look at him, carefully gauging his mood before she spoke.
Must be good.
“Single-crew fighters are a really stupid idea against Buran,” she said as an introduction. “We were sitting ducks.”
“I’m beginning to agree with you, yes,” Yan said. “I have a few designs in my head for bigger ships. One is an improved GunShip, the other is about the size of the S-11 Orca bombers you used to fly with on the old ship.”
“We need something like the Twins,” she said, referencing a pair of young women who flew aboard Kali-ma, back in Corynthe: Neon Pink and Rocket Frog. Asra and Saša Binici.
“RAN GunShips already have a short-range JumpSail built in,” Yan observed. “Jessica asked me for a design based on an old idea of hers. Modify a bulk freighter to haul as many as we could cram onto the decks. Launch them from the edge of some star system. Jump as a unit. Be like a pack of wolves suddenly coming out of the darkness.”
“Just being able to jump twice, like the girls, would have been enough,” da Vinci countered. “My ass wouldn’t have been hanging out in the wind, hoping the next ship we saw was friendly.”
“I will build you something better for the next battle,” Yan declared quietly.
“No,” Ainsley said.
“No?”
She kissed him.
“I’m done,” she said simply.
“Done?”
Yan was confused, but that was his normal address with Ainsley.
“I don’t want to be in charge of the Flight Wing,” she continued. “It’s too much. Makes me crazy. Crazier than usual. I spent a lot of time out there yesterday, wondering if I was finally going to die. Never been that close, at least not in my head. I’m done.”
“I see,” Yan said as a placeholder, not sure where she was going, or where he should be.
“Losing Jouster also made me realize that there’s more to life than just flying,” she said, leaning in to kiss him again.
He agreed, but this was a headstrong woman.
“So I’m going to take retirement after this,” she said. “I’ve got enough years in service that a Command Flight Centurion pension will be pretty good, especially with the money I have saved up.”
“What would you do?” Yan asked, suddenly realizing that the twinkle had come back into her eyes, where there had been the edges of despair earlier.
da Vinci was back. How did this woman manage to do this to him?
“Dunno,” Ainsley said. “Probably have to find a job eventually. Know anybody looking for washed-up, ex-fighter pilots?”
“I know a place in Ladaux,” Yan ventured, looking at her sidelong. “Could certainly use a designer with expertise in small craft. And maybe occasional work as a test pilot, if she’s crazy enough.”
“Sounds lovely,” she said with her first, true smile in hours.
“There is one catch,” Yan said carefully. They had danced around the topic, but never confronted it.
“Oh?”
“If word gets out that I’m on the ground more or less permanently, people might come find me,” he said. “Come looking, even. Depending on the technicalities, I do have two other wives out there. They might show up out of the blue someday.”
“And they would hate me?” she asked slyly.
He could tell she was estimating her odds in close combat. He was from Corynthe.
“Worse,” Yan countered. “Momoko probably would hate you, but I’m afraid that you and Aaliyah would turn into best friends and gang up on me.”
She grinned and kissed him again. He could get lost, kissing this woman.
“Challenge accepted,” she said.