Starlight :||: Duty. Family. Honor. #1

Chapter Six

Honor
Despite the weekend, students still had to attend classes and perform hops on Saturdays. This was a military base, not a weekend getaway. Fortunately, there was only one class and one hop every weekend.

"The bogey has good position right here," Viper stood at the front of the room, gesturing to the projector screen displaying the position of the planes on the hop Mav and Hollywood had taken that morning.

We'd started going up in pairs, learning to work together as a team. Ice and I had been paired together because of the two of us being on top of the leader board, our skills closest to each other. Afterwards, he'd come into the girl's locker room after John had left and I was halfway through getting changed, wanting to have a shower. My slim figure and muscular torso were bare to him as he paused by the door, taking everything in. Then his eyes met mine, and he slowly made his way towards me.

I pressed up against the cool metal of one of the lockers, unsure of what his intentions were. If he wanted to, I'd be happy to go for it right here on the bench in the middle of the locker room. But that wouldn't fix our problems. Growing nervous, I crossed my arms over my flat chest and my gaze flitted around the room.

"I'm not going to hurt you," He was frowning, concern lacing his features.

"I know," One hand went to his face, stroking his cheek.

"I wanted to invite you to dinner with my parents tonight, they'd love to see you again. Ma's always asking after you." I blinked at him in confusion. "Did you really think I was going to let you spend this weekend alone?

I'd said yes of course, not that I'd told my father that. I doubt he actually thought I'd show up to dinner with the strange woman living in my childhood home.

"Alright, freeze-frame," My father pointed to the footage right before the planes split. "Moment of choice. The F-14 is defensive, he has a chance to bug out right here. It's better to retire and save the aircraft than push a bad position. You stay in that diamond another three seconds, the bogey's going to blow you out of the sky."

Jester and Charlie stood around the screen, listening to everything the commander was saying. "You took a hard right, select zone five, you can extend an escape. You made a bad choice." My father berated Maverick, sat in the front frowning.

Charlie stepped forward, watching the screen as aircraft figures split. "Aircraft one performs a split S?" She muses out loud, turning to Pete. "That's the last thing you should do, the MiG's right on your tail. Freeze there, please. The MiG has you in his gun sight, what were you thinking at this point?"

"You can't think up there, you think, you're dead," Mav answered.

"That's a big gamble with a thirty million dollar plane, lieutenant," The woman raised an unimpressed brow. "Unfortunately, the gamble worked, the MiG never got a clean shot."

"Charlie?" Her gaze switched to me. "May I?" She nodded and the room turned to me, as John and I had taken up a position at the back as usual. "I understand where Maverick is coming from. Everything up there is too fast to slow down and think about it. Maverick," I looked at him. "You're flying is reckless based on you make decisions with the choices in front of you only. You should be making goals before you even reach the planes, planning and making calls to achieve that goal, despite how the enemy might react. You can't just go in there, fly straight to them and blow them out of the sky. There needs to be a plan in how you're going to control and influence the situation before you. Top Gun is here to teach us that." Maverick did not look happy with me, the muscle in his jaw working hard.

"Easy enough for you to say," Chipper smirked at me from across the aisle. "You seem to already have that skill."

"What's with the arrogance of pilots who think they know everything? As a pilot, you never stop learning. There is no peak level you can reach, there is never any situation you can fly into and know exactly how it's going to turn out. Top Gun can try and teach us as much as they can but the only person who's going to save you up there is you."