Damage Control (Valiant Knox) (7 page)

Captain Alphin took a few steps forward, stopping just in front of the lectern, and clasped his hands behind his back.

“I really hate having to use Sub-Lieutenant Rayne to get your attention, recruits. Having my eardrums perforated puts me in a foul mood, so I’m not going to say this twice. When any instructor is standing at the front of this room, there will be silence. If I have to get Rayne in here to use his superpowers, I will be pissed off, and you will pay the price.”

Captain Alphin nodded at Rayne, who saluted and then retreated toward the back of the room.

“What a pompous hard-ass,” someone muttered behind her, followed by a ripple of snickers from a few other recruits.

Mia turned her head far enough to see Steve had sat right behind her.
Great
. Just what she needed today—commentary from the a-hole contingent of the group. Steve saw her looking and flashed her a suave grin. Maybe some women would find that smarmy, rich-boy charisma attractive, but the prospect of him trying to charm her made a shudder trip down her back.

“Is there something going on over there I need to be made aware of?”

She turned her attention back to the front and found Captain Alphin glaring in her direction. Well, not exactly her direction, he seemed to be doing a really great job at looking through her still. No, that scowl seemed more directed at Steve behind her.

No one answered, though a few of the recruits who’d laughed shifted in their seats, until the CAFF turned his attention to bringing the screen at the front of the room online.

“So, apparently you’re all here to become fighter pilots. And the first thing a pilot needs to know is their ship or jet, and I mean from the inside out.” Captain Alphin typed on the remote datapad, bringing up a couple of diagrams on the large screen. “On the datapads in front of you, you’ll find schematics for the currently deployed V-29 multi-atmospheric fighter jet, as well as basic launch protocols every pilot must adhere to before each flight.”

Captain Alphin set the datapad down on the lectern and then faced the room again. “We’re going to head up to port level alpha, where, if you didn’t already know, the fighter jets are housed in bays alpha-one to delta-eight. You’ll get the chance to sit in a fighter jet and see the inside of a machine for yourself. After that, you’ll have two weeks to memorize these diagrams and protocols, as provided on the datapads. There will be a final exam before your maiden flight. If you don’t pass the theory, you will not be continuing any farther with the program, which most definitely includes flying any jets.”

A ripple of exclamations and quiet groans resonated about the room as Sub-Lieutenant Rayne and Captain Alphin led the way out of the ready room, recruits falling in behind them.

“Since the test in a few weeks is all about brains and not brawn, it’ll take out Steve and his crew, if they don’t fail at something else before that,” Kayla murmured from where she walked next to Mia.

“We can only hope.”

Something tickled the back of her neck and she flinched into a half duck, before turning. Steve stood not a step behind her, conceited grin firmly in place.

“Were you ladies talking about yours truly?”

Kayla scowled. “Yeah, we were trying to decide how long we’d have to put up with seeing your annoying face before you washed out.”

Despite Kayla’s insult, Steve’s grin didn’t budge.

Mia crossed her arms. When it came to guys like Steve, ignoring them was always the smartest way of dealing. But even though she’d given him her best cold shoulder, he closed the distance to stride beside her. She trained her gaze in the middle of Captain Alphin’s back as an icy, uneasy feeling washed through her.

“And how did you make it into the fighter-pilot program, sweetheart? It’s cute, really, that you think you can cut it.”

An angry flush rose up her neck, but she clamped her lips together against saying anything in retaliation. Steve was a classic bully, and no matter what she said in return, she’d somehow come out on the losing end.

As the group reached the transit-porter and squeezed on, Leigh spun, his sharp gaze landing on her, almost as if he’d felt the weight of her constant stare. His attention shifted to Steve beside her for a split second, then focused on her.

Something hot sparked in his eyes, his gaze lingering just a little longer than it should, before he turned away from her. A storm of tingling warmth rushed her, stealing her breath for a long second.

Common sense returned like a cold shower. Her plan of staying detached around him was going to work
so well
if she had a mini-meltdown every time he met her eyes.

“So, what do you think?” Steve asked from right beside her.

Somehow, while she’d been in a mental free fall over Leigh’s heart-stopping gaze, Steve had moved into her personal space and had apparently been talking to her.

“I’m sorry?” She took a big step away from him. Well, as far as she could get, considering the crowd jammed into the transit.

“Tonight, after messdeck, you and me, and a bottle of prohibited vodka…?”

She almost threw up, right onto Steve’s incorrectly laced boots. “Is that supposed to be romantic or something?”

“No, that’s meant to be two people getting together to blow off some steam in the best way possible. Naked.”

Gag
. Lucky she’d been too tired to eat much of her breakfast.

“Sorry, Steve, but I’ll be studying after messdeck tonight.”

Steve shrugged. “Another night, then.”

Before she could correct his assumption that she would
ever
want to go anywhere alone with him and a bottle of prohibited vodka—let alone get naked—he’d moved off to stand with the other Ackerly a-holes.

Kayla eyed Steve as she might a rabid animal. “I get the feeling he’s one of those guys who thinks when a girl says no, she really means yes, or maybe just needs a bit of extra convincing.”

Chapter Seven

L
eigh strolled around the far end of the fighter jet, nodding at Lawler, who was waiting for another recruit to finish their allocated five minutes in the cockpit to study the controls firsthand.

While many of the recruits took the morning’s activity seriously, learning as much as they could, others still seemed to think this was some sort of high school field trip where they could goof around and slack off. Well, if those recruits hadn’t found an attitude adjustment by the end of the day, he’d be more than happy to provide them with one.

He stopped and glared at one of the morons in question. Steve Robinson would not make it through this program, of that Leigh had no doubt. He saw the guy’s type every year—overconfident, self-serving imbeciles who thought the world owed them and they didn’t need to lift a finger to find success. Robinson was one of those guys seasoned soldiers knew to stay the heck away from because he was likely to get himself, if not someone else, killed.

Right now, said moron loitered a few steps away from Mia and another female recruit. He didn’t like the way old Steve had been hanging around her all day, but clearly it was none of his business.

Maybe if he and Mia had met under different circumstances, he could have started something with her. She might be beautiful, smart, intriguing, and a million other things, but too many people relied on him to lose his sanity and choose a woman over that.

“Robinson being a d-bag again?” Seb stopped beside him, folding his arms over a datapad and holding it against his chest. “We’ve got to make sure we wash that guy out in the next session. You know he asked me before how a guy gets
special items and privileges
around here? Like, what, we might be running some kind cryztal-lab or bootlegging operation out of echo-ten bay?”

“Idiot,” Leigh muttered, shaking his head. He cut his gaze away from said idiot. Instead, he glanced at Seb. “Where are we up to?”

Seb lowered the datapad and touched the screen, bringing up an alphabetical list of the recruits. “Almost done. Next recruit in the jet will be Wolfe, Mia.”

“I’ll take this one.” The words fell out of his mouth before he’d thought about it, and he immediately wanted to take them back again. Goddamn it, what the hell had happened to his careful self-control? He wasn’t impulsive. Yet the last three days had seen him slip off the straight and narrow several times.

Seb nodded and got distracted by some recruits who were messing around too close to a bench fitted with many very expensive, state-of-the-art tools. As the sub-lieutenant went to herd the rowdy children back with the rest of the class, Leigh strode closer to the nose of the jet, where Lawler oversaw the recruits who hadn’t taken their turn…plus a few hangers like Robinson, who apparently had nothing better to do than pester the others.

“Recruit Wolfe.”

Mia straightened to attention, stepping forward. “Sir, yes, sir?”

For some reason, her very correct response smashed right into the memory of her whispering his name last night, and he faltered a step before stopping.

“You’re up next, Wolfe.” He cleared his throat, since his voice had come out husky, and definitely a decibel lower.

Mia’s gaze caught his in a way that seemed too knowing. Could she see how her mere presence agitated him? Worse, could
other people
see the way she stirred him?

He trailed a step behind her, over to the side of the fighter jet, and waited while she climbed up the side and lowered herself into the cockpit. Once she was in, he scaled to the top and then looked down, forcing himself to focus on the familiar controls and not the gleam of Mia’s golden hair or the slender line of her neck.

With a few short directions, he showed her each instrument and then went through the prelaunch protocols. Every so often she would ask a question or interject an observation, which told him not only was she damned gorgeous, but he’d also been right when he’d guessed that she had a decent brain in that head of hers.

When he’d told her everything she needed to know, he descended the side of the craft and waited at the bottom, leaning back against the side. Like all the other recruits, she had five minutes to go over what she’d just been shown. Efficiently, when her time was up, she came out without him needing to remind her.

As she reached the last drop off the side of the jet, Leigh automatically stepped up and held a hand out for her, clasping her forearm to help her down. He’d done it a million times before—often with Bren, sometimes with Seb, Lawler, or other pilots. And occasionally he’d been the recipient of a hand-down himself after a particularly long or stressful battle. His fighter pilots were a close-knit bunch, and they looked out for one another.

But somehow, as Mia dropped down next to him and he hung on for longer than he needed to, the supportive gesture became weighted with a whole lot of other stuff going on under the surface.

“Thank you, sir.” Mia’s hand tightened where she held his arm, rebooting his brain that had apparently stalled at some point.

He dropped her arm and backed up a few steps. “Dismissed, Recruit.”

Mia nodded and stepped around him, walking over to join the same woman he’d seen her with earlier.

Leigh gave himself a mental shake.
Are you ten kinds of moron, or what, Alphin?

Did he
want
someone to realize he had an inappropriate interest in one of his recruits? Standing there, all but drooling on her was not exactly being subtle. He was at least fifteen years her senior, and her damned CO to boot. If that wasn’t enough to ice-over his desires, he didn’t know what was.

Leigh walked over to where Seb was lining up the last two recruits.

“I’ll take the group down to the physical training room for the next session.”

Seb nodded. “See you down there in a few.”

Leigh made an announcement over the general chatter and within a few moments, Lawler and he had the recruits headed down several levels so they could start the day’s physical tests. He and the other instructors needed to see what they were dealing with in terms of fitness levels before the recruits could move on to any kind of endurance challenges.

The rings he made these recruits jump through to earn their wings might seem extreme, but if a pilot became separated from their squadron, he wanted to be sure that person could last in the vast, mind-altering emptiness of space, or pulse-pounding fear of being behind enemy lines until help arrived.

Bren was waiting for them down in the PT room, and once there, they got the recruits split up into separate groups; some would do a cardio test, some a strength test, while others would be tested in basic hand-to-hand combat, with each group rotating so the recruits had a turn at all activities.

Leigh tried not to notice that Mia had been assigned to Bren for hand-to-hand combat, along with Steve-Frigging-Robinson. Seb had been right; they needed to wash that guy out of the program. Even now he was big-mouthing about his fight prowess back at Ackerly. The moron was really starting to get on his nerves. The basic moves learned at pre mil were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to serious combat. If Steve was too full of his own self-importance to realize that, he’d simply wash himself out faster.

He set the two other groups going on their tests, and then paced back and forth across the open space between the workout machines and the mats, where Bren had matched the recruits against one another. He didn’t want to be interested in Mia’s progress, but it seemed the rational parts of his mind had abandoned him. Eventually, as each contest wound down and the numbers of recruits left standing dwindled, he gave up on pretending he wasn’t watching. A crowd of other recruits who’d already bombed out of their own tests had gathered around the mats to cheer on their favorites, so Leigh took himself over to stand next to Seb and Lawler.

There were three recruits left: Mia, Robinson, and the woman Mia had befriended—apparently, her name was Kayla. Bren started up another round, and Leigh watched with rising interest as Mia and Kayla shared a look, seeming to arrive at some silent agreement. Mia and Kayla both moved at the same time, rounding out on either side of Robinson.

“Come on, ladies, who wants some of this first?” The guy held out his arms, lapping up the cheers from his buddies on the other side of the ring. While the idiot was distracted, both Mia and Kayla moved at the same time, quickly and efficiently taking Robinson down to the mat. At first, the guy laughed, but when Kayla managed to flip him and then Mia stuck her knee in his back, the snicker turned into a litany of curses.

Beside Leigh, Seb cracked up laughing, while Bren declared Robinson out of the match. The guy bitched about the girls cheating all the way across the mat, where he took his place next to his buddies and then eyed Bren with a baleful expression.

“Stevie-boy isn’t so chummy now,” Seb commented. “Those girls better watch out. If he’s like every other humiliated jerk-wad I know, he’ll be looking for payback.”

Seb was right. Robinson would definitely want to return his mortification in kind. “We’ll keep an eye on him, but hopefully he’ll be gone before he gets the opportunity.”

On the mat, Bren oversaw the final match between Mia and Kayla. Though Mia was a good head shorter than her opponent, she had speed on her side and appeared to have an innate ability to predict her adversary’s movements. An instinct like that would serve her well as a fighter pilot, if she made it through the program. And from everything he’d seen so far today—no, everything he’d seen of Mia starting with her selfless bravery on board the shuttle—she had the makings of a star fighter pilot if she was willing to push herself harder than she ever had in her life.

And what does that mean for you, exactly?
Hadn’t he been telling himself that he needed to hope she dropped out or failed the program sooner rather than later, so he could avoid the exact mess he found himself in today? What would happen if she made it into the elite force, under his command twenty-four hours a day?

Disaster.

When it came to her, cracks had formed in his outer defenses. The only way to deal with this anomaly would be to have her transferred out from his command. But, how fair was it to change the course of her career simply to avoid having to deal with her and keep his desire in check?

Yeah, it made him an all-round jerk.

The match between Mia and Kayla lasted for a few long minutes, until Mia found an opening and took control of the situation, baiting Kayla into leaving her right side open. Mia slipped in and had the other woman down in another second.

Bren walked onto the mat as Kayla moved back and the crowd around them cheered.

“Okay, okay. Recruit Wolfe, as a final challenge, you get to take on me. And if you win, you get a much-coveted free pass on any upcoming unit within the training program. If you don’t think you can pass a subject, or fail a test, then the free pass will be your second chance to successfully complete the training program.”

A surprised murmur rippled around the crowd. Yeah, a free pass was a great thing for a recruit to have up their sleeve, but Bren offered the same to every new bunch of potential recruits. And in all the years he and Bren had been training together, he could count on one hand the number of recruits who’d beaten her to win the prize.

Mia simply retreated to the edge of the mat, waiting for Bren to call the match into action. The two women circled each other, then Bren went in low, no doubt to test Mia’s range and reflexes. Despite Bren’s steadily increasing challenges and attacks Mia managed to hold up her own.

Just when it looked like Bren would get the upper hand, Mia changed her tactics and got Bren off-balance. Right away, Mia took advantage of the opportunity and knocked Bren to the mat, claiming victory.

The crowd cheered, and Mia grinned as she offered Bren a hand up.

As his XO stood, Bren caught his eye. Of course, now she expected him to take on Mia in one final challenge. Of the few recruits that had bested Bren over the years, none had been able to take him when he’d gone up against them.

Just one problem: he didn’t want to face Mia across the mat. It didn’t really run with his plan of distancing himself from her.

However, he couldn’t refuse, because Bren and Seb would wonder what was up with him. Instead of coming up with an excuse and fleeing, he shrugged out of his uniform jacket and handed it off to Seb, then unfastened the top few catches of his shirt.

“Congratulations, Wolfe, you’ve got yourself a free pass.” Bren motioned to him, and Leigh found his feet taking him out onto the mat. “Now, if you can take down Captain Alphin, you get a fast track into the final days of the program, whether you pass the initial days or not.”

An awed murmur rippled through the crowd. Yeah, it was an honor worth killing over, but not a single person had managed to win it yet.

He came to a stop in front of Mia, who appeared to be sizing him up.

“So, Wolfe, are you willing to take on the CAFF?” Bren shouted the last few words as the other recruits started cheering.

Mia nodded, her expression determined. But Leigh caught something else in the flash of her velvet-brown eyes, something entirely uncertain. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who thought this was a bad idea.

Bren called to begin and a hush fell over the crowd, but he and Mia just stood there and stared at each other. A long moment went by, and then another, while he tried to decide exactly how he was going to do this and hold on to his sanity.

Mia shifted into a defensive stance, obviously not willing to go on the attack with him as she had with the others. Well, he could accommodate her there. The sooner they got this over with, the better for their agreement to keep their distance.

Leigh lunged at her, but before he could get her in a grip, she’d slipped out of his way. Damn, she was quick and light. Yeah, he’d seen it while observing her engage the other opponents, but experiencing it firsthand was another matter. He got her back in his sights and tried a few other moves, once almost getting the better of her. But each time, she managed to elude him. It didn’t help that the feel of her silken, damp skin under his hands or coming up against her body was damned distracting.