The spring morning air was crisp and cold, and it sent a chill down Scott's back and through the thin fabric of the flight suit he wore as he stood out on the tarmac beside his A-10C with the crew chief for his plane. A half-dozen inspection panels were open on the jets' fuselage and wings, with APU hoses hooked up and cables linked to diagnostic carts stretching out across the concrete of the ready-alert hardpan.
The fair-haired pilot was fond of his crew chief, and the pair had a good working relationship based on a healthy amount of mutual appreciation, expressed primarily through backhanded compliments on his part mixed in with genuine ones and an upbeat attitude, and heaping amounts of feigned disdain and irritation coupled with a firm belief that pilots were barely a run above ameobas on the intellectual scale on hers, reaching in extreme cases to grudging small compliments.
One thing he knew could always be guaranteed to help any maintenance on the A-10C go well was a helping of coffee and a pastry from the bases' mess, and Scott handed over both as he approached Val, the sturdy red-headed woman in charge of chasing the junior mechanics and techs around to perform maintenance on 'his' plane.
"G'mornin' Val," he said with a cheery air as he handed over the coffee and pastry, which were swiped away as she glowered at him from under the brim of her cap as he sipped on his own beverage and stowed his helmet bag and logbooks in it behind the jets' front wheel, his survival vest going atop the pile.
"Who made you th' fuggin' weatherman," she grumbled back between mouthfuls of the pastry. "And what took you so long? Stylin' yer hair in those pilots' VIP quarters of yours, and getting in a session at the nail bar?"
"Yeah, even got a massage in too," he replied breezily. "How's my pretty girl looking?" he said with an appreciable smile as he followed her forward toward the ground attack jet.
Even charitably it would've been a stretch to call the A-10 pretty, in any of it's incarnations. It was a plane that was all business. It was designed entirely for one thing: blowing the ever-loving shit out of anything that walked, crawled, drove or otherwise was bound to the ground with a sizable assortment of ordnance. It was very much made for that purpose, flying low and - in fighter jet terms, at least - slow, and being made to absorb punishment that would crumple other planes like tinfoil. And the entire plane was designed and built around a cannon singularly designed to rip tanks apart, the almighty GAU-8A Avenger rotary 30mm cannon.
Scott loved his plane.
It wasn't a hot rod, it wasn't fast, and it wasn't pretty, but damn, it was cool to him. He loved flying the ground-attack jet, and wouldn't trade it for anything else.
He turned his head to listen as Val explained that the crew had virtually pulled an all-nighter to fix several bugs in the jets' software and run diagnostics on parts close to the end of their fatigue life. By sheer luck, they were close to finishing up, and she figured Scott's check flights would come later that morning, after she'd gone over a few forms with him.
He nodded as they did a walkaround of the jet, still wearing it's highly personalised lightning-and-thunder colour scheme. Given that some of the bugs had been with weapon systems and related hardware, a pair of sidewinder air-to-air missiles hung on their adaptor unde the the jet's starboard wing, and the loading panel for the 30mm cannon was open too, the loader parked nearby. To Scott's eye, the planes' numerous underwing and underbody hardpoints being empty left the jet looking light and almost incomplete.
He opened his mouth with a grin on his face to make another comment, as the bases' air raid siren began to sound.
A look of alarm passed between he and the short engineer, but lasted an eyeblink as the screech of jet engines tore through the moment, overtaken by a wave of warm air, the force strong enough to slap the breath out of the pilots' lungs and the stroboscopic flash of an explosion searing his eyes. Heartbeats later the sound caught up. A rumbling whump that that rolled through the air and across his body, resonating deep in his ribcage, and followed by the roaring thunder of other aircraft storming the base. Glimmering darts shot through the air, lashing down at parked shapes with lines of fire and sending oily plumes of smoke into the skies.
The rolling kaleidoscope of explosions, sound, and sensation overwhelmed him; the A-10 two down from his own exploded in a sheet of flame and a raining shower of parts, the concussion like a gods' angry hand as it flicked him to the ground.
As his eyes swum back to vision, Val was leaning over his face, screaming words he couldn't hear through the whining in his ears. Her lips moved in blurred lines until his senses snapped back into clear focus, as she pulled him to his feet and thrust his helmet into his hands.
"-king idiot, get in the plane and get into the damn air! The base is being bombed out from under our feet, and that plane ain't gonna do much good on the ground! Go, she's fuelled and ready for a hot start!"
Stumbling a few steps as he regained his bearings, Scott staggered toward the A-10 as Val yelled orders to her people, the aircraft maintenance crew looking more like a Formula One pit crew as they blurred into action.
He zipped his survival gear into place, and swung himself up the crew ladder and into the cockpit, buckling his harnesses and hitting the ENGINE START button as soon as Val gave him a thumbs up. As soon as the jets' electrical power came to life, he heard voices in his headset, announcing the enemy overhead, and the other pilots moving to engage.
He snapped switches, hit buttons and tapped keys as the jets' big turbofan engines came to life with a howl and then a roar. As soon as Val had slapped the steps and ladder shut in the side of the nose of the plane, he powered the canopy closed and fed power to the engines, feeling the jet start to roll.
He buckled the rubbery, stale-smelling shape of his oxygen mask into place over the stubble of his chin, speaking in sharp, short tones as the jet crawled along the ground, feeling more vulnerable with every minute.
"This is Valentine, rolling for takeoff!"
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