Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Hadn't Flown in Thirty-Two Years
Captain Ethan Carter looked at me as though the emergency had just found a way to become even more unbelievable.
"Phoenix?"
The airplane shuddered around us.
"That Phoenix?"
I didn't answer.
There wasn't time.
The bank angle had passed forty-three degrees, and we were losing altitude faster than I liked.
Emily was still staring at me.
I could see the questions behind her eyes.
Why are you here?
Why this flight?
Why didn't you tell me?
Why did thirty-two years have to end like this?
All good questions.
None mattered while the aircraft was trying to kill us.
"Thrust settings?" I asked.
Carter blinked.
"What?"
"Engines. Are they responding normally?"
"Yes."
"Autothrottle?"
"Disconnected."
"Flight controls?"
"Nothing useful."
"Trim?"
"Intermittent. Essentially frozen."
I leaned toward the center display.
Two enormous turbofan engines.
That was our chance.
Not a good chance.
But death doesn't require good options.
It only requires that you run out of them.
"Captain," I said, "reduce thrust on the right engine three percent."
Carter didn't move.
"I know what you're thinking."
"Do you?"
"You're thinking differential thrust might reduce the right bank."
"That's exactly what I'm thinking."
"On a 777, response time could be too slow."
"It will be."
"And asymmetric thrust at this angle could destabilize us further."
"It could."
"So you're asking me to gamble 186 lives."
I looked at the horizon.
"No. I'm telling you you're already gambling them by doing nothing."
His jaw tightened.
For a moment, rank filled the cockpit.
It didn't matter that I wasn't military anymore.
Pilots recognize command when it enters a room.
So do other pilots.
Carter moved the right throttle back slightly.
The engines changed pitch.
We waited.
Nothing.
Emily looked at the bank indicator.
Forty-three degrees.
Forty-three.
Forty-two point nine.
Carter leaned forward.
"Again."
I shook my head.
"Wait."
Every instinct in an emergency screams for action.
Test flying teaches the opposite.
Aircraft need time to answer.
Overcorrecting kills.
Forty-two point seven.
Emily whispered, "It's moving."
"Increase left thrust two percent."
Carter obeyed.
This time without arguing.
The left engine spooled.
The bank slowed.
Forty-two.
Forty-one point eight.
It was almost nothing.
Inside that cockpit, it felt miraculous.
Captain Carter looked at me.
"Where did you learn this?"
"Edwards."
His expression changed.
The old name still carried weight among aviators.
Emily finally found her voice.
"She was chief test pilot."
Carter looked at her.
"You know her?"
Emily's face tightened.
"She's my mother."
Silence.
Even the warning alarms seemed distant for half a heartbeat.
Carter looked between us.
"Your mother?"
"Yes."
"You never said—"
"Because we didn't speak."
That hurt more than she intended.
Or maybe exactly as much.
"Focus," I said.
Emily flinched.
I hated myself for sounding cold.
But emotion could wait.
Altitude couldn't.
We had descended through thirty-one thousand feet.
The aircraft was still banking right, but the angle was decreasing.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Forty.
Thirty-nine.
The cabin behind us remained filled with screams and prayers.
Hannah stood at the cockpit doorway gripping the frame.
"Captain," she said, "passengers are asking what's happening."
Carter glanced at me.
"What do I tell them?"
I checked the instruments.
"Tell them we're working the problem."
"They just heard me tell them they were going to die."
"Then give them a better update."
Carter keyed the intercom.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Carter again. We have someone assisting us in the cockpit. We are attempting an alternative control method. Remain seated and stay braced."
He paused.
Then added, "We are still fighting."
That sentence traveled through the aircraft.
I didn't hear the response.
But later, passengers would tell me everything changed when they heard it.
They were still terrified.
But terror with hope is different from terror without it.
I put both hands near the throttles.
Carter noticed the scars.
"Wraith?"
I looked at him.
He knew.
Not everything.
But enough.
"You read about it?"
"Every Air Force pilot did."
"They said I caused it."
Carter didn't reply.
Emily did.
"They lied."
The words struck deeper than I expected.
Thirty-two years ago, I would have given anything to hear her say that.
Now I couldn't even look at her.
"Bank thirty-five," I said.
"We need to get below thirty."
Emily adjusted our descent estimate.
"At current rate we've got time, but we're still drifting west."
"Nearest suitable airport?"
Carter pulled up navigation data.
"Portland. But controlling a landing like this—"
"Don't think about landing yet."
"What do we think about?"
"Surviving the next five minutes."
That was how test pilots stayed alive.
Never fly the whole emergency at once.
Fly the next five seconds.
Then the five after that.
The aircraft's bank slowly decreased.
Thirty-three.
Thirty-two.
Thirty-one.
The muscles in my arms began to tremble.
Not from physical effort.
From memory.
The Wraith cockpit returned in flashes.
Red warning lights.
A prototype aircraft worth billions.
A hydraulic manifold engineers knew could rupture under thermal load.
I hadn't known.
They had.
Two days before the test, engineers Daniel Price and Margaret Lowe had submitted a critical warning.
The program director buried it.
The Pentagon review board later claimed no such warning existed.
Then Daniel died in the observation area when my aircraft crashed after I ejected.
Margaret disappeared from the program.
And I became the convenient explanation for a disaster nobody wanted traced to a twelve-billion-dollar contract.
"Sarah."
Emily's voice pulled me back.
"What?"
"You're shaking."
"I'm fine."
"Your hand."
I looked down.
She was right.
My scarred fingers trembled on the throttle.
I pulled them away.
"I haven't flown since 1992."
Carter stared.
"You haven't touched controls in thirty-two years?"
"No."
"And you're doing this from memory?"
"Some things don't leave."
The truth was darker.
Some things refuse to leave.
I had spent decades waking at 3:17 in the morning hearing hydraulic warnings that weren't there.
I avoided airports whenever possible.
I drove fourteen hours instead of flying to my sister's funeral.
I couldn't watch air shows.
I couldn't even stand beneath low-flying jets without feeling my chest close.
And yet, now that I was inside a cockpit again, the fear wasn't where I expected it.
It wasn't in front of me.
It was behind me.
In 1992.
In the past.
This aircraft was different.
These people were alive.
This emergency could still be changed.
Bank twenty-eight.
Emily exhaled.
"We're coming level."
"Not level," I said. "Controlled."
There was a difference.
Without hydraulics, control would remain crude and delayed.
Thrust could influence yaw and roll.
Pitch might be managed through power, trim remnants, speed, and luck.
But landing?
That was something else.
Carter understood.
"Even if we get her level, how do we descend?"
"Power."
"And flare?"
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't have one.
Emily looked at me.
"Mom."
The word felt strange.
Tender.
Dangerous.
I kept my eyes on the instruments.
"Later."
"What if there isn't a later?"
I nearly told her not to say that.
Then I realized she was right.
Maybe we had minutes.
Maybe ten.
Maybe thirty.
Maybe the next failure would end everything.
Emily swallowed.
"I found the Wraith files."
"I know."
"I put that sentence in the invitation because I didn't know what else to write."
"I know."
"I should have called."
"Emily—"
"I should have called fifteen years ago."
The cockpit became very quiet inside me.
Outside, alarms still sounded.
Carter was coordinating with air traffic control.
Hannah was relaying instructions.
The aircraft shook.
But all I saw was my daughter's face.
She had been ten when the Wraith crashed.
Young enough to need me.
Old enough to remember the headlines.
PILOT ERROR KILLS TWO.
PHOENIX FALLS.
AIR FORCE TEST PILOT IGNORED SAFETY LIMITS.
My photograph appeared everywhere.
Emily's classmates repeated what their parents heard on television.
As she grew older, the shame hardened.
At twenty-seven, after one final argument, she stopped speaking to me.
And I let her.
That was my failure.
Not the Wraith.
Her.
"I was angry," she said.
"We don't have to do this now."
"Maybe we do."
I finally looked at her.
"Then survive first."
Her eyes filled.
She nodded.
"Okay."
Carter suddenly spoke.
"Sarah, we've got another problem."
I turned.
A new warning appeared.
Fuel imbalance.
The differential thrust we were using to control the bank was beginning to create secondary problems.
Worse, engine temperatures weren't matching.
"Left engine EGT climbing," Emily said.
I leaned toward the display.
Too fast.
If we lost an engine, differential thrust control would vanish.
And with it, our only way to steer.
"Reduce left thrust."
Carter did.
The aircraft began rolling right again.
Twenty-nine.
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
"Temperature?"
"Still climbing."
Thirty-two degrees.
I stared at the instruments.
We couldn't keep the left engine at elevated thrust.
But without it, the airplane returned to the failed-control position.
A trap.
One engine was giving us control.
And using it might destroy the engine.
Carter looked at me.
"What now, Phoenix?"
Thirty-two years earlier, men had asked me the same question.
Back then, I had chosen to stay with the aircraft too long.
Two people died.
This time, 186 lives waited behind us.
I reached for the throttles.
"Now," I said, "we find out whether this airplane wants to live."
May you like
Then the left-engine warning turned red.
To be continued in Chapter 3.
