Eleven Lives
Even after four weeks at Top Gun, Vi was still overwhelmed at the size of the training base and just how easy it was to get lost.
Half of the rooms on-base she hadn’t even been in; many of them the pilot didn’t see herself stepping in at all. Navigating the halls felt like an endless uphill battle, Sisyphus and his rock, only for you to come straight back to where you started.
They hadn’t been given a single damn map, either; whether it be for operational security standards or poor planning, it was a poor move from the senior officers, who were the ones most likely to berate you for turning up late or not turning up at all.
A couple days after their exhibition to the Drunken Sailor, and a less couple days after Vi was nursing the most skull-splitting hangover of her life, she received a text from an unknown number. Blunt, straight to the point, simple.
4:32P.M.
Saturday morning. 0900. Flight Sim Room 516. Don’t be late. – Cap C.K
Caitlyn didn’t need to sign off the message; there was only one person Vi knew on this base that spoke as robotically and curt as she did, even over texts. The pilot smiled to herself as she thumbed in a response:
Aye-aye Cap. Get ready to eat your words. – Lt V.V
But as Saturday drew closer, and Vi mulled over the fact she’d be spending one of the very limited mornings off she got during training proving a point to the stuck-up captain, her anxieties grew. Perhaps she had bitten off more than she could chew; she’d only done the canyon run a couple times, and despite her skill, it was still a very difficult run that required maximum concentration and effort.
Doing it blindfolded, however? And the fact that if she got it wrong, she’d never hear the end of it?
It was as if Vi had removed her own floaties, chucked herself in the deep end, and was now blaming the rest of the staff for not teaching her how to swim.
Vi had set off a half-hour early before their designated meet time to ensure that she got to the training room on-time and to make a mental map of her surroundings as she went. And she’d woken up even earlier than that to prepare her uniform from any prying eyes that may emerge from a simple classroom session (Caitlyn seemed the type of officer to expect 100% perfection on uniforms, even in informal environments). Electing to wear the watered down version of their formal dress, a khaki shirt adorned with her metal wings and rank badge and standard brown trousers (or “peanut butters” as they were aptly nicknamed by her fellow Navymen and women), Vi checked that each crease was sharp enough to cut diamond before shooting out of the door.
Tens of unknown rooms whizzed past her as she sprinted down the corridor in search of Room 516. She spotted a small chapel, which explained the singing she was woken up to in her accommodation on Sunday mornings, and a tucked-away old fashioned library filled to the brim with books on warfare and the history of flight.
516 was a miniscule box room, hidden in one of the corners of the base between another classroom and a set of toilets. Through the slightly frosted glass pane embedded in the door, Vi could make out a single flight simulator setup, a few wooden desks and accompanying chairs pushed to the side, and the greyish-blue silhouette of her captain sitting on one of the desks. She inhaled a sharp breath and pushed inside.
Caitlyn’s head snapped up as soon as Vi walked in. She wore a navy blue jumper and a sky-blue shirt beneath, perfectly ironed collars peeking up over the neck of the sweatshirt. Her beret sat on the surface beside her. “You’re late,” she stated firmly.
Vi glanced up at the wall-mounted analogue clock on the other side of the room. Two minutes past nine o’clock.
Shit.
“Sorry,” Vi grumbled, hand snapping to her temple in a salute before removing her own cover. “Have a word with management, it’s a maze out there.”
The captain hummed, hopping down off of the table and strolling towards the flight simulator. The contraption looked as though it had seen better days; the leather surface of the pilot’s bucket seat bolted down to the floor was cracked and fading and there was a single hairline fracture running down the front of the curved monitor. The helmet itself seemed relatively functional, bar the electrical tape holding the microphone wiring in place.
And the electrical tape plastered all over the front visor, presumably courtesy of the captain.
Vi chuckled dryly to herself and walked over to the flight simulator, picking up the helmet. “You weren’t kidding, huh,” she murmured, rotating the helmet between her hands.
“You have a point to prove, Vanderson,” Caitlyn retorted. She took her place beside the flight simulator. “I’m not really sure who you’re trying to impress at this point, though.”
The other pilot shrugged the snide comment off and slid into the bucket seat, nestling the flight helmet in the crease between her stomach and her thighs. “Are you going to let me review the map at least?” she asked as Caitlyn leant down to switch on the simulator. Vi noted the perfume she was wearing: light and floral: and the fact she was wearing perfume to a private training session.
“You won’t always get a map in a real dogfight, will you?” the captain said teasingly, offering Vi a small smile.
Caitlyn’s sadistic smirk was the last thing Vi saw before the captain’s hands placed the helmet over her head. Her vision of the monitor was entirely obscured; all she could rely on now was the sound bleeding through the tinny helmet headphones and the tiny slit of light showing the control column and throttle by her hands.
The indistinct sound of an engines’ afterburners roared into her speakers, drowning out all outer sounds entirely. Her hand jutted up to turn the volume down; the last thing she wanted to do was have to explain how her hearing blew to her senior officers.
“When will I know to go?” Vi asked, voice probably a little too loud. She could barely hear anything apart from the sounds of flight.
“You’re approaching the canyon now,” Caitlyn replied. She leant down to speak into Vi’s right ear, gaze flickering between the pilot and the simulated map on the screen. It showed every statistic a pilot may need to monitor in the edges circling the screen, including airspeed, ammunition count, and altitude.
Vi tested the waters with her control columns. She tilted the stick between her legs lightly, and cursed to herself when there was no resistance at all. The sound of wind screamed at her.
In regular flight, control columns tended to be as stiff as a broom, especially at high speeds. Only small movements were required to divert your jet, and to perform stark banks, a real push was needed against the stick. It was the same with the throttle. Maximum resistance for maximum control.
In the flight simulator, however, Vi realised that aspect had been removed entirely. Whether by design or because the engineers who set it up had never been in a plane in their life, it was going to make Vi’s life ten times more difficult.
Right on cue, the sound of metal scraping and impacting against a hard surface followed by an earth-shattering explosion filled her speaker. “Fuck,” she grunted.
Caitlyn chuckled slyly. “You didn’t even make it to the canyon. You nosedived into the ground,” she explained. Shadows danced around the small sliver of vision Vi had left as the captain leant over to reset the simulator. “Be careful with your control column. It’s very sensitive.”
Vi grumbled as she heard the engines again. She experimented with the control stick, barely touching it to the right this time, and was pleased when she didn’t hear the sounds of even more crashing or billowing winds. Miraculously, she made it into the canyon’s mouth and ripped past the first curve.
Caitlyn watched as she approached the second curve, only to fly straight into the dip of it. Amber flames and miscellaneous metal parts shattered across the screen. “And again,” Caitlyn stated.
So Vi went again. Sweat began trickling down her temples and stuck her shirt to her back; either the air conditioning was busted or Caitlyn was really trying to simulate the real-life conditions within a jet’s cockpit. The sound of explosions filled her headphones.
“Again,” the captain said.
Vi went again. And again. And again and again and again.
Each run, she tried to picture the canyon in her mind, where the corners and dips were and where she needed to drop her airspeed and altitude. Planning out each of her strifes as she carried on, palms now slick with perspiration against her control column and throttle.
Caitlyn was taking no prisoners. She offered no advice, no heads-up of if Vi was about to crash or if she was in the clear, just telling her to run it until she went down in flames or survived somehow.
On her eleventh run, after dipping right then left then right and another right and then left, the echoing roar of the engine bouncing through the enclosed space dissipated out into open air. Vi thought she may have accidentally flown above the canyon, which would mean another run of the simulator; until she ripped her helmet off, its padding still soggy with sweat, and realised she’d actually made it out of the canyon.
“Fuck yeah!” she bellowed, jumping up out of the bucket seat and grinning ear-to-ear. Dark stains circled her armpits and all up her back, but the pilot didn’t care. She’d done it; she’d actually done it. She circled around to Caitlyn, expecting the captain to be basking in her victory also, but her cold eyes just flickered over the other pilot. Vi threw her arms out. “Well?”
“Congratulations,” she drawled sarcastically, a chill in her tone. “Would be great if you had eleven lives to spare.”
Vi scoffed at her and shook her head. “Still did it. You don’t like being proven wrong, do you?” She added the last remark as a snarl.
Caitlyn’s jaw feathered as she ground her molars. “You still crashed ten times. You don’t get to respawn in a real dogfight. You’ve proven nothing.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” the lieutenant snapped, furrowing her eyebrows in a deep scowl.
Caitlyn straightened her back and folded her arms across her chest. “I am still your captain, Vanderson, do not swear-“
“Don’t give me that bullshit.” Vi cut her off instantly. “You knew that run was near impossible. If I wasn’t blindfolded I’d have had it first time. And I did have it, first time, in case you’ve forgotten. Or were you too busy getting out-manoeuvred by the better pilot for it to stay in your memory?”
“You think you’re the better pilot, Vanderson?” Caitlyn’s voice was rising now, octaves going up by the second. “I’ve had more air-to-air kills than you’ve had hot dinners. Humble yourself, Lieutenant.”
“Fuck you, Captain,” Vi spat, lips curling back into a snarl. “Why the Hell did you even agree to come back? You’ve got the people skills of a wet blanket.”
“I wasn’t given a choice!” The captain was shouting now, temperature rising in her face. Her cheeks tinged red. “If I had any sort of say in it, I would’ve stayed at home, and my life would have been miles better having not met you.”
Caitlyn paused for a moment. Vi stared intensely at her. There was the slightest hint of hurt burning in the flames behind her eyes.
“Vanguard is the worst possible callsign they could’ve given you,” she finally added. “I wouldn’t follow you to the chow hall, let alone into battle. Try Virulent; one day all that ego and bravado will get you and your team killed, Vanderson. And I refuse to be the one to pick up the pieces.”
“Oh yeah?” Vi sneered, snatching her cover up off the table and slotting it over her head angrily. “Killshot is the perfect callsign for you; nothing else matters as long as you get your fuckin’ numbers up. Enjoy yourself up on that high horse, captain. Someone will come and buck you off eventually.”
Vi turned to leave, but threw a comment over her shoulder as she turned her back. "You think you know me, know us, just because of some damn files. Well, I did my own research, Cap." She gritted her teeth. "I know your mother's that damn politician, Cassandra Kiramman, the one that's all so trigger happy when it comes to sending kids off to war. I didn't think they allowed nepo babies in the air force; guess I was wrong."
The lieutenant stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard in her wake the frame shook.
***
Violet’s Achilles heel was her temper. It was a burden she’d carried her entire life. Never knowing when to shut up, or lower her fists, or get back off her haunches.
She stomped back to her accommodation block, anger bubbling in a low simmer in her chest. Her shoulders and back twitched with adrenaline, avoiding the gaze of people who walked past on their way to lessons or early morning gym sessions.
Vi’s quarters were a modest single-occupancy ensuite, which she’d left unfurnished. She had no intention of keeping anything up on the walls or decorating the space; they were only here for ten weeks and she’d be packing things away as soon as she put them up. The only things the pilot had put up were her picture frames from home: one of her, her brothers and sister and her father, and a second picture of her and Ekko on their first flight together, sticking two fingers each up in the air from the cockpit of their F22 Raptor.
Everything else was bland and boring. Standard dark blue bedsheets. Standard single desk. Standard dresser, standard bathroom, standard cupboards. Everything flawlessly slotted into place like a giant jigsaw. Even the air smelt clinical, like it was a room in a medbay as opposed to somewhere that was meant to be a retreat for the hard-working pilots.
In all honesty, though, Vi really didn’t mind the single living conditions. She preferred it much more to having to room with someone else. Her roommate in flight school had been impartial to bringing back men and women late at night, with little to no warning other than giggling and scraping as she unlocked their door and the sound of two pairs of boots stomping into their shared space. If bombing people for a living didn’t leave her traumatised, that certainly would.
In her pent-up haze, Vi mindlessly plucked her phone out of her pocket and dialled the first and only number that would be able to soothe her just the tiniest bit.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
“Whattimedoyoucallthis?” a spritely voice on the other end trilled.
“Hey, Pow-Pow,” Vi replied, sighing.
There was the sound of fabric shuffling against itself on the other line. Was she still in bed at this time? “Heya, sis. What’s up?”
“The usual.” The pilot sniffed and plopped down on the edge of her bed, the cheap mattress sinking under her weight. “How’s Isha?”
“She’s at Dad’s. Made the mistake of telling her we’ll be throwing a party for her birthday. It’s all she’s talking about now.” Powder laughed to herself. “How are you?”
Vi paused for a moment. “That instructor’s still doing my damn head in,” she admitted finally. Her fingertips drew random shapes into the bedsheets.
“Ah.” Powder clicked her tongue. “Lovers’ tiff?”
“Behave.” Vi smirked to herself. It was near impossible to get mad at her sister. “She can’t decide where we stand. She’s like the showers at basic: one minute, super hot, getting to know me and asking me questions about myself and shit like that. Then she goes super cold. She just told me that one day I’m going to get my whole team killed, just because I proved her wrong in a stupid flight simulator.”
Silence on the other end. Powder didn’t say anything at first, and Vi cursed to herself internally.
Vi’s team was Ekko. No-one else. If her stunts got anyone killed, it would be Powder’s sister and her husband.
After what felt like eternity, her sister finally spoke again. “Just be careful, please, Vi,” she said, voice filled with wary. “This is your last shot. Use it carefully. You can’t just think about yourself anymore, Fat Hands.”
Vi nodded. Powder didn’t need to explain further; she knew exactly who and what she was talking about. “Thanks, sis,” she mumbled.
Powder moved again over the phone, this time sounding like she was standing up. “Listen, I gotta go. Call me if you need to, okay? Love you.”
“Love you too,” Vi replied, before realising she was talking to a blank screen. Her sister had already hung up.