“Is this your family, Captain?” the General asked, holding my Distinguished Flying Cross toward me. I looked past him at my father—once so proud, so loud, so certain I was a disappointment—now standing amid shattered glass and spilled bourbon with tears running down his face. For thirty years, he had mocked me in front of anyone willing to listen, but the answer I gave that General made the entire room fall completely silent.

The operational core of Project Nightfall operated out of an underground subterranean complex beneath Hangar 19, known simply as the Vault. The air down there was sterile, cooled to an exact sixty-four degrees, smelling faintly of computer coolant and burnt copper.

When Colonel Sterling escorted me into the flight ready room, the conversation died instantly. Four pilots and two flight engineers sat around a circular tactical table. Every head turned toward me.

Among them was Major Garrett Miller, a golden-boy combat pilot from the Navy’s elite test squadron who looked as though he had stepped directly off a recruiting poster. His flight suit was immaculate, his arms crossed over a broad chest, his expression sour with poorly concealed resentment.

"So this is the savior Vance sent us?" Miller said, his tone dripping with skepticism as he leaned back in his swivel chair. "A frontline rescue jockey? With all due respect, Colonel, Project Nightfall is an experimental hyper-maneuver platform. It requires precision test metrics, not reckless battlefield bravado."

"Captain Hayes pulled twelve wounded Rangers out of a hot zone in the Hindu Kush while taking heavy machine-gun fire through her primary canopy and flying on one engine," Sterling said flatly, taking his place at the head of the table. "Her instincts are precisely why she's here, Miller. The simulation algorithms can’t replicate a human being who refuses to die."

Miller scoffed, leaning forward. "Simulator run three is scheduled for 0900. If she wants to sit in the left seat of the Valkyrie, let’s see how she handles the Mach 4 low-level ingress simulation. Most pilots vomit their breakfast within forty seconds of the neural-coupling engagement."

I walked directly to the table, rested my palms on the cool surface, and looked Miller dead in the eye. "Major, I’ve had shrapnel tearing through my flight suit while steering through a canyon wall at night with no instruments. If your computer program can make me nauseous, I’ll buy you a steak. Otherwise, shut your mouth and get out of my cockpit."

A low chuckle came from the corner of the room. It was Captain Elena Ramirez, an avionics specialist with sharp eyes and grease under her fingernails. "I like her already," Ramirez muttered.

Sterling slapped a digital tablet against the display wall. The holographic display flared to life, resolving into a wireframe model of the aircraft I had seen upstairs: the *RQ-70 Valkyrie*.

"The Valkyrie is a hybrid sub-orbital penetrator," Sterling briefed, the humor completely gone from his demeanor. "It utilizes combined-cycle scramjet engines capable of skirting the edge of space at Mach 6, but designed to drop into heavy anti-aircraft umbrella zones at tree-top level without producing a radar, thermal, or acoustic footprint. The problem is the fly-by-light control interface. It responds to micro-adjustments faster than the human brain can process them. Our last pilot dislocated both shoulders fighting the stick during an uncontrolled oscillatory spin."