Quoted By:
That man was you, and the most you’d indulged her non-platonically, ever, was a single kiss a year back. No matter what happened, how many years had passed, she hadn’t given up. Yet you’d always wriggled away with some excuse, and these days, you had long run out of excuses. She knew it, too. It wasn’t that she was younger. It wasn’t that she lacked for positive qualities, quite the opposite. She just didn’t realize that she could aim higher than you, easily. Couldn’t and wouldn’t be turned away. Linda was certain that she’d wear you down eventually. Maybe she was right about that.
This was work right now, though. “Hey, payload to pilot,” you said on the crew intercom, which the glider hooked into, “First time in one of these. What can my crew expect for the landing?”
“Better than what they’d get from a normal pilot,” Linda replied, her focus still sharp in her voice. “These things handle like the Reichsmarine should have them, so I’d brace for it when the time comes. This isn’t my first time flying this with a tank on it, but the other times the crew wasn’t inside.”
Theoretically it should have been perfectly safe, though the tanker helmets were donned nevertheless. Even if the Luftwaffe didn’t actually provide its mechanized assets with the resin-rimmed dork caps. “The ETA?” you asked.
“One minute ten seconds until separation.” A pause. “You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“Who’d turn down flying with a Falkenstein?” You returned good-naturedly.
Your driver, Suszter, turned and spoke up to you, not on the wire. “Should have had her in here with us. I want to know how much Dheg-girrrrl stink she sweats.” …Linda might have only been one-quarter Dhegyar, but every Dhegyar today anyways acted full-blooded whether they were a deep-country squinty or could barely claim a drop whilst bearing a blonde head.
That was a comment you’d tolerate, even cajole alongside for, were it any other woman. Linda, though, a girl who had been friends since she was small, the daughter of your role model and idol, practically a second father, and thus her, something of a little sister, even if she didn’t see it that way…
>Tell Suszter to shut it. He could yap like that about any broad. Not Linda.
>Linda was a tough girl. Share that query over the intercom. It could be funny.
>Clout Suszter over the head. Dhegyar understood force better than words, and he was wearing a helmet anyways.
>Other?
