Page 5 of Chosen By Swift

“Compared to us, he’s a damned baby,” Hazard grumbled from behind the controls. “I think he’s ready. Don’t you?”

“I know he is.” Swift leaned back in his seat and called out, “Drift! Get in here!”

“Sir?” Drift appeared in the doorway of the cockpit, a tablet in hand.

“Come on. Take my seat.” Swift unbuckled himself and stepped aside so Drift could settle in. “Give me that.” He grabbed the tablet. “I’ll handle this pre-arrival check.” Leaning down, he gave Drift’s shoulder a squeeze. “You ding theValiant, and Orion will tear you a new asshole, kid.”

“Y-yes, sir,” Drift replied.

“Whatever approach speed Hazard suggests, take it down by half,” Swift instructed. “He’s a demon on the controls, but he’s earned the right to fly like a lunatic. You follow the rules, and you’ll be fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You stick your landing, and I’ll take you for your first stripe.” He ruffled Drift’s slightly longer hair. A successful docking would give Drift all the points he needed to earn his first shaved stripe on the side of his head, a traditional sign that he was a true pilot.

Drift grinned, and Swift was taken aback by how young he really was. “Yes, sir.”

As Swift left the cockpit, he heard Hazard say, “After Swift pays for yourstripes, I’ll take you on a guest pass to the OC.”

Swift could only imagine how excited the kid was now. A trip to the Officer’s Club, the hedonistic den where officers let off steam with their mates or poppies, was like a trip to the candy store for a pilot as young as Drift. It wouldn’t be his first experience with a woman. All recruits had sex before graduating the academy. It would be his first taste of what he could earn, and that one taste would keep Drift going until the next one and the next.

Glancing at the tablet, Swift checked all the steps Drift had already completed before moving down the list. It was all the boring shit that was typically relegated to the least senior member of the flight crew. He made the landing announcement, but whether the rest of the crew and passengers chose to find a seat on the landing deck was up to them. He let the cockpit know he was finished and locked the tablet into its slot.

Concerned about some of their passengers, Swift left the front of the ship and made his way to the landing deck. He wasn’t surprised to see every single one of the men they had rescued on their mission in their seats. After months in that frozen prison hell, the men were still stuck in prisoner mode, immediately jumping to do as told for fear of beatings and worse.

When Orion had come to him and asked that he join the risky rescue mission, he had immediately agreed. After the attacks on Prime and the unveiling of Splinter cells in every ship and at every outpost, there had been so much fighting and bloodshed. Thousands of men were killed and hundreds went missing. The purged Shadow Force had been chasing down leads, searching for prisoners of war and their own special operatives who had vanished.

Swift hadn’t known what to expect when they approached the frozen wasteland. He had taken the landing instead of Hazard who had, for once, admitted to being out of his depth. As soon as he had taken the controls, it had become crystal clear why Orion had chosen him as the co-pilot for the mission. Where Hazard excelled in risky escapes and daring attacks, Swift had a more delicate hand and hadn’t found an approach or landing he couldn’t stick, even in the harshest and most dangerous environments.

“If you’re up here, who the hell is babysitting Hazard?” Rampage asked, his voice still raw from his respiratory infection. He was barely a shell of the giant he had once been, and it hurt Swift to see Rampage so sallow and weak.

“Drift,” he said and dropped into the empty seat next to Rampage.

Rampage made a throaty sound of amusement that ended in a short cough. “I survived eight months in that frozen nightmare, and I’m going to die five feet from home because you let a baby pilot behind the controls.”

“He’s got to learn someday.” Swift stretched out his legs. “He’s a good kid.”

“They’re getting younger and younger,” Rampage remarked. “Or maybe it just seems that way.”

“It only seems that way. We shot out of the Academy at sixteen, remember? I know I was behind the controls of my own ship by Drift’s age. Hazard, too. I’m sure you were leading your own platoon or more at twenty.”

“We were at war.”

“We’re still at war,” Swift said tiredly. “We’ll always be at war. Our people don’t know any other way to live.”

“Maybe we need to learn a new one.”

“Maybe.” Swift didn’t see how that was possible. Their entire culture was built around the military and warmongering.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to face what’s waiting,” Rampage admitted quietly as he fidgeted with the fabric of his pants.

“We’re docking in the Shadow Force bays. No one will see us arriving,” Swift assured him. “You’re all going to medical quarantine.”

“Like Terror and his teams are going to leave us alone while we recover?”

“No.” Swift didn’t lie. There wasn’t any point. Rampage had been working alongside Shadow Force operators his entire career. “But Terror’s gotten softer since you and your men were captured.”

Rampage chortled. “I find that hard to believe.”

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