Chapter Text
Joint Base Bumfuck Nowhere, formerly Bumfuck Nowhere Air Force Base, is home to the development and testing of the F-302 and now to the first class of F-302 test pilots, a lucky few of whom will become the first pilots rated to fly a new class of planes. Selection for the program requires a TS/SCI with an additional Special Access Program read-on, graduation from USAF Test Pilot School, and a willingness to spend at least a year in Bumfuck, Nowhere.
Cam gets to Bumfuck, Nowhere not quite still covered in the dust of Afghanistan, having gotten a not-particularly-relaxing two weeks of R&R back home where everyone wants to know everything and nobody actually wants him to talk about it. There’s base housing that’s less shit than it could be—don’t want to kill the test pilots with mold, he supposes—and he unpacks his extremely minimal amount of shit with time to spare before the first briefing.
It’s one of those bases that’s big and empty, to match the big open sky, and Cam vaguely considers jogging to 4701—conveniently located between 3904 and 12—before deciding that sounds like too much fucking work for this early in the morning.
He finds a seat next to Bluetooth—Major Martinez—who looks over and mutters, “I swear to fucking god, they get younger every day.”
Everyone here so far is either a captain or a major, but the captain in front of them has a shock of barely-in-regs red hair and looks—despite being stupid tall—about twelve.
Cam smothers a smile.
He and Bluetooth—named for his ability to find cell service anywhere shy of the moon—were at TPS together, right before the war started, and if there’s anyone he wants flying next to him, it’s Bluetooth. From what Cam’s heard, Bluetooth’s been supporting JSOC up in Kandahar.
“You have any idea what we’re dealing with here?” Cam mutters back. The full scope of Cam’s knowledge right now is an experimental aircraft that might change how they fly, and it’s legit enough that they were willing to pull more than a dozen experienced pilots out of an active warzone for a year to test it.
“Rumors are some sort of experimental tech,” Bluetooth says under his breath. “Probably stealth or counter-stealth.”
“To find all of the Taliban’s invisible planes.”
Bluetooth opens his mouth, but then the door opens and a colonel walks in and takes his place in the front of the room. The briefing starts.
–
A week later, they still haven’t seen the planes.
They have five hours a day, five days a week, of reviewing schematics and technical specs, with briefings from engineers and flight mechanics and technical specialists. The rest of each day is spent on PT, simulators, and paperwork.
Somehow, there is always paperwork.
The real problem with the planes, from what Can can tell, other than the fact that he still hasn’t seen one, is that they shouldn’t work. What the engineers are promising, all pasty-faced and excited, is a plane that has some sort of internal mechanism to dampen the inertia to the point where you can hit multiple gs without feeling it.
And then they get to the part where the plane can survive exiting the atmosphere, flying around in space, and then reentering.
“We successfully achieved space flight with a previous prototype,” the engineer explains to them. “That plane had to be scrapped for other reasons, but it performed well exiting the atmosphere and continued to function in the vacuum of space.”
Squid—Captain Wells—asks, “Where the ‘other reasons’ reentry, by any chance?”
“Oh, no, I’m sure it would have survived reentry fine. There were other system issues."
The entineer looks ready to just move on from that, but Cam asks, “What about the pilot? If you’re not sure if the plane would have survived reentry?”
“They had to be retrieved,” the engineer says dismissively, then moves on to explaining the technical specs for the window sealant.
Jesus fucking Christ, Bluetooth mouths at Cam.
–
The first flight Cam takes up on the F-302 feels like nothing Cam has ever felt before. The second flight Cam takes up on the F-302 feels like it’s going to shake itself apart by the studs when the inertial dampeners do something fucked mid-flight.
He lands with a teeth-rattling bumpiness he would be embarrassed by if he weren’t so glad he didn’t hit G-LOC. Mechanics swarm the plane as soon as he shudders to a stop, and someone jams a shoulder in his armpit and half-carries him past them to the infirmary.
He only realizes once he’s been unceremoniously deposited on a bed that he’s shaking, his whole body trembling like there’s a live wire under his skin.
“Motherfucking shit,” he gasps, and leans over to vomit in the pan next to the bed.
He’s had bad flights before, every pilot has, but there’s something about abruptly slamming from barely-a-g to almost six with no transition that fucks with the body like nothing he’s felt before.
As the doctors and nurses descend on him, he realizes Bluetooth’s the one who carried him in here, and who’s now standing just out of the way of the medical staff, arms crossed. He’s watching Cam with worried eyes.
He’s scheduled to fly next, Cam remembers.
After a few hours of every test they can throw at him, when the trembling has faded back under his skin, the doctors declare him “miraculously lucky” and tell him to come back if he starts dying. He takes the motrin they offer for the ache that has settled into every muscle in his body and hobbles after Bluetooth out of the infirmary.
“You didn’t have to stay with me,” Cam croaks, even though he’s damn grateful he did.
“Fuck off,” Bluetooth tells him fondly. He checks his phone. “You up for a debrief?”
“No,” Cam says, but not like he means it.
The whole program is there to sit in on the debrief, as is the colonel who runs the program and a few of the key engineers. The only blessing is that it’s a round conference table, with all the chairs around the perimeter of the room also filled. The room is borderline claustrophobic, but it doesn’t feel like an interrogation.
Once they’re all there, Colonel Briggs says, “Thank you all for gathering here on such short notice. Along with the people in the room, we also have Major Davis and Major Carter on the line.” He doesn’t explain who Davis and Carter are. Nobody asks. If they weren’t supposed to be here, they wouldn’t be. “I want to start us off by saying that this is a technical debrief to try to understand what happened on the most recent F-302 test flight. This is not a disciplinary hearing. We are not here to assign blame or determine fault. If this was the result of mechanical failure, it shows us where we need to look; if it was due to human factors, it shows us what we need to better train, simulate, or explain. Technical Sergeant Ellis will be transcribing for the records. Are there any questions before we begin?”
There aren’t.
Colonel Briggs turns to Cam, saying, “Major Mitchell, please describe what you experienced.”
Cam takes a breath, then leans forward so he’s sitting up straight, even though it hurts. “Takeoff was at 0840. Purpose of the flight was to test roll control through a series of planned maneuvers. At 0843 I initiated the first Immelmann turn. Approximately ten seconds following completion of the Immelmann turn, the plane began to experience inertial dampener failure.”
One of the engineers asks, “How could you tell?”
Cam glances at him out of the corner of his eye; if he turns his head, he’s not positive he’ll be able to turn it back. He hurts. “The inertia,” he says.
The engineer flushes but goes on, “I meant, was there an alarm? Did you feel it?”
Cam closes his eyes, visualizing his dashboard, but he doesn’t remember seeing a new alarm. “I don’t think there was an alarm,” he says finally, “but I can’t be certain. I experienced grayout for a few seconds before reducing my speed. I scrubbed the rest of the test and returned to base to land.”
One of the engineers walks him through every button and lever and switch he pressed, then does it again, and by the time they’re done Cam feels like his brain is ready to melt out of his ears.
Finally, at almost 1700, Colonel Briggs says, “Thank you all for your time today. All test flights are suspended until further notice. We will reconvene in the morning.”
As people stream out of the room and Cam contemplates just sleeping here instead of trying to pry himself up and drive himself home, Colonel Briggs walks around the table to clap a hand on his shoulder and say, “Good flying, Major.”
Cam swallows. “Thank you, sir.”
“Get some rest.”
–
Cam somehow feels even worse in the morning, despite the motrin, but he drags himself in by 0754 out of sheer spite.
“We’re all on standdown,” Bluetooth tells him when he sees him. The man looks irritatingly awake. “And I was told the doctors would murder me if I let you go to PT.”
The idea of going to PT makes Cam want to die, so he doesn’t argue.
“Anyway, the captains are scheming, and I think we should be good senior officers and supervise.”
The captains, or at least six of them, are in the pilots’ ready room with Major Shel-Smith, and they shift to let Bluetooth and Cam join their loose circle.
Squid and Fanta—the redhead—have ended up as the ringleaders of the captains in the program. They’re friendly with each other but not friends, from what Cam can tell, but something about Squid’s run-ahead attitude and Fanta’s friendly nosiness make them a hell of a pair.
From what Cam can tell, Fanta knows someone on every base and FOB in the Air Force.
“The question of the day,” Squid says a little dramatically, “is who Major Carter and Major Davis are.”
“Major Carter I have no idea,” Fanta says, “but I bet it’s Major Paul Davis. Rumor has it he’s our advocate in the Pentagon.”
“For the F-302 program?” Shelly—Shel-Smith—asks.
“For whatever the F-302 program is part of.”
There hasn’t been any official word, but it’s pretty clear the program is part of a bigger Top Secret effort by the Air Force. You don’t get to planes where half the materials are just identified by code name that can apparently safely reach and fly in space without some shit going on in the background.
“So say Major Davis is our guy at the Pentagon,” Squid says. “Is Major Carter the money guy? Is he oversight? We have a thousand engineers here, but I guess he could be another one.”
“He could be OGC or leg affairs,” another captain offers. “In case someone spotted the plane.”
“I think it’s more likely he’s a contracting person than leg affairs,” Squid counters.
“Aren’t they usually CIVs?” the captain who suggested OGC says.
“Mishap investigator?” Bluetooth offers.
“Could be,” Squid concedes. Then, “Yeah, probably, or at least part of the investigation team. There can’t be that many people read on to the program who are qualified mishap investigators.”
“Near mishap, I think, technically,” Fanta says.
Everyone looks at Cam.
“Did it really go from full inertial dampeners to six gs?” Squid asks. “What did that even feel like?”
They’ve all had at least one flight with the inertial dampeners at this point.
Cam swallows. “Like hitting a brick wall,” he says. “Physically not that different from accelerating to that speed, except you’re not braced for it.”
“Colonel Briggs was right,” Bluetooth says. “That was some nice fucking flying.”
It didn’t feel like it at the time, but Cam got the plane back on the ground wheels first, so he supposes he can’t be too upset about it. He just hasn’t had a flight that bad in…years, probably.
“How long do you think it’ll be until we’re back up in the F-302?” Fanta asks. “I have to imagine it’ll be weeks at least, right?”
“Or months,” Shel-Smith offers.
–
The answer is eight days, and that’s only because Colonel Briggs makes the engineers and mechanics triple check everything before he’ll let his pilots back in the air in it.
“It’s Major Carther’s fix,” Cam hears one of the engineers tell Colonel Briggs at one point. “It’ll work.”
Colonel Briggs just tells them to check it again.
Apparently, while the engineers were still fucking around with the physical inertial dampener system, the mysterious Major Carter reviewed the system output, took a look at the backend programming, and figured out that something about how the AHRS was integrated with the inertial dampener controls caused rolls to register as a manual inertial dampener shutoff.
Bluetooth is the first one who goes up after the fix, and Cam watches with a pit in his stomach as he goes through the entire test Cam was slated for.
Cam only unclenches when Bluetooth lands, smooth as anything, and climbs out. He looks okay.
“It flew like before,” Bluetooth tells him after dinner, phlegmatic as ever. “If I hadn’t seen it fuck you up, I’d never have known something was ever wrong with it.”
“Major Carter,” Squid says, “Patron Saint of Joint Base Bumfuck Nowhere.”
–
It sticks, because three days later they get another patch from Major Carter that fixes something that could have impacted the upcoming rapid deceleration testing, and then again when he sends over some system upgrade that has all of the engineers all atwitter.
Squid and Fanta start a betting pool about who Major Carter really is, because there’s nothing to do on base other than flying but PT and paperwork and there’s nothing to do off-base at all.
Bluetooth’s bet is a Shakespare situation, where there’s multiple guys, all funneling their work through a Major Carter who may or may not himself be real.
Cam’s going with grown in a lab by the Air Force to be the brains behind their experimental plane program.
The day before they switch to co-piloted testing—once they’re confident enough that the plane isn’t going to spontaneously explode that they’re willing to risk two pilots in it at a time—a little altar goes up in the corner of the pilot’s room. Cam’s never spent enough time around Catholics to get most of the patron saint stuff, but anyone who’s been a pilot long enough can recognize a Saint Christopher medallion, and then there’s one for another guy who looks like he’s levitating, and tacked up on the wall behind the altar is a piece of paper where someone wrote Major Carter, Patron Saint of Joint Base Bumfuck Nowhere.
Before they’re set to head up together for the first time, Cam sees Captain McNally kiss the rosary he keeps with his stuff, then touch each of the saints in a row: St. Christopher, the flying saint, and then Major Carter, Patron Saint of Joint Base Bumfuck Nowhere.
They go up safe, and they come down safe.
Cam doesn’t think it’s because of McNally’s prayer, but, well, Cam’s willing to take whatever help they can get, divine or otherwise.