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CHECKLIST
She frowns at the huge screen. “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“What?” Green eyes shine with amusement and fake innocence. “It annoys you?”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Good. That’s precisely what I was aiming for.”
“Please carry on then, Commander. It isn’t as if the whole world is watching, whilst you play ‘insulting words and phrases from the 15th century’ with me. Except it is.”
Soft laughter ripples around the control room, but it is hesitant, nervous.
“I just need the distraction, wench.”
She glances up at the clock, the red numbers counting down ominously.
“The time for distractions is over, Commander. Time to suit up. Make sure you put on your impact layer. No arguments.”
“I hardly think a heavy suit filled with custard is going to save me.”
“It’s not filled with custard, idiot.”
He pulls his t-shirt over his head and Brienne tries desperately to pretend she isn’t staggered by the sight of him as he pretends to glare at her. “Idiot? And you don’t want me calling you wench?”
He reaches out and twists the on-board camera away, disappearing from view, but they can hear him shucking out of the rest of his clothes and beginning to pull himself into the layers that they hope will protect him.
It takes a while and Brienne spends just a few seconds of it guiltily shaking away the image of the wireless gold bio-monitors stuck strategically on his torso. She takes a deep breath and lets it go. This really isn’t the time to be distracted, after all. She returns her attention back to her work.
A cursory look over her datafeed shows that everything is as optimal as it can be, under the circumstances. She calls up the data on the fly by wire and looks at it for some time, still frowning.
“Annoying, isn’t it, Control?”
She looks up quickly and taps her ear. “What is that, Flight?”
“That you can hear me, but can’t see me? Now you know how I feel.”
“You know why you never get a live feed from here, Commander.”
He twists the camera back, his suit in place and his face suddenly serious. “In case of an emergency, you don’t want me seeing you all panic.”
“There’s no panic here, Commander,” she reassures him. “Just coffee.”
“What time is it, there?”
“It’s 1.22am, GMT.”
“Strange. I had you figured for one of those infuriatingly chipper morning people.”
“I’m a bear in the morning. Gloves, Commander,” she adds bluntly.
“No, Control,” he states precisely. The eyes that look into the camera become shrewd. “I think we know this is likely my final flight, one way or the other. And if I’m landing Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang here unaided, I need to feel her.”
She glances at the Flight Director as she is accosted by a technician with a vast wedge of papers, in the corner. Tyrell shrugs at her, as if to say ‘how can we stop him, now?’
“Your choice, Mr Potts.”
He chuckles. “Can I call you Truly Scrumptious?”
Brienne sighs. “Absolutely not.”
She watches as he pulls himself down out of the air and bounces slightly on the balls of his feet, taking a deep breath. Somehow Brienne believes she knows what he is thinking. That this might be the last time he stands at all.
He floats himself into the flight seat and buckles himself in carefully.
“How long now?” he asks.
“38 minutes 30 on my mark...mark.”
She sees his long fingers flick deftly over various controls before shifting his gaze back up. “Where’s Olly?”
“Flight Director Tyrell will be with you in moments, Commander.”
“Brienne,” he says, softly. “I wanted to thank you.”
For a few seconds, she can’t speak. It feels like the man on the screen can see her. “I’m just doing my job, Jaime. I would have done the same for anybody.”
He smiles. “You really would, wouldn’t you?”
She manages one more word. “Live.”
He nods, shortly. “I’ll do my best.”
Olenna pats her shoulder with a frail hand and activates her microphone. “Fenrir, this is Tyrell.”
Commander Jaime Lannister pulls his helmet out of the storage compartment beside his chair. “Hello, Flight Director,” he says dryly. “Are you ready for the end game?”
'The end game’.
The words knife through Brienne.
“Let us hope for beginnings, rather than endings, Commander,” the old woman says, mildly.
What is ending now had begun nearly two days before.
/-/-/-/-/
The choice of commander for this test flight was controversial, to say the least. Jaime Lannister had, like many of those working in space, originally been in the military. His time in the RAF had begun well, with glowing citations for some his missions, yet it had come to a distinctly abrupt and hushed up end. After his acceptance into the Space Programme, rumours had flown that he had purposely downed the plane of a fellow pilot called King, but no-one had ever heard the truth of the matter.
Even after he joined them, scandal followed. As the oldest son of the fabulously rich oligarch Tywin Lannister, he had ever been the kind of meat on which the tabloids ferociously fed and they had just eaten up the revelation that was his...unconventional relationship with his sister. It led to his disinheritance and a three year wait for a chance at a space flight.
All in all, Brienne is quite thankful she has had minimal interaction with the man during this mission.
Though she will admit, the data she is seeing shows his flying has been nothing but professional, during the maiden test of the Fenrir.
She takes charge in Control whilst both Flight Director Tyrell and the Commander rest.
The newly designed one-man craft has flown like a dream so far. Out to the moon, around it and back.
Four days in and it has been flawless. But Brienne knows enough not to think it done and dusted until wheels are safely back down on Earth.
In the middle of the night, she is proven right.
In a split second, there are red lights everywhere.
“Environmental?” Her call is instant, even as she wrangles information from the numbers flashing on her screen.
There is a shout from the front of the room. “Cabin pressure is fine. No loss of integrity. No fire.”
“Inform me of any changes immediately.”
She points at a small group of technicians along the row from her. “Course corrections.” She taps her earpiece. “Flight, this is Control. Our data is showing an impact. Can you confirm?”
They watch as a sleep-addled Commander Jaime Lannister rapidly pulls himself forward horizontally along the walls and restrains himself in the pilot’s seat. “Fuck, yes. My right wing, I think.”
“The cabin is secure. Life support is good. We’re just pulling the external view. Feeding it to you...now.”
“Fuck.”
He was correct about the location. A micro-impact has gouged through the upper surface of the delta-wing, leaving a long deep slice that is, she can see by the lights still flashing around her, affecting a number of systems.
“Let’s stabilise things. Flight, pull your checklist.”
They pick up corresponding white folders and quietly work through the various checks, making minor adjustments where necessary.
Once she is satisfied that although the Fenrir has sustained damage, it is safe, at least for now, she looks up from her folder and screen.
The Commander’s attention is glued to the window ahead of him. “I’m in a slight clockwise spin.”
“I know,” she says. “Attitude Control are already working on it.”
A man’s voice cuts in. “Thruster number 6 is down. We’ll have a revised manual manoeuvre in a few minutes.”
“Did you hear that, Commander?”
“Yes, Control.”
She strides forward, asking the relevant section, “Power?”
“Two panels are gone, but solar cells are at 96%. We’re good.”
She turns to address Control, tapping her earpiece again to make sure the Commander can hear her, as well. The chatter falls away and she speaks clearly, much more calmly than she feels. She is not one for speeches. “I think we are agreed that was an impact event, yes?” Heads bob all around her. “I need to know what systems have been affected, by how much and if that changes, even to a minor degree. I need to know of any possible secondary debris impact damage. I need all data we can get on the heat shield. I need an evaluation of the structural integrity of that wing. Send all information to my screen. And to Flight Director Tyrell, of course,” she finishes, smiling timidly. “Carry on.”
Once she is done, her attention is called to the Main Screen by the Commander’s voice. “Who are you, Control?”
“Junior Flight Director Tarth.”
“Junior Flight Director? Where’s Tyrell?"
She’s not sure he could’ve poured more scorn into saying her hard-earned work title. Charming.
“Asleep. Her rest periods are synched with yours. I’m sure she’s on her way now.”
She paces back to her own desk.
“Wait, you mean you’re on the Night’s Watch? Do you have a polyester suit? A peaked cap?” He grins entirely unlike somebody who almost died just minutes ago. “Did they give you a torch?”
Idiot.
She ignores him, looking at the data the now scrolling onto her screen.
“We have a thrusters manoeuvre planned for you, Commander. It should stabilise your rotation. Are you ready?”
“Hit me, Control.”
If only.
By the time Olenna Tyrell arrives, looking rather harried, the Fenrir’s path has been corrected. Brienne is happy to brief the Flight Director and hand over responsibility for this flight. The woman who has overseen so many space missions taps her ear. “Flight, this is Control. Lannister, what have you done to my boat?”
“Olly! Where’ve you been? You missed all the fun. Though your Junior seems quite a competent sort of bint.”
Bint? Bint?
Brienne turns her head towards her superior in disbelief and whispers, “Is he always like this?”
Director Tyrell grins wolfishly up at her and taps her earpiece twice to turn it off. “Only when he’s awake. He is very good at what he does, though.” She pauses. “The ‘bint’ thing is new. But he did call me a ‘life-sucking tyrant’ a few days ago, so I think you’re doing well.”
Brienne shakes her head, smiling, and goes back to her screen. There is work to be done.
/-/-/-/-/
She is woken with a message to meet the Flight Director in the observation gallery that overlooks the control room. She runs all the way and bursts in. “Problems?” she asks the older woman.
“From my point of view, no more than we had already. You might think differently, in a minute. Do sit.”
She does. “Please don’t be cryptic, Flight Commander.”
Olenna frowns and waves away the formality. “Bio and Psych came to me. They want you to be our endangered Commander’s primary contact for the rest of the mission.”
She knows she is gaping. “What? Why?”
“The biodata shows he is less stressed when he talks to you. I can’t think why. It isn’t as if I’m particularly prickly or anything.”
Brienne is too shocked to hear the sarcasm in her elder’s voice. “Really? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly serious,” Olenna replies. “They were almost flapping about heart rates and blood pressure and all sorts of things I’m no longer allowed to find tedious, despite the fact that I started out as an aerodynamicist.”
Brienne lets her head fall back with a groan. “He called me bint. And lass. And damsel.”
“And you’re going to do it anyway.” The reply is immediate and absolutely certain.
Brienne rises back up to her feet and smiles down, reaching out a hand to help the older woman up to her feet. “Yes. Of course. If only to hit him when he lands.”
“That sounds to me like the best possible outcome.” Olenna leans on Brienne’s offered arm. “Shall we make it happen?”
/-/-/-/-/
In between checklists, they play noughts and crosses. Naturally, he cheats and doesn’t even try to hide it.
“I was crosses,” she scowls. She knows she sounds childish and she doesn’t care. She has very quickly found she hates losing to this man.
“Technically, that is true,” he says lightly, “but as I physically wrote it on this bit of paper, I think I can claim overall victory.” Brienne drops her head into her hands.
/-/-/-/-/
They have a long and tetchy conversation about the high levels of lens flare in the fourth new Star Trek movie. He is all for it. She knows it is ridiculous and completely unnecessary.
/-/-/-/-/
She tells him about her home and a little of her childhood. Nothing too personal, but enough.
He, understandably, says nothing at all of his. The world is watching.
/-/-/-/-/
“Jaime, this is Flight Director Tyrell. Your track has you flying by the ISS. Cosmonaut Tarkovsky is going to image your heat shield as you make your pass.”
The Commander grins. “Good old Mother Russia. How is she?”
“Quite well,” Olenna answers dryly. “A grandmother now, actually.”
“I’ll have to thank her, the next time I’m at Baikonur.”
Brienne watches his face darken, and worries.
“The ISS?” he says. “It won’t give me much time.”
The Flight Director doesn’t even try to lie to him. “No. Four hours. If the heat shield is damaged there is an alternate plan to use thrusters to hold you in orbit and rendezvous with the ISS. You’ll have to perform an EVA...”
His face pales. “No. No. I’m not doing an untethered spacewalk.”
Brienne has seen the latest figures. She cuts in. “Commander, this is Tarth. It may be your only viable option.”
Green eyes blaze on the main screen. “I said no. I land in this bucket, or I burn.”
/-/-/-/-/
Pod shakes her awake and she moans.
“He’s asking for you.”
She pulls herself up into a sitting position. “I don’t suppose he’s asking for me by name?”
“No.” The young man shrugs, clearly trying to stop himself from laughing. “Though at least he’s stopped calling you a ‘saucy strumpet’.”
She stands wearily and follows Payne back to the Control Room, giving him a grateful nod as he passes her a cup of coffee.
Tap. “Flight, this is Control. Tarth speaking.”
A face floats into view. “Tell me, Junior Flight Director Tarth, are you married?”
She looks up at the ceiling, shaking her head as she feels herself reaching the end of her own tether. “No. You got me up for this?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Horse? Any other party of mild significance?”
“I was asleep. And no. No. No. No.”
He contrives to float across the screen upside down, his knees tucked under his chin, his smile entirely disingenuous. “As my official babysitter, I couldn’t allow you to fail in your duty. So...single?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
She reaches forward and lifts the lesser of her current burdens up from her desk.
“Guess what I’ve just picked up, Flight?”
He moans and pushes himself off a wall, pulling himself down and securing his belt. As he does so, she is fairly certain she hears him mutter words like ‘stubborn’, ‘dour’ and ‘wench’.
Ignore him, she tells herself, firmly.
He picks up his checklist and holds it up, drawing an instantly recognisable shape on it with an elegant finger. “Tell me, Control. Does yours have ‘Commander Jaime’ written on it? In a big love heart?”
Ignore him.
She takes a deep breath.
“Check O₂ tanks, Flight.”
“I’ll bet it does. O₂ tanks optimal.”
“CO₂?”
“In crayon. Within acceptable parameters.”
/-/-/-/-/
Two hours later, and the mood is much bleaker.
The structural integrity of the damaged wing has been analysed. They have been working under the assumption that the heat shield is intact. To do otherwise makes the issue of the wing redundant, anyway.
With a minor, though technically difficult adjustment, they believe they (he, she thinks) can nurse Fenrir through re-entry. Surprisingly, it is the higher pressure in the lower atmosphere and landing that may doom a successful touchdown. Particularly with a pre-heated and structurally compromised wing.
Even with the heat shield, they are currently estimating a 42% chance of a safe landing.
He looks up towards the camera. His gaze is naked.
“I’m going to die.”
Tap. “We’ll get you down, Commander. I swear it.”
He huffs. “I don’t think the down thing is an issue.”
She feels herself become fierce. “You’re going to live. Trust me.”
He almost smiles. “You know something? I think I do.”
She does smile. “Good. It’s time to seal the inner hull.”
/-/-/-/-/
“Truth or dare?”
She nearly chokes on her coffee in surprise. “Truth or dare? Are you sure that’s wise?”
A laugh rumbles, low and long, in his chest, as he shakes his head. “No, not at all. But I figured you the type to automatically go for a dare and I’d make you streak through Control.”
All her hard gathered good humour falls away and she looks down at her desk, struck by sudden misery. “Not funny, Commander.”
There must be something in her voice that reins him in. She pulls herself together and glances back up at the screen and what confronts her is stunning. There is only warm concern on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he says. And he means it.
She snaps at this, emotionally. But her words are gentle, honest and dignified. “You want truths, Commander? I’m ugly. I’m scarred. And I’m bigger than you.”
His reaction is poles apart from the one she braces herself against. She expects him to laugh at her, to tease her as so many others have, throughout her life. He does nothing of the sort, just tilting his head as if adjusting his view of her. “Really?” he asks, softly. She stays silent. He bites his lip, considering her words before he continues. “Interesting.”
He leans back in his chair, his hair floating about him like a halo, and bites his lip again.
/-/-/-/-/
Her gaze flickers between the numbers on her screen and the figure hunched in concentration on the main viewscreen.
They have to get this right. They simply have to.
He has to.
She may find him utterly frustrating, but she doesn’t know how she will live with herself, otherwise.
She taps into the conversation.
“Commander, your pitch is off by...”
The helmeted figure is virtually unmoving. Only the flesh of his fingers can be seen, as he carefully manipulates the controls. “I know. Hush now, wench. It’ll be fine. I need all of that tiny margin of error. It’s going to be rough, in there. See you on the other side, Bri...”
Then he is gone.
His voice is silenced.
The screen towering over them flickers and goes dark.
/-/-/-/-/
What follows is the longest three minutes and nineteen seconds of Brienne’s whole life, so far.
She knows her breath comes short and her large hands cover most of her face. She feels like a child, hiding behind a cushion during an episode of ‘Doctor Who’.
Only now it is magnified beyond her own understanding.
She actually starts to cry, silently, when they hear a brief, “...ribbly ill-mannered, not to...”
But it cuts off, and she whimpers, oddly unlike herself, behind her fingers.
It is a few long moments before the screen flickers back into life.
And he is there.
Alive.
“Structural. Update!” Brienne yells across the room, even as Flight Director Tyrell taps her earpiece coolly and says, “Flight, this is Control. Good work, Lannister. How is my boat feeling?”
Still, they can only see his fingers move.
His words are dry. “As creaky as your knees, Olly.”
“Don’t be smug, lad. You still have to land her.”
He answers, darkly. “I know.”
/-/-/-/-/
Fenrir creaks and metal grinds, but the skilled handling of the pilot at her controls almost brings her home.
Almost.
At just above three hundred feet above the safety of the runway, it all goes to hell.
The fast descending spacecraft (just a glider now, really) starts to rock unsteadily.
Tap. “Your number 4 ailerons are failing, Jaime. You need to compensate.”
He sounds surprisingly calm. “I know, Brienne. I’m trying.”
A few seconds later, another new on-board alarm wails and the live feed from the airstrip shows Fenrir bank uncontrollably before the end of the right wing simply shears away beyond the point of the original collision, a mere forty feet from the ground.
It flips the whole vehicle, and there is no time for Jaime to do anything other than brace for impact.
The feed from inside the Fenrir cuts off after a few horrifying seconds (the Commander - he - is being shaken like a rag-doll in his seat), but the pictures from the airstrip show the crippled spacecraft pinwheeling off the runway. It seems to take forever for it to stop. It finally settles upside down, rocking back and forth on its roof absurdly gently.
There is a beat, filled only with shock.
Flight Director Tyrell speaks.
“Seal the room. Bio, do we have life signs?”
“Yes.”
She taps her ear. “Commander Lannister, this is Control. Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
“This is Tyrell to Fenrir. Commander Lannister, come in.”
Still nothing.
The old woman furrows her brow. This is a difficult call. “Fire control. Douse it.”
She looks towards Brienne. “You try.”
Her fingers shake as they rise to her own ear. “Commander Lannister, this is Tarth. Lannister, this is Control. Please respond. Commander Lannister, please reply if you are able.”
Silence.
“Jaime? Jaime, this is Brienne. Jaime.”
The live feed from the airstrip shows what remains of the Fenrir being soaked from a great distance by powerful water cannon mounted on the back of fire trucks. The roiling steam that rises from the ruined heat shield almost obscures the wreckage entirely.
“Flight, this is Control. Jaime, please acknowledge.”
Brienne can’t tear her eyes from the screen. If that steam finds a way into the inner capsule, he will likely die.
“Jaime. Commander Lannister. Can you hear me?”
“Thermal?” Olenna asks, aiming the query off to her left.
“About seven minutes,” someone replies. At least it won’t be long until they can get to him. Normally they would have to wait at least two hours for the ship’s external temperature to cool.
“Jaime? Can you hear me?”
Please, Jaime.
“Jaime.”
She knows hers is the only voice to be heard in this vast room. She knows she now sounds like she is pleading for him, and she doesn’t care.
“Jaime.”
Dead air.
“Jaime.”
“Wench.” She nearly collapses at this single word, albeit that it is drenched in his pain. “Arm. Hurts.”
“Jaime. We’re coming for you.”
The wait is long. The wait to see him pulled, by brave paramedics and firefighters, from the wreckage.
When they finally get him out, there is so much blood.
Brienne turns swiftly away, curls herself awkwardly over a nearby wastebasket and vomits.
/-/-/-/-/
She runs her fingers over the printouts of the telemetry from the Fenrir, yet again.
Olly has told her it is unhealthy, this obsession, and she can’t help but agree. The inquiry is over and no-one was to blame.
It was a good flight, felled by a small stone.
But she can’t help herself. She wants to believe there was something that could’ve been done. Something she could have changed. To make it better. Even if she can’t find it. So she scans figures, in all of her spare moments, though she knows there is nothing to find.
“You ducked out of the news conference in the US, wench. I’m terribly disappointed in you.”
She doesn’t even dare to look up. She closes her eyes and inhales, as if she is trying to smell the sound of him, it shocks her so much. She opens those eyes and looks at her fingers, splayed on the paper. They are still. Her knuckles are white.
She lifts her head and he is there.
He is right there.
He is here.
She swallows. She reaches out, waving him in. She swallows again.
“Commander. Senior Flight Director Tyrell was in charge of the actual mission. It was more appropriate that she be there.” She pauses and looks at his sling. “How are you recovering?”
He looks down at the space where his hand should be and she can see the hurt in him. She can feel it.
“As well as I can.” He seems to ignore it though, striding in and bypassing the rather unloved looking, lone chair opposite her and walking around to lean against her desk.
Right next to her.
So close to her.
“You do know they were all asking about you? Where is she? Why isn’t she here? Bloody journalists.” He peers downwards. “Have you been on the internet at all, since my spectacularly poor landing?”
“No,” she says firmly. “Though even my father has e-mailed me links that he thinks are funny.”
“Apparently, you are ‘fugly’.”
She can feel her shoulders flinch at the barb and she turns her head away. “I don’t need the internet to tell me that.”
Slowly, painfully, a single finger is lifted to her chin, to gently urge her face upwards and back to him. When she is looking up at him once more, he tilts his head, with a slow grin. “I didn’t say I agreed. Your eyes are quite lovely. Anyway, at least you’re not a ‘smug, arrogant, misogynistic douche bag’."
Her mouth twitches. “I don’t suppose I am.”
He lets his hand fall away from her and she decides the wisest path, at the moment, is distraction.
“Why are you really here?”
“I wanted to say thank you.” He shrugs, uncertainly. “That you might have been right about the gloves.”
He looks at her lips, and her heart constricts. This never ends well.
Though this time, it does. “And that...I missed your voice. Brienne.”
She looks up at him, suspiciously. This makes no sense. She wants to ask him if he is lying, but then the finger that had so recently supported her chin lifts to her right eyebrow, stroking it.
I missed your voice, too. I‘ve missed you every day.
He leans forward and presses a soft kiss to her forehead. He pulls back and his voice is definitely teasing, but in no way mocking. “And do you know how dull it’s been, not having you bark the word ‘checklist’ at me every ten seconds?”
/-/-/-/-/
Two years and seventeen days later, Brienne walks into Control and sits at her station. Before officially taking over her post, she reaches under the desk and hoists up a tatty looking folder with one hand, dropping it onto the desk as she digs in her pocket with the other.
She pulls out a dark pink crayon.
She draws a the outline of a large heart, only to write ‘Commander Jaime’ within it in the small and neat script she always uses. Then she carefully places it next to her, in full view of the cameras that live stream missions.
Flight Director Tyrell may be even more physically frail now, but her mind is still a sharp-toothed, steel trap. She doesn’t fail to notice this small, yet frankly spectacular deviation from form, as she passes by.
It makes her laugh. “Good. Nauseatingly sweet, perhaps, but good.” She pats Brienne on the shoulder, kindly. “I trust you won’t be distracted during your shift?
Brienne looks up at her, shocked. “Of course not.” She somewhat spoils the effect by promptly blushing. “Though I might need a day off.”
“Have two. Oh, I’m feeling charitable. Have a week.” The revered Flight Director winks as she leans in. “And have fun,” she whispers.
/-/-/-/-/