Along the horizon, the peaks of the mountains extended into the distance, poking out of a low line of wispy clouds.
Tom looked over at Maddy, raising an eyebrow. “That’s right,” he said. “But what if you want to also assume zero bank angle?”
“Since this is fixed wing, I use the gyroscope to observe yaw and use the controls accordingly.”
“Good,” Tom said, looking over at Maddy from behind his aviator shades. “You’ve been doing what I asked.”
Maddy suppressed a smile. Ha.
“Now watch me. The key is to integrate all the information at once: the tension of the controls, what you’re seeing, what the instruments are telling you, what your intuition is telling you.”
The plane gracefully climbed and rolled to the right, through a bank of clouds that had rolled in from the ocean. Above the clouds was crystal blue sky as far as they could see. They both seemed taken with the sight for a moment.
“How did you learn?” Maddy said at last, breaking the spell.
“To fly?”
Maddy nodded.
“I may not have wings like an . . . Angel,” Tom said. “But ever since I was a boy flying the crop duster with my uncle back in Pennsylvania, we knew something special happened when I got up in the air. I was a natural-born flyer. They couldn’t keep me out of the air.”
Maddy studied him. “What do you have against Angels?”
“I don’t have anything against Angels,” Tom said. “Susan referred me to you, didn’t she?” He looked down across the horizon. “Now please pay attention as I make this manoeuvre.”
“You’re changing the subject. Every time something about Angels comes up, you get this look on your face.”
The young pilot glanced over. “I’d prefer not to talk about it. My politics are my business. Let’s just say I don’t agree with everything the Angels stand for.”
Maddy’s thoughts cast to her long discussions with Jacks about this, and the process she went through to choose joining the Angels over college.
“I don’t agree with everything either,” she said.
Tom looked at her incredulously. “You’re becoming a Guardian.”
“So I can get a chance to maybe change things,” she said, colour rising in her cheeks. “I resent your tone. You don’t know anything about me.”
Tom looked over at her. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I hope you can change some things. I really do, Maddy.”
A brief patch of turbulence shook the plane, then smoothed out. She tried to bring the topic around to less controversial subjects.
“So you flew so much with your uncle you became a professional pilot?”
“Nothing seemed more natural.”
“And now you fly . . . jets?” Maddy asked.
He nodded. “F-18s. And I’m here in Angel City testing a new prototype of my aircraft carrier in the Angel City Bay. Next-generation fighter.”
She remembered the awards and accolades she’d come across when she did a search on the pilot. She looked over at Tom. Even though he was serious and put on airs, he was just a boy a couple of years older than she was. A boy with a lot of responsibility. And he was helping her – even if he did feel obliged.
“Lieutenant Cooper,” Maddy said. “I know we may have got off to a rocky start. But thank you. I mean it.”
Tom looked over at her uncomfortably for a moment. She had caught him off guard. “Of course,” he said hurriedly. “Now what about when a precipitous drop in altitude occurs and you need to. . .”
The polished steel elevator doors in Maddy’s apartment building slid open with barely a whisper. She stepped out into the hallway, her cheeks glowing from the sun of the flight lesson, her hair windswept. She was met by Jacks, who was standing in the hall outside her apartment.
“You’re late,” Jacks said.