The recruit’s jaw hit the floor. But the color drained from his face completely when Mercer turned to the class and told them exactly who I was This,” Mercer growls, voice cutting like a knife through dead air, “is Lieutenant Commander Amelia Hart. Call sign Phoenix One. Ten years combat. Three tours. Five confirmed enemy kills. And the only pilot in this building who’s flown the Black Talon at Mach 3.7 and lived to talk about it.”

You could hear a pin drop. The recruit’s mouth is still hanging open like a broken trapdoor.

I take another sip of my coffee, slowly. Lukewarm or not, it suddenly tastes a hell of a lot sweeter.

Mercer sweeps his gaze over the room. “If any of you think you’re hotshots, think again. This woman wrote the damn handbook you’re pretending to understand. She’s not here to take notes. She’s here to decide who among you gets to stay.”

The silence deepens. Not even a chair creaks.

“Carry on,” Mercer says, and with a crisp nod to me, he strides out like a storm that came and went.

I stand, setting my coffee down on the desk, and walk to the front of the room. All eyes follow, wide and blinking like they’ve just realized they’re not at the top of the food chain.

“Let’s clear one thing up,” I say, voice low but steady. “You think you’re ready to fly? Maybe you are. But in the sky, attitude doesn’t keep you alive. Training does. Discipline does. Respect does.”

I pause in front of the recruit who called me “sweetie.” His name tag reads Coleman. His Adam’s apple bobs.

I lean close, just enough for him to feel the heat of the truth. “And if you ever call me sweetie again, Coleman, I’ll personally fly you back to your mama’s porch and make you apologize for wasting government funding.”

Someone in the back snorts, tries to cover it up as a cough. Coleman shrinks.

“Alright,” I snap, turning back to the projector. “Let’s talk about controlled stall maneuvers and why two of you will end up in the water if you don’t pay attention.”

The briefing continues, and I can feel the energy shifting. Now, they listen. Eyes are sharp, pencils move fast. Even Coleman stops fidgeting.

An hour later, we’re on the tarmac. The sun beats down hard on the silver jets lined like knives ready for war. The recruits gather in formation, helmets under arms, and I walk down the line, inspecting them like I’m choosing soldiers for a mission that only half of them will survive.

I stop at the end, where three Talon-class prototypes wait, humming quietly. Today’s exercise isn’t in the simulator. This one’s real air.

Mercer joins me. He hands me a helmet. “I put you with the top three from last month’s evaluations. Let’s see what they’re really made of.”

I nod, slipping on the helmet. The HUD inside flickers to life, green data swimming across the visor. My fingers tighten around the edge of the cockpit. The jet is familiar, like a second skin.

We lift off in staggered formation. Wind, speed, freedom. My heart kicks in rhythm with the afterburner. The boys try to keep up, engines screaming behind me like they’re chasing ghosts.

I take them through a combat pattern—dives, rolls, fake missile locks—and each move peels away their bravado like layers of cheap paint. One drops too low. Another cuts a turn late and disappears from radar. Now it’s just me and Coleman.

Of course it is.

He’s still behind me, struggling to match my rhythm. I push harder, flipping the jet into a vertical spiral that climbs fast and mean. Coleman jerks his jet into a climb, chasing me, but I can already see it—he’s late. He’s off-balance. He’s about to learn a hard lesson.

At the apex, I kill my engines. Silence floods the cockpit. The jet flips belly-up and begins to fall like a feather made of steel.

Coleman blows past me.

I reignite.

Roaring back to life, I’m behind him now, locking him in my sights. Missile tone chirps once.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Lock.

“Dead,” I say calmly over comms. “You’re dead, Coleman.”

He breathes heavy. “Copy that,” he mutters, subdued.

We land fifteen minutes later. He doesn’t speak to me. He doesn’t have to. That flight humbled him better than any speech ever could.

Later that evening, Mercer finds me in the hangar, wiping down the fuselage with a cloth.

“You smoked them,” he says, handing me a cold bottle of water.

“They needed it,” I reply, glancing back toward the barracks. “Too much swagger. Not enough skill.”

“Coleman’s not bad,” Mercer admits. “He’s rough around the edges, but I’ve seen worse.”

“He’s got potential,” I agree, “if he can learn that ego doesn’t fly the plane.”

He chuckles. “You ever think about training full-time?”

“I train every time I fly,” I say.

Mercer nods, understanding. Then he leans in a little. “You know they’ve been talking about Orion again.”

I freeze.

The Orion Project. Classified. High-risk. Hypersonic recon and defense. Last I heard, the program was scrapped after a test pilot blacked out during a 9G maneuver and never woke up.

“They’re bringing it back?” I ask.

“Only if we get someone crazy enough to test it.”

“You know what that means.”

Mercer smiles. “That’s why I told them you were in the building.”

The next day, I’m standing in a separate hangar, staring at a jet that doesn’t belong in this decade. Sleek, matte-black. Wings curved like a predator in mid-dive. No markings. No serial numbers.

Just like the legends.

A tech team is already swarming around it, checking hydraulics, programming flight paths, whispering like they’re handling a ghost.

“You sure about this?” Mercer asks, arms folded.

“Nope,” I say, climbing the ladder. “But that’s never stopped me before.”

The cockpit is tighter than what I’m used to. More digital, less mechanical. The moment I sit down, the HUD wraps around me like a cocoon of green fire.

“Phoenix One,” the comms buzz, “you are cleared for vertical takeoff. Confirm when ready.”

I take a breath. Deep. Grounded. Then I whisper into the mic: “Phoenix One, lighting the sky.”

The thrusters ignite with a silent fury, and I feel the beast rise beneath me like a dragon waking up. Straight up, no runway. Gravity presses me down, but adrenaline pulls me higher.

Ten thousand feet. Twenty. Thirty.

The world bends below. Curves above. And suddenly, I’m touching the edge of space.

“Altitude nominal. Speed increasing. Mach 3.2… Mach 3.6…”

The plane hums like it’s alive. I grip the stick tighter.

“Mach 4.”

The moment stretches. Everything around me dissolves into a blur of light and sky and sound so distant it might as well be silence.

And then the alarm pings.

Hydraulic pressure—dropping.

I scan quickly. Backup systems aren’t responding. The pitch begins to tilt.

“Control, I’m getting instability in the yaw—manual override’s not kicking in!”

“Abort if needed,” the voice says.

I don’t. I never do.

I switch to emergency bleed valves, dumping just enough thrust to slow the drop. Altitude drops fast. Clouds whip past. Air howls. My vision starts to tunnel.

I grit my teeth. I don’t blackout. Not today.

With a grunt, I angle the jet, forcing it into a wide spiral, losing altitude while bleeding speed. Warning lights flash like a carnival from hell. But I’m still flying.

Barely.

Ten minutes later, I bring the jet down with a scream of brakes and a trail of scorched rubber. The landing isn’t pretty, but it’s a landing.

Mercer is already running toward me as I climb out, legs shaking, suit drenched with sweat.

“You’re insane,” he says, half laughing, half scowling.

“Yeah,” I whisper, “but I did it.”

The tech team swarms the jet. Engineers mutter, already analyzing the data. But all I care about is the sky I just carved through.

By the time I return to the barracks, the recruits are outside, standing in formation again. Even Coleman.

They salute as I pass.

I stop, face them, and nod. “Tomorrow,” I say, “we fly again.”

Coleman steps forward.

“Lieutenant Commander,” he says, voice steady, “permission to speak freely.”

“Granted.”

“I was wrong yesterday. About you. About everything.”

I nod. “You’re not the first. You won’t be the last.”

“I want to learn from you,” he says. “I want to be better.”

Now that’s the real test. Not how they fly. Not how fast they talk. But what they do after they’ve been grounded by their own arrogance.

“You will,” I say. “If you can keep up.”

Behind me, the Orion waits in the hangar like a shadow too fast for the sun.

Above us, the sky is clear and endless.

And tomorrow, we chase it again.