“I heard that, boy!” Davies agreed, honestly laughing for the first time. “Ain’t gonna be a few though!”
“I’ll say one thing: first thing tomorrow there are going to be some serious changes to the air defences around here!” Thorne added on a more serious note as they continued walking. “They could have had us on toast today!”
“Think we’re safe for the rest of the night…?”
“Probably…we managed to get close enough to an AWACS aircraft to smoke it without even showing a blip on their screens…that’ll keep them guessing for a few hours at least…and once they get a look at the images from their recon flight and they know for sure we have two stealthy aircraft here, they’ll know better than to come at us half-cocked. They’ll be back all right, but it’ll take time for them to mass an assault of any strength.” He shook his head in mild frustration. “We’re going to be prepared next time, whenever that may be: we’ll need to break out all the BRTs we have in store, including back ups, and get them positioned so we get damn sight more warning than that. Next time they come… and they will… we need to be ready to hit ‘em with everything we have! If we lose the Galaxy and Extender, we might as well just give up altogether!” He halted in mid step, catching Davies unprepared, as another idea caught him.
“You okay, Max?”
“Yeah, I’m fine…” Thorne answered after a moment’s thought. “I just remembered something I should take care of before I hit the mess.” He clapped a friendly hand on the Texan’s shoulder. “Go and get a few into you, mate,” he suggested, then added: “And make sure Alec Trumbull gets a few into him as well…he might need ‘em.” He left Davies with a quizzical expression on his face and began striding purposefully back toward the flight line.
Thorne found Trumbull in the officer’s mess an hour later, sharing a few quiet drinks and some lively discussion with Nick, Eileen and Jack. The Texan pilot had indeed managed to consume a more than reasonable amount of the Jack Daniels Bourbon he and Eileen had ‘somehow’ managed to stash a healthy supply of somewhere on the Galaxy. The Jack Daniels distillery had only just restarted production in 1938 following Tennessee’s delayed repeal of prohibition five years after the laws were lifted nationally, and in the Realtime United States, production of whiskey would again be banned between 1942 through to the end of the war. Under such circumstances, it was unlikely in the extreme that the pair could’ve secured some local stock, so smuggling some back from the 21st century was the most obvious explanation for its presence.
“And then…” Davies stated with the careful manner of someone quite drunk “…I pulled a ‘high yo-yo’, got back onto that camel jockey’s tail, and fired a pair of Sidewinders right up the sonuvabitch’s ass!” The Texan was acting out the aerial manoeuvres of the recounted dogfight with his hands in the fashion of drunk, bragging pilots the world over as the glass of spirits in his right fist wavered this way and that and threatened to spill spectacularly.
“Incredible…!” Trumbull exclaimed, the statement carrying the utmost apparent sincerity, as he had absolutely no clue what a ‘High Yo-Yo’, ‘Camel Jockey’ or ‘Sidewinder’ were. He was of course far too much of a gentleman to let on, so he humoured the American pilot all the same and listened intently.
“There y’are, Max…!” Eileen Donelson smiled as he entered and raised her own glass in recognition of his arrival. “Can I buy y’ a drink? Only the best…” Thorne could tell she was also a little drunk — he could always when she was drunk — and truth be told everyone in the room had consumed a little too much alcohol while celebrating their second victory in as many days against their enemy.
“I’ll pass for the moment, thanks Eileen, though I’ll definitely take you up on the offer later…”
He turned his attention to Trumbull as he neared the group, standing as they were by the crackling warmth of the fireplace. With a subtle nod of his head, Thorne drew the pilot aside
“What I would like to do right now is finish that conversation we were having earlier before we were rudely interrupted by the air raid…” There was a pause during which the RAF pilot simply nodded slowly in agreement, never once breaking eye contact. “What do you say, Alec?” Thorne asked finally, his voice filled with serious intent. “You with us…? You willing to be part of whatever it takes to get this job done…?”
“I’m in if you’ll have me…” The squadron leader answered without reservation. “I would be truly honoured to be part of all this and have the opportunity to make a contribution.” There was another pause, during which no one at all spoke. Instead, Thorne gave a single , silent nod and the pact between the two men was sealed.
“You’d better come with me then…” The Australian stated simply. “We’ve some business to attend to.”
“We do…?” Trumbull inquired, bemused by that remark and in a decidedly party-like mood himself when all was said and done, having downed enough of the whisky to ensure he was on a par with the rest of them in terms of intoxication. “What business might that be?”
“We’re gonna take a little trip,” Thorne said quickly, throwing a nod toward the door and moving that way himself.
“You’re not thinking of taking him through a jump while he’s half-pissed are you?” Alpert asked, mildly mortified as all of the others present realised what Thorne was up to.
“Can you think of a better way to go through it…?” Thorne replied pointedly, remembering his own experience of the day before quite clearly and almost shuddering at the thought.
“Cruel bastard…!” Davies grinned maliciously, only vaguely miffed that Thorne was taking away his new-found and seemingly attentive audience. As predicted, a reasonable amount of alcohol had replaced his reflective mood with more characteristic bravado.
“You want to see ‘cruel’…?” Thorne shot back quickly, unable to resist a sarcastic reply when Davies was involved. “Dig out a pair of laptops and fire up Modern Warfare Two, and I’ll show you cruel!”
“My ass…!” Davies retorted softly, but he made no indication he was interested in taking Thorne up on his challenge at multiplayer gaming.
“‘A trip’…?” Trumbull asked slowly at the same time, barely managing to place his half-filled glass on a table as Thorne guided him past it by the arm. “Where are we off to…?”
“Tomorrow,” Thorne answered glibly as they reached the door.
“Good luck, ‘Jimmy’!” Eileen Donelson muttered with a grimace of her own as the door closed behind them
Another twenty minutes and the still-bewildered squadron leader was being strapped into the rear seat of the F-35E once more, having been provided with an ill-fitting G-suit similar to the one Thorne was wearing.
“Have you ever been seasick?” The Australian asked as he secured the confused man’s harness.