49
The flightto Brunei was almost on the ground before Susan woke up. Figuratively, not literally. The latter would have required that she’d been asleep, by now a luxury past imagining.
No, what she woke up to was that she should have made different choices on the aircraft carrier. She looked across the C-2 Greyhound’s aisle at Andi and Miranda.
They sat with their heads close together. She was in the same intercom loop they were but she might as well not have been. They were discussing the remains of the F-35C and its crash on the carrier in terms she didn’t begin to understand.
“A stress factor analysis along these shear lines in the shock pistons should provide an accurate method of calculating the force of impact.”
“No, we have to integrate the rate of shock absorption across time, though probably only to the millisecond scale for this scenario. We then would factor that like this.” And Miranda tapped a few quick notes into her computer.
“Right. Okay. Then we can start estimating…”
Susan tuned them out.
It was a language as unique as her own. If she began speaking with them about sociometric analysis of group cognition, their eyes would probably cross as badly as hers were now. Of course, after more than thirty years of hands-on training, she rarely had to reach back into her formal education.
But was it safe to interrupt them?
Normally such a question was easy to consider. A simple estimation of present-tense irritability compared with the message’s relative priority. But Andi and Miranda appeared perfectly calm. Except in this case, that wasn’t any measure of the kinds of reactions an interruption might engender.
So she settled on a bit of subterfuge.
Susan nudged Sadie awake, gave her a good scritch in apology for interrupting her nap, then waved her across the aisle. Sadie leapt the aisle and landed in Andi’s lap, who placed a free hand lightly on her back without looking up. Her mother had kept Shih Tzus so, of course, she was completely comfortable with one.
Sadie looked back and Susan signaled her to keep going.
Sadie clambered out from under Andi’s hand, walked over Miranda’s left arm, sat in her lap, then stared up at Miranda’s face and began to wag her tail furiously.
Miranda’s initial action was to withdraw her hands completely. That broke her connection with the keyboard. Which was a good start.
But neither did she pet Sadie.
Instead, she stared straight down, her face mirroring Sadie’s in some way Susan couldn’t identify.
She waited another fifteen seconds to ensure Miranda’s break from her structural calculations.
“I’ve truly never seen her like someone as much as she likes you, Miranda.”
“I do find it rather surprising…and not nearly as upsetting as I’d initially imagined.”
“Well, I’m glad, but I still get my dog back when all of this is over. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” Miranda still hadn’t looked aside.
“There are a few things we need to discuss before we land.”
“I’m not looking forward to this,” Miranda appeared to tell the dog.
“I know. There are a few rules we need to discuss.”
“That’s good, I like rules. It would make life so much easier if there was a practical, standard set of rules.”
“It would, but then getting people to adhere to them becomes the next challenge. We have laws at global, national, state, county, and city levels, yet we have a large number of rulebreakers.”
“Like the man who flew the C-20C Gulfstream III into the George Hotel and killed a senior member of Congress.”
“Umm, yes.” Susan had heard only a few mentions of something happening in DC. How or who had… Didn’t matter. She didn’t need to know.