Chapter 18

"Promise me you won't tell Mom." Vee even sounded worried.

"Tell your mother what?" asked the Access Commissioner.

"That the FED A pilots name is David James Austin," said Vee.

"Why not?"

"Because the princesses have a history of marrying them."

"Them?"

"Austins."

"There's more to this."

"Yes ... when I started growing these," Vee looked down at her food catchers, "They itched something awful ... all the Princesses and our half sisters have always enlisted help. They grew so fast they hurt and massaging them helps. Mother was ok with a Martin rubbing mine ... she knew I wasn't going to go any farther. If he'd been an Austin, she wouldn't have let him anywhere near me. After school we'd come do homework and Jimmy would rub my boobs. And that's all."

"So?"

"She'd be renting the church if she knew I know an Austin who is older. If she knew his name was David? She's be posting the Bans.

"If she knew I liked him..."

"I see." He did. Trying to do his job against the pressure the princess put on him made him a believer. The woman simply refused to obey her own laws.

By the following Wednesday, Vee had made her choices. Mother did NOT approve but there was very little she could do; two schools in Texas, Austin and Anderson, Maastricht in the Nederlands, Singapore, and Stanford. Two schools in country and three out.

On Friday, the Sukhoi 46 flew over the border and landed at Ostrander's. There was a royal presence ... Mother wanted to see what her recalcitrant daughter was spending a decent bite of the national wealth on.

The Access Commissioner was on hand to point out ... continuously ... that the Nation could have avoided all this if the ruling family had paid attention to the rules.

"I never would have gotten involved if you had just installed access ... I would have never even noticed."

The plane turned out to be cheaper than anyone had thought. The owner had died in a one car wreck ... drunk caused collisions aren't accidents ... accidents don't really have an 'at fault' driver ... a stupid driver, maybe ... but drunk driving is a fault and the owner was well over the limit.

The 46 was a single seat Ukrainian star, but not a diva. She had no vices. Spin? Let go of the stick and take ones feet off the pedals and she stopped. The plane flew inverted as easily as not and she was strong.

Combining the work of Stephanie Louise Kwolek, the inventor of poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, and the computer controlled 3D printer, the fuselage was a web of kevlar, fiberglas, carbon-fiber and aluminized lithium printed in one continuous thread and baked in purpose built ovens. No Sukhoi aerobatic aircraft had suffered structural failure since the beginning of the use the material.

Two had crashed at airshows, each killing their ham-fisted pilot.

This needs explanation: Military pilots are often bold and some of them are foolish. There are countries where talent is not as important as political favoritism. Some sons of important people are given positions they are unqualified to assume ... and those in such positions have a genetically inherited superiority complex that insists on being the best when the talent to be the best is so nonexistent as to be on the dark side of the moon.

"I can fly better than anyone," is an attitude that must prove itself.

Two privately owned Sukhoi aerobatic aircraft were appropriated by agencies of totalitarian regimes simply because the son of the man in power said he not only could fly better than the World Aerobatic Champion but he would prove it. Since the owner of the aircraft was recalcitrant...

The two crashed aircraft were still flying ... humans are much more vulnerable than the composite. They have a tendency to keep going when all else stops.

Physics. It's like that.

Wendolyn Wanzor Austin the fifth, heir apparent to the throne of the Princessapality, met Captain David James Austin, son and apparently intelligent offspring of a FED A Senator and his Congresswoman mother, at the Sukhoi 46. He proceeded to familiarize the 14 year old redhead with the checklist and aircraft ... and she let him.

There are words and there are words ... in this particular case she let him are words of extreme importance. Vee was an accomplished pilot but she let him. She followed him around like a puppy seeking approval from a new human. She let him check her chute and she let him adjust the Simpson five point padded harness that held her in the seat. She listened as he showed her which did what and why it did it ... he felt a certain familiarity ... he'd met this woman girl before but he couldn't quite place the place or time the time ... until she said, "Mind your fingers," slammed the canopy down and accelerated to the runway.

Her lips said, "You should get off," and even though he couldn't hear her, he read lips very well. He also remembered a redhead ... just about the size of this girl ... who flew the latest top secret FED A combat aircraft. Come to think it ... the hair color was a match ... and those lips ... but this was a resident of the warmongering Princessapality. Surely...