Chapter 1

Major Valerie Parks was not a beautiful women. She had dull brown hair and eyes. A good twenty pounds over weight. Short and pudgy. Seldom wore skirts except when she had to be in uniform for various inspections or parades or any other military activities.

Though short and on the chubby side, Valerie was the second best test pilot in the Air Force. She had several kills in the Iranian War of 2012. She was one of those hot shots that went after the enemy with reckless abandon. Even the more experienced Israeli pilots praised her ability, skill, courage, and luck. Some even believed that she had a death wish the way she threw herself into a dog fight. More than once he looked like she might be killed by an Iranian missile but she always managed to either evade it or send out a flare to send it off course.

She earned the Medal of Honor for four kills in one day when she was ambushed from the clouds. After shooting down the last Russian MIG, Valerie sent several of her missiles into the Iranian tanks to save a Coalition Force from being over run. She safely landed at the secret Iraqi air base with her plane shot to pieces. How she was able to accomplish this was short of a miracle. That evening she downed three boilermakers then went to bed and slept soundly.

Major Parks considered herself as one of the boys. She drank with them, ate with them, and even slept with some. She kidded that if a guy had more than five strong drinks, she looked pretty good to him. If he had more, she looked like Kate Beckinsale when she was much younger.

With the Medal of Honor about her neck, Valerie was taken out of the danger zone. She was cleared for top secret work which made her a test pilot. By 2015, the thirty year old Parks had built a huge reputation in testing new fighters for the entire military.

Being one of the best, Valerie was given the task of test piloting the new stealth mach ten fighter. It was given the code name of The Eagle's Talon. After going through weeks of learning about the craft, she spent another two days to familiarize herself with the cockpit. When off duty, she had a great sense of humor that kept her friends in stitches. Now she was all business as she inspected the new weapon from nose to rudder. She had a good sense what this plane could and could not do.

"Switch on," she told the tower, nervously.

"Copy," a man replied.

"Flaps are a-okay," she stated.

"Copy that. All the high brass and engineers are present."

"Roger," she returned. "I'm not to push this thing over Mach four?"

"That's affirmative," Tower responed.

"Lets do it," she pushed the stick forward just enough for the plane to move toward the runway. "I can tell you now, there's a few changes for the next models. I'll give you what improvements I see when I get back."

"Copy," one of the developers replied.

"Good luck, Parks," a familiar voice reached her.

"General Davis, you S-O-B," she smiled. "After I land back here, the drinks are on you, sir."

"Affirmative, Parks," Davis answered. "We'll get drunk then retreat back to my place. I badly need to get laid."

"I'm your girl for that, sir," she laughed, turning onto the runway. "I'm always at your disposal for that. Rank don't mean shit in the sack."

Davis laughed.

Now the joking was over. Valerie started to slowly rev the engines. She gradually brought it up to power. Voices were coming into her ears each giving different advice. She ignored them all and let her own skills kick in.

She took off as the powerful thrusts pushed her deeper into her seat. "Cow's shit," she said as she became airborne. In two seconds she was out of sight of the runway as the plane climbed at mach three. She leveled off and turned to make her run east. This was the most powerful vehicle she ever flew. The adrenaline pumped her up to a new alertness. She looked at the instruments in the cockpit and saw that she was almost 100,000 feet from the ground which put her near the edge of space.

Her mind was at a blur as she switched from one instrument to the next. This was the ultimate ride and she felt like she had to urinate.

"The guys at the academy should see me now," she said aloud.

"Tower, this is Talon, over."

Nothing,

"Tower, this Talon, over," she repeated.

Nothing.

Parks looked at the panel and saw that she was at mach eight. 'Oh shit, ' she thought trying to ease the stick back toward her. It was stuck. Now she was at mach nine. She tried to push it back with everything she had but it wouldn't budge. She was at mach eleven now and going faster. She formed a plan in her mind. Once this plane ran out of fuel, she'd glide it down as slow as possible then bail out.

Valerie looked ahead as saw a shimmering circle. There was no way to avoid it. She was fifteen minutes into this test and she knew she was in deep shit. When she entered this circle she was buffeted back and forth. Only the harness kept her from banging her sides against the craft.

She reached out and hit the ejection button, then everything turned black.

Major Parks came to in bright sunshine in some kind of a desert. Every muscle in her body ached in pain. She sat in the ejection seat while the chute fluttered in the wind. Up ahead she spotted a big black cloud of smoke rising into the air. It looked to be many miles away. Her mind slowly returned as she realized that she must have fucked up somewhere. Valerie had the presence of mind to grab on to the flare for when the rescuers arrived. She had it at the ready so she could shoot it off when she spotted the first helicopter.

Her mind went back to entering that strange phenomenon she had noticed that the plane was gradually going much slower. She last recalled that it was mach two. It might have slowed even lower when she blacked out. She wasn't sure. How she survived all of this was beyond her. Valerie knew that bailing out at such an incredible speed should have killed her. Though she felt lucky to survive, she didn't have a clue to where she was at.