“Captain, huh?” Trisha asked as Claudia began powering up the bird.
“Yes, ma’am. And you are…”
“A pain in the ass. At least so our commander keeps telling me.”
Claudia wasn’t about to argue with that.
Trisha waved for her to take the controls and pointed up and west.
Claudia cleared her flight with the Peleliu’s air boss in PriFly—Primary Flight Control jutted from an upper story of the ship’s superstructure—and pulled up on the collective with her left hand. The Little Bird sounded different from inside, still loud but smoother somehow. She’d never listened to a stealth helicopter before. She knew the innovation was that the sound was directionless from the ground and the helo was likely to sound as if it was departing—the instant before it landed on you. But inside the cockpit very
