Walking up the GX’s steps, I turned around and blew Sarah a kiss. I’ve seen this happen in the movies and thought it was contrived. But this was from the deepest part of my soul, and I saw it had hit her soul like a freight train.

I really had no choice leaving: two guys laid out with COVID and one with a broken leg meant that if I didn’t go, nobody would be available to do ground support on the deployed aircraft. If I didn’t go, they couldn’t proceed to wherever we were heading to.

The crews that I would be supporting were led by two very different people, Weasel (Sarah) and Dog (Pete), female vs male, USAF vs USN, but both equivalent of rank. Their nicknames spoke to their personalities too: when she spoke even issuing orders, Weasel spoke directly to your soul whereas Dog barked them out hard and fast. We had absolute trust in each other, and they needed me now.

Sarah and I wanted each other, but our wants could wait, somewhat like what I had addressed before the wedding dinner with the finger wiggle on her hip.

From the off, we had so much in common. There is so much to love about her: her beauty manifested in body, spirit, intelligence, and our touch, I reminded myself tearfully, leaving her slammed me hard. But there were lots of people who had just been slammed hard. Comparably, our slam was an ant’s tiptoe, and my brain knew but was still processing this as I took my seat, belted up, and plugged my Surface into the power and WIFI.

The stairs were pulled up and the engines’ gearboxes engaged their fan to spool up for thrust.

Miss u, I messaged as we now had enough thrust to taxi, and we headed towards the taxiway.

Her reply: You are needed there. Counting down til we hold each other xxx. Her intelligence was ruling her heart. Even more to love about her, I knew. I had struck the big one and felt truly awful that I was leaving her alone and having to deal with The Pests who, with their badgering, had irritated us so much this week. I knew they would be bullying and pestering her to go to the hotel and be with the couples, but I felt that she would soon make the decision that was best for her, though maybe not them. We were apart, albeit for a week, but I knew it would feel like a year for both.

“VR,” called the pilot a few feet ahead of me. Our feet no longer were on the same ground and my tears poured out. Briefing, dinner, and then sleep was my plan.

The Surface’s OMessage pinged. Wing was the caller, Annie was her name, but nobody called her that anymore and she was an EA: Executive Assistant which, like a lot of job titles and specs, bore little resemblance to either her work or import. She was really a planner, a facilitator, the glue that bonded my friends’ company. She was a mother figure in age and attitude to us and she liked power-plays to see whether someone new was a feather duster or rooster. I had first met her when I was relatively young, but I’ve never been a duster and so I got her respect, so the power-plays were now to get a fun rise off me and she found playing with roosters fun and looked down on dusters.

We briefly chatted about The Match and how things had gone on the Honeymoon. I added her to my phone’s backup drive access list so she could see our photos and she made the aside response of “She’d like another dress,” which I completely missed but idly grunted in response, as my dinner was now served and I started eating as she proceeded with the briefing she’d compiled from the Planning and Logistics teams – the latter led by the fierce, ex-EA nicknamed 10B, or if you’d had a run in with her, That Bitch.

The first thing wasn’t a surprise: I wasn’t going to land at Charlotte but would land on the other coast at Mojave, in the desert east of LA. Mojave was like Hotel California if you were a plane: it was a desert storage boneyard where old or unwanted planes checked in and rarely checked out. It was also Little Shop of Horrors as an assortment of highly motivated small companies had facilities that built and maintained mostly one-off and highly experimental aircraft.

My ex-colleagues/friends had a facility there that served these weirdos. Some of the kit we would need was stored there, the rest would be flown down from Seattle. I would board that plane along with the kit we’d pick up at Mojave.

The first few days of a deploy can be rough: the Falcons’ kit includes tents, sleeping bags, and dried food in case the crew had nowhere to sleep, they can sleep under the wings or nearby and it has happened. The first tasks were to sort out a hotel and transportation – some of which 10B’s crew did remotely, but invariably, some not. One project I’d done, we’d got screwed over by the hotel that we’d booked for the week and ended up sleeping on the hangar floor, getting woken early by the Farting Falcon: a piston plane that misfired as it taxied past us daily.

The welcome news was that we had been given the Apella Project’s facilities in Patagonia, 300km from the quake zone. Apella was the local name for a stratospheric air current that blew during the summer. The Project sent up a manned aircraft to study this phenomenon and they were so high that even U-2 pilots looked up at them flying. But it was winter, and the project was dormant, the hangar vacant and likewise the hotel and car hire that they used had vacancies and they let us have it all.

The airfield was only 300m above sea level and its runway was very long. This was ideal as Apella, and her Heron tow-plane needed a long taxi to get airborne. The Falcons would be flying at near maximum weight, so the wings would need dense air to bite and the engines cold air to compress and heat.

At the end of the call, I asked Wing to put my breakfast, likely bedtimes, and my layover into Sarah’s OMessage to call her and let her know. Missing Sarah was one thing, not being in contact all week I knew would kill both of us. She said that she’d ask Weasel’s husband, David, to contact Sarah so she’d have someone with prior experience to bounce off.

My vows said we’d write the story together, but I had meant in person, together. This chapter would be written separately but entwined.

The briefing finished just as my dessert and second glass of wine did and I asked the Flight Attendant to douse the lights so I could sleep, but an empty sleep devoid of the pressure of Sarah on my shoulder or her comfortable chest to lay my head on. I hoped she would be asleep soon and, that in sorrow, she would dream of hope: the hopeful anticipation of our meeting at the end of the week. Tonight, this I what would dream of too.

I woke, knowing where I was and where I was going: the change in the noise of the turbofan engines behind had woken me from a deep and surprisingly sating slumber. Wing had messaged me saying she’d talked to, and comforted Sarah and that she’d responded better than hoped. I knew that my love’s deep intellect was ruling her loving heart.

I landed in the middle of the night and rushed into the adjacent hangar, checking that everything was ready, and I had some spare time, so I grabbed a rather weedy tea and called my love. Our first chat apart was rushed and slightly edgy. She’d talked with Wing which had soothed her and had decided to go home instead of the hotel, which I was happy with as she was in a comfortable and familiar environment, and she had a plan to keep occupied. We both dearly missed each other, and we were avoiding expressing this, so I said, “I really value our chat."

She replied, “We want, others need, this is our best for now,” which hit me hard at its depth of understanding.

I boarded the new plane with Gopher, and we headed for the enormous runway where the sadly-now world’s largest aircraft resides, and we briefly saw her twin noses peeking out of her lair. As the wheels went up, my eyelids dropped, and I fell into a deep sleep. I knew that like a lot of things, this would be in short supply this week.

An hour out from landing, the cabin lights went up and so did we. A full breakfast of muesli, fruit, Full English, and croissants was produced along with OJ and coffee which we ate and we called Weasel who was on her inbound track having done a brief survey on her way down, so would land before us. Dog, in Falcon 2, had taken off later than Weasel and would land after us.

As we descended, I saw the stunning view of the Patagonias and the lake out of the window and snapped a few shots for Sarah. We came in straight, taxiing along the lakeside and straight onto the apron where we parked next to Falcon 1.

We got out and Gopher started preparing the unload as I went over and hugged Weasel. It was good to see her, but bad that I was here hugging my friend and not in the embrace of the lady I was starting to cherish and respect so much.

We identified our first task for tomorrow: there was a parking spot each for Apella and Heron, but only Apella’s had power and data, and they were too close to the hangar for the Falcons. We realised that parking there, the engines would suck out stuff from the hangar and FOD. We planned to get the splitter out of a kit we had brought down, run out two legs, and mark up the new spots, so the Falcons could get power, data, and an accurate GPS baseline.

A van with Hotel dos El Centro on it appeared. The driver got out and introduced himself as Jimmy and greeted us in perfect Spanish, then English. While his name was English, he explained that “was 100% local, albeit five generations away from Cardiff,” which explained things!

Apella’s crew hotel was near the airfield, and we were soon accommodated. The manager introduced herself to us, and I asked that they set out a buffet for early breakfast and late dinner so we could eat. She said that the chef was happy to work on our clock which made us all happy that we’d be getting fresh, hot food as some of the deploys we existed on either takeaways or nocturnal buffets.

As I got to bed, I called Sarah. I felt sad at seeing her on screen, not on my back, or front as was normal at this time, but I knew that people’s needs outweighed my want. We talked about our day, and I sent her a few shots of the airfield which she liked back. But we were still trying to avoid the magic MISS YOU. We closed by saying how much we valued the call.

The next morning was an early start. We assembled in the restaurant in the presence of the chef who said that he would cook what we wanted, and our lunch was ready. Breakfast was where we brief the day, then head out, Bring Up, preflight, and then they fly off into the sunrise.

Today was different as they wanted to know about Sarah, so I told them how lucky I was to connect with her on an intellectual level first and that we’d later fallen asleep entwined on the patio, even the hard-shelled Dog thought that was sweet.

I felt sad as this was my first breakfast without my love, and I missed being able to offload or feed her. Weasel picked up on this and told me to get up. I stood up and her big sister hugged me as she always had as I am ten years younger than her. She whispered, “Weasel hug good, but not the Sarah-y hug you want?” I hugged her tight and thanked her, for a Weasel Hug is always good.

We briefed today’s plan: Falcon 1 was on Apella’s spot and would use the ground power for Bring Up, then go APU to for engines; Falcon 2 would be on her temporary spot and would APU start with both using their satcoms to pull the flight plans. Finally, we picked up our lunch bags, but I noticed a possible problem here.

Dreaming xx, I messaged Sarah. Sorrows: future she responded. This was a quote from a proverb on Babylon 5: “To Dream in the City of Sorrows is to dream of a better future”. My Surface’s screensaver was a grab of Yedor, City of Sorrows. The alien capital had been a hellscape where barbarities and atrocities were visited by and upon the inhabitants, but in the 2200s, B5 depicted it now as a city of astounding beauty set in a mountain-surrounded basin. This 90s CGI soothed my heart. For the next week, we both knew that we would be Apart, but not Alone.

Falcon 1 would leave as she was first out and make a first, higher-level pass on each area, then Falcon 2 taxi to Apella’s spot to baseline, then follow and go lower and slower to get better resolution where Control and the locals wanted.

Lead and follow is our normal plan for the first few days unless there is a lot to hit quickly.

As we left, I hugged Weasel again, then Dog. He had a soft, but rarely seen inner that was open now. He loudly said, “We have the best with us. All together,” and I headed out for Bring Up.

At the hangar, I left the crews to pre-flight and prep for take-off and started sorting out the hangar, then they headed out. Gopher and a guy from the airfield came over and we started discussing the parking spots. He revealed that there was a service duct nearby that we could branch cables through and then hole through to make new spots. I called the Apella team and Control to loop them in and we agreed to this approach. 

The two teams had been busy as we now had a bridge onto their hangar server to connect the devices and the birds.  This meant that we could now push everything through the fast connection, instead of the slower and expensive Satcoms.

Later on, I helped with the surveying to ensure that the spot was accurate, something that was a core part of Day0 setup.  I spent the rest of the day in meetings and helping Gopher with the hangar, then the Falcons arrived out of the darkness.  After a quick dinner and debrief, I called my love and we had a short, but welcome goodnight call, saying how much we appreciated the call, but meaning that we missed each other.

The next morning, we had our normal early breakfast, and we had the OMessage call setup, but not on.  As we ate, I turned it on, and added Sarah in and introduced her. Weasel, as usual, was distracted: I thought she was messaging her family, but after the call, she said that she’d be a few minutes late to the van. 

Afterwards, she admitted that she’d actually 1:1’d Sarah, and I gave her a hug in thanks as we headed off.

Miss you, love you for being there helping.  Feel better now w call. Future, my phone messaged.

Counting the days til we embrace.  Sorrows.

I was wondering why the TLS crew hadn’t called me.  I thought that Sarah’s call had dealt to them, but there was an underlying current of something else .. possibly Wing’y!

We messaged briefly as we told each other about our day, and then it was lunch.  I pulled out the lunch from the fridge and showed her how much was still in there.  We realised that the problem was real: there was enough for five of us and we both laughed!  I quickly polled the Falcons and checked that they had lunch, which they did.  I emailed the hotel and put the lunch on hold until we ate it down and advised them that we needed half serves when we restarted the order.

I knew from the planning meetings that this was going to roll on and that I’d be on for another cycle.  While I could have returned to my love, we were all deep in sync now.  My role was very simple: if one of the Fly crew came to me, I was able to say, “You want this, here it is,” and place it in their hands.  Another Ground Ops would not be quite in sync with them.  I told Sarah that she was invited here which she readily agreed: it would be a second honeymoon, albeit with the addition of some mad pilots and nosy kids! The cyber-hugs and kisses were nice, but it was like hugging the sofa when I wanted to feel her body against me as we would sync and drop out like we had done since the first night.

On Wednesday, I received a call from an unknown number.  It was The Pests and I realised that their main number had been blocked by someone.  I wasn’t mad about doing the link-up during Bring Up as that was always a rush, but we had a cadence now.  They were hard on that time only and I tentatively agreed, hoping I could get Bring Up shifted slightly.  Sarah was hard against it which increased my respect and love for her, but she deferred to me, so I OK’d it.

Later on in the team meeting, Wing and 10B showed me the pics of Patagonia Lodge where we would reside next week. It was at the other end of the lake from us, and it looked stunning: a place to relax, bond and enjoy fine times with great people, one greater than the rest I was realising.  I knew that it would be perfect for a sort of honeymoon.

As we went to bed, we were told about a tentative re-task for the next day for Falcon 1.  Gopher and I decided that as it was tentative, we’d find out when it firmed, and then it was time for my cyber-snuggle. Overnight, the tentative firmed and Control told the hotel to get us up early.  We had to switch out a camera, add another LIDAR and, as the aircraft has separate Flight and Equipment architectures, change a pair of server modules.

I had a powerful and sophisticated radio and wireless headset on so that if I needed to stick my head somewhere tight, there was less chance of stripping it off my head.  In the aircraft, the radio is paired with the Surface so I could get the extra channels off it.  I was very familiar with it and could change channels or even kill it sightless or with thick gloves on.  I had found the mics on honeymoon rather crude in comparison and had easily worked out how to kill them and, in the spirit of bonding, I had helped Sarah to do so.

We headed to the hangar and there was snow on the ground, so I called up for de-ice.  But the existing camera was stuck in, so Gopher grabbed a hairdryer to unfreeze it while I swapped out the servers.  Neither went fast and soon, it was Flight Time and worse, TLS time.

I did the Bring Up to power the systems up off the ground power and logged onto the link The Pests had sent.  The link was crap and kept dropping which annoyed me, but it wasn’t at my end as the Surface was plugged in, via the aircraft, to the ground connection and its bandwidth usage display was showing under 50%. The new server modules weren’t powering up properly and, despite my thick hooded jacket, I was freezing as the aircraft door was open. My thin gloves were nearly useless, so I had to stick my fingers down my nuts to de-frost.  I could hear Gopher swearing his head off as he was installing the camera with one of the co-pilots. Typical, if something hits the fan, everything does, I knew, and was trying not to swear as I didn’t want to accidentally let loose when I was on the TLS link.

Finally, the crappy link stabilised and I could hear the TLS gang.  But the server was still brain-farting and now the camera was rebooting.  Weasel was making unhelpful comments and I told her to “Fuck Off or help”, which broke the tension. Thankfully I’d killed the link mic as I was really doing my nut in with all the aggro. Weasel was now up front, and I thought she might have my link in the background for noisiness as she was making some catty mutterings which simultaneously make me laugh and pissing me off. 

Dreaming. Love U. AOK, I messaged, deciding that two truths and a lie were OK, for things were really in the shit here and I knew Weasel was preparing to pre-flight. Then it was my turn, still with the less-dopey server and a camera that still seemed stupid.  I could hear Gopher with the hairdryer trying his best, but Weasel was doing her usual!

“3-2-1,” I heard over the link.

They asked me about the honeymoon and I said that we were good and had a good time, but I was on 10% brain for them and 90% on the pesky bird.  I saw the co-pilot walk across the runway and knew that there was very little sand left in the timer.

I heard Weasel mutter, “Who are these nosy dipshits,” and cackle.

My link was solely voice, and I heard a different voice ask The Sex Question.  I was really under the gun and had just about got the server and camera up properly but was doing the other checks.  Without thought, I just replied, "Babe, did we get any sleep on the honeymoon?"

“Pre-Flight,” I heard Weasel call and she fired the APU to start full pre-flight and then to provide power to turn the engines’ turbines. Haul-ass time, I thought, But how to get kill these idiots? Was my problem now, or Weasel would kick me out.

I heard the voice I had grown to love and cherish say, “APU?” and I just grunted, then a stern but so sexy to my mind "FUCK … Cut. Him. Off. NOW"

Quickly, I messaged IOU XXX, killed the link, disconnected from the aircraft as Weasel gave me the bird and blew me a kiss.

4 days. But IOU xxx, I saw on the screen that I had left open.  She was telling me that the owing was inverse. I was happy that we’d come through this together. All I wanted was to hold and kiss my love, or even to call her to hear her voice to see how she was, because the last words I heard were of anger and annoyance, though not at me.

2 more sleeps.  Future, I messaged.

I was alone in cold the hangar and for the first time in days, I cried tears of sadness. Tears at how upset Sarah was, tears that I wasn’t there to console her, tears of how much I missed her, despite only knowing her for a week.  I saw Wing’s status was FREE, so I called her.  She saw my red face and hers dropped.  I poured it out to her, and she simply nodded and made consoling comments, like a mother does to an upset child. 

She said, “The dress will solve everything,” and I remembered that I’d chosen for Sarah in a subsequent call with Wing after she had somehow gone out with an unknown lookalike and chosen three for me to decide upon, but I now decided that if my first choice went down well, I’d offer to buy the other two as well, and maybe during Down a suitable piece of jewelry as a memento. “Good comes to good, bad to the stupid and bad,” she soothingly affirmed, but her tone implied that unseen, there was a cat stalking the naughty mice and that the cat would pounce when it was ready, and the mice weren’t.

I hoped that the rest of the dinner party went well, and Sarah enjoyed it, but I had a lot on my plate, so duty took over. I resolved to explain to Sarah exactly what had just happened so she would understand, but I knew that unexplained, and from afar, she understood.

I was now counting down the hours until we would meet on the cold apron and our hearts and souls would heat up rapidly.