Everyone remembers the Wright brothers. December 17, 1903. The glorious beginning of aviation.
However, a world away from the American breakthrough, history was perhaps instead written on February 16, 1903 instead, when the Science Academy of Paris rejected the project of Traian Vuia entitled "aeroplane-automobile". At thirty-one years old at the time, the Romanian student dreaming of flight had come too long of a way from the village life of his country to let the French scientists stand in his way. He earned copyright over his project in May and with his family's financial support, he started building his plane regardless. His first successful take-off was registered and marked on March 18, 1906 and the reason why it echoes as a massive success to the whole world of aviation still is that while the world was making planes that required external assistance like catapults for take-off, Traian Vuia made the first plane that flew off the ground with only the help of its own engine.
The first mechanical flight.
Right next to the bust of Traian Vuia, as their steps carried them down a long hallway, followed another one. Henri Coandă, 1910, the mind behind the first jet plane engine. Another few deafened steps thudded away on floor colored in reassembly to unripe olives, dusted over by time, dirt and the pattern of white dots; with these new steps, new busts appeared to the right of the two visitors of the museum-like wing of the spacious command building of Air Force Staff, military base in Bucharest, Romania.
Aurel Vlaicu, ambitious pilot. Elie Carafoli, Adrian Adamiu...
It was a long hall. Spacious enough to hold many cornerstones of Romanian aviation, as well as several of the names of importance that have passed through here, left a mark, even though, for financial reasons, busts rather quickly turned to plaques and eventual pictures.
His name was there, at the end of the hallway.
So was hers.
"No one's making you do this," the man pleaded, his Romanian tough, a mouthful of sorrow and heartache. Age clung to his skin in spots, wrinkles and paleness that did not help with the silver of his rather rare hair. "You have your whole life ahead of yourself. A good life. A good pension, Cdr." His boots creaked against the floor and their walk came to a stop, meters away from even being close to reaching that distant exit into the main hallway of the secondary wing, where the NATO representative waited for his answer: would he return with a pilot or without one.
His eyes were fixed on her locked jaw; her eyes were immovable from staring at the doors ahead, even as a soft smile threatened her lips. With all her willpower, she fought back the flinch and kept her seriousness as concrete as the straightness of her posture.
"With all due respect, sir," she begun, voice but a single nuance above a sigh, a respectful whisper amongst the ghosts of legacy, "I have never refused a mission."
"Precisely why I am concerned. Why ask when they can just order your presence as a team leader?" Alas, his accentuation had enlightened something worthwhile for the woman to turn towards her superior. Before her stood Vice-admiral Apostol Tomescu, the Chief of the Romanian Air Force; a short man, in his late 70s, now pampered into his decorated official uniform, yet carrying the scents of an unslept night, immediately giving away the reason of the obscurity in the hallway: outside, the dead of night sung crickets over the cold 2AM.
Before Tomescu, however, for the respect in his eyes demanded acknowledgements, stood Romania's first pilot to graduate from the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program overseas, more commonly known as the infamous TOPGUN. An OF-5 by NATO Code, Comandor Monica Sollomovici was the jewel of the Romanian Air Force, with twenty-six flown missions, and currently, the Vice-admiral's only pillar of solidarity in a decaying institution.
Monica's eyes returned to the door ahead, choosing not to answer as his concern had also passed her mind, somewhere in between the excruciating itches for flying for something that mattered once more. Tomescu looked back and sighed, "I remember your first day here. Dreams of glory in your eyes, spite enough to challenge the everyone in your class. You were plump, full of life. I wouldn't have given you more than a week before the physical effort made you quit and go back to the Black Sea." He chewed on his words as thoughtful as any old man, nearing the finish line and suddenly treasuring all that his mind dared remembered from the entire decades it dragged itself through.
"You took all of us by surprise," Tomescu chuckled. "Acing test after test, exam after exam. You know that saying: we are put on this earth for a reason? Well, your reason to live, I knew then, was to fly. Which is something I admired then and I still admire now. I remember the tears in your eyes when I told you that you've got a shot at being accepted into that American program, then the tears your parents cried when I sent you off to enroll in their army, in their school. I remember my own tears when your old man gave me one of the letters you sent them, of how your ranks no longer mattered there, of how they sidelined you for three years before even considering your letter of recommendation for Top Gun, of how you were considering quitting, getting back home with a defeat..."
To this day, his heart clenched that at some point, they've all simply gotten used to that. However, his lips did not remain in a lined stagnation and soon, he smiled instead, "But then you got in and showed those Americans that you are worth their time. In less than a month, you came back home, top of your class, distinguished and remembered. A national pioneer to us, like all of them." Tomescu gestured at the busts they left behind but Monica did not budge. "Isn't this why you started? To have your name go down in history? It's already there, Sollomovici. Retirement isn't as terrifying as you are making it sound." A bemused chuckle broke his seriousness, "Heck, I sure count the days before I can call in my rest..."
"What I felt during the Top Gun program...," Monica threaded carefully, calm, even though her jaw shivered in emotion of remembrance. The Vice-admiral was playing a rather unsurprising game of persuasion, however, no matter how much the wind hopes to convince the mountain to move from its way, the most it could do was that very avalanche that had also trembled behind a peculiar stoicism Cdr. Sollomovici hid behind blue eyes and galaxies of freckles, torching their echoes of the redness of hair, now slicked tightly into a bun, as attire required from her. Her mind was long made. Perhaps from as far back as her month flying with the best pilots in the whole world, now tucked in a drawer of her mind, a drawer whose age was responsible for the expression wrinkles suddenly settling in on her face, painting lines between her freckles.
"It's not something I can put into words," Monica sighed out and turned her gaze up towards her superior's face. It mattered not to her how little he thought of her when she started on this road, but rather the impact he had had in her life; she owed this to the Vice-admiral, or rather said, he was the one to blame for how she turned out eventually. "But I can tell you this much, sir: I've never felt it again. God knows I tried, but..." In a fleeting weakness, her voice faded into the silence of a light's flicker behind them.
Tomescu's acceptance of a clear defeat was swift and as brief as the moment it took him turn back towards the door. "May you achieve what you want," he murmured, restarting their work, "and come home, Comandor."
Monica could not deny it though: her stomach twisted and turned with more force than ever for accepting this mission, that the formalities exchanged with the NATO official sent for recruitment fell short to nothing but a blur between knowing his name, Admiral Sanford, and hearing the verdict of approval from the Vice-admiral triggering a set of handshakes from which she could have only grown aware once more as Sanford led her outside, towards a waiting chopper. The cold air nipped her cheeks and she almost gasped, keeping up in the cut of the wind.
The noise ruptured through.
But no matter how suffocating that moment of anchoring herself to yet another mission had been, once Monica was sat across from Admiral Sandford, headset over her ears, she eased into the seat and felt lighter altogether. "Thank you, sir," she breathed out into the microphone and watched as the man grimaced.
"You weren't my first choice, captain," he admitted right away, earning a much expected surprise from Monica, though she manifested through merely widening her eyes. "In fact, I advocated against you being appointed to lead this mission." There, his words have poked out her half grin which did nothing less but fire up the man into half glaring. "Something with this much international notability requires stealth, agility, skill..."
Inevitably he trailed into detail. What started as a confirmation for Monica that she had landed on that one mission which will increase her rank and give her a substantial promotion that might break her out of the tedious routine she built in Romania at last, soon turned into a horror that drained all color from her face, shut off every glimmer of hope and pride from her eyes.
Her heart cowered into a single dot, even if by the end of his mission briefing, shorter than what he was instructed to give her once they'd arrive on American soil, Admiral Sandford sighed, "Don't get me wrong, captain. You've got the skills and the experience for this. I've read your file, your mission reports, your recommendations. But amongst the facades of awards and congratulations from higher ups of our kind, I've seen your pattern of ambition. You're not a team player and this is a team-based tasked."
"I'm fighter pilot, sir," Monica joined in with a fearful tone cracking her voice open. This was her hope to remind him of her true expertise, which she believed, laid miles away from the sensible task she was being asked to deliver.
"One that's been dragged through parades and school presentations," the Admiral mocked back mercilessly. "By your own country...," he disapproved of that treatment immediately, through a bare tease. "You must be itching for another battle, another glory to add to your repertoire. Raise your rank a little higher." Arms crossed over his chest, "And the universe somehow knows that, captain." He looked to the side, "Through the will of forces far beyond you and I, you were the most generally approved candidate for this job." It brought him no joy to tame his own dislike of her, but he creaked the brakes on those vicious emotions anyhow. "You'll be meeting your team as soon as we reach our temporary base of operations and I'll give you a proper briefing, after which training may ensue."
"Hopefully you'll brief us on what the hell we will be flying," Monica huffed, disbelief sharpening its teeth. "Rescue mission with a dogfight out...? I like a challenge, sir, but this? My ambition may not recommend me to you, but it is the only reason why I am crazy enough to consider this madness doable."
By the way she had handled his disapproval of her, the Admiral was assured that it was not the first time Comandor Sollomovici was disregarded and diminished for her resilience in the field, for the nerve to go at it like a machine, hungry and striving for more each time. She had long accepted not many will like that about her and that most superiors will scrunch their nose at how famously unwell she worked with a leader above her in a mission, but also with others in general.
To that, she answered with a constant snark, a well expected innocent superiority, so he reciprocated with a tired chuckle, "Wait 'till you see the weather forecasts."
AUTHOR'S NOTE ✈
Here we go? History check, background on Monica's ambitions and how much they mean to her, plus a littleee insight into the missions I have created and constructed for this book 🥰✌
I would say this is a pretty decent start honestly. What do you think?
( closing gif above made by darthvvderr )