"Thanks, Stan," Jennlynn told him in his office the next day. "You were right. I needed that."

"So did you wind up going to Hawaii, like I suggested?"

"No, I ended up on a horse-packing trip in the desert. It was very relaxing, a totally different world. I learned a lot."

"Some dude ranch?" Stan inquired.

"No, a real, working ranch, owned by some friends of mine up in Nevada. I spent a week as an apprentice cowgirl, mostly inspecting fences."

"Well, you look better and you act better," he told her. "Let that be a lesson to you. Take some time off and have some fun now and then. There’s more ways to have fun than sex."

"OK, maybe I learned that," she smiled, deciding to keep to herself the fact that she felt she’d had some of the greatest sex in her life out under the clear Nevada sky the past week, up at the little canyon, and in the bedroll at various other camps along the fence line.

"Good," he smiled, apparently not realizing there was more to her statement than he thought. "What’s the status on your plane?"

"Still a couple weeks," she sighed. "Maybe the middle of next week, we’ll have to see."

"As much as you needed to take off and get out of here," he said, "We had two times last week when having it around would have been useful. One of the times, I was asked by N&J if there was any chance they could sort of borrow you and it."

"Informally, I suppose we could have gotten away with it," she told him. "But that could get into a whole new bundle of worms real quick."

"Yeah," Stan nodded. "It gets you out of here just that much more. It would be a favor to a company we’ve done a lot of business with, but it could get out of hand."

"Worse," she said. "In a sense, we’d be operating an air charter service. We can sort of sneak by the way we’re doing now, keeping it in house, with the company chipping in on my costs. When we start servicing someone else, there’s a whole new set of federal aviation regulations involved."

"You know more about it than I do, so I guess it’s just as well that I had your plane being out of service as an excuse," he nodded. "Have you done any more thinking about setting up as an independent contractor for your flying for us?"

"There are a couple of advantages," she replied, realizing that she hadn’t thought about it much in the last week. The options had been there all week long, kicking around in the back of her head, the advantages and disadvantages, and somehow taking her mind off of it had allowed a logical decision to fall out without her actually realizing it. "On the whole, I think it would be the wiser course. If I’m going to get a twin to handle the business, I think we need to work out a contract for a minimum number of hours annually, because I’d have to set up as an air charter service and jump through all those hoops that the company would have to jump through anyway."

"You’re thinking twin?"

"Right," she said. "I’m leaning toward a Cessna 310 at this point, possibly a Piper Aztec, a few others in that category. That gives us about the speed of the Mooney, six seats instead of four and two engines. In time, it might build up to the level where we want to think in terms of a heavier eight- or ten-passenger twin, say Cessna 400 series, Beech QueenAir, or something like that. It depends on the used airplane market, too, and I really haven’t looked at it very seriously."

"That’s more expensive than your Mooney," he commented.

"Right," she agreed. "I’d have to be looking at high five figures at an absolute minimum, probably low six. And operational expenses will be higher, too. That’s why I’d need a guaranteed minimum utilization. But once we’re past that point, there are some legal, operational, and tax advantages to spinning off in a separate operation."

"How long would it take to get operational?" he asked.

"Hard to say," she told him. "Outside of the fact that I have to find and buy a plane and then get reasonably current in it, the FAA has so much paperwork involved it could take a couple weeks to a couple months. But we can get along on the current setup while the paperwork is in process."

"Plus, you’d have corporate paperwork to file and all that other red tape. The guaranteed minimum, that’d have to depend on the capital cost of the new plane, plus the operational cost, right?"

"Right," she agreed. "And I can’t tell you that until I know what plane I’m looking at. Once I have a plane and a price, I can make the rest fall out pretty quickly."

"Get rolling on it," he told her. "We have a pretty good attorney who can help you on the corporate side, and I know you’ve talked to an accountant about the tax stuff. Welcome to the wonderful world of being your own boss as an independent contractor."

"What do you mean ‘welcome?’" she snorted. "You don’t think I’m on salary at the Redlite, do you?"

"Well, no," he shook his head. "I guess I hadn’t thought about it. How about, welcome to the wonderful world of owning your own corporation?"

"That’s better," she laughed. "What have you got me scheduled for right now? Can I get out of here a little bit to get going on this?"

"There are some other things I could throw at you, but this is important, too," he said. "But since the Mark 7 project is on the shelf until we hear back from the customer, I do have one thing I’d like you to spend some time thinking about. This is a wild-hair reality check, not a project."

In a company that prided itself as much on innovation as Lambdatron did, there were always a lot of loose ideas floating around, some of them pretty far off the wall. Sometimes they were closely involved with a project at hand, and sometimes they weren’t. If they weren’t involved with a current project, usually the person originating the idea worked it up a little and passed it over to someone else to cross-check the validity, feasibility, and sometimes the market. Often a good idea wasn’t worth the bother – for instance, spending a million dollars to develop a widget whose market was only a few hundred at a hundred bucks each definitely wasn’t worth the effort, no matter how neat or technically sophisticated. However, if they could spin it off to something the public could pick up on and build demand to say, 50,000 or more units, even at a lower price, it could be very lucrative. Some ideas were workable, others too far out. The reality check was intended to keep things from getting too far without control. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t.

"Whose wild hair?" she inquired.

"Mine," he told her. "And it’s wilder than normal, since it’s way, way out of our back yard. I just want to have a quick look at the technical feasibility before I go bounce it off this guy I know in Washington. I’d really rather not have him come back at me saying, ‘Hell, we kicked that around years ago, it won’t fly, and here’s why.’"

"I can understand," she said. "Especially if it’s a field we don’t know much about. So what’s your idea?"

"I’ll have to give you a little background, and that involves ancient history," he told her. "Do you remember the Falklands War back in the early eighties?"

"I know they had one, that’s about it," she told him. "I was in fourth grade or around there at the time."

"Interesting war," he commented. "If nothing else, it proved that while the British lion may be old and missing a lot of teeth, it’s still a lion, and you fuck with it at your peril."

Stan went on to explain that one of the things learned in that war was the threat of sea-skimming missiles; shooting them down was an iffy proposition. But he’d reasoned that you don’t have to shoot down a missile, just blind it or lobotomize it. Since the brains are electronic, they can be fried with high levels of radio frequency energy. The navy had a radar system, the Aegis, that could do such a thing if the conditions were right, but it was primarily a radar and had other things to do in a missile attack. But what if someone were to build a dedicated system that could pump out the kind of power the Aegis did and not have to do radar detection, but acted as a dedicated missile killer instead, firing a literal shotgun blast of radio energy at an incoming after another radar detected it? Just on the surface, the idea seemed to have merit.

"It seems like a simple enough idea," Stan concluded. "Most of the pieces would appear to be in place, enough of them that I can’t help but wonder if there’s something wrong with the basic idea. It’s not our back yard. We deal in microchips, not megawatts. But I have a few back-of-the-envelope figures and a little tech data to go with it. I’d like you to take a look at it and see if you think there might be something in it. If there is, maybe I can bounce it informally off of this guy I know in Washington and not look too stupid if he shoots me down."

"But Stan," she protested. "I’m more of a microchip person myself. I really don’t know much about electronics dealing in megawatts."

"Neither does anyone else in the company," Stan shrugged. "It doesn’t matter; this is more a feasibility study to see if it’s worth running a feasibility study. I don’t want to dump a fresh major project on you right now with the Mark 7 still hanging. I think this radar study along with all the stuff you’ll have to go through getting your charter operation set up ought to keep you busy enough until we get the word back on that little number."

* * *

When Jennlynn got back to her office and had a chance to think about it, she was just a little surprised at how easily the decision to set up the charter company had been for her, and how easy the decision had been to purchase a light twin. After all the agonizing the first few days after Soiled Dove blew its engine, it was another one of those things that, though it had been in the back of her mind, had not been consciously thought about while she’d been riding the fence with Will. But, again, it had pretty well gelled there, so when the time came for the decision to be made, she knew the answer.

The idea seemed marginal enough that it seemed wiser to start out with a used airplane; they tended to hold their value well, and much of the price of an airplane depended on the time on its engines and the avionics package in it, so prices varied widely. She’d long since let her subscription to Trade-A-Plane lapse, but she still had the phone number, and a phone call got it coming to her airmail again. She wanted to get a feeling for what Mooneys with zero time engines were worth before she listed it, but as of that moment Soiled Dove was for sale.

A light twin wasn’t a bore-a-hole-in-the-sky airplane that she would want to hop in and fly a hundred miles for a cup of coffee, but really, she hadn’t done that with Soiled Dove. Other than the trips to the Redlite, she probably hadn’t used the Mooney for pure pleasure more than a handful of times in two years – but she’d put several hundred hours of flying on it for Lambdatron. There was no reason that she couldn’t handle a light twin, although she knew she’d want to get a little dual instruction in it just to brush up – she hadn’t flown a twin since her multi-engine instruction at Caltech years before.

The next few days were just comfortably busy, working out the details of how things were going to get handled. A meeting with an accountant Maureen recommended gave several good ideas about how the new company would be financially structured; not long afterward, there was a meeting with a lawyer to draw up the incorporation papers. "Have you figured out what you’re going to call this company?" he asked. "Swift Aviation, maybe?"

"No, I know of a company by that name," she said. She had thought about the question, while on Suki’s back when she’d been riding the fence with Will. It was another one of those things that had fallen out without a great deal of thinking about it. She’d never been real happy with the name Soiled Dove since it was a little blatant, and she’d only used it to herself, but she’d come up with another name that could be taken to intimate the same thing without being as obvious. "I do have another idea, though," she snickered.

* * *

One of the problems that had cropped up in flying the Mooney for Lambdatron had been the fact that she was the only one flying it, and sometimes she was needed in the office when she was also scheduled to be flying somewhere. With increased aviation utilization, it was clear that things were going to get to be more of a pain in the butt. Really, she needed to have a pilot she could call on to fill in for her, even though it wouldn’t be a full time job; some weeks, they might not fly at all, and at other times, it might be heavy, so she was going to have to find a pilot whose time was pretty flexible, and who was familiar with flying light twins. Several days later, she laid the whole problem out in front of Stewart Dozier, the manager of Hernando Aviation.

"Shouldn’t be a big problem," he said. "We’ve got a lot of retired military people in this neck of the woods; some of them might have thirty years of that kind of experience and will have forgotten more about that kind of stuff than you and I will ever know. Some of them will just about kill to get a few hours in the air, much less get paid for it." He leaned back in his chair for a moment, stared at the ceiling, then rocked forward and looked at her. "In fact, there’s a guy who’s done a little instruction for us. Retired Air Force, a hell of a pilot. I’ll warn you right now, though. Don’t get on a golf course with this guy, unless you want to come back without your pants. He’s probably a good enough golfer that he could be in the PGA, but he’d rather fleece suckers on the local courses. And he does, quite frequently."

"I don’t play golf," Jennlynn said dryly. "That should go a long way toward me keeping my pants. Do you have a phone number?"

"I’ll call him, if you like," he said.

"Sure," she smiled. "Go for it."

A couple minutes later Dozier had the pilot on the phone. "Mike, this is Stew down at Hernando. How would you like to do a little flying . . . no, not for us. I have a lady here who’s forming her own little air charter outfit. It’ll mostly be in-house stuff for one company, and she’ll be doing some of the flying . . . light twin, not sure yet what it’s going to be, she’s still looking . . . just from what we talked about it might be 10 or 15 hours a month, but it could grow . . . figured you’d say that. We’ll be waiting."

He hung up the phone. "He’s real interested; he’s on his way over."

Fifteen minutes later, a rugged-looking, well-dressed fiftyish man with light gray hair walked into the office. "Mike," Dozier said, "This is Jennlynn Swift, the woman I was talking about. Jennlynn, this is Mike Hanneman."

"Pleased to meet you ma’am," he said, obviously surprised to see that he was talking with a good-looking young woman. Rather than making small talk, he got right down to business. "So, what’s this deal all about?"

"I’m an engineer at Lambdatron," she said. "That’s a high-tech R&D place out in Tempe."

"I know Lambdatron, and I know Stan," he smiled. "I’ve done a little consulting out there, and took him for a hundred a side out at Camelback here a while back."

"Then I can cut a little of the explanation," she replied. "For the last couple years, I’ve been flying the occasional business run for the company in my Mooney M-21. We’ve been using it more and more, and it’s gotten to the point where we want to upgrade. We decided to do it with me running an independent company. I’ll be the main owner, but there will be some token shares held by people at Lambdatron to fill out a board. I’m looking for a light twin, but I haven’t come up with something I like yet. I can’t do all the flying, since it’s taking too much time away from my real job as it is, but I’m still planning on doing part of the flying. I’m told you can fly a light twin."

"I’ve got several hundred hours or so in the U-3, that’s the same as a Cessna 310," Mike smiled. "Also, a few thousand hours in planes ranging from the C-130 to the F-15. I still fly the 130 for the Arizona guard once a month."

"You’re a little ahead of me," Jennlynn laughed. "I’ve got about a thousand hours total, half in a Cessna 150 and half in the Mooney. I have maybe a dozen hours total in light twins, so I’d be looking to get a little dual."

"Shouldn’t be a problem," Dozier piped up. "Our multi-engine instructor is General Hanneman here."

"General?" Jennlynn said, eyes wide.

"It’s not all it’s cracked up to be," Mike smiled. "In the Air Force, you get a star and you get out of the real flying. I ended up flying as a mission commander on an AWACS. It was boring, so I got out. It was time."

"I had a little adventure with an AWACS once," Jennlynn smiled. "A friend and I found a cowboy who was unconscious from snakebite and hypothermia. I called Nellis on 121.5 and asked them to have the ambulance in Ely stand by. They couldn’t get radar contact on me, so they called in an AWACS. I thought it was pretty wild that they’d be out flying on Thanksgiving morning."

"Four years ago last Thanksgiving?" Mike smiled. "I remember that! Everybody on the bird was pissed that we had to be out on a dumb-ass exercise on Thanksgiving morning, but we felt like maybe we were supposed to be out there after you called for help."

"I will be damned," Jennlynn grinned. "I guess we have met before, sort of. Tell me, if you worked with AWACS, do you know much about high energy radar?"

"A fair amount. I was assistant project officer on a power upgrade for it a few years before."

"General Hanneman, I think I may have to pick your brain on a project we’re looking at over at Lambdatron," Jennlynn smiled, thinking that she may have just killed two birds with one stone. She hadn’t been able to come up with much knowledge of the subject locally, and what she had been able to come up with on high performance radar RF generators was very slim. Maybe this would break the logjam.

"A lot of it is classified, but I can probably help you with the general background," he told her. "So what kind of plane are you looking for?"

"I’m thinking something in the class of the 310, or a Beech Baron, or maybe an Aztec."

"Given a choice, I think I’d leave the Aztec off that list," he said. "That’s purely personal prejudice, though. But the Cessna or the Beech, they’re out there, some at good prices. If it were me, I’d lean toward the Cessna, just because I have a fair amount of time in the U-3."

"Then if you’re interested," Jennlynn said, "You can help me look for the right one. The flying will have to be on an hourly basis, but I’ll pay whatever the going rate is."

"It sounds fair enough to me, ma’am," he replied.

"One more thing," she said. "If you know Stan, you may have heard about me. Are you married?"

"Since the day after I graduated from the Academy," he said. "I have six grandchildren."

"Is your wife going to have problems with you working for a woman? Especially one who some people think has a rather notorious reputation?"

"She shouldn’t have, and I’ve never given her any reason to worry."

"If you work for me, she may think she has a reason. General Hanneman, if you were at Nellis, you’ve probably heard of the Redlite Ranch."

"I’ve been by it many times," he said, a puzzled look on his face. "I never went in there. I understand they built a big new facility here a while back, but that’s since I retired."

"It’s very nice," Jennlynn told him. "A huge improvement. General, I’m going to be straight with you, and if you have second thoughts, it’s no problem with me and I’ll understand. I primarily work for Lambdatron. I’m setting up this little charter service as kind of a moonlighting thing. For the last several years, I’ve had another moonlighting job, the last two years on occasional weekends at the Redlite Ranch. It will continue."

"Not tending bar, I’ll bet," Hanneman grinned.

"I’ve filled in there for a couple hours once or twice," she smirked, then got dead serious. "But no, that’s not been my main activity there. But that is the only place I carry out that activity. Nowhere else, not under any circumstances. Stan and my co-workers at Lambdatron are aware of this. It’s not a secret, but I don’t shout it from the housetops, either. If you want to work for me, I’d love to have you. But for your sake I want to make sure your wife knows who you’re working for and doesn’t have any problem with it."

"I don’t think she’ll have any problem, but I’ll clear it with her to be sure," he said.

"Good enough," she smiled. "General Hanneman, welcome to Skyhook Aviation."

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