Micah let out a breath that shook on its way out. His arms ached to the shoulder.
Vasquez flexed nothing, moved nothing quickly. "Again," she said gently. "Attitude, altitude, heading, airspeed. We fly it all the way to the ground, Micah. Not just through the scary part."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and began the scan again.
Chapter 19: Fuel, Weight and Fear
Level again in smoother air, Vasquez did the thing Micah least expected. She made him do arithmetic.
"An airplane on the ground in Memphis is a plan," she said. "An airplane hoping to reach Memphis is a wish. We do not land wishes. Read me the fuel gauges, one at a time, and do not round in your head before you say them."
He read them carefully, tank by tank, and she wrote the numbers with her left hand in slow, blocky figures on the clipboard wedged against her knee. Her broken right wrist stayed still in its sling, but Micah could see the swelling now above the scarf, and the tightness around her mouth each time the airplane moved.
"Now the burn," she said. "Tom will confirm, but I want your numbers first. At Sky Lab, did Joe make you plan fuel?"
"He made me plan it until I cried once," Micah admitted. "Then he made me plan it again."
"Good man. Plan it."
Micah worked it the way he had been taught, speaking each step aloud so she could catch any mistake. Fuel on board. Burn per hour. Minutes to Memphis, plus reserve for a second approach if the weather closed the runway, plus the fixed reserve Joe had called the never-spend money. His pencil shook, but the numbers lined up in a column, and he checked them backward, the way his grandfather had checked an engine twice.
"Landing weight," he said slowly, "puts us under the limit, but not by a lot. Fuel is enough for Memphis and one go-around and the reserve. Not enough for anything fancy after that."
"That matches mine," Vasquez said. "Tom, four-one-seven. We have run our numbers. Confirm Memphis remains suitable and no closer field is better with this weather."
Tom answered with the patience of a man reading from a screen he trusted. "Confirmed, four-one-seven. Memphis is suitable, runway two-seven open, crash and rescue standing by. Your fuel plan is sound. You are not tight enough to scare me, and I scare easy tonight."
A small sound escaped Micah that was almost a laugh. Vasquez reached over, briefly, with her good hand, and steadied the scratch pad before it slid.
"Now," she said more quietly, "the other weight. Tell me what is happening behind that door, honestly, because a frightened cabin is part of flying too."
He did not have to guess. Grace Kim came forward again on the intercom phone rather than opening the door, to keep the cockpit sealed against the rough air still passing beneath them, and her voice filled the small space.
"We have passengers writing notes," she said. "On napkins, on the backs of boarding passes. A man in row fourteen folded his into his little girl's pocket. Sofia is going row by row. She tells them to write it, fold it, and then buckle up and breathe, because writing it down means they can stop saying it in their heads. They are calmer holding pencils."
Micah's throat tightened. He thought of all the things a note on a napkin would have to carry. Love, mostly. Apologies. Instructions about dogs and keys and where the important papers were.
"What about Mr. Vane?" Vasquez asked.
A pause. "He asked Sofia for a pen," Grace said. "Himself. Quietly. Then he gave it back unused and put his head in his hands. He has been silent since the storm cell. I do not think it is anger anymore."
When the intercom clicked off, the cockpit felt very small and very quiet except for the engines.
"Do you want to write one?" Vasquez asked him, not looking away from the instruments for more than a glance. "There is paper. No one would judge it."
Micah thought of his mother, Tanya, sitting up in a hospital gown in Chicago, waiting for a surgery she had insisted was small and a son she had insisted would be fine. If he wrote a note now, it would be to her. It would say he was sorry about the jacket argument. It would say the Sky Lab money had not been wasted, whatever happened.
"No, ma'am," he said at last. "If I write it, I will start flying like it is finished. I would rather finish it first."
She nodded once, as if he had given a correct answer from the checklist. "Then we use the fear the way we use the fuel. We count it, we carry it, and we do not spend it early. Say the numbers back to me once more, from the top."
He said them, steadier this time. Fuel, weight, reserve, runway, wind. Each figure was a small solid thing to stand on in a night that had offered very little solid ground.