Page 18 of Badd B*tch

"Be seen and not heard? Never heard of that?"

"I mean, yeah, I have, but I didn't think it was a real thing that people actually enforced. At least, not since, like, the nineteenth century."

This got me a laugh. "Yeah, well, it was a rule in my house."

"Fuck that. Sounds suffocating."

She blinked a few times. "You know, it really was? I was in a lot of extracurriculars in school, and I guess I'm just now realizing that it was in large part because I hated being home."

"You're just now realizing?" I asked, amused.

"Um, yeah?"

"That's a little weird."

"No, it's not."

"Okay."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Do not placate me, Jax Badd."

“I’m not placating. I'm being agreeable."

“Well, don't."

I cackled. “He's being nice and agreeable. Oh, the horror."

She narrowed her eyes at me again. "Don't make me dump you in the Alaskan bush, mister."

I wasn't sure if she was entirely kidding. I opened my mouth to say something snarky when Tea jerked the controls violently, slewing us sharply to the left and then yanked our nose skyward. "FUCK!" she screeched, "HOLD ON!"

I had no clue what was going on, and other than the straps of the five-point harness, there was nothing to hold on to. My stomach was in my throat and so was my gorge, my dinner, and all of my insides. We were pulling real G's at this point, the sky now out my right-side window, all thick gray clouds and the descending purple gloom of oncoming night.

Something cracked against the windscreen, which spiderwebbed but held.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" I shouted.

"Bird strike." This was snapped, but out of necessity this time rather than attitude.

There was another sickening crash above my head, and this time the helo’s dash lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Tea was calm even as she swore, the F-bombs spoken in a low murmur, teeth clenched. "Rotor's toast. We’re going down, Jax. Get ready for a crash-landing.” Into the radio, then: "Mayday, mayday, mayday—"

I lost track of what she was saying then—our callsign or whatever it is, coordinates, I don't know. I heard, “We're going down, Jax," and lost all critical faculties. The ground was rushing up at us faster than belief, the carpet of pines now the whole world and growing larger, closer. Tea was fighting the controls tooth and nail, trying to keep us something like level as we hurtled earthward.

"Brace, brace, brace." Again, she sounded far too calm for the circumstances.

I, meanwhile, couldn't get a full breath in; panic coiled around my chest like a hungry anaconda. I yanked the restraints as tight as they would go and braced my hands on the dash in front of me and tried valiantly but vainly to not watch the earth reaching up to drag us down.

And then branches were whipping and smashing and slashing and slamming and slapping, and the windscreen shattered in a cutting blizzard of glass shards and warning klaxons were shrieking and bleeping, and metal was screaming, and through it all Lt. Commander Tea Tiernan was as calm as if she was at home in a bathtub, seemingly, at least.

The whip and slash of tree branches abruptly gave way to the brown blur of thick trunks, and we caromed off one and then another, jostled and tossed this way and that as our momentum carried us through the forest in a deafening, crunching shatter of splintering trees.

And then we stopped, all at once, abruptly enough that I was thrown forward, my head smashing painfully against the dash.

Silence.

I looked at Tea, who was still gripping the controls with both hands, spine straight, head high, breathing even and level.