Talia was out in front with Shannon flying low and to the right. They'd been on this patrol now for ninty minutes and hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. They were ten minutes from dropping the sensor packages to extend SB901's sensor envelope to five light minutes. She glanced out her cockpit and visually checked Lt. Vansen's position. She keyed her comm, "Recon one to Recon two."
Shannon looked up from her controls and stared out into space, the voice in the other ship breaking the monotomy. "Two here. What's up?"
Talia smiled and keyed her comm, and said, "We are five minutes from package delivery, just checking to see if you are still awake?"
"I'm awake." She sighed then asked, "Talia, do you ever regret not going off with Major Boyle?" She was tired of the routine, tired of being alone, just plain tired. "...except for that mission to rescue K'tag all we do is fly missions that; I'm just tired and whining."
"That's okay, and what wingmates are for." She looked her controls over and saw they had a two minutes. "Shannon you are a combat pilot from the uniform to the heart. I am a good technical pilot, but I... could do without the stress of combats and shit!"
Both women automatically cut their thrust and went to station keeping jets. The package Vansen was preparing to drop from the dorsal clamps was on a timer and would start monitoring the moment it was dropped. "Package dropped." Gently Vansen moved her ship out from the black box. "One down and one to go. Lead the way Talia."
With that both women set out on a course 90 degrees to their port. Sixty minutes later they were at the drop zone for package two and Talia without pause dropped the box and headed away. "Well at least we are then only ones pegged for this shit. Ryan and West; are dropping, three and four on the other assigned points." She rolled her shoulders, and asked, "Shall we call it a day?"
"Hoo Rah. You don't have to ask me twice." With that Shannon swung her ship around and headed on a zig zag course back for SB901, she calculated a flight time of 82 minutes. "Maybe we can get a party going with some of the ground pounders."
"Ohhh, a party." Talia said with a smile.
Vansen checked her controls and the space her ship was streaking through, "too bad Jayme isn't around."
"Her assignment is only temporary I heard...but it will give us a reason to party when she returns."
"No shit!" Shannon said with a laugh. "until then who should we invite. We can always break out a couple of bottles of something and invade the marine rec-room and see maybe Marki and Kama will be there to share it with."
"Sounds good." Both women continued the rest of the trip in relative silence except for their routine communitcations with Dock Master and their landing crews and mechanics.
Both women stripped of their jackets and let it hang tied around their waists. In their adjoining quarters they each grabbed a bottle of "hooch", and headed for the marine Rec Area.