No Quarter Given (SSE 667) by Lindsay McKenna

dislike Dana. In fact, he found himself alarmingly drawn to her. There was undeniable attraction between them, Griff sourly admitted. If only she wasn't his student. If only she wasn't a woman vying for a pilot's slot, he could easily chase her until he caught her. Every damned night he dreamed about her, about that sweet athletic body of hers. Griff wondered about her passion—if the gold fire in her eyes was a telltale sign of her carefully hidden expression as a woman. And her mouth... Sighing, Griff forced himself back to the present. Dana had completed the walk-around, signed off the discrepancy log to Parker and was climbing into the front cockpit. Griff wondered if she was going to be airsick again.
    This time, he ordered Dana to take off. He sat in the rear seat, his hands and feet hovering close to the controls in case she screwed up. He wasn't about to become a fatality like Toby. To his surprise, Dana brought the responsive trainer off the runway at exactly ninety-five miles per hour. At one thousand feet, wings still level, she requested a left-hand turn from the control tower and got it. Ordinarily, at 0700, the air was dead calm. But today, cumulus clouds were already building over the gulf, and the air was filled with bumpy pockets. The trainer began to drop and rise twenty or thirty feet at a time.
    "Steady her out, Coulter," Griff snapped. "Get the wings level! Ride those rudders."
    Dana broke out in a heavy sweat, feeling her stomach react instantly to the rough air. She choked down the bile, frantically trying to keep the wings level. It was impossible. The air seemed uncooperative and unrelenting.
    "Dammit, Coulter, steady! What the hell are you going to do when you're in the jet wash of a refueling tanker? You've got to be stable no matter how rough it is!"
    Compressing her lips, Dana worked hard to get the trainer under control.
    Griff was about to deliver another tongue-lashing when he heard her retch violently. Dana was airsick—again. He swallowed his tirade. "I've got the controls," he gritted out.
    Miserably, Dana wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. She took back the controls minutes later.
    "Get out of the traffic pattern. Make a ninety-degree right-hand turn," Griff snarled.
    The air smoothed out a bit. Dana gulped, and wished mightily for something to wash the terrible taste out of her mouth. This time, she hadn't eaten any breakfast, thinking it might have contributed to her airsickness before. But evidently it hadn't, and the airsickness pill had failed her—although it was making her dry-mouthed and dazed.
    For the next thirty minutes, Griff drilled Dana on making smooth, banking turns while keeping the wings level. Using a highway two thousand feet below as a marker, he illustrated how to make S-turns, one hundred and eighty degrees at a time. Surprisingly, Dana kept the trainer fairly steady and didn't lose or gain much altitude. Later, Griff knew they had to work on landings and takeoffs, and ordered Dana back to the pattern where the air was going to become increasingly bumpy. At least twenty other trainers were in the pattern circling the field, further chopping the air with their props.
    Within a minute of getting into the pattern, Dana was sick again. When she'd recovered, Griff was on her to stay level and maintain the correct altitude. He yelled at her for not seeing a trainer coming in from the starboard side, flying too close to them.
    Shaken, Dana forced herself to rise above her own physical misery and concentrate on the sky around her. Every bump made her stomach roll. Every snapping order from Griff drove her closer to tears. The first time she tried to land, she brought the trainer in too high. If not for Griff's lightning response, Dana was sure they would have crashed. As it was, the wheels kissed the runway like a lover. She wondered if she would ever land half that well.
    The second time around the pattern, lined up properly, Dana tensed, her hand gripping