Free The Hot Pilots by T. E. Cruise

different-looking airplane, thanks to
     her stubby, unswept, pylon-tipped wings and T-shaped tail.
    That was not to say that the F-404 was perfect, Steve thought as he banked his silver stilletto of a bird through the heavens.
     Amalgamated-Landis still had a number of flaws to address. The F-404’s high performance capabilities made her a thirsty bird;
     her stubby, rocket-fin wings could not carry much ordinance; she had poor turn radius capabilities, and a nasty pitch-up problem
     that Steve intended to see about right now…
    He checked to make sure that his safety harness was cinched tight, and then pulled back on the stick and went to afterburner.
     The Starscythe rose like the Buck Rogers rocket ship she so much resembled. Steve felt himself being flattened against his
     seat back as if a giant were pressing his palm against Steve’s chest, squashing the air out of his lungs. As he climbed higher
     the sky turned a darker shade of blue. His altimeter read sixty thousand feet. He was approaching zoom ceiling. His eyes kept
     scanning his instruments. At the very last moment before his bird ran out of lift and her oxygen-starved engine flamed out,
     he dropped the jet’s needle nose to go over the top.
    Steve heard himself groaning from the G-pressure as the F-404 arced into her dive. Far below through the cloud breaks was
     the glittering band of blue that was the Chesapeake Bay, and to the west, the green and white city-state of Washington, D.C.,
     but Steve had no time for sight-seeing.
    Get ready
, he told himself.
If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen now
—
    Pilots had been complaining that during attack dives the Starscythe’s chopped wings interacted with its tail fins to cause
     the nose to abruptly rise up, stalling the jet, and putting her into a flat spin. Brigadier General Howard Simon, whose pet
     project the Starscythe was, had called from Dayton to ask Steve to check the problem out, saying that the F-404 that was waiting
     for Steve at Andrews A.F.B. was one of the first off the Amalgamated-Landis assembly lines.
    It gave Steve a real thrill to be one of the first to fly a new airplane like this, but not nearly the thrill he felt as his
     diving Starscythe’s nose abruptly pitched up and his wings lost their bite. His helmet clanked hard against the canopy as
     the stumbling jet slid across the sky and went into its spin.
    Well, this is where I wanted to be
, Steve thought to himself. His instrument panel had gone from tranquil green to warning, buzzing amber/red. The Starscythe
     was falling like an autumn leaf and also twirling like a top as it fell, like a dog chasing its own tail. Steve watched the
     sky whip around sideways as his harness cut into his shoulders: At least the webbing kept him from being hurled against the
     steel and plexi walls of his cockpit like the little steel ball that catapulted around the walls of a spinning roulette wheel—
    Thinking of which, Steve hoped that his number would
not
come up as he struggled to get the jet’s nose down. He’d taken her up as high as she could go in order to leave himself enough
     room to recover from his purposely induced spin—At least that’s what he was hoping.
    He was down around thirty thousand feet when he finally got the Starscythe back under control. He leveled her off, and then
     came around to bring her back home to Andrews, taking deep breaths to slow the jackrabbit thud of his heart. As he called
     in for permission to land he was already mentally composing his report to General Moore. Beneath the green rubber oxygen mask
     his grin was as wide as the sky.
    The ground crew was waiting for Steve as he taxied the Starscythe along the tarmac toward the hangars. He climbed down out
     of the airplane and walked toward the ready room with his helmet tucked under his arm.
    “Steve! Wait up!”
    He turned, and was surprised to see Jack Horton coming toward him. The wind caught the front of Horton’s gray suit jacket,