Eagle and Kat (Kinsella Universe Book 8) Read online

  Eagle and Kat

  A novel by

  Gina Marie Wylie

  Copyright ©2016 by Gina Marie Wylie

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  Title

  Eagle and Kat

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Part IV

  Part V

  Part VI

  Part VII

  Part VIII

  Part IX

  Part X

  Part XI

  Part XII

  Part XIII

  Part XIV

  Part XV

  Really Fast

  Eagle and Kat

  Part I

  Jim Hawkins glanced away from the computer screen when he heard his bedsprings creak. Kat Schneider was there, lying on her stomach, her jean-clad legs kicked up in the air, watching him with a great deal of interest.

  He turned back to the screen and checked the readouts. Just another few meters and sure enough, he made the dock. He kept his hand wrapped around the control stick, but everything stayed green.

  He let go and turned back to Kat. "I owe you, Kat. Words...words are nothing compared to what you've done. The stick, the program, all of it."

  "You're my friend," she said simply. "My best and only friend."

  He grinned and held up the control stick Kat had designed. "Knowing my father would give his left nut for this just makes it that much sweeter."

  Kat gave him the finger. "Sure, he'd love it. Right up until you told him it was something a sixteen-year-old girl whipped up in an afternoon. Then he'd blow it off."

  "Well, not to worry. My idea of heaven is knowing he'd go ape if he saw what it can do."

  She chuckled. "Just so long as you don't sneeze again."

  Jim shared the laugh. He'd sneezed a few minutes after she'd given it to him, while he was trying to use it the first time. The results had been spectacular, because there were buttons and pressure points all over the control stick. To use the stick, Kat had developed a half dozen simulation programs–spaceships and jet planes, mostly. He had been starting the simplest one and the sneeze had resulted in a spectacular crash and burn.

  "What were you doing over the weekend?" Jim asked. "I didn't see you."

  "Thinking," she said, "about the past, the present, and the future."

  "Sometimes you think too much."

  Kat giggled. "You have no idea, Eagle. None at all."

  She regarded him for a few seconds...a few seconds Jim found unnerving. Any time Kat started calling him Eagle, he knew she was going someplace exciting. Kat loved excitement, the more the better.

  "Tell me, Eagle, what would you say if I wanted us to metaphorically jump off that proverbial cliff our parents and teachers warn us about?"

  "Metaphorically jumping off proverbial cliffs is okay. Real ones aren't," he said. "Just how proverbial and metaphorical are you talking about?"

  "Come here, Eagle, I want to check something."

  He lifted the control stick and she laughed. "Not that joy stick, just bring yourself. Come and stand by the bed."

  He got up and walked towards the bed, stopping in front of Kat. She sat up and faced him.

  His jaw didn't quite hit the floor, but it was close. Drool probably did. Earlier she had been wearing a sweater, but now she looked bare from the waist up, under her thin, gauzy blouse. She wore that blouse a lot, but always with a camisole under it. Now he realized, she wasn't wearing anything at all under it.

  Her breasts were small, her areolas clearly visible through the gauzy fabric. He swallowed, trying to clear his throat and wishing he hadn't gotten an instant hard-on.

  "Stand still, Eagle, I want to check something," Kat repeated.

  What happened next was something you hear about in stories, but something Jim had never imagined in reference to himself. Kat pulled down the zipper of his jeans, fished around a bit, finally pushing down his jockey shorts to pull his erection out of his slacks.

  She ran her hand along his length, and then cupped his balls. "Ah, balls! I was pretty sure you had them! In a minute, we'll see just how big they are."

  She leaned back and looked up at him. "Well, no surprise there. Porno books are full of shit. It did absolutely, positively, nothing for me. My nipples aren't hard and I don't have damp panties."

  It was all too clinical and Jim's stalk wilted. He reached down and returned his ex-erection to where it belonged. "What was that all about?" he said, trying to sound like his best friend wrapped her hand around his erection every day of the week.

  "Like I said, I spent the weekend thinking." She looked up at him. "About now, you're thinking it would be pretty cool to do it with me."

  Jim was pretty sure she was talking about sex–and she was right. A few seconds before, and making love to Kat had been the first thing on his list of things to do next.

  Kat wasn't pretty; she was kind of plain, really. She wasn't skinny, but she was a long way from fat. A slightly square face, medium height and build, with long dark brown hair...he'd known her as long as he could remember.

  She reached out and zipped up his zipper, taking appropriate care to miss his vitals. "Like I said, I was thinking about the present and the future. Long term, short term, and medium term. We've talked about our future, you and I."

  She patted the front of his jeans. Then she tugged his hand, pulling him down to sit on the bed next to her. "You and me, Eagle. We could do it. Nothing to it. I know for a fact I'd enjoy it. I'm pretty sure you would too."

  "It wouldn't be very smart," he told her. "Not without rock-solid protection."

  "Well, guess what? So far both Depo-Provera and the most common form of the pill don't agree with me. The first gave me cramps like you wouldn't believe. The pill just plain messes things up. I can do what you thought we were going to do as much as I want. We can't make love, though. Because a baby would screw both of us up."

  "I understand, Kat. I'm willing to wait."

  "Yeah, good for you," she said drily. "The problem is, my equipment works just fine. All the wires are hooked into the right sockets, and given the right circumstances everything works just peachy. Really peachy. So we have to be careful, really careful."

  "I promise," he said, crossing his heart. "Cross my heart, hope to die."

  "Yeah, well, we'll see."

  She looked him in the eye. "We had a plan, you and me. You want to fly spaceships. I want to design and build things. No sweat, I'll design and build your spaceships, and then you'll fly them. That was our long-term goal."

  "Yeah," Jim agreed.

  "We decided we would apply ourselves really hard in high school, make it as short as we could, but do as brilliantly as possible, so we can land at someplace like Caltech or MIT."

  Jim nodded again. "Both of us are geniuses! A piece of cake, a slam dunk!"

  Jim had no idea where Kat was going with all of this. They'd had this discussion a zillion times. Mostly they dotted i's and crossed t's.

  "So, how big are your balls really, Eagle? Are you willing to jump off a cliff with me?"

  "I don't follow," he said. "Obviously, you've decided something. I don't think it's fair for you to change your mind like that, without talking to me first. Not if you really want us to stick together."

  "I really want us to stick together, Eagle. There are a lot of reasons for that. We've talked about those too."

  "Cliffs and balls," he reminded her.

  "Yeah. We have our sights set on really fine schools. Expensive schools. We're both only children, and while your dad makes really, really big bucks, my parents have had to scrimp and save.

  "Sa
turday, Eagle, I saw the account statement on my college fund. A hundred and seventy-two thousand bucks. My dad says that he's on schedule, that if I take three years to get through high school, three more years to get my undergraduate degree, then two years of doctoral work, why, he'll be flat busted when I get my doctorate."

  This too had been the topic of many discussions. Jim had never heard the dollar amount before, but certainly he'd had a pretty good idea of just how large the financial vector would have to be. His own father would just dip into "cash flow," he'd been told. "I won't even notice," his father had said.

  His father was the managing partner of an LLC that had scored three consecutive big wins in the private aviation market. In 2017, Hawkins and Company had sold only 3 percent fewer aircraft than Gulfstream had. Personally, Jim wished his father had saved anyway, but that was because Jim wasn't really into taking avoidable risks.

  "A week ago, Eagle, I was browsing the Net," Kat said.

  "I found something interesting. Right up my alley, so to speak." She chuckled. "The woman doesn't even know I exist, but not only do I now have a role model, she's been a terrible influence. Beyond terrible."

  "A lot of people have role models," Jim said. "Most of the role models aren't that good and don't know the person exists who looks up to them."

  "Yeah, that's so. But one day Stephanie Kinsella and I will be standing next to each other. I swear it to God."

  "Who is Stephanie Kinsella?" Jim asked.

  "A full professor of physics at Caltech. She turned

  -two a week before I turned sixteen. She had her doctorate from Caltech when she was eighteen. If I follow the plan we've laid out, I'll be twenty-two when I have mine."

  "How'd she do that?" Jim asked.

  "Skipped high school and most of elementary school. I had to do some hacking, but I've seen her school transcripts. At twelve she maxed the SAT. Her father is richer than yours and mine together, and he bought her way into Caltech."

  "What about a high school diploma?" Jim was getting really confused.

  "The SAT is supposed to be a predictor of how well you will do in college...and how much you learned in high school. You and me, Jim. We could max the SAT right now."

  He contemplated that. He wasn't as sure as Kat was about it, but it was true that both of them ate up standardized tests.

  "And then, well..." Kat gripped his leg with her fingers. Tight. "Then I looked at what Professor Kinsella is doing now, and I realized I could do that today. I understand what she's doing. I know the math, I know all about it. I think I've figured out some improvements to her designs."

  She waved at the computer screen. "Tell me, Eagle, tell me true...if you sat down in a spaceship with controls like that stick, you could fly it, couldn't you?"

  "Well..." he hesitated. "I suppose."

  "Suppose my ass! You can. We both know it. What was that you were just doing, eh? You were docking with a tumbling satellite. You matched your velocity to it, in spite of all the different vectors."

  "I had a lot of help from instruments and, above all, the computer," Jim said sarcastically.

  "And you think a real spaceship won't have instruments and a computer?"

  Well, there was that.

  "So, Kat. What exactly is your new plan?"

  "I'm going to steal the money in my college account. My dad gets statements quarterly; he just got the one on Saturday. I'll have three months before he finds out it's gone."

  "That's crazy! What do you need the money for, if you're thinking about skipping college?"

  "Suppose I offered you your heart's desire, Eagle? A spaceship of your very own to fly."

  "You might be able to skip the rest of high school, that might work," Jim said, ignoring her question. "I can probably get away with it too, if I can get right into college. Then I need to get in NASA and whip some serious competition...and probably have to kiss a lot of booty to get an astronaut slot. Or I could go in the Air Force, learn to shoot down other people, and maybe, just possibly, in twenty years, I might get an astronaut slot. I'm not stupid, Kat. There is zero chance, except by a miracle, that I can land a pilot job at NASA. I have a better chance of becoming a pro athlete."

  "Who said anything about NASA? I was just going to build you one myself. A ship."

  Jim rolled his eyes. "Even the prize competition ships cost millions and millions. There are whole teams of men–and women–working on them."

  "What I want you to do, Jim, if you've got the balls, is go to your old man. BS him about wanting a plane of your own. One of his new designs. Then, when you get the plane, we make some slight modifications. And then in three months, you fly the two of us to orbit and back. Maybe orbit the moon. Or Mars."

  "Whoa!" Jim said. "Kat, my father taught me how to fly, okay? It was with the understanding that I can't legally solo until I'm sixteen. I'll be sixteen in a few weeks. He isn't going to give me a plane. Shit! They sell for ten, twenty million, fifty million bucks! Not going to happen!"

  Her hand slid between his legs, brushing his balls again. His erection returned instantly.

  "I asked about balls earlier, Eagle. Have you got them...or not? Do you want some of what is on offer here? Huh? I swear to God, if you don't at least say you'll try, I'm going to walk out that door and you'll never see me again. I will go down to Burbank airport and bang on doors until I find someone willing to give me what I want...for what I have to offer."

  Jim's first instinct was to boot her out the door. He didn't act on that instinct, so it wasn't his crass instincts that made him move her hand off the front of his jeans.

  "Is that what our friendship is? You grab me by my best part and threaten to cut me off if I don't do what you want? That's a crock, Kat! A crock!"

  "I kind of hinted about some of this to my mom and dad," she said. Her hand was back on his leg, holding him down. "Skip high school and college? That's daft, they told me. Daft. Crazy. You have to pay your dues, my father told me."

  "My dad tells me that 'paying your dues' is what he calls 'learning and experience.' He says you don't go anywhere without paying them. And if you try, you can really mess people up," Eagle riposted.

  "Let me tell you something, Eagle. I read Professor Kinsella's stuff. I read her notes. I read her plans. Every last damn thing of hers. I can do this. Will I make mistakes? You bet! She's made a couple, too! The two guys who did the original development are beyond clueless...they might be working on physics doctorates, but they are dumb as stumps.

  "I swear to you, Eagle, I can do this!"

  "Do what? Steal nearly two hundred thousand dollars from your parents? Help me steal an airplane worth millions and millions of dollars? "Wake up, Kat! Smell the roses! There is not a single modification you can make to a jet plane that will let it reach orbit! None! You can't do it for $160,000 or a hundred million bucks! Maybe if you paid the Russians, they would build you a booster that would get the aircraft into orbit, but when you tried to come back down, you'd burn up like Columbia did! Thanks, but no thanks, Kat! Yeah, I want to go to space. But I don't want a one-way ticket. I want a decent chance of coming back alive and in one piece."

  "You've known me for how long? Our entire lives, you moron! Do you think I'm stupid? If I build you a spaceship, I have to be there with you when it goes up. Do you think I'm offering this so we could make pretty sparks for some clueless moron to wish on? Don't be an idiot!"

  She stood up and walked over to the computer, killed the program, and brought up Firefox. "Get your lousy, stinking, faithless ass over here," she said. "I want to show you something."

  Jim got up, and she pushed him into the chair, and then leaned over his shoulder as she typed a URL into the navigation bar.

  "Watch!" she commanded as she hit return.

  There was a picture of a half dozen people standing in front of a classic Volkswagen Beetle. They were centered around a young black woman, who was noticeably shorter than the others.

  "That's Professor Kinsella th
ere, in the middle," Kat said, confirming Jim's guess. "Now, go down and click on the 'Live shot' button."

  Jim moved his trackball and clicked.

  At first he thought the picture was black and white, then he wasn't sure. "A lunar landscape," Jim whispered in awe. Hanging in the picture was a blue and white globe: Earth.

  "Look at the top of the frame, center, in the middle of the picture."

  Jim looked and frowned. That looked like a car rear view mirror, with more moonscape reflected in it.

  "It's an animation," Jim said confidently. "They can do some really great stuff with CGI these days."

  "It's not an animation, it's live," she told him. "Go back to the first page."

  He pushed the "Go Back" button, and she told him to click on the "Replay Launch" button.

  This screen had a picture of the VW with the hood up, showing compressed gas tanks. Next to it was a picture of the ass end of the VW, showing an engine. Jim laughed at that. "Like right, an internal combustion engine runs in vacuum? Not!"

  "Eagle, you've taken your mind out of gear, and you are cruising on contempt and disbelief right now. Besides, that's a gas turbine."

  "You left out a hefty dose of skepticism," he told her, angrier than ever.

  "You're entitled to skepticism, that's part of the territory," Kat said. "But unreasoning skepticism is just stupidity, a form of prejudice. You don't know enough, and you're real close to the point where I'm going to be permanently pissed off. I'll write you off as a clueless moron, like all the other clueless clown morons I have to put up with every day...and you know how I treat the rest of the clowns."

  Yeah, she ignored them.

  Underneath the pictures of the VW's guts, were two more buttons. One said, "Ground Perspective" and the other said, "Vehicle Perspective."

  "Shut your trap, Jimmy, and watch the Ground Perspective. Or it's sayonara, baby."

  He looked at Kat. This wasn't a joke; she was serious. The Jimmy nickname brought reason and sanity back to him faster than anything she'd said up until then.