Sabrina
Copyright© 2026 by The Outsider
Chapter 26: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
29 July 2019 – The United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Sabrina broke out in a sweat when she learned her new CO was one of her former friends from her fourth-class year. The events surrounding Sabrina’s conflict with former cadet Devin Fairhaven polarized the entire Cadet Wing in 2017. Combined with the punishments handed down by the Superintendent and Commandant, Sabrina suffered the loss of every friend she made during Basic Cadet Training in the aftermath.
Most cadets who graduate from the Academy count those they met during BCT among their closest friends for the rest of their lives. Sabrina had none of that. Sabrina was lucky to have made new friends since then. Despite being at the Academy when Sabrina squared off against the establishment, those new friends no longer cared about those events or were her friends because of what she did.
Dominique Phillips paused before ordering her three subordinates into the inner office. There, she outlined her goals for the semester and asked the other three for their thoughts on how they would each accomplish those goals in their divisions. The meeting lasted only thirty minutes before Dominique dismissed them.
“Cadet Knox, a moment, please? Cadet Sparger, please close the inner door on your way out.”
Sabrina froze before standing stiffly at attention, staring straight ahead.
“Relax, Cadet,” Dominique said. “Sabrina, please,” she asked when Sabrina retained her rigid posture. Only then did Sabrina relax, but only a little.
“Look, Sabrina, I know we aren’t friends any longer. I’m sorry about that. I truly am. I might not have agreed with your actions three years ago, but I respected your strength of conviction then, and I respect it now. I need that from you now, and I know I’ll get it.”
“Ma’am...”
“Dominique, Sabrina. Dominique. Or Nique, if you’re comfortable with that.”
“Nique, while I don’t regret standing up for myself or someone else, I do regret the consequences.” Sabrina drew a deep breath and let it back out slowly. “I can’t promise the resentment won’t show through at some point, either.”
“You’ve earned the right to be resentful, Sabrina. You felt you needed to stand up to Fairhaven, to fight for that four-deg and all the other women at this Academy. You stuck to your guns, stood your ground against the Commandant, and made the Superintendent back down when you got called on the carpet.”
“And immediately tossed my cookies afterward!”
“Details, Sabrina.” Dominique waved off the Stink-eye Sabrina gave her. “I won’t hold you up any longer. Dismissed.”
Sabrina still felt odd returning salutes.
For the past three years, she was the person initiating salutes, not the one returning them. The odd feeling struck her the first time she returned a salute during summer AM290 classes, and it hadn’t yet faded. Sabrina understood this would end soon, especially after graduation. She’d be back at the bottom of the totem pole then, at least for officers. Senior NCOs saluting her, especially the twenty-plus-years-of-service NCOs, would be very strange indeed.
Watching the four-degs run the Terrazzo strips also brought a wry smile to Sabrina’s lips. She couldn’t believe she was ever that young, that naïve, that starry-eyed. Sabrina went easy on the four-degs when they greeted her on the T-zo, preferring to guide – rather than bully – them to where they needed to be. She refused to think of them as ‘doolies.’
Sabrina continued that philosophy at the glider training squadron. Her command style leaned more toward mentor than screaming harridan. There were rare occasions when she brought the thunder down from on high. Nique checked in with Sabrina once a week at the most, knowing Sabrina had things under control.
Sabrina’s eyes crossed as she stared at her Astro Engineering 445 homework one night in mid-September.
’Who the hell decided adding letters – Greek letters at that – to math problems was a good idea?’ she asked herself.
Calculus still fried Sabrina’s brain from time to time. She pushed back from her desk and tried to forget about Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics and Control. Dina heard Sabrina’s chair roll and peeked over her shoulder.
“Having fun?” Dina asked.
“I’m having about as much fun as people who tried to get a hit off of Mariano Rivera,” Sabrina replied as she rubbed her gritty eyes.
“Really? A baseball reference? What about hockey?”
“I had to use something you’d understand.”
Sabrina saw a small stuffed penguin land on the floor after it hit her in the head.
“Be glad that wasn’t my glass paperweight!”
“That might have felt better than having to stare at this stuff for another hour, Dina.”
“So? Move on to something else.”
“I finished my other homework already.”
“Oh, way to make me feel better, Miss Über Brain...”
Another two hours remained in ACQ.
“Just keep that Chemistry crap away from me. I still have nightmares about that stuff from high school.”
Sabrina was just griping to gripe. With a 3.96 academic GPA, she demonstrated a solid grasp of the material in her classes. Combined with her 3.9 military and 4.0 physical fitness GPAs, she placed solidly in the top fifth of the Class of 2020. Barring any further catastrophes, Sabrina should receive her first choice when it comes time for post-graduation assignments.
“Like I believe THAT,” Dina snorted, referring to Sabrina’s nightmares. “Academics come easily for you. It’s the interpersonal stuff that seems to elude your grasp,” she followed up with a grin.
“As I’ve said in the past, it’s a gift I get from my father.”
“So none of your stubbornness comes from your mother?”
“I prefer to say that I’m very self-assured.”
Sabrina sat in the squadron lounge later that week, watching another episode of her father’s obstacle running competition show. Now that Jeff was up against the more seasoned contestants, he wasn’t blowing the others out of the water like earlier in the season. Still, he hardly looked concerned about making the next round. Jeff was near or at the top of the standings after every episode.
“I still can’t believe your dad’s in such good shape for his age, Sabrina,” Sean Doucette, a two-deg from Nebraska, commented.
“He’ll tell you it’s ‘clean living,’ Sean, but don’t believe a word of it. He’s an Army vet and a twenty-plus-year paramedic. T’ain’t nothin’ clean about those, and he knows it!”
“It must be your mom keeping him on the right path then, Sabrina.”
“Oh, Mom’s good at keeping him in line, that’s for sure, Dina! I know we’ve talked about how she does that, too!”
Sean raised an eyebrow.
“Since you’re new to King Ratz, Sean, I’ll fill you in. Mom has studied karate since she was five and is currently working on her eighth-level black belt. Dad’s studied it since they got together in 1992, though he took some classes in high school.
“Dad, my brothers, and I all had Mom as an instructor at one point, and we had a place at home where we could spar. Training never really ended until I came here.” Sabrina grinned. “Mom uses the sparring mat to ‘correct’ any bad attitudes that pop up, and Dad isn’t immune.”
“Holy crap,” Sean exclaimed. “So he’s in good shape because he’s studied karate for thirty years?”
“Well, no,” Sabrina admitted. “He’s in such good shape because he’s worked out like a madman for over forty years. Interval runs, weights, push-ups, sit-ups ... You name it, he does it.”
“So he really could win this thing?” Sean asked, waving at the television.
“Don’t jinx it, Sean, but probably.”
Sabrina stepped onto the ice in the Cadet Arena. With the football team away at the University of Utah this weekend and squadron training already finished for the day, the afternoon was hers. Over the next thirty minutes, some of her teammates joined her for an informal workout, and they started with simple drills to knock off the summer rust.
The familiar motions soon brought back most of their hockey acumen, though parts were still pretty rough. Sabrina lost an edge during a skating drill and crashed feet-first into the boards.
“First day on skates, Sabrina?” Mara Wayne quipped through her laughter.
“You’re not indispensable, you know?”
“Do you need help getting up? You didn’t break a hip or anything?”
“Fie on you, disloyal one!” Sabrina growled as she rolled to her knees before standing back on her blades. “What I need is a proper skate sharpening. Too many hours on the ice over the summer.”
“Be glad you got the ice time this summer,” Mitzi Langenhagen griped. “My summer duty at Mountain Home didn’t include any trips to ice rinks.”
“And the brief time you were home, you wanted to spend time with your family,” Sabrina added.
“Yeah,” Mitzi admitted. “We’ll be apart for too long after I graduate, so...”
“Even as rusty as we are, we’re in a good spot already.” As the captain, Sabrina didn’t have as many concerns for the upcoming season as before the session.
“I agree, Sabrina,” a familiar voice called from the bench.
Sabrina waved everyone over to the nearby bench.
“Ladies,” Sabrina said, “this is Ken Sawchuk, our new head coach.”
Sabrina, like Ken, saw the apprehensive looks on her teammates’ faces.
“Ladies,” Ken said, “I want to reassure you that there will be as few changes as I can reasonably get away with.”
Skepticism this time.
“I know, words are cheap. Sabrina and I have had plenty of conversations since I got here this summer. I know if I come in here throwing my weight around, I’ll alienate most, if not all of you. I want to guide, not command. That’s more my coaching style anyway.”
Players shifted their weight.
“Look, I’ve already taken up more of your practice time than I wanted to. I had planned to just observe today, but I felt I had to chime in after Sabrina made that comment about you being in a good spot. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot worse at the beginning of a season.”
Sabrina and her teammates nodded, remembering some train wrecks of their own.
“My office is on Level 2,” Ken continued, “with the rest of the athletic staff. I’m usually here between 0800 and 1400 ... damn it, 1600 in the off-season. I’m still adjusting to this ‘military time’ thing, ladies, so cut me some slack.”
Ken waved and walked away, down the players’ tunnel.
“Form your own opinions, everyone, but Coach seems pretty genuine,” Sabrina commented. “Okay, we’ve got another half-hour of ice time, so let’s get back to it.”
The late-September breeze off the mountains kept Sabrina cool while she watched the day’s flight operations from the Academy field’s apron. Her classic, USAF-issue polarized sunglasses knocked the bright sunshine down to a manageable level.
“How we lookin’, Boss?”
“Hey, Donnie. Looking good today. Solid class?”
“Seems like it,” Donnie Estabrook confirmed. “Even the weakest AM250 student this year has a good grasp of the basics. The difference in skills in the four-deg class is minor. In any of the classes, actually. We shouldn’t have any issues.”
“I thought you said we shouldn’t have any issues, Donnie!” Sabrina barked a month later.
It was hard to yell while sprinting across an airfield. Donnie kept his comments to himself. Glider Fourteen looked like a kid’s styrofoam plane after it had been aggressively launched and had a violent landing. The nose of the glider collapsed after taking the brunt of its face-first stop, the tail rose skyward at a near-sixty-degree angle, and the wings folded themselves to the ground, creating an unstable tripod.
USAFA Fire stabilized the aircraft’s tail boom before removing the cadets from the cockpit as other cadets gathered. The Security Forces’ cordon prevented other cadets from approaching the scene too closely. Sabrina overheard a technical sergeant from the control tower say something about ‘wind shear’ to Major Cunningham. The major nodded before raising his phone to his ear and speaking to someone, probably the Commandant of Cadets. Large glider pieces lay scattered behind the firefighters as their tools cut the plane apart.
Sabrina heard a shrill cry of pain as fire-rescue personnel worked to free the four-deg from the cockpit’s front seat. A civilian medical helicopter landed well away from the scene, so its rotor wash wouldn’t knock the glider over. Two Colorado Springs Fire Department ambulances parked twenty feet from the glider’s nose, their patient compartment doors facing the accident scene. The paramedics consulted with the scene commander and helicopter flight crew before bringing their stretchers and equipment over.
Sabrina could see little from where she stood. As the cadet squadron commander, Security Forces allowed her to be closer to the scene than others, but not by much.
“Who is it, Sabrina?” a familiar voice asked.
“Emma Pozo is the instructor,” Sabrina answered her cadet commander. “Janet Soaring Eagle is her assigned four-deg in the front seat.”
“Any word on their condition, yet?” Nique asked. Sabrina shook her head.
“Janet’s cried out a couple of times while they try to extricate her, but no word on Emma yet. No one’s come over to update me, but then again, they’re a little busy.”
Major Cunningham waved Nique and Sabrina over as soon as the words were out of Sabrina’s mouth. He introduced the two young women to USAFA’s fire chief and CSFD’s shift commander.
“Now that Chief Boeheim’s people have the glider secure, we’ll finish extricating Cadet Soaring Eagle in a few minutes,” CSFD’s Captain Unterkopfler reported. “She’ll go to Memorial Hospital here in the Springs by ground. AirLife will fly Cadet Pozo to Denver General’s trauma center for surgery as soon as we get her out. She’s in and out of consciousness, and we’re concerned that she’s bleeding internally. Cadet Pozo could go to Memorial, but Denver General’s better for internal trauma and trauma surgery.”
Sabrina looked stricken. These were her people, her girls! Two years ago, she took Emma on her first glider flight and felt even more responsible for her than the other cadets under her command.
“Cadet Knox, delegate,” the major cut in, reading Sabrina’s mind. “Get your people to shut everything down for the day. Phillips, you, too. Flight training is on hold for the immediate future, probably for the rest of the week. Cadet Knox and I will drive up to Denver to be with Cadet Pozo after I finish coordinating with the Commandant’s office. Cadet Soaring Eagle’s AOC and sponsor family will head over to Memorial to make sure she’s properly cared for. Make it happen, ladies. Dismissed.”
Sabrina remembered little of the next half-hour and soon found herself in Major Cunningham’s passenger seat as they sped north on Interstate 25. She saw a Pilot sign on the other side of the highway and shivered, remembering her brush with disaster. Another brush with disaster, that is.
“It’s not your fault, Sabrina.”
“Sir?”
“The weather office didn’t see anything on their forecasts that would have suggested we call off flight training today. You know how low their threshold is.”
“It’s strange, Sir. It’s like Emma is my kid. I feel like she’s an instructor because of me.”
“It’s possible, Sabrina. It’s also possible Emma would have become an instructor anyway.”
“Maybe,” Sabrina admitted as she looked out the window. “It hurts.”
“Guilt isn’t a rational emotion. Asking ‘What if?’ won’t help in the long run with this, Sabrina, but it’ll be hard to avoid. I can’t guarantee one hundred percent that you’ll be in the clear on this, but no one saw this coming. If anyone catches any heat over this, it’ll be the weather squadron.” Eric Cunningham looked at his chief glider pilot. “Have you talked to your dad about this stuff? I know he’s got plenty of guilt floating around in that head of his.”
“You’ve talked to him about this kinda thing, Sir?”
“When he and your mom came out for Parents’ Weekend. I recognized him from that obstacle running show he’s on. We got to talking about his time in the Army and as a paramedic. He brought up your uncle and Lily Sepulveda during those discussions.”
“He’s been carrying Lily around in his head for over twenty years. It’s better now than when I was a kid, but I know those memories still hurt.”
“It’s something you’ll have to come to grips with, Sabrina. You’ll probably never get over feeling responsible for this accident – I don’t think anyone who’s in charge does in cases like these – but you can’t let something you couldn’t control consume you.”
Sabrina gulped water as she watched the on-ice action from the bench two weeks later. The glider accident still gnawed at her, but she hoped that today’s game would help clear her head. The Vail team had stepped up its game since last season and pressed the cadets in all facets of the game. Mitzi Langenhagen ripped a shot past Vail’s goalie, breaking the one-to-one stalemate. Sabrina and her other teammates on the bench sprang to their feet, banging on the boards in celebration.
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