Sabrina
Copyright© 2026 by The Outsider
Chapter 40: An Unexpected Landing
12 October 2034 – Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Virginia
Sabrina shuffled into the house, still in a daze. The sudden end of her career in the Air Force would deny her a pension, since she had served only fourteen years. More importantly, her dream of flying in space now seemed deader than her career. Tom walked into the living room from the back of the house. He gathered his stunned wife into a hug as she dissolved into tears. He held on to her as the stress of the day – and the past six months – finally caught up to her.
Sabrina snapped awake sometime later. She looked around and discovered she was in the bedroom. She shrugged off the fleece throw and swung her feet off the bed. She sat there for a moment before putting her feet on the floor. She looked at her reflection in the large mirror across the room. Anger swept over her as she tore off the OCP uniform she still wore and threw it into the corner. She wanted nothing more to do with the Air Force or its symbols. She stood there in her sports bra and panties, panting from exertion.
Tom turned from the stove when he heard his wife enter the kitchen. She was wearing a Devens Regional High School hockey t-shirt and sweatpants.
“Hi, honey.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“About four hours?” he answered with a shrug. “I was gonna wake you soon. I didn’t want your sleep cycle to get too messed up.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” She walked closer to the stove. Tom put his arm around her while stirring something in a frying pan. “Whatcha making?”
“Your dad’s shepherd’s pie recipe. I’ve already mashed up the potatoes. It’ll be ready in about an hour.”
True to his word, Tom put dinner on the table an hour and fifteen minutes later.
“Don’t tell Dad, but I think you’ve improved on his recipe.”
“I added some ground chipotle to the ground beef.”
“Chipotle...” Sabrina snorted. “There’s a well-known Irish ingredient.”
“Hey, ‘if it’s stupid, but it works... ‘“
“You’ve been hanging around my dad too much.”
“I’ve known you since I was three, so, yeah, I’ve been around your dad a bit.” Tom looked at his wife’s attire. “That t-shirt is a little worn out.”
“It’s the only non-Air Force shirt I have that was clean. I haven’t done the laundry yet this week.”
“The first half of your stuff is folded in the spare room,” Tom told her. “The second half’s in the dryer. Let me know what you want me to box up.”
“You’re not wasting any time.”
“Sabrina, we have to be out of the house by the end of next month,” he reminded her. “I want to be done and gone well before that. All we have left to pack is our clothes and the stuff in the kitchen.”
“Just throw all my Air Force stuff in the dumpster.”
“Nope.”
“Tom, I’m serious.”
“Yeah? So am I.” Tom put his fork down. “Sabrina, at some point, you’ll remember the good parts of your career and want some mementos from them. Until Caldwell arrived last year, you were on the express elevator to the top. This is his fault, not yours.”
“Tom...”
“You’re going to believe anything that idiot said? If you are, you don’t have the backbone I thought you did. He’s managed to derail your dreams – temporarily, Sabrina – not destroy them. You must figure out how to pick yourself up again and still find a way to accomplish them! And how to shove your next round of successes up his ass!”
Tom was pissed, something Sabrina rarely saw. He was usually the relaxed, calm, collected one; she could be the emotional one in the relationship. Nothing ever fazed him.
“Since your ‘Air Force stuff’ includes pictures of your friends from the Academy, the Gallardos, and our time in Germany, you’re not throwing any of that out. At worst, we’ll ship it all off to your parents’ house, and they can put it in the basement until you’re ready to look at it again.”
“Tom...”
“No, Sabrina. I won’t let you throw out your good memories because of one stupid asshole and his cronies. We’ll box up our stuff, let the Air Force pay to ship it home to Lancaster, and finally visit your brother and sister-in-law in Texas.”
“Tom, we don’t know where we’re going next,” she reminded him. “Shouldn’t we just get a storage unit?”
“Where? Around here? First, we’d have to pay for it. Second, we’d have to pay someone to move it again. Your parents’ place is still your home of record, so the Air Force will pay the shipping costs there. Your mom and dad aren’t gonna charge us anything to store the stuff, and I think we might be able to afford to have it moved later.”
“Tom, I hear what you’re saying, but...”
Plates rattled as Tom slammed his fist down on the table.
“DAMMIT, SABRINA!” he yelled. “Why aren’t you PISSED? You’ve been moping around for the last three months since you understood your career was about to end. Fine, I get that you needed time to grieve about it, but get to the anger stage of grief! What Caldwell did to you is BULLSHIT! Where’s the fire that made you run toward the guns when we were in high school? You’ve been kicking ass since we were kids, but you won’t stand up for yourself now?”
Tom stood and flung his chair to the floor in disgust. His plate slammed down on the counter before he stormed out of the kitchen. Sabrina heard the back door slam shut. Sabrina sat staring at her half-eaten meal. She tried to summon the anger Tom wanted to see, but she still couldn’t find it in herself. She spent the past three months suppressing her feelings, trying to salvage what she could at the end of her career.
Blowing up at Caldwell and his sycophants wouldn’t have done her any good. Even now, while on her month of terminal leave and still technically in the Air Force, she had to watch herself if she was on base.
Numb. She was numb. She conditioned herself not to feel, not to react, over the past months, but to take the pile of shit shoveled her way by her current commander and his staff. People she used to feel at ease with and joke with while maintaining a proper, professional relationship had distanced themselves over the same period.
The friends she and Tom had made since being posted to Langley had done the same. She understood why they did it, at least in some regard – those in the Air Force still had careers they needed to worry about. Being associated with her in any way wouldn’t suit them in the long run. Sabrina cleared her place at the table and went to find her husband.
Tom sat at the small table on their postage-stamp-sized back patio, staring off into the distance. The view wasn’t anything to write about. Other company- and field-grade officer housing. Sabrina knew he wasn’t looking at the landscape, anyway. She slipped an arm around her husband while she crouched behind him. Tom’s hand came up to rest on her forearm.
“I’m sorry, Tom,” she said with a sigh. “I just don’t feel anything right now, not even sadness. I’m just numb.”
“I’m sorry too, Sabrina. I shouldn’t be angry at you, and I’m really not. Caldwell, Singleton, and Hudak, though ... they can burn in Hell.” Tom rose and took her hand. “C’mere.”
Tom did something with his phone before gathering his wife into his arms. A rapid, staccato guitar riff exploded from the speakers before a crash of drums. Tom pulled Sabrina into a lively, twirling dance step with the crash. He sang along with the bouncy, driving tune while gazing deep into her eyes in the way she loved.
The song’s third verse was a near match to the first. That was when Sabrina understood Tom’s point behind the dance session. The final chorus pounded that point home.
Hey, don’t write yourself off yet
It’s only in your head, you feel left out
Or looked down on
Just do your best
Do everything you can
And don’t you worry what their bitter hearts
Are gonna sayIt just takes some time
Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything’ll be just fine
Everything, everything’ll be alright, alright
The chorus repeated one final time before the song ended.
“You’ve been listening to my dad’s music again,” Sabrina said while smiling at her husband.
“And you’ve been listening to those bitter hearts too much,” Tom countered. Sabrina laid her head against his chest.
“You’ve been pretty busy over the last month or so. I finally noticed that most of our stuff is packed.”
“Yeah, I’m just waiting for them to cut your orders so I can put a copy in each box before I tape them up. The furniture’s not ours, so there’s not much to ship home.”
“I’ll check in with Wing headquarters tomorrow to see when we can expect those orders.”
“Did you give them a copy of the papers you signed at Squadron? I wouldn’t put submitting altered paperwork past Caldwell or his bunch.”
“Yeah. Wing HQ gave me back a copy of it, stamped ’RECEIVED’ with today’s date, and the colonel signed it personally as I watched. I’m glad you had me go over there and do that.”
“With your other COs, I wouldn’t have worried about it, but ... Look, call Alex and see what their schedule is like. See if they can host us for a week or even a long weekend. Let’s get away from here for a little while.”
Alex Knox hugged his little sister when she and Tom entered the small terminal at Rudolph-Kenedy County Airport. Letting her go, he shook Tom’s hand next.
“Hey, guys, how was your flight?” he asked.
“Not bad,” Tom answered, “though I wish we’d gotten the optional lavatory in the PA-47 ... I’ll be right back.”
“That’s a pretty sweet ride, Bina,” Alex remarked while motioning toward the small, twin-engine jet on the apron. “What’s it like flying that after all your years in fighters?”
“It’s both different and the same,” Sabrina admitted. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m doing forty on the highway when I should be going eighty. The almost complete lack of engine noise is still weird, but those jets are sweet. It’s a nice change at times. Tom’s almost rated for complex aircraft; he’s just building his hours.” She sighed. “I guess I’m gonna have more time to fly with him now.”
“How are you doing coming to grips with it?” her sister-in-law Adriana asked, meaning the end of Sabrina’s career.
“Still kinda numb, Anna. Tom’s well into the anger stage, but I haven’t even really started grieving, I don’t think. I’ve wanted to go into space for almost twenty-five years, and now that dream seems to be all but gone. At least Alex is still working in that field.” She turned back to her brother. “Can you get me a job?” she asked with a laugh.
“Don’t worry, Sabrina. I have a feeling that things will work out in the end,” Alex replied.
Alex drove off the airport property and pointed the car east. Once past Interstate 69E, the old US Route 77, the empty South Texas landscape opened up before them again.
“Wow, there’s nothing out here!” Tom commented.
“Goes on for miles,” Alex said. “There are miles of these scrub trees mixed with open plains and ranch land. Since they removed all the pumpjacks, that’s about it.”
A large sign appeared in the distance, warning drivers of a restricted area.
“‘Baffin Bay Spaceport, Headquarters of Ad Astra Space Exploration, Ltd. – Employee Entrance. Authorized Personnel Only,’” Sabrina read. “Sounds serious...”
“You’ve got your military IDs. Hand them up. We put your names on a visitor’s list, so we should be good.”
It took another ten minutes before Alex pulled into the driveway of a two-story house. The housing area had been one of the first sections completed on the sprawling spaceport; the subdivision reminded Sabrina of the senior officers’ housing areas on military bases.
“Wow, this place is yours?” Sabrina asked as she stepped inside, out of the heat.
“Well, it belongs to Ad Astra, the company developing the spaceport and the one we both work for,” Adriana answered. “They completed the housing first so everyone would have a decent place to return to at the end of their workday.”
“So much room. The place Tom and I have at Langley is about half this size.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have three kids,” Alex said, putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“You only have the two, Alex,” Sabrina said, confused.
Her brother and sister-in-law smiled back at her.
“OHMYGOD!” Sabrina shrieked before rushing over to hug Adriana. Tom finally clued in and shook Alex’s hand in congratulations.
“How far along are you, Anna?” he asked.
“Only a couple of months. You’re the first people we’ve told. Not even the parents know yet. The housing office assigned us this place last year when we told them we would be adding to our family.”
“Have you told Matty and Sera yet?”
“Well, yeah, we did tell them. We’re telling you guys now because they’ll spill the secret as soon as they’re home,” Alex laughed.
Later that evening, a dozen other couples from the neighborhood joined Sabrina and Tom on her brother’s back patio. Since it was Texas, a large smoker was cooling beside the patio after cooking meats. Guests also enjoyed different Tex-Mex dishes and some from the Mexican Chihuahua region, where Adriana Rosado Knox’s father’s side of the family came from.
All the other guests worked for Ad Astra somehow; there were no stay-at-home spouses. Those who didn’t work in spacecraft development with Alex worked in other supporting fields on the growing spaceport. The mix of different jobs represented kept the technobabble to a minimum and kept the talk focused on the families present. Sabrina found the evening very relaxing.
While enjoying their after-dinner drinks, the other guests raised a cheer when a new arrival walked around the corner of Alex and Anna’s house.
“Hey, Boss!” Alex called out to the newcomer. “Wanna beer?”
“Now there’s a dumb question...” the woman snorted as she pulled a bottle from the beer cooler.
“Sabrina, this is my boss, Beth. Well, all of us here work for her. Beth, this is my little sister, Sabrina. Her husband, Tom, is around here somewhere.”
Beth said nothing in greeting. Instead, she flipped something at Sabrina. Sabrina almost fumbled the catch but saw the small object flying toward her just in time. In the patio’s dim light, Sabrina made out the black leather of a flight suit name badge resting in her hands. The stylized, silver-embossed wings reminded her more of Army flight wings than the familiar Air Force ones. The badge bore the name ‘SABRINA KNOX-JONES’ under the wings, with ‘AD ASTRA CHIEF PILOT’ printed below.
“Alex tells me y’all’re in the market for a new job,” Beth said. “Got one for y’all if y’all’re interested.”
Sabrina nearly dropped her drink in shock.
“Mark this date down on your calendar, Beth. I doubt you’ll ever see my sister speechless again,” Alex laughed. Turning to his sister, he said, “Beth’s the president and CEO of Ad Astra, Sabrina. We’re at the point where we’re ready to do some flight testing of a single-stage-to-orbit lifter, or we will be very soon. I told her about you being bounced out of the Air Force, despite being one of their best test pilots.”
Sabrina blinked a couple of times before turning to her brother’s boss.
“This is unreal! Why would you offer me a position like this? All you’ve likely heard about me is my big brother’s bragging.”
Beth snorted.
“I’ve known about y’all since y’all were thirteen, Sabrina, and I’ve followed y’all ever since.” She chuckled at the look on Sabrina’s face. “After the end of the 2012-2013 school year – y’all’s freshman year at Devens Regional – y’all received the Youth Citizen Foundation’s Integrity Award. Two years later, after that first home invasion, the Foundation sent y’all another letter to assure y’all their opinion of y’all hadn’t changed.”
Sabrina looked at Alex.
“Did you tell her about all that?”
“Like I said, he didn’t have to, Sabrina. At the bottom of the second letter was a handwritten postscript. I didn’t have to convince Dad to let me write that because he was all for it.”
“YOU wrote that?”
“Sure did. ‘Go, girl!’ I meant it then, and I mean it now. I hope y’all’ll help take Ad Astra to new heights.”
The other guests left hours ago. Alex, Anna, Tom, Beth, and Sabrina sat around the dying embers in the fire pit outside on the patio. Sabrina was still shocked by the job offer, so she kept staring at the name badge.
“She gonna be okay?” Beth asked Tom.
“Probably,” Tom shrugged. “Anyway, enough about her. You got a tax prep office around here looking for some experienced help?”
“Sure do. Looking to get on the payroll, Tom?”
“Why should my wife reap all the benefits? Plus, with as many people as you’ll eventually have working here, a place like that will need help every year between February and April, at the very least. That’s what I’ve done at every place Sabrina got stationed.”
“I can introduce y’all to Milt and Clara, the two that run the place, when y’all’re ready.”
“Sounds good. I need to take your chief pilot on vacation first, though. She’s been under some stress lately, and I want her to decompress first.”
“I’d appreciate it if you did. I will need her running on all cylinders when you get back.”
That snapped Sabrina out of her trance.
“Wait, I haven’t agreed to take the job yet!”
Beth and Tom glanced at each other, exchanging smirks before turning to Sabrina.
“Were you even listening, Sabrina?” Tom asked. “They’re getting ready to test a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft. SPACE, honey. How much do you wanna bet Beth’s already got a name tag for you with the astronaut device on your wings?”
Beth couldn’t hide her smile.
“See? She does! You pass the Karman Line at any point during your test flights, and everybody on the planet will recognize you as being an astronaut. NASA and the Air Force say space starts at only fifty miles up, not the sixty-two miles Karman theorized.”
“And y’all’ll already have the inside track on being a mission commander for us,” Beth added. “The Air Force was going to be a dead end for y’all regarding crewed spaceflight, Sabrina. The Feds have gutted NASA so severely that they’re going to come begging to ride with us at some point. They barely do crewed missions now, as it is.
“We, on the other hand, have a list of investors as long as y’all’s arm, who understand it’ll take time for us to ramp up things here. Once successful, our experimental SSTO will become the first in a heavy-lift spacecraft fleet, allowing us to build our space station. That station will be the jumping-off point to wherever we want to go next.