Sabrina (Knox 3)
Copyright© 2026 by The Outsider
Chapter 42: Just When I Thought I Was Out
11 January 2036 – Baffin Bay Spaceport, Kenedy County, Texas
Sabrina was working in her office when her secretary (okay, her ‘administrative assistant’) answered a call.
“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll send her right over.” Mary hung up the phone and looked into Sabrina’s office. “Sabrina, Beth would like to see you as soon as you can reach her office.”
“Okay. I’ll head right over. Thanks, Mary.”
Sabrina saved and closed the file she was working on, stood up from her desk, and walked around the corner. A man in an Air Force major general’s uniform sat in a chair in front of Beth’s desk. She nodded politely to the general.
“You wanted to see me, Boss?” Sabrina asked.
“Hi, Sabrina,” Beth said. “Close the door and have a seat.” Sabrina did so, smiling as she sat in the chair next to the general. “How’s Marisa? Is she growing like a weed?”
“Four months old now. She’ll burn through the clothes you bought her before she turns a year old!”
“Funny how kids seem to do that all the time,” Beth said with a smile. She motioned to the general sitting next to Sabrina. “Sabrina, this is Major General Nicolas Cabrera, Adjutant General of the Texas Air National Guard. We have a proposal that we’d like for you to hear. General?”
Sabrina turned her attention and her chair to the general and raised an eyebrow.
“Mrs. Knox-Jones, I understand that you were a member of the Air Force Academy’s Class of 2020, spent fourteen years of active service in the US Air Force, and were one hell of a hot F-22 pilot?”
“Well, I’ll admit to the first two, General, but you’ll have a hard time getting me to admit to the last. The F-22 and I clicked, that’s all.”
“Told y’all she was modest as all heck, Nick...” Beth said to the man.
“I spoke to all of your commanding officers, including General Pete Cunningham, former commander of Air Combat Command, and they all thought highly of you. Anyway, with all the space and the two runways Beth is building, the Air National Guard would like to add a base here.”
“Forgive me, General, but how does this involve me?” Sabrina asked.
“We’d like for you to be the squadron commander here.”
Sabrina’s mouth dropped open.
“And I told y’all she’d be surprised as heck, too, Nick,” Beth added.
“General,” Sabrina responded, “they forced me out of the Air Force with just under fourteen years of service. I’m too junior to be a squadron commander!”
“The governor will write you an exemption if she has to. Call it a below-the-zone promotion.”
Sabrina just blinked.
“We’ll reactivate the 217th Squadron as a fighter squadron and the 196th Fighter Wing. Neither has been around in a while.”
Sabrina looked at the planned squadron’s patch. It imitated the colors of the American flag, Air Force roundel, the Texas state flag, and vaguely mirrored the state’s coat of arms. The patch’s motto was “Adferre Optimum Ad Pugnum,” Latin for “Bring Your Best to the Fight.”
She then looked at the 196th Fighter Wing’s planned patch. The state’s yellow outline sat at the base of the dark blue shield. One lone, white star sat on the top left of the sky, above the state’s outline, while an F-22’s silhouette streaked across the shield toward the star from the lower right side to the upper left. The F-22’s contrails were white over red, mimicking the state flag again.
“And a name tag for the flight suits...”
General Cabrera tossed a name tag in Sabrina’s lap, mimicking what Beth had done eighteen months ago. The name tag once more resembled a Texas state flag. On the far left, a white F-22 silhouette dominated the blue field. Sabrina’s command flight wings were silver over the top white stripe, and her name and callsign were in white text over the bottom red stripe.
“And you’ll need these...”
General Cabrera tossed her a pair of dark blue lieutenant colonel’s oak leaves for her flight suit.
“It’ll take a couple of years to stand up the unit and build the base,” Cabrera said. “The 217th won’t even get planes until the first few buildings on the base are nearly finished.”
“Plenty of time for y’all and Tommy to have more children if y’all want,” Beth added. “Seems like y’all and he have a lot to talk about.”
“You’ll have to take the online version of the Air Force Air Command and Staff College, too, but I doubt that will be a problem,” General Cabrera mentioned. “It’ll be easier and less expensive than sending you to Alabama for ten months.”
“General, I got bounced out of the Air Force because I didn’t go to Maxwell for Squadron Officer School!”
“But y’all took the online version, didn’t y’all?” Beth chimed in. “Y’all’s commanding officer had it out for y’all, Sabrina. Don’t take what that moron said as gospel!”
Sabrina mutely walked out of Beth’s office with barely a nod.
“Think she’ll go for it?” Nick Cabrera asked Beth.
“She’s a fool if she doesn’t! And her parents didn’t raise no fool!”
Sabrina walked back into the house she and Tommy had been assigned when they started working for Ad Astra. She was in a daze, and Tommy recognized her look.
“What did you get roped into this time?” he asked jokingly.
Sabrina looked up and spread all the patches across the coffee table in front of him.
“They want to make me a squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard, Tommy.”
It took Tommy a second or two to process everything, but he finally started smiling at his wife.
“This is something you want, right?”
“I don’t know, Tom,” Sabrina said. “I mean, I do, but I don’t know if I’m senior enough for this! Even if I had stayed in the Air Force, I’d be shy of the minimum sixteen years of Time in Service!”
“And did whoever you spoke to mention a ‘below-the-zone promotion?’”
“You know way too much,” Sabrina mumbled.
“I know you miss having a Raptor as an extension of you! The PiperJet is enjoyable, but it’s not enough. Not for you, anyway!” Tommy put his elbows on his knees as he sat on the couch. “If it goes less than Mach Two, it’s not fast enough!”
Tommy slid his hand up Sabrina’s leg, which was bare under her skirt.
“Was Beth involved in this?” he asked.
“General Cabrera made the offer in front of her, in her office. She probably had something to do with this, though.”
Sabrina explained how the Air Guard base would be built on the other side of Baffin Bay’s runways.
“So, we have time?” Tommy asked.
“The General mentioned that, too.” Sabrina moaned. “You know that turns me on!”
“You still look as good to me as you did that day on the slopes in Breckenridge!” Tommy kept moving his hand. “Marisa just went down for a nap, you know?”
The 196th Civil Engineering Squadron began work on the base after Sabrina talked to General Cabrera. Truthfully, the 196th was in charge of construction, but the base was mainly built by the same construction firms that built the rest of Baffin Bay Spaceport.
Hangars and buildings closest to the flight line were built first. The Baffin Bay Air National Guard fire station was one of those buildings. The Baffin Bay ANG fire station included an extra garage bay and crew quarters for the Baffin Bay Fire Department to base Ambulance 2 at the ANG fire station.
All BBFD members were cleared to come on base. As the base was being built, each received their DBIDS ID cards and department-issued IDs. These would allow them on both sides of the runway.
It took a few months, but Sabrina learned she was pregnant again in March. General Cabrera made sure Sabrina’s official photographs were taken before she started to show. Sabrina was now officially in command of the 217th Fighter Squadron, even though they didn’t have any aircraft yet.
“Sure is weird flying back into Fitchburg when we’re not here to visit either pair of parents.”
“We’re not visiting them for that primarily, Tom,” Sabrina answered, playing with Marisa in her car seat. They were taxiing to the gate in their private jet. “We’ll get to see all four grandparents while we’re here, mainly because they’ll watch Marisa while we’re at the reunion.”
“We’re staying at my parents’ house this time?”
“Yeah, because we stayed at my parents’ house the last time we visited,” Sabrina answered.
“Have we been to a reunion before? I don’t think we have...”
“We’ve been too busy,” Sabrina said. “Duty here in the States, our time in Germany...”
“Poor us!”
Sabrina and Tom walked back into Devens Regional the next night and felt as if they had been transported back in time. The reunion was in a section of the school that had been there for about twenty years, since they were students there.
“Hi!” said a bubbly young woman running the check-in table. “I gather you’re here for the Class of 2016’s reunion?”
“Hi,” Sabrina answered. “Sabrina Knox-Jones and Tom Jones,” she said, pointing to herself and Tom.
The other girl picked up two name tags and presented them to each one of them, separately.
“‘Hi, my name is... ‘“ Tom joked as they walked away.
“Says the guy who looks so handsome dressed in his navy suit tonight...”
“Says the woman who will have every eye on her! The others will barely notice I’m here!”
“You’ll be hard to miss, Tommy,” Sabrina said while pressing herself lovingly against him.
The couple quickly found Erica Thorisson and Shawn Hurt with their respective spouses. Sabrina and Tom were filling the four of them in on why they were in Texas now when Sabrina felt a presence behind her. She turned in her chair to find a contrite-looking Peter Knapp and a woman standing behind her.
“Hi, Sabrina,” Pete said with some regret in his voice. “Hi, Tom,” he said next. “This is my wife, Linda,” Pete said, pointing to the petite blonde next to him.
“It’s very nice to meet both of you,” Linda said politely.
“Would you two like to sit with us?” Sabrina asked. “There’s plenty of room.”
“Sabrina, before we sit with you two, and Shawn and Erica, I need to apologize for the way I acted toward you in Berkeley all those years ago.” Pete looked genuinely sorry while Linda tried to encourage him. “We were both under a bit of stress, but that doesn’t excuse how I acted that day.”
“Pete, I’ll admit that day hurt, but it allowed me to be free when Tommy showed up unannounced later that year. We’ve been together ever since. It allowed you to be free when Linda showed up, I’m sure.”
The old friends sat and reacquainted themselves with each other, as well as with their spouses, whom they didn’t know well up until that point. The hours flew by as pictures of all of their children were passed around. The friends danced with other friends’ spouses when the time came.
Sabrina learned before the reunion that Jasmine Ruiz had sold her interest in their Dunkin’ Donuts stores back to her father and moved away. Ruby Sepulveda and Naomi Taggert didn’t attend the reunion.
Sabrina was a bit sad to hear that news, but she did enjoy the chance to meet up with other friends, such as Vic Thurmond, Faith Henderson, and Robert Thomas. Robert jokingly saluted Sabrina upon learning she was now a lieutenant colonel with the Texas Air National Guard. He’d gotten as far as captain in the Army before getting out.
Sabrina snuggled up to Tom as their family went back to the Corpus Christi area and the Baffin Bay Spaceport.
“It was good to see everyone again,” Sabrina commented.
“It was certainly nice to reconnect.”
“We’ve got a bunch of new addresses for our Christmas cards.”
“We’ll see if anyone makes the trip down to visit us,” Tom said. “We visit our parents in Central Mass often enough.”
One thing that seems true across any work is that the higher you go, the more paperwork awaits you.
Sabrina sat at her desk on the ‘other’ side of Baffin Bay’s runways. Her growing belly meant she couldn’t fly the F-22s when the squadron finally received them next week. She went over the squadron’s needs with her deputy commander and the 196th Aviation Maintenance Squadron leader during the months, then weeks, before the planes arrived.
On her way back from another bathroom visit, she asked her deputy commander, “Are we all set for next week, Timmy?”
Major Tim Bryant looked up from the stack of paper on his desk.
“All good, Ma’am!” he replied in his thick South Texas drawl.
“Don’t break them all before I get to fly one!”
“I heard that Raikou can fly just about anything, Ma’am!”
“Timmy, it’s gonna feel weird flying one of those jets with my pencil up your ass!”
“C’mon, Ma’am! At least they have the simulators installed! You don’t have to worry about G-LOC or AGSM with those!”
“Thank heaven for small favors,” Sabrina mumbled.
Timmy smiled back at his squadron’s commander. He wasn’t sure about working for Sabrina when he was first assigned here. He soon learned to appreciate her relatively hands-off style of leadership. Sure, he had many meetings with her and the Aviation Maintenance squadron leader last week, but it wasn’t every day that a squadron was brought back from the dead and given new aircraft.
Sabrina had clearly defined what Timmy needed to do while she was out after having this baby. Otherwise, she let her subordinates follow their orders and would, like now, check in occasionally. Timmy was in a strange place as an active-duty Air National Guard member, but since Baffin Bay was in the middle of nowhere, Beth Oldham let active-duty members live on the ‘civilian side.’ She even authorized new housing developments to accommodate the extra people residing on the spaceport property.
The squadron was getting twenty, third-generation F-22As. The Collins Mark VI, the newest version of the Helmet Mounted Display System, made the F-22As even more deadly, making the F-22B irrelevant. With the F-51 Mustang IIs and F-52 Hellcat IIs coming online, the F-22B was even more irrelevant. That project was canceled.
The following week, Sabrina gazed longingly as the ‘new’ F-22s landed on Baffin Bay’s Runway 33 and taxied to the Air National Guard Base side of the runway’s ramps.
“How was the flight down?” Sabrina asked Timmy Bryant as they shook hands.
“Not bad, Ma’am. Just long.”
“Any issues at Nellis or Edwards?”
“Not enough restaurants near the flight line at Edwards these days, Ma’am,” Bryant griped. The new used F-22s had come from the 53rd Wing at Nellis and the 412th Test Wing at Edwards, both units Sabrina had formerly served in. “Nellis had more, closer choices.”
“Do we have to send anyone back for my plane?”
“No, the 412th sent Lieutenant Oh down with us,” Bryant explained as he motioned to the young lieutenant standing next to him. “We’ll have to ship her home, but I figure one of the C-17s can do that on their training flights in the coming week.”
Sabrina returned the lieutenant’s salute and firmly shook her hand.
“Ms. Oldham will put you in one of the guest lodges until we get you back to Kern County.”
“That would be greatly appreciated, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Rebekkah Oh responded. “I brought a small bag and my laptop with me, too. I should wash my uniforms before I return.”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” Timmy Bryant said. “The Colonel will hook you up.”
The lieutenant saluted Sabrina before leaving to find her temporary accommodations.
“You’re her idol, you know?” Bryant asked.
“Oh, c’mon! Not that ‘Raikou’ thing again!”
“Face it. Ma’am! You’re stuck with that!”
“Well, let’s look at your new ride...”
Years of experience in an F-22A allowed Sabrina to point out things to Timmy Bryant as he sat in the cockpit, especially the things he’d want to watch for. Her five-month-pregnant body prevented her from climbing into the cockpit. That didn’t stop her from standing on the ladder and pointing out certain things. Back in the simulator area the next week, Sabrina showed the rest of the squadron that ‘the old lady’ still had it.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side, Ma’am,” Bryant said to her over a discrete channel.
“I wish I could help you in a couple of weeks when you go up against the 147th.”
The 217th Fighter Squadron would face the 147th Attack Squadron during their Annual Training at the beginning of August. She’d miss out.
“You’ll help out by taking care of all that paperwork!”
She looked over at Timmy Bryant with a smirk.
“I’ll be sure to save some just for you, Timmy!”
Beth Oldham sat on one side of her desk while Sabrina Knox-Jones sat back down on the other.
“Sorry about that,” Sabrina apologized. “This kid’s already good at using my bladder as a soccer ball!”
Beth smiled back at the woman she’d followed since they were teens.
“They do that. I called it ‘Friday Night Lights’ when I had my three. Football’s kind of a thing down here.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” Sabrina said with a laugh. “Boss, you know I don’t actually need all the money you and General Cabrera are throwing at me?”
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