141- Partner’s in crime

Alexis Arabella Marshal

Alexis doesn't remember having a proper home.

Instead, she remembers a childhood where her only constant was a young boy called Alexander Apollo Owens.

Alexis would put her life in his hands and would always be confident that she would live to walk away and recount the tale to anybody who wanted to listen.

Alexis and Alexander had been best friends since they met at the orphanage, aged thirteen. Since then, they were inseperable.

Alexis often referred to Alexander as her soulmate. She didn't love him romantically, she loved him platonically, nothing more, but she couldn't live without him.

That is why when Alexander joined the air cadets aged fifteen, Alexis went with him.

She fell in love immediately. Navigation systems, aircraft control, meteorology.

Alexis didn't want to enjoy being an air cadet, she mostly did it for Alexander, but she felt compelled to enjoy her experience. She enjoyed finally having structure, finally having rules to follow. For a girl who's childhood had been unpredictable, the permanent strict routine of aviation became rather comforting for her.

There's just one small problem with that.

Alexis was a bit too good at it.

She was technically minded, calm under pressure and had an almost irritating ability to soak up knowledge like a dry sponge.

At age 17, Alexis received a phone call. Her Air cadet instructor. He had submitted her name for the opportunity of joining a youth aviation programme, sponsored by the RAF. The opportunity to gain her pilots license, free of charge, under the command of an ex-RAF fighter pilot turned aviation instructor. Alexis' name was selected as soon as the top brass read her instructors report.

Alexis almost turned down the offer. Almost. It was only Alexander's shouting that made her accept it. He called her crazy for even considering declining the offer.

The programme was aimed at identifying future military pilots, and identify it did.

Alexis took her first solo flight on the Monday of her second week.

Then she got her second solo flight.

Then her third.

And then? She was a qualified pilot. It happened almost too quickly, the RAF did not want to waste time.

Alexis could fly a plane legally on her own before she could drive a car, that came next, and was significantly more challenging than flying an aircraft.

Alexis ran over a traffic cone on her first driving test. She told the examiner at the end of the test that she was a qualified pilot, the examiner begged her to fly everywhere instead of driving.

On Alexis' eighteenth birthday, she enlisted. She joined the royal airforce, Alexander was a month behind her. He was born in July, she was born in June.

Alexis entered the RAF with an aviation background and a civilian pilot's license in her pocket. She was miles ahead of every other person who enlisted with her. She still had to undertake military aircraft training, but Alexis was prepared to knuckle down.

Aged 19, Alexis was selected for the RAF's pilot officer pathway. She was commissioned as a junior officer and begun her military flying training.

She was naturally gifted, and so far hadn't exactly had to try very hard.

Now? Now she had to try very fucking hard. Because being good was no longer acceptable, Alexis had to be the best. Alexis was not the best, not yet.

She struggled with one thing that held her down and separated her from her peers.

Alexis had never been taught to ask for help.

She lived life alone, she supplied herself, she fed herself, she learned to cook aged eleven, she learned to do laundry aged twelve, she never had to learn to ask for help, until now.

But once Alexis learned how to, she became dangerous.

She did not take criticism as criticism, to Alexis, it was feedback, improvement tips. She clung to every string of advice and improved herself, constantly.

Aged twenty-one, Alexis was selected for fast-jet training. A typhoon pilot in the making.

She earned her qualification and joined an operational squadron.

She's now flying combat aircraft in active warzones, dropping operational bombs and intercepting enemy aircraft, engaging in dogfights.

Alexis became the first ever RAF pilot to score an air-to-air kill while operating inside an active enemy air-defence zone.

Alexis was never meant to be there.

She took a risk.

She could have been court marshalled, or worse, killed.

Instead, she infiltrated enemy space and shot down the aircraft that was targeting her team, she then provided escort to the extraction helicopter to remove her team safely from the combat zone.

That was the moment people began to question just what Alexis was capable of.

It was the operation that changed her career. She stopped being regarded as a fighter pilot and began being regarded as something else. Something scarier. She became an operator.

By age twenty eight, she became a classified operationist, she was the pilot that the RAF chose to lead a team of aircraft for specific missions. Alexis became the youngest pilot in the RAF to score three air-to-air kills, two of which were in one mission, an infiltration of an underground nuclear powerplant in the south of Iraq. Alexis lead a squadron of five aircraft under instruction of the squadron leader she was under at the time who fell ill with appendicitis the day before the operation. With no time to find another leader with enough training on the situation, the Squadron leader designated his most talented pilot, Alexis, as the new mission lead, and instructed the take down from the security of the HMS Queen Elizabeth's operations room.

Two years after that, and with Alexis now on four air-to-air kills, Alexis was promoted to squadron Leader, aged thirty. Impressively young for the RAF, but incredibly late for somebody of her record.

Word was spreading quickly of the RAF pilot who worked on advanced weapons, tactical reconnaissance, close air support and forward air control. The RAF pilot who could dismantle an entire operation from the comfort of her cockpit, and walk away somehow unscathed.

There was one man who wanted her expertise on his side.

A mission landed on his desk.

The operation looked simple, until it didn't.

Five remaining members of the Konni group had resurfaced with their own tactical armies, and were now working together to slowly dismantle the taskforces set up to destroy them. They had already dismantled taskforce 7, and taskforce 422, they had their eyes on 141 already.

"Nova."

"Price, good to hear from you."

"Always is. What of the Konni group?"

"Gone. No one knows where they are hiding."

"Fuck."

"We have ideas, but nothing solid enough to act on. Why have you phoned me, Price?"

"I need a favour."

"Out with it, then, Captain."

"Get me that RAF pilot."

"Which one?"

"The operations specialist."

"Squadron Leader Marshal? What use do you have for her?"

"She knows how to manage airspace. I need someone like that on my taskforce if we're to stand any chance of beating these rebel fuckers."

"Copy that. I'll see what I can do."