You… you’re Hope? The Hope?”
“In the flesh,” I said.
His jaw tightened. The first officer’s mouth was open. The flight attendant was staring at me like I’d just walked out of a photograph.
I reached down, picked up the citation, and folded it back into a square. I tucked it into my bag.
“The hard landing this morning,” I said, “was because my number two brake was dragging. I wrote it up so maintenance could fix it before the next leg, because that’s what a captain does. She puts the safety of the aircraft and the passengers first, even if it makes her logbook look a little rough.”
I zipped the bag and stood up. My knees ached, and the old compression in my spine was still there from the ejection, but I stood straight.
“You fly the Airbus,” I said. “That’s good. I hear they’re nice jets. But
