The emergency aboard the flight had not been random.
The compromised flight systems had been designed to fail.
The first officer had been deliberately incapacitated so Captain Andrew would be left struggling alone during the crisis.
The intention, investigators concluded, was for the aircraft and potentially the evidence surrounding the fraudulent components to disappear in a catastrophic accident.
But there was another discovery.
One that affected Laura personally.
Years earlier, Sterling had worked with a defense contractor responsible for supplying aviation equipment to a military logistics program.
That contractor had supplied defective avionics components to Laura’s former squadron.
And one of those failures had been connected to the accident that killed Laura’s wingman and closest friend, Captain Gabriel Torres.
That accident had destroyed Laura.
For eighteen months, she had believed Gabriel died because she failed him.
She had replayed their final mission endlessly, wondering what command she should have given differently and what maneuver might have saved him.
