Chapter Text
The whole room was silent, struck dumb. Then a voice cut in.
“Uh, sir -“
“You’re a civilian, Kelly, you don’t have to ‘sir’ me.”
“What happens now?”
Maverick ran a hand down his face, looking exhausted.
“One of our test pilots was killed. On the base. Like I said, it’s a tragedy, but there has to be an investigation. NCIS is on their way right now. We’re in a holding pattern for the day, at least. They said they need to talk to anyone he’s met since he got here.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, looking around, “but when I know, you’ll know.”
“Who’d wanna kill him?”
“What’s it got to do with us?”
“Something about the program, maybe -“
“Nah, the F-35’s giving Lockheed a world of hurt, not like their competitors got beef -“
“Enough,” Mav cut in, and now Hondo could see that he had straightened up, his eyes alert despite the weariness in the lines of his face. “We don’t know anything, except that we’ve lost someone not easily replaced. I’m sorry I had to tell you all. I know he was new to the team, but my door is open, and the counselor and the chaplain’ve been notified, you’re more’n welcome to go talk to them. You can all take the rest of the morning off, the NCIS folks’ll be here soon, they’ll let us know when they want to talk to everyone.”
Everyone slowly filed out of the room, a few of the test engineers muttering to each other. Hondo lingered in the corner, waiting as the room emptied. Pete had made his way over to the desk and half-sat down on the edge, his shoulders dropping, and without really thinking about it, Hondo sat down next to him.
After a second, Pete knocked his shoulder against Hondo’s, leaning into him just a little.
“You okay there, Mav?”
He heard him let out a long breath, and waited.
“Yeah, I think so,” he muttered, and Hondo glanced over at him. “Just - you always know you can lose people in combat, even in the air for risky tests. I didn’t expect to lose one of my people on this project. ‘Specially not like that, it’s not what you sign up for.”
Hondo swallowed hard.
“Who knows,” he said quietly, “but yeah, it’s…it’s pretty bad.” He had only met Cheng the one time, but he had seemed likable enough, a little quiet but obviously capable.
“That’s the third time I’ve had to send the casualty notification officers. Thank fuck the Navy trains people to do that, I’d hate for his parents to have to talk to a tactless ass like me. Especially with NCIS taking his body for the investigation.”
Hondo nodded slowly. Something had occurred to him.
“You found him?”
Mav nodded. “Stopped by when he didn’t show last night.”
Something in Hondo’s stomach tightened, and he tried not to think too hard about what Cheng had to have looked like. They sat for a minute, and then there was a ringing from the pocket of Pete’s khakis. He pulled out his phone and flipped it open.
“Commander Mitchell speaking.”
“Understood, thank you.”
“Okay, I can meet you there.”
“Bye, thanks for calling.”
He looked down at the phone a second, then snapped it shut again. Hondo swallowed.
“I gotta go talk to the NCIS folks. They’re at his temp assignment now. You wanna come? Be easier to get their investigation started.”
The honest answer was “no”; he had no desire to see a crime scene and certainly not one practically on his doorstep, but Pete was rubbing his eyes as if struggling to keep them open, and he nodded.
He hadn’t expected a crime scene to be quite as busy as Cheng’s housing assignment. There seemed to be vehicles parked every which way, several uniformed MAs taking instructions from a straight-backed, gray-haired agent in an NCIS jacket, multiple other agents with cameras cordoning off the area, and two scrub-clad men wheeling a gurney inside.
“Sorry, sirs, you can’t come any closer.”
One of the agents in an NCIS ball cap had stood in their way, holding up a latex-gloved hand, then his eyes fell on Pete’s name tag. “Oh - Commander Mitchell?”
“That’s me,” he said with a curt nod. “I got a call from an Agent Gibbs, that you?”
The agent let out a slightly nervous chuckle. “Oh, uh, no, I’m Agent McGee, that would be him over there. Boss!” he called. “Dead guy’s CO is here.”
Hondo felt himself flinch at the words “dead guy”, but Agent McGee didn’t seem to have noticed. The gray-haired agent was now striding over towards them.
“Commander Mitchell,” he said crisply by way of greeting, “and…” his eyes slid over Hondo’s patches - “Warrant Officer Coleman.”
“He’s also part of the ITF,” said Mav quickly, extending a hand; Agent Gibbs shook it, then extended his hand to Hondo, who shook it in turn as Gibbs nodded at him.
“Okay, well, hold tight here for a second, we’ll be over to ask some questions soon.” He looked them up and down one more time, his eyes keen, and Hondo swallowed, a little nervously. Mav nudged him with an elbow.
“Got five bucks says he’s ex-military.”
Hondo snorted in spite of himself, still keeping a wary eye on Agent Gibbs’ retreating back. “We can make it ten if you can tell me which branch.”
“That’s a Marine.”
“You sound confident. Meet a lot of former Marine cops?”
“No such thing as a former Marine.”
“You think he’s a reservist?”
Mav shook his head slowly, still watching all the people walking around behind the CRIME SCENE tape. “Doubt it, I’m told NCIS is all civilians. Guess you haven’t worked with a lot of Marines, huh?”
Hondo shook his head, just as a third agent walked over to them with a notepad, pulling off his sunglasses with a flourish.
“Hi, I’m Agent DiNozzo. Commander Mitchell? Can I ask you a few questions here?”
He was looking at Mav unusually eagerly, and Hondo tipped his head to the side, watching him, then Gibbs strode up, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Don’t get excited, Tony, I’m talking to Mitchell. You can talk to Warrant Officer Coleman here.”
DiNozzo sighed, looked down, and grudgingly answered, “Got it, boss,” before looking back up at Hondo.
“Okay, Warrant Officer Coleman,” he started again, glancing down at Hondo’s nametag, “come with me, this shouldn’t take long.”
“I’ll try not to bore you,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at him; DiNozzo snorted a little, and gestured off to the side; Hondo followed him obligingly as Mav turned to face Gibbs.
“So,” he started, “you worked with Lieutenant Cheng?”
“Barely,” shrugged Hondo, “met him when we had the first all-hands for the ITF - that’s the F-35C Integrated Test Force. He just got here.”
“Any impressions?”
“Uh,” said Hondo, trying to think. “Seemed pretty young to be a test pilot, but Mav - Commander Mitchell - said he had good reports. He was pretty quiet, I didn’t really talk much with him.”
DiNozzo nodded, writing something down on his notepad.
“You worked with Commander Mitchell long?”
“A few years,” said Hondo with a nod, “last couple years we’ve been on the same team testing the Block III upgrades to the F/A-18. He’s got a lot of combat hours in that one.”
DiNozzo let out a whistle. “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”
Hondo chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll give you that, I love being a test engineer. It’s pretty cool to get to test a whole new plane.”
“So you don’t fly.”
“Nah, in the Navy it’s only commissioned officers who’re pilots,” said Hondo, gesturing vaguely at the pins on his khakis, “anyway, I hate flying, better them than me. I’m good at the technical stuff.”
“But you were supposed to work with Cheng?”
“Yeah, so, test engineers work with the test pilots - who have real-world experience - to design tests based on what kinds of system interactions will need fully-integrated flight tests, you know, stuff that we can’t just do at the component level or by analysis.”
DiNozzo hummed in acknowledgement. “Sounds complicated, you guys must be pretty smart.”
Hondo shrugged. “We try. Test Pilot School’s pretty rigorous.”
“You know what kind of a person signs up for it? It looks dangerous.” DiNozzo was glancing over at Mav, and Hondo found himself fighting the urge to roll his eyes.
“I mean, they give you a gun to do your job.”
DiNozzo looked down and snorted a little. “Fair point.”
“Anyway, it’s not like in The Right Stuff anymore, we don’t do flight tests of the actual structure, we have structural modeling to do that by analysis. The pilots don’t have the godawful casualty rates they used to. No one’s trying to break the airframe mid-flight anymore, well, except Mav once -”
“Actually,” said DiNozzo, “I do wanna know, what kind of a boss is he? Did he know Cheng before?”
“Uh,” said Hondo, trying to think, “I don’t think he knew him. He was just looking for test pilots with traps - carrier landings - and got a referral for Cheng, plus a few of the other pilots in the ITF.”
“Okay, and people like working for him? I mean, he’s got a reputation -”
“He’s got a reputation at NCIS?” Hondo raised an eyebrow, and DiNozzo let out an awkward chuckle.
“Uh, not exactly, just, I’ve heard stories. You’re the only active pilot with air-to-air kills, people talk about you.”
This time, Hondo did not stop himself from rolling his eyes.
“Please don’t tell him that, all the pilots got egos the size of Texas as it is.”
“Eh, if you could do cool stuff in supersonic jets, wouldn’t you?”
“Nah. I hate flying. Mav’s cocky, but he’s a good guy to work for. Takes care of his people.”
“How’d he react?” asked DiNozzo, tipping his head towards the door; the two men in scrubs were carefully wheeling the gurney back out, a body bag strapped to it. Hondo blinked, and looked away.
“He - I don’t know, I wasn’t there when he found him. He’s been rattled today, though. It was kind of a shock for all of us.”
“Even though you didn’t know him well?” DiNozzo was looking keenly at him over his notebook, and Hondo shrugged again.
“You just don’t really expect someone on your team to get murdered on the base.”
“Fair point,” muttered DiNozzo, scribbling something. “And he was the one who informed you?”
“Yeah,” nodded Hondo, “called a meeting this morning, told everyone, I guess he’d already talked to your boss and reported up.”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual about him, or Cheng, or anyone else before that?”
Hondo shook his head, and DiNozzo finished making a note, then flipped his notepad closed.
“Okay, thank you, Warrant Officer Coleman,” he said, “good to get started interviewing early. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”
“No problem,” answered Hondo, but DiNozzo had already turned away, walking towards a woman with long brown hair taking pictures of markers on the grass. He stood there, a little uncertainly for a second, before he saw Maverick turning away from Gibbs with a short nod and coming back towards him, running a hand through his hair and glancing around.
“Guess we should go,” he said shortly, “they said they’ll call if they need anything else.”
Hondo nodded, unlocking the driver’s side door to the car and watching as Pete got in.
“It’s weird, being questioned by the cops.”
Hondo hummed noncommittally.
“You feel like you’ve done something wrong even if you haven’t. And Gibbs feels like he’s X-raying you, you know?”
Hondo shrugged. “DiNozzo wasn’t too bad. Asked a lot about you, though. One of those people who thinks test pilots are as cool as they look in the movies.”
“But we are .”
Hondo snorted. “As long as you remember who keeps your asses in the air.”
“Long as this investigation doesn’t ground us,” muttered Pete, looking down at his watch. “They’re lining up the rest of the team this afternoon, then I guess we can start.”
“Hope so,” grunted Hondo, flicking his turn signal, “I got no idea how long these investigations take.”
Pete shrugged. “I get the feeling they’ll want to talk to me again,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror, “but I guess they’re always going to keep an eye on whoever reports the - the murder.” Out of the corner of his eye, Hondo saw his throat click in a swallow.
“That probably won’t be bad, though,” he answered, trying to sound bracing. “Gibbs came off as a straight shooter.”
Pete nodded, then tipped his head towards Hondo.
“Oh, I was right, by the way. Enlisted Marine. You owe me ten bucks.”