STATION 01: Engels airdrome - Training flight

It had been a long hard day. From the travel to the base, walking around the base, almost getting caught in the commissary, running into the man who helped them, flight training, walking back to find where her son was sleeping, and then cleaning the barracks - she slept soundly. Not because she was comfortable. Not because she was unburdened by worry or anxiety. But simply because of sheer exhaustion.

Getting woken up before dawn didn't help. Being rushed out of the barracks, criticized for not cleaning enough when they gave them the most horrendous barracks to begin with, demanding they clean it and also get ready in only ten minutes - it made her wake up in not the best mood.

But she kept her mouth shut, only eyeing her fellow recruits to see if they had the same emotionap reaction as she did. She had to keep her mouth shut - she needed this place for her son.

After the SLt. left, she said, as she got dressed, "One day, I will out rank her and I will order her to clean all night, and then tell her she should clean some more because it looks like a mess."

Rushing outside, she couldn't help but feel a pang of worry that she wasn't there to get her son breakfast.

Galina spoke to the other girls as much as possible, chatting about their home towns and trying to put everyone at ease.

She found it hard to sleep, despite her tiredness. This being the Army, she knew they would be awakened at dawn by deafening noise. The prospect made her nervous. In the night, fears—of crashing, being shot down, tormented by Nazis— took shape. She wept briefly, quietly, to relieve the tension.

The morning wake-up was as unpleasant as she expected. Galina was disappointed by the officer’s comment about the barracks. They had worked miracles! Without direction from any officer. She saw Dasha’s anger and smiled briefly at her.

"I have a bad feeling about this. We might just be on our own here, while getting yelled at for not doing it all. Come on, lets go.

"Likely. Do what you have to do, you know?" Dash whispers back. She herself isn't above using others to get her way, so she's not going to condemn the SLt for it. But she is going to keep an eye out and do what she has to in order for her and her son to survive.

Larisa sat at the back, looking a little paler than anyone's prior impression of her from the day before. She kept quiet, much of her previous enthusiasm knocked out of her. She knew how to disappear into the background from her formative years, perhaps that was the tack she should've taken on arrival, rather than try to boldly wing it with the 586th.

But oh how wonderful that first flight was! She would have to find a way to meet with Litvyak again to apologise for her seeming error and hopefully find some other way to impress her. But for now she was rightly where she belonged. The night had not been easy: Lt Sheremeteva was as cold and penetrating in her questions as would have been expected from the NKVD. Because Litvyak had put in a good word for her, Sheremeteva did not press much further into Larisa's murky past, but dismissed the entire incident as over-enthusiasm and a lack of respect for command and for failure to follow instructions. Still, it was a black mark on her record as far as the NKVD was concerned, something Larisa would probably have to work doubly hard just to erase.

She saw the rest file in, they seemed to have settled in to the 588th already, leaving her with some catching up to do. It was time to keep a lower profile for now, and then stick her head out again when the time was right.

The classroom, if it could even be called such, was an old run-down garage for repairing old farm equipment. The garage had been here since before this area was turned into a military air base, standing here for years unkempt. With the newer buildings being used for classes or offices or bunkers for the men, this all-woman squadron was regulated to the unused and unseen buildings. Of which this was one. The place still smelled of old oil and gas from years of mechanical work. It actually smelled familiar to Dash, as it was just this sort of place that she learned to work on and fly the old crop planes for the farms outside her old home.

Larisa saw that the rest of the trainees were not spared the relentless grilling from the NKVD officers. In some way she was a little relieved she did not suffer through what Captain Barsukova had in store for them, although Lieutenant Sheremeteva was no less thorough the previous night. She would need this chance to prove herself again after coming under their scrutiny.

"I will serve in any other capacity as required by our motherland, but it will be a terrible disappointment should I not have the opportunity to fly." Larisa straightened as she spoke, both to convey the earnestness of her aspiration, and to change whatever impression the KNVD might already have of her.

"What?" Dasha startles, coming to from her memories. "I.. I don't really know. I don't follow politics. I'm just a pilot, comrade. I'm here to fly and kill Germans and do my part for all."

Dasha was being serious; she really didn't know what Marxism was. She knew Lennon was one of her country's leaders. President? No, that was America. Chairman! That was it!

It's obvious to anyone watching her that's she's struggling with the question.