The Most Stressful Job in the Wasteland: Vertibird Pilot for the Brotherhood of Steel

A nameless Vertibird pilot walks us through the daily liturgy that keeps him sane: the pre-flight ritual, the scarred bird he calls The Albatross, the silent bond with his door gunner Kael. He remembers the small, brown-dirt life he lost when the Brotherhood pulled him from the ashes of his settlement, and the flight training that turned him into a machine part with wings. Then comes the mission that breaks him. A one-way diversionary run meant to buy time for a suicide strike on a super mutant breeding ground ends in burning wreckage, a dead gunner, and a Paladin who cares only about the lost hardware. What remains is a portrait of survival stripped of glory, a man who keeps climbing back into the cockpit not out of hope, but out of stubborn refusal to be the next name added to the wreckage report.