Waking up in the cockpit of a starfighter was basically the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me. Well … next to flying one.
I stretched in the darkness, impressed by how much room the cockpit had. It was larger than those of the DDF ships. I engaged my light-line for a little illumination and checked the clock. 0430. Two and a half hours until I needed to report for class today.
All things considered, I wasn’t that tired. Just a little achy from—
Something was sitting and watching me from the inside rim of the cockpit.
The creature wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in the caverns. It was yellow, for one thing. Flat, long, and kind of blobby, it had little blue spikes along its back, making a pattern against its bright yellow skin. It looked like a big slug the size of a loaf of bread, but thinner.
I couldn’t make out any eyes, but the way it folded up on itself—the front portion raised—reminded me slightly of a … a chipmunk? Like from the videos we’d watched in class of a few wildlife preservation caverns.
“What are you?” I asked softly.
My stomach growled.
“And, equally importantly,” I added, “are you edible?”
It twisted its “head” sideways to look at me—though it still didn’t seem to have any eyes. Or a mouth. Or, well, a face. It did let out a soft trill, a flutelike sound, from its back spikes.
If I’d learned anything from collecting mushrooms in the caverns, bright colors meant: “Don’t eat me, or soon my brethren will be eating you, sapient one.” Better to not put the strange cave slug into my mouth.
My stomach growled, but when I fished in my pack, I found only half of an old algae ration bar. I might have had barely enough time to get down to Igneous for food, but that would feel like … like slinking home, tail between my legs, beaten.
The admiral wanted to break me, did she? Well, she didn’t know what she was up against. I was a world-class, highly trained, longtime expert rat girl.
I leaned my seat up and dug around in the back of the surprisingly spacious cockpit. Usually, every centimeter of room was needed in a fighter—though this one seemed to have a cargo spot behind the pilot’s chair and what looked like a fold-out jump seat for a passenger.
Last night, I thought I’d seen some old tools in here. Sure enough, I found a coil of plastifiber rope. The sealed cockpit had preserved it, though this stuff was pretty much indestructible anyway. I uncoiled some and unwound it into string.
The slug thing remained on the control panel, watching me, occasionally tilting its “head” and making flute noises.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well just you watch.” I pushed the canopy open all the way—I hadn’t dared close it last night, for fear that there wouldn’t be ventilation—and jumped down. As I had hoped, I heard scuttling in the darkness and found rat droppings near some mushrooms along the wall.
I’d have preferred my speargun, but in a pinch, a snare would work—set with my ration bar as bait. I stepped back, pleased. The slug had moved onto the wing of the old ship, and it fluted at me in a way that I chose to hear as inquisitive.
“Those rats,” I said, “shall soon know the wrath of my hunger, dispensed through tiny coils of justice.” I smiled, then realized I was talking to a weird cave slug, which was a new low even for me.
Still, I had some time to kill, so I looked over the ship. Originally, I’d contemplated fixing the thing. After finishing my test, I’d daydreamed an entire future in which I brought my own ship to the DDF and forced them to take me.
Those imaginings now seemed … farfetched. This thing was not in good shape. Not just that bent wing, or the broken boosters at the back. Everything that wasn’t in the cockpit was scratched up, warped, or ripped apart.
But maybe that was only the outside. If the guts were good, then perhaps the ship was fixable?
I fetched the toolbox. It had stood the test of time worse than the rope—it looked like a little moisture had gotten trapped in the box—but a rusty wrench was still a wrench. So I moved some rocks, then crawled in under the ship, near the acclivity ring. I knew some basic mechanics, like all the students, though I hadn’t studied that as hard as I had flight patterns and ship layouts. Rig had always chided me, saying a good pilot should be able to repair her ship.
I hadn’t ever imagined that I’d be in an old cavern, lit only by the red-orange glow of my light-line, trying to pry an access panel off an old piece of junk. I finally got the thing off and looked in, thinking back to my lessons.
That’s probably the booster intake and injection system, and that’s got to be the stabilizer for the acclivity ring …
There was a lot up in here that I didn’t recognize, though I was able to locate the power matrix—the half-meter-wide box that was the ship’s power source. I unhooked it with some difficulty, then crawled out and used my light-line to pull it from underneath the ship.
The wires that hooked it to the ship were in good shape, surprisingly. Whoever had built this thing had made the electronics to last. The power matrix also used the same plugs we did now—which were the types we’d used in the fleet, before crashing on Detritus. Maybe that could somehow help me place its age?
I crawled back down and looked into the bowels of the ship. But what’s this? I wondered, rapping my knuckles on a large black box. Sleek, reflective despite the weight of years, it didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the machinery. But then, who was I to say what did and didn’t fit in a ship this odd?
On a whim, I opened up the tiny power matrix on my light-line, then plugged one of the smaller cords from the ship into it. A soft dinging came from the front of the ship, and a light turned on inside the access panel.
Scud. My light-line’s power matrix was obviously too weak, but if I had a real power source I might be able to get some of the ship’s functions running. It would still have a bent wing and broken boosters, but the idea was exciting to me. I looked back up into the ship’s innards.
The slug was inside, wrapped around a cord and hanging there, staring down at me with a distinctly inquisitive posture.
“Hey now,” I said. “How did you get in there?”
It fluted a response. Was it the same slug, or another? I crawled back out and checked, but I couldn’t see any other slugs around. I did hear a scrambling from near the wall, where my snare had caught a decently meaty-looking rat.
“See?” I said, peeking down under the ship. The slug dropped onto the rocks there. “And you doubted me.”
I skinned, gutted, and stripped the meat from the rat. The toolbox had a small microwelder, and my light-line’s power matrix was more than enough for that. With it, and a piece of metal, I made a frying pan—and soon I had some rat cooking. No seasoning, but I also didn’t have to go hungry.
I can use the lavatory at the school. I thought. They didn’t deny me that yesterday. And the lavatory had cleansing pods for washing up after PT. I could get some mushrooms in the mornings, set up more snares, and …
And was I really planning to live like a cavewoman?
I looked down at the cooking rat. It was either live here, or commute every night like the admiral expected me to.
This was a way to control my life. They wouldn’t give me food or a bunk? Fine. I didn’t need their charity.
I was a Defiant.
