I tied off the set of wires—working by red-orange glow in the otherwise dark cavern—then wrapped them in tape. There. I thought, stepping back and wiping my brow. Over the last few weeks, I’d managed to find a working power matrix in an old water heater at an Igneous recycling facility. I knew the guy who worked there, and he let me trade him rat meat to look the other way as I did some salvaging.
I’d also retrieved some supplies from one of my hidden dumps outside Igneous. I’d made a new speargun, and had fashioned a kitchen that had a real hot plate, a dehydrator, and some spices. I’d stopped by my home to fetch Bloodletter, my old stuffed bear. He made a fine pillow. It had been good to see my mother and Gran-Gran, though of course I hadn’t told them I was living in a cave.
“Well?” I asked Doomslug the Destroyer. “Think it will work?”
The little yellow-and-blue cave slug perked up on the rock nearby. “Work?” she fluted.
She could imitate noises, but there was always a distinctly fluty sound to what she said. I was pretty sure she was just mimicking me. And to be honest, I didn’t know if “she” was a she—weren’t slugs, like, both or something?
“Work!” Doomslug repeated, and I couldn’t help but take that in an optimistic light.
I flipped the switch on the power matrix, hoping my little hot-wire job would hold. The diagnostic panel on the side of the old ship flickered, and I heard a strange sound coming from the cockpit. I hurried over and climbed onto the box I used as a ladder to get in.
The sound came from the instrument panel—it was low, kind of industrial. Metal vibrating? After I listened for a moment, it changed tone.
“What is that?” I asked Doomslug, looking to my right and—as expected—finding her there. She could move very quickly when she wanted to, but seemed to have an aversion to doing so when I was watching.
Doomslug cocked her head to one side, then the other. She shivered the spines on her back and imitated the noise.
“Look how low the lights are.” I tapped the control panel. “This power matrix isn’t big enough either. I’ll need one made for a ship or a building, not a water heater.” I turned it off, then checked the clock on my light-line. “Keep an eye on things while I’m gone.”
“Gone!” Doomslug said.
“You don’t have to act so excited about it.” I quickly changed into my jumpsuit, and before I left, I took another glance at the ship. Fixing this thing is way beyond me. I thought. So why am I trying?
With a sigh, I hooked the end of my light-line to a rock, threw it up to smack against a stone near the entrance to my cave, then grabbed hold and hauled myself up to the crevice so I could shimmy out and head to class for the day.
* * *
Roughly an hour and a half later, I shifted my helmet—which was chafing my head—then grabbed my ship controls and buzzed past an enormous floating piece of debris. In real life that would have been dropping in a fiery blaze, but in the hologram Cobb had suspended the chunks in midair for us to practice on.
I was getting pretty good at dodging between them, though I wasn’t certain how well that skill would translate once they started—you know—hurtling down from above with horrific destructive potential. But hey, baby steps.
I launched my light-lance, which burst from a turret on the underside of my ship. A glowing line of red-orange energy speared the large piece of space junk.
“Ha!” I said. “Look at that! I hit it!”
After I flew past the chunk, however, the light-lance grew taut, and my momentum caused me to pivot. My ship spun on the line—setting off my GravCaps—then slammed into a different chunk of floating debris.
When I was younger, we’d played a game with a ball on a string, connected to a tall pole. If you pushed on the ball, it would spin around the pole. The light-lances were similar, only in this game, the debris was the pole and I was the ball.
Cobb sighed in the ear of my helmet as my hologram went black upon my death.
“Hey,” I pointed out, “at least I hit the thing this time.”
“Congratulations,” he said, “on that moral victory as you die. I’m sure your mother will be very proud, once your pin is sent back to her as a melted piece of slag.”
I huffed and sat up, leaning out of my cockpit to look toward Cobb. He walked through the center space in the room, speaking into a hand radio to communicate with us through our helmets, even though we were all right next to each other.
The ten mockpits made a circle, and the floor in the center had its own projector, one that spat out a tiny reproduction of what we were experiencing. Eight little holographic ships buzzed around Cobb, who watched us like some enormous god.
Bim slammed straight into a piece of debris near Cobb’s head, and the shower of sparks looked kind of like our instructor had suddenly had a really great idea. Perhaps the realization that the lot of us were worthless.
“Zoom out your proximity sensors, Bim!” Cobb said. “You should have seen that piece floating there!”
Bim stood up out of his hologram and pulled off his helmet. He ran his hand through his blue hair, looking frustrated.
I pulled back into my cockpit as my ship reappeared at the edge of the battlefield. Morningtide was there, hovering, watching the others flit between chunks of metal. It looked like Gran-Gran’s descriptions of an asteroid field, though of course it was in atmosphere, not up in space. We usually engaged the Krell at a height of somewhere between ten thousand and forty thousand feet.
Bim’s ship appeared near us, though he wasn’t in it.
“Morningtide!” Cobb said. “Don’t be timid, cadet! Get in there! I want you to swing from so many scudding lines of light that you get rope burns!”
Morningtide flew timidly into the field of debris.
I shifted my helmet again; it was seriously bothering me today. Maybe I needed a break. I turned off my hologram and stood up out of my seat to stretch, watching Cobb as he inspected a run that Jerkface was doing with Nedd as a wingmate. I put my helmet on my seat, then walked over to Morningtide’s hologram.
I peeked in, my head appearing as if in the top of her cockpit. She was huddled inside, an intense look on her tattooed face. She noticed me, then quickly took off her helmet.
“Hey,” I said softly. “How’s it going?”
She nodded in Cobb’s direction. “Rope burns?” she asked softly, with her thick accent.
“It’s when you rub your hand on something so fast, it hurts. Like if you scrape yourself on carpet—or on ropes. He just wants you to practice more with the light-lance.”
“Ah …” She tapped her control panel. “What was he said before? About prox … proximation?”
“We can zoom the proximity sensors,” I said, speaking slowly. I reached down and pointed at a toggle. “You can use this to make the sensor range bigger? Understand?”
“Ah, yes. Yes. Understand.” She smiled thankfully.
I gave her a thumbs-up and pulled out of her hologram. I caught Cobb glancing at me, and he seemed approving, though he quickly turned away to yell at Hurl—who was trying to get FM to bet her dessert on the outcome of the next run.
Perhaps it would have been easier for Cobb to explain himself better, but Morningtide did seem to understand most of the instruction. She was merely embarrassed about what she misunderstood, so I tried to check in on her.
I settled into my seat, then felt around inside my helmet, trying to figure out what was bothering me. What are these lumps? I thought, prodding the inside of the helmet. Maybe the size of a requisition chit or a large washer, the round lumps were underneath the inside lining of the helmet, and each had a small metal portion at the center, sticking through the lining. Had those been there before?
“Problem, cadet?” Cobb asked.
I jumped; I hadn’t seen him approach my mockpit. “Um, my helmet, sir. Something’s wrong with it.”
“Nothing’s wrong, cadet.”
“No, look. Feel in here. There are these—”
“Nothing’s wrong, cadet. Medical ordered your helmet swapped out this morning, before you arrived. It has sensors to monitor your bioreadings.”
“Oh,” I said, relaxing. “Well, I suppose that makes sense. But you should tell the others. It might distract some of the flight if their—”
“They only swapped out your helmet, cadet.”
I frowned. Only mine? “What … kind of readings are they taking about me, then?”
“I wouldn’t want to guess. Is this a problem?”
“… I suppose not,” I said, though it made me uncomfortable. I tried to read meaning into Cobb’s expression, but he was stoic as he met my eyes. Whatever this was, he obviously wasn’t going to tell me. But I couldn’t help feeling that it had something to do with my father, and the admiral’s dislike of me.
I pulled on the helmet, activating the radio and then my hologram. “Bim!” Cobb said in my ear, acting as if nothing had happened. “You knitting a sweater or something? Back into your seat!”
“If I have to,” Bim said.
“Have to? You want to go sweep floors instead of being a fighter pilot, boy? I’ve seen rocks that fly almost as well as you do—I could drop one in your seat, paint the head blue, and at least I’d stop getting lip!”
“Sorry, Cobb,” Bim said. “No lip intended, but … I mean, I talked to some cadets from Firestorm Flight this morning. They’ve been dogfighting this entire time.”
“Good for them! When they’re all dead, you can move into their room.” Cobb sighed—loudly, in an exaggerated way. “Here, let’s try this.”
A set of glowing golden rings appeared on the battlefield. They were just larger than a ship, and several were dangerously close to floating chunks of debris.
“Line up and confirm,” Cobb said.
“You heard the man!” Jerkface said. “Fall in at my mark!”
The eight of us flew to Jerkface’s ship and settled into a line, then gave him verbal confirmation.
“Flight ready, instructor!” Jerkface said.
“Here are the rules,” Cobb said. “Each ring you pass through gets you one point. Once you begin a run, you have to maintain a speed of at least Mag-1, and you can’t circle around if you miss a ring. There are five rings, and I’ll let you each do three runs through the course. Highest score gets two desserts tonight—but a warning, if you crash, you’re out with your score frozen where it was before you died.”
I perked up and tried not to dwell on the idea that the prize was useless to me. At least this might distract me from the uncomfortable helmet.
“A game.” Hurl said. “Like, you’re actually going to let us have fun?”
“I can have fun,” Cobb said. “I know all about having fun. Most of it involves sitting and dreaming of the day when you all stop asking me stupid questions!”
Nedd chuckled.
“That wasn’t a joke!” Cobb said. “Go.”
Hurl whooped and hit her overburn, zipping toward the debris field. I responded nearly as fast, accelerating to Mag-3, and almost beat her to the first ring. I flew through it right behind her, then glanced at my radar. Bim, FM, and Morningtide were on my tail. Arturo and Nedd flew in formation, as they often did. I expected Kimmalyn to be last, but she actually flew ahead of Jerkface—who delayed for some reason.
I focused on the course, racing through the next ring. The third one was practically behind a big chunk of debris. The only way through it at speed would be to use a light-lance to turn extra sharp.
Hurl whooped again and executed a near-perfect hook turn through the ring. I made the tactical decision to shoot past it—which proved wise as Bim tried to pivot through it, and smashed right into the chunk of debris.
“Scud!” he yelled as his ship exploded.
Jerkface still hasn’t started the course. I noted.
I made the fourth ring—it hovered between two hunks of debris—but missed the last one, which was behind a large floating metal box, requiring a light-lance turn to spin around it. I ended that run with three points, though Hurl got four. I hadn’t counted the others. Poor Kimmalyn crashed getting through the fourth ring.
The rest of us curved around the outside of the debris field for another run, and Jerkface finally flew in for his first run. He was watching to see us go through. I realized. He was scouting the battlefield.
Clever. Indeed, he got four rings like Hurl.
Hurl immediately raced in for her second run, and I realized that—in our eagerness—we’d been going several times faster than Cobb’s stated minimum speed. Why would we want to fly faster? Simply to get done first? Cobb hadn’t offered any points for that.
Stupid. I thought. It isn’t a race. It’s a test of precision. I slowed down to Mag-1 as Hurl—trying to hook that third ring again for the sharp turn—lost control and slammed herself into a nearby chunk of rock.
“Ha!” she exclaimed. She didn’t seem to care that she’d lost. She just seemed happy that there was a game to it now.
I focused on the third ring, going over and over in my head the things Cobb had taught. As I swooped past, I launched my light-lance into the asteroid and not only hooked it, but—to my surprise—swung around on the energy line so that I curved right through the ring.
Bim whistled. “Nice one, Spin.”
I released the light-lance and pulled up.
“You wanna try this one, Arturo?” Nedd asked as the two of them flew toward the third ring.
“I think our chances of victory are higher if we skip that ring each pass.”
“Too bad!” Nedd said, then hooked Arturo with his light-lance and pulled him after, diving for the ring.
Of course they both crashed. I hit the fourth ring easily, zipping between the two flying chunks of debris. But I missed the fifth one, spearing only air with my light-lance.
“Nedd, you idiot,” Arturo said in my ear. “Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to see what would happen,” Nedd answered.
“You wanted … Nedd, it was obvious what would happen. You just got us both killed!”
“Better here than the real world.”
“Better neither. Now we won’t win.”
“I never eat my first dessert though,” Nedd said. “Bad for the bod, my friend.”
The two went on bickering over the radio. FM, I noticed, didn’t try either of the difficult rings—she stuck to the three that were easier.
I gritted my teeth, focusing on the contest. I had to beat Jorgen. It was a matter of honor.
He finished his second run with four points again, making the third ring but skipping the last one, which was hardest. That put him at eight points, and me at only seven. FM, playing it safe, would be at six. I wasn’t sure about Morningtide, but she tried the last ring and missed, so I was probably ahead of her.
The four of us remaining swooped around for our final run. Again, Jerkface hung back, waiting for the rest of us to go first. Fine. I thought, hitting overburn and zipping through the first ring. I had to hit every one of these to have a chance. FM, notably, didn’t try to fly through even the first ring. She just zoomed carefully over the top of the course.
“FM, what are you doing?” Cobb asked.
“I figure these clowns will all get themselves killed, sir. I could probably win without any points at all.”
No. I thought, streaking through the second ring. He said we keep our points if we crash—we merely can’t get any more. So she wouldn’t win, careful or not. Cobb had accounted for that.
I approached the third ring, hands sweating. Come on … Go! I launched the light-lance and hit the debris square-on, but didn’t push into the throttle the right way, so I ended up swinging around, but missed the ring.
I gritted my teeth, but disengaged the light-lance and managed to pull out of the turn without smashing into anything. Morningtide tried the ring, and almost made it, but ended up crashing. Jerkface still waited outside, watching to see exactly how many rings he’d need to win. Clever. Again.
Scud, I hated that boy.
I was so distracted that I actually missed the fourth ring, which was one of the easy ones. Furious, my face growing cold, I used my light-line to spear the big square piece of debris, then spun downward—curving straight through the fifth ring, which so far as I’d seen, nobody had hit.
That left me with a total of ten points, while Jerkface was at eight. He would close that gap easily. I felt my anger boil as he finally started toward the course. Who did he think he was, sitting back there like some ancient king, watching the plebes scramble before him? He was so arrogant. But worse, he’d been right to wait. He’d been smarter than I had, and he’d gained a distinct advantage. He was going to win.
Unless …
A terrible idea took root in my mind. I spun and hit my over-burn, accelerating to Mag-5 and sprinting back toward the starting line. Above me, Jerkface went through the first ring at a leisurely pace, at exactly the minimum speed.
“Hey, Spin?” Nedd asked. “Whatcha doing?”
I ignored him, turning upward, dodging through floating pieces of debris. Ahead of me, Jerkface approached the second ring, an easy one—and the one that would bring him to ten points.
Straight on …, I thought, overburning. Pushing my acceleration to the red line of where—in a climb like this—I’d risk dropping unconscious.
“Spin?” Bim asked.
I grinned. Then smashed my ship right into Jerkface’s, overwhelming both shields and blowing us to pieces. We exploded into light.
Then we both re-formed at the edge of the battlefield.
“What the hell was that?” Jerkface shouted. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking how to win,” I said, sitting back in my seat, satisfied. “The way of the warrior, Jerkface.”
“We’re on a team. Spin!” he said. “You brash, self-centered. slimy piece of—”
“Enough, Jorgen,” Cobb snapped.
Jerkface fell quiet, but notably didn’t give his usual obsequious “Yes, sir!”
The holograms switched off, and Cobb walked over to my seat. “You’re dead.”
“I won anyway,” I said.
“It’s a tactic that would be useless in a real fight,” Cobb said. “You don’t get to take home points if you’re dead.”
I shrugged. “You set the rules, Cobb. Ten points for me, nine for Jerkface. It isn’t my fault that he doesn’t get to try for the last few points.”
“Yes it is!” Jerkface said, standing up out of his cockpit. “It absolutely is your fault!”
“Enough, son,” Cobb said. “It’s not worth getting worked up over this. You lost. It happens.” He glanced at me. “Though I guess I’ll be wanting to change the rules of that game.”
I stood up, grinning.
“Five-minute break,” Cobb said. “Everyone cool down and don’t strangle one another. That causes too much damn paperwork.” He hobbled over to the door and stepped out, perhaps to fetch his midday coffee.
Kimmalyn ran over to my seat, her dark curls bouncing. “Spin, that was wonderful!”
“What does the Saint say about games?” I asked.
“ ‘You can’t win if you don’t play,’ ” Kimmalyn said.
“Obviously.”
“Obviously!” She grinned again. Bim walked by and gave me a thumbs-up. Over his shoulder, I saw Jerkface glaring at me with unmitigated hostility as Arturo and Nedd tried to calm him down.
“Don’t worry, Jorg,” Nedd said. “You still beat Arturo.”
“Thank you very much. Nedd,” Arturo snapped.
Kimmalyn left the classroom to get something to drink, and I settled into my seat and dug one of my canteens out of my pack. I made sure to refill all three each day at the bathroom.
“So,” Bim said, leaning against my hologram projector, “you’re really into warriors and things, eh?”
“They inspire me,” I said. “My grandmother tells stories about ancient heroes.”
“You have any favorites?”
“Probably Beowulf,” I said, then took a long pull of water from the canteen. “He literally slew a dragon, and ripped the arm off a monster—he had to resort to his bare hands after his sword wouldn’t cut the thing. But then there’s Tashenamani—she slew the great warrior Custer—and Conan the Cimmerian, who fought in the ancient times before writing.”
“Yeah, they were great,” Bim said, and winked. “I mean … I hadn’t heard of them until now. But I’m sure they were great. Er. I’m thirsty.”
He blushed and walked off, leaving me confused. What was …
He was … he was flirting with me. I realized, stunned. Or, well, trying to.
Was that possible? I mean, he was actually cute, so why would he …
I looked at him again, and caught him in the middle of what seemed like a blush. Scud! That was the strangest thing that had happened to me since starting flight school, and I spent my mornings talking to a slug.
I thought about guys, but my life hadn’t exactly left me time for that kind of thing. The last time I’d had any romantic inclinations had been when I’d been eight and had given Rig a particularly nice hatchet I’d made out of a rock and a stick—then had decided he was gross the next week. Because, well, I’d been eight.
I jumped to my feet. “Uh, Bim?” I said.
He looked at me again.
“You ever heard of Odysseus?”
“No,” he said.
“He was an ancient hero who fought in the greatest war that ever happened on Earth, the Trojan War. It’s said he had a bow so strong that, other than him, only a giant could pull the string back. He … had blue hair, you know.”
“Yeah?” Bim asked.
“Pretty cool,” I said, then immediately sat down, taking a long gulp from my canteen.
Was that smooth? That was smooth, right?
I wasn’t sure what Sun Tzu or Beowulf would say about flirting with cute guys. Maybe share the skulls of your enemies with them, as a gesture of affection?
I felt kind of warm and gooey (in a good way) until I spotted Jerkface—across the room—watching me. I gave him a hard glare.
He, pointedly, turned to Nedd and Arturo. “I guess we shouldn’t expect real honor,” he said, “from the daughter of Zeen Nightshade.”
A bolt of coldness shot through me.
“Who?” Nedd asked. “Wait, who did you say she was?”
“You know,” Jerkface said, voice loud enough to carry through the entire room. “Callsign: Chaser? The Coward of Alta?”
The room went quiet. I could feel everyone’s eyes turning toward me. How had he found out? Who had told him?
I stood up. Scud, even Kimmalyn seemed to know who Chaser was. Her canteen dropped from her fingers and bounced against the floor, spilling water that she didn’t notice.
“Who?” Morningtide asked. “What is happen?”
I wanted to flee. Hide. Escape all those eyes. But I would not run.
“My father,” I said, “was not a coward.”
“I’m sorry,” Jerkface said. “I’m only stating the official history.” He stared at me, with that arrogant, so-punchable face. I found myself blushing in embarrassment—then in anger.
I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. I’d lived practically my entire life with this mantle. I was accustomed to those looks, those whispers. And I wasn’t ashamed of my father, right? So why should I care that the others had found out? Good. Fine. I was happy to be Chaser’s daughter.
It was just that … it had felt nice. To be able to make my own way, without standing in anyone’s shadow.
That thought made me feel like I was betraying my father, and that made me even more angry.
“She lives in a cave, you know,” Jerkface said to Arturo. “She goes there every night. The elevator operators told me they watch her hike out into the wilderness, because she’s not—”
He cut off as Cobb stepped in with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. Cobb focused immediately on me, then Jerkface. “Back to your seats,” he snapped at us. “We still have work to do today. And Quirk, did you drop that canteen?”
Kimmalyn unfroze and picked up her canteen, and everyone climbed into their cockpits without another word. At one point shortly after we went back to practicing with our light-lances, I caught Cobb looking at me with a grim expression, with eyes that seemed to be saying, It was going to happen eventually, cadet. Are you going to give in?
Never.
But that didn’t stop me from feeling sick through the whole set of drills.
A few hours later, I trailed out of the women’s bathroom, canteens refilled. A new pair of MPs walked me to the doors and saw me out, then—like normal—left me there.
I trudged across the base grounds, feeling frustrated, angry, and alone. I should have kept going out of the base, on toward my cave. But instead I took a path around the training building, one that let me walk past the mess hall.
I looked through the window there and spotted the others seated along a metal table—chatting, laughing, arguing. They’d even bullied Jerkface into joining them tonight—a rare treat for the plebes, as he usually drove off to the exclusive elevator. Nedd said it could reach the lower caverns in under fifteen minutes.
So there he was, enjoying what I was forbidden, after tossing away my secret like a fistful of expired rations. I hated him. In that moment, I kind of hated them all. I almost hated my father.
I stalked off into the night, leaving the base through the front gates. I turned to my left, toward the orchard, and the shortcut through it toward the wilderness. My path took me straight past the small hangars where Jerkface parked his hovercar.
I stopped there in the darkness, eyeing his bay. The front door was closed this time, but the side door was open, and I could see the car inside. It took me all of about half a second to come up with another really terrible idea.
Looking around, I didn’t see anyone watching. Darkness had come early tonight, the skylights moving away, and the orchard workers had already gone home. I was far enough from the front gates of the base that the guards there shouldn’t be able to see me in the gloom.
I slipped in the side of the small hangar and closed the door, then lit my light-line for a bit of illumination. I found a wrench on the wall of the small shed, then pulled open the hood of the blue hovercar.
Jerkface could walk home tonight. It would only be fair. After all, I had to walk home—and tonight I would have to do it while lugging a large, car-size power matrix tied to my back.
