The elevator doors opened, and I looked out upon a city that should not exist.
Alta was primarily a military base, so perhaps city was an ambitious term. Yet the elevator structure opened a good two hundred meters outside the base proper. Lining the roadway between the two were shops and homes. A real town, populated by the stubborn farmers who worked the strips of greenery beyond.
I lingered in the large elevator as it emptied of people. This represented a threshold to a new life, a life I’d always dreamed about. I found myself strangely hesitant as I stood there, pack full of clothing over my shoulder, the phantom feeling of my mother’s kiss farewell on my forehead.
“Oh, isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” a voice said from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. The speaker was a girl about my age. She was taller than I was, with tan-brown skin and long, curly black hair. I’d seen her earlier on the elevator and noted her cadet’s pin. She spoke with a faint accent I didn’t recognize.
“I keep thinking it can’t be real,” she said. “Do you think it might be some cruel prank they’re playing on us?”
“What tactical advantage would they gain by that?” I asked her.
The girl took my arm in a much too familiar way. “We can do this. Just take a deep breath. Reach up. Pluck a star. That’s what the Saint says.”
I had no idea what to make of this behavior. People normally treated me like a pariah; they didn’t take me by the arm. I was so stunned that I didn’t resist as she towed me after her out of the elevator. We entered the wide walkway leading through the town, toward the base.
I’d rather have been walking with Rodge, but they’d called him in late last night to ask him something about his test, and so far I hadn’t gotten word of what that meant. Hopefully he wasn’t in trouble.
The girl and I soon passed a fountain. A real fountain, like from the stories. We both stopped to gape, and I extricated my arm from the girl’s grasp. Part of me wanted to be offended—but she seemed so genuine.
“That music the water makes,” she said. “Isn’t it the most wonderful sound ever?”
“The most wonderful sound ever is the lamentations of my enemies, screaming my name toward the heavens with ragged, dying voices.”
The girl looked at me, cocking her head. “Well bless your stars.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s a line from a story.” I stuck out my hand to her. Best to be on good terms with the other cadets. “I’m callsign: Spin.”
“Kimmalyn,” she said, shaking my hand. “Um, we’re supposed to have callsigns already?”
“I’m an overachiever. What room you reporting to?”
“Umm …” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a paper. “C-14? Cadet Flight B.”
“Same as me.”
“Callsign … callsign …,” Kimmalyn murmured. “What should I pick?”
“Killer?” I suggested. “Afterburn? No, that’s probably too confusing. Fleshripper?”
“Couldn’t it be something a little less gruesome?”
“You’re going to be a warrior. You need a warrior’s name.”
“Not everything is about war!”
“Um, it kind of is—and flight school especially is.” I frowned, noting the accent in her voice. “Where are you from? Not Igneous, I guess.”
“Born and raised in Bountiful Cavern!” She leaned in. “We call it that, but nothing really grows there.”
“Bountiful,” I said. It was a cavern somewhat close to Igneous, also part of the Defiant League. “That’s where the clans from the Antioch crew settled, right?” The Antioch had been one of the gunships in the old fleet, before we’d been driven into hiding here on Detritus.
“Yup. My great-grandmother was assistant quartermaster.” She eyed me. “You said your callsign was Spin? Shouldn’t you be something like Lamentation or Eats Enemy Eyeballs?”
I shrugged. “Spin is what my dad used to call me.”
She smiled brightly at that. Scud, they’d let this girl in, but had denied me? What was the DDF trying to do? Put together a knitting club?
We approached the base, a group of tall, stern buildings surrounded by a wall. Right outside it, the farms gave way to an actual orchard. I stopped on the walkway, and found myself gaping again. I’d seen these trees from a distance, but up close they seemed enormous. Almost three meters tall! Before this, the tallest plant I’d seen was a mushroom that reached up to my waist.
“They planted those just after the Battle of Alta,” Kimmalyn said. “It must take brave people to volunteer for service up here so exposed to the air and to Krell attacks.” She looked up at the sky in awe, and I wondered if this was the first time she was seeing it.
We stepped up to a checkpoint in the wall, and I thrust my pin toward the guard there, half expecting rough treatment—like I’d always gotten from Aluko when entering Igneous. However, the bored guard only marked our names off on a list and waved us in. Not much ceremony for my first official entrance into Alta. Well, soon I’d be so famous, the guard at the door would salute me on sight.
Inside, we counted off the buildings, joining a handful of other cadets. From what I understood, around twenty-five of us had passed the test, and had been organized into three training flights. Only the best of the best would actually pass flight school and be assigned to full-time pilot duty.
Kimmalyn and I soon arrived at a wide, single-story structure near the launchpads. Flight school. I barely held myself back from running over to the glistening starfighters lined up for duty—I’d done enough gawking for one day.
Inside the building we found wide hallways, most of which appeared to be lined with classrooms. Kimmalyn squealed, then rushed over to talk to another cadet, someone she apparently knew. So I stopped by a window on the outer wall and looked out at the sky, waiting for her.
I found myself feeling … anxious. Not about the training, but about this place. It’s too big, too open. The hallways were over a meter wider than those of most buildings in Igneous, and the base’s buildings sprawled outward instead of being built on top of one another. The sky was just up there, always present, looming. Even with a forcefield between me and it—of the same invisible type that starfighters employed—I felt exposed.
I was going to have to sleep up here. Live, eat, exist. All out in the open. While I liked the sky, that didn’t mean I wanted it peeking in during every intimate moment.
I’ll simply have to deal with it. I told myself. The warrior cannot choose her bed; she must bless the stars if she can choose her battlefield. A quote from Junmi’s The Conquest of Space. I loved Gran-Gran’s stories about Junmi almost as much as I did the old Viking stories, even if they didn’t have quite as many decapitations.
Kimmalyn returned, and we found our classroom. I took a deep breath. Time to become a pilot. We pushed open the doors.
