Ten mock cockpits dominated the center of the room, arranged in a circle facing inward. Each bulky device had a seat, a control console, and part of a fuselage built around it—though no canopy. Other than that, they looked as if they’d been ripped right out of starships.
Instead of the nose cones of ships, however, each had a large box attached to the front, maybe a meter tall and half as wide. Kimmalyn and I were apparently the first of our flight to arrive, and I checked the wall clock. It was 0615. For once in my life, I was not only early—I was first.
Well, technically second, as Kimmalyn jumped past me to look over the mock cockpits. “Oh! I guess we’re first. Well, the Saint always said, ‘If you can’t arrive early, at least arrive before you’re late.’ ”
I walked into the room, setting down my backpack and checking out the mockpits. I recognized the control panel layout—they were from Poco-class ships, a basic, if fast, DDF starfighter model. The door opened, and two more cadets entered. The shorter boy at the front had dark blue hair and appeared to be a Yeongian. The crew of the Yeong-Gwang. from the old fleet, had largely been from China or Korea on Earth.
The blue-haired boy grinned as he looked over the room, putting his pack beside mine. “Wow. Our classroom!”
The girl behind him sauntered in like she owned the place. She was a lean, athletic-looking girl with blonde hair in a ponytail. She wore a DDF uniform jacket over her jumpsuit—loose, like she was out on the town.
Those two were soon followed by a girl with a tattoo across her lower jaw. She’d be Vician—from Vici Cavern. I didn’t know much about them, only that they were the descendants of the marines from the old space fleet. The Vicians had their own culture and kept to themselves—though they had reputations as great warriors.
I smiled at her, but she looked away immediately and didn’t respond when Kimmalyn perkily introduced herself. Fine then. I thought.
Kimmalyn got names and home caverns out of the other two. The guy with the blue hair was Bim, and was indeed a Yeongian. His clan had been part of the hydroponics team on the old ship, and had settled in a nearby cavern that maintained a large set of underground farms, lit and maintained by ancient machinery. I’d never eaten any of the food from there; it was reserved for those who had many achievement merits or industry merits.
The athletic girl was Hudiya, from Igneous. I didn’t know her, but the cavern was a big place, with a vast population. As the time for class drew near, a tall girl entered and introduced herself as Freyja. It was a good mythological name from Old Norse—of which I approved. She kind of had the look too. Though she was skinny, she was tall, maybe even a hundred and eighty-five centimeters, and she had blonde hair, which she wore cut very short. Her boots were brand-new, polished to a shine, and done up with gold clasps.
Well, that made six of us. We’d have a few more at least. About ten minutes before the start of class, three young men walked in together. They were obviously friends, as they were talking and joking softly. I didn’t recognize two of them, but the one at the front—with brown skin and short curly hair—was distinctive in a kind of baby-faced, pretty-boy way.
The guy from the test. I realized. The son of a First Citizen who had gotten free admission.
Great. We were saddled with a useless aristocrat, someone who lived in the lowest—and safest—of the Defiant caverns. He’d be in flight school not because of any skill or aptitude, but because he wanted to sport a cadet’s pin and feel important. Judging by the way the other two talked, I instantly pegged them as his cronies. I’d have bet anything that all of them had gotten in without taking the test, so our cadet group had three people who didn’t deserve to be there.
The tall, baby-faced guy walked to the center of the ring of seats. How could a boy have a face that was so extremely punchable? He cleared his throat, then clapped his hands sharply. “Get to attention, cadets! Is this how we want to present ourselves to our instructor? Lounging about, making idle chitchat? Line up!”
Kimmalyn, bless her stars, jumped up and stood at a kind of sloppy attention. His two cronies stepped over and fell into step as well, doing a much better impression of real soldiers. Everyone else just kind of looked at him.
“What gives you the right to order us around?” asked Hudiya, the athletic girl from my own cavern. She stood leaning against the wall, arms folded.
“I want to make a good first impression on the instructor, cadet,” Jerkface said. “Think how inspiring it will be when he comes in to find us all waiting at attention.”
Hudiya snorted. “Inspiring? We’d look like a bunch of suck-ups.”
Jerkface ignored her, instead inspecting his line of three cadets. He shook his head at Kimmalyn, whose version of “attention” involved standing on the tips of her toes and saluting with both hands. It was ridiculous.
“You look ridiculous,” Jerkface said to her.
The girl’s face fell, and she slumped. I felt an immediate burst of protective anger. I mean … he was right, but he didn’t have to belt it out like that.
“Who taught you to stand at attention?” Jerkface asked. “You’re going to embarrass us. I can’t have that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’d be stealing your spot, since embarrassing us is clearly your job, Jerkface.”
He looked me up and down—taking obvious note of the patched state of my pilot’s jumpsuit. It had been one of my father’s, and had required serious modification to fit me.
“Do I know you, cadet?” he asked. “You look familiar.”
“I was sitting in the front row taking the test,” I said, “when you turned in your exam without a single question answered. Maybe you saw me there when you glanced at the rest of the room, to see what people look like when they actually have to work to get things.”
He drew his lips to a line. It seemed I’d touched a nerve. Excellent. First blood.
“I chose not to waste resources,” he said, “making someone grade my test when I had already been offered a slot.”
“One you didn’t earn.”
He glanced at the other cadets in the room, who were watching with interest, then he lowered his voice. “Look. You don’t need to make trouble. Just fall into line, and—”
“Fall into line?” I said. “You’re still trying to give us orders?”
“It’s obvious I’m going to be your flightleader. You might as well get used to doing what I say.”
Arrogant son of a supernova. “Just because you cheated your way into—”
“I didn’t cheat!”
“—just because you bought your way into flight school doesn’t mean you’ll be flightleader. You need to watch yourself. Don’t make an enemy out of me.”
“And if I do?”
Scud, it was annoying to have to look up at him. I leaped onto my seat to gain a height advantage for the argument—an action that seemed to surprise him.
He cocked his head. “What—”
“Always attack from a position of superior advantage!” I said. “When this is done, Jerkface, I will hold your tarnished and melted pin up as my trophy as your smoldering ship marks your pyre, and the final resting place of your crushed and broken corpse!”
The room grew quiet.
“All right …,” Jerkface said. “Well, that was … descriptive.”
“Bless your stars,” Kimmalyn added. Hudiya gave me a thumbs-up and a grin, though the others in the room plainly had no idea what to make of me.
And … maybe my reaction had been over the top. I was used to making a scene; life had taught me that aggressive threats would cause people to back off. But did I need to do that here?
I realized something odd in that moment. None of these people seemed to know who I was. They hadn’t grown up near my neighborhood; they hadn’t gone to class with me. They might have heard of my father, but they didn’t know me from any other cadet.
Here, I wasn’t the rat girl or the daughter of a coward.
Here I was free.
The door chose that moment to open, and our instructor—Mongrel—stopped in the doorway, holding a steaming mug of coffee in one hand, a clipboard in the other. In the light, I recognized him from the pictures of the First Citizens, though his hair was greyer, and that mustache made him appear much older.
We must have looked like quite the menagerie. I was still standing on the seat of my mockpit, looming over Jerkface. Several of the others had been snickering at our exchange, while Kimmalyn was again trying to execute a salute.
Mongrel glanced at the clock, which had just hit seven hundred hours. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything intimate.”
“Uh …,” I said. I jumped off my seat and tried a little laugh.
“That wasn’t a joke!” Mongrel barked. “I don’t joke! Line up by the far wall, all of you!”
We scrambled to obey. As we lined up, Jerkface pulled off a precise salute, and he held it, at perfect attention.
Mongrel glanced at him and said, “Don’t be a suck-up, son. This isn’t basic training, and you aren’t grunts from the ground corps.”
Jerkface’s expression fell and he lowered his arm, then snapped to attention anyway. “Um, sorry, sir!”
Mongrel rolled his eyes. “My name is Captain Cobb. My call-sign is Mongrel, but you will call me Cobb—or sir, if you must.” He trailed along the line, his limp prominent, taking a sip of his coffee. “The rules of this classroom are simple. I teach. You learn. Anything that interferes with that is likely to get one of you killed.” He paused near where I stood by Jerkface. “That includes flirting.”
I felt my face go cold. “Sir! I wasn’t—”
“It also includes talking back to me! You’re in flight school now, stars help you. Four months of training. If you make it to the end without being kicked out or shot down, then you pass. That’s it. There are no tests. There are no grades. Just you in a cockpit, convincing me you deserve to remain there. I am the only authority that matters to you now.”
He waited, watching to see how we responded. And wisely, none of us said anything.
“Most of you won’t make it,” he continued. “Four months may not seem like long, but it will feel like an eternity. Some of you will drop out under the stress, and the Krell will kill some others. Usually, a flight of ten ends up with one cadet graduating to full pilot, maybe two.” He stopped at the end of the line, where Kimmalyn stood biting her lip.
“This bunch though …,” Cobb added, “I’ll be surprised if any of you make it.” He limped away from us, setting his coffee on a small desk at the front of the room, then riffling through the papers on his clipboard. “Which of you is Jorgen Weight?”
“Me, sir!” Jerkface said, standing up straighter.
“Great. You’re flightleader.”
I gasped.
Cobb eyed me, but said nothing. “Jorgen, you’ll need two assistant flightleaders. I’ll want the names by the end of the day.”
“I can give you those now, sir,” he said, pointing to his two cronies—a shorter boy and a taller one. “Arturo and Nedd.”
Cobb marked something on his clipboard. “Great. Everyone, pick a seat. We’re going to—”
“Wait,” I said. “That’s it? That’s how you choose our flight-leader? You’re not even going to see how we do first?”
“Pick a seat, cadets,” Cobb repeated, ignoring me.
“But—” I said.
“Except Cadet Spensa,” he said, “who will instead meet me in the hallway.”
I bit my tongue and stomped out into the hallway. I probably should have contained my frustration, but … really? He immediately picked Jerkface? Just like that?
Cobb followed me, then calmly shut the door. I prepared an outburst, but he spun on me and hissed, “Are you trying to ruin this, Spensa?”
I choked off my retort, shocked by his sudden anger.
“Do you know how far I had to stick my neck out to get you into this class?” he continued. “I argued that you sat in the room for hours, that you finished a damn near perfect test. It still took every bit of clout and reputation I’ve earned over the years to pull this off. Now, the first chance you get, you’re throwing a tantrum?”
“I … But you didn’t see what that guy was doing before class! He was strutting around, claiming he’d be flightleader.”
“Turns out he had good reason!”
“But—”
“But what?” Cobb demanded.
I stifled the words I was going to say, and instead remained silent.
He took a deep breath. “Good. You can control yourself at least a little.” He rubbed his brows with his thumb and forefinger. “You’re just like your father. I spent half the time wanting to strangle the man. Unfortunately, you’re not him—you have to live with what he did. You have to control yourself, Spensa. If it looks like I’m favoring you, someone will call improper bias, and you’ll be pulled from my class faster than you can spit.”
“So you can’t favor me?” I asked. “But everyone can favor the son of an aristocrat who didn’t even have to finish his test?”
Cobb sighed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No, I walked into that one,” he said. “Do you know who that boy is?”
“Son of a First Citizen?”
“Son of the Jeshua Weight, a hero of the Battle of Alta. She flew seven years in the DDF, and has over a hundred confirmed kills. Her husband is Algernon Weight, National Assembly Leader and high foreman of our largest intercavern shipping company. They’re among the most heavily merited people in the lower caverns.”
“So their son and his cronies get to be our leaders, just because of what their parents did?”
“Jorgen’s family owns three private fighters, and he has been training on them since he was fourteen. He has nearly a thousand hours in the cockpit. How many do you have?”
“His ‘cronies,’ ” Cobb said, “are Nedd Strong—who has two brothers in the DDF right now—and Arturo Mendez, son of a cargo pilot who had sixteen years in the DDF. Arturo has been acting as copilot with his father, and is certified with two hundred hours’ flight time. Again, how many hours do you have?”
“I …” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for questioning you, sir. Is this the part where I do push-ups, or clean a bathroom with a toothbrush or something?”
“I already said this isn’t infantry training. The punishment here isn’t some menial stupidity.” Cobb pulled open the door to the room. “Push me too far, and the punishment will be simple: you won’t get to fly.”
