Cobb kept his promise—he worked us hard that day.
We practiced coordinated banking, formations, and wingmate guarding exercises. We worked until my fingers felt stiff as gears, my arms ached like I’d been lifting weights, and my brain basically turned to mush. He even worked us through lunch, forcing an aide to bring everyone else sandwiches. I ate rat jerky and mushrooms like always.
The diodes in my helmet cooled down as I worked. The admiral thought she could tell from some readouts if I would be a coward? What kind of insanity was that?
There was no time to worry about it though. Cobb ran us through debris dodging, light-lance turns, and shield reignition drills. It was exhausting in a good way, and the only time I thought of Bim was when I realized that nobody was complaining that—yet again—we weren’t being allowed to use our weapons.
When Cobb at long last let us go, I felt as if I could have curled up right there and dozed off.
“Hey, Arturo,” Nedd said as he stood and stretched, “these projectors are pretty good. You think they could simulate a world where you’re not a scudding terrible pilot?”
“All we need for that,” Arturo said, “is an Off button for your radio. I’m certain we’d all improve by huge leaps if we didn’t have to listen to your incessant jabbering. Besides, as I recall, you were the one who ran into me earlier.”
“You were in my way!”
“Boys, boys,” Hurl said, sauntering past. “Can’t we make peace? Find common ground and agree that you’re both terrible pilots?”
“Ha!” Arturo said. “You just watch—I’ll make you eat those words someday, Hurl.”
“I’m hungry enough that I’d eat them now,” she said, “if they had a decent sauce on them. The mess hall better not be closed. Quirk, can I have your dessert?”
“What?” the girl said, looking up from her harness—which she’d been clipping together and folding neatly in her seat, like she always did when getting out of her mockpit.
“You’re nice and stuff,” Hurl said. “I figure you’ll give in if I push hard enough. So, can I eat your dessert?”
“Bless your stars,” Kimmalyn said. “But touch my pie, and I’ll rip your fingers off.” She blushed when she said it, and lifted her hand in front of her mouth.
“She’ll do it, Hurl,” I joked. “It’s always the nice ones you have to worry about.”
“Yeah,” Hurl said. “Ain’t that the …” She trailed off as she realized I was the one who’d spoken. Then she turned and continued out the door.
I knew that look in her eyes. Ever since Jorgen outed me as Chaser’s daughter, things hadn’t been the same between Hurl and me.
The others piled out of the chamber. I sighed, gathering my pack, preparing for an exhausted hike back to my cavern. As I hefted it over my shoulder, I realized that FM hadn’t left. She was standing by the wall, watching me. She was so tall and beautiful. As cadets, we kept DDF pilot dress standards. For daily work, we could choose jumpsuits or standard DDF uniforms if we wanted. We just had to be ready to change into flight suits if a call came up.
Most of us simply wore the jumpsuits, which were the most comfortable. Not FM. Alongside her polished boots, she often wore a tailored uniform with a jacket that somehow looked more stylish on her than others. She was so perfect, she almost seemed more like a statue than a person.
“Thank you,” she said to me, “for what you said earlier. About Bim, Morningtide, and the stars.”
“You didn’t find it ‘overly aggressive’?” I asked. FM was always complaining that the rest of us were too aggressive, which didn’t make sense to me. Wasn’t aggression the point of war?
“Well, most of what you say is utter nonsense,” FM said. “Windy bravado made as an excuse to tout jingoistic mantras instilled in you by a lifetime of Defiant indoctrination. But what you said earlier, that was from the heart. I … I needed to hear it. Thank you.”
“You’re a weird girl, FM,” I said. I had no idea what most of what she’d said had meant.
At his desk, Cobb snorted and glanced at me from behind his paperwork. You, of all people, are calling someone weird? his glance seemed to ask.
I walked with FM out into an empty hallway; the other cadet flights had finished classes hours ago.
“I want to make it clear,” FM said as we walked together, “that I don’t blame you for your attitudes. You’re a product of enormous societal pressure, forcing young people into increasingly aggressive postures. I’m sure on the inside you’re sweet.”
“I’m actually not,” I said, grinning. “But I’m okay if people underestimate me. Perhaps the Krell will do the same, so I can savor the surprise in their eyes as I rip those very eyes from their skulls.”
FM looked at me aghast.
“If, that is, they have eyes under that armor. Or skulls. Well—whatever they have, I’ll rip it out.” I glanced at her, then grinned more broadly. “I’m joking, FM. Kind of. I say things like that because they’re fun. Like the old stories, you know?”
“I haven’t read those old stories.”
“You’d probably hate them. Why do you always talk about the rest of us being too aggressive? Aren’t you Defiant?”
“I was raised Defiant,” she said. “But I choose, now, to be what people down below call a Disputer—I raise objections about the way the war is being run. I think we should throw off the oppressive mantle of military government.”
I stopped in place, shocked. I’d never heard words like that spoken before. “So … you’re a coward?”
FM blushed, standing up taller. “I’d have thought you. of all people, would be careful about throwing around that term.”
“Sorry,” I said, blushing in return. She was right. But still, I had trouble understanding what she was saying. I understood the words, but not the meaning. Throw off military government? Who would be in charge of the war then?
“I am still willing to fight,” FM said, her head high as we walked. “Just because I want change doesn’t mean I’ll let the Krell destroy us all. But do you realize what it’s doing to our society to train our children, practically from birth, to idealize and glorify fighting? To worship the First Citizens like saints? We should be teaching our children to be more caring, more inquisitive—not only to destroy, but to build.”
I shrugged. Those kinds of things seemed easy to say when you lived in the deep caverns, where a bomb wouldn’t kill your family. Still, it was nice to get some answers about the woman—she was so poised, it was hard to think of her as a “girl” even though she was the same age as the rest of us.
If I walked too far with her toward the mess hall though, I might run into the MPs and get into trouble. They’d stopped escorting me out of class every day, but I didn’t believe for a moment that meant I could go to dinner. So I bade FM farewell, and she jogged off to catch up with the others.
I started toward the exit, digging in my pack for some water—but remembered I’d left my last full canteen by my seat in the classroom. Great. Feeling my exhaustion from the training return, I trudged back to the classroom.
Cobb had activated the hologram in the center of the room, projecting a small version of a battlefield. In front of him, ships the size of ball bearings zipped and flew among debris trailing fire and smoke. Krell ships, flat and no larger than merit chits, fired tiny destructors.
He’s rewatching the fight from yesterday. I realized. The one where Bim and Morningtide died. I’d had no idea the battles were recorded.
I picked out my ship as it zipped into the battle. I felt the overwhelming chaos again, the rush of finally being in a real fight. I could almost hear the explosions. Kimmalyn’s worried voice. The sound of my own breathing, excited, sharp.
Anticipation, even a little fear, rose inside me while I watched—powerless. Morningtide died again.
My gut clenched. But I wouldn’t let myself look away.
In the room, my ship zipped through the fray, picking up a tail. I dove around a falling piece of rubble—using my light-lance to pivot with exactness—then soared between two other Krell ships.
Cobb paused the simulation with a gesture. He stepped forward, focusing on my ship—frozen in the air amid a spectacular show of destructors, falling streaks of light, and exploding ships. Then he rewound the simulation and played it through again, watching my maneuver.
“I almost blacked out,” I noted from the doorway. “I didn’t have control of my speed, and didn’t cut the turn before the GravCaps overloaded.”
“It was still quite the maneuver,” he said. “Particularly for a cadet. Remarkable, almost unbelievable.”
“Jerkface is better than I am.”
“Jorgen is an excellent technical pilot, but he doesn’t feel it like you do. You remind me of your father.” He seemed … grim as he said it.
I suddenly felt awkward, so I crossed to my simulator and grabbed my canteen. Cobb played out the rest of the battle, and I forced myself to watch as my ship and Bim’s chased the Krell bomber. Cobb froze the simulation again as the four strange guard ships broke off the enemy bomber—the ones who would, momentarily, shoot down Bim.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Something new. They haven’t altered their tactics in over a decade. What changed now?” He narrowed his eyes. “We survive by being able to anticipate the Krell. Anytime you can guess what your enemy is going to do, you have an advantage. No matter how dangerous they are, if you know their next move, you can counter it.”
Huh. That struck me, and I found myself nodding.
Cobb shut down the hologram and hobbled back toward his desk. “Here,” he said, sliding a box off the top and handing it to me. “I forgot to give this to you earlier.”
A personal radio?
“Normally, we only give these to full pilots who get off-duty time down in Igneous. But since you live off base, I figured you should have one. Keep it on you at all times. You’ll get a general warning call when the Krell attack.”
I took the device, which was rectangular and boxy, maybe the size of a small one-handed training weight. My father had carried one of these.
Cobb waved to dismiss me, then settled down in his seat and started looking through his papers.
I lingered though, a question on my mind. “Cobb?”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you fly with us? The other flight instructors go up with their cadets.”
I braced myself for anger or reprimand. Cobb just patted his leg. “Old wounds, Spin. Old wounds.” He’d been shot down, soon after the Battle of Alta. His leg had clipped the side of the canopy as he’d ejected.
“You don’t need your leg to fly.”
“Some wounds,” he said softly, “aren’t as obvious as a twisted leg. You found it hard to get into the cockpit today, after watching your friends die? Try doing it after you shoot down one of your own.”
I felt a sudden and striking coldness wash through me, like I’d ejected at high altitude. Was he saying …
Was he saying he was the one who had shot down my father?
Cobb looked up at me. “Who else do you think they’d order to bring him down, kid? I was his wingmate. I followed him when he ran.”
“He didn’t run.”
“I was there. He ran, Spensa. He—”
“My father was not a coward!”
I met Cobb’s gaze, and for the second time that day he looked away.
“What really happened up there, Cobb?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why do they think they can tell I’ll do the same, just by monitoring my brain? What aren’t you telling me?”
Though I’d never accepted the official story, part of me had always assumed that some kind of mistake had caused my father’s reputation. That in the confusion, people had assumed he’d turned coward when he hadn’t.
But I now had the chance to talk to someone who was there. Someone who … who had pulled the trigger …
“What happened?” I asked, stepping forward. I’d meant to say it forcefully, Defiantly—but it came out as a whispered plea. “Can you tell me? What you saw?”
“You’ve read the official report,” Cobb said, still not meeting my eyes. “The Krell were coming in a huge wave, carrying a lifebuster. It was a larger force than we’d ever faced before, and their positioning strongly indicated they’d found Alta Base. We fought off one attack, but they regrouped. As they were preparing to come at us again, your father panicked. He screamed that the enemy force was too big, that we were all going to die. He—”
“Who did he say it to? The entire flight?”
Cobb paused. “Yes. All four of us who were left, anyway. Well, he screamed and screamed, then he broke off and began flying away. You have to understand how dangerous that was for us. We were literally fighting for the survival of our species—if other ships started fleeing, it would have been chaos. We couldn’t afford to—”
“You followed him,” I interrupted. “He took off and flew away, and you followed. Then you shot him down?”
“The order came almost immediately from our flightleader. Shoot him down, to make an example and prevent anyone else from fleeing. I was right on his tail, and he wouldn’t respond to our pleas. So I hit my IMP and brought down his shield, then … then I shot. I’m a soldier. I obey orders.”
The pain in his voice was so real, so personal, it almost made me feel ashamed for pushing him. For the first time … my resolve shook. Could it be true?
“You swear to me?” I asked. “That’s exactly how it happened?”
Cobb finally met my eyes. He held them this time, and didn’t look away—but he also didn’t answer my question. I saw him harden as he set his jaw. And in that moment, I knew that his nonanswer was an answer. He’d given me the official story.
And it was a lie.
“It’s past time for you to be going, cadet,” Cobb said. “If you want a copy of the official record, I can get you one.”
“But it’s a lie. Isn’t it?” I looked to him again, and he gave the faintest, almost imperceptible nod.
My entire world lit up. I should have been angry. I should have been furious at Cobb for pulling the trigger. Instead, I was elated.
My father hadn’t run. My father wasn’t a coward.
“But why?” I asked. “What’s to be gained by pretending one of your pilots fled?”
“Go,” Cobb said, pointing. “That’s an order, cadet.”
“This is why Ironsides doesn’t want me in the DDF,” I realized. “She knows I’ll ask questions. Because … Scud, she was your flightleader, wasn’t she? The one who gave the order to shoot my father down? The name was redacted in the reports, but she’s the only one who fits …”
I looked back at Cobb, and his face was growing red with anger. Or maybe embarrassment. He’d just given me a secret, an important one, and … well, he looked like he was having second thoughts. I wasn’t going to get any more out of him right now.
I grabbed my pack and hurried out. My heart was broken for the friends I’d lost, and now I’d have to deal with the fact that my instructor was also my father’s killer.
But for now … well, I felt like a soldier planting her flag at the top of a hard-fought hill. All these years I’d dreamed, and studied, and trusted that my father had actually been a hero.
And I’d been right.
