I woke up in a room.
A room? Not M-Bot’s cockpit?
I sat up, my muscles aching, my head pounding. I was inside. In a bed. What had happened? Had I fallen asleep somewhere on DDF grounds? The admiral would—
You’re in the infirmary. I remembered. After the battle. Cobb sent you here to be checked over. They ordered you to sleep and undergo observation.
I vaguely remembered objecting, but the nurse had forced me into a hospital gown, then had ordered me into bed in a small, empty room. I’d been too numb to object. I didn’t even remember lying down; it was all a haze.
I did distinctly remember the flash as Hurl’s ship impacted the ground. I lay back against a too-soft pillow, squeezing my eyes shut. Hurl was gone.
Eventually I forced myself out of bed. I found my things on a stool: my jumpsuit, laundered, sitting with my light-line bracelet on top of it. My pack rested on the floor beside it, and the radio at the side was blinking. Scud … what if someone had answered that? Would M-Bot have been able to keep quiet?
My secrets suddenly seemed insignificant. In the face of what was happening … the horror of our flight slowly being consumed one by one … Who cared? Who cared if they found out my secrets?
Hurl was dead.
I checked the clock. 0545. I found the restroom, where I cleansed. I went back to my little room and dressed, then walked out to the hospital’s front desk. A nurse looked me over, then handed me a red ticket.
Medical leave for loss recovery. Orders: one week. It was imprinted with my name, stamped and signed.
“I can’t,” I said. “The admiral will kick me out of—”
“Your entire flight has been given mandatory medical leave,” the woman said. “On orders from Dr. Thior, head of medical. You won’t be kicked out of anything, cadet. You need a rest.”
I stared at the ticket.
“Go home,” the woman said. “Spend a week with your family and recover. Stars above … they push you cadets too hard.”
I stood there for a moment before I turned and walked out, dully meandering toward the training building. I took the roundabout way, past our Pocos. Four in a line. Arturo’s ship was off to the side in a little maintenance hangar, with pieces scattered along the ground.
Go home. Where? To live in my cave? Back down to my mother, whose disapproval of the DDF might finally make me lose the rest of my nerve?
I crumpled the leave ticket in my pocket and walked to our classroom, where I sat down in my seat alone. I really just wanted to think, to talk to Cobb, to sort through all of this. Hurl had said … brave to the end. And she had been.
Scud. Hurl was gone. In Gran-Gran’s stories they held feasts in honor of the fallen. But I didn’t want to feast. I wanted to crawl somewhere dark and curl up.
Strangely, as class time approached, the door creaked open and the others—except for Jorgen—arrived in a solemn, quiet group. Hadn’t the nurse said we all had leave? Perhaps they, like me, didn’t want to accept it.
Kimmalyn stopped by my seat and gave me a hug. I didn’t want a hug, but I took it. I needed it.
Even Jorgen arrived about ten minutes after class normally began. “I thought I might find you all here,” he said.
I braced myself for him to tell us to go. For him to toe the official line and tell us class was canceled because we were on forced leave.
Instead he inspected us, then nodded in an approving way. “Skyward Flight, line up,” he said in a soft voice. He hadn’t tried that since the first day, when we’d ignored him. Today though, it felt right. We four got up and stood in a row.
Jorgen walked to the classroom intercom and pushed one of the buttons. “Jax, will you send to Captain Cobb and tell him his flight is waiting for him, in their usual room? Thank you.”
Jorgen then walked over and joined us in line. Together, we waited. Fifteen after. Twenty after. It was 0729 before Cobb slammed open the door and limped in.
We snapped to attention and saluted.
He looked at us, then roared, “SIT DOWN!”
I started. That wasn’t what I had expected. Still, along with the others, I jumped to obey.
“If you are in an uncontrolled descent,” he shouted at us, his face coloring, “then you eject! You hear me! You scudding EJECT!”
He was angry. Like, actually angry. He pretended to be angry sometimes, but it was nothing like this: red-faced, spitting as he shouted.
“How many times did I say this?” he said. “How many times did I give you orders? And still you buy into that nonsense?” He waved his hand out the window, toward the large DDF high command building. “The only reason we have this stupid culture of self-martyrdom is because somebody feels they have to justify our casualties. To make them seem honorable, righteous.
“It’s neither one. And you’re fools for listening to them. Don’t you throw your lives away. Don’t you dare be like that idiot yesterday. Don’t you—”
“Don’t call her an idiot,” I snapped. “She was trying to fly a controlled crash. She was trying to save her ship.”
“She was scared of being called a coward!” Cobb bellowed. “It had nothing to do with the ship!”
“Hurl—Hudiya—was a hero.” I glared at him.
“She was a—”
I stood up. “Simply because you want to justify your cowardice in ejecting doesn’t mean we have to do the same!”
Cobb froze. Then he kind of … deflated. He sank down into the seat by his desk. He didn’t seem wise, or even grizzled. Just … old, tired, and sad.
I immediately felt embarrassed. Cobb didn’t deserve that; he hadn’t done anything wrong in ejecting, and even the DDF didn’t blame him. And Hurl, well, I’d told her to eject. I’d practically begged her to.
But she hadn’t. And we had to respect her choice, didn’t we?
“You’re all on medical leave for a week,” Cobb said. “Dr. Thior has been pushing to give more leave to flights once they lose members, and it looks like she’s started to get her way.” He stood up and stared right at me. “I hope you enjoy being a hero when your corpse is rotting like your friend’s, alone in a wasteland, forgotten and ignored.”
“She’ll be given a pilot’s burial,” I said. “Her name will be sung for generations.”
He snorted. “If they had to sing the name of every fool cadet who died on her way to pilot, we’d never have time for anything else. And Hurl’s corpse isn’t going to be recovered for at least several weeks. The scouts confirmed that the crash destroyed her ship’s acclivity ring beyond recovery. There’s nothing on that Poco worth salvage priority, not considering that big wreck we’re still working on.
“So your heroic friend will be left out there—another dead pilot buried by the slag of her own explosion. Scud. I have to go write a letter to her parents and explain why. I can’t trust what Ivans will say.”
He hobbled toward the door, but stopped and turned toward Kimmalyn. I hadn’t noticed that she’d stood up. She saluted him, eyes teary. Then she dropped something on her seat.
Her cadet’s pin.
Cobb nodded. “Keep the pin, Quirk,” he told her. “You’re dismissed with whatever honors matter to you.”
He turned and left.
Dismissed? Dismissed? “He can’t do that to you!” I demanded, turning toward Kimmalyn.
She wilted. “I asked for it after the battle. He told me to think about it overnight. And I did.”
“But … you can’t …”
Jorgen stepped up beside me, confronting Kimmalyn. “Spin is right, Quirk. You’re an important member of this flight.”
“The weakest member,” Kimmalyn said. “How many times has one of you had to pull out of a fight to come and save me? I’m putting you all in danger.” Contrary to what Cobb had said, she left her pin on her seat as she walked toward the door.
“Kimmalyn,” I said, feeling helpless. I rushed after her and took her hand. “Please.”
“I got her killed, Spin,” she whispered. “You know that as well as I do.”
“She got herself killed.”
“The one shot that mattered. That’s the one I missed.”
“There were two ships chasing her. One shot, even if it had hit, might not have been enough.”
She smiled, squeezed my hand, then left.
I felt my world collapsing. First Hurl, now Kimmalyn. I looked toward Jorgen. Surely he could stop this. Couldn’t he?
He stood stiffly, tall, with that too-handsome face. He stared straight ahead, and I thought I could see something in his eyes. Guilt? Pain?
He’s watching his flight break apart around him too.
I had to do something. Make some kind of sense out of this disaster, and of my pain. But no, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop Kimmalyn. At least … at least she’d be safe this way.
Hurl though …
“Arturo,” I said, picking up my pack, “about how far out was that battle, would you say?”
“Pretty close to our original position, beyond the AA guns. Say, eighty klicks.”
I shouldered my pack. “Great. I’ll see you all in a week.”
“Where are you going?” FM asked.
“I’m going to find Hurl,” I said, “and give her a pilot’s burial.”
