I trudged across the dry, dusty ground. My compass kept me on the right heading, which was important, because everything looked the same out here on the surface.
I tried not to think. Thinking was dangerous. I’d barely known Bim and Morningtide, and their deaths had left me shaken for weeks. Hurl had been my wingmate.
It was more though. She’d been like me. At least, like I pretended to be. She was usually one step ahead of me, leading the charge.
In her death, I saw myself.
No. No thinking.
That didn’t stop the emotions. The hole inside, the pain of a wound rubbed raw. After this, nothing could ever be the same. Yesterday hadn’t just marked the death of a friend. It marked the death of my ability to pretend this war was—in any way—glorious.
My radio was blinking. I hit the switch.
“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “Are you certain this journey is wise? I am not capable of worry, mind you, but—”
“I’d rather be alone,” I said. “I’ll call you tomorrow or something.” I clicked the radio off and stuffed it inside my backpack, where I’d stashed some rat meat and water for the journey. If it wasn’t enough, I could go hunting. Maybe I’d vanish into the caverns, never to return. Become a nomad, like my clan before the founding of Alta.
And never fly again?
Just walk, Spensa. I told myself. Stop thinking and walk.
This was simple.
This I could do.
I was about two hours outside Alta when a sound broke the quiet and I turned to see a hovercar approaching. It flew three meters off the ground and towed a wake of dust behind. Had someone warned the admiral? Had she sent MPs with some made-up reason why I couldn’t be out here?
No … As it got closer I realized I recognized that blue car. It was Jorgen’s. He must have gotten the power matrix replaced.
I grunted, then turned forward and kept walking. He pulled up beside me and lowered his car so that his head was barely a meter above mine.
“Spin? Are you really planning to walk eighty klicks?”
I didn’t reply.
“You realize it’s dangerous out here,” Jorgen said. “I should order you back. What if you get caught in a debris fall?”
I shrugged. I’d been living near the surface for months, and had only really been in danger that one time—when I’d discovered M-Bot’s cave.
“Spensa,” Jorgen said. “For the North Star’s sake, get in. I’ll drive you.”
“Don’t you have some fancy rich-person event you need to be attending?”
“My parents don’t know about the medical leave yet. For a little while, I’m as free as you are.”
Me? Free? I wanted to laugh in his face.
Still, he had a car. This would transform a multiday trip into one that would last a few hours. I resented him for giving me the option, as I’d wanted to be on my own. To suffer, perhaps. But a part of me knew I wouldn’t reach Hurl’s body with what I had in my pack. I’d probably be forced to turn back after a day of hiking.
“I want to go with you,” Jorgen said. “It’s a good idea. Hurl … deserves this. I brought some materials for the pyre.”
Stop being right, Jorgen. I thought. But I walked around the car and climbed into the passenger side. I had dust up to my thighs, which I smeared all over the car’s interior, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He pushed on the car’s throttle, sending us darting across the landscape. The car had a small acclivity ring, and no booster, just basic thrusters—but being so close to the ground, I felt like we were going faster than we really were. Particularly with no roof and the wind blowing my hair.
I let the motion transfix me.
“Do you want to talk?” Jorgen asked.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t have anything to say.
“A good flightleader is supposed to be able to help his flight with their problems,” he said. “You couldn’t have saved her, Spin. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“You think she should have pulled out,” I said.
“I … That’s not relevant now.”
“You think she shouldn’t have gone for that kill. You think she disobeyed protocol, and shouldn’t have flown off on her own. You’re thinking it. I know you are. You’re judging her.”
“So now you’re angry at me for things I might be thinking?”
“Were you thinking them? Were you judging her?”
Jorgen didn’t say anything. He kept driving, wind blowing in his too-neat, too-perfect hair.
“Why do you have to be so stiff all the time?” I asked. “Why does your way of ‘helping’ always sound like you’re quoting from some manual? Are you some kind of thinking machine? Do you actually care?”
He winced, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew he cared. I’d seen him that morning in the classroom, trying to find a way to save Morningtide in the simulation. Over and over.
My words were stupid. Thoughtless.
Which was exactly what I got for not thinking.
“Why do you put up with me?” I asked. I opened my eyes and leaned my head back, staring at the debris field high overhead. “Why didn’t you turn me in for vandalizing your car, or assaulting you, or a dozen other things?”
“You saved Nedd’s life.”
I tipped my head and looked at Jorgen. He was driving with his eyes fixed straight forward.
“You followed my friend into the belly of a beast,” he continued. “And you towed him by his collar to safety. Even before that, I knew. You’re insubordinate, mouthy, and … well, you’re scudding frustrating. But when you fly, Spin, you fly as part of a team—and you keep my people safe.”
He looked at me, met my eyes. “You can swear at me all you want, threaten me, whatever. So long as you fly like you did yesterday, protecting the others, I want you on my team.”
“Hurl still died,” I said. “Kimmalyn still left.”
“Hurl died because of her recklessness. Quirk left because she felt inadequate. Those problems, like your insubordination, are my fault. It’s my job to keep my flight in line.”
“Well, if they’re handing you impossible jobs, why don’t they just ask you to defeat the Krell all on your own? Seems about as likely to happen as you wrangling the lot of us …”
He stiffened, eyes forward, and I realized he’d taken it as an insult. Scud.
We eventually passed the AA-gun battery, and Jorgen called them to prevent their proximity warnings from going off. They let him go without question, once he mentioned who he was—the son of a First Citizen.
After the AA guns, it was surprisingly easy to locate Hurl’s wreckage. She’d skidded some hundred or more meters, gouging the dusty earth with a wide scar. The ship had broken into three big chunks. The rear of the fuselage, with the booster, had apparently ripped off first. As we drove along, we found where the middle of the fuselage—what was left of it—had made a large black mark on the ground. The power matrix had exploded after hitting some rocks, and had destroyed the acclivity ring. That was the flash I’d seen.
But a small chunk of the front fuselage—with the cockpit—had broken free and skidded on farther. My heart leaped as I spotted the bent remnants of the cockpit crushed up against a pile of large boulders ahead.
Jorgen landed the hovercar, and I scrambled out, dashing ahead of him. I jumped onto the first of the rocks, then heaved myself up onto another, scraping my fingers. I needed to get high enough to see into the crushed cockpit. I had to know. I pulled myself up to a higher boulder, where I could look down into the broken canopy.
She was there.
A part of me hadn’t believed she would be. A part of me had hoped that Hurl had somehow pulled herself from the wreckage—that she was walking back, battered but alive. Self-assured as always.
That was a fantasy. Her pressure suit reported vitals, and we all had emergency transmitters to activate if we needed rescuing. If Hurl had survived, the DDF would have known. One glimpse confirmed that she’d probably died at the first impact. She was crushed—pinned inside the mangled metal of the cockpit.
I tore my gaze away, cold flooding my chest. Pain. Emptiness. I looked back along the scar in the ground her ship had made while crashing. That long swath seemed to indicate that she’d managed to get her ship horizontal at the end, that she’d gotten close to a gliding position.
So she’d almost done it. With a blown-off wing and a broken acclivity ring, she’d still almost landed.
Jorgen grunted as he tried to climb up. I gave him a hand, but sometimes I forgot how small I was compared to someone like him. He nearly pulled me right off with a casual jerk of his arm.
He scrambled onto the rock beside me, then took a quick glance at Hurl. He went pale and turned aside, settling down on an upper portion of a boulder. I set my jaw, then forced myself to climb into the cockpit and pull Hurl’s pin off her bloodied flight suit. The least we could do was return that to her family.
I looked at Hurl’s lacerated face, her one remaining eye staring ahead. Defiant until the end, for all the good it had done. Brave … cowardly … she was still dead, so what did it matter?
Feeling like a terrible friend for those thoughts, I closed her eye, then climbed out and wiped my hands on my jumpsuit.
Jorgen nodded toward the car. “I’ve got the things for the pyre in the trunk.”
I let myself down with my light-line, and he followed. In the trunk of the vehicle, we found some oil and a bundle of wood, which surprised me. I’d been expecting coal. He really was rich if he had this on hand. We climbed back to the ship, then pulled the bundle up after us with my light-line.
We started packing the wood into the cockpit, piece by piece. “This is how our ancestors used to do it,” Jorgen said as he worked. “Burn the ship, out on the ocean.”
I nodded, wondering how little he thought of my education, if he assumed I didn’t know that. Neither of us had ever seen an ocean, of course. Detritus didn’t have them.
I poured oil onto the wood and the body, then stepped back, and Jorgen handed me the lighter. I lit a small stick, then tossed it into the canopy.
The sudden intensity of the flames took me by surprise, and sweat prickled my brow. The two of us retreated farther, and eventually climbed onto one of the higher boulders.
By tradition, we saluted the flames. “Return to the stars,” Jorgen said—the officer’s part. “Sail them well, warrior.”
It wasn’t the whole elegy, but it was enough. We settled down on the rocks, to watch—by tradition—until the fire went out. I rubbed Hurl’s pin, bringing back the gleam.
“I’m not defiant,” Jorgen said.
“What? I thought you grew up in the deep caverns.”
“I mean, I’m Defiant—I’m from the Defiant caverns. But I don’t feel defiant. I don’t know how to be like you. And Hurl. Since I was little, everything has been scheduled for me. How am I supposed to follow the grand speeches—defying the Krell, defying our doom—when everything I do has seven rules attached to it?”
“At least it got you flight lessons and free entry into the DDF. At least you can fly.”
He shrugged. “Six months.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s how long I get after graduation, Spin. They put me in Cobb’s class because it’s supposed to be the safest for cadets—and once I graduate, I’m to fly for six months. At that point, I’ll have enough of a record as a pilot to be respected by my peers, so my family will pull me out.”
“They can do that?”
“Yeah. They’ll probably make it look like a family emergency—a need for me to step into my government position sooner than anticipated. The rest of my life will be spent in meetings, interfacing on behalf of my father with the DDF.”
“Will you … ever get to fly?”
“I suppose I could go up for fun. But how could it compare to flying a real starfighter in battle? How could I go out for joyrides—a few calculated and protected moments—when I’ve had something so much greater?” He glanced up at the sky. “My father always worried that I liked flying too much. To be honest, during my practices—before I started official training—I thought a pair of wings might let me escape his legacy. But I’m not defiant. I’ll do what’s expected of me.”
“What?”
“Nobody calls your father a coward. Yet … you do still live in his shadow.” Somehow, Jorgen was trapped as soundly as I was. All his merits couldn’t buy him freedom.
Together we watched the embers of the pyre die as the sky grew darker, the ancient skylights dimming. We shared a few thoughts of Hurl—though we had both missed out on her nightly dinnertime antics, and had only heard of them secondhand.
“She was like me,” I finally said as the fire grew cold and the hour late. “More me than I am, these days.”
Jorgen didn’t press me on that. He just nodded, and by this light—a few embers of the fire reflecting in his eyes—his face didn’t seem quite as punchable as it always had before. Maybe because I could read the emotions behind that mask of authoritarian perfection.
When the last light of the fire went out, we stood and saluted again. Jorgen then climbed down to his car, explaining he needed to check in with his family. I stood on the high rock, looking again along the gouge that Hurl’s crash had caused.
Did I blame her for wasting her life? Or did I respect her for refusing—at all costs—to be branded a coward? Could I feel both at once?
She really did almost make it. I thought, noting the nearly undamaged wing lying nearby. And farther back, the rear end of the fuselage. Ripped off, sitting on its own.
Booster included.
I felt a sudden spike of realization. It would be weeks before anyone came to scavenge this wreckage. And if they did wonder where the booster went, they’d probably assume it blew off in the initial destructor hit.
If I could somehow get it to my cave …
It wouldn’t be robbing the dead. Scud, Hurl would tell me to take the booster. She’d want me to fly and fight. But how in the world would I get it all the way back? A booster would be orders of magnitude heavier than I could lift …
I looked toward Jorgen, sitting in his car. Did I dare?
Did I have any other choice? I had seen some chains in the trunk when we’d been unloading the wood …
I climbed down from the rocks and headed toward the car, walking up right as he was turning off the radio. “No emergencies yet,” he said. “But we should get going.”
I debated for a moment before finally asking. “Jorgen, how much can this car lift?”
“A fair amount. Why?”
“Are you willing to do something that sounds a little crazy?”
“Like flying out and giving our own funeral to one of our friends?”
“More crazy,” I said. “But I need you to do it, and not ask too many questions. Pretend I’m insane with grief or something.”
He looked at me, carefully. “What is it, exactly, that you want to do?”
