“Yeah, that’ll do,” Cobb said, waving toward one of the seats. “Don’t wear out my goodwill, son.”
Rig took the seat gladly, but then saw me on the side of the room and gave me a huge thumbs-up. We’d made it. Both of us somehow, with Rig at the top, which was awesome—so at least the test really was fair for him.
Cobb walked over to Jerkface’s seat, then flipped a switch on the side of the box in the front. A veil of light surrounded the mockpit—silent, shimmering, like a glowing bubble. From inside, Jerkface breathed out a soft—but audible—prayer to the North Star. I leaned forward in my chair.
“It can be disorienting,” Cobb said, walking over and turning on Arturo’s machine, then Nedd’s. “Though it’s no match for actually being in the air, it’s a reasonable substitute.”
I waited, tense, as he went around the circle, flipping on devices one after another. Each cadet made some audible signal of appreciation—a little gasp, or a “Wow.” My heart just about broke as Cobb turned away from the last empty seat and walked toward the front of the room.
Then, as if remembering something he’d left behind, he looked over his shoulder at me.
I nearly exploded with anticipation.
Finally he nodded toward the empty mockpit. I scrambled out of my seat and climbed in as he flipped the switch. Light flashed around me, and in the blink of an eye I seemed to be sitting in the cockpit of a Poco-class fighter on a launchpad outside the building. The illusion was so incredible that I gasped, then stuck my hand outside the “canopy” just to be sure. The hologram wavered and fell apart into little grains of light—like falling dust—when my hand broke through it.
I pulled my hand back in, then inspected the controls: a throttle lever, a dashboard full of buttons, and a control sphere for my right hand. The sphere was a globe I could palm, with grooves for my fingers and buttons at the tips.
Outside the holographic cockpit canopy, I could see the other “ships” in a line beside a picture-perfect reproduction of Alta Base. I could even look up and see the sky, the faint patterns of the rubble belt…everything.
Cobb’s mustachioed face broke through the sky—like one of the Saints themselves—as he leaned in through the hologram to speak with me. “You like the feel of this, cadet?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “More than anything.”
“Good. Don’t lose it.”
I met his eyes and nodded.
He backed away. “All right, cadets,” he said. His voice felt ghostly coming from seemingly nowhere. “I don’t waste time. Every day you’re training is a day good pilots are dying in the fight without you as backup. Put on the helmets at your feet.”
I did so, and Cobb’s voice now came through the earpiece inside my helmet. “Let’s practice takeoffs,” he said. “That should—”
“Sir!” Jerkface said. “I can show them.”
I rolled my eyes.
“All right, flightleader,” Cobb said. “I’m willing to let someone else do the hard work for me. Let’s see you get them into the sky.”
“Yes, sir!” Jerkface said. “Flight, your fighters don’t need their boosters to raise or lower your altitude. That is handled by the acclivity ring, the hooplike device underneath every starship. Its power switch is…um…top of the front console, the red button. Never turn that off when flying, or you’ll drop like a piece of debris.”
One ship down the line suddenly lit up beneath as the acclivity ring turned on.
“Use your control sphere to bank right or left,” Jerkface continued, “or to make small movements. To do a quick ascent, use the smaller lever beside the throttle and pull it upward.”
Jerkface’s starship lifted into the air in a steady ascent straight up. His ship, like the rest of ours, was a Poco-class. They looked like glorified pencils with wings, but they were still starships, and I was in a cockpit. Holographically kind of almost, but still it was happening.
I flicked the red switch, and my entire dashboard lit up. I grinned, holding the control sphere in my right hand and yanking on the altitude control with my left.
My ship sprang backward in a sudden jerking motion, and I managed to crash it into the building behind us.
And I wasn’t the only one. Our ships responded with far more sensitivity than we were expecting. Rig flipped his completely upside down somehow; Kimmalyn darted up into the air, then screamed at the sudden motion and brought herself back down and flattened right on the launchpad.
“Altitude control only,” Jerkface said. “Don’t touch the control sphere right now, cadets!”
Cobb chuckled from outside somewhere.
“Sir!” Jerkface said. “I…er…That…” He fell silent. “Huh.”
I was glad nobody could see how much I was blushing. I appeared to have crashed my ship into a holographic version of the flight school mess hall, judging by the tables and spilled food. I felt as if I should have whiplash, but while my chair shook a little when the ship moved, it couldn’t replicate the true motions of flight.
“Congratulations, cadets,” Cobb said. “I’m pretty sure half of you are dead now. Thoughts, flightleader?”
“I didn’t expect them to be that hopeless, sir.”
“We’re not hopeless,” I said. “Just…eager.”
“And maybe a little embarrassed,” Kimmalyn noted.
“Speak for yourself,” a girl’s voice said through my earpiece. What was her name again? Hudiya, the ponytailed girl with the loose jacket. She was laughing. “Oh, my stomach. I think I’m going to hurl. Can I do it again?”
“Again?” Kimmalyn asked.
“It was awesome!”
“You just said you thought you were going to hurl.”
“In a good way.”
“How do you hurl in a good way?”
“Attention!” Cobb snapped. My ship fuzzed around me, and suddenly all of us were back in a line, our ships whole again, the simulation apparently reset. “Like a lot of new pilots, you’re not accustomed to how responsive your ships can be. With the power of the acclivity ring and your booster, you can perform precision maneuvers—particularly once we get you trained with light-lances.
“That versatility comes at a cost, however. It’s really easy to get yourself killed in a starship. So today we’re going to practice three things. Going up. Coming down. And not dying while you do either. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” came our chorus.
“You’re also going to learn to control your radio. The set of blue buttons on the top left of your control panel manages that; you’ll need to accustom yourselves to opening a line to the whole flight, or to your wingmate alone. We’ll go over the other buttons later. I don’t want you distracted right now. Stars only know how you could do worse than that little performance you just gave, but I’m disinclined to give you the opportunity!”
“Yes, sir!” we belted out, somewhat sheepishly.
And so, for the next three hours, we took off and landed.
It was frustrating work because I felt like I should be able to do far more. I’d studied so hard and I’d practiced in my mind. I felt like I knew this.
Only I didn’t. My crash at the start proved that. And my continuing inability frustrated me.
The sole way to overcome that was to practice, so I dedicated myself to the instruction. Up and down. Up and down. Time after time. I did it with gritted teeth, determined not to crash again.
Eventually, we all managed to make five trips up and down without crashing. As Cobb sent us up again, I leveled at five hundred on the altimeter, then stopped myself there. I released a breath, leaning back as the other cadets joined me in a line.
Jerkface zoomed past and did a little flip before settling in. Show-off.
“All right, flightleader,” Cobb said. “Call your flight roll and get a verbal confirmation
of readiness from each member. You’ll do this before every engagement, to verify that nobody is having mechanical or physical troubles. Flight, if you are experiencing troubles, tell your flightleader. If you fly into battle knowing something is wrong with your ship, then you are responsible for the damage you might cause.”
“Sir,” Bim asked over the line, “is it true that if we crash a real ship while in training, we can’t graduate?”
“Usually,” Cobb said, “if a cadet crashes their starfighter, it’s a sign of some kind of negligence, the type that indicates they shouldn’t be trusted with that kind of equipment.”
“And if we eject?” Bim said. “I’ve heard that cadets do training in real combat situations. If we get shot down and eject, does it mean we’re out? As a cadet, I mean?”
Cob was silent for a moment. “There’s no hard-and-fast rule,” he said.
“But it’s tradition, right?” Bim asked. “A cadet who ejects and scuttles their ship stays grounded from then on.”
“It’s because they’re looking for cowards,” Hudiya said. “They want to kick out cadets who are too eager to eject.”
I felt a jolt of adrenaline, as I always did when someone mentioned the word coward. But it wasn’t in reference to me, and never would be. I would never eject.
“Real pilots,” said one of Jerkface’s cronies, “the best of the best? They can steer a crashing ship into a salvageable landing, even if they’ve been shot. Acclivity rings are worth so much that pilots have to protect them, because the pilot isn’t worth as much as—”
“That’s enough, Arturo,” Cobb cut in. “You’re spreading stupid rumors. Both pilots and ships are valuable. You cadets ignore that talk—you might hear it from other flights—about steering your ship into a controlled landing. You hear me? If you’re shot down, you eject. Don’t worry about the consequences, worry about your life. If you’re a good enough pilot it won’t impact your career, tradition or no tradition.”
I frowned. That wasn’t what I’d heard. Full pilots who got shot down, they were given second chances. But cadets? Why graduate someone who had been shot down when you were looking for only the very best?
“Stupid pilot pride,” Cobb grumbled. “It’s cost us more than the Krell have, I swear. Flightleader, weren’t you going to call roll?”
“Oh, right!” Jorgen said. “Cadet Flight B! Time to—”
“Cadet Flight B?” Cobb said. “You can come up with a better name than that, flightleader.”
“Er. Yes, sir. Um…”
“Skyward Flight,” I said.
“Skyward Flight,” Jerkface said, jumping on the name. “Roll call and confirmation of readiness, in order of dashboard ship identification!”
“Skyward Two,” said the taller of the two cronies. “Callsign: Nedder. Confirmed.”
“Skyward Three,” said Hudiya. “Callsign: Hurl. Confirmed.”
“Seriously?” Jerkface asked. “Hurl?”
“Memorable, isn’t it?” she asked.
Jerkface sighed.
“Skyward Four,” said Rig. “Um…Callsign: Rigmarole. Wow, it sounds good to say that. And, um, confirmed.”
“Skyward Five,” said Arturo, the shorter of the two cronies. “Callsign: Amphisbaena.”
“Amphi-what?” Hurl asked.
“It’s a two-headed dragon,” Arturo said. “It’s an extremely fearsome animal from mythology. Confirmed.”
“Skyward Six,” Kimmalyn said. “So…callsign. I need one of those, eh?”
“Saint,” I suggested.
“Oh, stars no,” she replied.
“You can pick one later,” Cobb said. “Just use your first name for now.”
“No, no,” she said. “Just call me Quick. No need to procrastinate my choice; the Saint always said, ‘Save time and do that job now.’ ”
“How,” Arturo said, “does doing something ‘now’ save you any time? Theoretically, the indicated job will take the same amount of time now as it would later.”
“Tangent, Amphi,” Jerkface said. “Skyward Seven?”
“Skyward Seven,” said an accented girl’s voice I didn’t think I’d heard before. “Callsign: Morningtide. Confirmed.”
Wait. Who was that? I wracked my brain. The Vician girl with the tattoo on her lower jaw, I realized. The one who brushed me off earlier.
“Skyward Eight,” said Bim. “Bim. That’s my name, not my callsign. I’ll get back to you on that later. I don’t want to screw it up. Confirmed, by the way.”
“Skyward Nine,” said Freyja, the tall blonde girl. “Callsign: FM. Confirmed.” She’d launched her ship the first time without crashing, the only one who had done that except for Jerkface and his cronies. Her expensive clothing and those golden clasps on her boots made me think she must be from the lower caverns too. Her family obviously had enough merits for fancy requisitions.
“Skyward Ten,” I said. “Callsign: Spin. Confirmed.”
“What a bland callsign,” Jerkface said. “I’ll be Jager. It means hunter in one of the old—”
“Can’t be Jager,” Cobb said. “We’ve already got a Jager. Nightmare Flight. Just graduated two months ago.”
“Oh,” Jerkface said. “I…er. I didn’t know that.”
“How about Jerkface?” I said. “It’s what I’ve been calling you in my head. We can call you that.”
“No. We. Can’t.”
I heard a number of snickers—including one I was pretty sure came from Nedd “Nedder” Strong, the taller of Jerkface’s cronies.
“All right,” Cobb said, ignoring us. “Now that you’ve done that, maybe we can talk about how to actually move somewhere.”
I nodded, eager, though I realized nobody could see me.
“Hold the throttle with a light touch,” Cobb directed. “Nudge it forward slowly, until the dial says point-one.”
I did so, timid—extra worried that I’d repeat my embarrassment from earlier—and I let out a breath as my ship moved forward at a modest boost.
“Good,” Cobb said. “You’re now going point-one Mag. That’s a tenth of Mag-1, which is normal combat speed. Even-numbered designations, you lower yourselves three hundred feet. You’d be more used to saying a hundred meters, but it’s tradition to use feet for altitude, for some scudding reason, and you’ll get used to it. Odd-numbered designations, you go up three hundred. That will give you some space to try very slight moves to the left and right as you fly.”
I did as he said, diving down, then leveling out. I tried a veer right, and a veer left. It felt…natural. Like I was meant to do this. Like I—
A series of loud alerts erupted. I jumped, then—panicked—I searched my dashboard, worried I’d done something wrong. Finally, my brain put together that the sound wasn’t coming from my ship, or even from our room. It was alarms outside the building.
That’s the attack warning, I thought, pulling off my helmet to hear better. The trumpet sounds were different up here in Alta. Faster-paced.
I pushed my head up through the canopy of my hologram, and saw several others doing the same. Cobb had stepped toward the windows of our classroom and was looking out toward the sky. I could barely make out some distant falling debris burning in the atmosphere. Krell attack.
The speaker on the wall crackled. “Cobb,” Admiral Ironsides’s voice said. “Do you have those greenmoss cadets hovering yet?”
Cobb walked to the panel on the wall and pushed a button. “Barely. I’m still convinced one of them is going to find a way to make their ship self-destruct, even though Pocos don’t have that function.”
“Great. Get them up, spread formation, above Alta.”
Cobb glanced at us before pressing the button again. “Confirmation requested, Admiral. You want the new cadets in the sky during an attack?”
“Get them up t
here, Cobb. This is a large wave. Nightmare Flight is down in the city for R&R, and I don’t have time to call them back. Ironsides out.”
Cobb hesitated, then he barked out an order. “You heard the admiral! Skyward Flight, to the launchpad. Go!”
To the launchpad?
Now?
After one day of flight training?
Cobb slammed a button on his desk, shutting down all of our holographic emitters. I couldn’t help wondering if this was some kind of test or a strange initiation—yet the pale look of Cobb’s face persuaded me otherwise. He didn’t like this.
What in the stars was the admiral thinking? Surely…surely she wouldn’t get my entire flight killed just as retribution for Cobb letting me into the DDF? Right?
We left the training room in a ragged jumble. “Rig,” I said, falling in beside my friend as we jogged down the hallway, alarms blaring in the distance. “Can you believe this? Any of this?”
“No. I still can’t believe I’m here, Spin. When they called me in and told me about my score, I thought they were going to accuse me of cheating! Then the admiral gave me an award and took some photos. It’s almost as incredible as the way Cobb let you in, after—”
“Never mind that,” I said quickly. I didn’t want anyone overhearing that my circumstances were unusual.
I glanced to the side and found Jerkface jogging a few paces away. He narrowed his eyes at me. Great.
We burst out of the training building and gathered on the steps outside right as a flight of Fresa-class starships launched into the sky. One of the on-duty flights; there were usually several of those, along with another flight or two that could be called up in an emergency.
So why did they need us? I didn’t get it.
Cobb emerged from the building and gestured to a line of ten Poco-class fighters on a nearby launchpad. Ground crew were positioning ladders by them.
“On the double!” Jerkface shouted. “To your ships! Everyone remember your number?”
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