I recognized the speaker as Rikolfr, a member of the admiral’s staff. I complied, turning my ship in the right direction. That brought Detritus into my view: a blue-grey sphere with a bright, inviting atmosphere. Thirty ships from our fleet flew off down toward the planet.
The rest of us skimmed along outside the atmosphere, passing several platforms whose lights blinked a friendly blue, instead of the angry red of the other platforms. Thanks to M-Bot’s stealth capabilities, we’d been able to land on one and hack its systems. Fortunately, the platforms’ internal security protocols made some small exceptions for humans, which had given the engineers a brief respite—long enough to finish their work.
That done, Rodge and the other engineers had figured out how to power down a few of the platforms nearby, letting us reclaim those too. Our work had captured only ten out of thousands so far, but it was a promising start.
Platform Prime was the largest of these—an enormous platform with docking bays for starfighters. We’d turned it into an orbital headquarters, though the engineering teams were still working on some of its systems—most notably the ancient data banks.
I flew into my assigned dock, a small individual hangar. The lights flickered on as the bay door closed, and the room pressurized. I drew in a deep breath and sighed, then opened the canopy. It felt so dull to return after a battle and go back to ordinary life. Unrealistic though it was, I wished that I could continue patrolling and flying. The answers to who I was—to what I was—were out there somewhere, not in these sterile metallic hallways.
“Hey!” M-Bot said as I climbed out of the cockpit. “Take me with you. I don’t want to miss the fun.”
“I’m just going to get a lecture.”
“Like I said . . . ,” he replied.
Fine. I reached back under the front control panel and unhooked his new mobile receptor: a bracelet device that contained some sensory equipment, a holographic projector, a receiver to boost M-Bot’s communication capabilities, and a small clock display. He claimed to have had a mobile receptor like it in the past, but it was missing—his old pilot had probably taken it hundreds of years ago when he’d gone out to explore Detritus.
When M-Bot had given the engineers plans to create a new one, they’d gone crazy over the microhologram technology it contained. Fortunately, they’d stopped celebrating long enough to fabricate me a replacement. I’d taken to wearing this rather than my father’s light-line, as I rarely found chances to use that now that I wasn’t exploring caverns regularly.
I snapped on the hologram bracelet, then handed my helmet to Dobsi—one of the ground crew members—as she climbed up the ladder outside to check on me.
“Anything we should look at?” she asked.
“I took a chunk of debris on the right side of the fuselage with my shield down.”
“I’ll check it out.”
“Thanks,” I said. “And fair warning: he’s in one of his moods.”
“Is he ever not?”
“There was this one time,” I said, “when he was processing a self-diagnostic, and didn’t say anything for a whole five minutes. It was pure bliss.”
“You know,” M-Bot said, “that I’m programmed to be able to recognize sarcasm, right?”
“The joke would be wasted if you weren’t.” I entered the changing room, which doubled as my bunk up here—not that I owned a lot. My father’s pin, my old maps of the caverns, and a few of my improvised weapons. I kept them in one trunk beside the cot, with my changes of clothing.
As soon as I entered, a fluting trill greeted me. Doomslug sat on her perch beside the door. Bright yellow, with little blue spikes along her back, she was snuggled into some of my old shirts, which she’d made into a nest. I scratched her on the head, and she gave another joyful fluting sound. She wasn’t slimy, but rather tough, like the feel of good leather.
I was glad to see her here; she was supposed to stay in my bunk room, but kept slipping away somehow, and I’d often find her in the hangar. She seemed to like being near M-Bot.
I washed up, but didn’t change out of my flight suit. Then, having wasted as much time as I could justify, I steeled myself with a warrior’s determination and stepped out into the hallway. The light here was always too bright after being out in space—the white walls shiny and reflective. The only part that wasn’t overly polished or lit was the carpet down the center, which had aged remarkably well—likely because this had all been a vacuum until the engineering team had patched the station’s holes and turned on the life support systems.
In the hallway waited the other members of my flight. Nedd and Arturo were arguing about whether or not pilots should be allowed to paint designs on the fronts of their ships. I ignored them and stepped up beside Kimmalyn, whose hair was messy now that she held her helmet under her arm.
“You do realize how mad Jorgen is,” she whispered to me.
“I can handle him,” I said.
Kimmalyn raised an eyebrow.
“Really,” I said. “I just have to be properly confident and intimidating. Got any eye black handy?”
“Uh, what’s that?”
“A kind of war paint used by the men who fought on the gridiron on Old Earth. A type of deathmatch involving a dead pig.”
“Neat. But I’m fresh out. And . . . Spin, wouldn’t it be better to not aggravate Jorgen? For once?”
“Not sure I’m capable of that.”
FM walked past, giving me an encouraging thumbs-up. I returned it, though I still felt awkward around her sometimes. The tall, slender woman somehow managed to wear even a flight suit in a fashionable way, while the bulky clothing always made me feel like I had on three layers too many. She joined T-Stall and Catnip, a pair of guys who had been added to our flight to fill in holes. They were in their early twenties, older than the rest of us by a few years, though they were doing their best to integrate.
Aside from Jorgen, the only other member of our team was Sadie, the new girl. She promptly tripped over the small ledge on the ground between her changing room and the hallway, nearly dropping her helmet. Her blue hair and distinctive features reminded me of . . . well, painful memories.
Most of the others continued on down the hall toward the mess, but I waited around for Jorgen—better to confront him now, though he was usually last out of his ship, as he went through the postflight checklist every time, in detail, even though it was okay to let the ground crew do it. Kimmalyn waited with me, and Sadie hurried over to us.
“You were so amazing out there,” she said, clutching her helmet to her chest as she beamed. Scud. We were only one class ahead of her group, so were basically the same age. But surely we didn’t look nearly as young as she did.
“Yeah, well, nice flying today yourself,” I said.
“You were watching?”
I hadn’t been watching, but I nodded to her encouragingly.
“Maybe soon I’ll be able to be like you, Spin!”
“You did wonderfully, dear,” Kimmalyn said, patting Sadie on the shoulder. “But never try to be who you aren’t; you don’t have nearly enough practice to pull it off.”
“Right, right,” Sadie said, digging in her pocket and pulling out a little notepad and a pencil. “Never . . . who you aren’t . . .” She scribbled down the saying as if it were scripture, though I was sure Kimmalyn had made it up on the spot.
I glanced at Kimmalyn. Her serene expressions were famously hard to read, but the twinkle in her eyes revealed she loved the idea of someone recording her sayings.
“I wish I could have followed you today, Spin. It looked dangerous for you to be alone.”
“The only thing I want you to follow, Sadie,” a firm voice said, “is your orders. If only others were so inclined.”
I didn’t have to look to know that Jorgen—flightleader, and sometimes Jerkface—had finally joined us, and was standing behind me.