Dia’s words returned to me. You don’t really think they’d let the daughter of Chaser fly for the DDF, do you?
I tried anyway. Furious—holding my pencil so tightly I broke the tip and had to get a replacement—I scrawled on my stupid test. Each question felt intended to break my will. Algae vats. Ventilation. Sewage. Places I supposedly belonged.
Daughter of a coward. She’s lucky we don’t just toss her into the vats.
I wrote for hours, emotions dogfighting within me. Anger fought naive anticipation. Frustration fought hope. Realization shot down optimism.
14. Explain the proper procedure if you think a vat of algae might have been contaminated by a coworker.
I tried not to leave any questions blank, but on well over two-thirds of them, my answer boiled down to, “I don’t know. I’d ask someone who does.” And it hurt to answer them, as if by doing so I was proving that I was incompetent.
But I would not give up. Finally the bell chimed, marking the end of the five-hour time limit. I slumped as an aide pulled the test from my fingers. I watched her walk off.
No.
Admiral Ironsides had returned and was speaking—now that the test had ended—with a small group of people in suits and skirts, First Citizens or National Assembly members. Ironsides was known for being stern but fair.
I stood up and walked to her, fishing in my pocket, fist closing on my father’s pin. I waited, respectful, as the students filed out for the after-test party, where they’d be joined by those who had already settled on other careers, and who had been spending the day applying for and being assigned positions. Those who took this test and failed would be given second pickings later in the week.
Tonight though, everyone would celebrate together, future pilot and future janitor alike.
Finally, Ironsides looked at me.
I held up my father’s pin. “Sir,” I said. “As the daughter of a pilot who fought at the Battle of Alta, I would like to petition for acceptance into flight school.”
She looked me up and down, noting the ripped sleeve, the dirty face, the dried blood on my arm. She took the pin from my hand, and I held my breath.
“Do you really think,” she said, “that I would accept the pin of a traitor?”
My heart sank.
“You aren’t even supposed to have this, girl,” she said. “Wasn’t it destroyed when he crashed? Did you steal someone else’s pin?”
“Sir,” I said, my voice taut. “It didn’t go down in the crash with him. He gave it to me before he flew that last time.”
Admiral Ironsides turned to leave.
“Sir?” I said. “Please. Please. just give me a chance.”
She hesitated, and I thought she was considering, but then she leaned in to me and whispered. “Girl, do you have any idea the kind of public relations nightmare you could cause for us? If I let you in, and you turn out to be a coward like he was . . . Well, there is no way on this planet I will let you into a cockpit. Be glad we even let you into this building.”
It felt like I’d been slapped. I winced. This woman—one of my heroes—turned to leave.
I grabbed her arm, and several aides nearby gasped softly. But I held on.
“You still have my pin,” I said. “Those belong to the pilots and their families. Tradition—”
“The pins of actual pilots belong to the families,” she said. “Not cowards.” She pulled herself out of my grip with a shockingly firm yank.
I could have attacked her. I almost did; the heat was rising inside me, and my face felt cold.
Arms grabbed me from behind before I could do it. “Spin?” Rig said. “Spensa! What are you doing?”
“She stole it. She took my father’s . . .” I trailed off as the admiral walked out with her collected attendants. Then I sagged into Rig’s grasp.
“Spensa?” Rig said. “Let’s go to the party. We can talk about it there. How do you think you did? I think . . . I think did terribly. Spensa?”
I pulled away from him and trudged back to my desk, suddenly feeling too exhausted to stand.
“Spin?” he asked.
“Go to the party, Rig,” I whispered.
“But—”
“Leave me alone. Please. Just . . . let me be by myself.”
He never did know how to deal with me when I got like this, so he hovered about, then finally trailed off.
And I sat alone in the room.
6
Hours passed.
My anger before had been as hot as magma. Now I just felt cold. Numb.
Echoes of the party drifted in from another area of the building.
I felt used, stupid, and most of all . . . empty. Shouldn’t I have been snapping my pencil, throwing tables about in rage? Ranting about seeking vengeance upon my foes, and their children and grandchildren? Typical Spensa behavior?
Instead I sat there and stared. Until the sounds of the party grew quieter. Eventually, an aide peeked into the room. “Um, you’re supposed to leave.”
I didn’t move.
“Are you sure you don’t want to leave?”
They’d have to drag me out of here. I imagined it—very heroic and Defiant—but the aide didn’t seem so inclined. She switched off the lights and left me there, lit only by the red-orange glow of the emergency lights.
Finally, I stood up and walked to the desk by the wall, where Ironsides had—perhaps accidentally—left the tests the children of the First Citizens had given her. I looked through the stack; each of them had only the name filled out, the other questions blank.
I took the one off the top, the first one handed in. It held the name Jorgen Weight, followed by a question.
1. Name the four major battles that secured the United Defiant Caverns’ independence as the first major state on Detritus.
That was a tricky question, as people were probably going to forget the Unicarn Skirmish—it didn’t get talked about as much. But it was where the fledgling DDF had first employed fighters of the second generation of designs, built in secret in Igneous. I trailed over to my desk and sat down, then answered the question.
I moved on to the next, then the next. They were good questions. More than simple lists of dates or parts. Some math questions about combat speeds. But most were questions about intent, opinion, and personal preference. I struggled on two of them, trying to decide if I should say what I thought the test wanted. or what I thought was actually the correct answer.
I went with the second both times. Who cared anyway, right?
By the time I was finishing up, I heard people talking outside. Janitors, from the sounds of their discussion.
Suddenly I felt silly. Would I scream and force some poor janitor to pull me out by my hair? I’d been beaten. You couldn’t win every fight, and there was no shame in losing when you were outnumbered. I turned over the test and tapped my pencil against it, still sitting mostly in the dark, working by the glow of the emergency lights.
I started sketching a W-shaped ship on the back of the test as a crazy idea began to form in my head. The DDF hadn’t begun as an official military; it had started out as a bunch of dreamers with their own crazy idea. Get the apparatus working, create ships from some schematics that had survived our crash on the planet.
They’d built their own ships.