The door opened, letting in light from the hallway. I heard a bucket get set on the ground outside, and two people complaining about spills in the party room.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I said, finishing my sketch. Thinking. Wondering. Dreaming.
“Why are you still here, kid?” a janitor asked. “You didn’t want to go to the party?”
“I didn’t feel much like celebrating.”
He grunted. “Didn’t do well on the test?”
“Turns out it doesn’t matter,” I said. I glanced at him, but he was backlit, just a silhouette in the doorway. “Do you ever . . .,” I said. “Do you ever feel they forced you to be what you are?”
“No. I might have forced myself into it though.”
I sighed. Mother was probably worried sick about me. I stood up and wandered over to the wall where the aide had put my pack.
“Why do you want it so much?” the janitor asked. Was there something familiar about his voice? “It’s dangerous, being a pilot. A lot of them get killed.”
“Just under fifty percent are shot down in their first five years,” I said. “But they don’t all die. Some eject. Others get shot down, but survive the crash.”
“Yes. I know.”
I froze, then frowned and looked back at the figure. I couldn’t make out his face, but something flashed on his breast. Medals? A pilot’s pin? I squinted, and made out the shape of a DDF jacket and dress slacks.
This was no janitor. I could still hear those two out in the hallway, joking with each other.
I stood up straighter. The man walked slowly to my desk, and the emergency lights revealed he was older, maybe in his fifties, with a stark white mustache. He walked with a prominent limp.
He picked up the test I’d filled out, then flipped through it. “So why?” he finally asked. “Why care so much? They never ask the most important question on these tests. Why do you want to be a pilot?”
To prove myself, and to redeem my father’s name. It was my immediate response, though something else warred with it. Something my father had sometimes said, something buried inside me, often overshadowed by ideas of vengeance and redemption.
“Because you get to see the sky,” I whispered.
The man grunted. “We name ourselves Defiants,” he said. “It’s the central ideal of our people—the fact that we refuse to back down. And yet, Ironsides always acts so surprised when someone defies her.” He shook his head, then set the test down again. He put something on top of it.
He turned to limp away.
“Wait,” I said. “Who are you?”
He stopped at the doorway, and the light outside showed his face more clearly, with that mustache, and eyes that seemed . . . old. “I knew your father.”
Wait. I did know that voice. “Mongrel?” I said. “That is you. You were his wingmate!”
“In another life,” he said. “Oh-seven-hundred sharp on the day after tomorrow, building F, room C-14. Show the pin to get access.”
The pin? I walked back to the desk, and found—sitting on top of my test—a cadet’s pin.
I snatched it up. “But Ironsides said she’d never let me into a cockpit.”
“I’ll deal with Ironsides. It’s my class; I get final say over my students, and even she can’t overrule me. She’s too important for that.”
“Too important? To give orders?”
“Military protocol. When you get important enough to order an armada into battle, you’re too important to interfere with how a quartermaster runs his shop. You’ll see. There’s a lot you know, judging by that test—but still some things you don’t. You got number seventeen wrong.”
“Seventeen . . .” I flipped through the test quickly. “The overwhelming odds question?”
“The right answer was to fall back and await reinforcement.”
“No it wasn’t.”
He stiffened, and I quickly bit my tongue. Should I be arguing with the person who’d just given me a cadet’s pin?
“I’ll let you into the sky,” he said, “but they’re not going to be easy on you. I’m not going to be easy on you. Wouldn’t be fair.”
“Is anything fair?”
He smiled. “Death is. He treats us all the same. Oh-seven-hundred. Don’t be late.”
PART TWO
7
The elevator doors opened, and I looked out upon a city that should not exist.
Alta was primarily a military base, so perhaps city was an ambitious term. Yet the elevator structure opened a good two hundred meters outside the base proper. Lining the roadway between the two were shops and homes. A real town, populated by the stubborn farmers who worked the strips of greenery beyond.
I lingered in the large elevator as it emptied of people. This represented a threshold to a new life, a life I’d always dreamed about. I found myself strangely hesitant as I stood there, pack full of clothing over my shoulder, the phantom feeling of my mother’s kiss farewell on my forehead.
“Oh, isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” a voice said from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. The speaker was a girl about my age. She was taller than I was, with tan-brown skin and long, curly black hair. I’d seen her earlier on the elevator and noted her cadet’s pin. She spoke with a faint accent I didn’t recognize.
“I keep thinking it can’t be real,” she said. “Do you think it might be some cruel prank they’re playing on us?”
“What tactical advantage would they gain by that?” I asked her.
The girl took my arm in a much too familiar way. “We can do this. Just take a deep breath. Reach up. Pluck a star. That’s what the Saint says.”
I had no idea what to make of this behavior. People normally treated me like a pariah; they didn’t take me by the arm. I was so stunned that I didn’t resist as she towed me after her out of the elevator. We entered the wide walkway leading through the town, toward the base.
I’d rather have been walking with Rodge, but they’d called him in late last night to ask him something about his test, and so far I hadn’t gotten word of what that meant. Hopefully he wasn’t in trouble.
The girl and I soon passed a fountain. A real fountain, like from the stories. We both stopped to gape, and I extricated my arm from the girl’s grasp. Part of me wanted to be offended—but she seemed so genuine.
“That music the water makes,” she said. “Isn’t it the most wonderful sound ever?”
“The most wonderful sound ever is the lamentations of my enemies, screaming my name toward the heavens with ragged, dying voices.”
The girl looked at me, cocking her head. “Well bless your stars.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s a line from a story.” I stuck out my hand to her. Best to be on good terms with the other cadets. “I’m callsign: Spin.”
“Kimmalyn,” she said, shaking my hand. “Um, we’re supposed to have callsigns already?”
“I’m an overachiever. What room you reporting to?”
“Umm . . .” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a paper. “C-14? Cadet Flight B.”