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.