Both went down, smashing into the rock surface in a pair of twin explosions.
“Scud,” FM said. She was a prim one, with her golden boot latches and her stylish haircut.
Hurl, however, merely laughed. She did that a lot, enjoying herself perhaps too much. “Wow!” she said. “Now that was an explosion. How many points do I get for that performance, Cobb?”
“Points? You think this is a game, cadet?”
“Life is a game,” Hurl said.
“Yes, well, you just lost all your points and died,” Cobb said. “If you fall into an uncontrolled spin like that, eject.”
“Um . . . how do I do that, again?” Nedd asked.
“Seriously, Nedd?” Arturo asked. “We went over this yesterday. Look at the lever between your legs. See the big E on it? What do you think that stands for?”
“I figured it meant emergency.”
“And what do you do when there’s an emergency? In a fighter? You . . .”
“Call you,” Nedd said. “And say, ‘Hey Arturo. Where’s the scudding eject lever?’ ”
Arturo sighed. I grinned, looking out my window toward the next ship in formation—I could barely see the girl inside. Morningtide, her tattoo visible even with her helmet on. She glanced away sharply. Not even a smile.
Fine.
“Fly back in,” Cobb said to us. “It’s nearly time for lunch.”
“Fly back in?” Bim complained. “Can’t we just turn off the holograms and go grab some grub?”
“Sure. Turn it off, get something to eat, then keep walking on back to where you came from—because I don’t have time for cadets who refuse to practice their landings.”
“Er, sorry, sir.”
“Don’t waste radio waves with apologies, cadet. Just follow orders.”
“All right, flight,” Jerkface said. “Standard spread, bank to heading 165.”
We obeyed, maneuvering back into a line, and flew toward the virtual version of Alta. “Cobb,” I said, “are we going to practice recovering our ship from an uncontrolled descent?”
“Not this again,” he said. “You’ll very rarely be in such a situation—and so, if you are, I want you trained to yank that eject lever. I don’t want you distracted by some bravado about saving your ship.”
“What if we could have saved it, sir?” Jorgen said. “Shouldn’t a good pilot do everything he or she can in order to protect their acclivity ring? They’re rare enough that tradition states we should—”
“Don’t quote that stupid tradition to me,” Cobb snapped. “We need good pilots as much as we need acclivity rings. If you are in an uncontrolled descent, you eject. You understand me?”
A few of the others gave verbal confirmation. I didn’t. He hadn’t contradicted the most important fact—that if a cadet ejected and scuttled their ship, they would never fly again. Maybe once I became a full pilot I could think about ejecting, but for now I was never pulling that lever.
Having this taken away from me would be basically the same as dying anyway.
We landed, and the holograms shut down. The others started to pile out of the room toward the mess hall for lunch, laughing together about how spectacular FM and Hurl had looked when they exploded. Kimmalyn noticed me hanging back in the room, and tried to stop—but Cobb gently steered her from the room after the others.
“I explained the situation to them,” he said, stopping in the doorway. “The elevators say you didn’t go down to Igneous last night?”
“I . . . I know of a little cave, about a half hour’s hike outside of town. I figured it would save time to stay there. I’ve spent my life scavenging in the tunnels. I feel more comfortable there.”
“Suit yourself. Did you bring in a lunch today?”
I shook my head.
“Do so from now on. I won’t have you distracted by hunger during training.” Then he left. Soon after, I heard voices in the distance. Laughter, echoing from the mess hall.
I considered getting in more training, but wasn’t certain I was allowed to use the machines without supervision. I couldn’t sit there and listen for an hour though, so I decided to take a walk. It was strange how exhausted I could feel from flying, yet still have so much nervous energy from sitting so long.
I exited the training building—noting the two MPs stationed in the hallway. Were they really there just to keep me from snatching a roll? That was a lot of resources for the admiral to expend to satisfy her rivalry with an insignificant cadet. On the other hand, if you were going to pick a fight, you should fight to win—and I had to respect that.
I left the DDF base and made my way to the orchard right outside the walls. Though there were workers here tending the trees, other people in uniforms walked among them, and benches had been set out along the path. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the presence of real plant life. Not fungus or moss, but actual trees. I wasted a good five minutes feeling the bark and picking at the leaves, half convinced the whole thing would be made of some highly realistic plastic.
I eventually stepped out and looked up at the debris field. As always, I could make out vast patterns, muted greys and lines in the sky, though it was too distant to see any specifics. A skylight was moving straight overhead, bright enough that I couldn’t look directly at it without my eyes watering.
I didn’t spot any holes through the debris. That one moment with my father was the only time I’d ever seen into space itself—there were just too many layers of junk up there, orbiting in different patterns.
What had the people been like, the ones who had built all of this? Some of the kids in my clan had whispered that Detritus was actually Old Earth, but my father had laughed at that notion. Apparently the planet was far too small, and we had maps of Earth that it didn’t match.
But they had been human, or at least they’d used our language. Gran-Gran’s generation—the crew of the Defiant and its fleet—had known Detritus was here. They’d come to the old abandoned planet intentionally. To hide, though the landing had been far more destructive than they’d intended. I tried to imagine what it had been like for them. To leave the skies, to leave your ships, being forced to break into clans and hide. Had it been as strange for them to look up and see a cavern ceiling as it still was for me to look up and see the sky?
I continued to wander the orchard pathways. There was a certain rugged friendliness about the workers up here. They smiled at me as I walked past. Some gave me a quick, informal salute. I wondered how they’d react to hearing I was the daughter of Chaser, the infamous coward.
As I rounded the orchard and headed back toward class, I passed a number of people in suits and skirts getting an official tour of the orchards. That was the kind of clothing you saw on overseers below; people rich in merits who had been moved to deep caverns, the safer, better-protected locations that might survive a bomb. People like Jorgen and his cronies.
They seemed too . . . clean.
As I walked away, I spotted something curious: between the orchard and the base was a row of small vehicle hangars. The door to one of them was up, revealing Jerkface’s hovercar peeking out. I glanced in, noting the polished chrome and baby-blue colorings. Cool, soft, and obviously expensive. Why stash it here, outside the base?