15
I tied off the set of wires—working by red-orange glow in the otherwise dark cavern—then wrapped them in tape. There. I thought, stepping back and wiping my brow. Over the last few weeks, I’d managed to find a working power matrix in an old water heater at an Igneous recycling facility. I knew the guy who worked there, and he let me trade him rat meat to look the other way as I did some salvaging.
I’d also retrieved some supplies from one of my hidden dumps outside Igneous. I’d made a new speargun, and had fashioned a kitchen that had a real hot plate, a dehydrator, and some spices. I’d stopped by my home to fetch Bloodletter, my old stuffed bear. He made a fine pillow. It had been good to see my mother and Gran-Gran, though of course I hadn’t told them I was living in a cave.
“Well?” I asked Doomslug the Destroyer. “Think it will work?”
The little yellow-and-blue cave slug perked up on the rock nearby. “Work?” she fluted.
She could imitate noises, but there was always a distinctly fluty sound to what she said. I was pretty sure she was just mimicking me. And to be honest, I didn’t know if “she” was a she—weren’t slugs, like, both or something?
“Work!” Doomslug repeated, and I couldn’t help but take that in an optimistic light.
I flipped the switch on the power matrix, hoping my little hot-wire job would hold. The diagnostic panel on the side of the old ship flickered, and I heard a strange sound coming from the cockpit. I hurried over and climbed onto the box I used as a ladder to get in.
The sound came from the instrument panel—it was low, kind of industrial. Metal vibrating? After I listened for a moment, it changed tone.
“What is that?” I asked Doomslug, looking to my right and—as expected—finding her there. She could move very quickly when she wanted to, but seemed to have an aversion to doing so when I was watching.
Doomslug cocked her head to one side, then the other. She shivered the spines on her back and imitated the noise.
“Look how low the lights are.” I tapped the control panel. “This power matrix isn’t big enough either. I’ll need one made for a ship or a building, not a water heater.” I turned it off, then checked the clock on my light-line. “Keep an eye on things while I’m gone.”
“Gone!” Doomslug said.
“You don’t have to act so excited about it.” I quickly changed into my jumpsuit, and before I left, I took another glance at the ship. Fixing this thing is way beyond me. I thought. So why am I trying?
With a sigh, I hooked the end of my light-line to a rock, threw it up to smack against a stone near the entrance to my cave, then grabbed hold and hauled myself up to the crevice so I could shimmy out and head to class for the day.
*
Roughly an hour and a half later, I shifted my helmet—which was chafing my head—then grabbed my ship controls and buzzed past an enormous floating piece of debris. In real life that would have been dropping in a fiery blaze, but in the hologram Cobb had suspended the chunks in midair for us to practice on.
I was getting pretty good at dodging between them, though I wasn’t certain how well that skill would translate once they started—you know—hurtling down from above with horrific destructive potential. But hey, baby steps.
I launched my light-lance, which burst from a turret on the underside of my ship. A glowing line of red-orange energy speared the large piece of space junk.
“Ha!” I said. “Look at that! I hit it!”
After I flew past the chunk, however, the light-lance grew taut, and my momentum caused me to pivot. My ship spun on the line—setting off my GravCaps—then slammed into a different chunk of floating debris.
When I was younger, we’d played a game with a ball on a string, connected to a tall pole. If you pushed on the ball, it would spin around the pole. The light-lances were similar, only in this game, the debris was the pole and I was the ball.
Cobb sighed in the ear of my helmet as my hologram went black upon my death.
“Hey,” I pointed out, “at least I hit the thing this time.”
“Congratulations,” he said, “on that moral victory as you die. I’m sure your mother will be very proud, once your pin is sent back to her as a melted piece of slag.”
I huffed and sat up, leaning out of my cockpit to look toward Cobb. He walked through the center space in the room, speaking into a hand radio to communicate with us through our helmets, even though we were all right next to each other.
The ten mockpits made a circle, and the floor in the center had its own projector, one that spat out a tiny reproduction of what we were experiencing. Eight little holographic ships buzzed around Cobb, who watched us like some enormous god.
Bim slammed straight into a piece of debris near Cobb’s head, and the shower of sparks looked kind of like our instructor had suddenly had a really great idea. Perhaps the realization that the lot of us were worthless.
“Zoom out your proximity sensors, Bim!” Cobb said. “You should have seen that piece floating there!”
Bim stood up out of his hologram and pulled off his helmet. He ran his hand through his blue hair, looking frustrated.
I pulled back into my cockpit as my ship reappeared at the edge of the battlefield. Morningtide was there, hovering, watching the others flit between chunks of metal. It looked like Gran-Gran’s descriptions of an asteroid field, though of course it was in atmosphere, not up in space. We usually engaged the Krell at a height of somewhere between ten thousand and forty thousand feet.
Bim’s ship appeared near us, though he wasn’t in it.
“Morningtide!” Cobb said. “Don’t be timid, cadet! Get in there! I want you to swing from so many scudding lines of light that you get rope burns!”
Morningtide flew timidly into the field of debris.
I shifted my helmet again; it was seriously bothering me today. Maybe I needed a break. I turned off my hologram and stood up out of my seat to stretch, watching Cobb as he inspected a run that Jerkface was doing with Nedd as a wingmate. I put my helmet on my seat, then walked over to Morningtide’s hologram.
I peeked in, my head appearing as if in the top of her cockpit. She was huddled inside, an intense look on her tattooed face. She noticed me, then quickly took off her helmet.
“Hey,” I said softly. “How’s it going?”
She nodded in Cobb’s direction. “Rope burns?” she asked softly, with her thick accent.
“It’s when you rub your hand on something so fast, it hurts. Like if you scrape yourself on carpet—or on ropes. He just wants you to practice more with the light-lance.”
“Ah . . .” She tapped her control panel. “What was he said before? About prox . . . proximation?”
“We can zoom the proximity sensors,” I said, speaking slowly. I reached down and pointed at a toggle. “You can use this to make the sensor range bigger? Understand?”
“Ah, yes. Yes. Understand.” She smiled thankfully.
I gave her a thumbs-up and pulled out of her hologram. I caught Cobb glancing at me, and he seemed approving, though he quickly turned away to yell at Hurl—who was trying to get FM to bet her dessert on the outcome of the next run.
Perhaps it would have been easier for Cobb to explain himself better, but Morningtide did seem to understand most of the instruction. She was merely embarrassed about what she misunderstood, so I tried to check in on her.