I’ll catch her on the way out. I decided. I moved to the front of the building to wait, preparing my speech. No excuses. Just an outlining of facts.
As I waited, I heard another buzzing from my pack. Was that it, then? The call for me to report for discipline? I dug the radio out and hit the button.
Something odd came through the line. Music.
It was incredible. Otherworldly—unlike anything I’d ever heard before. A large group of instruments playing alongside one another in sweeping, moving, beautiful coordination. Not just a person with a flute or a drum. A hundred gorgeous winds, a thrumming pulse of drums—high brass, like the call to arms, but used not as a battle cry. More . . . more as a soul for the stately, powerful melody.
I stood frozen in place, listening, stunned as it played over the radio. Like light somehow. The beauty of the stars, but . . . but as a sound. A triumphant, amazing, incredible sound.
It cut off suddenly.
“No,” I said, shaking the radio. “No, give me more.”
“My recording is corrupted beyond that point,” M-Bot said. “I’m sorry.”
“What was it?”
“The New World Symphony. Dvořák. You asked me what human society was like, from before. I found this fragment.”
Despite myself, I felt my knees buckle. I sat down on a planter beside the doors into the building, holding the precious radio.
We’d created things like that? Sounds so beautiful? How many people had to get together to play that? We had musicians, of course, but before Alta, the gathering of too many people in one place had led to destruction. So by tradition, our performers were limited to trios. This had sounded like hundreds.
How much practice, how much time, had been devoted to something so frivolous—and so wonderful—as making music?
Set your sights on something higher.
I heard voices approaching inside the building. I stuffed the radio away and, feeling foolish, wiped the corners of my eyes. Right. Turning myself in. Time to do this.
The door swung open, and Ironsides—wearing a crisp white uniform—stepped out. “I can’t understand why your father would think that, cadet,” she was saying. “Obviously I’d have chosen a different instructor for you, if not for your family’s own demands—”
She stopped in place, noting me on the pathway. I bit my lip. An aide was holding the door open for her—and I realized that I recognized that aide. A brown-skinned young man in a cadet’s jumpsuit and a uniform coat.
Jerkface. So he had beaten me here.
“Admiral,” I said, saluting.
“You,” she said, lips turning down. “Aren’t you forbidden to use DDF facilities after the end of classes? Do I need to summon the MPs to escort you away? Honestly, we need to have a conversation about that. Are you really living in an uncharted cave instead of returning down below?”
“Sir,” I said, still holding the salute. I didn’t look at Jorgen. “I take full responsibility for my actions. I find that I must formally request that I be subject to—”
Jerkface slammed the door, making the admiral jump and me stop talking. He shot me a glare.
“I . . .,” I continued, looking back at the admiral. “I must formally request that I be subject to disciplinary—”
“Excuse me, Admiral,” Jerkface said quickly. “This is about me. Just a minute.” He marched over and grabbed my arm. He flinched as I immediately raised a fist, but I reluctantly let him pull me away.
The admiral didn’t seem inclined to wait for two cadets. She walked on with a sniff and climbed into a sleek black hovercar waiting on the roadway.
“What is wrong with you?” Jerkface hissed at me.
“I’m turning myself in,” I said, lifting my chin. “I won’t let your side be the only side she hears.”
“Stars above.” He glanced at the car and lowered his voice. “Go home, Spin. Are you trying to get yourself expelled?”
“I’m not going to sit around and wait for you to send them after me. I’m going to fight.”
“Haven’t you fought enough for one day?” He rubbed his brow. “Just go. I’ll see you tomorrow in class.”
What? I was having trouble following his logic. He wanted me to suffer first, perhaps?
“You’re planning to turn me in tomorrow instead?” I asked.
“I don’t intend to ‘turn you in’ at all. You think I want to lose another member of my flight? We need every pilot.”
I put my hands on my hips and studied him. He seemed . . . sincere. Annoyed, but sincere. “So . . . wait. Why are you meeting the admiral?”
“We host the admiral once a week for formal dinner at my parents’ house in the lower caverns,” he said. “It’s only slightly worse than the other nights, when the National Assembly Leaders visit. Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have provoked you. A leader needs to pull people after him, not push them before him.” He nodded to me, as if that were enough.
I wasn’t convinced. I’d gotten myself all built up for this, braced for impact, ready to take a destructor to the face. Now he was simply . . . going to let me go?
“I stole your car’s power matrix,” I blurted out.
“What?”
“I know you suspect me. Well, I did it. So go ahead. Turn me in.”
“Stars! That was you?”
“Um . . . Yes, obviously. Who else would it be?”
“The thing had a bad starter, and I’d called in a guild mechanic. I figured he’d come and worked on it for some reason.”
“At the base?”
“I don’t know! The bureaucracy in those places is incredible. When I called to complain, they made excuses, so I figured . . .” He put his hand to his head. “Why in the world would you rip out my power matrix?”
“Um . . . I needed to destroy your morale.” I winced at the bad lie. “By leaving you powerless and impotent? Yeah, a symbol of my complete and total undermining of your authority! A defiant emblem! I carried it off, like an ancient barbarian warlord, who would steal the heart of—”
“Wasn’t that a lot of work? Couldn’t you have just discharged the acclivity ring like a normal human being?”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Never mind. You can make it up to me later. By, maybe, not insulting me in front of the rest of the flight. For one day at least?”
I stood there, processing. He seemed to actually not want a fight. Huh.
“Look,” Jerkface said, glancing at the black car. “I know something of what it’s like to live in your parents’ shadow. All right? I’m sorry. I won’t do . . . what I did again. But no more punching me, okay?”
“Okay.”
He nodded to me and jogged off, apologizing to the admiral as he climbed into the car.
“Next time I’ll kick instead!” I called after him. “Ha!” But of course he couldn’t hear. I watched them drive off, then shook my head and picked up my pack. I didn’t understand Jorgen at all. I was still in the DDF somehow. And he . . . Jorgen didn’t want revenge. He didn’t want to fight me.
Though once I might have laughed at that, strangely I found the way he’d acted to be noble. He put the flight first.