“Admiral Ironsides would like to speak with you.”
I nodded.
The MP led me to the building where I’d met Jorgen and the admiral that once. As we neared, my sense of resignation grew. Somehow I’d known this was coming. Staying with the girls last night had been a bad idea, but . . . this wasn’t about one little infraction.
It seemed to me, as I stepped into the building, that a confrontation had been growing inevitable. I deserved this for what I’d done to Jorgen, twice over. More telling, the admiral was the most powerful person in the DDF, while I was the daughter of a coward. In some ways, it was remarkable she hadn’t found a way to kick me out before this.
It was time for it to end. I was a fighter, yes, but a good fighter knew when a battle was unwinnable.
The MP deposited me inside the admiral’s shockingly messy office. Ironsides was drinking coffee at her desk, looking over some report, her back to me.
“Close the door,” she said.
I obeyed.
“There’s a note here on the security reports at the gate. You didn’t leave last night. Have you made a hidey-hole in one of the maintenance closets or something?”
“Yes,” I said, relieved that at least she didn’t know the others had helped me.
“Have you eaten mess hall food? Stolen by your own hand, or smuggled out for you by one of your flightmates?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
The admiral sipped her coffee, still not looking toward me. I stared at her back, her silvery hair, bracing myself for the words. You’re out.
“Don’t you think it’s time to stop this farce?” she said, turning a page. “Drop out now. I’ll let you keep your cadet’s pin.”
I frowned. Why . . . ask? Why not just say the words? She had the power now that I’d broken her rules, didn’t she?
Ironsides turned her chair, fixing me with a cold stare. “Nothing to say, cadet?”
“Why do you care so much?” I asked. “I’m only one girl. I’m no threat to you.”
The admiral set down her coffee, then stood. She straightened her crisp white uniform jacket, then stepped up to me. Like most people, she towered over me.
“You think this is about my pride, girl?” Ironsides asked. “If I let you continue in the DDF, you’ll get good people killed when you inevitably run. So, I offer again. Walk away with the pin. In the city below, it should be enough to secure you any number of jobs, many quite lucrative.”
She stared at me, hard. And suddenly it made sense.
She couldn’t kick me out. Not because she lacked the power, but because . . . she needed me to prove that she was right. She needed me to drop out, give up, because that was what a coward would do.
Her rules weren’t about tricking me into an infraction. They were about making my life terrible so that I backed down. If she kicked me out, I could continue the narrative. I could claim my family had been wronged. I could scream about my father’s innocence. My treatment would only support my victimhood. Not being able to sleep in the cadet quarters? No food during my training? That would look terrible.
But if I walked away, she won. It was the only way she won.
In that moment, I was more powerful than the very admiral in command of the Defiant Defense Force.
So I saluted. “Can I return to my classes now, sir?”
A blush rose to her cheeks. “You’re a coward. From a family of cowards.”
I held the salute.
“I could destroy you. See you impoverished. You don’t want me as an enemy. Reject my kind offer now, and you will never have another chance at it.”
I held the salute.
“Bah,” the admiral said, turning from me and sitting down hard. She grabbed her coffee and drank, as if I weren’t there.
I took it as a dismissal. I turned and let myself out, and the MP, still standing outside the door, let me go.
Nobody came for me as I walked to the classroom. I went straight to my mockpit and sat down, then greeted the others as they arrived. When Cobb hobbled in, I realized I was excited for class. It felt as if I’d maybe, finally, escaped the shadow that had been hovering over me since Bim and Morningtide had died.
The girls and their kindness were part of that, but my conversation with Ironsides was a bigger part. She’d given me what I needed to keep fighting. She’d invigorated me. In a strange way, she’d brought me back to life.
I would fight. I would find the answers to what had really happened to my father. And Ironsides would regret forcing me to do both.
PART FOUR
INTERLUDE
Admiral Judy “Ironsides” Ivans always watched the battle replays. She used the main control room, which had a large holographic projector in the center of the circular floor. She preferred to stand in its center, light shining up across her, the rest of the room dark.
She watched them fight. She watched them die. She forced herself to listen to the audio, if there was any, of each pilot’s last words.
She tried to read the enemy’s goals in the pattern of red and blue ships—red for the DDF, blue for the Krell. It had been years since she’d been a pilot, yet as she stood with headphones on—ships swirling around her—the feel of it returned to her. The hum of the booster, the rush of a banking ship, the rattle of destructor fire. The pulse of the battlefield.
Some days, she entertained fancies of climbing into a ship and joining the fray again. Then she banished those idiot dreams. The DDF was too low on ships to waste one on an old woman with shriveled reaction times. Fragmented tales—and some old print history books—spoke of great generals who took up a weapon and joined their soldiers on the front lines. Judy, however, knew she was no Julius Caesar. She was barely a Nero.
Still, Judy Ivans was dangerous in other ways.
She watched the battle spin and fly beneath the shadow of the slowly dropping shipyard. The Krell had committed almost sixty ships to this fight—two-thirds of their maximum, a major investment for them. It was clear they knew that if that wreckage had fallen into DDF hands intact, it would have been a huge boon. There had been hundreds of acclivity rings on that massive ship/station.
Now, salvage reported that fewer than a dozen so far were recoverable—and Judy had lost fourteen ships in the engagement. She saw, in their deaths, her own faults. She hadn’t been willing to truly commit. If she’d raised all of their reserve ships and pilots, then thrown them at the battle, she might have earned hundreds of acclivity rings. Instead she’d wavered, worried about a trap, until it was too late.
That was what she lacked, compared to people like Caesar of old. She needed to be willing to commit everything.
Rikolfr, her aide, stepped up to her with a clipboard full of notes. Judy rewound the battlefield, highlighting a specific pilot. The cadet who had given her so much trouble.
Ships exploded and pilots died. Judy wouldn’t let herself feel for the deaths; she couldn’t let herself feel for them. As long as they had more pilots than acclivity rings—and they did, slightly—then personnel was the more disposable of the two resources.
Finally, Judy took off her headphones.
“She flies well,” Rikolfr said.
“Too well?” Judy asked.
Rikolfr flipped through papers on his clipboard. “Newest data is in from her helmet sensors. It hasn’t been encouraging during her training—almost no anomalies. But that fight you’re watching, the battle at the falling shipyard, well . . .”