“I’m not defiant,” Jorgen said.
“What? I thought you grew up in the deep caverns.”
“I mean, I’m Defiant—I’m from the Defiant caverns. But I don’t feel defiant. I don’t know how to be like you. And Hurl. Since I was little, everything has been scheduled for me. How am I supposed to follow the grand speeches—defying the Krell, defying our doom—when everything I do has seven rules attached to it?”
“At least it got you flight lessons and free entry into the DDF. At least you can fly.”
He shrugged. “Six months.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s how long I get after graduation, Spin. They put me in Cobb’s class because it’s supposed to be the safest for cadets—and once I graduate, I’m to fly for six months. At that point, I’ll have enough of a record as a pilot to be respected by my peers, so my family will pull me out.”
“They can do that?”
“Yeah. They’ll probably make it look like a family emergency—a need for me to step into my government position sooner than anticipated. The rest of my life will be spent in meetings, interfacing on behalf of my father with the DDF.”
“Will you . . . ever get to fly?”
“I suppose I could go up for fun. But how could it compare to flying a real starfighter in battle? How could I go out for joyrides—a few calculated and protected moments—when I’ve had something so much greater?” He glanced up at the sky. “My father always worried that I liked flying too much. To be honest, during my practices—before I started official training—I thought a pair of wings might let me escape his legacy. But I’m not defiant. I’ll do what’s expected of me.”
“Huh,” I said softly.
“What?”
“Nobody calls your father a coward. Yet . . . you do still live in his shadow.” Somehow, Jorgen was trapped as soundly as I was. All his merits couldn’t buy him freedom.
Together we watched the embers of the pyre die as the sky grew darker, the ancient skylights dimming. We shared a few thoughts of Hurl—though we had both missed out on her nightly dinnertime antics, and had only heard of them secondhand.
“She was like me,” I finally said as the fire grew cold and the hour late. “More me than I am, these days.”
Jorgen didn’t press me on that. He just nodded, and by this light—a few embers of the fire reflecting in his eyes—his face didn’t seem quite as punchable as it always had before. Maybe because I could read the emotions behind that mask of authoritarian perfection.
When the last light of the fire went out, we stood and saluted again. Jorgen then climbed down to his car, explaining he needed to check in with his family. I stood on the high rock, looking again along the gouge that Hurl’s crash had caused.
Did I blame her for wasting her life? Or did I respect her for refusing—at all costs—to be branded a coward? Could I feel both at once?
She really did almost make it. I thought, noting the nearly undamaged wing lying nearby. And farther back, the rear end of the fuselage. Ripped off, sitting on its own.
Booster included.
I felt a sudden spike of realization. It would be weeks before anyone came to scavenge this wreckage. And if they did wonder where the booster went, they’d probably assume it blew off in the initial destructor hit.
If I could somehow get it to my cave . . .
It wouldn’t be robbing the dead. Scud, Hurl would tell me to take the booster. She’d want me to fly and fight. But how in the world would I get it all the way back? A booster would be orders of magnitude heavier than I could lift . . .
I looked toward Jorgen, sitting in his car. Did I dare?
Did I have any other choice? I had seen some chains in the trunk when we’d been unloading the wood . . .
I climbed down from the rocks and headed toward the car, walking up right as he was turning off the radio. “No emergencies yet,” he said. “But we should get going.”
I debated for a moment before finally asking. “Jorgen, how much can this car lift?”
“A fair amount. Why?”
“Are you willing to do something that sounds a little crazy?”
“Like flying out and giving our own funeral to one of our friends?”
“More crazy,” I said. “But I need you to do it, and not ask too many questions. Pretend I’m insane with grief or something.”
He looked at me, carefully. “What is it, exactly, that you want to do?”
35
“You realize,” Jorgen said as we flew back toward Alta, “I’m starting to get very suspicious.”
I looked over the side to where the booster dangled from the bottom of his hovercar, connected by chains to the tow ring on the underside of the chassis. His car’s small acclivity ring had been barely enough to lift the weight.
“First you steal my power matrix,” Jorgen said, “now this. What are you doing? Building your own Poco?” He laughed.
When I didn’t join in, he looked at me. Then he put the heel of his palm to his forehead, rubbing it as understanding sank in. “You are. You’re building a starfighter.”
“I told you not to ask too many questions.”
“And I never agreed. Spin, you’re building a ship?”
“Repairing,” I said. “I found a wreck.”
“All salvage belongs to the DDF. Claiming it is the same as stealing.”
“Like you just helped me steal a booster?”
He groaned and leaned back.
“What did you think we were doing?” I asked, amused. “We spent half an hour pulling a chunk of salvage from the ground!”
“You told me to assume you were emotionally unstable because of Hurl’s death!”
“I didn’t expect you to believe me,” I said. “Look, I’ve done this forever without getting into trouble. Down in Igneous, I used salvage to build my own speargun for hunting.”
“An entire fighter is different from a speargun. How are you planning to fix the thing? You don’t have the expertise for that—or the time!”
I didn’t reply; no need to get Rig into trouble.
“You’re insane,” he said.
“Admiral Ironsides won’t let me fly. She’s got a grudge against me because of my father. Even if I graduate, I’ll spend my life grounded.”
“So you build your own ship? What do you think is going to happen? That you’ll show up on a battlefield in the nick of time, and everyone will simply forget to ask where you got your own scudding starfighter?”
I . . . honestly didn’t have a response to that. I’d shoved logic aside, figuring questions like that were bridges to be burned once I captured them.
“Spin, even assuming you could fix a crashed Poco yourself—you can’t, by the way—the first time you took the thing into the air, the DDF would pick it up on scanners. If you don’t identify yourself, you’ll get shot down. If you do, they’ll take that ship from you faster than you can say ‘court-martial.’ ”
I’d like to see them try. “Maybe I don’t fly it for the DDF,” I said. “There are other caverns, other people.”