“No,” Jorgen said. “His parents pulled him out of the DDF. This has been building for a few weeks—ever since he almost got shot down. They’ve been panicking. Off the record, of course. Nobody would admit to being afraid for their son.”
“Strings were pulled,” Cobb said. “The admiral compromised. Arturo gets a pilot’s pin but doesn’t graduate.”
“How does that work?” FM asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I agreed. “He didn’t graduate, but he gets to be a full pilot?”
“He’s been retired honorably from service,” Cobb said. “Officially, it’s because he was needed for supervising cargo flights for his family—if we’re ever going to get enough igniter parts, we’ll need those shipments from other caverns. Come on, you three. Let’s get to your debriefing.”
Cobb walked off, and FM and Jorgen joined him. Those two seemed resigned, as if this sort of thing was expected.
I didn’t follow. I felt indignant on Arturo’s behalf. His parents just yanked him out like that?
Jorgen is expecting the same thing to happen to him. I remembered. Maybe all of them were ready for this. The ones from highly merited families, at least.
Standing there, outside the school, I realized for the first time that I was the only ordinary person in the flight who had made it this far. That made me irrationally angry. How dare his parents shelter him, now that it was getting dangerous? Particularly against his own obvious desires?
Jorgen stopped in the doorway ahead, while the others continued on inside. “Hey,” he said, looking back at me. “You coming?”
I stalked up to him.
“Arturo’s parents were never going to let him fly permanently,” he said. “I’m honestly surprised that it took them this long to get spooked.”
“Will the same happen to you? Will your father come for you tomorrow?”
“Not yet. Arturo’s not going into politics, but I am. I’ll need to have a few battles under my belt as a real pilot before my parents pull me out.”
“So a little danger, then you’ll be protected. Coddled. Kept safe.”
He winced.
“You realize the only ones who died on our team were the common ones,” I snapped. “Bim, Morningtide, Hurl. Not a single deep caverner among them!”
“They were my friends too, Spin.”
“You, Arturo, Nedd, FM.” I poked him in the chest with each name. “You had training ahead of time. A leg up, to keep you alive, until your coward families could stick some medals on you and parade you around as proof that you’re so much better than the rest of us!”
He grabbed my arms to stop me from poking him, but I wasn’t mad at him. In fact, I could see in his eyes that he was just as frustrated as me. He hated that he was boxed in like this.
I grabbed hold of his flight suit by the front, gripping it with two fists. Then I quietly rested my forehead against his chest. Frustrated and—yes—even afraid. Afraid of losing more friends.
Jorgen tensed, then finally let go of my shoulders and—likely uncertain what else to do—wrapped his arms around me. It should have been awkward. Instead, it was actually comforting. He understood. He felt the loss like I did.
“I barely got to be a real part of the flight,” I whispered, “and it’s being ripped apart again. A piece of me is glad he’s safe, and will stay safe, but another piece of me is angry. Why couldn’t Hurl have been kept safe, or Bim?”
Jorgen didn’t respond.
“Cobb told us, on that first day, that only one or two of us would make it,” I said. “Who dies next? Me? You? Why, after decades, don’t we even know what we’re fighting or why we’re doing it?”
“We know why, Spensa,” he said softly. “It’s for Igneous, and Alta. For civilization. And you’re right, the way we do things isn’t fair. But these are the rules we play by. They’re the only rules I know.”
“Why is everything about rules, to you?” I asked, my forehead still resting against his chest. “What about emotion, what about feelings?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I . . .”
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and held on. I thought about the DDF, about Alta and Igneous, and about the fact that I didn’t have anything to defy any longer. I’d spent my life fighting against the things they said about my father.
Now what did I do?
“I do feel things, Spin,” he finally said. “Like right now, I feel incredibly awkward. I didn’t ever think you were the hugging type.”
I released the front of his flight suit, causing him to drop his arms. “You grabbed me first,” I said.
“You were attacking me!”
“Lightly tapping your chest for emphasis.”
He rolled his eyes, and the moment was over. Strangely though—as we joined FM and walked toward our new classroom—I realized something. I did feel better. Just a little, but considering how my life had been going lately, I was willing to take what I could get.
42
A number of days later, FM and I ate with Inkwell Flight and Firestorm Flight, the other two cadet flights who had started at the same time as us. Between them, they had six members remaining, meaning that even all of us combined didn’t make a full ten-person flight.
Most of the conversation swirled around whether or not we’d be collected into a single cadet flight. If that happened, which flight name would we keep? FM argued we should make up a new name, though I figured that since we still had our flightleader—the other two had lost theirs at some point—we should be in charge.
I stayed quiet, finishing my food quickly. Part of me kept expecting the admiral to burst in and haul me off. The food was amazing, and instead of my old patched jumpsuit, I’d been able to requisition three new ones that fit me perfectly.
The other cadets were growing anxious for graduation. “I’m going to be a scout,” said Remark, a boisterous guy with a bowl cut. “I’ve already got an invitation.”
“Too boring,” FM said.
“Really?” said one of the girls. “I’d have thought it would appeal to you—with all your talk of ‘Defiant aggression.’ ”
“It’s so expected though,” FM said. “Even if I am kind of good at it.”
As I listened, I wondered if FM would be taken away by her family too, though she didn’t seem as important as Jorgen, who was off at another state function. I idly wondered what it would be like to attend one of his fancy government dinners. I imagined the delicious scandal I would cause. The daughter of the infamous coward?
Of course, everyone would be too polite to say anything, so they’d have to suffer through it while I—being a primitive barbarian girl—ignorantly slurped my soup, belched loudly, and ate with my hands. Jorgen would just roll his eyes.
The fantasy made me smile, but then I frowned to myself. Why was I thinking about Jorgen, of all people?
The others at the table laughed as someone mentioned Arturo’s callsign, which nobody could pronounce. “It must be quiet in your training, now that he’s dropped,” said Drama—a girl with an accent reminiscent of Kimmalyn’s.