A sudden burst of light from nearby sent FM cursing softly.
“Sorry!” Morningtide said with her thick accent. “Sorry, sorry!” It was the most I’d heard out of her all day.
“What’s the third weapon?” Jerkface said.
“Light-lances,” I guessed. I’d read the term, but again, the specifics on what they did weren’t covered in the books.
“Ah, so you know about them, Spin,” Cobb said. “I thought you might. Give us a little display.”
“Um, okay. But why me?”
“They work very similarly to their smaller cousins: light-lines. I have a hunch you’ve got some experience there.”
How did he know? I wore my light-line to class, as I needed it to get in and out of my cavern, but I thought I’d kept it hidden under the long sleeve of my jumpsuit.
“Thumb and little finger,” Cobb said, “buttons on either side of the control sphere.”
Well, sure. Why not? I pushed the throttle forward and moved out of line, approaching the hovering Krell ships. I picked one, the wires at its rear floating down behind it. Like all ships, it had an acclivity ring—with a standard size of about two meters in diameter—glowing with a soft blue light underneath.
The Krell looked even more sinister up close. It had that strange, unfinished feel to it, though it wasn’t actually incomplete. Those wires hanging from the back were probably intentional, and its design was simply alien. Not unfinished, but made by creatures that didn’t think like humans did.
I held my breath, then clicked the buttons Cobb had indicated. A line of molten red light launched from the front of my ship and attached to the Krell ship. As Cobb had indicated, it worked just like the light-line, but larger—and launched from my ship like a harpoon.
Wow, I thought.
“Light-lances,” Cobb said. “You’ve probably seen their smaller cousins on the wrists of pilots; they were used by the engineering department in the old fleet to anchor themselves while they worked on machines in zero gravity. Spin has one, somehow—which I’ve decided not to mention to the quartermaster.”
“Thank—”
“You can thank me by shutting up when I’m talking,” Cobb said. “Light-lances work like a kind of energy lasso, connecting you to something you spear with it. You can use it to attach to an enemy ship, or you can use it on the terrain.”
“The terrain?” Arturo asked. “You mean we stick ourselves to the ground?”
“Hardly,” Cobb said.
The sky exploded above and I looked up, gasping, as the ubiquitous haze of debris began to rain down balls of fire. Superheated metal and other junk, turned into falling stars by the heat of reentry.
I quickly spun my ship, then pushed on the throttle and moved back toward the line. It took a few minutes for the debris to start falling around us, some chunks glowing more brightly than others. They moved at a variety of speeds, and I realized some of the falling junk had acclivity stone glowing blue inside it, giving it some lift.
The junk smashed into several of the Krell fighters, pulverizing them.
“The Krell usually attack during debris falls,” Cobb said. “The Krell don’t have light-lances, and though they tend to be maneuverable, a DDF ship with a good pilot can outpace and outfly them. You’ll often engage them in the middle of the falling debris. In there, the light-lance will be your best tool—which is why we’re going to spend the next month training on them. Any idiot with a finger can fire a destructor. But it takes a pilot to fly the debris and use it as an advantage.
“I’ve seen pilots use the light-lances to pull Krell into one another, stick them to space junk, or even yank a wingmate out of danger. You can pivot unexpectedly by attaching yourself to a big chunk and swinging around it. You can toss debris at your enemy, instantly overwhelming their shield and smashing them. The more dangerous the battlefield, the more advantage the better pilot will have. Which, when I’m done, will be you.”
We watched the debris fall, burning light reflecting against my canopy. “So…,” I said. “You’re saying that by the end of our training, you expect us to be able to use grappling hooks made of energy to smash our enemies with flaming chunks of space debris?”
“Yes.”
“That…,” I whispered, “that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
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.
I settled into my seat, then felt around inside my helmet, trying to figure out what was bothering me. What are these lumps? I thought, prodding the inside of the helmet. Maybe the size of a requisition chit or a large washer, the round lumps were underneath the inside lining of the helmet, and each had a small metal portion at the center, sticking through the lining. Had those been there before?
“Problem, cadet?” Cobb asked.
I jumped; I hadn’t seen him approach my mockpit. “Um, my helmet, sir. Something’s wrong with it.”
“Nothing’s wrong, cadet.”
“No, look. Feel in here. There are these—”
“Nothing’s wrong, cadet. Medical ordered your helmet swapped out this morning, before you arrived. It has sensors to monitor your bioreadings.”
“Oh,” I said, relaxing. “Well, I suppose that makes sense. But you should tell the others. It might distract some of the flight if their—”
“They only swapped out your helmet, cadet.”
I frowned. Only mine? “What…kind of readings are they taking about me, then?”
“I wouldn’t want to guess. Is this a problem?”
“…I suppose not,” I said, though it made me uncomfortable. I tried to read meaning into Cobb’s expression, but he was stoic as he met my eyes. Whatever this was, he obviously wasn’t going to tell me. But I couldn’t help feeling that it had something to do with my father, and the admiral’s dislike of me.
I pulled on the helmet, activating the radio and then my hologram. “Bim!” Cobb said in my ear, acting as if nothing had happened. “You knitting a sweater or something? Back into your seat!”
“If I have to,” Bim said.
“Have to? You want to go sweep floors instead of being a fighter pilot, boy? I’ve seen rocks that fly almost as well as you do—I could drop one in your seat, paint the head blue, and at least I’d stop getting lip!”
“Sorry, Cobb,” Bim said. “No lip intended, but…I mean, I talked to some cadets from Firestorm Flight this morning. They’ve been dogfighting this entire time.”
“Good for them! When they’re all dead, you can move into their room.” Cobb sighed—loudly, in an exaggerated way. “Here, let’s try this.”
A set of glowing golden rings appeared on the battlefield. They were just larger than a ship, and several were dangerously close to floating chunks of debris.
“Line up and confirm,” Cobb said.
“You heard the man!” Jerkface said. “Fall in at my mark!”
The eight of us flew to Jerkface’s ship and settled into a line, then gave him verbal confirmation.
“Flight ready, instructor!” Jerkface said.
“Here are the rules,” Cobb said. “Each ring you pass through gets you one point. Once you begin a run, you have to maintain a speed of at least Mag-1, and you can’t circle around if you miss a ring. There are five rings, and I’ll let you each do three runs through the course. Highest score gets two desserts tonight—but a warning, if you crash, you’re out with your score frozen where it was before you died.”
I perked up and tried not to dwell on the idea that the prize was useless to me. At least this might distract me from the uncomfortable helmet.
“A game,” Hurl said. “Like, you’re actually going to let us have fun?”
“I can have fun,” Cobb said. “I know all about having fun. Most of it involves sitting and dreaming of the day when you all stop asking me stupid questions!”
Nedd chuckled.
“That wasn’t a joke!” Cobb said. “Go.”
Hurl whooped and hit her overburn, zipping toward the debris field. I responded nearly as fast, accelerating to Mag-3, and almost beat her to the first ring. I flew through it right behind her, then glanced at my radar. Bim, FM, and Morningtide were on my tail. Arturo and Nedd flew in formation, as they often did. I expected Kimmalyn to be last, but she actually flew ahead of Jerkface—who delayed for some reason.
I focused on the course, racing thr
ough the next ring. The third one was practically behind a big chunk of debris. The only way through it at speed would be to use a light-lance to turn extra sharp.
Hurl whooped again and executed a near-perfect hook turn through the ring. I made the tactical decision to shoot past it—which proved wise as Bim tried to pivot through it, and smashed right into the chunk of debris.
“Scud!” he yelled as his ship exploded.
Jerkface still hasn’t started the course, I noted.
I made the fourth ring—it hovered between two hunks of debris—but missed the last one, which was behind a large floating metal box, requiring a light-lance turn to spin around it. I ended that run with three points, though Hurl got four. I hadn’t counted the others. Poor Kimmalyn crashed getting through the fourth ring.
The rest of us curved around the outside of the debris field for another run, and Jerkface finally flew in for his first run. He was watching to see us go through, I realized. He was scouting the battlefield.
Clever. Indeed, he got four rings like Hurl.
Hurl immediately raced in for her second run, and I realized that—in our eagerness—we’d been going several times faster than Cobb’s stated minimum speed. Why would we want to fly faster? Simply to get done first? Cobb hadn’t offered any points for that.
Stupid, I thought. It isn’t a race. It’s a test of precision. I slowed down to Mag-1 as Hurl—trying to hook that third ring again for the sharp turn—lost control and slammed herself into a nearby chunk of rock.
“Ha!” she exclaimed. She didn’t seem to care that she’d lost. She just seemed happy that there was a game to it now.
I focused on the third ring, going over and over in my head the things Cobb had taught. As I swooped past, I launched my light-lance into the asteroid and not only hooked it, but—to my surprise—swung around on the energy line so that I curved right through the ring.
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