by Maura Milan
5
Ia’s hands raced forward. She flicked the switches in front of her, activating the dual engines.
4
One hand on the wheel, and the other hand on the throttle.
3
“Rear thrusters on,” Ia called out. A slight vibration rumbled against her back as the thrusters activated.
2
She pushed the throttle lever forward, allowing more fuel to power the rear thrusters.
And 1.
The lights flew past her as the jet zipped down the runway until all she saw was a black expanse.
She was flying.
And not even the muted pain of her recovering heart could keep her from yipping with glee. This was the first time she had flown since her capture. Zigzagging between stars, she dipped her jet along the orbit of a nearby moon, feeling the tug and pull of its gravity. She tested out the beautiful engine that carried her, trying to push it as fast as it could go. It was almost as quick as her own starjet, Orca. Almost, but not quite.
Loud beeps stung at her ears. And the words Begin Course Simulation blinked onto the screen.
Then she remembered where she was.
That this was all a simulation, a series of constructed images stitched together to fool her head and eyes.
This was just a test. A stupid test.
A streak of competition flared within her, knowing they would rank her with the other cadets, with those tyros—Dead Space slang for newbies who had no idea what they were doing. Even if this wasn’t real, she was going to conquer this sim. It would allow her some sense of happiness to know she was better than all the Commonwealth flyers on this Deus-damned planet.
“Computer shields to one hundred.” The shields flashed blue as they activated. It was only for show. She knew she wasn’t going to need them.
The mother of all asteroids tumbled toward her. Large chunks of ice and rock splintered off, colliding with smaller asteroids.
She was going to need the extra power. Her voice rang out through the cockpit. “Mid thrusters.”
“Activated,” the computer called back.
Her jet reached the outer edge of the field. She pivoted, dodging each piece of rubble that came her way. She broke through a flurry of debris. But she wasn’t in the clear yet. There was still the big one. It crashed toward her like a behemoth in the darkness.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, she grabbed the two side-by-side throttle levers. One was for the rear thrust, and the other for the front. She punched them forward, feeling the simulation pod tilt as it tried to re-create the motion. The jet flew head-on at the mother asteroid, and she saw it winking at her like a giant icy eye.
Ia flew faster and faster, until the engines were overheating. WARNING. The word was all over her screen. Light flashed as bold and red as the blood pumping through her veins.
“Collision imminent,” the computer’s voice trilled through the metal pod.
Ia kept her eyes on the navigational meters. 1000 meters. 500 meters. 200 meters.
She was so close she could see the cracks in the asteroid’s crust.
50 meters.
Her hand flew to her side and yanked at the air brake right next to her, triggering an additional set of thrusts in the front. It gave her enough resistance. With both hands on the wheel, she pulled. The nose of her jet pointed up, straight up, so that she was now vertically traversing the height of the asteroid. Higher and higher.
Ia gazed into the All Black, basking in its embrace. Once she cleared this last obstacle, it would all end. The view would fade, and the pod would right itself into reality.
For now, she kept flying, staring into the darkness.
“Simulation complete,” the computer sang into her ear, and an emptiness rattled her heart.
The pod readjusted, rotating back to its original axis. It settled back into its locking position. Ia fixed her face, trying to hide the sadness inside her. The simulator pod opened. With a grin stretching from ear to ear, she looked past the cadets until she found Knives’s arrogant blue eyes, as cold as the planet she was stuck on.
“So that’s the hardest thing you can throw at me?”
CHAPTER 15
BRINN
BRINN YAWNED BEFORE she stepped into the First Year common room. She had spent the night once again on the bathroom floor, and her neck was stiff from the way she’d slept. She’d fallen asleep hearing Ia bang something against the wall in the main sleeping quarters, followed by a yowl.
The First Year common room was filled with red L-shaped couches where cadets chatted, cheered, or consoled. To an outside observer, it would appear to be a normal day. But it wasn’t. This morning would decide the rest of Brinn’s adult life.
After a full day of tests yesterday, including a flight simulation and two written exams, their scores had been analyzed and their placements already decided. Whatever department she was assigned to would dictate her classes for the next two years.
There were three categories to be sifted into. Flyers. Engineers. And comms.
The flyers were self-explanatory. They were the pilots. The heroes. Brinn would be lying if she said she didn’t want to be placed in this group. Everyone wanted to be a flyer.
The largest group was the engineers. They did almost everything. While the flyers worked on their aerial maneuvering, the engineers figured out how to keep the vehicles in the air. There were several divisions within the engineers themselves. In addition to ship maintenance and engine duties, some engineers might be sectioned off to advance in hydroponics, armaments, or borg technology. Engineers could do anything. Except fly.
Then there were the communications specialists, experts in language and culture, the Commonwealth’s intergalactic anthropologists. More importantly, they served as the eyes and ears of the Commonwealth. They knew about every transmission, legal and illegal, that slipped through the ArcLite.
In the center of the common room, three large holoscreens hovered above everyone’s heads, angled so everyone could see. Brinn rose on her tiptoes to get a better view.
Angie leaned in. “I already checked. You’re an engineer.”
At the sound of those words, the heaviness of the unknown lifted off Brinn’s shoulders. Of course she was an engineer. It made the most sense; her rational thinking was better suited for the engineering track, and she didn’t have the gall to be a flyer. She’d failed the flight simulation within seconds. In all honesty, it was a blow to her pride. She had never failed anything before. The only thing that made her feel better was the fact that not many had succeeded. Brinn had been there when someone did though. She remembered it, that ghostly image of Ia emerging from the simulator pod, steam leaking from the broken hydraulics system.
A lot of the cadets were furious, calling her a cheat, a show-off. But some of the cadets were uncharacteristically positive. From that test alone, Ia Cōcha had gathered a handful of fans. Brinn couldn’t decide if she was one of them. She was impressed by Cōcha’s skill. That was certain. But Brinn had quickly exited the room to forget the smug look on Cōcha’s face. Like it was so easy.
Brinn stared at her ID number and placement glowing on the holoscreen, and reminded herself that this was all for the best. Being a flyer would call too much attention to herself. Putting herself in the spotlight wasn’t exactly how she did things.
Brinn glanced over at Angie. “Where did you get placed?”
Angie ran her fingers expertly through her fine blond hair. “Comms unit. Just like I expected.”
In one corner of the room, a group of cadets clapped each other on the back, grins plastered on their faces.
“Check out the flyers.” Angie ogled them from the distance. “I can’t wait to see them in their grav suits.”
Brinn shifted so she could see their faces. She recognized a few of them. Among the pumping fists and high fives, she spotted Nero Sinoblancas, Cammo with his gap-toothed grin, and right next to him, almost exactly in the center of it all, was Liam.
The group was small. Only ten of them.
But hold on.
Brinn scanned the flyers, her eyes doing a loop as she tried to find a certain face.
Around her, a hush of murmurs simmered throughout the room. She turned to see Ia standing in the doorway of the common room, her eyes on the holoscreens floating above.
“Are you miffing kidding me?” she muttered, then charged out, her guards rushing after her.
Brinn looked back to the holoscreen, searching the list of names, until a curious line of data jumped out at her in bright-yellow lettering.
Name: Ia Cōcha.
Category: Engineer
CHAPTER 16
KNIVES
LIKE AN EXPLODING GRENADE, Ia burst through the large metal doors to the main lecture auditorium where Knives stood at the podium, a holodisplay of Eden’s planetary makeup hovering above them. Heads swiveled toward her. She was interrupting his lecture, but he’d expected no less—she had no shame. She stalked down the stairs like a damning Medusa, her eyes trying to turn him to stone.
“You made me an engineer?” Ia yelled, her voice so sharp it made his eardrums throb.
Just as she looked ready to launch herself down the stairs at him, her guards grabbed her arms, pulling her out into the hallway.
Knives sighed and looked up at his classroom. “I’ll be right back,” he told his second year students. He had to handle this before she made even more of a scene.
The moment he opened the door to the hallway, Ia swung a balled fist at his face.
He ducked, dodging the edge of her knuckles.
Aaron and Geoff rushed over, trying to restrain her. She shrugged out of their grip, and with one look, she urged them to back off. They didn’t dare grab her after that.
Knives stood up straight in challenge. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m the best pilot in this metal hole in the ground. I know it. You know it. Geoff freaking knows it,” she said, pointing a finger at her guard.
Geoff nodded sheepishly. “She’s right. I do.”
Knives crossed his arms and grimaced. “Your skills are on another level. I won’t deny that.”
“Then I should be a flyer.” Ia stepped up to him and glared. “Give me a starjet.” It was an order, not a request.
Knives rolled his eyes. “So you can escape again?”
“I belong in the skies,” she shouted, “not living out my days stuck in the middle of a frozen mountain!”
Knives took a deep breath. “Our flyers earn their jets. The Commonwealth doesn’t just hand them out, especially to Public Enemy Number One.”
“Listen to me. I’m the Sovereign of Dead Space, a Warrior of the Fighting Planets.” Ia dropped her gaze and let out a long breath. “Without a jet, I’m nothing.”
“Wrong.” His eyes remained trained upon her. “Those fancy titles mean mif. What matters is how you act and what you do.”
“And what about you?” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “It doesn’t make sense why someone so young, with so much potential, is floundering as flight master. There are rumors floating around that you turned down a pretty big colonization campaign.”
Knives gritted his teeth, annoyed that his personal decisions were fodder for the cadets’ gossip.
“That doesn’t concern you.” His voice sharpened like razor blades.
“Then it’s true.” She sneered. “You’re always egging me to escape, but how about you? Whatever happened to you made you too scared to leave.” She shook her head, and every single vicious syllable corroded through him as quickly as tarnish through silver.
A violent silence bridged the gap between them. Filled with unspoken words and the creak of buried histories. She was right, though he’d never admit it to her.
“Go,” he ordered finally.
“With pleasure.” She scoffed and stomped away.
Knives spent the rest of his lecture simmering from what Ia had said, how she had tried to pry things out of him as if he were a broken toy. When the last bell chimed, he shut down the projectors of the classroom, leaving the rest of the class in the dim. “All right, that’s it for today. Dismissed, all of you.”
He was the first to make a move toward the doors.
“Is there any homework?” one of his second-year flyers called after him.
“Yeah,” he yelled back. “Don’t bother me.” And he stomped out of the room.
Thank Deus for the weekend. After everything that had happened these past few days, Knives was ready to fly the mif out of there.
Myth was an old space station two gates away. It was a place to refuel, to drink, and to place bets on whatever you fancied. And none of it was legal, which was why it was located in Dead Space territory. But Knives was willing to take his chances, since by Commonwealth law, he was underage. Dead Space joints never checked IDs.
The docks of Myth were busy with vessels, all in various states of wear and tear. His Kaiken was the cleanest jet there, and as Knives landed, he had to ignore the looks that came from the crews nearby.
Fortunately, he’d chosen to wear a less flashy outfit. Instead of his flight master’s suit, Knives wore a crumpled gray thermal shirt and navy-blue flight pants, the same as nearly half of Myth’s patrons were wearing. Once he docked, he fished out his brown leather bomber jacket and shrugged it on. The jacket had come with the jet; he’d found it in the cargo bin the day after he bought the Kaiken from the racing garage. There were no patches on the jacket, just worn cracks of leather on the elbows and the previous owner’s name etched and fading on the chest. Pete.
Even though it was his first time there, Knives found the tavern easily. All he had to do was follow the smell of sweat and vomit. The tavern was built into the old captain’s deck of the space station. It was dark from the burned-out circuitry, and the floors were sticky with old grease, but that didn’t deter all the people shoved inside, trying to get their preferred bev. Slurred conversation pooled around him as he edged his way through the crowd, trying hard to avoid the path of spilled drinks.
Spotting an opening at the bar, Knives wedged himself in between a tall man with robotic arm prosthetics and another patron with deep scars along her cheeks.
Knives caught the eye of the bartender. She was slender, with long, tangled brown hair.
“What can I get you?” she asked, leaning in to read the patch on his chest. “Pete.”
“A bottle of whatever you have.”
“The archnol here is made from old burnout,” she warned. “Rad level is pretty high.”
“I’m not that picky.”
She smiled in response, and he noticed the way she looked at him, her eyelashes flickering in his direction. She grabbed a bottle from behind her and twisted the cap.
Knives swiped at his holowatch, accessing his wallet app for scanning.
“It’s on me,” she said, placing the bottle down.
He flashed her a grin, staring at her long enough to see the blush creep onto her face. He could have stayed there the whole night, flirting with her. But all he wanted to do was turn off his brain and be rid of any thoughts of Aphelion. He’d expected the first week to be difficult, but with Cōcha on the cadet list and his new teaching duties, he had been stretched too thin.
Weaving through the crowd, he found a column to lean against, angling his head to catch tidbits of news from the people nearby.
“The price of century coin is going up,” a person with a bronze eye patch said. “If you manage to scavenge one, keep ’em.”
“Did you hear about them Armada trying to take control of Dead Space?” a Dvvinn woman asked.
“Of course. Ia Cōcha’s gone, so someone’s gonna wanna move in on her territory,” lisped a Dead Spacer with a mouthful of missing teeth.
Great, Knives thought—two gates away, and people were still chittering about Ia. She was like a ghost, haunting him wherever he went. He took a swig of archnol, letting the liquid burn down his throat, and cont
inued listening.
“That bit’ll come back and kill whoever takes her place, mark me words. Pity the munghead who tries.”
Knives smiled to himself; he agreed with the man.
“Fierce lil’ thing. I hope to Deus I’m here to see that,” said the person with the lisp.
“You talking about the Scourge? She’s a weaklin’. I beat her down pretty good, cornered her on the docks of Whiler.”
Knives’s ears perked to the man’s story, and he inched forward, trying to get a look at him. The man was of moderate build and not nearly as tall as Knives was. Ia could have handled him in a second, no question.
“They say she’s untouchable,” someone chimed in.
“Oh, I touched her.” The man leered.
Before he knew it, Knives was at the guy’s back, clapping him on the shoulder.
The man turned. “What the mif ya think yer doing?”
“This.” Knives’s fist flew forward. The man fell to the floor, holding his palm over his left eye. Knives looked up to see the man’s companions moving in on him. There were four of them, and he knew he couldn’t fight them off. Not in this crowd. But he had no other option than to lean back and put his fists up.
A hand grabbed his sleeve from behind and yanked him away.
He swiveled.
It was the bartender. Leaning forward, she eyed the men circling in. “No fights, you scuzz. If you ruin the place one more time, I’m closing down the taps. I swear to Deus, I will.”
The men grumbled, but they eased off. The bartender turned toward Knives, her fingers still around the fabric of his sleeve.
“What were you thinking?” she asked, her voice tense. Her breath smelled of minty vapor. “I should have let them kill you. There’d be one less idiot in the universe.”
He gave her a look. There were too many hotheaded women in his life; he didn’t have room for another one. “I’ll be going.”
“No.” Collapsing onto a nearby couch, she motioned for him to join her. “Might as well finish your drink.”
He sat down and let her observe him, her eyes brushing over his features. Her fingers held a small vaporizer to her lips. Smoke curled from her mouth, and the smell of mint drifted his way.