by Maura Milan
The flyers started their training missions today, and the Aeronauticals—second-year engineers who had chosen to specialize in maintaining the training jets—and the first-year engineers were assigned to clean up after their mess. Brinn was in the hallway on the way to their meeting location when her holowatch beeped.
She swiped at her screen, pulling up the message. Her face paled as she read, and before she was done, she was already running, scanning the halls until she spotted Ia from behind, her familiar black bob swishing above her shoulders. She grabbed Ia by the elbow, then glanced behind at the guards before leading Ia a few steps away so that they wouldn’t hear.
“I just got a message from the headmaster,” Brinn said. “He wants me to come to his office.”
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t say anything,” Ia grumbled.
“Do you think he knows? Is there any way they could have found out about…” She pointed at the neural tap hidden underneath the hair at the base of Ia’s head.
Ia glared at her. “No,” she hissed. “The connection is completely private.”
Brinn was on the verge of panicking. If they found out she’d helped Ia, she would be convicted of treason. The oxygen inside banged against her lungs, threatening to leave and never return.
She thought Ia would laugh at the state she was in, but instead Ia patted her softly on the back. “Relax. It’s probably nothing.”
Brinn felt unbalanced. It was one of the first times in her life that she didn’t have a clear solution to a problem. Normally when she was unable to figure something out, she asked Faren for advice, but he wasn’t there. And going to Angie for help would instantly burn the bridge between them. Here in Aphelion, there was only one person she could turn to. She looked over at Ia. “What should I do?”
Ia stiffened at the earnestness of her tone. But then her eyes focused. “A good friend once told me you can never outsmart a Tawny. Just remember that, and you’ll be fine.”
Brinn sat in a chair facing the headmaster’s desk, her back straight and her hands clasped in her lap. He studied her, and she studied him, watching his brows knit into a vee, his jaw clenching into hard lines. She took a deep breath to keep herself from fainting in her seat.
“I just wanted to check in on you. How are things working out with Ia?”
Brinn stared at her fingers, trying to figure out the least conspicuous thing to say.
“She sings in her sleep,” Brinn said softly. “It wakes me up in the middle of the night.”
It had happened the first night she slept in the main room. As she lay awake, a tiny hum came from Ia’s side of the room. Brinn lay on her side, observing Ia’s dormant figure, convinced she would stir, but Ia’s eyes remained closed, and the hum quickly turned into a tune, mournful and dissonant. Utterly unlike the songs of Olympus. It lasted for three bars when the melody descended into a gurgly snore.
Brinn had eased back into bed, a little baffled by what had transpired. Maybe there was some meaning to it? She spent most of the night sequencing the note progression, trying to decrypt whatever message could be hidden underneath its melody. It led her in circles until finally she decided there was no message at all. It was a sad song, and that was all it was. But every night from then on, she listened.
The headmaster leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers upon his desk. “Ia singing in her sleep is hardly anything worth worrying over.”
He scratched his chin with the pink rubber end of his writing utensil. Brinn was certain it was called a pencil, though she’d never actually seen one. He went on scribbling something into his journal while they spoke. From the brushstrokes, she could tell they were a series of numbers.
“And is there anything else odd that you’d like to bring up?” he asked while he wrote.
That was a question Brinn wanted to avoid completely. She stared at the headmaster’s pencil as it erased one of the graphite scratchings on the page. Not scratchings, really. But numbers, math. Instantly, she remembered Ia’s advice. You can never outsmart a Tawny.
Instead of answering his question, she tapped the piece of paper. “Don’t,” she said.
His hand stopped, and Headmaster Weathers’s evergreen eyes rose.
“Don’t erase that,” Brinn said. “You still need it.”
“Is that so?” His eyes darted along the string of numbers littering his page, but when he realized Brinn was peering at his work, he closed the cover.
“If you just tweak it so that X is a variable, not a constant, then the last part will work.”
He gave her a look and then reopened his journal to peer down at his formula.
“If you want,” she added, “you could simplify it even further.”
The headmaster ripped out a blank page. He scrawled Brinn’s name on it and slid it over to her. His other hand held out his writing utensil for her to use.
Brinn took it from him and leaned over the blank page. She started scribbling. It felt awkward to physically handwrite each symbol and number, and the lines didn’t appear as neat as they would on a holoscreen.
She set the pencil down when she was finished. The headmaster plucked the paper from her, positioning it at a readable angle. His fingers tapped on the page, moving from one section to the next. And then his eyes swooped up to hers. “How did you do this?”
“I suppose I see numbers differently than other people…”
His words burst out of him. “I’ve been trying to crack this wretched thing for nearly twenty years now. My experiments have only been able to transfer energy one way, but not the other. And without properly maintaining the balance, the whole thing collapses within minutes. But with this”—he tapped the piece of paper—“we can open a door that we can finally go through.”
“What exactly are you working on, sir?” Brinn asked.
His expression fell as if plucked from a fanciful dream; then he peered at her like she was either precious or dangerous. Brinn couldn’t tell which one it was.
He tapped his pencil against the wooden desktop. It made a high-pitched ticking sound like an old-fashioned clock. “You’re a very unique girl, cadet. Smart. Observant.” He paused, eyes flashing at her. “But for now, I kindly request you keep this between you and me.”
Brinn shut her mouth and nodded.
The headmaster closed his notebook. “You’re dismissed.”
Brinn left the office, her worries now replaced with questions.
She was a girl who was used to secrets. Hiding her identity, then covering for Ia as she spoke to her brother. Now Brinn was charged with another one. She had seen those equations, and they played by a different set of rules. Whatever the headmaster was working on was based on a new realm of science. It was something that went beyond the universe itself.
She just had to hope that they stayed as they were. Numbers. And nothing else.
CHAPTER 25
IA
IA STOOD ON THE TARMAC, staring at the Head Aeronautical, a Second Year who looked like he had just hit puberty.
“Everyone to your stations,” the boy barked. “I want these jets cleaner than when they first got here.”
Brinn was lucky. Ia would much rather be chatting up the headmaster instead of stuck doing deck duty. If she ever had the chance to have an audience with the headmaster, she’d have a field day, asking him everything she could about Aphelion. Like where it was located for starters.
But for now, she’d have to unearth Aphelion’s secrets all on her own.
Ignoring the Head Aeronautical’s orders, Ia wandered to the outer boundary of the tarmac. She had been focused on gathering intel. Sights, sounds, schedules, voices. Anything that would be helpful in either an escape plan or the complete decimation of Olympus. And now, finally, was the perfect time to take pictures of the flight deck.
Her left eye clicked into camera mode, and she took photos of all the jets and their storage order, making note of which ones were in better condition than the others. From close inspect
ion, she noted the doors were locked with fingerprint scans. Every single one of them. She scratched her head. Well, then, she would have to cut someone’s finger off.
She took a glance at some of the engines. Most of them came back steaming, which meant these tyros were riding too hard on their thrusters. As she cornered around the tail of one of the jets, a Second Year placed a hose in her hands. Ia stared at it, shocked.
That little scuzz expected her to wash the grime off this ship.
Grumbling, she clicked off her eye mod. She was the Sovereign of Dead Space, not a maid. Yet sadly, this tiresome task would be the most interesting part of her week. She twisted the hose on and pointed the water at the burned layer of debris gunked up under one of the wings.
It took her two hours to get the training jet spotless. No one helped her. Everyone else worked in teams, steering clear of her. Even the Second Year who was maintaining the engines of that same starjet kept his distance. By the time Ia was done, everyone had completed their duties and headed back to their quarters, leaving her in the sole company of her guards.
Suddenly, there was movement as starjets shifted on the hanging system above, rotating around the track in unison. The jets were in a different class than the training jet she had spent most of her evening polishing. No matter how much she scrubbed at the frame, it was still an ugly, clunky thing. The jets above looked dangerous, especially one particular white model, long and sharp as a blade. She watched as it lowered to the tarmac a couple meters away. It was a 504 Kaiken jet, with red and orange racing stripes still painted on the sides.
What was a racer doing here?
Ia glanced back at Geoff and Aaron, who were leaning up against the wall, immersed in a heated discussion on the correct way to clean their charge pistols. They wouldn’t notice if she took a closer look. She crept around a line of parked training jets. And there it was, right in front of her.
She reached up, running her fingers along the smooth metal. It was in pristine condition. Whoever owned this jet took good care of it.
“What are you doing here?”
Ia turned and saw Knives. She had been wondering when they’d bump into each other. Every time she saw him, she looked him over from head to toe, wondering where he kept the silver heart tracker that day.
But the heart tracker wasn’t the only reason she remained firm in her place. He would be useful in other ways. Tonguing the biometal node at the top of her mouth, she turned on her vocal synthesizer. Yet another toy in her bag of tricks that the academy had failed to confiscate from her. A short chat with him would secure several sample sets of phonetic syllables and generate an identical match. She’d be able to literally use his voice.
“Need a hand?”
He ignored her, sifting through the drawers of the standing toolbox.
A little bit of flirtation wouldn’t hurt, and it wasn’t like she’d mean it anyway. She just needed to get him to talk. Confidently, she angled her head so that she could catch his gaze.
But then his ice-blue eyes flicked up at her, bright like starlight, and her heart swayed. Perhaps the wiring they put insider her was acting up, she thought, entirely dismissing that uneven, fuzzy feeling that had left her speechless.
Knives stared at Ia, then rolled his eyes. “What’s the catch?”
She shook herself out of her daze and placed one hand on her hip. “I like your ride. That’s all.” She patted the undercarriage of the jet. “You don’t see them very often.”
“You know about this model?” he asked.
She nodded. “Only that Vars Ferrini flew this exact racer to win the Allmetal Cup two years in a row.”
Knives snorted and turned away. But Ia could tell he was impressed.
“Go get the fuel pods,” he said finally.
“If I help out,” she said, standing firmly before him, “let me sit inside.”
There were two reasons why she wanted to scope out the Kaiken’s cockpit. It could be a great escape vehicle later on, and also just to check it out, to sit in wonder at how spectacular this piece of machinery was.
Knives stared at the Kaiken, considering.
Ia held her right hand across her heart and pledged. “I’ll be on my best behavior. Look, my guards are right there, watching me like hawks.”
Off to the side, Aaron tapped his two fingers to his temple in salute, acknowledging that he had heard every word she had said.
“Fine,” Knives grunted.
Ia smiled. “How many do you need?” she asked, moving toward the fuel shelves.
“Six.”
Before Knives could even grab his tools, Ia had returned with a cart of fuel pods behind her and a pair of pliers held out in offering.
With another grunt, he grabbed the pliers and started switching out his old spark plugs for new ones. Ia opened the fuel latch near the tail of his jet.
Knives hovered in her periphery, studying every move she made. “You better not be sabotaging me.”
“There are better ways to sabotage a person than to mess with their fuel.” She held up a screw in her fingers. “For instance, I could run this over your window and weaken the glass enough to shatter at takeoff. You’d die instantly.”
“You can kill me,” he said, snatching the metal screw from her, “but leave the jet out of it. I’m still paying this thing off.”
Chuckling, she heaved the last of the pods into the charge receptor. “Six fuel pods, huh? Where are you heading?”
She was fishing for information, and he seemed to know. His eyes narrowed.
“I’m your instructor. I don’t have to answer you.”
She glared at him. “Those ranks don’t mean anything up in the All Black. One day, you’ll see.”
“You can say that if you ever get to fly again.”
Ia winced, suddenly furious by his jabbing tone. He was right, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear it. “Are we done here?” She took her gloves off, ready to leave.
She walked back to her guards, balling her hands into fists. As long as she was here, she would never be able to go up in the All Black again, much less sit behind the wheel of another jet.
“Wait.” Knives’s voice echoed throughout the flight deck. “I thought you wanted to see inside.”
She stopped and glared at him over her shoulder.
He pulled down the ladder to the cockpit and looked at her. There was something apologetic in his expression that chipped away at her anger.
She stormed up to him. “You better not be miffing with me.”
Knives shook his head, then produced a pair of cuffs. “I’m not. But you have to wear these.”
She gave him the side-eye, and then finally held out her arms. Being cuffed would be worth it to see the inside of this jet. All she needed were her eyes anyway, to get a glimpse of the panels and displays in order to know how to use the Kaiken for her escape if she had to.
After Knives bound her wrists together, she was instructed to sit in the front pilot seat of the narrow cockpit. Knives sat directly behind her, in the copilot chair—which was boosted to see outside and at the same time gave him a full view of everything she was doing. It would be hard to access any information from his logs or MOS or to even snoop through his side compartments to see if there was anything silver and egg-shaped inside.
The cabin was surprisingly clean. Even the windows were free of smudgy fingerprints. Not at all like her jet. She didn’t go out of her way to keep her own ship, Orca, in mint condition. She’d rarely had time to get to a proper landing site to clean up any debris, so Orca’s wings were always scorched and coated with a layer of burn-off. And the inside was the same. Dirty. She loved eating while flying, her cockpit permanently littered with old food wrappers.
But in this Kaiken, there was no trash in sight. Not even a piece of crumpled foil hidden underneath the seat.
She tapped at the meters and gauges on the console, wishing they would come to life. But the levels lay dormant like large, beastly Majak
ian PakBears in winter.
Knives shifted in the seat behind her, the synthetic leather of his chair squeaking underneath his weight.
“So, what do you think of her?” He leaned over Ia’s shoulder, reaching across to tap at the gyroscopic meter that helped orient the ship’s axis. “This model is ten years old. I was thinking of going completely holo and updating the monitoring onboard that runs everything.”
Ia rolled her eyes. “You Bugs are too spoiled. This jet will fly just fine without a fancy new operating system.”
“But with a heftier processor, it’ll be a cinch figuring out when to modulate my engines.”
She groaned and turned to look him straight in the eye. “How long have you had this Kaiken?”
“Almost a year.”
“Then you should know by now how your engine responds and how to milk it for all it’s worth. Of course, knowing you, you probably spend more time in your simulators instead of your actual jet.”
He was silent.
“Please tell me I’m wrong.”
“The cadets can’t train themselves.”
Ia pitied him. He was a skilled pilot, but he was stuck running artificial flight environments instead of being up in the sky. She remembered the rumors she’d heard, that Knives had turned down leading a colonization campaign right after graduation. Something must have happened that changed his mind. Perhaps he was just lazy, she tried to convince herself, but every time she looked at him, there was some emptiness chipped into the blue of his eyes, a missing piece.
She glanced over her shoulder. “I’ve never flown a Kaiken, but I bet I could figure out the best time to sequence your propulsion just by listening to the engine.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She chuckled, wishing she could show off right now. “Well, I guess you’ll never find out.”
“Unlock the front and back wheels,” Knives spoke. The MOS beeped and whirred at the sound of his voice. She felt the jet lurch forward as the lock pads released all at once.