Boarding pods bloomed along the sides of the transport, and Marika’s lone Lightning screamed down the line. “They’re slavers, Control — they’re using pods. I count twelve…that should be the bunch,” she reported, flicking the yoke back and firing thrusters to slow her ship’s careen and start it back, in the direction it now faced.
She ignored the pods for the moment, slow, short range globes meant only to carry boarding parties and burn new ports through the thick skin of an interplanetary. She peeled away from them and headed straight for the corsair, touching the thrusters at the last minute so that her broad, wing-shaped Lightning came within a yard of the pitted hull of the pirate craft. “That should set every prox alarm in the bridge blazing and squawking…and of course there’s no one there but some old coot, with all the able bodies mustered to capture the crew and tote the sleeping tubes.” She muttered to herself, as she reached the stern of the ship and did another rapid turn, swooping along the lower hull. “Let’s ruin his day some more.” Her forward guns blazed, and the bulbous comm array shattered. She cleared the looming hull and the liner stretched out ahead of her, twelve pods of savage pirates, cut off from their vessel, glistening ripe in the chilly starlight. Her hatch sprang open.
Light flooded in, and the screens of her cockpit were suddenly too faded to see. “M’rika!” called a familiar voice, as she aborted the session with a slightly surly slap of the controls.
“Yes, Temo,” she answered, unfastening herself from the pilot’s seat.
“You do realize that there’s no class tomorrow?”
“Yup.” She reached for the hatch-rungs and pulled herself out into the bright reality of the training center.
“And that there are no training tests for the next month?” the tall, brown-haired boy outside continued.
“Very much aware.”
“And that we have a rare FOUR day holiday? And that even WERE you to squander this golden time on Academy work, you’d be best advised to work on the essay for Laws and Statutes that I happen to know you haven’t even begun?”
“Affirmative on both counts, Cadet Temo,” she said, a rueful smile growing in spite of her.
“And for that matter,” he continued inexorably, “that monkats are not approved cargo for Fed fightercraft?” Pakriti yowled dismissively as he scrabbled up out of the hatch. Temo slid down the ladder from the simulator hatch. “Devotion to your studies is one thing, queen of my heart, but you’re cold-cracked, you are.” He punched at the console at the foot of the simulator. “Pirate Encounter 37A…I didn’t even know there were 37 pirate encounters. Whereas I’m sure YOU don’t know that there are no fewer than 43 dance clubs in the greater Iatrom area, 9 of which are within a free-zone radius of the Academy. Why is this great knowledge not yours? Because you lock yourself in simulator rooms on free nights. You’re a squadron leader, Mri-mri, not a postulant priestess.”
“And my status as squadron leader (of this purely theoretical squadron, I might add) means I should spend less time in sim?”
“No, it means when the rest of us are currently in billet getting pretty for a night out, you should be there. Bonding.”
“Much as I hate to admit it, motormouth, you have a point. Of course, it can’t hurt your festive enthusiasm that after a month of sims for me and reckless debauchery for you, you’d still outfly me….”
“But I have no application, no focus, no strategy, no gravitas and no air of command — to quote the latest cadet-reports liberated by our fair Lisiam — which is why I am only a lowly wingman.”
“Lisiam has been rooting about in the staff files again? Temo….you promised me you’d watch her.”
“And I did, every moment. It was most educational, both on the general topic of computer penetration and on the specific matter of our squadron’s reports and status.”
Marika froze and faced her friend, smug and dashing in deep blue civvies. They stood in a glass-walled skybridge between the training and housing nodes, and the night lights of Iatrom were beginning to shine out in the settling twilight. “You saw our squadron status?”
“Indeed I did. Might even remember it, if I strained my brain.”
“Strain it, hotshot.”
“For a kiss?” Temo’s dark eyes danced, but Marika’s raised eyebrow quelled him. “Okay, okay. We’re two points away from flight status.”
“Fiery rings of Heti!” Marika shrieked, and did an impromptu victory dance that defeated Temo’s nonexistant dignity and left him crumpled in laughter. “Hey, wait a second! How long have you known about this, Temo Makasakrites?”
“About an hour. I thought it could wait until we were equipped to toast it properly!”
Marika gave Temo a mock-glower, but it cracked under the combined strain of her own glee and his antic cowering. “C’mon, flirt, let’s go investigate these ‘dance clubs’ of which you speak.”
They raced back to their squadron’s billet, marked with a graceful bird. They had been classmates for five years, a squad for three. Officially, they were the Heron Squadron. Unofficially, they were called ‘The Unpronouncables’. They were Marika Stjärnasdotter, Squad Leader; Temo Makasakrites, wingman/scout; Lisiam Leshaque-Tirnajjes, Control officer; Ferra Natalañosiberos, Control pilot; Gwynhwyfar Dewie, wingman; Tesanee Pichaeronarongsongkram, wingman/scout, and Augustin Kalimanczhel, wingman. For all that, it was merely Lisi, Ferra, Gwen, Pin and Aggie who ambushed their beloved Marika as she pushed the heron-marked door aside and made her way into their cramped but cozy quarters.
Lisi had not only dug up the classified squadron report, but tricked a printer into printing it, and she waved it like a flag…. Ferra threw confetti, Gwen was playing a bombastic rendition of the Federated’s Anthem on the tiny keyboard in the corner, Aggie was pushing an improvised crown onto her head, and Pin, already stunning herself in glistening red that looked as if it had been lacquered onto her, had assembled a gorgeous and rather flashy outfit from the ‘glad rags’ each female cadet had offered as around Marika’s size.
And so, wisely dropping the damning printout in the disint, they swept their newly togged leader out into the hallway, the lobby, and then the sparkling night of Iatrom, alive with sound and celebration as if it too knew their news. They reveled all night, Temo doing seductive dances until they all screamed with laughter, even Gwen, who usually blushed too hard to laugh when Temo began his antics. She danced; Pin danced, to the delight of many an Iatrom youth; they all danced, even Marika, whose body had too long been an instrument only of sparring and war. It was a golden night, combining all the heady liberty of youth with the pride and assurance of accomplished adulthood, and it shone in Marika’s memory.
It still shone so brightly a year later that, with the Lightnings nestled into the belly of the Control ship and all systems go for their first patrol, when she tried to summon the memory of her father, of the pirates, the Jewel of Hades, the bodies wafting into space; all Marika could see was her friends, coruscating in the clubs of Iatrom Central, all hopeful eyes and flashing smiles… and as the Heron Squadron flew together into the stars, Marika smiled.
