Page 12 of Defiant

Jorgen continued. “Winzik’s problem is that he’s ruling a vast empire. He’s stretched thin, and has anenormousfront to protect.”

“We’ll want to raid this information nexus quickly,” I said. “Then get out. Try to cover up what we were after to keep him in the dark.”

“Then as soon as possible,” Itchika said, “we destroy the gateways they’re using to get into the nowhere. Cutting them off from acclivity stone completely.”

The group nodded. There would be fine details to plan, but I knew it would soon be time to get back in the cockpit. This time to do some fighting.

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5

I hauled myself up the ladder to Skyward Six, a Poco-class starfighter, like I’d trained on in flight school. After days of planning, the time was right.

Today we were going to raid the Superiority information nexus, to get the locations of the mining stations. I forced my nerves into line. It was my first mission back with my team, but it shouldn’t be a difficult one. Just a quick bash and grab. I could do that. No problem.

I settled into the cockpit. It should have felt familiar, welcoming—but it was a tad larger than the cockpit of the ship I’d flown in the nowhere. Though the control schemes were similar, I kept finding myself reaching for things and missing by a few centimeters.

Down below, Sadie—the new girl—laughed and joked with Nedd as they split toward their separate ships. I was accustomed to her being timid and uncertain, but now she laughed with a boisterous confidence.

The way Nedd joked with her had a twisted kind of familiarity. I’d been on the other end of those jokes so many times. Now it was someone else. I couldn’t help feeling replaced. By Sadie, or by Alanik—who had joined Skyward Flight in my absence. She chattedwith Arturo as ground crews finished up with their ships. There was an irony there—the woman I’d imitated now seemed more comfortable with my friends than I did.

I kept expecting Jorgen to board his ship and start giving us orders. But the admiral of the fleet couldn’t be spared to fly missions.

Everything was different. That didn’t make itwrong,but I couldn’t help feeling it was another sign. A portent.

I settled down into my cockpit, and found that the ship had been outfitted with a…well, a slug holster. Almost all the ships flew with a hyperslug now; it was an incredible advantage in space battles to be able to teleport. Not just offensively either. The slugs were also a last-ditch “eject button.” As a ship was falling to destructor fire, the slug could grab the pilot and teleport to safety.

So the cockpits had been modified with slings, on the left side underneath where the canopy closed. A sling was best for helping the slug withstand g-forces, and while by design there wasn’t a lot of room inside a cockpit, that location tended to besomewhatout of the way.

I put Doomslug in the sling and gave her a good scritch on the head. She fluted at me consolingly, sensing my mood. To distract myself, I went through the preflight checklist, just as Cobb had taught me. We trusted the ground crews with our lives, and it was rare that I’d catch something they didn’t—but a pilot has to take charge of her ship and her equipment. Looking over everything again wasn’t about distrust. It was about responsibility.

My hands knew what to do—I’d drilled on these checks so many times, I was pretty sure if you handed my corpse a control sphere, it would twist the mechanism to determine the calibration. That, unfortunately, meant that I could think while I worked. The sense of not fitting in, of having lost everything, returned. I—

“Are you moping?” a voice asked from my right. “In the cockpit of astarship.Never thought I’d see the day.”

I jumped, turning to find that someone had climbed the short ladder beside my ship and was peeking in. Kimmalyn had pulled her black hair into a long ponytail to prepare for flying. She folded her arms on the edge of the cockpit, inspecting me with deep brown eyes.

“Spensa Nightshade, sad?” she said. “In a starfighter?”

“I’m not sad,” I said, checking the booster controls.

“You’re moping,” Kimmalyn said again. “The Saint said that the best moping must be done alone.”

“She did, did she?”

“Indeed.”

“So…”

“So I must never leave someone alone to mope,” Kimmalyn said, “as Ineverwant a person to experience the best kind of moping. It’s also the worst kind, you see.”

She leaned down, head on her arms, watching me.

“Shouldn’t you be checking in with your wingmate?” I asked.

“Yup.” She didn’t move.

“That’s Sadie, I understand.”

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