added the Weights and Measures to the channel. “Flight Command,” I said, “Flight Fifteen is going to need to run some exercises and learn how to coordinate. Call back the drones and reset their attack vectors. Don’t send them in again until I say we’re ready for it.”
“Pardon?” a voice asked. “Um . . . you’re supposed to try flying into one of those approach tunnels in the—”
“I’m not letting my flight anywhere near your training machine until I’m sure they can fly in formation!” I shouted. “Right now, I’m convinced they’ll mistake their own backsides for the approach tunnels, and end up rammed so far up there we’ll need spelunking gear to get them out!”
Hesho chuckled softly on the line.
“Um . . . ,” Flight Command said. “I guess . . . I guess we can do that?”
The others started flying back, and the drones disengaged. Brade kept flying toward the delver maze though, so I opened a private line to her. “Brade, I’m serious. Vapor made me her XO, and I’m giving you an order. You damn well better get back in line, or I will flay you. I hear people will pay good money for a human skin to hang on their walls.”
With obvious reluctance, Brade disengaged and spun around to boost back toward us.
And . . . had that all really come out of my mouth? I sat back in my seat, my heart thundering inside me as if I’d run a race. I hadn’t specifically intended to say any of that. It had all just kind of . . . happened.
Scud. Cobb would be laughing his head off if he could hear me right now. As the others gathered back together, a private call came to me from Vapor.
“Well done,” she said. “But perhaps a tad aggressive for this group. Where did you learn to talk like that?”
“I . . . um, had an interesting flight instructor back home.”
“Tone it down,” Vapor suggested. “But I agree with you—we should do some more training before we fight. Organize them to do so.”
“You’re really going to make me do the hard part, aren’t you?” I said.
“A good commander knows when to appoint a good drill instructor. You’ve been in the military before. You obviously know this.”
I sighed, but she was right, and I’d walked right into the job. As the flight gathered together, I explained one of Cobb’s old formation exercises, one he’d adapted for space fighting once we’d started training out in the vacuum. Vapor quietly joined the line, and soon I had them flying pretty much in an organized way. As much as I hated being put in charge, I could run these exercises practically in my sleep, so I was good at watching the others and giving them tips.
They soon got the hang of it. Much faster than Skyward Flight had, actually. This group had good piloting instincts; most just didn’t have formal combat training.
Vapor is used to working on her own, I decided as we flew through a shifting exercise where we traded places in formation to confuse an oncoming enemy flight.
Morriumur was timid, but willing to learn. Hesho was accustomed to having people follow his lead, and was often surprised when the rest of us didn’t know instinctively what he wanted to do. He needed to learn better communication.
Brade was the worst. Though she was the best pilot, she kept trying to go on ahead. Far too eager.
“You need to stay with the rest of us,” I said, calling her. “Don’t keep trying to go ahead.”
“I’m a human,” Brade snapped. “We’re aggressive. Deal with it.”
“Just earlier you said you didn’t spend time around humans,” I said, “and therefore didn’t know their habits. You can’t play the ‘I’m not like them’ card, then use your nature as a human as an excuse.”
“I try to hold back,” Brade said, “but deep down I know the truth. I’m going to lose my temper. It’s hopeless to plan for anything else.”
“That’s a load of yesterday’s slop,” I said. “When I started training, I was hopeless. I lost my temper so often, you could have set your clock by my tantrums.”
“Really?” Brade asked.
“Really. I literally assaulted my flightleader in class one day. But I learned. So can you.”
She fell silent, but seemed to be trying harder as we went through another exercise. As the day progressed—and we stopped for lunch in our cockpits—I found myself most impressed by Morriumur. All things considered, their flying ability was remarkable,