a boulder. I set my jaw, then forced myself to climb into the cockpit and pull Hurl’s pin off her bloodied flight suit. The least we could do was return that to her family.
I looked at Hurl’s lacerated face, her one remaining eye staring ahead. Defiant until the end, for all the good it had done. Brave . . . cowardly . . . she was still dead, so what did it matter?
Feeling like a terrible friend for those thoughts, I closed her eye, then climbed out and wiped my hands on my jumpsuit.
Jorgen nodded toward the car. “I’ve got the things for the pyre in the trunk.”
I let myself down with my light-line, and he followed. In the trunk of the vehicle, we found some oil and a bundle of wood, which surprised me. I’d been expecting coal. He really was rich if he had this on hand. We climbed back to the ship, then pulled the bundle up after us with my light-line.
We started packing the wood into the cockpit, piece by piece. “This is how our ancestors used to do it,” Jorgen said as he worked. “Burn the ship, out on the ocean.”
I nodded, wondering how little he thought of my education, if he assumed I didn’t know that. Neither of us had ever seen an ocean, of course. Detritus didn’t have them.
I poured oil onto the wood and the body, then stepped back, and Jorgen handed me the lighter. I lit a small stick, then tossed it into the canopy.
The sudden intensity of the flames took me by surprise, and sweat prickled my brow. The two of us retreated farther, and eventually climbed onto one of the higher boulders.
By tradition, we saluted the flames. “Return to the stars,” Jorgen said—the officer’s part. “Sail them well, warrior.”
It wasn’t the whole elegy, but it was enough. We settled down on the rocks, to watch—by tradition—until the fire went out. I rubbed Hurl’s pin, bringing back the gleam.
“I’m not defiant,” Jorgen said.
“What? I thought you grew up in the deep caverns.”
“I mean, I’m Defiant—I’m from the Defiant caverns. But I don’t feel defiant. I don’t know how to be like you. And Hurl. Since I was little, everything has been scheduled for me. How am I supposed to follow the grand speeches—defying the Krell, defying our doom—when everything I do has seven rules attached to it?”
“At least it got you flight lessons and free entry into the DDF. At least you can fly.”
He shrugged. “Six months.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s how long I get after graduation, Spin. They put me in Cobb’s class because it’s supposed to be the safest for cadets—and once I graduate, I’m to fly for six months. At that point, I’ll have enough of a record as a pilot to be respected by my peers, so my family will pull me out.”
“They can do that?”
“Yeah. They’ll probably make it look like a family emergency—a need for me to step into my government position sooner than anticipated. The rest of my life will be spent in meetings, interfacing on behalf of my father with the DDF.”
“Will you . . . ever get to fly?”
“I suppose I could go up for fun. But how could it compare to flying a real starfighter in battle? How could I go out for joyrides—a few calculated and protected moments—when I’ve had something so much greater?” He glanced up at the sky. “My father always worried that I liked flying too much. To be honest, during my practices—before I started official training—I thought a pair of wings might let me escape his legacy. But I’m not defiant. I’ll do what’s expected of me.”
“Huh,” I said softly.
“What?”
“Nobody calls your father a coward. Yet . . . you do still live in his shadow.” Somehow, Jorgen was trapped as soundly as I was. All his merits couldn’t buy him freedom.
Together we watched the embers of the pyre die as the sky grew darker, the ancient skylights dimming. We shared a few thoughts of Hurl—though we had both missed out on her nightly dinnertime antics, and had only heard of them secondhand.
“She was like me,” I finally said as the fire grew cold and the hour late. “More me than I am, these days.”
Jorgen didn’t press me on that. He just nodded, and by this light—a few embers of the fire reflecting in his eyes—his face didn’t seem quite as punchable as it always had before. Maybe because I could read the emotions behind that mask of