the grooves. I’d sat in mock cockpits before at the museum, but never in a real ship.
I reached into my pocket, feeling my father’s pin, which I’d recovered from its hiding place before setting out into the tunnels. I held it up, letting it sparkle in the glow of my bracelet. Was this what my father had felt, this snug sense of rightness when sitting in a cockpit? What would he think if he knew his daughter spent her time hunting rats? That she was here in a dusty cavern, instead of sitting and taking the pilot test?
That she’d folded instead of fighting?
“I didn’t fold!” I said. “I didn’t run!”
Or . . . well, I had. But what else could I have done? I couldn’t fight the entire system. If Admiral Ironsides herself—head of the DDF—didn’t want me in, there was nothing I could do.
Anger flooded me. Frustration, hatred. Hatred at the DDF for how they’d treated my father, anger at my mother and teachers—every adult who had let me keep dreaming when surely they’d all known the truth.
I closed my eyes, and could almost feel the force of the ship’s booster behind me. Could almost sense the pull of g-forces as I took a turn. The scent of crisp, clean air pulled in from the upper atmosphere and pushed into the cockpit.
I wanted to feel it more than anything. But when I opened my eyes, I was back in a dusty old broken-down antique. I would never fly. They’d sent me away.
A voice whispered from the back of my mind.
What if that is the test?
What if . . . what if they wanted to see what I’d do? Scud, what if Mrs. Vmeer had been lying? What if I’d run away for nothing—or worse, what if I’d just proven that I was a coward, like everyone claimed my father had been?
I cursed, checking the clock on my light-line bracelet. Four hours. I had four hours until the test. But I’d spent almost an entire day wandering. There was no way I could make it back to Igneous in time. Could I?
“Claim the stars, Spensa,” I whispered.
I had to try.
5
I exploded into the testing room like a fighter with its booster on full overburn.
I interrupted a tall older woman in a white admiral’s uniform. She had chin-length silvery hair, and she frowned at me as I pulled to a halt in the doorway. Then her eyes immediately went to the clock hanging on the wall.
The second hand ticked one last notch. Eighteen hundred hours on the dot.
I made it. I was a sweaty mess, my jumpsuit ripped and stained with dust from my near encounter with a piece of space debris. But I’d made it.
Nobody said a word in the room, which was located in the government buildings at the center of Igneous—near the elevators to the surface. The room was stuffed with desks; there had to be a hundred kids here. I hadn’t realized there were so many seventeen-year-olds in the Defiant caverns, and these were only the ones who wanted to test for pilot.
At that moment, every single one of them was staring at me.
I kept my chin high and tried to pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the sole open desk I spotted was the one directly in front of the woman with the silver hair.
Did I recognize her? That face . . .
Scud.
That wasn’t just some junior admiral, it was Judy Ivans, “Ironsides” herself. She was a First Citizen and head of the DDF, so I’d seen her face in hundreds of paintings and statues. She was basically the most important person in the world.
I limped a little as I made my way over and sat down in front of her, trying not to show my embarrassment—or my pain. Dashing all this way had involved multiple crazy descents with my light-line through caverns and tunnels. My muscles were protesting the effort, and my right leg seized up with a cramp the moment I sat down.
Wincing, I dropped my pack to the ground by my seat. An aide snatched it and carried it to the side of the room, as you weren’t allowed anything at your desk but a pencil.
I closed my eyes—but then cracked them as I heard a distinct voice whispering nearby, “Oh, thank the homeworld.” Rig? I glanced and spotted him a few rows over. He had probably arrived three hours early, then spent the entire time worrying that I would