that moment. None of these people seemed to know who I was. They hadn’t grown up near my neighborhood; they hadn’t gone to class with me. They might have heard of my father, but they didn’t know me from any other cadet.
Here, I wasn’t the rat girl or the daughter of a coward.
Here I was free.
The door chose that moment to open, and our instructor—Mongrel—stopped in the doorway, holding a steaming mug of coffee in one hand, a clipboard in the other. In the light, I recognized him from the pictures of the First Citizens, though his hair was greyer, and that mustache made him appear much older.
We must have looked like quite the menagerie. I was still standing on the seat of my mockpit, looming over Jerkface. Several of the others had been snickering at our exchange, while Kimmalyn was again trying to execute a salute.
Mongrel glanced at the clock, which had just hit seven hundred hours. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything intimate.”
“Uh . . .,” I said. I jumped off my seat and tried a little laugh.
“That wasn’t a joke!” Mongrel barked. “I don’t joke! Line up by the far wall, all of you!”
We scrambled to obey. As we lined up, Jerkface pulled off a precise salute, and he held it, at perfect attention.
Mongrel glanced at him and said, “Don’t be a suck-up, son. This isn’t basic training, and you aren’t grunts from the ground corps.”
Jerkface’s expression fell and he lowered his arm, then snapped to attention anyway. “Um, sorry, sir!”
Mongrel rolled his eyes. “My name is Captain Cobb. My call-sign is Mongrel, but you will call me Cobb—or sir, if you must.” He trailed along the line, his limp prominent, taking a sip of his coffee. “The rules of this classroom are simple. I teach. You learn. Anything that interferes with that is likely to get one of you killed.” He paused near where I stood by Jerkface. “That includes flirting.”
I felt my face go cold. “Sir! I wasn’t—”
“It also includes talking back to me! You’re in flight school now, stars help you. Four months of training. If you make it to the end without being kicked out or shot down, then you pass. That’s it. There are no tests. There are no grades. Just you in a cockpit, convincing me you deserve to remain there. I am the only authority that matters to you now.”
He waited, watching to see how we responded. And wisely, none of us said anything.
“Most of you won’t make it,” he continued. “Four months may not seem like long, but it will feel like an eternity. Some of you will drop out under the stress, and the Krell will kill some others. Usually, a flight of ten ends up with one cadet graduating to full pilot, maybe two.” He stopped at the end of the line, where Kimmalyn stood biting her lip.
“This bunch though . . .,” Cobb added, “I’ll be surprised if any of you make it.” He limped away from us, setting his coffee on a small desk at the front of the room, then riffling through the papers on his clipboard. “Which of you is Jorgen Weight?”
“Me, sir!” Jerkface said, standing up straighter.
“Great. You’re flightleader.”
I gasped.
Cobb eyed me, but said nothing. “Jorgen, you’ll need two assistant flightleaders. I’ll want the names by the end of the day.”
“I can give you those now, sir,” he said, pointing to his two cronies—a shorter boy and a taller one. “Arturo and Nedd.”
Cobb marked something on his clipboard. “Great. Everyone, pick a seat. We’re going to—”
“Wait,” I said. “That’s it? That’s how you choose our flight-leader? You’re not even going to see how we do first?”
“Pick a seat, cadets,” Cobb repeated, ignoring me.
“But—” I said.
“Except Cadet Spensa,” he said, “who will instead meet me in the hallway.”
I bit my tongue and stomped out into the hallway. I probably should have contained my frustration, but . . . really? He immediately picked Jerkface? Just like that?
Cobb followed me, then calmly shut the door. I prepared an outburst, but he spun on me and hissed, “Are you trying to ruin this, Spensa?”
I choked off my retort, shocked by his sudden anger.
“Do you know how far I had to stick my neck out to get you into this class?” he continued. “I argued that you sat in the room for hours, that you finished a damn near perfect test. It still took every bit of clout and reputation I’ve earned over the years to pull