“But it’s a lie. Isn’t it?” I looked to him again, and he gave the faintest, almost imperceptible nod.

My entire world lit up. I should have been angry. I should have been furious at Cobb for pulling the trigger. Instead, I was elated.

My father hadn’t run. My father wasn’t a coward.

“But why?” I asked. “What’s to be gained by pretending one of your pilots fled?”

“Go,” Cobb said, pointing. “That’s an order, cadet.”

“This is why Ironsides doesn’t want me in the DDF,” I realized. “She knows I’ll ask questions. Because… Scud, she was your flightleader, wasn’t she? The one who gave the order to shoot my father down? The name was redacted in the reports, but she’s the only one who fits…”

I looked back at Cobb, and his face was growing red with anger. Or maybe embarrassment. He’d just given me a secret, an important one, and… well, he looked like he was having second thoughts. I wasn’t going to get any more out of him right now.

I grabbed my pack and hurried out. My heart was broken for the friends I’d lost, and now I’d have to deal with the fact that my instructor was also my father’s killer.

But for now… well, I felt like a soldier planting her flag at the top of a hard-fought hill. All these years I’d dreamed, and studied, and trusted that my father had actually been a hero.

And I’d been right.

22

“What reason,” Rig asked as we worked together, “could the DDF possibly have to pretend your father was a coward?”

“I can think of dozens of scenarios,” I said, lying underneath M-Bot beside him.

Five days had passed since the event. Since we’d lost Bim and Morningtide. Working with Rig off-hours, repairing the ship, had been a welcome solace from my own thoughts—even if it was taxing to get up early like I had today, work on the ship, then go to class and endure Cobb’s instructions all day.

Today, we were unhooking wires from M-Bot’s belly and replacing them with new ones. Some of the old ones seemed good, but Rig figured we should replace them all just in case, and I wasn’t going to argue with his expertise.

I plugged in another wire and threaded it according to the instructions Rig had drawn out earlier. My light-line glowed from within the ship, wound through the innards to give us light, itself like a glowing wire.

“There are literally hundreds of reasons the DDF would lie about my father,” I said as I worked. “Maybe my father was in conflict with Ironsides about leadership, and she decided to make him have an ‘accident.’ ”

“In the middle of the most important battle the DDF had ever flown?” Rig said. “That’s fanciful, even for you, Spin.”

“Fanciful?” I demanded. “Me? I’m a realist, Rig.”

“Realist. Like all the times you made me go pretend to slay stardragons with you as kids.”

“That was battle training.”