I wanted to rage. I wanted to hit someone, break something, scream until my lungs bled.

Instead I strode from the room, away from the laughing eyes of the other students.

3

I sought refuge in the silent caverns. I didn’t dare go back to my mother and grandmother. My mother would undoubtedly be happy—she’d lost a husband to the Krell, and dreaded seeing me suffer the same fate. Gran-Gran… she would tell me to fight.

But fight what? The military itself didn’t want me.

I felt like a fool. All this time, telling myself I’d become a pilot, and in truth I’d never had a chance. My teachers must have spent these years laughing at me behind their hands.

I walked through an unfamiliar cavern on the outer edge of what I’d explored, hours from Igneous. And still the feelings of embarrassment and anger shadowed me.

What an idiot I had been.

I reached the edge of a subterranean cliff and knelt, activating my father’s light-line by tapping two fingers against my palm—an action the bracelet could sense. It glowed more brightly. Gran-Gran said we’d brought these with us to Detritus, that they were pieces of equipment used by the explorers and warriors of the old human space fleet. I wasn’t supposed to have one, but everyone thought it had been destroyed when my father crashed.

I placed my wrist against the stone of the cliff, and tapped my fingers on my palm once more. This command made an energy line stick to the rock, connecting my bracelet to the stone.

A three-finger tap let out more slack. Using that, I could climb over the ledge—rope in hand—and lower myself to the bottom. After I landed, a two-finger tap made the rope let go of the rock above, then snap back into the bracelet housing. I didn’t know how it worked, only that I needed to recharge it every month or two, something I did in secret by plugging it into power lines in the caverns.

I crept into a cavern filled with kurdi mushrooms. They tasted foul, but were edible—and rats loved them. This would be prime hunting ground. So I turned off my light and settled down to wait, listening intently.

I had never feared the darkness. It reminded me of the exercise Gran-Gran taught, where I floated up toward the singing stars. You couldn’t fear the dark if you were a fighter. And I was a fighter.

I was… I was going to… going to be a pilot…

I looked upward, trying to push away those feelings of loss. Instead, I was soaring. Toward the stars. And I again thought that I could hear something calling to me—a sound like a distant flute.

A nearby scraping pulled me back. Rat nails on stone. I raised my speargun, familiar motions guiding me, and engaged a smidgen of light from my light-line.

The rat turned in a panic toward me. My finger trembled on the trigger, but I didn’t fire as it scrambled away. What did it matter? Was I really going to go on with my life like nothing had happened?