“That music the water makes,” she said. “Isn’t it the most wonderful sound ever?”

“The most wonderful sound ever is the lamentations of my enemies, screaming my name toward the heavens with ragged, dying voices.”

The girl looked at me, cocking her head. “Well bless your stars.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s a line from a story.” I stuck out my hand to her. Best to be on good terms with the other cadets. “I’m callsign: Spin.”

“Kimmalyn,” she said, shaking my hand. “Um, we’re supposed to have callsigns already?”

“I’m an overachiever. What room you reporting to?”

“Umm…” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a paper. “C-14? Cadet Flight B.”

“Same as me.”

“Callsign… callsign…,” Kimmalyn murmured. “What should I pick?”

“Killer?” I suggested. “Afterburn? No, that’s probably too confusing. Fleshripper?”

“Couldn’t it be something a little less gruesome?”

“You’re going to be a warrior. You need a warrior’s name.”

“Not everything is about war!”

“Um, it kind of is—and flight school especially is.” I frowned, noting the accent in her voice. “Where are you from? Not Igneous, I guess.”

“Born and raised in Bountiful Cavern!” She leaned in. “We call it that, but nothing really grows there.”

“Bountiful,” I said. It was a cavern somewhat close to Igneous, also part of the Defiant League. “That’s where the clans from the Antioch crew settled, right?” The Antioch had been one of the gunships in the old fleet, before we’d been driven into hiding here on Detritus.

“Yup. My great-grandmother was assistant quartermaster.” She eyed me. “You said your callsign was Spin? Shouldn’t you be something like Lamentation or Eats Enemy Eyeballs?”

I shrugged. “Spin is what my dad used to call me.”

She smiled brightly at that. Scud, they’d let this girl in, but had denied me? What was the DDF trying to do? Put together a knitting club?

We approached the base, a group of tall, stern buildings surrounded by a wall. Right outside it, the farms gave way to an actual orchard. I stopped on the walkway, and found myself gaping again. I’d seen these trees from a distance, but up close they seemed enormous. Almost three meters tall! Before this, the tallest plant I’d seen was a mushroom that reached up to my waist.

“They planted those just after the Battle of Alta,” Kimmalyn said. “It must take brave people to volunteer for service up here so exposed to the air and to Krell attacks.” She looked up at the sky in awe, and I wondered if this was the first time she was seeing it.

We stepped up to a checkpoint in the wall, and I thrust my pin toward the guard there, half expecting rough treatment—like I’d always gotten from Aluko when entering Igneous. However, the bored guard only marked our names off on a list and waved us in. Not much ceremony for my first official entrance into Alta. Well, soon I’d be so famous, the guard at the door would salute me on sight.