Kimmalyn, bless her stars, jumped up and stood at a kind of sloppy attention. His two cronies stepped over and fell into step as well, doing a much better impression of real soldiers. Everyone else just kind of looked at him.

“What gives you the right to order us around?” asked Hudiya, the athletic girl from my own cavern. She stood leaning against the wall, arms folded.

“I want to make a good first impression on the instructor, cadet,” Jerkface said. “Think how inspiring it will be when he comes in to find us all waiting at attention.”

Hudiya snorted. “Inspiring? We’d look like a bunch of suck-ups.”

Jerkface ignored her, instead inspecting his line of three cadets. He shook his head at Kimmalyn, whose version of “attention” involved standing on the tips of her toes and saluting with both hands. It was ridiculous.

“You look ridiculous,” Jerkface said to her.

The girl’s face fell, and she slumped. I felt an immediate burst of protective anger. I mean… he was right, but he didn’t have to belt it out like that.

“Who taught you to stand at attention?” Jerkface asked. “You’re going to embarrass us. I can’t have that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’d be stealing your spot, since embarrassing us is clearly your job, Jerkface.”

He looked me up and down—taking obvious note of the patched state of my pilot’s jumpsuit. It had been one of my father’s, and had required serious modification to fit me.

“Do I know you, cadet?” he asked. “You look familiar.”

“I was sitting in the front row taking the test,” I said, “when you turned in your exam without a single question answered. Maybe you saw me there when you glanced at the rest of the room, to see what people look like when they actually have to work to get things.”

He drew his lips to a line. It seemed I’d touched a nerve. Excellent. First blood.

“I chose not to waste resources,” he said, “making someone grade my test when I had already been offered a slot.”

“One you didn’t earn.”

He glanced at the other cadets in the room, who were watching with interest, then he lowered his voice. “Look. You don’t need to make trouble. Just fall into line, and—”

“Fall into line?” I said. “You’re still trying to give us orders?”

“It’s obvious I’m going to be your flightleader. You might as well get used to doing what I say.”

Arrogant son of a supernova. “Just because you cheated your way into—”

“I didn’t cheat!”

“—just because you bought your way into flight school doesn’t mean you’ll be flightleader. You need to watch yourself. Don’t make an enemy out of me.”

“And if I do?”

Scud, it was annoying to have to look up at him. I leaped onto my seat to gain a height advantage for the argument—an action that seemed to surprise him.

He cocked his head. “What—”

“Always attack from a position of superior advantage!” I said. “When this is done, Jerkface, I will hold your tarnished and melted pin up as my trophy as your smoldering ship marks your pyre, and the final resting place of your crushed and broken corpse!”