“I figured it meant emergency.”

“And what do you do when there’s an emergency? In a fighter? You…”

“Call you,” Nedd said. “And say, ‘Hey Arturo. Where’s the scudding eject lever?’ ”

Arturo sighed. I grinned, looking out my window toward the next ship in formation—I could barely see the girl inside. Morningtide, her tattoo visible even with her helmet on. She glanced away sharply. Not even a smile.

Fine.

“Fly back in,” Cobb said to us. “It’s nearly time for lunch.”

“Fly back in?” Bim complained. “Can’t we just turn off the holograms and go grab some grub?”

“Sure. Turn it off, get something to eat, then keep walking on back to where you came from—because I don’t have time for cadets who refuse to practice their landings.”

“Er, sorry, sir.”

“Don’t waste radio waves with apologies, cadet. Just follow orders.”

“All right, flight,” Jerkface said. “Standard spread, bank to heading 165.”

We obeyed, maneuvering back into a line, and flew toward the virtual version of Alta. “Cobb,” I said, “are we going to practice recovering our ship from an uncontrolled descent?”

“Not this again,” he said. “You’ll very rarely be in such a situation—and so, if you are, I want you trained to yank that eject lever. I don’t want you distracted by some bravado about saving your ship.”

“What if we could have saved it, sir?” Jorgen said. “Shouldn’t a good pilot do everything he or she can in order to protect their acclivity ring? They’re rare enough that tradition states we should—”

“Don’t quote that stupid tradition to me,” Cobb snapped. “We need good pilots as much as we need acclivity rings. If you are in an uncontrolled descent, you eject. You understand me?”

A few of the others gave verbal confirmation. I didn’t. He hadn’t contradicted the most important fact—that if a cadet ejected and scuttled their ship, they would never fly again. Maybe once I became a full pilot I could think about ejecting, but for now I was never pulling that lever.

Having this taken away from me would be basically the same as dying anyway.

We landed, and the holograms shut down. The others started to pile out of the room toward the mess hall for lunch, laughing together about how spectacular FM and Hurl had looked when they exploded. Kimmalyn noticed me hanging back in the room, and tried to stop—but Cobb gently steered her from the room after the others.

“I explained the situation to them,” he said, stopping in the doorway. “The elevators say you didn’t go down to Igneous last night?”

“I… I know of a little cave, about a half hour’s hike outside of town. I figured it would save time to stay there. I’ve spent my life scavenging in the tunnels. I feel more comfortable there.”

“Suit yourself. Did you bring in a lunch today?”

I shook my head.

“Do so from now on. I won’t have you distracted by hunger during training.” Then he left. Soon after, I heard voices in the distance. Laughter, echoing from the mess hall.