“Wen?” I ask again, after a few minutes have passed. The gravity is bleeding away beneath us, and Delos’s landscape blurs together at the edge of the cockpit windows.
“Yeah?”
“You ever flown in zero-g before?”
There’s a too-long pause. Her lack of an answer is all the answer I need. I scan the dashboard on the copilot’s side for something—anything—that will save our skins the second this goes sideways, but all I have is guns filled with blanks.
I let out a long, resigned sigh. Even though anxiety hums at the base of my skull, I know there’s little I can do to stop her. “Well, no time to learn like the present.”
“That’s the spirit,” Wen mutters, and spurs the Cygnet until we see stars. The rush of air fades away, first to a whisper and finally to the silence of the void. Wen spins down the main engines—they’re no longer needed with no drag to tear us back. As our acceleration fades, we drift out of our seats against the harnesses. I sneak a sidelong glance at Wen. An unfettered grin has overtaken her lips, one I know all too well. You never forget your first time in orbit. For a moment I’m back above Rana, the lone still point in a shuttle packed with cadets quite literally bouncing off the walls, unsure how to handle the fact that for the first time in my life, my birth planet’s gravity is no longer dragging me back down.
“Okay,” I say, once I’ve given her mind enough time to process the emotion and her body enough time to get its bearings. My eyes stay fixed on the navigation in case any other traffic starts to brush up against our flight path. We’re out over an open area, clear of any cities and too close to the planet to be a bother to any of the orbiting satellites. “Now, adjust our vector fifteen degrees to the right.”
Wen punches the attitude thrusters on the left side of the ship. Our nose tilts against the black, but our vector stays the same, sailing us crooked along it. Wen frowns.
“Engines,” I remind her, forcing my voice to remain steady. With no gravity to tug us in one direction, the ship only goes where pushed. The attitude thrusters have the force needed to rotate a craft, but to change its vector, we need a contribution from the Cygnet’s actual firing power.
Wen gives the main engines a boost, and our course skids sideways. I watch our vector on the readout, but I don’t dare urge her to go any faster. Caution trumps speed when a new pilot’s testing the vacuum for the first time.
“How was that?” Wen asks the moment we’ve locked onto the target vector.
“Could be better. Use the gyros to point us, not the attitude thrusters. It’s more precise.”
Her lips purse, and she falters on the controls, probing the gyro stick like she’s not sure what to do with it.
“Gently—” I warn, but it’s too late.
Wen spins the Cygnet like a top, the forces jamming me back in my seat before I have a chance to rip her hand off the stick. The last thing I see is her fingers flailing, scrabbling, trying to claw their way back across the dashboard as the force of our spin throws her into the side of her harness. Then my vision goes dark.
My head smashes sideways, my helmet digging into my cheek as my jaw does its best to make contact with my gel-seat. I fight with everything I have, arms straining, fingers reaching, fumbling over the unfamiliar controls on my side of the craft.
You’ve endured worse in your academy training, my mind screams. Remember the centrifuge? Remember the stress tests? My body screams back that all of my blood is pooling in all the wrong places.
I find the weapons panel. The ship’s loaded with blanks, no actual firing power in any of our guns, but maybe blanks are enough. Blanks will have to be enough, because I’m starting to feel like I could take a nap. I root through what’s left of my brain until I get the calculation right. Spinning one way. Fire the other. Slow the ship.
I run my hand over the ridges that distinguish each knob. The bones of my fingers feel like they’re about to shatter. I find the button—I hope it’s the right one. Either it makes our situation better, or it makes it a whole lot worse.
Only one way to find out.
I jam down. If we had bolts enabled, I’d be depleting our entire arsenal, firing a whirling barrage of death into the void. I hear the guns behind, beneath, chugging their emptiness into the black. Each blank sends a shudder through the ship, and each shudder skims away some of our speed like a hand brushing against a spinning wheel. I choke out a breath as my lungs finally find the strength to expand, then lean forward against my harness until my fingers brush the gyro controls on Wen’s side of the ship. I spin them counter to our rotation with a twitch of my hand, breathing a long sigh of relief as the spots fade from my vision. With a few long burns of the attitude thrusters, I scale the Cygnet’s vector back to a point.
Wen’s slumped in the pilot’s seat, unmoving. Her arms drift in front of her in a dead man’s float. Panic snaps through me, and I jam my fingers under her chin, digging for a pulse in the soft flesh next to her trachea. Her head rolls, but a weak, slow beat rises through her skin.
I sag back in my own gel-seat, closing my eyes.
At the academy, our introduction to flight in a vacuum was gradual. We worked in simulators aboard a training station—nasty, finicky, slow-moving things, but they had safety measures imposed that kept us from centrifuging ourselves into cadet-sized puddles. Even when we graduated to an actual cockpit, we spent days watching a skilled pilot fly before we were allowed to touch the controls.
I neglected that, caught up in the thrill of seeing Wen fly, and it almost got both of us killed.
Gal and I have spent the past two weeks consumed by the fear that we’ll be caught and executed, and somehow an untested pilot in zero-g nearly took me out instead. I realize with a jolt that I never actually said anything to Gal this morning. Never said goodbye—I’m not even sure if he knew we were going on our flight today. He’s been waking up each morning already consumed by thoughts of war and treachery, and he collapses into bed—my bed, still—each night thoroughly worn out by them.
If Wen had killed us with her spinout, Gal would have been left all alone in the midst of his enemies. I would have abandoned him to face Maxo Iral, the man he’s feared since childhood, for a chance to blow off some steam in the cockpit of a fast ship. I’ve never vomited in zero-g before, but a tickle of nausea climbs up my throat at the thought of Gal alone on the base.
I think I owe him an apology. Maybe a thousand apologies.
I remember Wen’s question. Whose side are you on? I remember how the answer wasn’t him, and my nausea doubles fiercely. Gal told me on that rooftop back in Isla that he didn’t want to be the terms I lived my life on. Now I think that fear’s farthest from his mind—not just because he’s preoccupied with our gambit but because I’ve been letting him slip away so easily. My eyes burn, and heat flushes my cheeks. With no gravity to pull it, the water floats in my vision, blurring the controls in front of me.