Compete (22 page)

“I see.” I pause and exhale, as all kinds of enthusiastic ideas circulate through my head. Suddenly I feel
so much better
about things in general, including my original plan for saving my parents.

No matter how much of a long-shot it is,
there’s hope!
They can survive the Jump!

As I mull over this new information, Anu says to Gennio, “So are you coming with me to pick up You-Know-Who from ICS-1? I need a co-pilot and Baritei is stuck on a shift at Hydroponics.”

I freeze, with my fork halfway to my mouth.

What? No. Way.

This kind of coincidence cannot be real.

“Are you going to fly a shuttle to the flagship?” I say, staring at Anu.

“No, I am going to walk on my knuckles,” he says, rolling his eyes. “
Of course
I’m taking a shuttle. It’s for your own damn Court Protocol Class at 3:00 PM tonight. What’s His Name hates to pilot in the Quantum Stream, so he needs to be ferried across like the Imperator Himself.”

“Who?”

“Consul Suval Denu! Who else? Your exalted Court Protocol Instructor!”

“Oh,” Gennio says with a minor shudder.
“Him.”

I look from one to the other, not liking the sound of this. “Who is he?” I say. “What’s wrong with him?”

Anu makes a snort.

“Oh, nothing’s wrong,” Gennio hurries to say in a placating way. “He is just a little—”

“Oh, you’ll see him soon enough.” Anu makes another even more rude snort and takes a deep swig from the steaming glass of
lvikao
. The delicious pastry aroma from the glass wafts at me.

“So when are you going there?” I ask. “Can I come with you, please?”

Both the aides give me a curious look.

“You want to come on the shuttle?” Gennio says. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. . . . The CP may not expect you to leave this ship—”

“Oh, for crap’s sake, let her come,” Anu says. “It’s not like she has anything important to do besides scribbling. Her Pilot Training Class is at 1:00 and this is going to take no more than half an hour. It’s educational!”

“Are we going now? When are we going?” I straighten in my seat, while my thoughts race. . . .
I need to call Logan immediately and tell him I’m coming.

“As soon as we’re done here. No need to check in at the CCO, I already sent an email to the CP that we’re all coming in an hour late.”

“You did not!” Gennio exclaims, horrified.

“No, of course I didn’t, fat-brain.” Anu puts down his glass. “You are going to go over there and tell him yourself. Make something up, if necessary. Then meet me and Earth girl over at Shuttle Bay Two.”

A
pparently, in addition to the usual non-intrusive general weapons scan everyone gets upon arrival in any shuttle bay, there’s also a mandatory high-security scan before boarding a shuttle for the Imperial flagship. Fifteen minutes later, after being scanned by guards for unauthorized weapons, Anu and I stand on a drafty shuttle bay platform next to a small saucer shuttle, feeling the wind corridor motion of the air in the long concave tube down below the platform, a few steps away.

The shuttle is the exact same personal flyer model I am now used to. It is inert, hovering in a parked position about three feet off the floor of the bay.

Anu stands idly, with crossed hands, as we wait for Gennio to show up. He says nothing and doesn’t even look at me.

Earlier, I managed to excuse myself on account of needing to use the bathroom, and dropped by my cabin where I left a hasty video message for Logan that I’m on my way. And now I’m here, shifting from foot to foot nervously, and hoping that Gennio convinces Command Pilot Aeson Kassiopei that there’s a good reason for this shuttle trip.

A few minutes later, Gennio comes running.

“So?” Anu asks.

“All is fine. We can all go.” Gennio glances at both of us with an expression of relief. “The CP did not even say anything, just told us to be back within the hour.”

“Great!” Anu slaps one hand against his thigh, then immediately turns to the shuttle hatch. He sings a brief sequence in a low baritone and the hatch opens.

We climb up the short ladder and go inside.

I follow them from behind, and pause momentarily as the familiar ivory-cream interior of the rounded hull greets me. Wall panels of slate-grey orichalcum alternating with pale cream with embossed spiral designs circle the chamber. In the center there are six seats in a suspension harness, and a seventh command chair with a hovering control panel before it.

Gennio makes a move toward the command chair, but Anu is there first. Overtaking him, Anu slides into the main pilot chair and says, “No, you co-pilot today. Pull up the secondary console.”

Gennio nods and takes the closest of the six seats next to the command chair.

And then they both look at me.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Anu points me to the other adjacent chair on the other side of him. “Sit down and watch how it’s done!”

I take the seat and glance over at the main control panel that’s hovering before Anu.

“Gwen, engage your safety harness, please,” Gennio says to me from his chair on the other side of Anu.

And then we all buckle in. I pull the belt-level harness together, and as it joins at the buckle, the vertical harnesses descend from all directions, whipping like snakes, which never ceases to startle me.

Gennio hums a soft tenor sequence and one of the panels separates from the walls and levitates toward him, turning its nether side up to reveal a console.

“Wow, neat!” I say.

Anu stares at me. “Now, you do it. Might as well grab a console and help pilot, since you’re here.”

“
What?”
I panic, and my brows rise. “Are you crazy? I don’t know how to do anything yet! I mean, I just had
one class
yesterday—my first ever, where they barely taught us the names of buttons and function keys. We never got to do any flight simulator stuff yet! I don’t even know how to turn this console thing on—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Anu gives me a brief disgusted look. “Just do what we do, there’s nothing to it. Takes about five minutes to figure out—”

“No, Anu,” Gennio interrupts. “She is just learning, you can’t expect her to—”

“Sure I can.” Anu glares at Gennio. “Are you forgetting our own pilot school?”

And then he turns to me. “Listen, Earth girl, when they teach us to pilot back on Atlantis, they just stick us in a shuttle and make us do it—
all in one day
. The Instructor Pilot sits down and shows you, and you try it until you get it right, or you crash and die. None of that fancy flight simulator nonsense. You’re in a damn shuttle, aren’t you? So you’ve got everything you need to learn. Now,
learn
—unless you are an idiot with half a brain or less! Which I’m guessing you are!”

As I listen to Anu’s tirade, I feel my face grow hot with anger. Me, an idiot? What about
him?
What the hell is he thinking?

As I stare in outrage, he makes another sarcastic snort. “Just as I thought. You
are
too stupid to learn like an Atlantean. I have no idea why the CP made you an Aide, unless he just wants a female around the CCO, so he can look at you when you bend over—”

“
Anu!”
Gennio exclaims in a serious voice. “That’s quite enough! You are really out of line! You need to apologize—”

Me? I’m so angry, I am white-knuckled as I clench my fists, and my head is beyond hot. I imagine mashing my fist into Anu’s pasty long face.
I am going to break his face and crack his nose and
. . . .

Instead I take a deep breath. And then I say, fiercely, through my teeth, “Anu Vei, apparently you aren’t afraid to die. Because
I am about to kill us all.
I am going to pilot this shuttle right now. Show me what to do.”

“No, Gwen, please, don’t—” Gennio begins.

But I shake my head. My face is locked in an implacable expression.
“Show me!”
I exclaim, thinking back on what sequence Gennio sang a few moments ago. “How do I call up the console?”

“It’s somewhat advanced,” Gennio mutters nervously. “You need to
auto-key
the panel to yourself first, then call it to you. See those walls, the panels that are grey are all potential consoles—”

I guess Gennio has no idea how much voice training I’ve had.

“Like this?” I say. And then I focus on the nearest orichalcum wall panel and sing the sequence that’s quite familiar by now, keying and calling it to me like a hoverboard.

Anu and Gennio start at the rich sound of my mezzo-soprano, and then stare as the panel obediently hovers in my direction.

I easily command it to turn over, and the console is revealed.

“Now what?” I say in a hard voice.

Gennio’s mouth has parted. “Wait! You really are serious?” he says.

“Deadly serious.” I glare at him and Anu.

Anu makes a grunt noise. It’s a sound of satisfaction.

M
oments later, all three of us have the controls “on,” with the ready lights enabled—dim pulsing colors moving in response to the faintest sound under the bumpy touch surface—as long as you keep your fingers on it. Meanwhile, the window shields on the hull walls directly opposite us have come down, revealing flight windows with the outside view of the shuttle bay.

I glance back and forth from the keys of my console to the observation windows before us. I’m shaking slightly, with a combination of anger, terror, and stubborn resolve.

Just for a moment I remember the stress of having to take driver’s education back at school in Vermont. I flash back to my poor Dad attempting to teach me to drive, in one of our older cars. . . . Oh lord, I was so bad! Even on my last attempt four months ago, I flunked the written test out of sheer terror, despite knowing all the answers, and barely missed getting a learner’s permit.

This—this is so much worse. Infinitely worse. It’s so
not
like driving a car on Earth.

I am going to die.

And I am going to take two other people with me.

“Okay, Gwen,” Gennio repeats, for like the tenth time. “Remember, there are four basic functions. Red and Green control the Propulsion, also known as Thrust, and Brake—in other words, Go and Stop. Yellow and Blue control the direction and course correction. Yellow sets the initial course, Blue refines and balances it according to environmental factors, adjusting and controlling the overall flight.”

“Got it,” I say breathlessly.

“One very advanced Pilot can perform all four functions and fly alone. But for best results and best safety, you need at least two Pilots per vehicle,” Gennio continues.

“And in a large spacecraft like an ark-ship, you need four Pilots,” Anu interrupts.

“Right. Fortunately we are in a small shuttle,” Gennio continues. “Now, the main Pilot—in our case, Anu—will handle the primary Thrust and Brake functions. I, the Co-Pilot will handle the Navigation and course correction Adjustments.”

“No, you won’t,” Anu says. “
She
will Navigate. She’s Yellow, so might as well let her perform her proper function. You just handle your own Blue crap.”

Then Anu glances at me disdainfully. “You have the easy part—setting course. We’re simply going to a nearby ship, so plotting the mini-course is a no-brainer.”

“But if you were Navigating the whole Fleet across vast interstellar space, that would be a different matter,” Gennio says. “Very difficult, probably the most difficult task of all. Imagine—if you set the wrong course across stars, we get lost and we die.”

“Exactly. But for now, Earth girl, you just Navigate us across a tiny ship-to-ship length of the Fleet—easy! While fat-brain here—he has to course-correct and control the initial path and trajectory you set, all while compensating for our own variable speed and the Quantum Stream general velocity—all of which is the Blue control function.”

“Slow down! Too much! Too much information—this is probably very confusing to her,” Gennio says with a worried frown. “Are you sure, Gwen, can you handle this?”

“Yeah,” I say, while my gut fills with cold terror. “Now tell me how to Navigate.”

Chapter Thirteen

“F
irst,” Gennio says, “we start the shuttle. The main Pilot sings a Major keying sequence while holding down this four-color ignition key.” And he points to a kind of raised bump in the bottom center of the console where four different-color lights race in a circle around each other. I recognize it from having memorized it the night before for my Pilot Training class.

“Go ahead, put your finger on it, Earth girl,” Anu says. “If you don’t, you won’t be recognized by the shuttle as a Pilot for this flight. All Pilots must make contact and be keyed to the shuttle console.”