Compete (49 page)

“Item five.
Re-enter the Quantum Stream zone as soon as you are within reach.
This is self-explanatory. As you speed up and gain proximity to the QS field signal trace—the progress of which you can see on the Yellow Navigation Grid, as the two dots approach each other—you will have the chance to merge back into the QS field. Do it! This is your only chance!”

The Instructor goes silent for a few moments and observes the impact on our faces.

All I can think is,
Wow. This is terrifying
.

How in the world are we supposed to go out there tomorrow, now that we’ve had our pants scared off?

“Any questions on the QS Breach Emergency Protocol?”

No one raises any hands.

Instructor Okoi nods. “Fine. Your shuttle inspection begins at 1:00 PM today. All Pilot Pairs assigned to each specific shuttle must perform the vessel inspection together. It will be crowded, but you will manage. Remember, the condition of your shuttles will be added to your final scores tomorrow. Now, dismissed!”

I
get out of there and return to the CCO, in a grim mood. Work goes poorly because my mind is not on it, and then I grab a quick solitary lunch at the Officers Meal Hall. I escape here whenever I want to get away from all other Earth teens—such as today. At this point I need time away from the entire crazy Cadet preliminary QS Race frenzy that’s buzzing in all the usual Cadet places. Here it’s relatively quiet. The Atlantean officers are just having an ordinary lunch. If I can pretend for a moment I’m one of them, maybe my heart will stop racing. . . .

Unfortunately it’s not to be. I see Aeson Kassiopei come into the meal hall to pick up his usual bagged lunch. As always, the moment he’s seen in the room, everyone stands up and salutes. Aeson has to acknowledge them, and command them to be at ease.

I watch his fleeting strained expression that is revealed just for a moment before his lapis-blue eyes become veiled, as he turns to the food server, takes his food, and walks out, proud and straight-backed.

And for that one moment, as always, with a twinge in my heart I feel sorry for him—for his position, and the distance he must keep.

I’ll see him back at the CCO later. But now, the shuttle inspection awaits.

A
t 1:00 PM I am at Shuttle Bay One, in a crowd of my Pilot Training classmates and a bunch of Cadets from other classes. Our shuttles are parked in rows, on both sides of the platform, and we go looking for our assigned ones.

Hugo and I got shuttle #72, and it’s somewhere in the middle of the lineup. By the time we get to it, we see it’s open, ladder down, and other Cadet Pairs are crawling all over it, inside and outside, doing underbelly inspection.

There are six Pilot Pairs assigned to each vessel. We are all supposed to follow a standard checklist and redundantly examine each item on the list, even if another Pair has just gone through it.

“Okay, I’ll take the first ten items and you take the next,” I say to Hugo.

He frowns. “No, I’ll take the first ten.”

I frown and roll my eyes. “Okay. Fine, you take the next ten and I’ll take the first.”

“Okay—no, wait!” He really glares at me. “What are you saying?”

“Haven’t you ever watched old-fashioned comedy routines?”

“Uhm—what? No! Just cut the crap, okay!”

I snort and let him take the first ten. Which means he climbs inside the shuttle while I deal with the exterior, bumping shoulders and knocking heads with the other Cadet Pairs inspecting the same parts, while we all crawl underneath in the hover space, between the floor and the shuttle underside.

Half an hour later we switch and this time I get to go inside while Hugo crawls underneath.

Eventually we’re done and turn in our checklists with our recommended repair instructions and notes to our Instructor. This ship inspection is also part of our final Test Score, so we have to be careful and thorough.

I
get back to the CCO, do some more semi-distracted work, listening to Anu complain about some personnel schedules to the CP, and then it’s dinner and a small break in my cabin.

I call up Gracie and wish her luck. Gracie gives me a finger kiss against the screen and I know she is nervous as hell. Meanwhile, her whole barracks sounds like a zoo at feeding time. Yeah, she isn’t the only one.

“It’s going to be okay, Gee Four,” I whisper with a gentle tired smile. “Just be careful, stay a little slow, and it’s okay, no one says you have to win this stupid Race!”

“I know,” she yells back, because she has to, over the din in the background. “I just want to place a little higher than average. Especially considering all the pressure to score high points for our Quadrant. You do know they are keeping track of cumulative points for all Cadets who are with Red, and we’re supposed to try to beat the averages of the Blues and Greens and Yellows—”

“Okay, yes, of course!” I hurry to reassure her. “But it just means you can still aim to do well for yourself, but be more on the careful side as you do it.”

“Yup!” She pauses with a silly shy smile. “Have you seen Blayne today?” she asks. “How is he? Doing okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry about Blayne,” I tell her. “His score is a decent one. He’ll do fine.”

She snorts. “I know! Just wanted to know if he is stressing at all. Hope not!”

“Oh no, the boy is calm and sarcastic as usual. All’s well.”

“Oh good.” She exhales in relief.

I can’t hold back a smile of my own.

L
ater that night I go to my voice training. I get to the CCO at 8:00 PM, and for the first fifteen minutes everything is routine as usual—Aeson Kassiopei has me practice our latest voice exercise while he works on something else. But suddenly, in the middle of things he shuts off his computer with a snap and turns to me with a steady look.

“Lark,” he says. “Enough for today. Put that away for now. . . .”

“Oh?” I look up at him with a composed expression, and drop the orichalcum piece that I’m manipulating.

Over these many weeks I’ve perfected the blank calm look that I’ve cultivated especially for
him
. It’s now become an easy habit, like putting on a Halloween sad mask. Why sad? Because, underneath it, I’m nothing but a trembling, vulnerable, raw
wound
that’s refusing to heal. I realize how emotional and pathetic that sounds . . . but now that I’ve acknowledged my stupid feelings with my conscious rational
higher
mind, there’s no use lying to myself any more or putting a pretty spin on it. Might as well face it.

But oh, how well I’ve disguised it from him.

He
has no idea what’s happening inside me every time I’m in the same room with him.

“I want to speak to you about tomorrow’s Quantum Stream Race,” Aeson Kassiopei says, while his intense gaze rests upon me.

“Okay. . . .”

“I want you to be very careful. Do not take unnecessary risks. It doesn’t matter how well or poorly you place.”

“It does to me.” I continue looking at him.

He, in turn, continues watching me. “Why?” His tone has become particularly soft.

“Because I have to do well enough so that when the year is over I can enter the Games of the Atlantis Grail.”

His expression darkens. “Oh, no . . . don’t. Not that again. Look, I thought we’ve come to an understanding about it, the futility, the dangers involved.”

“Maybe
you
have, Command Pilot Kassiopei,” I say coldly, while inside me turbulence is rising. “I am still resolved.”

There’s a strange pause. His eyes—oh, the pure, serene clarity of his relentless gaze.

“You are
not
resolved. I do not permit you to take unnecessary risks,” he says, still speaking softly. But now there is a strange
power
to his charismatic voice, an insidious slithering force that comes up from deep in the ground and rises to permeate my skin with sweet languorous darkness. . . . Every word he utters falls with precision like a stone.

Wait—is he using a
compelling
power voice on me?

I blink and shake my head. And suddenly, like a flash of lightning, I am furious.

Oh my God
. . . .
Yes, he is!

So
that’s
what it’s like. I am certain of it!

“I’m sorry, Command Pilot,” I say, pretending not to notice, pretending to be agreeable and acquiescent. “I’m tired and I need to go back to my room early. Need to get some rest before the Race. May I be excused, please?”

His gaze continues to overwhelm me, but now his lips hold back a smile.

I know—I can almost
see
it. And I am so mad I could slap him!

“Very well,” he says, this time speaking normally. “You may go, Lark. Get well rested and take it easy tomorrow.”

“Oh, I will,” I say, almost sweetly—that’s how furious I am now.

And then I get out of there before I do anything I might regret.

I am so going to win this damned QS Race tomorrow.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

T
he morning of the Quantum Stream Race finds me in high energy and strangely charged after the previous night. I find I am still angry at Kassiopei for attempting to
compel
me, and for some reason failing to do so—or at least me being well enough aware of it that it doesn’t “take.”

Hah! So much for all that fine talk from Gennio and Anu about the
compelling power voice
being illegal and immoral, not to mention dangerous enough to cause brain damage. So, does that mean that Kassiopei can get away with using it when others can’t?

However, I get it. He
is
concerned, and I, with my Logos voice, am still an asset for Atlantis that must be protected at any cost.

And it’s not like he compelled me to do something awful. He merely tried to keep me safe and
sedate
.

But oh, he is so going to regret it. . . .

I smile grimly to myself as I get dressed and head for breakfast. I have exactly fifteen minutes, before I have to report to Shuttle Bay One at 8:00 AM for the QS Race lineup.

I
arrive early, but already the crowd of Cadets in Shuttle Bay One is overwhelming. The mind-blowing fact is, in this exact moment, the same thing is happening in Shuttle Bays Two, Three, and Four, and in every other ark-ship shuttle bay in the Fleet.

Everyone is crisply dressed in sharp clean uniforms, polished boots, and Cadet Star Insignias glittering on chests. Faces look nervous, determined—everyone wants to do well on this flight test, since it will determine a great deal of our futures (for some of us even more so than others, I think). Atlantean guards and officers direct us to our places where we line up to wait near our assigned parked shuttles.

Basically the Quantum Stream Race is a complicated relay. Each shuttle gets a series of six Pilot Pairs over the course of the Race, and each Pair goes up against ten others at a time.

It works like this:

The Fleet formation is made up of three long columns or lines of ships stretching to the horizon—columns #1, #2, and #3. The four Imperial Command Ships are all located in the middle column, which is #2. They are spaced along even intervals throughout the length of the Fleet. ICS-1 is in the very front, while ICS-4 is in the very end. The two long empty channels between the three formation columns are the racing lanes.

Shuttles launch from every ark-ship’s four shuttle bays, emerge outside (on the right side of the ship if coming from columns #1 and #2, and on the left if column #3) and wait in a vertical “pancake stack” with ten other shuttles, at the designated starting point near the “racing lane.”

The starting point is marked by a hologram light projection that beams out from each ark-ship, casting a wide strip of color light across the racing lane. This holo-strip serves both as the Start and Finish Line for each leg of the relay Race.

Each shuttle begins and ends its turn next to its home ship by crossing the Start/Finish strip. But first it must complete a circle around the Fleet, racing against ten others.

Ten shuttles at a time—each coming from a single vertical pancake stack—enter the racing lane and wait for the start signal. When the signal sounds, off they go. Thirty seconds later, the next vertical stack of ten (from one of the other shuttle bays, rotating in order) enters the racing lane, and so on.

The “racetrack” course stretches along the channel between the formations in a super-elongated circle. You fly straight between formations,
streaming
in the same direction as the Quantum Stream, until you reach the ICS-1 flagship up at the very head of the Fleet.