Dove Arising (21 page)

Only the number one rank will satisfy me, but to preserve our alliance, I don’t say so.

In the training dome, Arcturus takes over and gives us strategy lessons for the field. The eyes of most trainees glaze over with indifference; they won’t become officers anytime soon, but the highest-ranking among us sit attentively, typing with our index fingers on our handscreens. We might give orders of our own in a matter of weeks.

“Never send troops into completely unknown territory. Send a small recon team first to gather intelligence about the geography and the people. Secure the highest ground. Play to the capabilities of each soldier in your unit. Do not pause in your directives for long, lest your soldiers panic. Follow the orders from your own superiors at all times. And always secure a meeting location if anything goes wrong.”

The morning of the evaluation, no one knows what to expect.

“Hope you all slept well,” Yinha announces. “Today’s will be the most difficult of the evaluations. We’re going outside again. There will be one team of twenty-four and one team of twenty-five, each guarding a cache of supplies, represented by a green box. The object is to find the other team’s box and bring it to your side of the arena. Everyone will be individually evaluated based on what we see in our cameras, set up around the area. Simple. Straightforward.”

Each trainee is issued a gray pressure suit, the better to blend in with the regolith—the dusty mess that is the lunar surface’s poor imitation of soil. The suits aren’t as bulky as old Earthbound astronaut garb but leave a good half-centimeter of air between our bodies and the plastic-like material. I seal my limbs inside my suit without complaining, like some of the girls, that it makes me look “fat.”

We’ve dealt with the outdoors before. I can’t fathom why this will be the hardest evaluation of all—harder than that race through the Montes Carpatus.

“Outside, it’s nighttime, but you may not use any illumination. The yellow team will wear helmets with dim yellow lights on the forehead and rear; the blue team will wear helmets with blue lights. This will be the only means of team identification. Shooting at the lights with your simulation Lazies and hitting them will result in the victim being physically removed from the contest.”

We’ll be virtually blind for this evaluation, which will make it both difficult and dangerous. I glance at Nash, whose arm envelops a hyperventilating Eri.

Vinasa—no one speaks of her, but everyone thinks of her.

“We are trying to mimic ground combat,” says Yinha. “So our two top trainees will lead the teams. Follow their orders as you would any officer’s.”

The thought zaps me into shock. I’ll be in charge of over twenty other trainees, pitted against Wes and his bloc. If we lose, my score could take a nosedive.

Yinha reads off the teams. Nash, Orion, and Io are with me on the Blue Team. Wes has Eri and the notorious trio of Jupiter, Ganymede, and Callisto on Yellow. Our teams are evenly matched in terms of skill, but Wes must deal with the three most dastardly suckers ever to pass through training. They’ll probably refuse to listen to him, and the judges will find him an ineffective leader. Worse, Jupiter and Callisto won’t hesitate to use their parents’ power to place ahead. It’s not fair, and it makes me wonder if someone in the high command is setting Wes up to lose.

The instructors issue the usual burden of equipment to carry on our backs. Then they shoo us into a Titan ship—one of the medium-sized models—and even with a suited-up Nash by my side, I panic as soon as the ship exits the air lock chamber. My fingers and toes shake; every sound seems to arrive at my ears after a long, echoing journey. No one talks to me, though, because we’re all asking ourselves the same two questions.

Will someone die today, like Vin? Will it be me?

We have fifteen minutes to explore the marked-off area and strategize before the evaluation begins. Every step I take pushes me higher and farther than I’d anticipated, but soon I remember how to move efficiently. I triple-check the gauges on the inside of my helmet to be sure that my pressure suit won’t spontaneously explode in the near-vacuum that surrounds us. If Dad were here, I wonder if he’d be relieved, or proud, or concerned. . . . I don’t remember him well enough to know. Would he lose his nerve, as Mom would if she knew I was in space? After his accident, she wrung her hands and screamed whenever Anka got too close to a window.

Trainees from years past have been here, traversing the sloping terrain. Patchy footsteps pepper the regolith. Boulders litter the ground, many taller than I am—perfect for cover. There’s the dark outline of a low hill close to the back of the Blue half. Yellow’s side is nearly the mirror image of ours, so that from the start, no one has an advantage. First things first; I’ll need to change that.

I turn on my microphone. “Hi.”

A few people greet me in return.

“Ideas?” I want us to think together, rather than have me make decisions in spite of having zero qualifications. Wes will likely follow standard procedure and decide everything himself, but I figure that my fifteen-year-old mind, in conjunction with twenty-three older ones, might match his genius.

A gaggle of responses overwhelms my eardrums.

“One at a time,” I chide.

“The rocks are tippy,” a dreamy voice replies. According to my visor screen, it’s Io.

“Yeah, I tried to move one,” says a boy named Pan. “They’re really light; three people could pick one up.”

Huh.
Each rock looks as if its mass were a metric ton. Of course—the instructors designed this field to be manipulated and probably inserted fake boulders—hard shells stuffed with foam. Moon-grav also contributes by making everything lighter, about one-sixth its usual weight.

“What if we make some kind of defensive formation with the smaller rocks?” Pan says.

The rest of the team jabbers their approval before tossing out other ideas.

“A wall.”

“A fortress.”

Some proposals are downright ridiculous, like “chuck the boulders at the other team.”

But a female teammate suggests, “Make a fort, just don’t put the box in it.”

I stop in my tracks. “Yep, make a circle with the boulders at the top of the hill. Good one.”

“Thanks!” she gushes. “But where will we put the box?”

My team starts chattering again, sounding like twenty-three Ankas. “Put it in someone’s backpack.”

“Yeah, have someone carry it so that it keeps on moving.”

But the simplest idea is the best. “Dig a hole,” suggests Orion. “Dig a hole and stick a boulder on top. Have some people guard it.”

Instead of talking, I have resorted to what I do best: listening. While arranging our defenses, we decide on a passive strategy of hiding behind boulders and ambushing attackers. Orion will lead the stealthiest of us on a miniature recon mission to discern the location of the other team’s box. I’m going to hide within the boulder structure on the hill, because as Orion points out, there will be pandemonium if I’m shot down. But just in case, I give secondary command to Nash, whom people seem to like.

It’s all the planning we have time for. Too soon, the match begins.

24

“GO!” YINHA YELLS.

From my vantage point, I see my team hunker down behind boulders while sinister shapes stalk toward our territory. Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I can make out the fuzzy outlines of human forms. Their helmets bob up and down with each step; they’re not used to moon-grav.

Orion, Pan, and a girl named Libra, on recon, cross the dividing line of lights and send me real-time updates on the other side. Yellow shoots down Libra. Once the programming in her helmet jerks her to the ground, a pair of painful-looking pincers removes her from the regolith and carries her toward the Titan.

“I can’t see Wes, little piece of grit,” Orion fumes. “And we have no idea where their green box is. He hid it good.”

I hear frantic whispers from my teammates on defense. Wes’s team is making headway.

“It’s the yellow team,” Nash says from below. “They’re running to our side and jumping up on the boulders. Then they shoot. I think
Wezn
read your mind and knew you’d tell us to hide. We’re getting killed here.”

He knows me too well; I should have anticipated this. I issue new orders: “Team, get to higher ground before they reach the hill.” I gesture frantically with both arms, hoping to draw the Yellow Team’s attention away from a crucial boulder far to the left, the one hiding our box. “You’ll have more of a vantage point if you come up here.”

Several blue lights dance toward the hill. Yellow ones follow, too close. I get out my simulation Lazy, peep out from behind the boulder shielding me, and shoot at the enemy lights. It’s tough, as they’re continuously bouncing in different directions. Wes probably told his troops never to move in straight lines. I cheer inside when one of my shots turns a yellow light red.

“Callisto’s down!” cheers a group of Blue girls.

I let myself laugh. Better that the regolith slaps her than I do.

Though Nash motions me to duck, I stay standing and continue trying to pick off the Yellow Team. I don’t score any more hits, but two other lights turn red thanks to the shooting of my teammates.

I remember Arcturus’s advice to keep talking. “Good work, defense. Orion, how’s the other side?”

Orion turns on his microphone, panting. “You won’t believe it. We made it to the top of their hill, where they had the box, and as soon as they saw us, they started chucking it to each other. Someone throws it; someone else catches it—Pan, duck!—and they take cover. We can’t keep this up forever. I’ve lost two people already.”

“Nukes on a stick,” Nash swears. “Hang in there, O.”

I try not to overreact. “Any ideas?”

“Half of us stay here,” says Orion. “The rest go stomp on them.”

“Yeah,” Pan agrees. “A surge would be nice.”

My legs tense, itching for action. “Orion and Pan, keep an eye on that box. I’m coming with reinforcements. Nash—
stay here
.” She protests, but I shush her with a finger. I name ten other people, and tell them to wait near the dividing line while I make my way over through enemy fire and fake boulders.