Rebellion in the Shadows
Chapter Eight

Notawa tried to keep the conversation light while we waited in line for breakfast the next morning.

“So, we can run the ten laps right after the sim? Should only take eighteen minutes or so.”

I couldn’t take it anymore and blurt out, “What the heck was that about last night?”

“Nothing, do you want some tea? You look tired,” Notawa asked, as she slid her tray along the buffet counter.

“I couldn’t sleep at all. I was thinking about it all night.”

“It’s just, you don’t say that.” She leaned in and whispered, “You can’t say that the Flying Force killed someone.” She twisted her head to glance over her shoulder as if someone would grab her for even saying that.

“Why?”

“Just don’t. OK?” She had stopped moving forward and was holding up the line behind us. The furrowed frown and wrinkled brow looked comical on her normally smiling face and I fought the urge to laugh. Notawa didn’t do serious very well.

“OK! The gods alive, can we just eat?” I threw up my hands in defeat. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

Then, she raised her voice so everyone around heard it, “It’s simulation day! Can’t we be excited about that?”

The whole point of the Flying Force Space Academy was to go into space. Thus the name. The Collaboration of Science and Engineers had worked up a new aircraft for that job, a space shuttle.

And I was going to fly it.

First, I had to log in 120 hours in the simulator and then had to be chosen by the Space Association Board. Now that I had finished a few of the initial classes, I would run the flight simulator with my partner every Friday. Zarleque met us at the table, looking bright and fresh as a newborn baby.

“Good morning ladies, ready for today? Six hours strapped to a fake spaceship sound like as much fun to you as it does to me?”

“Actually, it does. Can’t wait to see what they came up with,” I said as we sat at the metal table. Zarleque dug into his breakfast like he hadn’t eaten in years. Flecks of sausage flew from his mouth and spattered the table around him. He didn’t get that big by skipping protein, but it was as if I was watching a wild purthis tear apart zweihorn.

Notawa was thinking the same thing. Her eyes dared to dart towards him every so often to see if he was done.

“During your simulation, it’s possible they will throw obstacles at you. The computers could stop working or the coordinates could flip upside down, so preparation is crucial.” The corners of her lips kept twitching upward. She knew something.

“OK, what do they have planned, I know you know.”

“Nothing. Just be prepared and listen to me,” she said, her smile widening.

“You sound like a mother.” I added pushing away my oats.

“I am a mother. Eat your breakfast.” Zarleque’s shoulders shook from the effort of stifling his laughter. Their amusement irritated me. The stuff about my mother had me on edge, and Notawa’s explanation didn’t satisfy my curiosity at all.

“What’s so funny?” I asked Zarleque.

He raised his hands and said, “I’m just ready for flying.”

“I’m glad you guys think this is funny. You aren’t the ones being watched under a microscope. All these people just waiting and wishing for you to fail,” I said. Zarleque stopped chewing and Notawa set her fork onto the table.

“You think people are waiting for you to fail?” Notawa asked. Zarleque patted my back.

“Not one person thinks you are going to fail. Not one. That’s part of why they hate you. You don’t need to impress them,” he said.

“You just need to fly,” Notawa added. Zarleque’s giant hand squeezed my shoulder just a little too roughly.

“That I can do, I guess.” I shrugged off his grip with a wince. Focusing on flying was easy. New drones and a spaceship? That made it damn near impossible to think about anything else. We finished our breakfast and left for the simulation. Even with their reassurance, my mind was still uneasy.

“Relax Talaya, you’re grossing me out,” Zarlique said. I hadn’t even realized I’d been chewing my fingernails.

“Please, after watching you eat, you deserve it,” I said, but quit biting them when we walked through the doors.

The simulation room was solemn as a funeral. Pairs of pilots were scattered everywhere. The man in the front was the reason for the silence.

Prime Master Reconist Geokee. This was the man that would take over if, the gods forbid, something happened to Master Guardian Sidarc.

“Get into your pairs and replace a simulator,” he said as we walked in. When Zarleque walked by him, Geokee noticed they were almost the same height and he didn’t like it.

“Big guy, where’re you going?” he asked. His dark eyes scrutinized Zarleque.

“To replace a simulator?” Zarleque said looking around the room. Geokee scrunched his face as if he had smelled something foul, forcing a scattering of freckles together over his nose, like he had smelled something disgusting. He glared and pointed to simulator nearest to him.

“Here,” he ordered.

“Yes sir, of course,” Zarleque said. We shuffled over to the giant machine. The screens were already warming up. Geokee watched our every move for a few more minutes, then left to intimidate the other pilots with his attention.

His heavy boots thumped on the ground while he paced around the room. The look of disdain never left his face. Every single person in the room was beneath him, and he wanted us to know it. His attitude made more sense when I saw one last person enter the room.

Master Guardian himself strolled in completely at ease. He looked around the room, surveying the Technicians, Coordinators, and Privy Masters that surrounded him, but he ignored them all. He was searching for me. When he found me, he gave me a smile.

I shivered. There was nothing warm or comforting about that smile.

“They have everyone watching today,” I whispered to Zarleque.

“Oh yeah. Nothing like pressure to kill any hint of fun,” he said.

“I think Master Guardian is here for me.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would he care about you?” he said.

“I don’t know, but he just stares at me. Like he wants to rip my head off.” I sneaked a peek at him again. Sure enough, he was still staring.

“You’re being paranoid. You guys are on the same team, now get your suit on.”

Technicians brought over our flight gear. We both got busy, covering our thin PT uniform with the heavy simulation suits. It took me a full minute to zip every zipper, button each button and latch every latch. Zarleque turned around to have me zip his suit up. Before I had him do the same, I took the Elite Flyers pin off my shirt and set it on the small empty dash over the steering yoke. The pin never left my uniform but puncturing a space suit, even a fake one, was a bad idea.

“Smell that?” Zarleque asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Zarleque grow up.”

“What? Ew, no, don’t be gross. No, it smells like paint.” I pointed to the wall near the back, a small flashing hologram in front of it read, ‘wet paint.’

“They must have just finished this room like yesterday,” he said.

“They haven’t been running simulations before this?” The helmet smelled funny too, it was as new as the rest of the room.

“Nope. We are the first group to go through it.” I looked around at all the people that had been selected. The only other person I recognized was Su’jee. She glared at me. Instead of glaring back, I focused on the simulator. At least I didn’t have to look at her dumb face for the whole flight.

The dozen or so simulators that were staggered throughout the room all faced frontward. My fingers were busy flipping fake switches while my partner did the same. Zarleque was higher ranked, so he was supposed to be the pilot.

“You gonna take point?” he asked.

“No, shouldn’t you do it? You’re a Privy Mate.”

“Yes, but you are Select Master Guardian. Technically you’re higher ranked than everyone in this room except them,” he nodded towards the two grumpy guys at the front of the room.

“That doesn’t count,” I told him. He didn’t get a chance to argue.

From the front, Geokee said, “Ten seconds to launch.”

“Fine, I’ll run pilot.” I said under my breath. It took one adjustment on my calcumat to display the pilot’s information on my side of the screens rather than his. The holograms in front of us were as near to perfect as they could be. They would even respond to our touch. Everything except the chairs, harnesses, steering column, and monitors were projected images. It looked as real as anything I had seen before.

Simulations and remote piloting weren’t that strange. When we were first learning to fly, it was something a Reconist had to do daily. Remote piloting was simple, but the range wasn’t far enough to be convenient, it had to stay within a 5,000-miles of a radio tower. With the addition of the satellite we would be deploying in a few months, they could fix that. There was a rumor going around that they wanted to replace all aircraft with remote piloting. That would be a nightmare for me, flying a simulator was boring, nothing like the real thing.

Geokee was still stomping through the room, shouting half-coherent things at the class.

“You should be launched by now. If you aren’t, you’re already behind.”

“Shit, come on Zar!” I said, a moment too late. Geokee moved over to our sim and banged on the back of my chair causing the holograms to flicker twice.

“Privy Mate! Why are you co-piloting this Reconist?!” His freckles were all drawn into one dark patch over his nose.

“She’s S.M.G.” For such a big scary-looking guy, Zarleque didn’t have a heart for conflict.

“You are her Privy Mate, you get that through that big dumb skull! You understand me Privy Mate?” he asked.

“Yessir,” Zarleque answered. Geokee lowered his head down into Zarleque’s face.

“DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND?” The giant vein in his neck throbbed.

“He said he understood,” I said flatly.

“You have something to say to me Reconist?” Before he had time to really get in my face about it, Master Guardian’s voice came from the front.

“Geokee…” he warned. It was all he had to say to summon the little bulldog back to the front. Ignoring them both, I initiated our launch.

We both pulled over helmets on while the monitor loaded the simulation. My screen flickered slightly.

“Did you see that?” I asked Zarleque. He pointed to his helmet to indicate he couldn’t hear me. I adjusted the dial on our comms.

“... copy?” he asked.

“That’s better. Did you see that screen flicker?” I asked.

“Nope, probably just a surge from everything turning on. Want to power cycle?” He was adjusting his harness, loosening the grip over his massive shoulders. His chair looked like it was made for a child and he was stuffing himself into it for their enjoyment.

“Negative, just watch for more I guess.”

The screen was showing us the view from on top a 4-5-2 airplane. Our tiny four-man spaceship would be taken to 30,000 feet on top of the 4-5-2, then it would uncouple, glide while the plane moved out from under it, and blast into space.

The picture was unbelievably realistic, a few bitter birds flew across the screen in formation and the puffy white clouds shot past the side of the plane. Zarleque pointed to another screen to the left of us.

“Different simulation?” he asked. Their screen showed a bright blue sky without birds or clouds or any landscape. The game on my calcumat looked more real than that but a mix of budget cuts and laziness always made their simulations look terrible.

“They are going to cycle through different sims every week. We must have the newest one, sure looks good. Engines prepped, ready for launch,” I reported.

“Copy, waiting for ideal telemetry, 32N117W, approaching in five, four, prepare for uncoupling, two, one,” he said.

“Engine ignite.”

Pressure squeezed me from all around. Our simulation suits were imitating the feel of the real thing. Air pumped through the fabric and wrapped around me tightly. The simulator itself began to shake and the Elite Flyers pin fell from the dashboard to the ground. Even the pressure inside the helmet increased making my eyes feel like they were going to pop out of my head. From all my studying I knew that we needed to hit 17,500 miles per hour to escape Amacuro’s atmosphere. Or rather, the fake spaceship had to travel that fast.

“Increasing altitude at a rate of eight miles per second.” Zarleque’s voice shook with the simulator. All six of the monitors showed the same eerie red glow covering the windshield. It made the world seem as though it was burning. It was by far the best simulation video I had ever seen. Most were these cheesy-looking videos but they’d spared no expense on this one.

Amacuro sank farther below our fake spaceship, but it was a full forty seconds before we reached the outside of the atmosphere. I knew the exact moment we reached space because everything went still. The machine was trying to simulate weightlessness by forcing air out of our suits and pumping it up from the seat instead, exactly like my bed. The air was pushing us up out of our seats by a half an inch and the straps on my harnesses strained against me, cutting into my suit.

“This feels weird,” Zarleque said.

“That’s a copy!” For a moment, my eyes closed. I tried to imagine that this was really it, that we were truly in space. After a few minutes, I frowned and opened them back up, disappointed in how artificial it felt.

Zarleque checked our trajectory. It would take about three hours to line everything up. The ship would have to circle the planet several times to reach the proper position to deploy the fake satellite.

“Set spin for artificial gravity,” he commanded.

“Roger, setting spin.” The small red graphic on the holotablet flashed once when I pushed it.

“Artificial gravity isn’t working,” I said, pressing it several more times. “What do we do?”

“It’s non-essential, ignore it.” He was right, but it didn’t sit easy with me. Everything would be ten times as difficult in space if the artificial gravity didn’t work. “Talaya, look,” I stopped fiddling with the button to look at Zarleque. He was staring at the monitors.

There were pictures of outer space in our digirecords and the old textbooks. Small photos that showed a black square dotted with white stars. They were nothing, nothing at all compared to what I saw. The dark expanse was bewildering, making me feel so insignificant and small. Twinkling bulbs were everywhere, like little flickering decorations in a never-ending room. Each one was layered in varying brightness, splattered with dim colors that danced in our monitors.

The real stunner was our sister planet, Arkii. Half of it was exposed in a bright reflection of light from Tau Ceti. The swirling thick cover of clouds moved lazily over the surface. Lightning flashed at the top of the planet where darker clouds spun in an angry circle. My eyes tried to take in everything at once. The scene demanded that attention. As hard as it was, I stole a glance around the room. Not one other simulator displayed the same video.

Zarleque pushed the remote camera button to move the one outside the spaceship. He panned over so that every monitor showed the big beautiful planet. For one quick moment, the clouds moved aside to display the tiniest view of the surface.

It was bright blue and moving. Light reflected off it, like the sheen of sunshine on a wave and then it was gone. Covered by the same gray clouds as the rest of the planet.

“Zarleque?” I whispered, afraid to move. “What the hell was that?” That was water beneath those thick clouds, I knew it. Zarleque turned to me. Through his clear visor, I saw something unexpected; Fear. He tapped the side of his helmet motioning that he couldn’t hear me. A small crackle came over my headset.

“Return your camera forward. Stay on mission.” Another burst of static, and the comms were returned to our control. Zarleque shifted the camera back to its original position. Neither of us spoke. No one had ever seen the surface of Arkii. As far as we had been told it was a dead planet. No plant life, no animals, no water, nothing but poisonous gas and old, rusted rock.

Arkii was visible from the surface of our planet, close enough to not need a telescope or binoculars. In school, our instructors had told us that it was completely uninhabitable. Arkii was just a beautiful decoration in the sky, nothing more. There wasn’t any questioning the information we were given. Teachers taught and we believed, end of story.