Sharon Lee - - Prologue

"Real work," Theo repeated. "Aren't you doing real work now?"

He lifted his hand from hers and made a short gesture of dismissal. "It is real, but—not preferred. My goal had always been to be part of a survey team. My duty to the clan done, I may embrace it—I hold the word of my delm on the matter! So . . ." He raised his teacup, as if he offered a toast. "Let us put that topic behind us, if you please, and speak of pleasanter things."

True to his word, he did just that, chattering away through the remainder of the meal until she was laughing, and matching him absurdity for absurdity. They were still laughing when they climbed the ramp hand in hand and Torvin let them in.

Theo looked to the second chair, took a step—and Win Ton's fingers tightened on hers. She paused and looked into his face, saw . . . something . . . and swayed back, as if it were part of a dance.

"Win Ton," she began, and—

"Theo," he started—

They both laughed again, somehow in the middle of it becoming tangled into a hug. His lips burned against her temple, and she hugged him tighter, wanting to, to melt into him, to—

She moved her head, and kissed him on the lips. He started, then pulled her closer, his arms so tight she could scarcely breathe, but that really didn't seem to matter. She slid her hands inside his jacket, feeling his back through the sweater. He dropped his head to her shoulder, nuzzling the side of her neck. His hand moved and she felt him touch the wings on her collar.

"You wear them," he murmured.

She laughed, shakily. "It's your gift to me. Of course, I wear them."

"Good," he breathed. "Excellent." His lips charted a lingering course up toward her ear.

"There's a bunk," he whispered, his voice not at all steady. "Theo—your choice. I—"

"Yes," she said, shaking, needing, wanting . "I'm not—Win Ton; I haven't had a lot of practice."

He choked—no, it was laughter, and the look he gave her was brilliant with delight.

"Well, then," he said unsteadily, "I stand ready. You may practice on me, if you wish."

"I do wish," she said, and reached up to kiss him again.

Twenty

Piloting Praxis

Anlingdin Piloting Academy

"Once you've sat first or second seat on orbit around an inhabited planet you'll see that being Pilot in Command of a space vessel makes being PIC on a two- or four-seat air-sucking cloud hopper an order of magnitude less dangerous to all concerned."

The casual dismissal of their progress to date shocked the room; the palpable intake of breath became a uniform over-the-shoulder glance in her direction from the front—and Theo imagined those behind her staring at the back of her head. As far as she knew there were exactly two people in the room who met that criteria: Instructor yos'Senchul and herself.

That she had exactly two-hundred-and-fifty-one minutes as orbital second board, certified C&C—Comm and Control—by a Scout was known across the campus, and as the instructor went on to explain, far beyond the campus.

"In many ways being on orbit in controlled space is safer than flying through the air. It takes far longer to hard-land a spacecraft than a Star King; and there are many more resources in place to ensure that you do not fall out of the sky.

"Make no miscalculation about it, Pilots, most of these resources are brought to bear not because you are personally more valuable, but because the damage you might do with even a minor lapse in judgment is exponentially greater with each step you take."

The instructor looked pensive for a moment, which Theo thought was a teacher's act since Liadens she knew rarely showed such emotions. Even Father needed to exaggerate his normal expressions to make them obvious to people who didn't know him.

The one-handed motion made next was also artful: a toss emphasizing the empty sleeve.

"Mistakes are expensive. A Slipper striking a home in a small subdivision of a dozen houses might kill the unlucky pilot and damage the home. A Star King doing the same could wipe out the pilot, family, and house, perhaps even two houses. The shuttle . . ."

He paused for effect then, allowing everyone to digest the thought.

"But no, we need not speculate on this, because we have available, courtesy of the Scout who recently visited, a virtual museum of recent pilot error accidents. Some are complete with tapes permitting you to fly the error right into the ground, or not, on your own time, in sim. All of the master-adjudicated errors we share today have occurred within the last two Standards. These are not pretty. They are, however, instructional."

Of the six errors yos'Senchul deemed most instructive, only one was by a trainee, and that trainee already licensed as a Second Class Provisional. Somehow that heartened Theo, when perhaps it was meant as a warning to all of them.

She took the long-way-around walk to lunch to think through not only what she'd seen, but also what she hadn't. Some of her classmates had simply not reacted at all to the vids, as far as she could see, as if they hadn't recognized the problem instantly. For her part, her hand still ached where she'd clenched the offending palm, trying to take it back from the motion that she hadn't made, that she knew better than to make, already.

She danced out that realization momentarily, feeling this move here and that move there and seeing that, of course, with the hands and body flowing properly, as compared with dance, even strapped in—especially strapped in—this move, this move that hurt her hand to think about, this move that had killed a pilot and a field boss and injured a dozen farmworkers, this motion went entirely against the warm-up exercises and the way you worked with a bowli ball. Well . . .

The dancing was combat. The dancing was prep for bowli ball which was prep for moving now . The dancing was board drills. The dancing was what had convinced Win Ton that she . . .

Chaos!

Yes, she missed him. Missed him. Not like she missed Father and Kamele, or the way she still sometimes missed Bek. Still, it was difficult not to look at everything she was doing now knowing that Win Ton also shared this information or moved this way, or would understand—

Well, maybe he'd even understand why it was she'd been spending quite so much time at sim-ship, and why it was she was busy, busy with extra dance, busy with a sudden interest in packet and courier ships, busy avoiding the sometimes just-too-stealthy questions and insinuations from Asu.

Really, what was it to Asu exactly what they'd done or hadn't, or when, or who started what? The first three days after her return from orbit she'd felt like Asu was peering at her neck, looking at her shoulders, for Simple Sake, checking out her feet and legs for marks and bruises!

Win Ton was Liaden, and thoughtful and gentle, and Liaden! That meant careful, in many senses.

And everybody's questions about, "How was it in orbit?" Pfui!

Yes, Win Ton was a Scout pilot . . . which meant a master class pilot, as it turned out, and so yes, not only could he certify her orbital time but he also should, because that's part of what master class pilots were supposed to do. He'd also been very clear that once they lifted, it was all about the ship.

She smiled to herself. Yes, when she'd rolled the Torvin through the sun-cooling routine, Win Ton's smile had been good. But she'd rolled it properly on axis, and then she'd offered her calculations to him and the board for the deorbit burn that would bring them down on the longest, flattest, slowest, quietest possible landing the ship could make, according to all the information the ship so willingly fed second board. And it was all about the ship, and about being a pilot.