It appeared the Navy forces would be wiped out in a battle for the ages, but it might take longer than Molly initially thought. It was enough to force a grim smile, as sick and sore as her body felt. The Navy geeks that enjoyed scoring these encounters would have a blast with this one.

She returned her focus to the ships ahead of her and the lovely, zooming gifts they’d left behind. She brought up the nav calculator, temporarily comforted by her usual duties. The thrill of playing “pilot” had been tempered somewhat by the pressure of being responsible. A small part of her missed the warm embrace of being a role-player. I’ll do my simple tasks and let someone else risk failing, she thought, then pushed it to the back of her mind. She needed to concentrate on the numbers.

Three moving objects. It was a word problem flight instructors would adore. They’d be able to phrase it so no pilot would understand what in hyperspace was going on. Molly knew better than to make this more confusing than it needed to be. There were really two different problems here, and each could be solved individually.

First, she plotted the speed and direction of her ship and the two flankers. This gave her the coordinate in space at which they would meet if she kept gaining on them. Next, she did the same for her Firehawk and the missiles speeding toward her thrusters. This gave her another set of coordinates. She hoped the first point in space would be nearer than the second, giving her a chance to hurt them before they hurt her.

But the plots didn’t show that. In fact, Molly thought she’d done something wrong. Only a single nav result showed up on her display. She started to run the calculations a second time when she recognized the improbable: both problems had the same solution. She would reach her enemy at the precise moment their missiles reached her. A ship overtaking two ships, being overtaken by their projectiles.

Molly had another thought: Maybe this wasn’t a bad thing.

With the gap between her and the two craft ahead dwindling, she only had half a minute to prepare for impact. She pulled the defense menus up one more time and drilled down to the useless chaff screen. She might not be able to arm them, but maybe she could give her ship a bit of a buffer. It helped that the flankers were now in firing range of the fleet. Distracted with laser-fire from the Navy, they weren’t keeping a vigilant eye on their rears. Molly and the two missiles zipped down their wake, all three players set to meet at a single point.

Worst-case scenario: the missiles take her out just as she arrives between the other two ships. The blast would vaporize her, but it should also take her foes out of the fight. If she ended up with three dead bogeys after entering a battle with no offensive capabilities, Molly would consider it a victory of the highest order.

The best-case scenario was too much to wish for, but it had all four of her chaff canisters deploying and the missiles making impact, saving her cockpit from the blast and directing the force to the enemies on either side. It was yet another bold stunt with slim chances, but Molly decided to keep gambling while she was on a lucky streak.

As she entered the thruster-wash of the enemy, she placed her thumb over the release button. Time slowed to a silent crawl. The laser fire ahead of the flankers seemed to spurt forward like drips of red molasses. Everything moved so slowly that none of it appeared threatening, as if she could reach out and just pluck the hot plasma from outer space.

And then she was there, riding the wake of the two ships, buffeted in their thruster-wash. Her thumb twitched a command, releasing the useless chaff.

The missiles made impact, an orange glow wrapping its silent arms around her Firehawk.

And for the second time that day, Molly’s world went black.

••••

“Molly.”

It was Cole’s voice.

Her vision returned, the black in front of her visor opening like a camera’s iris to reveal the battle raging ahead. Their Firehawk was still partly intact, the protective shell of a cockpit drifting through space with twisted hunks of metal trailing behind. Her life support readout indicated that she was dead.

“Damnit!” Molly slammed a fist into the flight controls, hurting her hand more than she did the simulator.

Cole reached his gloved hand over and patted her thigh, trying to comfort her. “What’re you so upset about? You did good, girl. Those other two ships caught most of the blast. They’re goners.”

Molly glanced at Cole. A smirk peeked out below his visor. She smiled back, a bit reluctantly. “Huh. I guess you’re right. I was hoping I’d keep getting lucky. What the hell happened to you?”

Cole tried to shrug his shoulders in the flight harness. “I dunno. The simulator said I was dead, so I must’ve been. Didn’t make sense from the damage we sustained, but nothing about this exercise makes sense. Oh, and by the way, my suit ignored the fact that I was lifeless and gave me the same Gs you took in that missile maneuver. Remind me to beat your ass later.”

She pouted. “Yeah? Did Cole get a tummy ache?”

Cole laughed and the joke lingered in the cockpit for a few minutes. On the screen, the remainder of their fleet tried in vain to stave off defeat. Gradually, the humor faded, and they started asking more questions. Serious questions. They went back to the conversation they were having before the exercise went hot, Molly more open this time to Cole’s conspiracies.

When the last Navy ship tried to flee, there were still seven fully functional enemy craft left for the mop-up. The cadets wouldn’t find out until the debriefing which race they were up against today, but Molly already suspected the Tchung. More tax dollars spent training against a non-enemy, a race no one had seen for generations.

The last Navy ship was surrounded, creating a traitorous feeling of anticipation. The end of this exercise would bring relief. Being dead and having to watch her fellow cadets struggle to extend the inevitable made Molly’s entire body twitch. It was like her right hand trying to pilot from the nav side of the cockpit. Finally, with a puff of orange pixels, the battle was over. The panorama of carnage went black, and one horror replaced another: the summation screen showing the casualty and damage reports. It wasn’t supposed to be a scoreboard, or taken as a game, but that’s how the students saw it. All but one of them were boys. Comparing anything measurable was their favorite pastime.

Molly scanned the list from top to bottom. Jakobs/Dinks sat on top with 2.5 confirmed kills, which meant one of their enemy had taken damage from another crew. They also had a wingman assist and a tactical bonus for recognizing the flow of battle and reacting properly. Subtracting their eventual death left them with 550 points. Not too bad a score, considering.

Down at the very bottom was Cole/Fyde with zero kills, an unassisted wingman penalty, three tactical violations, and a self-kill. With a score of -2080 rendered in bright red, it made everyone else look like they knew what in hyperspace they were doing.

Cole shook his head and patted Molly’s gloved fist with his. Her AC revved up to whisk away her body heat, partly rising from the shame of the score and partly—from something else.

A window on the right side of the summation screen opened up and Captain Saunders scowled back at the cadets, his round and oversized head resting on rolls of fat. “Not bad, boys.”

Molly cringed at the masculine pronoun, a military staple.

“This exercise is meant to test your endurance and teamwork. Two days of sleeping in shifts before a battle is the real deal. This is what any of you who actually graduate and fly for us can expect. We’ve been putting senior flight crews through this exact maneuver for over thirty years. Those numbers look bad, some of them especially, but you’ll be pleased to hear you’ve fared better than any other class since I’ve been here.

“Too bad you’re all dead,” he added sarcastically. “Not screwing up worse than previous generations of know-nothings means I don’t want to hear you celebrating. If more of you had recognized the real danger was the flanking craft and not the main body, we could’ve seen this scenario defeated, a feat real Navy pilots pull off in their sleep. But it’s hard to match their coordinated defense with twitchy trigger fingers on some of you and inoperable ones on others.

“The three bottom crews need to report to me immediately for a dressing down; the rest of you hit the showers then start writing up your failure reports. And I want to read what you did wrong, not excuses for why you did it wrong. The real winners today were the Tchung, so don’t feel proud for getting lucky. Dismissed.”

With that, the screens went translucent, and Molly stared out at the familiar wall of cinder blocks. Out her starboard side porthole a line of cramped simulator pods stretched out for a hundred meters. Their hatches popped open almost in unison, but she couldn’t hear them—their hatch was still shut.

Molly snapped her helmet off and looked at Cole. He held his own helmet in his lap, his face serious.

“I don’t care what they say, you did great.”

“Thanks.” Molly loaded the word with sarcasm and rolled her eyes. If she ever allowed herself to take a compliment from Cole, her face would betray the way she felt about him. It was the only thing she had in common with these boys: the need to be mean in order to keep her distance.

“I’m serious. Another thing: let’s keep the sabotage business to ourselves for now. All they need to know is that the weapons systems were off-line. They should adjust our score for that. Get rid of that bogus wingman penalty, at least.”

“Sure thing, Captain.” The half-smile turned into a full one, even if it was forced.

“You know, it’s not really a sign of respect when you say it like that.” Cole grinned and popped the hatch, letting in the sound of soldier boots as they clanged down the metal platforms outside the musky, slept-in simulators.

Jakobs and Dinks loitered by the rear of their pod. Molly could guess why.

“Nice shooting out there,” Jakobs said, smiling from ear to ear with the demented visage of the sleep-deprived. “Oh, I’m sorry, you never even got a shot off, didja?” He checked with Dinks, who validated his joke with a silent, breathy laugh.

Molly glared at Jakobs. “Your lapdog is panting,” she said. “Does he need some water?” She tried to push past them, but Jakobs grabbed her arm, spinning her around.

They glared at one another while the other two boys sized up the situation. Jakobs was tall for a 17-year-old, and he had the sort of good looks that inspired poor behavior in boys. He’d been getting away with figurative murder his entire life—soon the Navy would pay him to do it for real.

“Go to hyperspace,” she told him.

“Flank you,” he said, his dark eyes sparkling with a glint of superiority. Molly knew better. He bullied for acceptance, scaring people into liking him. She focused on his Roman nose and dreamed about punching it.

“Go watch the replay, ass’troid.” Cole spat the words and tugged Molly away from trouble. She wondered if he was sticking up for her or protecting Jakobs from a beating. And if he was defending her, was it simply as his navigator?

She turned and marched out of the simulator room with her eyes fixed straight ahead, the rims of her ears burning. The hyperspace nausea, induced with subsonic bass speakers, churned up her stomach acid. Or maybe that was just Jakobs and Dinks.

From behind, the duo kept hounding her during the long walk down the hallway. She couldn’t hear them over the pounding of her own pulse, but she could see the effects of their taunting. Sneers of petty delight spread across the faces of every cadet they walked by. Everyone was ignoring Saunders’s commands, reveling in how well they’d done.

All except for the Academy reject, of course.

••••

Outside Captain Saunders’s office, Molly and Cole joined Peters and Simons on a well-worn wooden bench. The four clustered together, shoulders touching, as muffled shouts wormed their way through the wall panels. It was somehow worse that they couldn’t make out specific words. The Captain’s tone was more torturous—raw and full of all kinds of nasty potential.

At the tirade’s end, a moment of silence descended as excuses were likely made. Everyone on the bench could imagine the lame apologies; they were all busy rehearsing their own. The door opened with a slight click, and two despondent students shuffled out, not even pausing to wish their comrades luck.

As second-worst performers, Peters and Simons went in next. The muffled shouting resumed. The space between Molly and Cole felt more oppressive and stuffy than the crowded bench had seemed just moments ago. She wanted to talk, but she could tell Cole didn’t. It was like being back in the cockpit—next to his corpse. She needed a partner, but he was unable to reciprocate thanks to some external command to do nothing—that pressure from the other boys in the Academy to see her as a girl in every way but the one that mattered.

Or was it an internal command Cole felt? Was it a complete lack of the type of feelings Molly had to force herself to keep in check?

There was a third and far worse possibility: Maybe he felt the same way and kept waiting for her to engage, while Molly’s need to be a man amongst boys prevented her from finding out.

A period of silence jolted her back to her senses, and she and Cole sat up as straight as possible. After another round of muted apologies, the door clicked and the two boys filed out of the office. Simons glanced over his shoulder at Molly. The beat look on his face made her want to rush to him—give him a hug and tell him everything was going to be okay. She didn’t know him that well, but a few minutes on that bench together had been as much of a bond as she got out of most cadets in the Academy. She hoped her expression communicated her concern for him.

It probably just looked like fear.

Following protocol, Cole stepped into the office first. Molly took up a space to his right, her hands overlapped behind her back. She forced herself to meet Captain Saunders’s gaze and saw how tired he looked.