Oz watched Corporal Greaves eat from across the dining hall. This would be the first time the man had left on patrol since they were paired together. It could be the last time he'd ever see his instructor. The boy ate at his food mechanically, not noticing it until it was gone.
He had the man's combat uniform pressed and ready before Greaves had returned from breakfast. The corporal changed in silence, not sparing the boy a glance.
"Chores before simulator," Greaves reminded him. "And get into the top thousand, private," he said before the door slammed shut and headed out for duty.
For the first time since he had arrived at base, Oz was on his own.
There was no time at all to savor it, though. The chores Greaves needed doing were going to take him all over the base, and he would need as much time in the sim as possible. When he finally had the new pair of boots polished, and his hands cleaned, he still had two hours to spare in the flight simulator.
Clearly, his wasn't the only trainer that had been sent off. A quarter of the cadets inside were on their own today. He ignored the suggested training programs and instead opted for the free flight mode. He hit the start button and climbed inside.
When the screen booted up, he found his ship was already in flight and the sky an ombre, fading from black to blinding blue. There was no one to advise him, no voice on the radio, and no goals.
He pulled at the controls, and the world spun with each shift of the joysticks. The ship righted itself with ease, maintaining height without his help.
"Let's take you for a spin," Oz whispered.
He pushed the sticks forward, and the gravity shifted, ripping toward him as he fell into a dive. The simulator shook and the G forces pulled at him until he blacked out.
He jerked back awake as the pod slipped open again. Oz slapped the start button and slid back inside.
Little by little, he felt out the controls. It was built to be intuitive, the books had said. It was simplified to the point where any civilian off the street could get inside and give the enemy hell. A soft squeeze of the trigger set the gun burring away beneath him. A touch of the thumb and he could lock onto a target. The next squeeze of the gun trigger turned that target to dust. It was as easy as breathing.
But it was one thing to have the control layout memorized, and it was another to know it all by feel without looking. And it was another thing entirely to do it all while spinning under high G forces. Greaves hadn't been lying about that.
It took a few more crashes until he could dive to the earth and pull back in time to recover. If he struck a few trees along the way, the shields could take it without complaint. Outcroppings of rock, on the other hand, would send him spinning. And that usually meant biting it into the ground a few rolls in.
After an hour, he backed out and selected program two. 'Dog Fight', it read.
They were higher in the atmosphere this time, with the blue glow of the planet only reaching the bottom of his view screen.
"Enemy incoming," an automated voice called out. "Eighty seconds out. Class A fighter, one."
Oz nodded. Class A's were fighters, small and nimble like his own.
Finally, some combat.
"Lock on: Auto" he called out, his voice cracking with excitement. He heard the chime of confirmation. "Fire on: Auto." The chime rang out again.
"Forty seconds."
Oz pressed down harder on the throttle. "Thirty-one seconds," it corrected.
With a moment to spare, he snapped the joysticks hard in opposite directions. The G forces hit him faster than he expected. He had planned to pull out of the barrel roll immediately, but his body could hardly move now. The world was fading away, like it was sinking into a drain. He squeezed his eyes shut, then reversed the handles with one final effort.
To his surprise, it worked. For a moment, at least.
He had over-corrected. His insides suddenly shifted in the opposite direction. The G forces rose as he spiraled again. And then it was too late. The pod slid open as he began to be sick over the controls.
"Not bad, for a minute there." It was Greaves.
"You're alive," Oz said in surprise.
"Just a route patrol. And you would be alive, too, if you had pulled out of that correctly."
"Did I kill them?"
Greaves leaned over the training computer, and tapped at the screen. "You did. Or at least the computer did. And in good time, too."
The man waited for Oz to climb out of the seat and clean himself off. "It is good to trust in the computer's ability. It can react faster than you can."
The corporal dialed something up on the program as Oz stripped off his shirt and climbed back into the pod.
