I zipped up my jumpsuit, adjusted the slim oxygen pack attached my shoulders, and took a deep breath. My stomach churned as I stared at my reflection in the polished metal wall. The red suit looked like a big warning beacon.
“Cadet Davos.” Lieutenant Evrek strode into the locker room. “Are you ready for your flight or not?”
I snapped a quick salute. “Ready as I’ll ever be, sir.”
The Lieutenant held the locker room door open for me. I scrambled past him and into the hangar. The huge gun-metal gray space echoed with a cacophony of dock workers’ shouts, the beeps of loading cranes and segues, and the loud flutter of wings. Crates obscured much of my view of the ground.
Dragons were everywhere: walking upright, flapping beside hovercraft, doing aerial acrobatics, and climbing on the catwalk beside ant-sized workers. They hung upside-down on the mesh-covered ceiling, their wings wrapped around their heads. The myriad of bright colors reflected off the polished metal walls, creating a dazzling kaleidoscope.
“Come along, cadet.” Lieutenant Evrek strode past me.
I trotted in his wake, dodging a group of jogging fighter pilots in blue jumpsuits. We stepped around a forklift. In a small clearing, surrounded on the far side by small fighter ships and the other sides by cabled bundles of crates, stood a dark pink dragon and an engineer. The dragon stood on its hind legs, shrugging a flexible harness webbing over its shoulders.
I stopped and stared. My gut felt like a thousand dragons were careening around inside. Five years here at the Academy, training hundreds of hours, beating out dozens of other candidates, and here I was. Ready for my first space flight.
Now, if I just could survive it.
“Shut that maw, cadet. We don’t need to see how many teeth you have,” Lieutenant Evrek barked.
The dragon and engineer turned toward us. I snapped my mouth shut, my face and neck heating.
The engineer shook hands with the lieutenant. “Hey, there, Evrek. And this must be the test cadet for the day. My name’s Garvin.” He held his hand toward me.
I gripped it, trying to keep my own hand steady.
Lieutenant handed me a communicator ring. “Go ahead and introduce yourself.” He inclined his head toward the dragon.
I weighed the ring in my palm, then slipped it onto my right-hand ring finger. It hugged the skin, covering my finger from the joint to the second knuckle, and flexed as I moved. I held up my hand and made eye contact with the dragon, like I’d been taught in class.
The dragon nodded and dropped down to all four paws.
I placed my hand on its shoulder and spoke. “It’s good to meet my battle mate. My name is Isaak Davos.”
Mine is Lex, the dragon replied, the voice low and distinctly male.
I almost dropped my hand. A pink male dragon?
Yes, I know. Lex rolled his eyes.
I pulled the neck of my jumpsuit. Sorry. You weren’t supposed to hear that.
Don’t bother about it. You’ll get used to separating private thoughts from telepathy soon. Lex crouched. Shall we begin?
I glanced over my shoulder at Lieutenant Evrek and Garvin. The engineer gave me a thumbs-up. I hooked my boot into the harness rigging that hugged Lex’s sides and boosted myself onto his back. Garvin stepped up and pulled the harness over my shoulders, showing me how to buckle myself in. He handed me my helmet—stream-lined like a fighter pilot’s, but enclosed like a space walker’s. I fitted it over my head and heard a faint hiss as he connected the breathing tube to the slim pack on my back.
Garvin directed us to a smaller launching hatch off to the side. Lex considerately walked on all fours to get there. I couldn’t imagine riding on an upright dragon like some of the officers did. Once we were in the hatch, they sealed off the inner door.
I took a deep breath, staring at the outer door. Finally, I was here. Though I didn’t understand how the dragons could fly in the vacuum of space. The class on the science of dragon-flight had gone right over my head. I was here to fly.
Ready? Lex asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” I answered, tightening my grip on the harness.
The outer popped open. Air rushed past us, and water vapor froze as it jettisoned out the door. The vacuum tugged me forward in my harness.
Lex’s claws slipped on the slick metal and we slid a few feet toward the door.
My heart stuttered. Horror stories of first flights tumbled through my thoughts. Dragons injuring their wings and being laid up for weeks. Cadets getting torn from their harnesses.
Lex staggered, managed to get his footing, and folded his wings tight as we were sucked out of the hatch and launched into space.
I swallowed my yelp of surprise. My body floated up, tugging at the harness straps.
This was it?
Space felt, even looked, empty. Weird. I’d always thought of it as clustered tight with stars and galaxies. We were floating in the middle of a huge blank space, suspended by nothing and guided only by the flap of Lex’s wings. The stars were bright and so sharp they looked like they were floating right beside me.
Look over there! Lex swiveled.
I gasped. A galaxy swirled below us, bright yellow and green, planets and stars speckling it like glowing spots of glitter. An empty spot, filled with the glimmer of distant stars, gaped at the center of the galaxy. The whole thing had to be millions of miles across, yet it looked like it could fit inside my footlocker. For a moment, we hovered, staring at the brilliant colors around us.
Lieutenant Evrek’s voice crackled in my earpiece. “You all right, cadet?”
“Yes, sir.” I pushed myself to the side to get a better look at the galaxy.
“Not feeling twitchy or claustrophobic?”
“No sir.”
“How’s Lex?”
How are you doing?
Very well. Can you ask the lieutenant when the test is going to start?
I chuckled. “Lex is fine. He wants to know when the test will start.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you two passed with excellent marks.”
I blinked and tried to scratch my head. My hand thudded against my helmet. “Sir? I don’t understand.”
“You handled yourselves well during the exit, which was intentionally more forceful than our flyers usually experience. In addition, you don’t seem to be giving in to the space sickness.”
The words sent a chill up my back. I’d seen it myself when I’d first moved into the Academy ship. Some of the students couldn’t handle the vast, infinite, cold emptiness of space. The kids who couldn’t sleep, the ones who felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic, the ones who wouldn’t look out of the ship’s windows, they’d been shipped home within the first week. One or two of them had even turned violent, desperate to get away from the despair they felt.
There was a reason some people said space sucked out your soul.
I squinted as the sunlight reflected off space debris light years away.
Lex twitched his wings. I hear you.
I flinched. “Sorry.”
That wasn’t an admonition. I hear you. I understand. Space is beautiful. I don’t know why some are frightened of it.
I nodded. The dragon got it. The vastness, the emptiness—rather than frightening me, I saw it as an opportunity. Who knew what was out there, waiting to be explored?
A burst of static broke over my comm. “Okay, cadet, time to bring it in.”
I told Lex, and we swung toward the ship. We entered the chamber, sealing the outer door behind us. The inner opened with a pneumatic hiss, and Garvin helped us clamber out of our harness and flight paraphernalia.
A bell pealed over the general rumble of noise in the hangar, and everyone stopped whatever they were doing and glanced toward the glassed-in observation bay. I squinted. Several figures stood behind the glass. I was almost certain that one of them was Lieutenant Evrek.
“Attention.”
It was Lieutenant Evrek’s voice over the speakers, all right.
“Everyone, please welcome our latest addition to the Empiric Wings Battle Squad, Cadet Isaak Davos.”
A loud ripple of cheers and applause crashed through the hangar. My neck and ears burned.
Garvin slapped my shoulder, making me jolt forward a step. “Well, how was it? You gonna keep your wings?”
I glanced at Lex. The pink dragon grinned and winked at me.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m hooked.”
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