“I still think this is bad idea,” Roja said frankly as he settled himself in the pilot’s chair with the ease of someone who spent most of their life at the helm of a ship. “Strap in.”

Luka slipped into the copilot’s chair and looked over at Roja even as he did as he was told. “Why?”

“Flying isn’t just something you learn,” Roja told him, and brought the little shuttlecraft to life quickly. It was heavily modified because Captain Tusca was paranoid and wanted to make sure his flyers could perform if they ever needed more than one ship to get out of a bad scrape. Roja approved. It meant he didn’t have to teach Luka to fly with the whole crew watching. “It’s your heartbeat and your air. You feel the helm under your hands every moment you’re awake and dream about it when you’re not.”

“Is that why the captain banned you from the helm?” Luka asked quietly. Roja didn’t answer until they were clear of the Wavedancer and heading for a nearby asteroid that was big enough to have several smaller ones around it. It would be a good place for Luka to learn basic maneuvers. “Because you love it so much?”

“No kid,” Roja murmured, fingers itching to do what he did best. To open her up and push until she broke, or didn’t. Him versus his own skill and the Black in a flyer he leased from the captain and modified until it barely resembled what it started as. “He banned me from the helm because he knew what I am. Probably saved my life by doing it.”

“How?”

One simple word, but it was a complicated question. Roja flew them into the asteroids as he tried to figure out how to answer.

“No Red Baron has ever lived past fifty,” he said at last. “Most don’t make it past thirty. They get shot down, or they push their abilities, or their ship just a little too hard. I’m the oldest in more than a century.”

“You turned thirty-two last month,” Luka said quietly. He was starting to see the cost of being a Red Baron. Good. It might keep him alive a little longer. “How did you become the Red Baron?”

“The same way everyone does it,” Roja shrugged, and switched the main controls over to the copilot seat. He could take control if he needed to, but now it was Luka’s show. “You ever flown before?”

“Just little personal craft.”

“Atmo-bound or in space?”

“Atmo only.”

Atmo flying was different. For one, there was a definitive down. Not all humans did well in a 3D mindset, but the few that did could outmaneuver almost anyone, just by operating on a different axis than the other guy.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Okay, well, this isn’t that different,” Roja told him, even though it really was. For a first lesson, most of that didn’t matter though. “The controls are pretty much the same, and the only gravity you need to worry about is if we’re planetside, and right now, we’re not.”

Slowly, Luka took control of the ship. Roja had to give him credit. It was a smoother transition than he actually expected. Apparently, his young friend was a reasonably capable driver. That was useful. A quick refresher on the basics and they could probably skip right to the fun stuff.

As Luka got used to the way the ship handled, Roja kept an eye on his dials, and listened to the tiny, ever-present voice inside that whispered possible futures. For now, all it had to say was that Luka would have to screw up spectacularly to cause any trouble, and to be fair, he probably wasn’t going to actually hit the self-destruct by accident.

Roja flipped the safety cover down over the button anyway. No harm in being careful.

“You were telling me how you became the Baron,” Luka said when they were zipping through space, and in and out of the asteroids. Roja kept his hands on the controls, but he would know about it before Luka crashed them and didn’t worry too much. “You just said ‘how anyone does it’ but no one did it but you.”

“It’s not complicated,” Roja shrugged, and leaned over to nudge Luka’s hands into a better grip. “Like this. See how you can feel the engines in your fingertips? No, it’s not complicated to become the Baron. But it is hard.”

“So how do you do it?”

“You outfly the current Red Baron.”

He still remembered that flight. Unlike most, he hadn’t actually challenged for the title. He was just excited to fly, and to feel the press of time on his mind and the engines under his hands.

That his chosen course was through an abandoned space-station littered with still-active mines and half-active defenses was… not a fluke, but certainly the product of youth and arrogance.

And then there was a red ship behind him, and chatter on his comms. The other pilot made the universal gesture for bring it on and Roja accepted, wrapped up in the thrill of Go Fast! and how close is too close. With his precognition screaming death in every direction, he blazed a path through the old station.

It wasn’t until he got out on the other side, a full second before the red ship, that he listened to the chatter and found out who the red ship actually belonged to, and found out who he had just out flown.

No one expected the blaze of flames that erupted from the red ship, or the scream of rage that echoed over the comms for long minutes after the ship was nothing but rubble and space dust.

And just like that, Roja was the new Red Baron, witnessed by a dozen ships who came to challenge and were shown up by a dumb teenager who hadn’t even known what he was doing.

“Was it hard?” Luka wondered, breaking Roja from his thoughts as he slowly got a feel for the ship and got more confident, spinning them in circles and pulling tight, hairpin turns. It was harder when there was something to hit, but here in open space, it was practice, and practice was good. “To outfly him?”

“I didn’t even know I did it,” Roja admitted wryly. “I was seventeen and stupid and loved to fly.”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got a long way to go before you can challenge for the title,” Roja chuckled at the look Luka gave him. “We’ll get there if you turn out to be any good at this.”

He was. Roja could already see that painful love of flying that the best pilots were never without. Their ship’s helmsman had it too, but Carlito would never be a Baron. He was too enamored with the stars rushing past and couldn’t feel the ship under his hands.

“For now,” he continued, and shifted a little more control over to Luka. “Let’s see how fast this box of bolts can really go, huh?”