Two hours after they’d started, they’d gotten far enough to where cadets Gaab and Porkins had managed to get out of the docking bay without hitting anything else.
It was at the start of the third hour that Bondo lost his composure.
“Sir,” said Bondo after four Cadets exited the virtual bay and the red PILOT ERROR message had lit up his interior for the hundred-and-twenty-third time, “Sir I need to...exit the...booth.”
“Negative, Cadet. Keep flying until you all get out.”
“Sir, I...Sir, I need...need to...” Bondo didn’t finish the sentence. He started to flail about inside the booth, which was already tight and cramped. Small movements at first, but as he began to panic his lurching and grunting turned into yells and screams, his sizable arms slamming into the sides of the booth, and even at the holoscreen which fizzed and reformed as soon as his hands moved away.
“Cadet Crasna? You need to calm down,” said the instructor, stepping down from his elevated podium and walking down the aisle through the rows of sim booths towards the one booth that rocked and bucked as the large person inside tried to escape.
“What happens if he gets out?” Slak said. No one else was talking but him.
“He can try again. Claustrophobia isn’t unheard of, but you need to get it under control or you might just open up your fighter and die in an effort to stretch your legs.”
#
In the room next door, Shea Hublin and Han Solo watched the proceedings on a monitor. Hublin looked at his second in command; his eyes were cold as they glared at Bondo’s upset screaming inside the capsule.
“You don’t approve, do you Solo?”
“I’m a Second Lieutenant in an army of about a trillion soldiers, Shea. What I think, do or approve doesn’t matter so long as I do what I’m told.”
“True. But I’m curious. Would you do things this way?”
Solo gritted his teeth. “I hate unnecessary cruelty to anyone, Hublin. And I see this as unnecessary, yes. I liked it better when they just had us try to move cargo over fake lava.”
“Yes, well, progress is progress, and all that. You can stand in the way of it and be crushed, or hop on board and enjoy the ride.”
“You think progress is anything new, Hublin. When you’ve seen as much of the Galaxy as I have, you’ll see they aren’t always the same thing.”
#
“LET ME OUT!” Bondo was screaming, “LEMME OUT! GOTTA OUT!”
“The sewer with this,” Dav said. He twisted and pulled, then twisted the lock on his booth, which opened and let the door to the sim swing open.
“Cadet Eccles,” the instructor said, his voice a hard edge, “would you kindly return to your...”
“No, Sir!” Dav said said, “I will not kindly return!” he arrived at Bondo’s sim and began searching for the seam on the side door. He found the exterior lock in two seconds, but couldn’t get it to comply.
Bondo was by now beyond the ability to speak, but ranging around inside the booth incoherently. “Slak!” Dav yelled, “Norrin! You two know how to get locks to open ! Get over here, now!”
Slak hesitated for just a second, as did Norrin.
They both hit their locks and exited at the same time, glancing at each other over the roofs of the sim booths for just a second as they did so. They ran to Bondo’s booth, each trying hard not to think too much about how much Bondo had done for them without them even asking, or him seeking a reward or favor afterwards.
“What do we do?” Dav said.
“It’s a palm lock. It’d open instantly if we had Bondo’s hand, since he was the last one to open it. But I’ll have to...”
“Norrin!” Dav said, bringing his face an inch from the smaller boy’s, “can you open this?”
“Ap...um...” Slak made a disgusted noise, reached over and tapped something on the lock in a little pattern no one else knew. The thumb print circle on it changed from red to blue.
Norrin looked at it, then looked up at Dav “Yes!” he yelled, “Yes, I can now!” Norrin said, bending to start tapping other points on the lock. “But when that lock opens, all the doors’ll come off at once. And if Bondo’s still in a frenzy, you’re gonna need people to...”
Dav had already looked at Slak and made a quick gesture. Slak nodded, and was pounding on the other sim booths in the space of a second. “Out! Out! Bondo’s in trouble! Move! Move! MOVE!”
Dav did the same. In a half-minute every member of the flight was in the aisles and on all four sides of Bondo’s sim booth.
“Ready?” Norrin said.
Twenty-eight heads nodded.
Norrin tapped another code into the lock, almost missing a button as a particularly heavy hit of Bondo’s slammed against the booth.
With a hiss of emergency-released hydraulic steam, all four walls popped open like bulkheads on a troop carrier delivering its cargo. The rest of the flight caught the doors as they popped open, although poor Norrin took a bonk in the head from the heavy metal plating.
As the other members of his flight lowered the metal walls to the floor, Bondo rose up and out like a creature out of myth and time. He roared, his body nearly bursting out of his black flight suit, his huge arms in the air and his eyes blazing in fear and anger. Norrin stood up just in time to be hit again as Bondo’s stray open palm shot up like a rocket bomb, smacking Norrin up and into the arms of a number of the other cadets.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Over a dozen arms gripped Bondo, gently but firmly. Dav was in his face, close, and talking in a calm voice.
Miraculously, Bondo lost his sense of rage. Quieted now, he looked around, disoriented. He tried to sit, but slowly reeled backward in a near faint. The dozen pairs of hands already holding him now lowered him gently to the ground.
“Excellent,” said a voice at the door.
They all turned. It was Hublin and Solo. Solo had his arms crossed, looking grim and more than a little angry. Hublin was smiling wide for the first time anyone could remember.
“Ladies- As I was, Lady and gentlemen: You are done for the day. Classes are cancelled, and you all have free time until form up tomorrow morning. Enjoy yourselves. Dismissed. Cadet Eccles, you will wait for me outside this room until Second Lieutenant Solo and I come for you. Is that clear?”
Dav hesitated for the briefest instant. “Yes, sir!”
Everyone cheered, and even Bondo in his sweaty fatigue seemed to understand that he was free, at least until the morning. As they filed out, the instructor looked over at Hublin with a straight face.
“Time?” Hublin said.
“Not bad,” Instructor Doff said, “considering you’ve got Four Flight this time around. You beat Three Flight by a full five minutes, from when a Flight member lost control to the Flight gathering to help them. Two Flight froze, no one wanted to disobey my order. One Flight had the most interesting attitude of all: Someone did stand up to help, but Freddik ordered him to reseat himself. Said that the weak needed to be weeded out early, and this was the best way to do it.”
“And what happened?” Solo asked.
“The Commander happened to be looking on the session, and ordered me to end the test then and there. Said this was the best, most correct possible outcome.”
“Did he now?” Solo said. “Interesting. Even more interesting to me is that the cadets never talk to each other about this between flights, I mean,” said Solo.
“By this point in the season, gentlemen,” Doff said, “the Flights have gotten so competitive with each other there’s very little fraternization between the groups. Unless one Flight’s male decides to stake out a female of a lower Flight.”
“Hurm,” said Hublin.
“To your credit, Second Lieutenant Solo,” said the instructor, “you and Hublin are doing things with Four Flight that no one else has. I understand it’s usually the charity cases of the group- the folks who do extraordinarily well in some areas but awful in others. Still, it took an unusually long time for one of your boys to crack, and an unusually short time for one of them to break ranks and turn leader to save them.”
Solo said, “I know. But there’s a part of me that wishes we could be honest with them. This isn’t a test designed to make them exit a docking bay. It’s designed to frustrate a person to their breaking point and see what the rest of the team will do.”
“Second Lieutenant Solo,” said Captain Doff, “let’s not forget that the enemy won’t hesitate to trick, deceive or otherwise play dirty when trying to kill those cadets. You above all ought to know that.”
Solo hesitated for a second. “Point made,” he said, and turned to go.
#
Dav waited outside the room, leaning against the wall. When it slid open and Solo exited, he snapped to attention and looked straight forward.
“As you were, Eccles,” Solo grumbled, walking away down the hall.
Dav leaned back again, and had just touched the wall when the door slid open a second time, making him snap to his rigid pose of attention again.
“Eccles,” Hublin said, his teeth gritted and his mouth barely an inch from Dav’s ear, “why did you break ranks and exit your pod?”
“Crasna was in trouble, sir.”
“Other cadets have been in trouble before. Gaab couldn’t climb the wall on the obstacle course the other day. You didn’t break ranks then.”
“You gave us specific orders not to assist our fellow Cadets through the obstacle course, Sir.”
“Didn’t the instructor give you similarly specific instructions?”
“No, sir. He asked me if I would kindly return to my seat. Also, throughout the instructional period, he did not identify himself as an officer, nor did he have the insignia of rank displayed on his uniform, the way you and Second Lieutenant Solo do, Sir.”
Hublin looked at his black flight suit. Eccles was right- he had the grey rectangle above his right breast with one blue square in the grey rectangle’s field on it.
“Indeed,” Hublin said. “Eccles, there are those who’d say you did a stupid thing in there. Do you know that?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“There are those who’d say that since you couldn’t have saved Cadet Crasna in the vacuum of space, you should have left him to flail about and find his own way. What do you say to that?”
“Sir, Crasna is part of my flight. Moral considerations and the way I was raised aside, we’re a team in Four Flight. And a team member tries harder and works better when he knows and trusts those he’s working with.”
Hublin nodded his head, his mouth making the satisfied, semi-frown of a man who’s heard something unexpected, yet satisfying.
“Eccles, on the daily duty roster, thus far you’ve acted as...bed check inspector, fire marshal, uniform inspector, weapons counter, and...safety procedure inspector. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And not a single black mark on any of those duties.”
“None I am aware of, sir.”
“Well and good. You will no longer rotate with the other cadets on the duty roster. Do you know why?”
Dav hesitated, unsure and suddenly worried. “No, sir.”
“It’s because you acted as a leader in there today, And your flight is so pathetic, I haven’t been able to promote anyone to Flight Senior yet. You, Cadet Eccles, are going to be Flight Senior for the remainder of this time in school. Unless you mess it up, which I think is more than likely given how you’ve squandered your opportunities thus far. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“I can see you’re happy. Don’t be. Your job now will be to ensure everyone else does their jobs, or you’ll pay the price. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And one more thing, Cadet.”
“Sir?”
Hublin leaned in to Dav’s ear, his voice now a gentle whisper. “I’ve got a good feel for things like this. And my instincts tell me that the time is coming when I won’t be there to do what needs be done. Part of being a leader means doing the occasional...unpleasantry in pursuit of excellence, both on a team level and a personal one. At some point, in order to be a true leader, you’ll need to do what needs to be done, regardless of how distasteful it is to you on a personal level. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No, no you don’t. Not yet. But you will, Flight Senior Eccles. Dismissed.”
Dav clicked his heels, saluted Hublin, turned on his heel and marched away. He waited until his thought he was out of sight and earshot of Hublin before he took off running down the hall, giving a huge whoop of joy and leaping into the air as he ran to give the news to the rest of the Flight, wherever they’d gathered.
-----
TO BE CONTINUED...
#