The Star Pirate's Folly

Chapter 35: Steel

"C'mon, where's your steel?" Truly said in Bee's ear. "You beat already?"

"I'm never gonna catch you, Truly," she panted, exhausted after an hour of near-constant chase. Everything burned, ached, or throbbed. Pulling herself to the lockers with her palm nodes, Bee landed solid on her feet. She locked the nodes to act as anchors and relaxed her entire body to let herself rest in the weightless delight of null-gravity before she took her suit off.

"Safe bet, bumblebee. You lose again."

"Someday," she managed, still gasping deep breaths of her suit's filtered air.

It was a simple game with simple rules: touch Truly. That's all she had to do to win, just touch him. It drove her insane that she couldn't do it. She'd been careening around the nullroom ever since he came and woke her up but barely even gotten close to him. At least the game kept her mind occupied along with her body. Felt good to exert herself. Felt even better finally being comfortable in nullo.

Truly even said so—she'd gotten much better at moving in the suit since her first day in the nullroom. Instead of the gut-clenching terror she once felt after launching off, Bee glided with confidence. She could gauge where she wanted to go, how hard she had to push to get there. Before she had to correct herself every time with her palm nodes, or just "fall" somewhere onto her feet if she screwed up. But more and more often she didn't need the help and could keep herself in motion for long periods without touching anything.

Still, she was nowhere near Truly's caliber. Watching the man fly was a marvel. Every time they trained together she learned something new from him, some little technique she'd get him to explain to her. Today they focused on altering trajectory. To teach more easily Truly had Myra display on their HUDs a neon orange thread of light behind him as he moved around the nullroom.

While Bee watched, Truly had used his palm nodes to pull himself around the room. First he'd start moving straight ahead, with the trail of light straight behind him. Then he'd pull in a different direction and the light would follow him as he arced toward one wall, then another until the thread snaked all over the place in wild knots.

Then he told her to follow his trail. Myra lit up an aquamarine trail behind Bee as she shoved off. At the first arc Truly had taken she extended her arm and pulsed the palm node but overcompensated for the gentle curve and jerked away from his orange thread of light. She tried to pull herself back down and wound up tumbling end over end until she shot out both her arms and stopped herself by pulling against opposite walls.

Myra reset her trail and Bee went back to the starting point. That was the first of many failed attempts. She got further along the trail of light each time but before long Truly suggested they switch to their daily game of tag. That ended as always, with Bee wearing herself out in chase until she could no longer keep up with him—although today she was noticeably slower than usual, weak from not eating anything.

With her heart settling down and her breathing returning to normal, Bee looked up at Truly drifting toward her in his armor. "What'd you say just then? Where's my steel? Heard the Captain say something like that too. Privateer thing?"

"Find your steel, he says. Something the rebels started saying back before the Break. Sort of a rallying cry. Catchy, I guess—people just kept on repeating it."

"I'll have to look it up," she said before removing her helmet and peeling off her nullsuit. Still coated with sweat, goosebumps prickled on her exposed skin and she shivered as she hung her suit in her locker.

Truly settled down beside her in his gray armor, orange-striped knees bending as he landed, and detached his helmet. He'd barely broken a sweat, she realized as she watched him remove his armor piece by piece.