Far Horizon (Juggernaut #4)

Twenty Three

'You've worn a Mark three before, cadet?'

'Um. I don't think so.' The Valkyrie helmets fitted in the same way as these. Were they Mark three? Ellie just thought they were helmets. Since she arrived on the Paris, everything seemed to have a letter or a number or a dash or an abbreviation. Starling was a perfectly good name for a spacecraft , she thought. Why complicate it with S and T and the number twelve?

'You don't know?' came a voice over the intercom. It was one of the twins.

'We can talk to each other?' said Dominique.

'You're share a channel for the first lessons,' said Tariq. 'But until you have a need to speak, stay quiet. I don't want the channel filled with noise. Carry on, cadet,' he finished. He climbed down from Ellie's pod and moved on.

When the last two pods were secure, Lieutenant Anwar returned to his console. His semi-circular workstation was not quite centred in the room, so he had a clear view of all eight simulators plus the central display. His own console was filled with dozens of smaller screens, each one showing a video feed of cockpit, plus simulated status, telemetry, mission parameters, and all the other details he needed to run the training.

'Let's get started,' he said. He pressed a button, and eight cockpits closed and latched shut.

Ellie's momentary thrill passed quickly. Once the cockpit closed she could still see the rest of the room. There was nothing realistic about this. The Lieutenant pressed another button and the room vanished. Now Ellie's view was completely different. Instead of the simulation room, Ellie saw through the canopy a triangular tunnel. Twin light tracks stretched along grey walls, converging and vanishing to a point some distance ahead where she could see the launch bay doors.

Ellie lifted herself higher in her seat. The rest of the Starling now existed in the simulation. Wings extended from beneath the cockpit with a shallow sweep backward. She saw the thruster exhausts at each wingtip and could make see the microswitched venting flip back and forth in response to her playing with the controls. Beneath her, which Ellie couldn't see, the Starling sat in the housing for the magnetic launch sled.

The illusion was perfect. If she had just woken up here she would have no idea she was in a simulator.

In front of her was the launch tube doors. They were closed now, but Ellie knew they would open, and beyond them was the stars, and when she was ready, the magnetic sled would accelerate her to launch speed in three seconds. Then she would be in space, and free. She waited for the instruction to go.

Her earpiece chirped as Tariq joined the comm channel.

'Lesson one cadets. The safe start up and shut down of your Starling.'

'What?' said Ellie

'Check your comms, cadet, I know you heard me.'

'But... when do we get to fly?'

'You can fly when you start up and shut down safely and not before.'

'But I know how to start a ship.'

'I see." Ellie heard a faint chirp in her earpiece as the channel changed. "Listen up, class. Cadet Young will be taking us through this first lesson. Pay attention and direct any questions to me afterwards. Go ahead Cadet.'

'Go ahead what?' said Ellie.

'Show us how it's done. Take your Starling through the start up sequence. I've disengaged the simulated safety protocols and I'm feeding your video to the rest of the class so we can all learn from your knowledge. Class, please remain silent during this lesson.'

Ellie said nothing. She knew he was trying to put her on the spot. But she also knew what she was doing. She had been flying her racer for years and she had flown a Valkyrie. That was a real ship, and the start button was under a flip panel to the left of the throttle, so it should be right there.

She left for it with her little finger, but there was no button. There was no button the other side either.

'Um,' she said.

'Problem, cadet?'

Ellie thought back. She must have read about this in the manual, before she skipped ahead to the more interesting parts. There was something about vectored thrust? No, that was for vertical take off. This was a mag sled, so she would need to disengage the locks, remotely power up the field coils in the tunnel wall, raise landing gear, ignite the engines to five per cent thrust, ready to hit high-burn as she left the launch tube, and then she would be away.

Painfully away of the class watching her Ellie found each control in turn and activated them one after the other. The cabin responded to each change as if she really was turning on superconducting magnetic coils four meters away, and as if the twin engined fusion drive really was powering up.

Confident she had the sequence right she hit comms.

'Ready to launch,' she said.

'Launch when ready,' said the lieutenant.

Ellie gripped the controls, and thumbed the launch button. Then she looked up, and only then did she realise her mistake. Her ship lurched forward and exploded in the tube.

The class cheered together in mock celebration.

'Congratulations, cadet. You just set a record for the fastest death in my class by quite some margin. Most cadets at least make it out of the launch bay. I suggest that next time you open the bay doors before accelerating, but that's just my opinion. After all, everyone knows how to start a ship, don't they.'

Tariq hit a sequence of commands to reset Ellie's simulation. The inferno outside her cockpit disappeared and the launch tunnel reappeared. The doors to space were still closed. He opened a private channel to Ellie's pod.

'Lesson learned, cadet?'

'Yes. Sorry.'

'Mistakes are part of the lesson, cadet. Just get them out of your system in here before you get out there. And next time don't assume you're the smartest in the room. I don't know where you came from and I don't care. In here you learn to fly. That's all I care about.'

'Sorry,' she said again.

'Don't be sorry, be better.' He cut the private channel and opened a public one. 'Alright class, fun's over. We're going to go through that again, step by step, until you can do it blindfolded. Let's begin.'

* * * * *

Tariq's warning about the blindfold turned out to be accurate. By the end of the day, they had each simulated startups and shutdowns of their Starlings in a variety of conditions, under different sensory inputs, under simulated attacks which shook their virtual craft so hard Ellie could hardly see the controls.

They would do it again and again. Sometimes alone. Sometimes in competition. Sometimes they would synchonise their sequences forcing them to hit each other's beats in perfect unison. Other times the ignition sequence would jump from ship to ship, each pilot suddenly being presented with an incomplete part of the whole, and forced to take another step, or to finish it completely, before it would jump away to the next cadet.

And then they would take a break and the Lieutenant would start all over again. This time, he blindfolded them.

And throughout all these exercises, the launch bay doors never opened.