Yoris dives out of nowhere, lasers flaring. I bank hard left, barely scraping past a simulated mine cluster. Swan flanks, sends Yoris into a spin, but Gorran’s right there. Silent. Precise. The guy’s like a ghost in the void, moving with surgical clarity.
We trade kills, dodge-and-burn maneuvers tighter than a starviper coil. I’m sweating inside my suit, teeth gritted, eyes scanning every blip. But it’s not enough.
Yoris draws me out with a feint. I take the bait—because of course I do—and Swan gets double-tagged. Game over.
The sim bleeds to black. HUD displays final tally: Loss. Barely.
I rip the helmet off, panting, drenched, pissed.
“You still fly like you’re the only one in the sky,” Yoris says in the locker room, toweling off like he just jogged a lap. “Might be why Nova’s keeping you at arm’s length. She likes team players.”
I clench my jaw.
“She’s smart,” he continues. “Wants to see if she can break the golden boy. You’re just her latest experiment.”
My fists curl. It takes everything in me not to throw a punch.
Swan steps between us. “Let it go.”
I don’t.
But I don’t swing either.
Not until I’ve cooled off under a freezing rinse, suit half-forgotten in a heap on the bench. My knuckles ache from being held too tight.
“You keep flying solo,” Swan says beside me, voice low, “you’re gonna crash alone.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying—if you want First Ray, it’s not just about flying. It’s about leading. Learning to trust the wing.”
It stings. Because he’s right. And it’s not just about the title. It’s about proving to Nova that I’m not just some hotshot with a big mouth.
Later, I sit alone in the hangar, legs dangling off the edge of the repair bay scaffold, staring at the undercarriage of my fighter. The sleek Vakutan engineering gleams back like a polished mirror, but all I see are cracks. Microfractures.
“Look like you lost a fight with the sim again.”
Her voice cuts clean through the fog.
Nova walks past me in her uniform, hair tied back, datapad under her arm. She gives me a nod. Keeps walking.
That hurts more than Yoris’s words ever could.
She didn’t stop.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t ask.
I sit there, shoulders slumped, heart heavier than my armor, and wonder what the hell it would take—not just to win.
But to deserve her.
CHAPTER 9
NOVA
“Lieutenant Starling, a word.”
