Chapter 88: Flying Lesson II

"Okay. Your task is a simple one. Get us out of the asteroid field in one piece. Within the time limit," Oaty explained once Lusac was settled into the pilot's seat.

"Time limit? Come on, Oaty. It's going to be hard enough to get us out without banging up the shuttle. Don't add that in. We can add that in next time," Lusac pleaded while silently promising himself that there would never, ever be a next time. Oaty could find someone else to torment with his 'pilot training' classes.

"You underestimate your own skills. Don't worry, Lus. You'll do fine," the pilot assured him. "Alright, starting the clock now. You have five minutes."

"Five minutes… Okay. I can do this," Lus muttered himself as he took stock of all the sensor screens in front him. It had only taken Oaty two minutes to position them in the field, so five minutes would be plenty of time for him to get back out.

Right?

Wrong.

There were asteroids everywhere, and they were moving quickly, making it hard to gauge how to get around them. Lusac spent several seconds plotting a mental course, but every time he went to take the ship through it, the asteroids had moved and blocked his course.

It seemed he'd made a hundred failed attempts when the timer's beep went off.

"And… we're dead," Oaty announced.

"I'm sorry. I told you I wasn't ready for the time limit. Let me practice getting us out without it once, and then I can try with it," Lusac offered.

"Nope. Timer's going. Try again."

Lus grumbled some curses under his breath as he refocused on piloting. He did manage to make it past one asteroid before getting hung trying to escape the last two blocking their exit. It shouldn't be this hard, but somehow anytime he started forward, it was like the rocks moved to be in his way. It was frustrating, and when the timer went off again, he stood up from the seat.

"I'm done. Let's go back to the Argo," he announced.

Oaty chuckled and shook his head. "Only way we're getting out of here is if you get us out. I'm not moving from this chair."

"Fine. I'm not doing it, so we'll just float out here until something crushes us." Lusac crossed his arms, showing Oaty that he wasn't going to back down easily.

"Alright." The pilot put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his seat, staring out the window. "Why don't I tell you another story while we wait for you to unwad your panties and try again?'

"You already told me the story of winning the Cinder Rock Youth Cup today, Oaty. I don't want to hear it again." Lusac sighed.

"Nah. Not that one. The one about how I ended up with the Runners."

"You were a pilot for the Corporates, and your ship crashed. You were the only survivor, and you were found by a Runner crew who was hiding out there to make repairs on their own ship," Lusac said, reminding him that he knew that story too.

"I meant how I ended up in that situation. With the Corporate military." Oaty's face wasn't quite so teasing, and Lus's stance softened.

As far as he knew, Oaty had never told anyone that story. Everyone knew he came from a Corporate family, but as to how the son of two important officials ended up as a grunt pilot on the frontlines in the war… That was something he'd never shared with anyone on the Argo.

Oaty glanced behind with a smirk. "I'll tell you on the condition that you'll keep trying the asteroid exercise afterwards. Deal?"

"Deal," Lusac said immediately.

The man sighed. "When the war broke out, my life hardly changed. All it meant was that I kept going to local racing tournaments instead of the galaxy wide ones, but I didn't mind so much. There was less competition there, and I won a whole lot more. My room was full of so many trophies, you could hardly see the walls. I was given a second bedroom just to store the things.

"My parents were also gone more, but I liked it better that way. I was an only child, so it meant I got the house to myself."

"Alongside the golems?"

"Yeah. Alongside the golems and our estate manager, a woman named Caroline. Caroline was the best. She was like an aunt to me, and she had a daughter about my age named Lucia. When we were kids, Caroline would bring Lucia to work, and the two of us would play together. She was kind of my best friend for a lot of years, but we lost touch once I got into racing. Didn't have time for friends."

Oaty stared forward, his eyes distant. "Things were fine until one day Caroline didn't show up for work. And it wasn't until three days later she came back, and when I asked her about her absence… Well, I found out the hard way that Lucia had been conscripted into the Corporate military when the war first started, and Caroline had only just gotten word that Lucia had been killed in action."

He paused the story here, clearly lost in his own thoughts. It was as though he didn't even remember he was talking to Lusac, instead he was just reminiscing to himself aloud, and Lus happened to be present.

"That was the moment that changed things for me. I'd never experienced grief before, not of losing someone, and it crushed me, more so than her own mother. When I finally pulled out of the spiral, only one question was on my mind… Why… Why did this war have to happen? What good was going to come of it?

"And so I started looking for answers. And I found them." His face was angry now as he looked ahead at nothing. "Thanks to my parents' high status, I got access to a lot of information the common person couldn't, and I learned about the salary bumps and all the money gained by the rich, and I realized that this had nothing to do with morals."

Oaty turned to look back at Lus with a smile. "Obviously there wasn't much a teenager could do to change the fate of the galaxy, but I decided to try anyway. I got in with the radicals and joined all the war protests on my home planet.My parents were gone so much they didn't even notice."

He sighed. "At least until it was impossible to ignore. A journalist happened to notice me and realize who I was. Suddenly the traitor son was on the front page of every newsite and tabloid. My parents became outraged and basically locked me in the house. Even then I refused to back down."

Oaty shook his head. "By that point the damage was done. Due to pressure from the press and their bosses, my parents had to do something to show the world that I was a good Corporate boy, and so they shipped me off to the military. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, with only the safest of duties, but I managed to skirt the protections they put in place and get myself into the real action. I figured if I had to take part in the war, I was going to do something good."

"What was your plan before your ship crashed?" Lusac asked.

The pilot chuckled. "That was the plan, Lusac. I intentionally rammed my ship into that planet. We were a bomber headed for a defenseless colony, so I did what I could to protect some people."

Lus's jaw dropped. "What about the people on the ship who died? Some of them might not have been there by choice."

"You think I don't know that?" Oaty's face remained neutral, but Lus sensed the emotion boiling underneath. "I didn't like killing innocents, but it was better those soldiers than the helpless kids at the colony we were supposed to bomb."

"What makes their lives less valuable?" Lusac was stunned and shocked to hear this kind of confession from Oaty. "They might have been like me, forced to do it or watch their families starve."

"You ever seen a dead kid?"

Lusac swallowed. "No."

"I have. After one of our bombing runs on a government agriculture planet, I was part of the task force sent down to examine the damage. There was a little boy who couldn't have been more than five or six years old. He was clinging to the remains of a stuffed animal, and it was clear he'd died in absolute terror as our bombs fell. After that I vowed I'd never have a part in ending a child's life again."

Lusac lost his passion for arguing. Even hearing about such a sight sent chills across his body and caused an aching lump to form in his stomach.

He sat down in the pilot's chair. "War sucks. You're right. No one wins."

"Only the rich," Oaty concurred. "I, uh, would appreciate it if this stays between us. You know, pilot's honor and stuff?"'

Lus nodded. "Of course, Oaty. It's your story to share, not mine."

The pilot smiled, but Lus could tell it wasn't genuine. "Enough chatting. You let me prattle on way too much, Lusac. Now let's get back to business."

"Right… Me trying to get us out of an asteroid field under the duress of a time limit." Lusac grimaced as he took the shuttle's controls in his hands. He couldn't be sure, but it did seem like there were more asteroids blocking his path out. Or perhaps Oaty had secretly flown the shuttle deeper into the asteroid field to give him an extra challenge while he was distracted with the story.

"Ready?"

"Ready," Lus glumly confirmed.

"Timer is going," Oaty said.

Lusac took a deep breath and checked all his sensors to be sure he was aware of all the asteroids.

In a not-so-shocking turn of events, Lus failed to complete the challenge again. And again. And again. Sometimes it felt like he was flying in circles, and other times it seemed like the asteroids were actively working against him when he plotted his course.

"Want a hint?" Oaty asked as they geared for another attempt.

"You mean there's a trick to this?" Lusac looked at him, his frustration about to erupt on the pilot for making him suffer this long.

"Asteroids' directions are tough for the navigation computer to judge. Your best bet is to fly without it."

Lus stared at him dubiously. "But that can be dangerous. The nav computer automatically keeps us from crashing into anything."

"You gotta learn to fly under any circumstances to be a real pilot."

Lusac shook his head but decided to take Oaty's ill-sounding advice anyway. Flying free-hand sounded like a death sentence, but suffocating in the void of space had to be better than continually failing at the same, stupid challenge.

A warning popped up on the front screen as Lus turned off the navigation computer, but he dismissed it, choosing to trust that Oaty wouldn't lead him too far astray.

Oaty restarted the timer, and Lus began the challenge anew, only this time, instead of watching the asteroids and trying to plot a path through them with the navigation system, he manually directed the shuttle as soon as he saw an opening.

It was a whole lot more stressful than following the navigation HUD in a predetermined path, but he kept the shuttle at a steady speed and remained tuned into the sensors so he could make the necessary adjustments to avoid asteroids when they came too close.

The tension in his body released as he safely guided the ship out of the field and back into the open void.

"Well done. We'll make a pilot out of you yet," Oaty congratulated. "And with thirty seconds to spare. Not too shabby. Now move out of the chair. I'm sick of your granny pace. I'd actually like to get back to the Argo in time for dinner."

"You mean in time for me to make dinner," Lusac countered.

"That too." Oaty smiled, seeming to have completely moved past their earlier discussions.

Lus didn't think it'd be as easy for him to do the same, but he still appreciated that his friend had trusted him enough to share such things. This lesson hadn't turned out so bad after all.