Saltation by Sharon Lee; Steve Miller

Author:Sharon Lee; Steve Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2011-05-02T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

Erkes Dormitory, Suite 302

Anlingdin Piloting Academy

The light flashed on Theo's message queue.

If she ignored it, she could relax until her tutoring assignment.

It might, of course, be a message from Asu asking if they needed anything for the larder, or explaining that she might be late again tonight. Maybe it was that, finally, Asu topped the shuttle queue and would be orbiting until tomorrow. That would ease the tension in the room.

Stretching into a flat-footed centering pose she closed her eyes, trying to absorb the energy instead of sighing it away. Those inner calm routines worked really well for some people, but the idea that sighing wasted relaxation was one proposed by her latest martial arts partner, and she doubted it.

The light still blinked when she opened her eyes. She sighed anyway.

Asu's schedules and hers diverged more and more now, with Asu concentrating on the basic licensing course—and being a social whirlwind—while Theo's mirrored, according to Chelly, the hard-core tradeship course he'd audited while summering as the school's exchange student.

Maybe she should ignore the message. On the other hand, she hadn't ignored a message since break had morphed into school. While that had happened all too fast according to her workmates it had hardly been fast enough for Theo, who enjoyed the company and the stipends of break but missed the school constant of hands-on flying.

Break over, she'd looked toward the time she'd be a flight deckhand, and get her own chance to sit first seat on the shuttle. That staffing notice was one she'd waited for, fully aware that each flashing message light might signal her listing on that queue.

Theo did the hand stretch thing that was supposed to be a good antidote to muscle loss if you were in zero g for a long time.

Asu might make flight deckhand this year, half a Standard after Theo's first of three deckhand runs and first as PIC. Most recently she'd subbed for Freck the day he broke his thumb at bowli ball. The shuttle was all work and no fun, as far as she was concerned, in part because you had to watch the crew as much as the craft.

She stood down from the stretching, shaking her head. For all that Asu tried to rag her about her math, which was up to snuff, these days, Asu was clearly not looking toward being a professional.

The queue lit up as she touched it—mail call.

She danced another relaxation move—until she saw that it was not yet another one of Jondeer's extravagances for Asu.

Signature pilot post, T. Waitley, Erkes 302.

She felt a thrill of anticipation, and Win Ton's bright face shone in her memory, a quirky smile playing about his lips as—but suppose it was something else?

"Go, Theo!" she said.

Thanking the luck that her roommate was elsewhere, Theo cleared the light and sprinted for the door. Asu need never know!

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