Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [82]
Except there were some occasions in his mental motion picture when she would simply laugh, or even shake off his touch and storm away. He wasn’t sure what he would do if those came true, but he knew his heart would stop beating. Maybe he’d simply walk outside of Tycho’s atmosphere and see how long it took him to suffocate or freeze to death.
When he got to thinking that way he would shake his head and tell himself that he was being stupid. That’s not you, he thought. That’s some lovesick puppy. Will Riker’s a lot of things, but he’s not a guy who’d commit suicide for anyone.
Then again, love changes you, he guessed. If it doesn’t, maybe it was never really there at all.
Tycho City was everything Will had remembered it being-big, sprawling, bustling, full of bright lights and loud noise and riots of color, as if to chase away the deadly silence of the moon’s surface. Everyone who lived there seemed to speak louder than was necessary, and tried to pack more activity into each day than Will did in a week. The pace of life was furious.
For the cadets, the pace was also fast. They woke early each morning, bathed and ate and then went straight to the field for flight practice. Breaking into their squadrons, they flew an assortment of shuttlecraft, mostly ships that would have been mothballed if not for the educational opportunity they offered. On the morning of their last day, Will was at the helm of a twenty-year-old executive shuttle. It was a sleek ship that seated ten, though on this one there were only the four cadets and their flight instructor, a Vulcan named Satek.
Will felt nervous as he eased the ship out of the dock under Satek’s watchful eye. He had done this enough times in flight sims and training runs, but he wanted everything to be perfect this time. The ship responded like a dream to his commands, though, despite its age-it was actually pretty lush, compared to what he was used to, since it had been the private shuttle of a highly placed Federation diplomat, and all its systems were in top working order. The shuttle hangar opening looked awfully small as they approached it, and the nose of the ship awfully large. And despite the low speed Will knew they were holding at, he felt like the ship was accelerating much too fast.
“You’re doing great,” Paul Rice whispered to him as they cleared the hangar bay. “No problems. Give it some power now.”
With the last structure safely behind them, Will knew that it was okay to give it some juice. They would fly out to a series of buoys, perform a few maneuvers around them, then return. The only tricky part yet to come would be landing again, which would also be Will’s job.
Once at the buoys, each of the cadets in the squadron took their turn putting the shuttle through its paces. They worked on accelerated banked turns, figure eights, hard stops, and other aerial maneuvers. As usual, Paul had the surest hand and best control-he was born to fly, Will was convinced. Dennis Haynes, still in Will’s squadron, was uncertain and hesitant, and that showed in his flying. Estresor Fil was workmanlike and by the book, but every move she made felt just a little stiff. She got the job done, though, and Satek seemed pleased with her performance. Jenna Garcia was nearly as smooth as Paul was, impressing Will with her technical acuity and her command of the conn.
Finally, once they had all made a couple of turns, Satek turned to Will. “Very well done, gentlemen. Cadet Riker, please take us back to Tycho City.”
“Yes, sir,” Will said. Jenna slipped from the helmsman’s chair and Will sat down. He glanced over the instrument display. Everything looked shipshape. “Set course for Tycho City, Starfleet hangar bay,” he instructed the computer. A quick look at the navigational reference display told him when the course had been confirmed.
A short while later the hangar bay loomed in the front viewscreen as the ship’s navigational