“Are you ready, cadet?” Keya said.
I wasn’t. I thought I had this down, Keel and I had practised the same fight sequences, the same jump and captures followed by yet more choreographed fighting over and over and over. Apparently, he’d been pulling his punches though.
“C’mon, cadet. My lieutenant said you had this,” Keya said, dropping her spear down into a neutral position and flipping her visor up. I struggled to find my balance, arms flailing, but was pleased I was finding my feet faster and faster. The issue was Keya was adding a little extra oomph in her strikes and that momentum was messing with my reactions, throwing the whole sequence off. I didn’t say that to her though. “Let’s focus on the jumps,” she said with a sigh. “They’re the crowd pleasers so as long as you have them down, you’ll be fine. You’re going to need to count a little higher for the pickups. There're more dragons and we’re performing in a bigger space, so they’ll take longer to get to you.” She smiled when she saw my expression. “Don’t worry, ground eating puts the mood of the crowd off. They’re either shocked and horrified or baying for more bloody and neither is what we’re looking for. Just trust your fellow riders, cadet. Count to Thirty—”
“Thirty! I was counting to twenty at most.”
Keya held up a hand. “Thirty and we’ll be there, I promise.” She watched my face and then smiled, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We strike without warning, cadet. You should’ve been dead a thousand times over before now and someone’s always caught you. They will again. You ready?” I nodded. Her eyes went to the horizon as she tapped into the comms unit in her helmet. “Radath and Hinkler, you’re doing pickups for the cadets.” She gave them the coordinates, pulling her visor down with a snap and then said, “God speed, cadet,” and shoved me off.
My yelp no doubt deafened everyone in comms range. Usually, I threw myself off with a carefully orchestrated backward somersault, something I’d practised over and over on the fence that ran along the back of the cottage. Instead my arms and legs clawed at the air as I struggled to orientate myself. 1 Mississippi, two Mississippi... I forced my body to obey, arms out to slow my passage somewhat, toes pointed to the ground. Five Mississippi, six Mississippi. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Practise was the best thing for anxiety, if I had enough time to try, try, stuff up, improve, try another tack then develop a level of mastery, I was normally OK, but I guess there was no getting used to BASE jumping off flying lizards. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. That familiar sensation of shitting my pants while knowing help was on the way began to rise, but I needed to push past that because it wasn’t yet. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. Was I counting too fast? Did you use Mississippi between double digit-ed numbers or not? Twenty-five, twenty-six. The ground was rushing up to meet me; I was starting to pick up details I couldn’t see before. I didn’t like details, details meant I was getting close enough to die. Fuck, what number am I up to? Is it thirty? My
head whipped around as I looked for my incoming dragon but everything was a blur. A scream built up in my chest. I wanted to yell out on the comms link that I needed a pick up. What if they’d gotten distracted or run into some issues themselves? Surely this was thirty seconds already. I wanted, needed to say something. I was going to die here in a foreign realm, never to see my sister, my family again. Never to organise platters of fresh prawns for Mirenese. Never to hear Jez’s ridiculous tall tales about her sexual exploits. Tears pricked my eyes and I screwed them tight in shame. “Guys, pickup needed. Help me!”
“Pickup here,” a terse reply came. Dragon claws slammed around my body, me jerking in response to the break in momentum, every muscle aching because I’d neglected to go loose. Tears ran freely now. This was my first jump, it was only ten seconds longer than the first one and I’d broken. I knew I had to stop it, I wasn’t able to see properly and I simply couldn’t afford to sob my way through the next routine. “Drop in 3,” the dragon rider who’s beast was carrying me said. “Be ready in 3, 2, 1, go!”
I dropped at the exact moment, my arms and legs tucked in tight against my body so I didn’t drift over, letting them go loose as I hit the dragon’s spine before rolling into a standing position. My legs were shaking as I moved into the hand to hand combat stance, arms up like knives. My vision was a messy smear, but I relied on muscle memory to take me through the sequence. I ducked, struck, spun and rolled, just as I had been taught, only stopping when we reached our final form, a standoff of mutually assured destruction, both hands ready to chop at the other’s neck.
Being able to do the routine didn’t stop the tears, rather it made it worse when we stopped. I tried to hold back the sobs, not wanting every rider in Aravisia to hear the ragged sound of my breath, the hiccuping sounds I make while ugly crying, but I had no choice. My opponent dropped their arms and when he flipped open his visor, I saw it was Keel. His brows creased with concern. “Tess, what—?”
“You need to practise those longer jumps, cadet,” the Captain’s voice came over the comms with a crackle. I could hear the grit of her teeth in her tone. “Lieutenant, get her up and then I want thirty-second jumps, over and over until she’s got it, then some forties.”
“That’s insanely high. Who’s going to see her up that high?” Keel said.
“You questioning an order, Lieutenant?”
“No, I—”
“I need to break her of that fear. I thought you’d done that. You had, to a certain degree, but she’s as reliant on a twenty-second pickup as anyone else would be of a much shorter one. I need her to jump without fear and trust that we will be there to catch her. Can you do that or do I need to assign another officer?”
Keel stared at me for a moment. “No, sir.”
“Then get her up there, rider.”
“Yes, sir.”
I got it together as Artor, Keel’s dragon, took us up. The tears dried up, the sobs stopped apart from those last remaining spasms when your breath stutters in your chest, marking the passing of my hysterics. Instead, a flat, empty shame settled over me. I looked out at the morning sky as we went up, it was featureless and bluish-grey which somehow made me feel better. “Let’s do 40,” I said, my words coming out as little more than a rasp.
“What?” Keel’s voice came through the speakers in my helmet.
“Take us up. Keya’s right, I have to get used to this. No time like the present.”
Tess?
I’m OK, I’ve got to do some longer jumps. I’ve had a sook about it and I’ll be fine.
No, Tess, I—
Miazydar, I’ll be fine, I just need to focus. I’ll see you on the other side.
I was conscious he was trying to contact me again, but what was I going to do, lie in bed with my dragon, eat ice cream, plait each other's hair and talk about the shittiness of being forced to jump off a dragon’s back for the edification of the masses? It was time to stop thinking and do. I got to my feet as soon as Artor stopped, hovering in space. “This is it, Tess, Just—”
“Pickup in 40,” I said and then threw myself off the dragon.
I didn’t wonder if there were dragons below me, didn’t wait for a reply. Someone did, I heard a muttered, “Roger that,” but I paid it little mind. I arrowed down towards the ground, the sand rushing up as I fell, the burble of the wind as I went reverberating through my helmet, my body shaking like a doll from the speed and momentum of my drop. “Pickup incoming,” a voice said. I forced myself to relax, letting my muscles go loose right when I wanted to hunch into a ball. “Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, gotcha!”
I hung within the dragon’s claws like a dead bird, all the life punched out of me despite the rush of adrenalin forcing my heart to smash against my ribcage. “I did it,” I gasped, struggling to draw breath into my aching ribs. “I did it.”
We did it. It was then that I looked down at the claws that had me and my heart sank when I saw they were red. I looked up and saw the same creamy under scales I’d lain against so many times before. “On the ground, cadet, now,” the Captain’s voice barked at me.