Coda could feel his face growing red. He stirred his food absently. Squawks wasn’t wrong, but Coda liked to think of himself as determined, not boring. He had a goal, and he wasn’t going to stop striving for it until he achieved it. He didn’t have time for anything else. It was as simple as that.
“And when am I going to find time for a hobby?” Coda asked defensively. “It’s not like you guys have anything going on outside of our training, either.”
“Are you serious?” Squawks asked, suddenly irritated. He turned to Noodle and Tex, who wore equally vexed expressions. “Is he being serious right now? God, Coda, you can damn near recognize someone by their flight patterns, but when it comes to everything else, you really are clueless, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you think we do during our free time?”
“I don’t know…” Now that Coda thought about it, since Uno’s departure, their extra practices in the simulator had all but ended, and most nights during their free time, his friends did disappear. He’d never thought to ask where. He’d barely even noticed they were gone.
“Unreal, man. Tex has his own garden in hydroponics, growing carrots and potatoes and crap. And Noodle, you telling me you haven’t seen him scribbling in his notebook? He’s writing a book, man. By hand. Swords and dragons and all that nerdy stuff. I’m working on something more communal. Everyone has their own thing. Everyone but you. And it kind of sucks that you didn’t know that.”
Coda looked at the three of them as if seeing them for the first time. Squawks was right. He barely knew anything about them. He might call them friends, but they were anything but. They were his wingmen, his squad mates, and that was it. He’d known he’d built a wall around himself—he’d done that years ago—but he hadn’t realized he hadn’t entered anyone else’s, either.
“I’m sorry,” Coda said. “You’re right. I am… Are you really writing a book, Noodle?”
His slender friend nodded, his face turning crimson.
“Mind if I read it sometime? I apparently need a hobby.”
“No,” Noodle said softly.
“No?” Coda raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected to be rejected.
“Not until it’s finished.”
“All right. How long will that be?”
Noodle shrugged as if to say he had no idea. Since he clearly had no desire to talk about it, Coda turned to Tex. “And you, growing food. I thought you said this stuff wasn’t so bad.”
“It’s not,” Tex said. “But there’s nothing better than fresh veggies.”
Squawks snorted. “Everything is better than fresh veggies. Well, almost everything,” he added, sticking his spoon back into the meat paste.
“I had no idea,” Coda said. “I haven’t been a good friend, and I’m—”
“Stop,” Squawks said. “You don’t need to baby us. Just get out of your own head sometime.”
“All right.”
For the remainder of lunch, Coda tried to play a larger role in the banter, but try as he might, his eyes kept drifting back to Moscow. He’d decided the night before to suck it up and bury the hatchet. And he meant to tell Moscow as much. So when Coda’s friends finished and stood to return their trays into the washing dispenser, Coda made for Moscow.
Squawks groaned behind him. “He really is going to ask him to dance.”
Ignoring the comment, Coda continued toward Moscow. He was sitting at another table with his friends, and they were laughing, in the middle of a story about how poorly the morning flight had gone. If the commander had heightened expectations following his pep talk the day before, then he must have been very disappointed with the morning’s session.
Their laughter died away as they spotted Coda approaching. Bear nodded to him, her previous disdain having been damped down in their hours spent training together in the simulator. Moscow, however, smiled when he noticed Coda, and it wasn’t an inviting thing.
“Can I talk to you?” Coda asked.
“Come to congratulate me on our victory yesterday?” Moscow asked. “Or maybe thank me for saving your bacon?”
Coda ground his teeth. Why can’t he make this easy? “Something like that.”
Moscow shrugged and rose from the table. Coda quickly led him out of the mess hall into an adjoining corridor.
“Look,” Moscow said before Coda could start. “I’m just busting your balls, okay? Nothing personal. If you didn’t take offense to everything, people might tone it down.”
“That’s good,” Coda said, “because that’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. This thing, this rivalry—it needs to stop. Because like it or not, we’re two of the best pilots in this squadron, but even that won’t guarantee our spot in the squadron. If we make it, then we have to trust each other, and we can’t do that if we’re constantly looking over our shoulders.”
“Why wouldn’t we both make it?”
“Huh?”
“If we’re two of the best pilots, why wouldn’t we both make it? Why would one of us get reassigned?”
“That’s not the point,” Coda said, trying to steer the conversation back to center. “I’m just saying—”
“It’s not the point, but it’s important. Why wouldn’t we both make it?”
“Because there’s a chasm in the middle of our squadron a mile wide, Moscow. We were about to go at it in the hangar and it wouldn’t have just been us. It would have been your group and mine. It would have been a brawl.”
“You sound like the commander.”
“Well, he’s right.” Coda regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. Moscow was already suspicious, and the way Coda had phrased his reply left little doubt that he’d had help coming to the conclusions.
“You talked to him?” Moscow voice went quiet. “What did you talk about?”
“Nothing,” Coda said. “He just told me to fix this.”
Moscow eyed him as if deciding whether or not to believe him. Was he always this on guard? This suspicious?
Moscow shook his head. “And here I thought you were doing something honorable. Instead, you’re just following orders.”
“I was!” Coda
