Book of Names

In the distance, the noise, hollow but insistent, nagging. Like a ringing in her ears, but something else. Elise shrugged it off, tried to focus. Marcus was trying to talk to her about the upcoming testing program for the Valkyre. The starch of her dress whites, and her annoyance, why was he trying to talk about her right now, at the funeral? About this, of all things.

"With Xavier gone, we need you to step up Elise. The official announcement is tomorrow, but I wanted you to know now. You're getting the slot. You'll be flying the other XF-91 test article by next week. I know Xavier's death was a setback, but they'll get it right. This is how it goes sometimes" she heard him saying, but he was speaking slowly, like he was under water. Or she was. Elise shook her head, tried to focus. How it goes sometimes. How we get killed, he meant.

A crack suddenly, rifles over the coffin. There wasn't anything in it. After Xavier had put the prototype Valkyrie into the ground at better than a thousand kilometers an hour, there wasn't anything to bury. The XF-91 program was prestigious, the first LEIGH&CO aircraft that could make orbit unassisted. Or was it a spacecraft. Elise thought of herself as a pilot, not an astronaut, but that's what they were talking about weren't they. Going back to space, as if that hadn't nearly killed them all the first time around, getting to this planet.

The noise, back again, louder. Stranger, like it was coming in and out. Marcus was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't hear him. She saw the Quartermaster bringing the Book of Names out now, white gloves. He set it on the coffin, opened it crisply to the past page. Xavier's widow, crying now, her hand trembling, taking a breath to steady herself before signing his name in the book of what we had lost, given up at the alter of our lust and need for clawing ourselves back into the sky and on to the stars. The Book was thick, and the widow was signing a page that looked to be in the middle.

Elise winced in sudden pain, a migraine. The noise sounded so familiar, like she had heard it many times before. Somewhere. She turned her back on the coffin, looked at the tombstones, up at the blue of the sky. Training, she had heard it in training. She tried to listen, and it came in now, stronger, slower, like she could make sense of it. It was the master caution alarm on an aircraft.

Consciousness slammed into her as the Valkyrie's uncontrolled spin slowed down past 5g, the stars out the frosted canopy spinning so fast they were circles. Pinned against the side of the cockpit Elise could barely move. The ship was protesting in a noise that sounded like someone pounding a high tension wire with a mallet. She started forcing herself to breathe shallow, like the training, as the alarm blared. Breath breath squeeze, breath breath squeeze.

The Valkyrie was into atmo now, and was starting to burn. That was the good news, because she was slowing down. Elise could make out that the airspeed tape was coming alive, a bit north of 30,000kph. That was also the bad news because, well, she was burning. With all her effort, she moved her foot to the rudder pedal and pushed. The spin slowed a little, the pressure easing off. She could breathe now. Hitting the master caution silence toggle, the noise stopped.

She could make out New Eden now, still spinning below her, as the plasma glow crackled around the outside of the ship. This is what happened to Xavier, she realized. They hadn't fixed a single thing. Elise wondered if the engineers had even tried, or if they had just sent her up hoping for the best. She thought of Simon, her brother. It was he that would write her name into the Book of Names. Their parents were dead in the crash, and she was unmarried. Simon was all she had, besides the Company.

Whenever she touched the stick, everything got worse. She didn't have positive control, and she was way too fast. She imagined Marcus, talking to her brother. Would Marcus tell him that these things happen? That this was a worthy sacrifice? That this mattered, that she mattered? How many times had he given that speech. How could he even believe it anymore. How could anyone.

I'm dead Elise thought to herself. Too fast to pull the egress teleport. What killed me? She looked down the caution panel, but it was everything you expected when you were on fire hurtling off orbit. She nudged the stick again, this time in pitch, and the spin sped up again, pressing her back against the side of the panel. Spin. Why was she spinning. The planet was closer now and she realized the stars were gone. She didn't have long now. Dozens of seconds before that plasma came through the hull, and then it would be fast. What killed me, she repeated to herself. She said it out loud. What killed me. Why am I in the Book. Why are they writing my name.

She thought of when she was a little girl, before the crash, before the Exodus, in Iowa. Spinning in the field with her brother in the crisp cold fall air, right after the combines had run, straw all over their clothes. They would spin and spin, to see who could last the longest, but they always fell down. Just like now. Why am I spinning. Why is there un-commanded yaw. Why do we fall down. Elise remembered something Marcus had said, almost a year to the day earlier when she had joined the flight test program. "So we don't fall down", he had joked. The yaw damper. He was talking about the yaw damper the engineers had added. It was killing her.

Elise slammed the disarm switches on the flight dynamics safeties, cutting the computers out of the loop. "Manual Law" the annunciator monotoned. She pushed experimentally on the stick, gently. This time the Valkyrie responded, smoothly, accurately. She eased out of the spin, and started bringing the nose up. With the ship stable, she threw the spoilers out, the familiar rumble as the increased drag slowed her entry. Ran down the checklist for a main engine relight.

Three weeks later, on a clifftop by the sea, she was a hero. Waves crashing high on the rocks as they pinned a medal on her, same dress whites as she wore to the funeral, the skyline of New Eden City in the distance. She posed for the pictures against the charred hull of the Valkyrie, did what was necessary, smiled. Marcus took her back to the base, after, where the Quartermaster was waiting. He must have understood, he didn't say anything at all, just opened the safe and removed the Book. They poured her three fingers of Rival, left her alone. She opened the Book to the page marked by the purple silk ribbon. Touched the name, Christian Xavier, and then the space under it. The space where her name would have been.