Free Frontier: Book One - The Space Cadets by Laurence Moroney

she could, trying to put as much distance
between her and Ronaldo as she could. On the heat sensor, her ship
was a bright light.
    But there was something wrong. The
ship was flying much too predictably, in a wide, fast arc around
the cylinder and back towards the hangar. It was easy for Ronaldo
to see her and chase her. Calculating her trajectory, he headed her
off with a tight beam laser.
    Aisha flicked on her heads-up
display, and Soo-Kyung ’ s ship was so
bright with heat that it washed out the rest of the
display.
    She peered through the cockpit,
but both ships were too far away. What could she do? Her hand
hovered over the radar button. She could send out a ping, and
positively identify the ships. That would allow her to get a lock
on Soo-Kyung and Ronaldo, so whichever one survived would be
at her mercy.
    Something didn ’ t feel quite right. She looked out the window again,
seeing that Ronaldo was almost in firing range. She had to
act.
    Taking a deep breath, Aisha
activated her radar. She instructed the computer to lock onto the
results. It beeped back at her, and she quickly deactivated the
radar. Ronaldo had Soo-Kyung in range and was opening up with his
laser.
    He had her with a direct hit. But
something was wrong. There was no kill sound on her display. She
looked at it again, and--
    Boom! She was
hit, hard, with both bullets and lasers, and at almost point-blank
range. A clear kill; she was dead. What had happened? Craning her
neck, she turned around to see Soo-Kyung ’ s ship only feet behind
hers.
    She could see Soo-Kyung smiling,
and giving her a thumbs up. Aisha sighed, not believing she could
have been fooled so easily. She wasn ’ t
even sure how she ’ d been fooled.
Soo-Kyung ’ s ship moved slowly, ever so
slowly toward her. The nose of her ship connected with
Aisha ’ s just behind the cockpit, and began
to push her.
    That ’ s
how she had fooled everyone! When someone pinged with radar,
she ’ d know where they were. But when they
used the heat sensors, they were fooled by the proximity of the
ships. She ’ d push one ship onto a path,
and shut down her own ship. While her opponent chased the bait, she
could zero in on it. In this case, she used Ronaldo as the bait to
get Aisha to turn on her radar and give away her
position.
    It was genius.
    Ronaldo was still shooting his
laser at the decoy, so Soo-Kyung pushed Aisha ’ s ship in his direction, burning what must be the
last of her fuel to get enough speed to be a burning glow on his
heat scanners. When she was close to laser range, she boosted away
from Aisha, effectively pushing herself slowly in the opposite
direction. Ronaldo opened up with direct hits on Aisha ’ s ship, the bullets racketing against her hull,
splattering red paint all over it.
    Then, from behind, she saw
Soo-Kyung ’ s ship light up. Her beam hit
Ronaldo ’ s ship, straight and true, killing
it instantly.
    The lights came back on in
Aisha ’ s ship, and she was able to regain
control. Simms’ face appeared on her screen. “Nice work, Miss Kim,”
he said. “And not bad, Parks and Ronaldo. The rest of you...that
was a shambles! You are a disgrace to your species. Get the
heck back here, now!”

Chapter
10
Korea
    May there be peace with you
always, my dear girl. May you understand what peace is, and the
difference between peace and victory. When we win a war, we like to
call it declaring peace, but it isn’t, it’s just postponing future
war.
    Peace only comes when we work
together for a common, agreed upon goal. There’ll be a chance for
you to do that in the new world. Don’t forget. Work towards this
peace, and make it not just yours, but everyone’s…
     
    Silently, they returned to their apartment. Most of their classmates were
jealous at Soo-Kyung ’ s prize of no homework for a week. “ It ’ s not like homework is hard for you
anyway, ” grumbled
Ronaldo, shaking her hand in a concession to her victory. He smiled
and winked. “ Just
kidding,