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Fly High	By : IcarusComplex Category: 1 through F > Dinotopia Views: 1456 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own any incarnation of Dinotopia (book, miniseries, TV series); James Gurney does. Similarly, I don't own characters, places, or a dinosaur, and I make no money from this. At all.

Chapter List
- 1-Runaway
- 2-Tomorrow
- 3-Luck
- 4-Elf
- 5-Joke
- 6-Secret
- 2
- 3
- 4
    99 – Luck

     As luck would have it, the same Powers-That-Be who heard David’s prayer for distraction from The Waterfall City Incident (obligingly piling training, trying weather, and a hefty dose of night-terrors onto him) must have been listening in again that day in the archives.
     At dawn, the twelve of them assembled, stamping in the cold. Only the absence of an officer let them loosen up to do that much, otherwise it would have been backs straight, chest out, and let your kriffin’ ass fall off, it’ll lighten your flight load. Above the usual crisp anticipation of dawn – in an airbound city, as in a seabound one, so much the more significant – there was a palpable thrill in the air. David could sense it tingling through the all of them like electricity. A sense of something rewarding to come, somewhere between his first A+ and his first flight. Or maybe more like his first look at real breasts and his first flight. That felt more up to par.
    Beside him, Romana was among the few to hold off the shivers borne out by the pre-dawn canyon winds. Between her and Keane (whose morning-face on David’s other side could only have been sourer if it were carved by a sculptor fond of Zippeau’s arctium longevus tea) they maintaining parade posture admirably. But David could see her straining.
    Just as the sun crested the rim of the canyon, Oonu appeared. In one hand he carried a tightly rolled scroll. Despite the early hour, he looked brisker than ever. David wondered what the urgent business calling him away had been but snapped to attention with the others. Greeting them, he nodded to a man David hadn’t noticed before. The man stepped forward from behind the line of First Years and took the scroll from Oonu. David knew him by sight only – Assistant Squadron Leader Dylan DeLar – although Oz had mentioned the handsome older Rider was a personal friend of Romana’s from Treetown. A puffy scar darted out of his hairline above the temple and folded back just above his ear; as if something with a sharp beak had nearly carved off a flap of skin and taken his ear in the bargain, David realised with a chill. It looked painful and relatively fresh.
    “You have progressed faster than expected,” Oonu announced. He casually assumed at-ease position. “Recent events have no doubt played a hand in this. Never before has the Corps seen a First Year Class step up to the bar in a crisis so readily and competently as you did. There have been many tragic turns of events in recent months. Not one among us has been left unscarred by the things we have all lived through.
    “But the Corps believes you have the strength to turn these hard lessons to your advantage. Ordinarily, Wingmates would not be assigned for fully three months further into your training. After in depth discussion however the decision has been made to waive your final months before integration.”
    He turned a fierce brown eye more like his Saurian partner than David had ever seen over the cadets. “I expect you to prove yourselves worthy of this honour.”
    “Once you have been assigned your wingmate,” he said in a more business-like tone, “pairs will complete an obstacle course to demonstrate their potential synchronicity. Pairs have been carefully matched up, so don’t think you come to me complaining just because you don’t like your wingmate—although I expect you’re all past that by now.”
    The Master Pilot’s tone unearthed a rebellious spark in David; one Karl was always teasing him for pretending he didn’t have. Automatically his mind went to Keane. It wasn’t that any of them really disliked the Chinese-extracted cadet; it was more… grim apathy than antipathy. Well, he thought, sourly, at the very least he’d be predictable. David would do his best to make it work, he told himself. He wasn’t a quitter like Karl; if it came to that, he’d just grit his teeth and tough it out until end-of-year reassessment.
    “The tests will take some time,” Oonu was saying. “Pairs will be summoned for their time trial throughout the day.”
    David felt more than heard the collective breath as he unravelled the scroll; he was among it.
    “Cadets Maxwell and Yun.”
    David winced in sympathy for the mountain man. But that was Keane out of the way, and Max probably was the only one patient enough to handle him.
    “Jory and Toshran.
    “Arienne and Heygar.”
    Another odd match-up. He skimmed a sideways glance at the tiny woman on Romana’s far side and, past her at the far end of the line, the stocky, scarred man.
    “David and Romana.”
    The air left he lungs in a rush to rival his first flight. For better or worse, he had Romana for a wingmate—or she had him.
    “Oskrim and Sorba.
    “Kados and Lliale.” That grabbed his attention. Kados and Lliale exchanged sidelong glances of their own and barely hid their smiles.
    ‘We’ll never sleep safe in our beds again,’ David thought numbly.
    As ASL DeLar stepped forward to give them the final rundown on procedure from this point there was a flutter through the line like a ruffling of feathers as they adjusted to the new changes. Nothing was really different and yet it seemed to David that the world had subtly shifted and at the oddest moment he was going to turn and find that nothing was quite the same.
    DeLar blithely disregarded the superficiality of the cadets’ attention as he ran down a list of need-to-knows. Several critical and appraising looks went back and forth. A few furtive smiles, a couple of gleeful glints to the eye. Kados and Lliale – halfway between David and Heygar, and the end of the line to David’s left respectively – looked downright evil.
    Oonu raised his eyebrows at the nearest and their faces went miraculously blank. In spite of the stern set of his posture, though, a hint of amusement lingered in the corners of his mouth. If he didn’t know better, David might have guessed Oonu was not unsympathetic to their excitement.
    With a wry smile, he ordered Max and Keane to remain and dismissed the rest of the class.
    “Breathe deep.”
    The cadets thumped their chests in unison. “Fly high!”
    Romana turned to David as the line trooped off the ledge and broke up. Behind them the rumbled of DeLar’s voice started up again as he approached the two men and began to give them a more rigorous rundown of the trial ahead.
    David waited for Romana to say something. For the life of him he couldn’t tell if her expression was of pleasure or upset. She merely looked… troubled. ‘Disquieted’ as Rosemary once described David.
    When she left the training room without a word, he let her go without pursuit. Mayhap she’d work it out for herself, if given time.
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Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Again, I have only the vaguest idea of hierarchy organisation in the Skybax Corps; since my own background tends towards more structured military (army), expect that. (Thusly, ASL DeLar is roughly equivalent to a sergeant, where Oonu is a lieutenant.)
Old-school Dinotopian heirarchy only has three ranks: beginner, novice and master pilot. Since the miniseries calls them cadets, and references squadrons and some slightly more structured organisation, we're going to presume things have changed a little in the last forty years or so. I had far too much fun creating secondary characters out of the short glimpses of David's cadet class. Just sayin'.
EDIT: fixed that little error in the name of the tea. Haven't watched the miniseries in a while, so I was groping for what sounded right... Obviously that didn't work, so it's back to research.
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Fly High

99 – Luck