Learning to Dance

After eighteen months of waiting, the Eagle and its crew
were declared officially lost in space by the G.L.E.E. A
memorial was organized and attended by thousands. Taz
didn’t go. The newsfeeds that day published pictures of
each of the Eagle’s four hundred and seventy three
crewmen, and she paused the screen at Up’s. It was a
classic, stern military pose, and he seemed older and
strange to her, all engalanada in his dress uniform. His blue
eyes looked unsmilingly at the camera, at her.
Taz threw herself farther into her studies, and solidified
her position at the top of her class. No one wanted to fight
her in the ring anymore, and so she took out her frustrations
on the punching bags and practiced her knife-throwing
skills while her classmates looked over their shoulders in
apprehension. When a fellow cadet invited her to play a
game of cards in the mess hall, she responded with hostility.
She took to carrying a switchblade around and
absentmindedly flicking it open and closed whenever
anyone got too close. The first and second years were
terrified of her.
Now here she was, at the eve of her graduation. Four
years ago, she was a scared little girl who’d lost everything
because she didn’t know how to properly defend herself.
Tomorrow she would become Ensign Taz, a real Starship
Ranger, and finally have free reign to go out and kill every
maldito robot she met. She sat on her bunk and touched the
fringe of her own dress uniform, a smart blue and gold.
“I did it, Up,” she whispered.
The door banged open, and she carefully hung the
uniform in her locker, next to the book Up had given her.
“He’s not coming back, Taz.”
She glared. “Shut up, Pedro.”
“But you know it’s true. If that ship was still out there
we would have heard from them by now. It’s been nearly