Safety Tests Read Online Free PDF Page A

shadow control. I’ve never used it before, but it works. I hit the automatic sensors through the shadow control—that’s the fastest way to regain control of a ship—and then I select the last navigation instruction sending us back to the Moon.
    The ship veers, scraping a robot ship. Iva tries to regain control. She will too. She’s that good.
    We’re not heading toward the station any more. I have no idea where we’re going and I don’t care.
    I need to stop her.
    I slam one fist on my side of the console, disconnecting all of the safety protocols. Our straps slide off.
    She grabs the controls and I push myself sideways, grabbing her. I knock her into the wall, then grab her shoulders and slam her head against the console.
    The station warnings are coming in, plus warnings from other ships, and because I’ve shut off the safety protocols the ship is officially considered out of control. That means the robots ships are going to nudge us, and some fighter ships are supposed to blow us up (but they never do, or they would have saved the life of my predecessor way back when) and someone else has to warn the nearby ships about us, because my ship—our ship—this stupid out-of-control ship—is running silent.
    I can’t care about that yet. I have to care about her. She’s reaching for me and I slam her head against the console again. She’s dazed. There isn’t a lot of room to maneuver in this cockpit, but I have to get her out of it.
    I use her chin to pull her backwards. She grabs at the pilot’s chair, wraps her foot around the base, and holds on.
    I’m half down myself, but still on my feet. I stomp on her elbow, then kick her in the stomach, dislodging her grip just briefly. She clutches my knee, ruining my balance. I hold onto my chair, and shake her off.
    Then I grab her chin again and slam her head against the floor. The smacking sound sickens me. I slam again and again until I’m certain she’s unconscious.
    I have to drag her out of here. I have to lock off the cockpit and all of the controls. This ship doesn’t have a brig. It doesn’t have anything except passenger straps for emergencies, and different environmental controls for different parts of the ship.
    The passenger sections have no cockpit access. I drag her down the hall, into the passenger section. She’s heavy, and she’s starting to moan. At least I haven’t killed her. I pull her into one of the seats, and strap her down. As I leave, I shut off the gravity.
    If she manages to free herself—which I don’t think she can do—she’ll have to deal with zero-gravity. She probably had military zero-g training, but that training happened more than a decade ago, and zero-g skills aren’t intuitive.
    I had to work in zero-g for three years—that’s part of being a Level One Military Pilot—but most military pilots never do that. And I can tell just from her attitude issues that she never had the patience or the respect for authority to go that far.
    I scurry back to the cockpit, and sit in her seat. We’re half an hour into the Moon flight, directly on the center of the route, but the messages I’m getting from other pilots are rude to say the least. Fighter ships still flank me.
    I don’t want to wear a strap at this point—I want the freedom of movement—so I turn the safety protocols on one by one. Then I let out a small sigh and send a message with my identification back to the station.
    I’m fine. Ship in my control again. Need security when we arrive.
    I get an automated response, which is just fine by me.
    Then I send a message to Connie: This last student went seriously bonko nutball. Nearly killed us all. We need more than station security to deal with her. Plus, check her medical data, see what we missed .
    By medical data, I mean the illegal stuff that we downloaded, just to see. I don’t expect to find anything, but in case we do, I want to prevent this from happening the next time.
    I let the ship head toward the