Steelhands (2011) by Jaida Jones, Danielle Bennett

ever wrapped my head around, and I’d managed it with loads more stubborn folk than this one. From somewhere behind me, I could hear Radomir give a slight, dry cough. He was always complaining about his constitution in winter, so I didn’t pay him any mind.
    “Things always go to shit after takeoff,” I explained, and there was a collective creak of the desks as students either leaned forward or back in their chairs, depending on how they felt about colorful language. Some of the ones sleeping in the back had actually woken up from their dreams of being swaddled babes in arms, and they looked kind of regretful they hadn’t chosen a seat closer to the center of action. “The reinforcements you’re depending on don’t arrive in time, for any number of reasons that don’t matter because what counts is you’re fucked now. Or some idiot overslept and forgot to give your girl—your dragon—a good once-over before you left at night, leaving her harness loose. Little mistakes, the small things you don’t even think about—say the weather changes and all of a sudden the battlefield’s a mud pit, or you’re flying sideways through sheets of rain. You can’t always avoid ’em, but what you
can
do is train your mind to be ready. Keep calm in the face of everybody else feeling fucked sideways. That make sense?”
    The girl sat back in her chair, silent, but I could see the cogs turning in her head, unlike some of the others who just looked dumbfounded, or a little too pleased by the naughty words I was using. She really was thinking it over.
    Radomir cleared his throat again. I invoked the professor’s right of ignoring his lecturing assistant and kept my eyes on the girl instead.
    “That does make sense,” she said finally. “Only … This doesn’t mean you’ll be moving the class unexpectedly to another room or—I don’t know—making it rain just to see what we do in a crisis, right?” She almost sounded disappointed, too.
    I was surprised into laughing. She wasn’t making fun of me—atleast I didn’t think she was, mostly because of the look of pure suspicion on her face, like she wanted me to know I wasn’t going to get the jump on her and she’d show up to class in a coat and tall rubber boots every day for the next two months if she had to.
    The boy sitting next to her hid his face in his hands.
    Little did he know he had a real firecracker to contend with. Or maybe he
did
know, and that was why he looked so close to crying.
    “No,” I said, once I’d finished laughing. “They’re pretty understanding here at the ’Versity that I don’t have the same training as the other professors, but I think they’d be mad as hogs before feeding time if I pulled a stunt like that. Not because of how much they care about
you
lot, of course, but out of respect to your parents, most of whom’re paying your way through this and don’t want to buy you any new clothes on top of every other expense.”
    The truth was, since these kids were from the country and not the brats of the upper class, I probably
could’ve
gotten away with it, but I hadn’t taken leave of my senses enough for it to seem like a good idea just yet. I was going to be
that professor
sooner or later—the one no one wanted to be assigned to, more like a commander of troops than a teacher—which was exactly what I was anyway, so where was the harm in that? I’d like to see those in charge complain to me about that one. They wanted me lecturing here at the ’Versity for status’s sake. Now they had me, for all the good it’d do them.
    Anyway, I’d keep it in the back of my mind for whenever I wanted to take an early retirement.
    “Pardon me,” Radomir said. I wanted to commend him for finally finding his voice after all that throat clearing, but I wasn’t supposed to twit my assistant in front of the class, or so Roy’d told me. Something about fostering a united front, but I had a feeling it was because his boy had been made a