WE HURRIED DOWN the corridor in the direction of their landing bay. “Is my ship in your hangar with the others?” I asked.
Rig fell back to walk briskly beside me, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we kind of… took it apart.”
“You what?”
“We were figuring out the differences between your engineering and ours,” he said. “I can put it back together, but it will take me time.”
“We don’t have time,” I snapped at him. I was sure my people would have done the same with a human ship, but that didn’t change the fact that I needed to get in the air now.
“We’ll set you up with one of our ships,” Rig said. “Some of the controls are different, but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances, unless you want one of the others to take a Dulo and you could ride copilot.”
“No,” I said. The idea of being at the mercy of one of the humans as we returned to ReDawn was stifling. I could steal a ship there of course, but I’d rather come in with my own set of wings. “Give me one of your ships. I’ll… figure it out.”
“You should take a comms slug with you,” Rig said to Jorgen. “In case you need one to contact us.”
“Good idea,” Jorgen said. “Snuggles, take me to Fine.”
“Fine!” Snuggles said, and Jorgen disappeared, and then reappeared a moment later next to FM with a purple and orange slug tucked under his arm.
“Fine!” Snuggles said again.
“Good job, Snuggles,” FM said, and she withdrew a tin from her pocket and offered it a pinch of some sticky substance.
Interesting.
“Are you coming with us?” FM asked Rig over her shoulder. “Because if not, you should get back to Engineering. You don’t want to be associated with what we’re about to do.”
Rig hesitated. “I think I should stay here, but…”
He didn’t seem happy about it, possibly because his friends were all running off into danger and he didn’t know when they would be back.
“It’s okay,” FM said. “If we need you, we know where to find you.”
“Yeah,” Rig said. “I won’t be able to say the same for you.”
FM looked like she was about to say more, but she glanced at the others and stayed silent. Rig gave her a sad wave and then turned to go. She watched after him over her shoulder, though I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
There was clearly a subtext I was missing there. I’d have to ask her about it later, when we weren’t about to steal a flight of starships.
I followed Jorgen out a side door and along a narrow path between buildings to the landing bay. Jorgen breezed past two humans who were working on one of the control panels of a partially disassembled ship.
“We’re on orders to take our ships up immediately,” he said. “Sorry for the late notice.”
One of the ground crew followed on his heels, staring at me in alarm. “Didn’t you hear?” she said. “There’s a mandatory muster—you’re all expected to be in your quarters for a surprise inspection.”
Jorgen looked relieved. Cobb had obviously done that to cover our tracks, and possibly so he could claim later that we’d used the muster as cover without his knowledge.
“These orders supersede those,” Jorgen said.
“We weren’t notified,” she said. “We can start working through the preflight checks—”
“No time,” Jorgen said. “We’ll do it ourselves. You can radio to Admiral Cobb directly. He’ll authorize it.”
Or fail to answer his radio, more likely, to maintain deniability.
“Alanik is going to take one of the spare Skyward ships,” FM said.
“There aren’t any spare Skyward ships,” the ground crew member said. “We’ve only now got any Skyward ships again, and we’re definitely not authorized to put an alien in—”
“Do you want to be responsible for us being delayed?” Jorgen asked.
“I am responsible for getting you in the air, and I can’t do that without—”
“The shield is going to fail,” FM cut in. “There’s some debris on a trajectory to destroy the controls, and if we don’t get up there and shoot it down, the sky is going to be open to the Superiority again. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
The ground crew person hesitated, and Jorgen shot FM a grateful look.
“Come on,” FM said to me. “We’ll get you into a ship.”
On the way across the landing bay we passed my own ship parked among a few with obvious damage. It was similar in design to the human ships, but made from darker metal. It didn’t look disassembled from the outside, but when I peered through the canopy, I found that they’d taken everything apart. My instruments were in pieces, the navigation module disassembled and left on the seat.
“Not flying that today,” FM said. “Rig can fix it for you later. Come on.”
I wasn’t sure whose ship she brought me to, and when I climbed into the cockpit I had even less idea what I was looking at. The instrumentation was all arranged differently.
“Can you fly it?” FM asked.
“I can hyperjump with it,” I said. “Flying might be a bit more of a challenge.”
FM pointed out some of the more vital systems, and I began to acclimate myself. I found the eject lever on the side of the seat, in the same location as ours. Not everything was different from our starships. “These are the radio controls,” FM said, flipping a toggle and spinning a dial. She handed me a helmet. “I’ll set you to the flight channel. Remember what you say over the radio isn’t secure. I’m going to get myself in the air, but if you have any questions…”
I had a lot of questions, but that ground crew tech was probably trying to reach Admiral Cobb right now. Through the canopy I saw Kimmalyn running across the landing bay with three men following her. Trailing after them was a short girl with blue hair.
“We’re all here,” Jorgen said over the radio. “Skyward Flight, let’s get in the air. Go!”
I scanned the ship controls, trying to remember what FM had told me. I found the lever to engage the acclivity ring—those controls weren’t very different from my ship. The throttle lever and the control sphere were the same, though the one in my ship was smaller, and this one felt unwieldy in my hand.
I made sure to remember the location of the button for the destructors—I didn’t want to set those off by mistake. I engaged my acclivity ring and rose in the air, and managed—mostly accidentally—to remember which were the dive controls as my ship pitched forward, nose pointed at the ground.
“You okay, Alanik?” FM asked.
“Fine,” I said, righting myself. I could fly. I only looked like I couldn’t.
I piloted the ship out of the landing bay and then climbed in altitude until I pulled even with Jorgen. One by one, the ships in Skyward Flight followed us into the air.
“Skyward Flight,” Jorgen said over the radio. “Sound off when ready. Alanik, we’re going to make you Skyward Eight for the moment. You’ll need a callsign eventually, if you don’t have one.”
What was a callsign?
Then Jorgen called out, “Skyward One, callsign Jerkface,”
Jerkface? My pin translated that to something akin to “rude visage,” which didn’t seem like a nice thing to call anyone.
The rest of the flight sounded off, and I recognized a few of their voices, though many of them used different names. Kimmalyn was “Quirk,” I thought, and FM was still FM. I didn’t think I’d met Nedder yet, and I had no idea which of the men I’d seen were Catnip, T-Stall, or Amphisbaena, though I thought that last one might be Arturo, and the girl with the blue hair must be Sentry. My pin didn’t even offer a translation for some of them. I didn’t fully understand the purpose of the callsigns—perhaps to conceal their identities from the enemy?—but this wasn’t the time to ask.
“Skyward Flight,” Jeshua Weight’s voice said over the radio.
“All ships converge above the landing platform,” Jorgen said, ignoring her. “Alanik, we can’t use the hyperdrives to reach your planet. Are you prepared to hyperjump?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I can’t bring you all unless our ships are touching.”
“We’re going to interlock using light-lances,” Jorgen said. “We’ve tried other things, but that’s the fastest way. We’ll attach to you, so you don’t have to worry about the controls.”
Kimmalyn’s ship drew nearer to mine, and then a line of light, similar to our light hooks, beamed out from her ship, connecting it to mine.
“Skyward Flight,” Jeshua tried again. “You are grounded. Land your ships immediately or you will face court-martial.”
The others began to converge around me, moving closer than I was comfortable with as they connected their ships to mine. I tried to adjust my position by manipulating my control sphere, but it was more sensitive than I was used to, and I ended up jogging unintentionally to the side.
“Jorgen!” Jeshua said, shouting into the radio now. “Ground those ships!”
“Sorry, Mom,” Jorgen said. He did sound sorry, and more than a little stressed out.
“Um, Jerkface?” Nedder said over the radio. “They’re readying ships. You don’t think they’re going to shoot at us, do you?”
“If you leave to fight for the UrDail without permission you are defecting,” Jeshua said. “Ground your ships immediately.”
“Scud,” Nedder said. “Do you think she’ll do it?”
“I don’t know,” Jorgen said. “Let’s get out of here before we find out.”
“I’m ready when you are,” I told him, and reached into the negative realm, feeling across the abyss toward ReDawn. I reached for Hollow, sensing its familiar branches hanging there, a solid point on the other side of all that nothingness.
“Jerkface,” Arturo said. “Stardragon Flight is starting to launch.”
“This is Robin from Stardragon Flight,” an uncertain voice said over the radio. “Awaiting orders.”
“Where is Admiral Cobb?” Jeshua said.
“She can’t tell them to shoot,” Arturo said. “She doesn’t have the authority.”
I wondered if that was the only thing stopping her; if she’d really give the order to shoot down her own son.
Jorgen didn’t respond. I peered past Kimmalyn’s ship to Jorgen’s. I could see Boomslug perched on his shoulders, though I couldn’t see his face, shadowed as it was by his helmet.
“Alanik, we are a go to hyperjump,” Jorgen said.
“Jerkface?” Robin said again. “What are you—”
I reached across the negative realm to Hollow, and I pulled.
