I started running.
A sense of anxiety built in me as I heard the distant sound of debris hitting. I somehow knew that Ironsides would send my flight up for this attack. She liked testing cadets in real combat experience, and we were far enough in our training that Cobb had warned we’d soon be sent into some real battles.
It was our turn. The time had come. So I forced myself into a jog—then a dash—across the dusty ground.
Sweat pouring down the sides of my face, I felt a horrible inevitability as I approached the base, where warning klaxons blared. Not fear, really, but dread. What if I was too late? What if the others went into battle without me?
I entered the base, then rounded the outside wall toward our launchpad. A single ship sat there, alone. I had been right.
I reached my ship in a sweaty mess, pushing my own ladder into place as several members of the ground crew noticed me and started yelling.
One got there in time to stabilize my ladder. “Where have you been, cadet!” she shouted at me. “The rest of your flight went up twenty minutes ago!”
I shook my head, sliding into the cockpit, too exhausted to speak.
“No pressure suit?” the ground crewer said.
“All right. Don’t make any sharp ascents then. You have clearance to go. Call in to your flightleader, then move.”
I nodded, then pulled on my helmet. This one—like the one in the training room—had the strange lumps inside, to measure whatever it was they wanted to measure about me. I flipped on the flight radio band as the canopy lowered.
“—don’t let your nerves get the best of you,” Jerkface was saying over the radio. “Stay focused, watch your wingmate. You heard Cobb. We don’t have to fire. Just focus on keeping yourselves from being turned to slag.”
“What?” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Spin?” Jerkface asked. “Where have you been?”
“In my cave! Where else would I be?” I engaged my acclivity ring and launched my ship upward. G-forces hit me, and my stomach felt like it was trying to escape through my toes. I slowed the ascent. “Repeat that part to me. You’re going into battle? You’re not staying at the edge of combat?”
“The admiral finally wants to let us fight!” Bim said, eager.
“Contain yourself, Bim,” Jerkface said. “Spin, we’re at 11.3-302.7-21000. Get here as fast as you can. Ironsides has ordered us into a small firefight alongside a flight of full pilots. We’re there to confuse the enemy and hopefully split their attention.”
In other words, we’re being sent in as targets. I thought, wiping my hand on my jumpsuit, my heartbeat thrumming, sweat making my hair stick to my face. Or they are. Without me.
Not for long.
I slammed the throttle forward, going into overburn. The Grav-Caps protected me for three seconds, and then I slammed back in my seat. I could take g-forces like these though, pushing me straight backward. It wasn’t pleasant, but I didn’t risk blacking out. I just had to get to speed, then carefully climb—using the acclivity ring.
I quickly reached Mag-10—which was the upper speed threshold for a Poco, at least safely. Even this was stretching the limits. The atmospheric scoops—which pushed air away around the ship in a bubble, preventing me from ripping off my own wings during tight maneuvers—were overwhelmed, and my ship rattled from the motion. The friction of air resistance made my normally invisible shield start to glow.
I climbed upward as well—but carefully, slower, as the g-forces in that direction threatened to knock me out. Going up forced my blood down into my feet. I did the stomach-clenching exercises we’d been taught in centrifuge training, but still, darkness started to creep around the outsides of my vision.
I held on, pressed down at six times my normal weight. Though the flight would only take a short while, I had to listen to my friends in battle all the way.
“Careful, Hurl. Not too eager.”
“One’s on me! I’ve got one on me!”
“Dodge, FM!”
“Dodging! Dodging! Scud, who was that?”
“Nightstorm Six. That’s my brother, guys! Callsign: Vent. FM, you owe me some fries or something.”
“To your right! Arturo, look up!”
“Looking! Stars, what a mess.”
Finally my dash beeped, indicating I was approaching my desired coordinates. I let off on the altitude lever, then performed a rapid deceleration. In a Poco with atmospheric scoops, that meant spinning my ship in the air—the GravCaps kicking in—then firing my booster backward to slow me down.
I came out of it after slowing to Mag-1, standard dogfighting speed. I spun my Poco around, facing toward the battlefield, where distant lights flashed in the dark morning sky. Debris fell as red streaks.
“I’m here,” I said to the others.
“Get in and help Morningtide!” Jorgen shouted at me. “Can you spot her?”
“Looking!” I said, frantic, scanning my proximity sensor screen. There. I hit overburn, accelerating her direction.
“Guys,” I said, glancing at the scanner. “Morningtide has picked up a tail!”
“I see it,” Jerkface said. “Morningtide, you read?”
“Trying. Trying dodge.”
My ship screamed toward the battlefield. I could now see the individual fighters—a swirling mess mixed with destructor bolts and the occasional light-lance. Morningtide’s Poco pulled upward into a loop—trailed by three Krell ships.
Almost there. Almost there!
The Krell destructors flared. Hit. Hit again. And then …
A burst of light. A spray of sparks.
And Morningtide died in a massive explosion. She didn’t have a chance to eject.
Kimmalyn screamed—a high-pitched, panicked, pained sound.
“No!” Jerkface said. “No, no, no!”
I arrived, flying at Mag-3—too fast for normal dogfighting maneuvers—but still managed to spear one of the Krell ships with my light-lance. But it was too late.
The fiery sparks that had been Morningtide went out as they fell.
I spun and reversed my thrust, letting go of the light-lance and flinging the Krell ship to the side. Another of our fighters came in after it, shooting and managing to blast it down.
I fell in beside Jerkface, silently smothering my own screams. He’d lost his wingmate. Where was Arturo?
I couldn’t make out anything tactical in the fray. My flight zipped in all directions, drawing fire—yes—but also adding to the confusion. A few larger classes of DDF fighters wound through it all, mixing with some dozen Krell ships, each trailing wires in that same unfinished way.
I was crying. But I set my jaw and kept on Jorgen’s wing. He expertly speared a Krell ship with his light-lance, and it tried to break away, so I speared it as well.
“That debris, Jorgen,” I said. “Coming down at your two, falling slowly.”
“Right.” We both hit our throttles, as Cobb had taught us, and pulled the enemy ship toward the debris. At the last minute, we cut our lines and split to the sides, slamming the Krell ship into the debris in a fiery explosion.
“What are you two doing?” Cobb said over the line. “You were ordered into defensive postures.”
“Cobb!” I said. “Morningtide—”
“Keep your head, girl!” he shouted. “Grieve when the debris rests. Right now, obey orders. Defensive. Postures.”
I gritted my teeth, but didn’t argue, following Jorgen as he wound through the smoke trails left by falling chunks of debris. That looked to be Arturo and Nedd to my right, leapfrogging each other with quick accelerations and decelerations, to keep the enemy from focusing on either one of them. That kind of technique could confuse the Krell, much like overwhelming them with targets.
Morningtide …
“Quirk?” Jorgen said. “What are you doing?”
I realized I could still hear Kimmalyn’s soft whine of pain over the radio. I searched the scanner, then spotted a single Poco—without a wingmate—hovering near the perimeter of the fight.
“Quirk, move!” Jorgen said. “You’re a clear target. Get in here.”
“I …,” Kimmalyn said. “I was trying to line up a shot. I was going to save her …”
“Join the fight!” Jorgen shouted. “Cadet, hit your throttle and get in here!”
“I’ll cover her,” I said, moving to break off as we zoomed past two Krell coming the other way. So many sparks and destructor shots lit the sky, I almost felt I was down in Igneous, swallowed up by a forge.
“No,” Jorgen said to me. “You see Bim? At your eight? Cover him. I’ll deal with Kimmalyn.”
“Understood.” I zipped down and to my left, the GravCaps covering the g-forces of the sharp turn. As I moved, however, a spot on my dash lit up: a bright violet warning light near my proximity sensors.
I’d picked up a tail.
Though we’d barely touched on dogfighting, Cobb’s training snapped into my mind. Trust the scanner. Don’t waste time trying to get a visual. Keep your focus on flying.
“Spin!” FM said. “You’ve got a tail!”
I was already pulling my ship into an evasive loop, counting on the GravCaps to handle the g-force. Something clicked immediately in my head. The training, the way my face grew cold, the way my mind snapped into focus despite the fatigue, the stress, and the grief. It was almost like it didn’t matter if a Krell was following me. In that moment, it was just me and the ship. Extensions of one another.
I pulled out of my loop into a straight dive, then cut to the side and launched a perfect light-lance hook into a slowly falling chunk of debris. I didn’t go quite fast enough, and when my GravCaps cut, the g-forces rammed me down in my seat. I saw black at the corners of my vision, but held on.
I spun around sharply and buzzed another chunk of debris—trailing its smoke in my wake—then zoomed right between two Krell ships coming the other direction. My tail lost me in the turn—and I caught a flashing explosion behind me as one of the full pilots picked it off while it was trying to catch up to me.
“Good maneuver, Spin,” Cobb said softly in my ear. “Excellent maneuver, actually. But don’t get too flashy. Remember the simulation. Flashy moves can still get you killed.”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see.
“Bim is at your ten now, up about one-fifty. Get on him. That boy is too eager.”
As if on cue, Bim’s voice entered the flight line. “Guys? Do you see that? Up in front of me?”
There was a larger firefight happening in the distance; we’d been ordered to join the smaller of the two skirmishes. I could make out the falling sparks and missed destructor shots of that larger battle, but I didn’t think that was what Bim was indicating.
As I fell in at his side, I spotted it: a Krell ship, but a different model from the curved fighters. This one was bulbous, like a bulging fruit with wings at the top. Or … no, that was a ship flying with something huge attached to the bottom.
A bomber. I realized, remembering my studies. One carrying a lifebuster.
“Lifebuster,” Jorgen said. “Cobb, we’ve confirmed sighting of a lifebuster bomb.”
“The other flight radio bands are talking about it too,” Cobb said. “Steady, cadet. The admiral is already dealing with that bomber.”
“I can hit it, Cobb,” Bim said. “I can bring it down.”
I expected Cobb to dismiss that idea immediately, but he didn’t. “Let me call for orders and tell them you have a visual.”
Bim took that as confirmation. “You with me, Spin?”
“Every step,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, cadet,” Cobb said. “There’s something odd about these descriptions. Can you confirm? That bomb sounds larger than usual.”
Bim wasn’t listening. I watched out my cockpit window as he dove toward the solitary bomber, which had—following usual Krell protocol—slipped down to low altitude to try flying in underneath the AA guns.
“Something’s wrong,” Cobb said.
A group of shadows broke off the sides of the bomb—smaller Krell ships, almost invisible in the darkness. Four of them.
They lit up the air with red destructor blasts. One grazed my canopy, causing my shield to crackle with light. My nerves jolted, and I spun my ship—by instinct—to the side.
“Cobb,” I said. “Four escort ships just broke off the bomber!”
The ships buzzed us. I dodged, barely, my hands sweaty on my controls. “They’re faster than regular Krell!”
“This is something new,” Cobb said. “Fall back, you two.”
“I can hit it, Cobb!” Bim said. The light of his destructor glowed at the front of his ship as he powered up a long-range shot.
The four guardian ships swarmed toward us, firing again.
“Bim!” I screamed.
I was pretty sure I saw him look toward me—light reflecting on his helmet visor—as the blasts hit his ship, overwhelming his shield with concentrated fire.
Bim’s ship exploded into several large chunks, one of which slammed into my ship. I was flung to the side as my Poco went into a spin. Quirk screamed my name as the world rocked. The lights on my dash went insane, the “shield down” warning blaring.
G-forces hit as the GravCaps were overwhelmed. Nausea flooded me, and everything became a blur. But my training still kicked in. Somehow—pulling hard on the control sphere—I managed to hit the dive controls, which pivoted my acclivity ring on its front hinge, like a hatch swinging open. That angled it toward the nose of my ship, and the maneuver pulled me out of the fall. The world righted itself, and I hung there in a hover, my nose pointed straight at the ground.
Lights flashed on my dash. Below, I watched as Bim’s remains hit the surface in a ripple of soft explosions.
He’d never … he’d never even picked a callsign.
“The enemy is disengaging!” Nedd said. “Looks like they’ve had enough!”
I listened, numb, to other reports. A strike team of full pilots went after the bomber, and rather than risk losing the weapon, the Krell pulled into a full retreat.
The bomber escaped, as did enough ships to keep the admiral from giving chase.
I just hung there, blue glow of the acclivity ring a cold, lifeless light in front of me.
“Spin?” Jorgen said. “Report in? Are you all right?”
“No,” I whispered, but finally reset my acclivity ring, rotating my ship to the standard axis. I channeled power to the shield igniter, waited until the light powered up, then grabbed the handle and slammed it backward. Another shield crackled to life around my Poco, then turned invisible.
I climbed up into line with the others.
“Vocal confirmation of status,” Jorgen ordered.
We responded, and everyone else was still there. But when we flew back to base, our formation had two stark holes in it. Bim and Morningtide were gone.
Skyward Flight had been reduced from nine to seven.
