Rig was gone by the time I got back to my cavern, though he appeared to have made some good progress on the booster. Doomslug was sitting on a rock near the wing, and I scratched her head as I walked to the cockpit, then climbed in.
I felt a strange sense of … inevitability. I carried long-kept secrets in my pocket. The answers, at long last, to what had happened with my father. Why was I suddenly so reluctant?
I closed the cockpit. “M-Bot, do you know how to get the hologram out of something like this?” I held up the metal case, showing the connectors on the bottom.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s a standard format. See the series of ports underneath the panel marked ‘A-118’? You want the port that reads ‘SSXB.’ ”
I followed the instructions, hesitating only briefly before plugging in the case.
M-Bot hummed to himself. “Ah. Curious. Curious.”
“What?”
“I’m drawing out the suspense so you enjoy the surprise.”
“Please don’t.”
“Humans prefer—”
“Just tell me.”
“Fine, complainer. This includes a great deal of data. A three-D holomap, but also the original ship transponder data, radio signals of the battle, and even some camera footage from inside bunkers. This would be very hard to fake.”
Fake. I hadn’t considered that, but now I found myself anxious. “Are you sure?”
“I’d spot any edits. Would you like to watch it?”
“Yes.”
No.
“Then climb out.”
“Climb out?”
“My holoprojector can emit a small version of the battle for you to watch.”
I heaved myself out of the cockpit, scratching Doomslug on the head—she’d moved to the nose of the ship—and dropped with a thump to the rocky floor.
A battle appeared in front of me. When Cobb watched us fly, everything was painted with bold colors—bright red and blue ships. M-Bot instead projected the ships in exacting miniature. They flew in waves before me, so real that I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and touching them—which broke them into granular particles of something that wasn’t quite light.
The Krell appeared next, looking even more unfinished than they did now. Less regular. Wires hanging out at odd angles, wings that had rips in them, patchwork creations of metal. My little cavern became a battlefield.
I sat down and watched in silence. M-Bot’s holoprojector didn’t produce sound. Ships went up in flares of muted death. They flew like gnats without wings or buzz.
I knew the battle. I’d been taught it, memorized the tactics employed. Watching, however, I felt it. Before, I’d imagined the great maneuvers as, against the odds, forty human fighters faced down two and a half times that many enemies. I’d pictured a bold defense. Bordering on desperation, but always in control.
Now that I was a pilot though, I could feel the chaos. The haphazard pace of the battle. The tactics seemed less grand—no less heroic, but far more improvised. Which actually raised my opinion of the pilots.
It went on for quite a while—longer than any of Skyward Flight’s skirmishes had gone—and I picked him out easily. The best fighter in the bunch, the one who led the charges. It felt arrogant to think I could single out my father’s ship from the crowded mess, but there was something about the way he flew …
“Can you identify the pilots?” I asked.
Little readouts appeared above each ship, listing callsigns and designations.
HOPE SEVEN, the ship’s label read. CALLSIGN: CHASER.
Arrogant or not, I’d called it accurately. Despite myself, I tried again to touch his ship, and found tears in my eyes. Fool girl. I wiped them as my father fell in with his wingmate. Callsign: Mongrel. Cobb.
Another ship joined them. Callsign: Ironsides. Then two more I didn’t recognize. Callsigns: Rally and Antique. Those five were all that remained of my father’s initial flight of eight. The battle casualties were very high; what had begun as forty ships was now twenty-seven.
I stood up and walked after my father’s ship as it swooped through the cavern. The First Citizens fought frantically, but their bravery bore fruit as they drove the Krell back. I knew they would—yet still found myself watching breathlessly. Ships exploded as little flashes. Lives spent to found what would become the first stable society and government on Detritus since the Defiant had crashed here.
That society and government were both flawed. FM was right about how unfair it was, how single-minded and authoritarian. But it was something. It existed because these people—these pilots—had defied the Krell.
Near the end of the battle, the Krell pulled back to regroup. From my studies, I knew they would make only one more push before finally retreating into the sky. The human battle lines re-formed, flights grouping together, and I could almost hear them making verbal confirmations of status.
I knew this moment. The moment when …
One ship—my father’s—broke from the pack. My heart about stopped. My breath caught.
But he flew upward.
I leaped onto a rock, then onto M-Bot’s wing, trying to follow my father as he flew higher into the sky. I reached up, and could imagine what he’d seen. I somehow knew what it was—my father had spotted a hole in the debris, like the one he’d pointed out to me. The one I’d only ever seen a second time, flying M-Bot, when the debris had lined up just right.
I read something into his disappearance. Not cowardice at all. To me, his move—flying upward—was obvious. The battle had been going for an hour. After this desperate stand, with the enemy regrouping for another push, my father had worried the fight would fail.
So he’d done something desperate. He’d gone to see where the Krell came from. To try to stop them. I felt a chill, watching him fly upward. He was doing what he’d always told me.
He had tried to aim for something higher.
His ship vanished.
“He didn’t run,” I said. I wiped the tears from my eyes again. “He broke formation. He may have disobeyed orders. But he didn’t run.”
“Well,” M-Bot said, “it—”
“That’s what they’re covering up!” I said, looking toward M-Bot’s cockpit. “They branded him a coward because he flew up when he wasn’t supposed to.”
“You might—”
“Cobb has known all this time. It must have torn him up inside. It’s why he doesn’t fly; guilt for the lies he’s perpetuated. But what did my father see? What happened to him? Did he—”
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’m jumping ahead a short time. Watch.”
A speck of light, like a star, dropped down from the top of the cavern. My father’s ship returning? I reached out toward it, and the holographic ship swooped down, passing through my hand. When my father reached the other four ships in his flight, he hit his IMP and brought down their shields.
Wait. What?
As I watched, the Krell returned in a surging, final assault. My father spun in a perfect loop and unleashed his destructors, destroying one of his own flightmates.
It … it can’t be …
Callsign: Rally died in a flash of fire. My father swooped around, joining the Krell, who didn’t fire on him—but supported him as he attacked another member of his former flight.
“No,” I said. “No, it’s a lie!”
Callsign: Antique died trying to run from my father.
“M-Bot, that’s not him!” I yelled.
“Life signs are the same. I cannot see what happened above, but it is the same ship, with the same pilot. It’s him.”
He destroyed another ship in front of my eyes. He was a terror on the battlefield. A disaster of steel and fire.
“No.”
Ironsides and Mongrel fell in together, tailing my father. He shot down someone else. That was four of the First Citizens he’d killed.
“I …” I felt empty. I slumped to the ground.
Mongrel fired. My father dodged, but Mongrel stayed on him—hunting him. Until finally he scored a hit.
My father’s ship exploded in a tiny inferno, the pieces spiraling down before me, raining as burning debris.
I barely watched the rest of the battle. I just stared at the spot where my father’s ship had vanished. Eventually, the humans were victorious. The remaining Krell fled in defeat.
Fourteen survivors.
Twenty-five dead.
One traitor.
The hologram vanished.
“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “I can read your emotional state as dazed.”
“You’re sure this data couldn’t be faked?”
“The plausibility of this record being falsified without my ability to detect? Considering your people’s technology? Highly improbable. In human terms, no, Spensa. There’s no way this is fake. I’m … sorry.”
“Why?” I whispered. “Why would he do that? Was he one of them all along? Or … or what did he see up there?”
“I have no data that could help answer those questions. I have voice recordings of the battle, but my analysis considers it normal battle chatter—at least until your father saw the hole in the sky.”
“Play that,” I said. “Let me listen to it.”
“I can hear the stars.”
I’d asked for it, but hearing my father’s voice again—after all these years—still hit me with a wave of emotion. Pain, love. I was a little girl again, in that moment.
“I can see them too, Cobb,” my father said. “Like I saw them earlier today. A hole in the debris field. I can get through.”
“Chaser!” Ironsides said. “Stay in ranks.”
“I can get through, Judy. I’ve got to try. I’ve got to see.” He paused, then his voice grew softer. “I can hear the stars.”
The line was silent for a short time. And then Ironsides spoke. “Go,” she said. “I trust you.”
The audio cut out.
“After that,” M-Bot said, “your father flew up out of the debris field. The sensors don’t record what happened up there. Then, approximately five minutes and thirty-nine seconds later, he returns and attacks.”
“I have only one little clip,” M-Bot said. “I assume you want to hear it?”
I didn’t. But I had to anyway. Tears streaming down my face, I listened as M-Bot played the recording. The open channel, with many voices talking in the chaos of the battle. I distinctly heard Cobb shouting at my father.
“Why? Why, Chaser?”
Then, almost inaudible over the chatter, my father’s voice. Soft. Mournful.
“I will kill you,” he said. “I will kill you all.”
The cavern fell silent again.
“That is the only time I can find where he spoke after returning,” M-Bot said.
I shook my head, trying to make sense of it. “Why wouldn’t the DDF publicize this? They had no problem condemning him as a coward. Why hold back the truth when it’s worse?”
“I could try to guess,” M-Bot said. “But I’m afraid without further information, I’d merely be making things up.”
I stumbled to my feet, then climbed into M-Bot’s cockpit. I hit the Close button, sealing the canopy, then turned off the lights.
“Spensa?”
I curled up into myself.
And lay there.
