“Verbal confirmations, in ascending order,” said Nose—the flight-leader of Nightmare Flight. “Newbies first.”
“Skyward One, ready,” Jorgen said, then hesitated. He sighed. “Callsign: Jerkface.”
Nose chuckled. “I feel your pain, cadet.”
FM sounded off, then I followed. Skyward Flight—what was left of it—was flying with Nightmare today on their maneuvers.
I hadn’t made any decisions about what to do with the information Gran-Gran had given me. I was still deeply troubled, uncertain. For now though, I had decided to do what Jorgen told me, and keep flying. I could avoid what had happened to my father, right? I could be careful?
I flew through the maneuvers that Nightmare flightleader instructed, letting the familiar motions distract me. It was nice to be back in a Poco-class ship after several weeks of testing other designs. It felt like settling into a familiar easy chair, imprinted with just the right dents from your backside.
We flew in a wide formation—Jorgen paired with a member of Nightmare Flight—down at 10k altitude. We were spotting the ground for wrecks, trails of ships in the dust, and anything else suspicious. It was akin to scouting during a battle, but—if possible—even more monotonous.
“Unidentified signature at 53-1-8008!” said one of the men from Nightmare Flight. “We should—”
“Cobb warned us about the 8008 trick,” Jorgen said flatly. “And about the ‘get the green pilot to evacuate his ship’s septic’ trick. And about the ‘prepare for inspection’ joke.”
“Scud,” said one of the other pilots. “Old Cobb really is no fun, is he.”
“Because he doesn’t want his cadets getting hazed?” Jorgen said. “We are supposed to be watching for signs of Krell, not engaging in juvenile initiation rituals. I expected better of you men and women.”
I glanced out my cockpit toward FM, who shook her head. Oh, Jorgen.
“Jerkface, eh?” said one of the pilots. “I can’t imagine where you’d get a name like that …”
“Enough chitchat,” Nose said, cutting off individual channels. “Everyone make for 53.8-702-45000. Home radar shows some turbulence in the debris field above that point.”
A few grumbles met that, which I found curious. I’d imagined full pilots as being … well, more dignified. Maybe that was Jorgen’s influence on me.
We flew the indicated heading, and ahead, a large-scale debris fall began to occur. Chunks of metal rained down, some as bright lines of fire and smoke, others—with acclivity rings or still-charged acclivity stone—hovering down more slowly. We carefully approached the edge of the debris fall.
“All right,” Nose said. “We’re supposed to be showing these cadets some maneuvers. While we watch for Krell, let’s do some runs through the debris. If you spot a good acclivity ring, tag it with a radio beacon for salvage. Bog and Tunestone, you’re up first. Local heading eighty-three. Take the two cadets on your tail. Sushi and Nord, you take heading seventeen, and take Jerkface. Maybe he can lecture you on proper procedure. Stars know, you boneheads could use it.”
FM and I followed the full pilots, who did a very cautious—and somewhat unengaging—pass through the debris. We didn’t even use our light-lances. Bog—the man who had made fun of Jorgen earlier—shot a few radio beacons at some larger chunks of debris. “Is your flightleader always like that?” he asked us. “Talking like he’s got his joystick rammed up his backside?”
“Jorgen is a great flightleader,” I snapped. “You shouldn’t resent someone just because he expects you to do your best.”
“Yeah,” FM said. “If you’re going to swear to a cause, no matter how fundamentally flawed, then you should try to uphold your office.”
“Scud,” Bog said. “You hearing this, Tunestone?”
“I hear a bunch of yapping puppies on the line,” Tunestone replied. Her voice was high-pitched and dismissive. “They keep drowning out the cadets, unfortunately.”
“You should be careful,” I said, my anger rising. “Next week we’ll be full pilots, and I’ll be competing with you for kills. Good luck making ace once that happens.”
Bog chuckled. “A few days from full pilot? My, how grownup you are.” He hit his booster and darted back into the falling debris, Tunestone on his wing. FM and I followed, watching as Bog went in close to a falling chunk of debris, then used his light-lance to pivot around it.
It was a competent pivot, but nothing special. He followed it by pivoting around another piece of junk, which he tagged for salvage. Tunestone followed, though she ended up overshooting her second piece of debris as she pivoted too sharply.
FM and I followed at a modest distance, watching them, until FM said on a direct call, “Spin, I think they’re trying to show off.”
“Nah,” I said. “Those were some basic pivots. Surely they don’t think we would be impressed by that …”
I trailed off as Bog’s comm line lit up. “That’s called light-lancing, kids. They might be graduating you, but you’ll still have a lot to learn.”
I looked out toward FM, incredulous. I knew—logically—that most cadets focused on dogfighting and destructor play. Cobb said it was part of the DDF’s problem, churning out pilots with a focus on maximizing kills, rather than flight prowess. But even knowing that, I was shocked.
These pilots really expected us to be awed by maneuvers Cobb had taught during our first weeks in flight school?
“Two-fourteen?” I said to FM. “With a double flatline at the end, and a V sweep?”
“Gladly,” she said, and hit her overburn.
The two of us zipped out and then pivoted in opposite directions around a large chunk of debris. I swung myself around a second burning chunk—zipping down beneath it, then flinging myself upward so I launched into the sky, acclivity ring hinging backward. I spun between two larger debris chunks and tagged them both, before pivoting around the higher one to dive back downward.
FM was coming up straight at me. I hit her with a light-lance, then turned and overburned opposite her. The two of us expertly spun each other in the air, conserving momentum. My GravCaps flashed right as I let us out of the maneuver.
After the twist, she rocketed out heading east, and I launched out heading west. We each tagged a piece of debris, then swept around together, rejoining Bog and Tunestone.
Who didn’t say anything. I followed them in silence, grinning, until another light on my comm flashed. “You two looking for a flight when you graduate?” Nose asked. “We’ve got a couple of holes.”
“We’ll see,” FM said. “I might become a scout. Life in this flight seems kind of boring.”
“You two been showing off?” Jorgen’s voice cut in over a private channel as he flew back with his wingmate.
“Would we do that?” I asked him.
“Spin,” he said, “you could be tied to a table with eight broken ribs and a delirious fever, and you’d still find a way to make everyone else look bad.”
“Hey,” I said, grinning at the compliment. “Most people make themselves look bad. I just stand to the side and don’t get in the way.”
Jorgen chuckled. “On my last pass, I saw something flash up above. Might be Krell. Let me see if Nose will let us go check it out.”
“There you go again,” FM said, “always being a Jerkface and actually remembering our orders.”
“Such a terrible example,” I said.
He called in to Nose, and started gaining altitude. “Spin and FM, you’re with me. We’ve got clearance to climb to 700k to scope it out. But be careful; we haven’t practiced a lot of minimal-atmosphere maneuverability.”
Starships could, of course, fly just fine without atmosphere—but it was a different kind of flight. At the same time, I found myself nervous as we climbed higher and higher. This was even higher than I’d gone in M-Bot, and I kept thinking about what had happened when my father had climbed up near the debris field. I still didn’t know what had changed up there to make him fight his own team.
Scud. Maybe I should stay down low. It was too late now though, as the general haze of shapes that made up the debris field became increasingly distinct. Getting closer, I could see skylights looming at the lower levels of the debris—and my mind reeled at their scale. We were still a hundred klicks from them, and they looked enormous. How big were those?
Timid, I tried to see if I could hear the stars better, up this close. I focused and … I thought I heard faint sounds coming from up there. But they were obstructed, as if something was in the way.
The debris field. I thought. It is interfering. My father had only turned traitor after he’d seen a hole in the debris field, an alignment that let him see out into space. And maybe fly all the way through the debris field to get out himself?
“There,” FM said, drawing my attention back to our mission. “At my seven. Something big.”
The light shifted and I saw a gargantuan shape among the broken bits of debris. Large, boxy, it was somehow familiar … “That looks a lot like the old shipyard that I chased Nedd into,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jorgen said. “And it’s in a low orbit. Might crash down in a few days, at that rate. Maybe all of those old shipyards have started running out of power.”
“Which means …,” FM said.
“Hundreds of acclivity rings,” Jorgen finished. “If this thing falls, and we can salvage it, it could transform the DDF. I’ll call in a report.”
Distant light flashed along one side of the enormous shipyard. “Those were destructors,” I said. “Something is shooting up there. Don’t get too close.” I hit the mute, then scrambled for my personal radio. “M-Bot, you seeing this? Any guess what that shipyard is firing at?”
Silence.
“Please,” I whispered into the radio. “I need you.”
Silence. I blushed, feeling foolish, then clipped the private radio back into its spot on my seat where it wouldn’t rattle around the cockpit.
“That is curious, Jorgen,” Cobb was saying as I turned off the mute. “Those destructor blasts are probably defense turrets on the shipyard itself—the one that fell earlier had them, though they were out of power by that point. Report this back to Nose, and I’ll take it to Flight Command. If that thing drops, we’ll want to salvage it before the Krell destroy it.”
“Cobb,” I said. “It’s still firing.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “So Jorgen said.”
“At what though?” I asked.
Up above, black specks resolved into Krell ships, which had likely been scouting the old shipyard’s perimeter.
But now they saw us.
