“You can’t watch in more detail?” I asked. “Cobb and the admirals have some kind of hologram that replicates the battlefield, so they’re using scanners or something to construct what’s going on.”
“That’s ridiculous,” M-Bot said. “I’d have noticed a video feed, unless it was a localized short-range beacon created by echolocation devices in the various ships that…Oooooooooooh!”
A flaming starship—one of ours—came down in a death spiral, and though Arturo tried to get in close and spear it with his light-lance to help, the ship was too far out.
The pilot didn’t eject. They tried until the last moment to pull up, rescue their ship. I steeled myself, looking back up at the battlefield.
“Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh,” M-Bot said.
“Well?” I asked.
“I found the video feed,” he said. “You’re all so slow. You really fly like that? How can you stand it?”
“Moving faster would either break our ships or crush those of us inside with g-forces.”
“Ah yes. Human squishiness quotient. Is that why you’re so mad at that space junk? Jealousy is not pretty, Spensa.”
“Weren’t you going to do something useful?”
“Computing enemy attack patterns,” M-Bot said. “It will take me a few minutes to finish running simulations and analyzing predictive data.” He paused. “Huh. I didn’t know I could do those things.”
“Is it my turn?” Arturo asked over the general line, and I jumped. I kept expecting them to hear M-Bot talking to me, though the AI said he was sending his own feed directly into my helmet, then intercepting my outward feed to edit away any sign of his voice or my responses to him. Somehow, he did all of this in the blink of an eye, before my signals reached the rest of my flight.
“Hold a moment,” Cobb said. “Something is odd about this attack. Can’t put my finger on it.”
A large shadow shifted overhead. Enormous. It was so big, my mind reeled to comprehend it. It was like the sky itself was falling. A sudden shower of hundreds of pieces of debris rained down, a blazing hail. And behind it, that something. That enormous, inconceivable something.
“Pull back,” Cobb said. “Flightleader, scramble your ships and get them back to—”
In a sudden burst of motion, the battle above us became the battle around us as ships from both sides dodged downward. Krell ships and human ships scattered in front of the enormous thing that was falling from above—a dark metallic cube the size of a mountain.
A ship? What ship could be that size? It was vaster than a city. Had even the flagship of our fleet been that big? I had always imagined it as a slightly larger troop transport.
The fighters kept shooting at one another as they lowered their altitude. Our little flight was suddenly in the center of a firestorm of destructor blasts and falling chunks of burning metal.
“Out!” Jorgen said. “Accelerate to Mag-5 and follow my lead. Local heading 132, away from those dogfighters behind us.”
I engaged my booster, zipping forward, Hurl on my wing.
“That’s a ship,” Arturo said. “Look how slowly it’s falling. Those are functioning acclivity rings across the bottom. Hundreds of them.”
A shadow blanketed the land. I leaned into my throttle, speeding up to Mag-5, well above normal dogfighting speeds. Any faster, and we wouldn’t be able to respond to our surroundings. Indeed, as a fighter-size chunk of debris fell near us, we barely had time to react. Half of our flight dodged left, the other half right.
I went left with Kimmalyn and Nedd, slowing for more maneuverability. Destructor blasts sprayed in front of me as two of our starfighters barreled past, followed by six Krell ships. I cursed and dodged around them, followed by a whimpering Kimmalyn, who took my wing position.
“Analysis complete!” M-Bot said. “Oh! Wow. You’re busy.”
I dove, but we had picked up a tail. The Krell ship sprayed blasts around me. I cursed, then pulled back. “Go ahead of me, Quirk!”
She sped past and I broke right, getting the Krell ship to focus on me—the closer target.
“You really should have waited for my computations before beginning,” M-Bot noted. “Impatience is a serious character flaw.”
I gritted my teeth, spinning through a sequence of dodges.
“Spin, Quirk, Nedder,” Jorgen said on the line. “Where are you? Why didn’t you follow my—”
“I’m taking fire, Jerkface,” I snapped.
“I’m on you, Spin,” Nedd said in my ear. “If you can level out, I’ll try and shoot him down.”
“You won’t get through the shield. Quirk, you still there?”
“At your three,” she said, voice trembling.
“Be ready to pick this guy off.”
“Oh! Um, okay. Okay…”
The enormous falling vessel loomed overhead. Arturo had been right; its descent was slow, steady. But it was old and broken, with gaping holes in it. The battlefield continued in a wide, shadowed section of open air underneath it, filled with dogfighting ships and lines of destructor fire.
My tail got a shot on me, and my shield crackled.
Focus. I’d practiced this a hundred times in simulation. I pulled up into a loop, my tail following. At the top of the curve, I performed a starfighter maneuver—ignoring air resistance, I turned my ship on its axis and slammed on my overburn, darting out of the loop to the side.
My GravCaps flared, buffering most of the g-forces, but my stomach still practically climbed up my throat. The simulations did not do justice to exactly how disorienting this was, particularly when the GravCaps cut out and I got slammed back into my seat.
I was supposed to be able to handle that kind of force, and I didn’t black out—so technically, I did handle it. But I nearly threw up.
My proximity alarm went off. The Krell ship, as hoped, hadn’t compensated fast enough. It had continued the loop, and I shot out of my maneuver right past it. I fought through the nausea and slammed the IMP—taking down my shield and that of my tail.
I braced myself. I was completely open. If that Krell got turned toward me and fired off a single shot—
A flash came behind me, and a shock wave washed across my ship.
“I got him,” Kimmalyn said. “I…I did it!”
“Thanks,” I said, exhaling in relief, letting off my overburners. I continued in a straight line, starting to slow, as I turned off my booster and primed my shield igniter. My helmet felt hot and sweaty against my head as my fingers moved through the familiar motions. Thank the stars for Cobb’s training; my body knew what to do.
A Krell ship came in, spotting me coasting on my momentum. I cringed, but a spray of weapons fire sent the ship scattering away.
“I’ve got you,” Nedd said, zipping overhead. “Quirk, join me in a defensive pattern.”
“Gotcha,” Kimmalyn said.
“No need,” I said, slamming the igniter. “I’m back up. Shall we get out of here?”
“Gladly,” Kimmalyn said.
I led the other two in a course that I hoped would get us out, then called Jorgen. “We’re at heading 304.8,” I told him. “Did the rest of you get out from underneath this thing?”
“Affirmative,” Jorgen said. “We passed out of the shadow at 303.97-1210.3-21200. We’ll wait for you here, Spin.”
He sounded calm, which was honestly more than I could say for myself. I couldn’t help imagining more empty seats in our classroom.
“Are you ready for my analysis?” M-Bot said.
“That depends on how often it will mention mushrooms.”
“Only once, I’m afraid. The thing you see looming overhead is around half of a C-137-KJM orbital shipyard with added delver training facility. I don’t know exactly what that is, but I believe it must have been for
manufacturing starships. There’s no sign of the other half, but this chunk has probably been floating up there for centuries, judging by the low power output of those acclivity rings.
“My projections indicate its orbit has decayed now that it doesn’t have enough power for self-correction. It doesn’t seem to have an AI—or if it does have one, it refuses to talk to me, which is rude. The Krell attack patterns indicate a defensive goal, intended to keep you away from the station.”
“Really?” I asked. “Repeat that last part.”
“Hm? Oh, it’s obvious from their flight patterns. They aren’t worried about actually killing you or getting to your base or anything. Today, they just want to keep you away from this ship, likely because of the fantastic salvage it would provide for your backward, fleshy society of slow-ship-fliers.”
That made sense. They sometimes shot down debris to keep us from getting acclivity rings. How worried must they be about us capturing this thing, with hundreds of them?
“Also, it looks a little like a mushroom,” M-Bot added.
Another pair of DDF fighters—perhaps the same ones we’d seen before—bolted past, tailed by a large group of Krell.
“Hey,” Nedd said. “Spin and Quirk, you two get out. You’re almost there. I need to do something.”
“What?” I said, turning to look over my shoulder. “Nedder?”
He broke off from our flight pattern, giving chase to the Krell ships that had passed us. What did he think he was doing?
I turned and followed. “Nedder? Scud.”
“Spin?” Kimmalyn said.
“We’re not leaving him. Come on.”
We raced after Nedd, who was tailing the six Krell ships. They—in turn—were flying after two Sigo-class fighters painted blue, indicating they were from Nightstorm Flight. Nedd clearly intended to help, but one cadet against six Krell?
“Nedd!” I said, “I’m all for fighting—you know that—but we also need to follow orders.”
He didn’t respond. Ahead, the two Nightstorms—overwhelmed by the enemy fire—did something desperate. They flew up close to the large shipyard, then curved around and flew into a hole in its side. A gaping blackness, perhaps where another section of the shipyard had once been attached.
The whole structure was still falling, but very slowly. Eventually it would crash down—and I doubted we wanted to be anywhere nearby when it did. I watched as the Krell ships pursued our pilots into the depths of the ancient ship, and Nedd barreled after them. So I gritted my teeth and followed.
“Spin,” Kimmalyn said. “I don’t think I can do that. If I try to fly in there, I swear I’ll crash.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Go join Jorgen and the others.”
“All right,” she said. She zipped off to the left, flying out from underneath the shadow of the falling machine.
I, instead, dove into the breach, chasing into the darkness after Nedd.
I hurtled through the innards of the ancient station—a large open blackness, rimmed by cranes and other construction equipment, lit by flickering emergency floodlights. The writing on one wall, in a circular pattern, reminded me of some of the old equipment down in the caverns—like the strange room I had often passed where the ceiling and floor had been covered in this writing. I could only assume the old occupants of this planet had constructed ships in here—but why had they needed so much space? Our starfighters were swallowed by the cavernous chamber.
The two DDF fighters soared upward, chased by the six Krell, who fired liberally, spraying destructor blasts through the darkness. Nedd tried to catch up, and I tailed him—hitting my overburn for a moment of extra acceleration.
I couldn’t call the other fighters. Cadet ships weren’t normally equipped with radio channels to call full pilots. They didn’t want us interfering.
I switched to Nedd’s direct channel. “This is insane,” I said. “Thank you so much for giving me an excuse to try it.”
“Spin?” he said. “You’re still with me?”
“So far. What’s the plan?”
“Help those fighters somehow. Maybe we can get close? Those Krell are flying in a—” He cut off as he buzzed past an old crane, nearly clipping it. “They’re flying in a group. We could hit them all at once, with a well-placed IMP.”
“I’ll follow your lead,” I said, dodging underneath the crane. “But if Jerkface asks, I’m totally going to claim I tried to talk you out of this.”
“You? As the voice of reason? Spin, I’m an idiot, and even I wouldn’t believe that.”
I grinned, then joined Nedd in accelerating to Mag-1.2, trying to catch up to the Krell. Unfortunately, the DDF pilots broke to the right—straight into a tunnel leading farther into the depths of the old station.
A part of me couldn’t believe we were doing this. Flying through the center of an ancient piece of debris while it was in the middle of plummeting toward the ground? How long did we have until the thing crashed? Minutes at most?
I gritted my teeth, letting up on the throttle as Nedd and I banked, then chased the Krell into the tunnel. Red lights lined the tunnel, and they flashed in a blur as we zipped through at Mag-1.2, already a dangerous speed for what amounted to indoors. I didn’t dare go faster, but a quick glance at my proximity sensor indicated the Krell were still well outside IMP range.
Nedd unloaded with his destructor, and I followed his lead—but as Cobb had warned, aiming was difficult, even with six targets swarming in front of us. The Krell shields easily absorbed the few shots that connected.
Far ahead, our fellow pilots speared the wall with light-lances and cornered into another tunnel. The Krell followed, less adroit. I speared the wall with my own lance, then pulled myself into a tight curve to follow. My GravCaps flashed, absorbing the g-forces and keeping me from getting flattened.
I gave them a workout as we wound through the innards of the ship, taking turn after turn—moving through such a frantic, tight sequence, I didn’t fire a single shot. My attention was totally consumed by watching the Krell thrusters—using their motions as a guidepost for where to place my next light-lance. Turn, release, dodge, lance, turn. Repeat.
“Just…a little…closer…,” Nedd said from right ahead of me.
Lance. Turn. Release.
“I’ve got an updated battle projection,” M-Bot said happily.
Ahead, a Krell ship missed its turn, clipping the side of the tunnel wall. The shield absorbed the impact, but the rebound sent the ship slamming into the opposite wall. The sudden, violent explosion made me back off on my speed. I made my turn, barely, debris and sparks crackling off my ship’s shield.
“You forgot I was here, didn’t you?” M-Bot said.
“Busy,” I said through gritted teeth. Nedd hadn’t slowed at the explosion—in fact, he was overburning, closing in on Mag-1.5, trying to get closer to the remaining Krell.
I sped up to keep pace with him, but this was starting to feel like too much. Even for me.
“I could just go back into hibernation, if you’re not interested in talking,” M-Bot noted. “You’d, um, miss me, if I did that, right?”
“Sure.”
“Ah, you humans are so sentimental! Hahaha. By the way, you have precisely three and a half minutes until this station hits the surface. Maybe less than that, as the Krell have begun firing upon it.”
“What?”
“Now that the bulk of your ships have retreated, the Krell are focusing on the station, trying to keep it out of your hands. I believe some bombers are preparing explosive charges on the top, and ordinary fighters outside are destroying all the acclivity rings to drop it faster.”
“Scud. We could probably build several flights’ worth of ships with the salvage from this place.” The Krell weren’t going to let that happen.
But why allow this thing to fall i
n the first place? Why not destroy it up above?
Trying to figure out Krell motivations now was a waste of time. I pulled into another turn after Nedd. I could barely make out the enemy; they were losing us.
Far ahead, the bright orange flash of an explosion lit the tunnels. One of the ships we were trying to protect had just been destroyed.
“Nedd!” I shouted into the comm. “This place is coming down. We have to get out!”
“No. I have to help!”
I took aim, then—gritting my teeth—risked spearing him with my light-lance. The glowing red line of light stuck to him and made his shield crackle. I cut my booster, then spun my ship on its acclivity ring and boosted the other direction, pulling him backward, slowing his ship.
“Let go of me!” he shouted.
“Nedd…We can’t help. We’re not good enough for this sort of thing yet. Stars above, it’s a wonder we survived that run through the tunnels.”
“But…But…”
We hovered there, burners pulling us opposite directions, connected by a cord of light.
“Coward,” he whispered.
The word hit me like a slap to the face. I wasn’t—I couldn’t be—
Coward.
“I’m cutting my booster,” he said. “Step yours down, or we’ll end up careening into that wall.”
I bit off a response to him, then lowered my thrust before cutting the light-lance. We fell still, but somewhere distant, the entire structure groaned and shook.
“Which way?” he asked. “Where do we go?”
“I don’t know.”
M-Bot made a throat-clearing noise. “Would you like instructions on how to escape the flaming death trap that you’ve inconveniently found yourself—”
“Yes!” I snapped.
“No need to get prickly. Fly ahead until I tell you, then take a left.”
“Follow me!” I said to Nedd, slamming the throttle forward and leaping into motion. I tore through the tunnels, the flare of my booster reflecting off the abandoned metal walls. Nedd followed.
“Left, down that tunnel just ahead,” M-Bot noted. “Great. Now go two tunnels—no, not that one—there. Take that one.”
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