Skyward

by Brandon Sanderson

  But all I needed was to keep them busy for a little longer. I cut right and speared one with my light-lance, using its momentum to spin me in a tight turn. I darted around its companions as I released the one I’d lanced, sending it flying in an awkward tumble.

  Now up. I cut up and around a hillside, moving away before the Krell could corner me.

  “Spensa?” M-Bot said.

  Down. I dove, right before some Krell ships tried to cut me off in the other direction.

  “How are you doing that?” he asked.

  Right. I turned through the center of some ships coming at me. Destructor blasts skimmed my wings, but not a single shot landed.

  “You’re reacting,” he said, “to things they haven’t done yet.”

  I could sense their orders in the back of my mind. Quiet yet piercing, the commands traveled from above down to these Krell. They were communicating using another space, another place—and I could tap into it. Listen in on their commands.

  I was somehow internalizing their commands, and responding to them before I knew what I was doing.

  I tried not to let that freak me out.

  M-Bot was incredibly agile, capable of quick boosts and deliberate slices in one direction or another. As I flew, it seemed as if I could feel him—feel the very lines of electricity that passed my orders through his fuselage. I flew with the immediate, unconscious skill of a person flexing their muscles. With the precision of a cautious surgeon, but the frenetic energy of the strongest athlete. It was incredible.

  I was so consumed that I almost missed it as Arturo radioed in. “Spin, this isn’t working. Those black ships refuse to be pulled away from the bomber. They engage us if we get close, but fall back when we draw away. And the bomber is still flying on a steady course.”

  “ETA until the enemy reaches position to destroy Igneous?” I asked.

  “Under two minutes,” M-Bot said. “At current speed of—”

  “This is Riptide leader, callsign: Terrier,” a male voice said. “What in the North Star’s light is happening here?”

  “No time to explain,” I said. “Flightleader, take everything you have and hit those black ships that are protecting the bomber.”

  “And who are you?”

  I turned—followed by my train of angry Krell ships—and buzzed over the six newcomers who had just arrived at the battle. I could barely get a visual on them because the destructor fire around me was so thick. I took another hit, and a fourth.

  “Shield at forty percent strength,” M-Bot noted.

  I stayed ahead of most of the enemies, finding the holes between shots, my instincts somehow reading the Krell motions.

  Stars appeared in my vision. Pinpricks of light.

  The eyes.

  Jorgen’s voice rang through the channel. “Sir, with all due respect, she’s a person you should listen to. Now.”

  Terrier grunted, then said, “Riptide Flight, all ships, engage those black fighters.”

  “Not all,” I said, spinning right. “Jorgen, FM, you there?”

  “Here, Spin,” FM said.

  “You two. Take position near that bomber. I’m going to lead this swarm of Krell back around to it and hopefully give you enough of a distraction to get in close. When that happens, I need you to IMP that bomber. We don’t have much time left.”

  “Roger,” Jorgen said. “On me, FM?”

  “Gotcha.”

  I swung in a wide loop, passing by Kimmalyn—who flew carefully out beyond the main battlefield. My entourage ignored her, presuming me to be the dangerous one.

  “Quirk,” I said over a private channel. “I need you to shoot that bomber.”

  “If that ship crashes, it will detonate the bomb,” Kimmalyn said. “You’ll die. You’ll all die. Even if you escape, everyone in Alta will die.”

  “Do you think you can knock the ship’s engines out? Or do something to get that bomber to drop the bomb?”

  “A shot like that would—”

  “Kimmalyn. What would the Saint say?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Then what would you say? Remember? The first day we met?”

  I banked and spun back toward the bomber. Terrier and his ships, along with Arturo and Nedd, had thrown themselves at the black fighters. I bore down on it all, bringing the rest of the ships in to create a chaotic, frenzied jumble.

  “Under thirty seconds,” M-Bot said softly.

  “You told me to take a deep breath,” I said to Kimmalyn. “Reach up…”

  “Pluck a star,” she whispered.

  My arrival—and the ships chasing me—created the confusion I’d anticipated. Ships darted in every direction, and the black ships scattered out of the way, trying to avoid collisions with their own vessels.

  In my mind, I heard a specific Krell order sent to the bomber. The eyes accompanied me, somehow growing brighter—more hateful—as I heard the Krell chatter in my mind.

  Initiate countdown to detonation at one hundred seconds.

  “M-Bot!” I said. “Someone above just set the bomb to explode on a one-hundred-second countdown!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can hear them!”

  “Hear them how? They aren’t using radio that I can monitor!” He paused. “Can you hear their superluminal communications?”

  I caught a flash to my right. “IMP struck!” FM shouted, excited. “Bomber shields down!”

  “Quirk, fire!” I screamed.

  A line of red light pierced the battlefield. It passed between Krell ships, went right over Jorgen’s wing as he overburned away from the bomber.

  And damn me if it didn’t spear the exact spot between the bomber and the bomb, severing the clamps. The bomber continued flying forward.

  But the bomb, cut free, dropped.

  “Lifebuster dropped!” Terrier shouted. “All ships, overburn out! Now!”

  Everyone scattered, Krell included. Everyone but me.

  I dove.

  “Lifebuster dropped,” Riptide flightleader shouted. “All ships, overburn out! Now!”

  Judy let out a long sigh as she stood, hands behind her back, watching the hologram. Around her, in the command center, a few people clapped. A few others prayed. Rikolfr wept.

  Judy just watched the bomb fall. She’d done what she could. Perhaps humankind could rebuild, with the remaining ships that survived. Perhaps the Defiants would continue on.

  They’d do it without Alta. She braced herself. Ships scattered, to try to escape the blast. All but one.

  That one dove toward the bomb.

  “The defect,” Judy whispered.

  * * *

  —

  I speared the bomb with my light-lance, then pulled up in a curve that overwhelmed M-Bot’s incredible GravCaps. The force pressed me against my seat as, by a narrow margin, I crested a dusty hillside—towing the lifebuster bomb after me.

  M-Bot put up a timer, mirroring the one on the bomb. Forty-five seconds.

  “We need to get this thing outside the death zone,” I said, slamming the throttle full forward and putting everything into an overburn away.

  “This will be close,” he said. “I’m extending the atmospheric scoop so we don’t rip that bomb off our light-lance as we accelerate, but above Mag-16 the scoop’s envelope will shrink too much to fully shelter the bomb, so that’s our max for now…”

  We tore away from Alta, accelerating to speeds no DDF ship could have managed, despite that restriction. I felt the g-forces even through his GravCaps. We careened through the middle of a pack of DDF ships—they were gone in a blink.

  “We’re going to make it!” M-Bot said. “Just barely. But we’ll…Oh.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “We’ll be in the middle of the blast when
it explodes, Spensa. And I don’t want to die. This is very inconvenient.”

  The countdown hit ten. Ahead, I saw a swarm of black dots in the air. Krell chasing after the DDF ships.

  “There has to be a way out of this!” M-Bot said. “Booster and thrusters: online. No, not fast enough. Acclivity ring and altitude controls: online. Can we rise quickly enough? No, no, no!”

  I felt at peace. Serene.

  “Communications and stealth systems: online, but useless. Light-lance: online, carrying the bomb. If we drop it too soon, the wave will hit Alta.”

  I sank into the ship, feeling—becoming—his very processors as they worked. I felt the number counting down to three.

  “Self-repair: offline. Destructors: offline.”

  Two.

  I felt, more than saw, the blossom of the bomb’s first explosion behind. And I felt, more than heard, M-Bot’s diagnostic tool working.

  “Biological component engaged,” his voice said.

  One.

  “Cytonic hyperdrive: online.”

  An explosion of fire surrounding us.

  “What?” M-Bot said. “Spin! Engage the—”

  I did something with my mind.

  We vanished, leaving a ship-size hole in the expanding blossom of flame and destruction.

  In that moment between heartbeats, I felt myself enter someplace dark. A place not just black, a place of nothingness. Where matter did not, and could not, exist.

  In that moment between heartbeats, I somehow stopped being, yet didn’t stop experiencing. A field of white appeared around me—a billion stars. Like eyes opening at once, shining upon me.

  Ancient things stirred. And in that moment between heartbeats, they not only saw me, but they knew me.

  I jolted from that place that was not a place, and felt like I’d slammed into my straps, as if I’d been thrown physically back into the cockpit. I gasped, heart racing, sweat streaming down my face.

  My ship hovered, still and quiet, lights blinking out on the control panel.

  “Cytonic hyperdrive offline,” M-Bot said.

  “What,” I said, gasping for breath. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know!” he said. “But my instruments place us at—calculating—one hundred kilometers from the point of detonation. Wow. My internal chronometer indicates no discrepancy between our time and solar time, so we experienced no time dilation—but somehow we traveled that distance virtually instantaneously. Faster than light, certainly.”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Call Alta. Are they safe?”

  The channel came on, and I heard whoops and screams—it took a moment to distinguish those as cheers of joy, not terror.

  “Alta Base,” M-Bot said. “This is Skyward Eleven. You may commence thanking us for saving you from utter annihilation.”

  “Thank you!” some voices cried. “Thank you!”

  “Mushrooms are the preferred offering,” M-Bot said to them. “As many varieties as you can dig up.”

  “Really?” I said, pulling off my helmet to wipe my brow. “Still on the mushroom thing?”

  “I didn’t erase that part of my programming,” he said. “I’m fond of it. It gives me something to collect, like the way humans choose to accumulate useless items of sentimental and thematic value.”

  I grinned, though I couldn’t shake the haunting feeling of those eyes watching me. Those…somethings knew what I’d done, and they didn’t like it. Perhaps there had been a reason that M-Bot’s faster-than-light capacities had been offline.

  That raised a question, of course. Could we do that again? Gran-Gran said that her mother had been the engine of the Defiant. That she had made it work.

  The answer is not to fear the spark, but to learn to control it.

  I looked upward, toward the sky.

  And there, I saw a hole. The debris shifting just right to reveal the stars. Exactly like…that day when I’d been with my father. My first time to the surface.

  It seemed too momentous to be a coincidence.

  “Spensa,” M-Bot said. “The admiral is trying to contact you, but you have your helmet off.”

  I absently put my helmet back on, still staring at that hole in the debris. That pathway to infinity. Could I…hear something out there? Calling to me?

  “Spensa,” the admiral said. “How did you survive that blast?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered truthfully.

  “I suppose I’m going to need to pardon your father now,” she said.

  “You just survived a lifebuster explosion by a few meters,” I said, “and still, all you can think about is that old grudge?”

  The admiral fell silent.

  Yes. I…I could hear the stars.

  Come to us.

  “Spensa,” she said. “You need to know something about your father. About that day. We’ve lied, but for your own good.”

  “I know,” I said, flipping controls, turning my ship’s acclivity ring on its hinges so it pointed downward. My ship rotated so the nose pointed upward. Skyward.

  “Return to base,” the admiral said. “Return to honors and celebration.”

  “I will. Eventually.”

  Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock.

  “Spensa. There is a defect inside you. Please. You need to come back. Every moment you spend in the sky is a danger to you and to everyone else.”

  Be different. Set your sights on something higher.

  “My ship doesn’t have destructors,” I said absently. “If I come back crazy, you should be able to shoot me down.”

  “Spin,” Ironsides said, her voice pained. “Don’t do this.”

  Something more grand.

  “Goodbye, Admiral,” I said, flipping off the comm.

  Then I hit the overburn, launching upward.

  Claim the stars.

  I knew it was stupid.

  The admiral was right. I should have returned to the base.

  But I couldn’t. Not only because I could hear the stars calling to me, luring me. Not only because of what had happened in that place between heartbeats.

  I wasn’t being controlled by something else. At least I didn’t think I was. But I had to know. I had to confront it.

  I had to see what my father had seen.

  We soared higher, higher, up where the atmosphere faded and we could see the planet’s curve. Still higher, aiming for that gap through the debris field.

  I drew closer than I ever had before, and this time I was struck by how deliberate it all looked. We called it a debris field, but it really wasn’t debris. There was a shape to all of this. An intent.

  Enormous platforms that shined light downward. Others that looked like the shipyards. Together they formed a sequence of broken shells around our planet. And they had aligned just right to create an opening through them.

  I passed into that large gap. If I veered too far to the sides, I’d likely be in range of the defensive guns that Cobb had mentioned. But here, traveling through this impromptu corridor, I was safe.

  As I passed the first layer of debris, M-Bot said we’d entered space proper—though he also said the line between atmosphere and not was an “arbitrary distinction, as the exosphere doesn’t end, but instead fades.”

  My breath caught in awe as we passed enormous platforms that could have held Alta a thousand times over or more. They were covered with what appeared to be buildings—each silent, dark. Millions upon millions of them.

  People lived up here, once, I thought. I soared past several layers. By now we were going at incredible speeds—Mag-55—but without wind resistance, it didn’t really matter. Speed was relative in space.

  I looked away from the platforms, toward the end of the corridor. Out there were still, calm lights.

&n
bsp; “Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’m detecting radio communication ahead. One of those specks is not a star.”

  I leaned forward as we passed another layer of debris. Yes, ahead I could see a glowing spot that was much closer than the stars. A ship? No, a space station. Shaped like a spinning top, with lights on all sides.

  Smaller specks moved about it. Ships. I adjusted our course, pointing toward the station. Beneath us a platform revolved in its orbit, cutting off my sight of the shrinking shape of Detritus. Could I get back? Did I even care?

  I could hear them louder, the voices of the stars. Chatter that didn’t come through the radio, and didn’t form words. The call of the stars…it was…it was Krell communication. They used that place between heartbeats to talk to one another, to communicate instantly. And…and the minds of thinking machines somehow relied upon the same technology to process quickly.

  It all required access to that not-place, that nowhere.

  We drew closer to the station. “Don’t they know it’s dangerous?” I whispered. “That something lives in the nowhere? Don’t they know about the eyes?”

  Maybe that’s why we only use radio, I thought. Why our ancestors abandoned this advanced communications technology. Our ancestors were frightened of what lived in the nowhere.

  “I’m confused as to what you mean,” M-Bot said. “Though the Krell are using some normal sublight communications in addition to the superluminal ones. The ordinary ones, I can crack and listen in. Working to translate.”

  I slowed M-Bot, passing ships that turned toward mine. These didn’t appear to be fighters; they were boxy, with large open windows at the front.

  In that moment, something hit me, like a physical force. It crawled inside my brain, made my vision fuzz. I screamed, sagging in my straps.

  “Spensa!” M-Bot said. “What’s wrong? What is happening?”

  I could only whimper. The pain. And…impressions. They were sending images. They were…they were trying to overwrite…what I was seeing…

  “Engaging stealth and jamming!” M-Bot said. “Spensa, I’m reading unusual signals. Spensa?”

  The voices vanished. The pain evaporated. I let out a long, relieved sigh.