Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

We came in low around a planetoid that my mission briefing had called Luna. Old Earth’s moon.

I couldn’t make out much by starlight, but the place reminded me of Detritus. A vast dark planetoid, surface broken by craters. Forlorn. Abandoned by time, and with no defensive shell to hide and protect it. Old Earth had vanished centuries ago, leaving this moon in a lonely orbit around Sol.

Our enemy had built their base here. Cuna said it was because this region was already quarantined, kept off maps, with no travel in or out except for military reasons. So, we humans came home—in a way—for this mission. Only at the same time we didn’t. Because Old Earth wasn’t here, and nobody knew where it had gone.

That was a mystery for another day, however. Today I had a secret facility to raid. Our plan was straightforward. In roughly ten minutes, we would come into range of the base’s sensors. Soon after, we’d reach the base itself.

The place would have an inhibitor—a slug with powers preventing us from using cytonics. Fortunately, Cuna had visited this installation several times, and knew where the inhibitor was. Whenever a high official visited a Superiority base, one of their jobs was to check that protocol was being followed for protecting sensitive equipment—namely cytonic equipment. Very, very few people in the Superiority even knew that taynix slugs were the source of these powers.

Cuna had given us the location: a small bunker marked on my map, at the edge of the installation. We would destroy that as quickly as possible. Once the inhibitor was down, we could set up our own. Nedd was in charge of that, with his wingmate Arturo protecting him. The two would also be defended by Sadie and a kitsen battleship—not much larger than my fighter, but laden with ten times the firepower.

We had very few inhibitor slugs, unfortunately, and had brought only two on this mission. One was with Nedd. The backup was on the kitsen ship.

Once our inhibitor was in place, it would block the enemy from calling for help—and would prevent them from receiving immediate backup, even if a call went out before we got our inhibitor up. We’d be free to fully engage any enemy fighters, and we could send for our own backup if we needed it. Everything in these battles depended on cytonics and slugs. Those who could teleport freely would almost certainly win, while those who couldn’t would be in trouble.

Once we had control of the region, we’d send a strike force into a specific building: a tall structure marked on my map. Cuna said it held the data storage. Our strike force would recover the information, then we’d all hyperjump away.

I went over these steps in my mind as we soared across the surface of Luna. As a child, I’d listened to Gran-Gran describe the moon in so many different ways: As a knowing companion, always watching from the sky. As a brilliant silvery drop of metal. As a herald of the changing days, mysteriously linked to the woman’s body in particular.

Then in school, I’d seen slides of it from the remnants of our archives. Just a desolate chunk of rock. I’d had trouble reconciling the beautiful, friendly, mysterious body of the stories with…well, this hunk of stone. Why had the ancient humans described it with such poetry?

They’d been lonely, I’d decided. Lonely in the universe, unaware of the many other species out there. Lonely in relation to the sky, so uncomfortably open and empty.

“Five minutes until you arrive,” Cuna said over the comm as we swept in along the surface of the moon. “Remember to send the code I gave you. I hope you enjoy this reunion with what was once a very important location in human lore.”

I glanced out the canopy, watching the surface pass as we emerged into the light of the nearby sun. Though we buzzed in frightfully close to the surface, the miniscule atmosphere meant our passing barely disturbed the dust.

“What of…Old Earth?” Nedd asked. “Isn’t there any sign of it at all?”

“None,” Cuna said. “The Earth Disappearance Station was initially set up here to study what might have happened to the planet. But even the best scientists—working with licensed, and very rare, Superiority cytonics—could find no trace of it. Your homeworld is well and truly gone.”

They’d given us an explanation earlier, filling in gaps in our records from Detritus. At some point during the final human war, the united forces of the galaxy—forged into a cohesive government to resist the human menace—had launched an all-out attack on Earth. When they’d arrived, they’d found only empty space. And an abandoned moon, cast away like a piece of debris blown off a fleeing battleship.

Even with that explanation, I felt as if I would find Old Earth peeking above the horizon. Waiting there, a blue ball of legend and myth, cradle of life and stories. My ship’s system even had a phantom circle on the proximity monitor to display where it would have been. Nothing. Black, empty space. Earth had passed into the legends it had spawned.

Perhaps, M-Bot said in my mind, it’s a ghost. Like me!

You’re joking, but you could be kind of right, I thought back at him. Detritus proves that entire planets can move using cytonics. Maybe Earth teleported away to avoid invasion?

But if Earth had moved to a safe location, why had the humans on it never emerged? Were they in hiding?

“Eyes up,” Arturo said to us over the line. “Installation should be visible any moment now.”

We had brought only thirteen ships. Skyward Flight, Vanir Flight, and one kitsen battleship. All under Arturo’s command. That was a fraction of our forces—but the more we brought, the more likely the enemy would be to spot us. In a war where both sides could supply reinforcements in the blink of an eye, stealth trumped numbers. Once we had inhibitor dominance, we could bring in as much of our fleet as we wanted.

Exactly when Cuna had said they would, the enemy sent an authentication request via hypercomm. My cytonic senses picked it up right before Hesho—using some newer technology acquired during my absence—noticed it on the comms. I almost responded, bypassing the equipment. Instead I left it to Arturo, who sent Cuna’s code in reply. We were hoping that it would buy us a few minutes—assuming Winzik had forgotten to get Cuna’s authorization codes changed since we’d rescued them.

Moments later, we came upon the installation. My cytonic senses immediately winked off—and I felt blinded. We’d hit their inhibitor field. Chet trembled and seemed to grow smaller—though delvers weren’t stopped by inhibitors, they could feel them, and didn’t like the sensation. M-Bot, who had been humming to himself, vanished.

A single slug, enhanced with some technology, could provide a fairly large bubble of protection—kilometers across. That was big, at least on the scale of one person or a base like this. When flying out in space, kilometers could pass incredibly quickly.

Still, I felt exposed, trapped. To distract myself, I focused on the base itself. Simply referred to as the EDS, the station had been built in the ruins of New Beijing, which had fallen quickly after Earth had disappeared. All humans had long since been removed from the facility. Element-specific gravity gave the base, which was settled into a large crater, a bubble of pressurized air. That, together with radiation skimmers, made the location livable.

Even knowing that, I was shocked to see greenery around the city. Trees were an incongruous sight around the perimeter, just inside the bubble. But of course biological methods of oxygen recycling would be planted, if only as a backup if the mechanical scrubbers went down.

What lay beyond the trees was even more unnerving. The structures inside the bubble were dotted with lights, and while the place wasn’t packed with buildings like Starsight had been, the roads were still busy. It had parks. Restaurants. Apartments.

Scud. I’d imagined some secret military base, squat like a beetle huddled against the stone. Not a sprawling city.

“Shot off,” Kimmalyn said, firing her sniping destructor precisely. A flare went up inside the city. “That should have been their inhibitor.”

I tried hard not to think about the cost of that shot, but I did know FM and Jorgen had argued long and hard about the necessity of it. He had made good arguments: That in war, you couldn’t worry that the battleship you brought down had a janitorial and medical staff on it. That you couldn’t worry if the enemy trying to kill you had been pressed to fight against their will, as had been done to many, many soldiers throughout history. You just had to survive.

Once I’d have agreed with him. But now I heard FM’s vigorous objections in the back of my mind. Was there another way? There should have been another way, right? Still, with the fall of that small bunker, my senses returned. M-Bot’s humming resumed—as if he hadn’t even noticed. Chet stretched, and I felt my anxiety decrease.

Nedd, Arturo, and the kitsen ship—named the Iron Fortress—soared ahead of us.

“Hey, Hesho,” I said, “is Iron Fortress the full name of the kitsen ship? Or is it actually the Iron Fortress of Poetic Words Said after a Held Breath or something?” When I’d flown with Hesho before, his ship had been named something beautiful. I found this one surprisingly mundane.

“Just Iron Fortress,” he said, with a smile. “The captain gets to name the ship. You will find many kitsen who like names as I do, but there are some who prefer simple clarity.” He paused. “I will miss naming opportunities a great deal. It was one of my previous duties. We shall see if my traditions last. Though I am not alone in my love for poetry, I am…among the more obtuse in that regard.”

I’d always had a sense that Hesho was a little odd, not just because of the emperor thing. We all watched, tense, as Nedd and the Iron Fortress flew into position—hovering above the base—and activated their own inhibitors. Our tech wasn’t as good as the Superiority’s, but we still managed to get a field up that covered the entire city. Hopefully it would at least slow down any reinforcements.

The rest of us streaked forward, and I got more visuals on the place. So ordinary. So full of life. “Anyone else uncomfortable about this?” I asked over the line.

“Yeah,” Arturo said. “Admiral, you seeing these visuals?”

“What’s wrong?” Jorgen asked from base. “I’m looking at what you’re sending, but I’m not reading anything odd. Are there defenses I’m not spotting?”

“It’s not the defenses,” I said, “but the lack of them. Jorgen, we’re raiding a city.”

“City,” Doomslug fluted softly.

The lights on my dash flickered.

“Direct, private call from him,” Hesho said. “Patching you through.”

“Spin,” Jorgen said in my helmet a moment later. He could have spoken directly into my head, but we were trying to get into the habit of using communication slugs, as it worked better for everyone else. “You need to see this through.”

Ahead of us, a local defense force had started scrambling. A few enemy fighters were rising into the air. Not many. Scud, they barely had anything. “Jorgen, those look like police ships, not true military vessels.”

“They will try to kill you either way,” he said. “Listen, this is a secret military base. They are guarding military assets of an incredibly valuable nature.”

“But…Jorgen, there are families down there.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “this kind of operation needs to be extremely tightly controlled. You want people committed to long-term service, since every person you transfer out is another one who can potentially leak the location. So you build a city out of it. Let everyone settle down.”

“And we’re going to attack them,” I said softly.

“No, we’re going to raid their information storage,” Jorgen said. “Spin, I’m sorry. But this is what battle is like. What happened to the bloodthirsty warrior? I’m sure Alexander the Great wouldn’t have had second thoughts about a raid like this.”

“Alexander the Great was a monster,” I said. “Most of them were, Jorgen, even if the stories dodge the issue. I…”

I’d lived among these people now. I couldn’t see things as I once had. Still, I trailed off. My friends and I were fighting for survival against a much more powerful force, led by people who were decidedly evil. Did I think I was going to be able to go to war without causing casualties?

It was just…this was the first time I’d gone into a true battle against the Superiority since living on Starsight. How many of the pilots I was about to kill were like Morriumur? Good, decent people in the wrong place? How many people down there just wanted to live? Scud, first the slug, now this? Could I live with every stray shot I fired potentially blasting through an apartment window and vaporizing civilians?

I didn’t have much choice, because the enemy ships were upon us. Fewer than twenty in all; enough to be dangerous, but not the swarm we’d feared. They had obviously intended this base’s clandestine nature to protect it.

“Our cytonic inhibitor is working,” Nedd said over the comm. “Lucky here is doing her job beautifully.”

He and the kitsen ship would remain on the defensive, keeping the inhibitor field up. Arturo and Sadie would protect them. Hopefully we had put that inhibitor up fast enough to prevent the enemy from even calling for help.

The ships that engaged us were at least competent. Working in formations, trying to chase us into losing our wingmates, guarding the way forward to prevent us from flying together into the center of the city. I immediately pulled to the right, away from the barrage of oncoming destructor fire, and swept the perimeter of the bubble.

Kimmalyn followed, as capable a wingmate as I’d ever had. We buzzed past a set of gun emplacements—huge antiaircraft guns that were pointed toward the sky. Those would have decimated any larger ships that had gotten close, but were too long-ranged to bother us. One of the reasons we’d come in low and from the side was to stay under them. I could imagine the frustration of the people inside, watching their city be attacked, unable to do anything.

“All right, everyone,” Arturo said. “Skyward Flight, engage those fighters and keep them busy. Vanir Flight, you’re incursion. Get close to the installation, scout it visually, then have your slugs hyperjump your marines inside.”

Vanir was a small flight, just four Sportas: four-seater fighters, each carrying a team of marines. Not quite carrier ships, intended for fast maneuverability and combat, they could drop off three ground troops when needed. Today they’d send their ground forces in to steal the information we wanted. The rest of us just had to keep the fighters busy. Fortunately, the little fighters we were facing were very unlikely to have slugs of their own, so even if one got beyond our inhibitor field, they wouldn’t be able to call for help.

“Watch your right,” Hesho noted, and I dodged by instinct, avoiding a trail of destructor fire.

“Want to try a Hatch maneuver?” Kimmalyn said, banking alongside me. That was a ploy where I would go into a frantic set of dodges to convince the enemy ships I was panicking.

“Not yet,” I said. “Let’s give them a chase first, so we can see how good they are.”

“Roger that, Spin,” Kimmalyn said.

I went into a set of evasives: the challenging, flowery type. Kimmalyn and I spun and looped, broke apart and curved back together, soared upward and sideways—dodging the fire from behind with poise. These pilots behind us were good. And the ships had actual people in the cockpits, rather than being piloted remotely. That was rare for the Superiority. Only their best fought in person.

That said, I’d faced delvers throwing hundreds of ships at me at once. Compared to that, these…well, they weren’t much of a challenge. I stuck to the outside of the bubble of air, keeping a full six of the ships busy. Kimmalyn kept up with me, and together we didn’t take a single hit to our shields.

“Spin,” Jorgen said over the line, “what are you doing?”

“Dealing with more than my share of fighters,” I said, pulling into a dive. “Anyone else and their wingmate handling six at once?”

“You haven’t fired a single shot,” Jorgen noted.

“I don’t need to.”

He fell silent. “Understood,” he said.

I watched the proximity monitor as I flew, and Hesho helpfully highlighted the incursion team. They’d pushed inward, toward the center of the city. There they buzzed a specific skyscraper with shiny black windows: the place Cuna indicated was the information storage facility. Inside we could find all kinds of useful data, including the locations of the mining stations where the enemy got their acclivity stone.

Some among the military were still suspicious of Cuna—worrying they were a plant. I didn’t have those concerns. Winzik had legitimately tried to kill Cuna—who, in turn, had already offered information and aid that would have been incredibly stupid to release if they were a spy.

As the incursion team finished their sweep of the data storage building, a dozen more of our ships arrived as reinforcements. The enemy fighters were good, but now they were severely outgunned—and my team included the best pilots in the galaxy. Enemy ships started going up in flowers of flame, but so far we’d only lost one fighter: Catnip, who, according to Hesho’s monitor, had hyperjumped with his slug to safety.

I should have known it was too good to last. “Scud,” Breakaway said over the comm. She was leading Vanir Flight, and therefore the incursion force. “Admiral, there’s a shield on this building, as we expected. But there’s also a second inhibitor field here, covering just this structure.”

“What?” Cuna said. “That…that’s…I’m sorry. It must have been set up after my previous visit.”

“Scud,” Jorgen said in my ear. The Iron Fortress had sophisticated scanning equipment, and would be sending up-to-the-second scans of the region and the fighters back to headquarters. “That’s a wrinkle. Breakaway, can you…Wait, what’s that?”

I scanned the battlefield, flying by instinct, looking for whatever he’d noticed. All through the city, rooftops were opening, and guns were rising from them. AA guns. Smaller, shorter ranged, designed to hit starfighters. They had waited to deploy them until our team got close to the city center, where they’d be surrounded.

“Defensive maneuvers!” Arturo said. “All ships!”

Vanir Flight immediately scattered as the guns started unloading on them. I held my breath, but the shots mostly missed. We lost one Vanir ship, and I waited for confirmation the crew had been hyperjumped to safety in time.

Yellow light on the comm. Some casualties from that explosion—we’d lost at least one of the four on the ship. Scud! Still, the others dodged successfully. A modern ship with a good pilot was more maneuverable than a turret. Unfortunately, this threw a huge wrinkle into the plan. How would we break into the base if we had to be on the defensive the whole time?

“Spin,” Kimmalyn said, “that looks bad.”

As she said it, the ships tailing us got off a lucky shot on me—the destructor fire rippling across the surface of my shield, briefly illuminating the shell that protected my ship.

“Shield at sixty-five percent,” Hesho warned. “That was a solid hit.”

I nodded. The city didn’t have its own shield, though several of the more important buildings clearly had individual ones. Better to protect the most vital areas with high-powered shields than to have a single larger, thin one, easily breakable.

I focused on my evasion, pushing into a dive. Kimmalyn and I spun around one another, bright destructor blasts raining past us like burning meteorites. Sprays of them hit the city below, blooms of fire rising along a street, as flying cars exploded while fleeing the firefight.

Scud. Were my opponents that ruthless? That uncaring of the noncombatants the stray fire was killing?

No. No, I knew better. I imagined the anguish they felt being forced to defend their city, knowing each shot might kill people they knew, people they loved. The enemy pilots were doing their jobs. And sometimes the job sucked.

“Spin…” Kimmalyn said as we pulled into a loop over the city.

“All right, everyone,” Arturo said, his voice tense. “We’ll get picked off if we keep this up. Swing back in a Stewart formation, planning to angle straight toward the target. First squad, on mark 118. Squad two, follow. Nedd, you—”

Nedd’s ship went up in a burst of fire. Gone in a second, the powerful AA guns blasting straight through his shield.

“Scud!” Arturo screamed. “Nedd!”

In that moment, all of the enemy ships—even those tailing me—turned and swarmed the kitsen ship, Iron Fortress.

“Protect the kitsen ship!” Jorgen said over the line. “All pilots!”

It was too late. A dozen shots hit the kitsen ship, and as its shield went down, it hyperjumped away.

“Jorgen,” Arturo said, “Nedd—”

“Stay focused,” Jorgen said. “Medical will send information when they have it. Go, everyone!”

We obeyed, following Arturo’s commands. I couldn’t help but watch my dash. My heart wrenched, my insides twisting. Then a yellow light came on next to Nedd’s name.

At least one casualty. Either Nedd, or his slug, was gone.

“Stay sharp!” Jorgen shouted. “Our inhibitors are both down. The enemy will send for help. No time to delay.”

I reached the top of my loop and started another dive. A brilliant dazzling blast from the AA guns nearly took out Arturo, who was forced to hyperjump away, his shield down. Everyone else was scattering. Jorgen sent reinforcements—I saw another flight appearing on the monitors.

“Prepare to abandon mission,” Jorgen said.

“Spin,” Kimmalyn said. “Please.”

Everything started to shake, my cockpit vibrating as my soul trembled. I snapped my eyes open, pulled out of my dive, and screamed. Angry at the enemy, at my own frailty, at Winzik for forcing my hand.

Angry at the universe. For having no answers.

I moved my finger onto the trigger of my destructors and, hating everything about this, took aim at the first enemy I saw and started firing.