Evershore (Skyward Flight: Novella 3)

No one questioned me when I said I wanted three flights readied for hyperjump as soon as possible, and all pilots on standby in case we needed more. If we were committing to protecting Cobb, Gran-Gran, and the kitsen, then we had to be all in.

We’d left a taynix on Wandering Leaf—Bob the commslug, named by Nedd—so the other slugs could take us back and forth. Gill transported us to the taynix control room on the platform, a room with a wide control panel and rows of boxes to hold taynix in the various defense and weapons systems.

Everyone on the platform was asleep—some of the UrDail Independence pilots had chosen to stay here, probably to ensure that our military didn’t adopt Wandering Leaf as their own asset.

FM tucked Gill into the hyperdrive box. I intended to direct the hyperjump to Evershore from this control room. I could send the instructions to the pilots’ slugs from here, so long as each flight had at least one hyperdrive on board. Then I could hyperjump Wandering Leaf into the airspace over Dreamspring, coordinating with Alanik to ensure none of our people ended up close enough to get shot by Wandering Leaf’s defenses.

Rig appeared in front of the control panel beside FM, and she jumped. No matter how many times we hyperjumped, it was still hard to get used to people appearing out of nowhere. It reminded me of the times as a child when I used to jump out from behind furniture and startle my mother. It always worked no matter how many times I did it, much to my mother’s chagrin.

Sometimes it wasn’t what happened that surprised you. It was when.

“I’m about to fly out to that platform that resembles Wandering Leaf,” Rig said. “But I’m worried we won’t be able to figure out how to move any platforms quickly enough. I’m equally worried that we will and we’ll leave Detritus open to attack.”

“There are already holes in the platforms around the planet,” I said. “The shield stretches between them. It would continue to fill in the gaps if we only took a few platforms, wouldn’t it?”

“I hope so,” Rig said.

“If it doesn’t, we’ll return them,” I said. “Maybe we won’t even be able to figure out how to move them, but I think we need to explore all of our options.”

“Of course,” Rig said. “I’ll have Drape with me, so if you need to communicate you can hyperjump in and back out again. I’ll also see if there’s a hypercomm there that we can get working.” He looked nervously from me to FM, and FM threw her arms around him.

“Be safe,” he said.

I hoped we would be, but stars, none of us could promise that.

Rig gave Drape the command to take him home, and he blinked out to meet with the engineers. FM looked shaken.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” FM said. “But this isn’t the time to talk about it.”

“We have to wait for the signal from the other flights that they’re ready to hyperjump,” I said. “They’ve just been roused from their beds, so we have a few minutes.”

FM squeezed her eyes shut. “Saints and stars, Jorgen. It’s a lot easier to make you talk than to do it myself.”

“I could call Rig back,” I said. “But I think he needs to get moving with the other engineers.”

“I don’t want to talk to Rig about it anyway,” she mumbled.

That surprised me. “I thought you said you liked that he made you talk.”

“I said it was good for me. But I hate it. And I realize that if I don’t talk to you right now, you’re going to use that as an excuse to shut down and probably explode again.”

I hoped that wasn’t true. But I didn’t deny it.

FM sighed. “So yes, it sucks, okay? I hate leaving Rig, knowing I may not be coming back. I know what it does to him and how much worse it’ll be if something happens to me, and I feel terrible about it. I wonder if I ever should have started things between us, if that was really fair to him. And I wonder how much longer he’s going to want to put up with this before he decides that I’m not worth the stress. Okay? Are you happy now?”

“No,” I said. “But I’m glad you told me.”

FM fiddled with one of the console buttons, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “Do you ever feel like maybe you shouldn’t have started things with Spensa?”

“I didn’t start it,” I said. “She did. But…” It surprised me how easily the answer came. “No. I’ve never regretted it. I could never regret one minute with her, no matter how it all turns out.” The strength of my conviction startled me. I meant every word.

FM’s shoulders relaxed.

“You don’t regret it either,” I said. “You’re just scared.”

FM pressed her lips together, and she nodded. “I don’t think it’s fair to him. But if you can handle Spensa running off into literally nowhere…”

Rig dropped out of flight school after his first time in the air, but he’d come with us into battle on ReDawn anyway, and he hadn’t flinched. “He knows why you’re doing this. He’s making the same call.”

“Yeah,” FM said. “And I hate him being in danger too. I almost hope he can’t get the platforms to move, because then he’ll be here and he’ll be safer.”

If the platforms didn’t move, we’d all have far fewer resources to deal with whatever the Superiority brought against us. But I didn’t point out her bad logic. I understood.

“I’m going to go wake the UrDail pilots,” FM said. “So they aren’t frightened when the platform moves, and so they can decide to stay here if that’s what they want.”

“Good idea,” I said. Alanik’s brother and the others had fought beside us on ReDawn, but this wasn’t their fight. They deserved the opportunity to decide for themselves.

“Jerkface,” a voice said over my radio. “This is Robin from Stardragon Flight. We were told to contact you as soon as we were in the air.”

Last time I talked to Robin over the radio, her flight had been called up to keep Skyward Flight from escaping to ReDawn. “Copy, Robin,” I said. “Do you have a hyperdrive?”

“We’ve got one of them in our flight,” Robin said. “Ivy and Victory Flights have a couple more each.”

“Good,” I said. “Connect all your ships with light-lances. Don’t leave anyone behind. Signal me when you’re ready, and we’ll bring everyone with us to Evershore.”

“Jerkface?” Robin said. “What the scud are we doing?”

“Defending potential new allies,” I said. “They’re under attack because the Superiority got wind of our presence there. We’ll be joining their air force in defending their planet. I’ll give you specific formations when we arrive.”

“Yes, sir,” Robin said.

I blinked. I wasn’t technically Robin’s superior, and I was giving her orders anyway. Stoff had given me leave to do that, but…

I didn’t correct her. I was going to need them all to listen to me, so this was a good sign even if it wasn’t exactly right.

Jorgen? Alanik said in my mind. Another carrier ship has arrived.

We’re on our way, I told her.

I made sure Gill was ready while FM alerted the UrDail pilots.

“We’re ready to go,” Robin told me over the radio. “My flight wants to know where exactly we’re heading?”

Had I not told them? “Evershore,” I said. “It’s a planet inhabited by small fox aliens.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” Robin said. “Thanks for filling us in.”

I sighed. Answering all their questions would take time we didn’t have. “You’ll see soon enough. All flights, prepare for hyperjump.”

FM returned to the doorway of the control room. “Gilaf and the others are getting ready. They’re in.”

“Good,” I said. “We’re going to need them.”

I’m ready to hyperjump, I said to Alanik. Get someone high enough in the air that the platform won’t fire on the planet when we arrive.

There was a long pause.

Arturo’s up high enough, Alanik said. The space around him is clear. Go.

I reached out to the other flights, finding the minds of their taynix, and gave them instructions to go to Alanik’s slug, Snide, down near Dreamspring. Then I reached for Gill in the box and instructed him to take the platform to Naga. I wanted us to emerge in the air, not drop the platform on top of the beach where the autoturrets would fire on the city.

We slipped beneath the unseeing eyes and appeared beneath the black sky, marred grey by periodic clouds. I could see the carrier ships Alanik was talking about up above the clouds, pieces of their large boxy shapes visible behind the fluffy obstructions. Arturo hovered right above the platform’s surface, close enough that he wouldn’t be hit by the autocannons.

“Scud, Jerkface,” Arturo said. “That thing popping out of nowhere is terrifying.”

The platforms shook as the guns fired at some enemy ships that had been waiting right inside the clouds. They scattered and retreated.

“Welcome back,” Kimmalyn said over the radio.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going to do something about those carrier ships. Everyone else steer clear of the platform and defend the city.”

“We’ve got more kitsen ships on our side now,” Arturo said. “They’re gathering over Dreamspring.”

“And we will feast on the souls of all who dare to harm our beloved city,” Goro said.

“I sure hope that’s metaphorical,” FM muttered, then turned to me. “Gilaf will contact you over the radio when he and the other UrDail pilots are ready to jump out to help. I’m going to take Gill to my ship.”

“Do it,” I said. “Amphi, I want you to command the flight. It’s too hard for me to keep track of you all while I’m working the platform.” Last time I’d had Rig to handle this, and all I’d had to do was command Boomslug to shoot the hyperweapon. This was going to be more complicated.

“Copy, Jerkface. What is our strategy?”

Scud, we needed one of those. Not only for our flight, but for everyone. “Protect the city,” I said. “Victory Flight, make sure the city itself doesn’t take fire. Keep the enemy distracted.” I paused. “Amphi, have we heard from Cuna?”

“They’re working with the medical people to get Cobb and Gran-Gran moved to the library. Going toward the cliffs doesn’t seem to be causing their vitals to drop.”

It all had something to do with that portal, but I didn’t understand what. “Good,” I said. “They’ll have better cover there. But we still need to protect the city. Stardragon and Ivy Flights, intercept the enemy ships before they reach the city. Your goal is to make sure Victory sees no action.”

“Copy, Jerkface,” Robin said.

“Skyward Flight will take point. All flights stay at least five klicks from the platform to avoid the autofire. Our objective is to convince them we aren’t worth it and pull their ships back. If you have a hyperdrive and need to be pulled out of the heat, let me know. Otherwise, Amphi will give you specific formation instructions.”

“Okay,” Arturo said. He probably wasn’t prepared to do that for multiple flights, but he started doing it anyway.

Which left me free to focus on the new carrier ships in the sky. I wasn’t going to sit here and wait for them to pour out their fighters to bombard the city.

I was going to take them out first.

“Jerkface,” Alanik said, “your sidekick wants to join you again. I think he’s given up on me.”

“Send him over with Snide,” I said.

Snide and Juno appeared a moment later, both riding on Juno’s platform. A moment later Alanik called Snide back, and the slug disappeared again.

“I did not give up on her,” Juno said. “I simply said she appeared to have less aptitude for mindblades than you do. It wasn’t a qualitative judgment.”

“To Alanik it probably felt like one,” I said.

“Is there some particular meditation you would like to try?” Juno asked. “I don’t have all my books, but I could—”

“Not right now,” I said. I called to Snuggles, who appeared in my arms with Boomslug. I tucked Snuggles into the taynix box where Gill had been. “Maybe later. Right now I need to concentrate.”

“The purpose of meditation is to help your concentration—”

I tuned him out, loading Boomslug into the platform’s hyperweapon. Then I focused on the airspace near the carrier ship and sent Snuggles the instruction to go.

We slid beneath the eyes and then Wandering Leaf reappeared beneath the carrier ship. Our inhibitor field encompassed the enemy ship, preventing it from hyperjumping while the autoturrets fired, weakening the shield, piercing through it in a few places to punch holes in the hull. The hangar doors opened and ships poured out, trying to escape. The big guns couldn’t possibly hit all those targets. The sensors showed that my people were still flying low—I didn’t need to worry about clipping them yet.

Go, I said to Boomslug, focusing on the area right outside the hangar.

I felt the edge of the nowhere ripping apart as the hyperweapon fired, mindblades flying out at the escaping ships, bypassing the shields, cleaving their hulls in two. Debris rained down out of the sky. The pilots didn’t even get a chance to eject.

I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for them. I leaned toward the window, spotting the next carrier ship halfway behind a nearby tower of clouds.

Go, I said to Snuggles, and suddenly we were in front of it, the platform shaking with autoturret fire.

“We’re ready,” Alanik’s brother, Gilaf, said over the radio. “But we’d rather not jump out right here, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Sorry for the short notice,” I said. “We didn’t get much more ourselves. I’ll jump you down closer to the planet.”

“Hell of a way to wake up,” Gilaf said.

I contacted the taynix in Gilaf’s ship and sent him and the other UrDail pilots down to the place where we’d first brought the platform in.

This carrier ship seemed mostly empty, but I still told Boomslug to fire, aiming the hyperweapon at the hull of the ship. It diced into chunks, bits of it blowing out into the sky and then falling.

“Did you do that?” Juno asked, watching through the window.

“I did,” I said. Stars, this thing was powerful. This tactic could be less effective against a battleship, which might be equipped with an inhibitor, but we were putting a serious amount of metal into the ocean from these carrier ships. Bits were going to wash up on the beach for years.

What could we do if we were able to move more of the other platforms from their orbit around Detritus?

The third carrier ship belched forth more fighters. I could feel the distinct vibration of a cytonic among them, and I reached out, listening for any cytonic communications, to see what we could learn about their plans.

Instead I felt something else. A thrumming against the nowhere, a rhythmic knocking like someone tapping their nails against the boundary between that world and ours.

The enemy cytonic sliced across the battlefield, headed directly for Alanik. The thrumming followed them, and as I focused I could feel small projectiles swarming around them, like pointed shards of glass made out of bits of the nowhere.

Oh, scud.

“Angel, get out of there,” I said. “That incoming ship has—”

The shards of nowhere flew out around the enemy pilot’s ship in a swirling melee, clipping wings and piercing hulls. Two ships went down—one from Ivy Flight and one from Stardragon—as the ship neared Alanik.

Alanik’s ship blinked out of existence and reappeared farther down toward the city, where Victory Flight was chasing off the fighters that had pierced through our other forces. The enemy ship sailed right past the place where she’d been, toward Kimmalyn and Nedd, who darted away. The ship pursued Kimmalyn. Before I could say anything, Arturo was yelling at her over the radio to go into a dive, get out of there.

She dove, but the enemy ship followed her, slicing her ship into three even pieces. The wreckage fell to the ground. She didn’t eject, but she wouldn’t have needed to. I searched for her taynix in the falling wreckage, but I couldn’t find him. I hoped he’d hyperjumped her out.

“All flights,” I said, “that pilot has mindblades. Take them down.”

“We can’t get close enough to use the IMP,” Amphi said. “Quirk’s our best shot and she’s down.”

“Nedder,” FM said. “Did Quirk make it out?”

“I don’t know,” Nedd said. He sounded shaken. The cytonic with the mindblades dove again, this time taking off after Catnip.

I found Catnip’s slug, Whiskers, and instructed it to jump down closer to the city, below Victory Flight. Catnip disappeared. Our ships flew loosely around the enemy cytonic, all trying to peg the ship with destructor fire without getting close enough to be torn apart by the mindblades, but the enemy ship rolled and dodged, evading their fire.

I couldn’t let this continue. I could get in my own ship and try to go after the cytonic, but I imagined they had a lot more practice with those mindblades than I had, and possibly a lot more reach.

“All flights,” I said, “pull up.”

All across the battlefield, ships shot up into the clouds, clashing with the Superiority ships that had made it out of their carriers. Not all the kitsen flights obeyed, but those that didn’t were far enough away from the cytonic that they should be safe from the autofire above and below.

Go, I told Snuggles.

And I hyperjumped the platform directly below the cytonic pilot.

The cytonic pilot immediately pulled up, accelerating to get out of the inhibitor field.

Go, I said to Boomslug.

Boomslug fired the hyperweapon in the direction of the pilot, but they reached the edge of the inhibitor field and hyperjumped away. I searched for them across the sky—

And found them high above the planet, farther even than the carrier ships. Most of our forces were between me and them, but I could follow in an instant, if I could only see where they’d gone. I looked up through the window at the clouds—

And was blinded by a blast of blue energy that poured down from the sky, striking the shield around Wandering Leaf, which sputtered and crackled.

I squinted against the light. When it faded, I stared up at a large, newly arrived ship with an enormous cannon on the front of it.

Scud.

Scud.

“What is that?” Juno asked.

“It’s a planetary weapon,” I said.

“A weapon for planets,” Juno said. “It seems wrong to invent such a thing.”

“No argument here,” I said. It looked just like the one we’d destroyed on ReDawn. It made sense that it hadn’t been unique. They must have had the thing charged before they hyperjumped it in, which made a sick, reckless kind of sense.

We could not let that thing fire on the planet. I didn’t know how many kitsen that ship could destroy in one blast, and I didn’t want to find out.

“Jerkface—” Arturo said over the radio.

“I see it,” I said. “All flights, clear the space around the cannon.” The flights split, going into evasive maneuvers and leading the enemy ships away from the cannon, which was fixed squarely on Wandering Leaf.

They’d take out the platform and then Dreamspring. I had to destroy the cannon before that happened.

The airspace between me and the cannon was clear. I still didn’t know for certain if Kimmalyn was okay, or if any of my friends had been caught in that energy beam, but there were going to be a lot of other casualties if I didn’t act quickly. I focused on the space just below the cannon and hyperjumped the platform up.

The autoturrets fired immediately, pummeling the cannon and the ship around it. Scud, this thing was terrifying from this close. Last time it was Rig who’d had to stare one of these down. I hadn’t given him enough credit for it. The blue light was building again. I focused on the cannon, ready to tell Boomslug to fire—

And suddenly the vibration of the universe went dead. I could no longer feel the cytonic inside the enemy ship, or the minds of Boomslug and Snuggles so nearby in the boxes. Scud, the enemy cytonics had put up an inhibitor, and I’d brought the platform right into range. It was the same thing I’d done to the mindblade cytonic, but they had a ship with an engine, and Wandering Leaf moved only by hyperjump.

I was stuck here.

“This seems bad!” Juno said, his voice almost a squeak.

The blue light glowed brighter and brighter, and then the beam pummeled my shields again. The shield crackled and then blinked out, leaving the platform vulnerable to the next attack. I couldn’t hyperjump out. I couldn’t use the hyperweapon. I didn’t have a starfighter on board, and Alanik couldn’t come in to get me.

I stared up into the mouth of the cannon as it once again began to glow with an eerie blue light.