Skyward (The Skyward Series Book 1)

“You are the weakest point in our defenses,” Cobb said, walking through the center of the classroom, speaking to the nine of us in our seats, our holograms not yet engaged. “Your ship can accelerate at incredible speeds and make turns you can’t survive. It is far more capable than you are. If you die up there, it won’t be because the ship failed you. It will be because you failed the ship.”

A week had passed already, almost in a blur. Training each day in the simulations, doing time in the centrifuge, then sleeping each night in the cockpit of the ancient ship. I was beyond tired of unseasoned rat and mushrooms.

“G-forces are your biggest enemy,” Cobb continued. “And you can’t just watch your g-forces, you have to be aware of which direction they’re pushing on you. Human beings can take a reasonable amount of g-force backward, like when you’re going in a straight line.

“But if you pull up or do a hard bank, the g-forces will push downward, forcing the blood out of your head into your feet. Many people will g-lock—go unconscious—after pulling only nine or ten Gs that way. And if you turn on your axis, then boost another direction like we’ve been practicing … Well, you can easily push over a hundred Gs, enough to turn your insides to soup by the sudden jerk in momentum.”

Nedd raised his hand. “So, why did we learn those moves?”

“GravCaps,” I said.

Cobb pointed at me and nodded. “Your ships can compensate for sudden extreme g-forces. DDF vessels have things called Gravitational Capacitors. When you change direction or accelerate quickly, the GravCaps will engage and deflect the force. GravCaps can work for about three seconds before needing a brief moment to recharge, so they’re of most use when making tight turns.”

I knew this already. In fact, Nedd probably would have known it, if he’d been forced to study for the test. So I let my mind wander, thinking of my broken-down ship. I hadn’t made much progress on the ancient ship, as I’d spent most of my time hunting and curing rat meat. I still needed to find a power matrix somewhere …

“Your ships have three kinds of weapons,” Cobb said.

Wait, weapons? My attention snapped back to the class, and I noted Bim also perking up. It was cute how he responded to any mention of weapons in an overeager-puppy sort of way.

“Yes, Bim,” Cobb said. “Weapons. Don’t wet yourself with excitement. The first of these three is your basic destructor—your primary weapon, but also your least effective. It shoots a concentrated beam of energy, and is usually fired in bursts at short range.”

Cobb stopped near Kimmalyn’s seat. “Or, less often, it can be charged for very precise long-range sniping. Most pilots only use this function for finishing off disabled ships, or perhaps picking off an enemy during an ambush. Hitting an active target at distance with a destructor requires incredible skill.”

Kimmalyn grinned.

“Don’t get cocky,” Cobb said, walking on. “A destructor is practically useless against a shielded foe—though you’ll still fire them at every opportunity, as it’s human nature to hope for a lucky hit. I’ll attempt to beat this out of you, but honestly, even full pilots cling to their destructors like they’re scudding letters from their childhood sweetheart.”

Bim chuckled.

“That wasn’t a joke,” Cobb snapped. “Holograms on.”

We powered up the devices, and suddenly we were on the launchpad. Once we were up in the air and had done verbal confirmations, Cobb’s voice crackled in my helmet’s speaker. “All right. Stars help us, it’s time for you to start shooting. The destructor trigger is the button next to your index finger on the control sphere. Go ahead.”

I hesitantly pressed the button. A burst of three white-hot blasts shot in rapid succession from the pencil nose of my ship. I grinned and pressed it again and again, firing bursts one after another. Just like that, I was granted the very power over life and death! And for more than rats!

“Don’t wear it out, Spin,” Cobb said. “See the dial on your throttle? The one you can rotate with the thumb of your left hand? That’s the destructor rate control. Top position is steady fire. It’s loved by every drooling, meathead, idiot pilot who didn’t train with me.”

“What about those of us who are still drooling, meathead idiots?” Nedd asked. “But did train with you?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Nedder,” Cobb said. “I’ve never seen you drool. Second position on the dial is burst. Third position is a charged long-range shot. Indulge yourselves. Get it out of your system.”

He made a bunch of Krell ships appear in the air in front of us. They didn’t fly or move; they simply hung there. Target practice? I’d always wanted to do target practice—ever since I’d been a little girl, throwing rocks at other, more nefarious-looking rocks.

Together, we launched a hailstorm of death and devastation through the air.

We missed.

We missed by what seemed like miles. Even though the ships weren’t that far away. I gritted my teeth and tried again, switching between different destructor modes, angling my ship with my control sphere, firing with everything I had. But scud … for how close everything looked. there sure was a lot of empty space to shoot.

Jerkface finally got a hit, knocking one of the ships down in a spray of fire. I grunted, focusing on a single vessel. Come ON.

“Go ahead, Quirk,” Cobb said.

“Oh, I thought I’d give them a chance, sir!” Kimmalyn said. “ ‘Winning isn’t always about being the best,’ you know.”

“Humor me,” Cobb said.

“Well, okay.” Her ship charged for a couple of seconds, then released a focused line of light—which blasted a Krell ship from the sky. She repeated the feat again, and again, and then did it a fourth time.

“Kind of like trying to hit the floor with a rock, sir,” she said. “They aren’t even moving.”

“How?” I asked, in awe. “How did you learn to shoot like that, Quirk?”

“Her father’s training,” Hurl said. “Remember? The story with the mushroom that looked like a squirrel?”

FM laughed, and I even heard a peep out of Morningtide. But no, I didn’t know any stories about mushrooms or squirrels—it had to be a story they’d chatted about at night, in the bunks. While I was walking back to my cave.

I pressed hard on my destructor button, and managed—remarkably—to finally hit one of the targets. The way it sprayed sparks as it fell was immensely satisfying.

“All right,” Cobb said. “That’s enough of that stupidity. I’m shutting down your destructors.”

“But we only just got them!” Bim said. “Can’t we do a little dogfighting or something?”

“Sure, all right,” Cobb said. “Here you go.”

The remaining Krell fighters—the dozen or so we hadn’t managed to shoot down—suddenly came streaking toward us, destructors blazing. Hurl let out a whoop, but I snapped into focus and dove out of the way.

Kimmalyn went down first, in an immediate flash of light and sparks. I dove into a twirling spin, watching the red line on my canopy that indicated in the real world how much g-force I’d be feeling. Cobb was right—the GravCaps protected me when I did a quick turn, but I had to be careful not to run them out midturn, then slam myself with all that g-force.

I pulled up, and fire and explosions surrounded me, debris from the ships of other cadets raining down.

“We’ve tried to reverse engineer Krell technology,” Cobb said in a calm voice, a striking contrast to the insanity around me. Nedd screamed as he was hit. Morningtide went down quietly. “But we have failed. They have better destructors and better shields. That means, fighting them, you’re outgunned and outarmored.”

I was consumed entirely with survival. I swerved, dodged, and spun. Three Krell ships—three—swooped in on my tail, and one hit me with a destructor shot. I cut right hard, but another shot took me, and the warning light started flashing on my control panel. Shield down.

“You’ll have to hit a Krell a half dozen times to bring down their shields,” Cobb said. “But they will do the same to you with two or three hits.”

I pulled up into a loop. Blasts marked the deaths of my companions—flares in the dim sky. Only one other ship was still flying, and I knew—without needing to see the numbers on the fuselage—that it would be Jorgen. He was a way better pilot than I was.

That still grated on me. I growled, spinning in that wide loop, trying to get one of the enemy into my sights. Almost … there …

My controls went dead. The ship stopped responding. During that loop, I’d redlined the g-forces, and the GravCaps had run out. Though my body couldn’t feel it here, if I’d been in an actual ship I’d have passed out.

A Krell ship disposed of me with a passing—almost offhand—shot, and my hologram fuzzed. Then my canopy vanished, and I was in the classroom. Jorgen managed to last another seventeen seconds. I counted.

I sat back in my seat, pulse thumping rapidly. That had been like witnessing the end of the world.

“Let’s assume you were approaching competence,” Cobb said. “A remarkable fantasy, I realize, but I’m ever an optimist. If you managed to fly better than the average Krell ship, you’d still be at a severe disadvantage using only destructors.”

“So we’re screwed?” FM said, standing up.

“No. We just have to fight differently—and we have to even the odds somehow. Strap back in, cadet.”

She did, and the holograms started again with us in the sky in a line. The Krell ships reappeared in a silent formation in front of us. I eyed them more suspiciously this time, index finger itching to spray them with destructor fire.

“Dragon-boy,” Cobb said to Arturo. “Press the buttons next to your third and fourth fingers. Hit them both at once.”

My ship shook, and a little pop of light exploded from Arturo, like a radiant splash of water.

“Hey!” Hurl said. “My shield is down.”

“Mine too,” said Kimmalyn.

“And mine,” Arturo added.

“Mine’s up,” Jerkface said, as did several others.

Arturo’s shield went down. I thought, as did those of the two ships next to him in line. I leaned forward, looking out the cockpit canopy, keenly interested. In my days of studying, I’d been taught booster specs, flight patterns, acclivity rings—basically everything about the fighters except weapon specifics.

“The IMP,” Cobb said. “Inverted Magellan Pulse. It will completely negate any protective shield a ship emits—including, unfortunately, your own. It has an extremely short range, so you’ll basically have to be crawling into a Krell’s engines before you activate it.

“The key to beating the Krell is not to pound them with destructor shots. It’s to outmaneuver them, team up against them, and outthink them. Krell fly individually. They barely support one another.

“You, instead, will fight in traditional wingmate pairs. You’ll work to engage the IMP in a way that gives your wingmate a clear, unshielded shot. But you also always need to be aware—engaging the IMP leaves you exposed and vulnerable until you reignite your shield.”

A sudden burst of light from nearby sent FM cursing softly.

“Sorry!” Morningtide said with her thick accent. “Sorry, sorry!” It was the most I’d heard out of her all day.

“What’s the third weapon?” Jerkface said.

“Light-lances,” I guessed. I’d read the term, but again, the specifics on what they did weren’t covered in the books.

“Ah, so you know about them, Spin,” Cobb said. “I thought you might. Give us a little display.”

“Um, okay. But why me?”

“They work very similarly to their smaller cousins: light-lines. I have a hunch you’ve got some experience there.”

How did he know? I wore my light-line to class, as I needed it to get in and out of my cavern, but I thought I’d kept it hidden under the long sleeve of my jumpsuit.

“Thumb and little finger,” Cobb said, “buttons on either side of the control sphere.”

Well, sure. Why not? I pushed the throttle forward and moved out of line, approaching the hovering Krell ships. I picked one, the wires at its rear floating down behind it. Like all ships, it had an acclivity ring—with a standard size of about two meters in diameter—glowing with a soft blue light underneath.

The Krell looked even more sinister up close. It had that strange, unfinished feel to it, though it wasn’t actually incomplete. Those wires hanging from the back were probably intentional, and its design was simply alien. Not unfinished, but made by creatures that didn’t think like humans did.

I held my breath, then clicked the buttons Cobb had indicated. A line of molten red light launched from the front of my ship and attached to the Krell ship. As Cobb had indicated, it worked just like the light-line, but larger—and launched from my ship like a harpoon.

Wow. I thought.

“Light-lances,” Cobb said. “You’ve probably seen their smaller cousins on the wrists of pilots; they were used by the engineering department in the old fleet to anchor themselves while they worked on machines in zero gravity. Spin has one, somehow—which I’ve decided not to mention to the quartermaster.”

“Thank—”

“You can thank me by shutting up when I’m talking,” Cobb said. “Light-lances work like a kind of energy lasso, connecting you to something you spear with it. You can use it to attach to an enemy ship, or you can use it on the terrain.”

“The terrain?” Arturo asked. “You mean we stick ourselves to the ground?”

“Hardly,” Cobb said.

The sky exploded above and I looked up, gasping, as the ubiquitous haze of debris began to rain down balls of fire. Superheated metal and other junk, turned into falling stars by the heat of reentry.

I quickly spun my ship, then pushed on the throttle and moved back toward the line. It took a few minutes for the debris to start falling around us, some chunks glowing more brightly than others. They moved at a variety of speeds, and I realized some of the falling junk had acclivity stone glowing blue inside it, giving it some lift.

The junk smashed into several of the Krell fighters, pulverizing them.

“The Krell usually attack during debris falls,” Cobb said. “The Krell don’t have light-lances, and though they tend to be maneuverable, a DDF ship with a good pilot can outpace and outfly them. You’ll often engage them in the middle of the falling debris. In there, the light-lance will be your best tool—which is why we’re going to spend the next month training on them. Any idiot with a finger can fire a destructor. But it takes a pilot to fly the debris and use it as an advantage.

“I’ve seen pilots use the light-lances to pull Krell into one another, stick them to space junk, or even yank a wingmate out of danger. You can pivot unexpectedly by attaching yourself to a big chunk and swinging around it. You can toss debris at your enemy, instantly overwhelming their shield and smashing them. The more dangerous the battlefield, the more advantage the better pilot will have. Which, when I’m done, will be you.”

We watched the debris fall, burning light reflecting against my canopy. “So …,” I said. “You’re saying that by the end of our training, you expect us to be able to use grappling hooks made of energy to smash our enemies with flaming chunks of space debris?”

“Yes.”

“That …,” I whispered, “that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”