Skyward (The Skyward Series Book 1)

I settled into my Poco, wearing my pressure suit and helmet—my first time in a real cockpit since Bim and Morningtide had died.

That immediately made something inside me hurt. Would it be like this every time, from now on? Would I always have this quiet worry at the back of my mind? The one that whispered, “Which of your friends won’t make it home from this mission?”

Today was supposed to be something more routine though. Not a battle. I powered on the Poco and felt that wonderful hum—the one the simulation couldn’t imitate.

I gripped the control sphere in my right hand, the throttle in my left, then lifted off and climbed into the sky alongside the other six fighters. Jorgen counted us off with confirmations, then called Cobb.

“Skyward Flight ready. Orders, sir?”

“Go to 304.16-1240-25000,” Cobb said.

“Flight, set coordinates,” Jorgen said. “I’ll take point. In case of a Krell ambush, I’ll fall back with Arturo and FM. Nedd, you’re with Quirk in the middle formation. Spin and Hurl, I want you in the rear prepared to spray covering fire.”

“There won’t be an ambush, cadet,” Cobb said, sounding amused. “Just get to the indicated location.”

We flew, and stars … it felt good. The ship trembled as it moved, responding to my commands. Wind currents were so much more alive than the simulation made them seem. I wanted to swoop back and forth, fly low and skim the crater-marked surface, then soar up high and buzz the debris field at the very edges of space.

I kept myself under control. I could do that.

Eventually, we approached a large group of fighters flying way up higher. There were a good five flights up there.

“Nearing coordinates,” Jorgen said to Cobb. “What’s going on? A training exercise?”

“For you, yes,” Cobb said. Overhead, a few streaks of light marked smaller bits of debris breaking into the atmosphere. I watched, concerned.

“Hey, know-it-all,” Cobb said.

“Yes, sir?” Arturo answered immediately.

“What causes debris falls?” Cobb asked.

“Various things,” Arturo said. “There are a lot of ancient mechanisms up there, and though many still work, their power matrixes are slowly running out, so their orbits decay and they fall. Other times, collisions happen.”

“Right,” Cobb said. “Well, that’s what we’re facing here. There was some kind of collision between two enormous chunks of metal above, and that’s making some debris lose its orbit. We can expect a Krell incursion, and those fighters are here to watch. But you’re here for another reason: a little target practice.”

“On what, sir?”

Several large chunks of debris dropped out of the sky, burning past the flights above us.

“The debris,” I guessed.

“I want you flying in pairs,” Cobb said. “You’re going to practice formations and do careful runs. Pick a larger piece of debris, follow it for a few seconds, then tag it for salvage to investigate. Your destructors have been outfitted to fire beacons if you pull the rate control dial out until it clicks.”

“That’s it?” Hurl said. “Tagging pieces of space junk?”

“Space junk can’t dodge,” Cobb said, “doesn’t have shields, and accelerates predictably. I figure that’s right about your skill level. Besides, you’ll often be ordered to tag salvage during debris falls, while waiting to see if the Krell attack. It’s good practice—so don’t complain, or I’ll stuff you back in the simulations for another month.”

“We’re ready and willing, sir,” Jorgen said. “Hurl included. Thank you for this opportunity.”

Hurl made a few gagging noises into a private line to FM and Kimmalyn—the lights on the console under the ship numbers showed me who was listening—and she didn’t leave me off. Which seemed like maybe a step forward?

Jorgen arranged us into pairs and set us to work. When larger chunks of debris fell from the sky, we’d swoop down behind them and match speed—like we’d been taught—before shooting a radio beacon into them. The most useful debris were the ones that glowed blue with acclivity stone. We could salvage that to make ships.

I let myself enjoy the work. It wasn’t actual fighting, but the feel of the dive, the thrill of targeting and firing … I could imagine the chunks of space debris as Krell ships.

“Are you ignoring me again?” M-Bot asked in my ear. “I think you’re ignoring me again.”

“How can I ignore you,” I said with a grunt, tagging another chunk of debris, “if I don’t know you’re listening?”

“I’m always listening.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little creepy?”

“Nope! What are you doing?”

I pulled out of my dive, with Hurl on my wing, and settled back into formation to wait for my next turn. “I’m shooting space junk.”

“What did it do to you?”

“Nothing. It’s just practice.”

“But it can’t even shoot back!”

“M-Bot, it’s space junk.”

“As if that were an excuse.”

“It … It actually is,” I said. “It’s a really good excuse.”

Kimmalyn took a run, Arturo at her wing. She did pretty well, for her, though Jorgen still found reason to nitpick. “Pull in tighter,” he told her as she swooped down. “Now don’t ride it too close—if you were using real destructors to shoot it, chunks might fly back and hit you. Make sure you don’t squeeze too hard when you fire …”

“Not to complain,” she said, sounding tense, “but I do believe I should focus right now.”

“Sorry,” Jorgen snapped. “I’ll try to be less helpful in the future.”

“Dear, I think you’ll find that difficult.” She tagged the chunk of debris, then sighed in relief.

“Nice work, Quirk,” Jorgen said. “Nedder, you take next run with FM on wing.”

Kimmalyn fell into line as, up above, several chunks of space debris fell at once. The regular fighters moved out of the way, letting them pass. We were flying relatively high, to give us time for good dives, so the ground was far below—though we were still very far from the rubble belt itself, the lowest layers of which flew three hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet.

Nedd picked one of the chunks and fell in behind it, ignoring the other three. So Kimmalyn charged her destructors for long range and then sniped all three pieces, tagging one right after another, without missing a single time.

“Stop showing off, Quirk,” Cobb said.

“Sorry, sir.”

I frowned, then called Cobb in private. “Cobb? Do you ever wonder if we’re doing this wrong?”

“Of course you’re doing it wrong. You’re cadets.”

“No,” I said. “I mean …” How could I explain? “Quirk, she’s a really good shot. Isn’t there a better way to use her? She feels like a failure in most of our exercises, because she’s the worst pilot. Maybe she could just snipe for us?”

“And how long do you think she’d sit out there popping off Krell before they swarmed her? Remember, if they decide any one pilot is too dangerous, they focus on that person.”

“Maybe we could use that. You said that anytime you can anticipate an enemy, that’s an advantage, right?”

He grunted. “Leave the tactics to the admirals, Spin.” He turned off the line as Nedd successfully tagged the debris.

“Good night, sweet prince,” M-Bot whispered as the junk crashed to the ground. “Or princess. Or, most likely, genderless piece of inanimate space junk.”

I looked up above, watching for more debris. Hurl would be on the next run, and I’d be her wing. Some junk was definitely moving up there. Several pieces of it … swarming down …

Not junk. Krell.

I bolted upright, hand going tense on my control sphere. Multiple flights of the enemy emerged from the rubble belt, and the full pilots moved to engage them.

“Fly down to twenty thousand feet, cadets,” Cobb said. “You’ll be here as reserves, but those pilots should be able to handle this. Looks like … only about thirty enemy ships.”

I settled back, but couldn’t relax as explosions began to light the sky. Soon, the debris falling around us wasn’t solely from the rubble belt. Cobb called for Hurl to do her run. Apparently we were going to continue despite the fighting, which was probably good training, as I thought about it.

Hurl performed an excellent maneuver, with a precise set of shots at the end. “Nice,” I told her as we fell into line. I didn’t get a reply, of course.

“Alas, poor space junk,” M-Bot said. “I would have pretended to know you, if I were capable of lying.”

“Can’t you do anything useful?”

“… This isn’t useful?”

“What about those Krell up there?” I asked him. “Can’t you … I don’t know, tell me about their ships or something?”

“At this range, I have access only to general scanners,” he said. “They’re merely little blips to me, no specifics.”

“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.