Skyward (The Skyward Series Book 1)

I hurtled through the innards of the ancient station—a large open blackness, rimmed by cranes and other construction equipment, lit by flickering emergency floodlights. The writing on one wall, in a circular pattern, reminded me of some of the old equipment down in the caverns—like the strange room I had often passed where the ceiling and floor had been covered in this writing. I could only assume the old occupants of this planet had constructed ships in here—but why had they needed so much space? Our starfighters were swallowed by the cavernous chamber.

The two DDF fighters soared upward, chased by the six Krell, who fired liberally, spraying destructor blasts through the darkness. Nedd tried to catch up, and I tailed him—hitting my over-burn for a moment of extra acceleration.

I couldn’t call the other fighters. Cadet ships weren’t normally equipped with radio channels to call full pilots. They didn’t want us interfering.

I switched to Nedd’s direct channel. “This is insane,” I said. “Thank you so much for giving me an excuse to try it.”

“Spin?” he said. “You’re still with me?”

“So far. What’s the plan?”

“Help those fighters somehow. Maybe we can get close? Those Krell are flying in a—” He cut off as he buzzed past an old crane, nearly clipping it. “They’re flying in a group. We could hit them all at once, with a well-placed IMP.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” I said, dodging underneath the crane. “But if Jerkface asks, I’m totally going to claim I tried to talk you out of this.”

“You? As the voice of reason? Spin, I’m an idiot, and even I wouldn’t believe that.”

I grinned, then joined Nedd in accelerating to Mag-1.2, trying to catch up to the Krell. Unfortunately, the DDF pilots broke to the right—straight into a tunnel leading farther into the depths of the old station.

A part of me couldn’t believe we were doing this. Flying through the center of an ancient piece of debris while it was in the middle of plummeting toward the ground? How long did we have until the thing crashed? Minutes at most?

I gritted my teeth, letting up on the throttle as Nedd and I banked, then chased the Krell into the tunnel. Red lights lined the tunnel, and they flashed in a blur as we zipped through at Mag-1.2, already a dangerous speed for what amounted to indoors. I didn’t dare go faster, but a quick glance at my proximity sensor indicated the Krell were still well outside IMP range.

Nedd unloaded with his destructor, and I followed his lead—but as Cobb had warned, aiming was difficult, even with six targets swarming in front of us. The Krell shields easily absorbed the few shots that connected.

Far ahead, our fellow pilots speared the wall with light-lances and cornered into another tunnel. The Krell followed, less adroit. I speared the wall with my own lance, then pulled myself into a tight curve to follow. My GravCaps flashed, absorbing the g-forces and keeping me from getting flattened.

I gave them a workout as we wound through the innards of the ship, taking turn after turn—moving through such a frantic, tight sequence, I didn’t fire a single shot. My attention was totally consumed by watching the Krell thrusters—using their motions as a guidepost for where to place my next light-lance. Turn, release, dodge, lance, turn. Repeat.

“Just … a little … closer …,” Nedd said from right ahead of me.

Lance. Turn. Release.

“I’ve got an updated battle projection,” M-Bot said happily.

Ahead, a Krell ship missed its turn, clipping the side of the tunnel wall. The shield absorbed the impact, but the rebound sent the ship slamming into the opposite wall. The sudden, violent explosion made me back off on my speed. I made my turn, barely, debris and sparks crackling off my ship’s shield.

“You forgot I was here, didn’t you?” M-Bot said.

“Busy,” I said through gritted teeth. Nedd hadn’t slowed at the explosion—in fact, he was overburning, closing in on Mag-1.5, trying to get closer to the remaining Krell.

I sped up to keep pace with him, but this was starting to feel like too much. Even for me.

“I could just go back into hibernation, if you’re not interested in talking,” M-Bot noted. “You’d, um, miss me, if I did that, right?”

“Sure.”

“Ah, you humans are so sentimental! Hahaha. By the way, you have precisely three and a half minutes until this station hits the surface. Maybe less than that, as the Krell have begun firing upon it.”

“What?”

“Now that the bulk of your ships have retreated, the Krell are focusing on the station, trying to keep it out of your hands. I believe some bombers are preparing explosive charges on the top, and ordinary fighters outside are destroying all the acclivity rings to drop it faster.”

“Scud. We could probably build several flights’ worth of ships with the salvage from this place.” The Krell weren’t going to let that happen.

But why allow this thing to fall in the first place? Why not destroy it up above?

Trying to figure out Krell motivations now was a waste of time. I pulled into another turn after Nedd. I could barely make out the enemy; they were losing us.

Far ahead, the bright orange flash of an explosion lit the tunnels. One of the ships we were trying to protect had just been destroyed.

“Nedd!” I shouted into the comm. “This place is coming down. We have to get out!”

“No. I have to help!”

I took aim, then—gritting my teeth—risked spearing him with my light-lance. The glowing red line of light stuck to him and made his shield crackle. I cut my booster, then spun my ship on its acclivity ring and boosted the other direction, pulling him backward, slowing his ship.

“Let go of me!” he shouted.

“Nedd … We can’t help. We’re not good enough for this sort of thing yet. Stars above, it’s a wonder we survived that run through the tunnels.”

“But … But …”

We hovered there, burners pulling us opposite directions, connected by a cord of light.

“Coward,” he whispered.

The word hit me like a slap to the face. I wasn’t—I couldn’t be—

Coward.

“I’m cutting my booster,” he said. “Step yours down, or we’ll end up careening into that wall.”

I bit off a response to him, then lowered my thrust before cutting the light-lance. We fell still, but somewhere distant, the entire structure groaned and shook.

“Which way?” he asked. “Where do we go?”

“I don’t know.”

M-Bot made a throat-clearing noise. “Would you like instructions on how to escape the flaming death trap that you’ve inconveniently found yourself—”

“Yes!” I snapped.

“No need to get prickly. Fly ahead until I tell you, then take a left.”

“Follow me!” I said to Nedd, slamming the throttle forward and leaping into motion. I tore through the tunnels, the flare of my booster reflecting off the abandoned metal walls. Nedd followed.

“Left, down that tunnel just ahead,” M-Bot noted. “Great. Now go two tunnels—no, not that one—there. Take that one.”

I used my light-lance to turn sharply into the tunnel.

“You have slightly under two minutes until you die a fiery death and I’m left with only Rig and the slug. I haven’t been able to compute which of those two is the less engaging conversationalist. Take that tunnel above you.”

I followed his instructions, curving through the maddening complex of turns and tunnels. The sounds outside grew louder. Wrenching steel. Shaking. Hollow explosions.

Sweat soaked the sides of my helmet. I gave my entire attention to the flying, absorbed. Dedicated. Focused.

Though I never lost control of my flying, a part of me started to feel disconnected. The insides of my helmet began to grow hot, and I could swear that I could hear voices inside my head. Just fragments of words.

… detonate …

… turn …

… booster …

Nedd and I burst back into that cavernous opening at the outer rim of the shipyard. My focus faded into relief, and I didn’t need M-Bot’s instructions to turn straight for the glowing gap in the wall.

Nedd and I darted out of the hole and nearly plowed right into the ground. The shipyard had almost hit the surface.

I pulled up and skimmed the blue-grey surface, kicking up dust behind me. Nedd cursed softly. We’d entered a narrow, shrinking gap of space between station and ground.

“The Krell have just detonated several large explosives on the top of the shipyard,” M-Bot said.

I bolted forward under the shipyard. The steel ceiling overhead lowered, chunks of metal breaking off and warping around us as the thing’s structural integrity collapsed.

“At current velocity, you will not escape the blast wave,” M-Bot said softly.

“Overburn, Nedd!” I shouted, slamming my throttle all the way forward. “Mag-10!” The GravCaps kicked in, but quickly overloaded, and a moment later I was smashed backward in my seat.

My face grew heavy, the skin pulling back from my eyes and around my mouth. My arms felt leaden and tried to slip away from the controls.

Ahead, the way out—freedom—was an ever-shrinking line of light.

My Poco started to rattle as I hit Mag-10, then continued, pushing to Mag-10.5. The vibration got worse, and my shield grew bright from the sudden heat of wind resistance.

Blessedly, it was enough. Nedd and I exploded out from underneath the shipyard as it crashed down, spraying dust and debris after us. But at these speeds, we quickly outran that—and outran the sound of the crash, since we were going several times the speed of sound.

I breathed out, decelerating carefully, the rattling subsiding.

Nedd on my wing, we swooped around—and in those seconds of flight after escaping, we’d gotten far enough away that I couldn’t even see the dust of the crashing shipyard. My sensors barely registered the shock wave when it finally hit us on our way to rendezvous with the others.

Eventually, we did get close enough that I could make out the enormous dust cloud the crash had caused. The wreckage itself was just a big dark shadow in the dust, swarming with smaller specks above. Krell ships, making sure nothing useful could be salvaged from the enormous wreck. Acclivity stone could often be recovered from the core of fallen debris, but concentrated destructor fire—or the intense heat from the right kind of an explosion—would ruin it.

“Finally,” Jorgen said as we fell in with the flight. “What in the stars were you two thinking?”

I didn’t respond, instead doing a count of our team. Seven ships, including mine. We’d all made it. We were sweaty, rattled, and solemn—almost nobody said anything as we met up with Riptide Flight for the return to base. But we were alive.

Coward.

Nedd’s voice echoed inside my brain, more distracting than the heat from the sensors in my helmet, or the surreal place my thoughts had gone as we flew out. Had I really thought I’d heard voices?

I wasn’t a coward. Sometimes you had to retreat. The entire DDF had pulled back from this fight. I wasn’t less of a soldier because I had convinced Nedd to escape. Right?

It was growing dark by the time we landed at the launchpad. I stripped off my helmet and climbed from the cockpit, exhausted. Jorgen met me at the bottom of the ladder.

“You still haven’t answered me,” he snapped. “I left you alone during the flight back, as I’m sure you’re rattled, but you are going to explain yourself.” He grabbed me by the arm and held on to it tightly. “You nearly got Nedd killed with that stunt.”

I sighed, then looked at his hand.

He carefully let go. “The question remains,” he said. “That was crazy, even for you. I can’t believe you’d—”

“As much as I like being the crazy one, Jerkface, I’m too tired to listen to you right now.” I nodded toward Nedd’s ship in the dim light. “He flew in. I followed. You’d rather I let him go alone?”

“Nedd?” Jorgen said. “He’s too levelheaded for something like that.”

“Maybe the rest of us are getting to him. All I know is there were a couple of Sigos from Nightstorm Flight who picked up some enemy tails, and Nedd would not let go.”

“Nightstorm Flight?” Jorgen asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

Jorgen fell silent, then turned and walked toward Nedd’s ship. I followed, feeling wrung out, my head starting to ache in a strange way—like needles behind my eyes. Nedd’s ship was empty, and he wasn’t with the others, who were gathering at the rooms near the launchpad to change out of their pressure suits. They were laughing together now that the stress of the battle had faded.

Jorgen took off down the path between launchpads, and I followed, confused, until we reached a line of seven Sigo-class starfighters branded with the Nightstorm Flight logo. They’d gotten back before us, and their pilots had already gone, leaving the ships to the maintenance crews.

Nedd knelt on the pavement near two empty spots in the line of ships.

“What?” I asked Jorgen.

“His brothers, Spin. They’re wingmates, Nightstorm Six and Seven.”

The pilots we’d been following. The ones who, it now became obvious, had both died in those dark tunnels.