Skyward (The Skyward Series Book 1)

My flight with M-Bot, though brief and mostly linear, still managed to overshadow the next two weeks of simulation training.

I performed a maneuver, chasing a Krell ship through a series of tight turns around chunks of debris, Hurl on my wing. But my mind started to drift. The Krell ship got away.

“Hey!” Kimmalyn said as we regrouped. “Did you guys see? I didn’t crash!”

I listened with half an ear—still distracted—as they all chattered.

“I crashed though,” FM admitted. “I hit a piece of debris and went down in a fiery heap.”

“Not your fault!” Kimmalyn said. “As the Saint always said, true failure is choosing to fail.”

“Besides, FM,” Arturo added, “you’ve still crashed fewer times than the rest of us, total.”

“I won’t hold that record for long, if I keep this up,” FM said.

“You’re just trying to be subversive by crashing today,” Hurl said, “because nobody expects it from you. You rebel you.”

FM chuckled softly.

“You could all do what nobody expects,” Jorgen said on the group line, “and actually line up straight for once. Amphi, I’m looking at you.”

“Right, right,” Arturo said, hovering his ship into place. “Though I guess technically Jorgen has crashed less than you, FM. He’s flown half as often. It’s hard to blow up when all you do is sit around complaining and giving orders.”

“As the Saint always said,” Kimmalyn added again in a solemn voice, “true failure is choosing to fail.”

Jorgen didn’t defend himself, though I thought I heard a quick intake of breath from him. I grimaced. It was true that Jorgen tended to hang back and watch us run exercises, offering instruction rather than flying himself. But maybe the others would act differently if they knew he spent late nights practicing on his own afterward.

I felt ashamed, suddenly. Jorgen’s callsign, and the way the others treated him, were partially my fault. He didn’t deserve all that. I mean, he could be insufferable, but he was trying to do his best.

As Cobb sent us in for another round of dogfighting, Rig’s words floated up from the back of my mind.

What about me? Am I a coward, Spensa?

I was certain he wasn’t. But I’d lived my childhood clinging to a simple rule, reinforced by Gran-Gran’s stories. Good people were brave. Bad people were cowards. I knew my father had been a good person, so it was obvious to me that he couldn’t have run away. End of story. Close the book.

It was getting harder to hold to that particular black-and-white line. I’d promised Hurl I wouldn’t be a coward. But did any coward intend to turn and run? I’d never felt like fleeing a battle, but I was still surprised by the real emotions of being a pilot. By how much it had hurt to lose Bim and Morningtide, by how overwhelmed I sometimes felt.

Was it possible that something similar, for a brief moment, had caused my father to retreat? And if he had, could I really promise that I wouldn’t someday do the same?

I dodged around a chunk of debris, but almost clipped Hurl’s wing.

“Come on, Spin,” she said. “Head in the game. Eye on the ball.”

“The ball?”

“Sorry. League metaphor.”

“I didn’t get to go to many games.” Workers got tickets as rewards for exemplary merits. But it would be good to talk about something, to get my thoughts off my worries. “I barely know what you did. Something about hoverbikes? Did you fly?”

“Not quite,” Hurl said as we dodged back and forth, a Krell ship—as per the exercise—coming in behind us. “The Digball League gets acclivity rings that are too small to fly ships. Our bikes could go full three-D in little bursts, but each bike is allotted a fixed amount of air time. Part of the strategy is knowing when to use it.”

She sounded wistful. “Do you miss the game?” I asked.

“A little. Mostly my team. This is way better though.” A flash of destructor fire sprayed around us. “More dangerous. More of a rush.”

We did a wave-dodge, where we split in opposite directions under heavy destructor fire. Hurl stayed on our target while I looped back down and offered fire support, chasing off the enemy.

I caught up at the next turn, falling in behind Hurl. Our target flew extra low, only a hundred feet or so off the ground. We descended, tossing up plumes of blue-grey dust behind us, and darted past an ancient piece of debris. Long since scavenged for its acclivity stone, it lay exposed like the skeleton of a disturbed grave.

“So,” Hurl said as we flew through valleys, staying on our target, “what about you? You never talk about what you used to do before the DDF.”

“Aren’t we supposed to keep our ‘head in the game’?”

“Eh. Except when I’m curious.”

“I … I was a ratcatcher.”

“Like, for one of the protein factories?”

“No. I was solo. The factory scouts hunt the lower caverns out pretty well, so I built my own speargun, explored farther caverns, and caught them on my own. My mom sold the meat for requisition chits to workers on their way home.”

“Wow. That’s badass.”

“You think so?”

“Totally.”

I smiled, feeling warm at that.

The Krell turned and accelerated upward. “I’m going in,” I said, and hit my overburn. I raced up at an angle, my g-force line going to max.

Tonight. I thought to the Krell, your ashen remains will mix with the planet’s dust, and your howls of pain shall echo upon the wind! I cut into the ship’s wake, getting just close enough to hit my IMP and destroy its shield.

Hurl flew past me, her destructor fire sounding over the blaring klaxon that warned my shield was down. The Krell ship exploded into molten debris.

Hurl let out a whoop, but then I blushed, remembering my line of thought. Ashes mixing with dust and howls on the wind? That sort of thing—once so exciting to me—now seemed … less the words of a hero, and more the words of someone trying to sound heroic. My father had never talked like that.

As I reignited my shield, a light on the communication panel lit up, announcing that Cobb was listening in. “Nice work,” he said. “You two are starting to make a good team.”

“Thanks, Cobb,” I said.

“It would be better if Spin could spend time with the rest of us,” Hurl added. “You know—instead of sleeping in her cave.”

“Let me know when you intend to take that up with the admiral,” Cobb said. “I’ll be sure to leave the building so I don’t have to listen to her shout at you. Cobb out.”

The light went off, and Hurl hovered her ship down beside mine. “The way she treats you is stupid, Spin. You are a badass. Like that stuff you always say.”

“Thanks,” I answered. I could feel my cheeks heating up. “Those things make me feel self-conscious now though.”

“Don’t let them get to you, Spin. Be who you are.”

And who am I? I looked upward, wondering if the simulation ever created holes in the debris—if it ever let you see through to the highest sky.

We ran a few more exercises before Jorgen called us back in to line up. We hovered in place, and I checked the clock on my dash. Only 1600? We still had several hours of training left. Was Cobb going to call it early and send us for more centrifuge time, like he’d done yesterday?

“All right,” Cobb announced over the radio. “You’re ready for the next lesson.”

“We get to use destructors?” Kimmalyn exclaimed.

I leaned forward in my seat to look out at her cockpit. We’d been fighting with destructors for weeks now.

“Sorry,” she said. “Got caught up in the hype.”

A Krell bomber materialized in front of us. It was a sturdier build than the average Krell ship. It was the same shape, but in the center between its wings, it carried an enormous lifebuster. The bomb was even bigger than the ship was. I shivered, remembering the last time I’d seen one of these—when Bim and I had chased one down.

A scene materialized farther out: a mess of fighting ships, some Krell, some DDF.

“Our AA guns cover a range out to one hundred and twenty klicks from Alta,” Cobb said. “The guns need to be big enough to blast Krell ships through their shields—not to mention big enough to shoot apart large debris so it burns up while falling. But being so big limits their functional arc. They’re really good at picking off distant objects, but can’t hit things too close.

“If Krell get low enough—about six hundred feet from the ground—they can come in under the big guns. The smaller gun emplacements—like the ones Quirk trained on before—don’t have the punch to get through Krell shields. Without fighters IMPing the enemy, the small gun emplacements have trouble.”

The simulation highlighted a specific ship among the ones fighting in the distance. Another bomber.

“The Krell distract us with dogfights and falling debris, then often try to sneak through a bomber carrying a lifebuster,” Cobb continued. “You need to be constantly aware, and watching, to report sighting a lifebuster. And I’ll warn you, they’ve used decoys before.”

“We report it,” Hurl said, “and then we shoot it, right? Or maybe better—shoot it first, then report?”

“Do that,” Cobb said, “and it could be disastrous. Lifebusters are often rigged to explode if damaged. Shoot one of these down at the wrong time, and you could get dozens of your companion pilots killed.”

“Oh,” Hurl said.

“Only the admiral, or acting command staff, can authorize shooting down a lifebuster,” Cobb continued. “Often we can chase the bomber away by threatening it—lifebusters are valuable, and as far as we can surmise, difficult to produce. If that doesn’t work, the admiral will send in a special strike team to shoot down the bomber.

“Be extremely careful. Igneous is far enough below the surface that only a direct hit right on top will send a blast down deep enough to harm it, but casually destroying a lifebuster too close—even forty or fifty klicks away—could destroy Alta in the corrosion wave the bomb releases. So if you spot a bomber, you call it in immediately, then let someone with the experience, data, and authority decide what to do. Understood?”

Scattered mumbles of “Understood” followed. Then Jorgen made us all sound off one at a time, giving a verbal acknowledgment. Maybe we did treat him a little too harshly, but scud … he could be annoying.

“Great,” Cobb said. “Flightleader, scramble your people through this battlefield. We’ll do some scenarios where we practice spotting, reporting, and—yes—taking down lifebusters. Any guesses how often you all will blow yourselves up?”

Turned out, we blew ourselves up a lot.

The lifebuster drills were among the most difficult we’d ever done. In our first days flying, we’d learned to do what was called a pilot’s scan. A quick assessment of all the things we needed to keep in mind while flying: booster indicators, navigation instruments, altitude, communication channels, wingmates, flightmates, terrain … and a dozen more.

Going into battle added a host of other things to watch. Orders from the flightleader or from Alta, tactics, enemies. A pilot’s situational awareness was one of the most mentally taxing parts of the job.

Doing all of that while constantly watching for a bomber … well, it was tough. Extremely tough.

Sometimes Cobb would run us through entire hour-long battle simulations and never send in a bomber. Sometimes he’d send in seven—six decoys and a real one.

The bombers were remarkably slow—they maxed out at Mag-2—but carried a deadly payload. When a bomb went off, it hit with three waves. The first explosion was meant to blast downward, penetrating rock, collapsing or ripping open caverns. After that was a second explosion—it was a strange greenish-black color. This alien corrosion could exterminate life, causing a chain reaction in organic matter. The third explosion was a shock wave, meant to drive this terrible burning green light outward.

We ran simulation after simulation. Time and time again, one of us blew the bomb up too soon without giving warning for the others to overburn away—which vaporized our entire flight. Multiple times, we misjudged how close we’d gotten to Alta—so that when we destroyed the bomber and detonated the bomb, Cobb sent the grim report. “You just killed the entire population of Alta. I’m dead now. Congratulations.”

After one particularly frustrating run, the six of us pulled up together and watched the sickly green light expand.

“I’m—” Cobb began.

“You’re dead,” FM said. “We get it, Cobb. What are we supposed to do? If the bomb gets too close to the city, do we have any other choice?”

“No,” Cobb said softly. “You don’t.”

“But—”

“If it comes down to destroying Alta but saving Igneous,” Cobb said, “Igneous is more important. There’s a reason we rotate a third of our ships, pilots, and command staff into the deep caverns. The DDF can survive—maybe—if Alta is destroyed. But without the apparatus to make new ships, we’re done for. So if the admiral orders it, you shoot that bomb and make it detonate, even if doing so destroys Alta.”

We watched the green light crawling through an ever-widening sphere of destruction. Finally it faded.

Cobb made us fly exercises until I was numb from exhaustion, my reaction times slowing. Then he made us do it again. He wanted to drill deeply into us to always watch for bombers, no matter how tired we were.

During that last run, I hated Cobb like I’d never hated anyone. Even more than the admiral.

We failed to stop the bomb this time too. I reset my position, falling into line by rote to start the next run. However, my canopy vanished. I blinked, surprised to be back in the real world. The others began pulling off helmets and standing up to stretch. What … what time was it?

“Did I recognize that last battle, Cobb?” Arturo asked, standing up. “Was it the Battle of Trajerto?”

“With modifications,” Cobb said.

Trajerto. I thought. It had happened about five years ago; we’d come very close to losing Alta. A Krell flight had snuck in and destroyed the smaller AA guns. Fortunately, a couple of DDF scout ships had brought down the lifebuster before it could get close enough to Alta.

“You’re using historical battles for our simulations?” I asked, trying to push through my stupor.

“Of course I am,” Cobb said. “You think I have time to make up these simulations?”

Something about that struck me, but I was too exhausted to put my finger on it. I climbed out of my mockpit, tossed my helmet onto my seat, and stretched. Scud, I was hungry, but I didn’t have any dinner with me—the next batch of jerky was curing back at my cave.

I had a long, tired, hungry walk ahead of me. I grabbed my pack, slung it over my shoulder, and started out.

Hurl caught up to me in the hallway, then nodded in the direction of the nearby dorm section. I could read her expression. They could pretend to be tired, bring food back to their rooms …

I shook my head. It wasn’t worth riling the admiral.

Hurl gave me a raised fist. “Badass,” she whispered. I found energy for a smile, raised my own, then we parted.

I trudged toward the exit. The other classrooms were dark, save one, where the instructor was lecturing another flight of cadets. “The best pilots can steer a ship out of an uncontrolled fall,” a woman’s voice said, echoing in the hallway. “Your first reaction might be to eject, but if you want to be a real hero, you will do whatever you can to save your acclivity ring. A Defiant protects the people, not the self.”

It was basically the opposite of what Cobb had taught us.

On my way through the orchard outside the base, I noticed my radio blinking. M-Bot wanted to talk with me. I had persuaded him, with effort, to stop breaking into my line while I was training. It just seemed too likely that someone would overhear us.

“Hey,” I said into the line. “Bored?”

“I can’t get bored.” He paused. “But I’ll have you know that I can think at thousands of times the speed of a human brain—so twelve hours to you is by relative measure a long time to me. A really long time.”

I smiled.

“Reeeeaaaaalllly long,” he added.

“What did you think of the training today?”

“I took some careful notes for further review,” he said. Most nights, I went over with M-Bot what I’d done wrong. His programs offered excellent analysis of my flying. While he offered commentary that could sometimes be unflattering, the nightly debriefings had proved effective in helping me tweak my flying—and I felt I was doing better than ever.

We hadn’t gone into the air again. Rig had taken out the ship’s GravCaps and shields to disassemble and document them. It was work beyond my ability to help with, but I didn’t mind, as I had the practices to keep me busy.

“You really do need help against bombers,” M-Bot said to me. “You died or destroyed the city seventeen times today, while you were completely successful only twice.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“I try to be helpful. I realize human memories are flawed and inconsistent.”

I sighed and walked out of the orchard, starting the more boring part of the trek home.

“The battles were interesting,” M-Bot said. “I’m … very glad that you lived through some of them.”

One foot after the other. Who would have thought that sitting in a box, moving only your hands, could be so tiring? My brain felt like it had been ripped out, clubbed to death by a barbarian, then stuffed back in upside down.

“You are very attractive and intelligent,” M-Bot said. “Spensa? Is my moral support subroutine functioning? Um, you’re quite bipedal. And very efficient at converting oxygen into carbon dioxide, an essential gas for plant life to—”

“I’m just tired, M-Bot. I’ve been through a lot today.”

“Nineteen battles! Though four of them were the same battle turned on a different axis and presented with a few distinct movement seeds for enemies.”

“Yeah, those are historical fights,” I said. “Like Cobb said …”

I halted.

“Spensa?” he asked. “I hear no more footfalls? Have you temporarily stopped being bipedal?”

“Historical battles,” I said, realizing something I should have put together long ago. “They have recordings of past battles?”

“They track all of their ships,” he said, “and have scanner records of enemy movements. I suspect they recreate these three-dimensional models for training and analysis.”

“Do you suppose … they have a record like that of the Battle of Alta? The fight where …”

Where my father had deserted.

“I’m sure they do somewhere,” M-Bot continued. “It’s the most important battle in the history of your people! The foundation of … Oh! Your father!”

“You can think at a thousand times the speed of a human brain,” I said, “but it took you that long to put together a simple fact?”

“I underclock conversations. If I focus my full efforts, it takes you several minutes in relative time to speak a single syllable.”

I supposed that made sense. “The record of my father’s battle. Can you … grab it? Show it to me?”

“I can only intercept what they’re actively broadcasting,” he said. “It seems that the DDF tries to minimize wireless communication, so as to not attract the attention of the eyes.”

“The what?” I asked.

“The eyes. I … I have no idea what that is. There’s a hole in my memory banks there. Huh.” The ship sounded genuinely confused. “I remember this quote: ‘Use physical cords for data transfer, avoid broadcasting, and put shielding around faster processors. To do otherwise risks the attention of the eyes.’ But that’s it. Curious …”

“So maybe our communications aren’t as primitive as you always say. Maybe they’re just being careful.” I started walking again. My pack felt so heavy, it could have been filled with spent shell casings.

“Either way,” M-Bot said, “I would guess there’s an archive somewhere on base. If they have a recording of the Battle of Alta, that would be the first place to check.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure whether to feel excited, or further bowed down, by the knowledge that I could theoretically watch my father’s last battle. See for myself if he’d actually deserted, and have … what? Proof?

I trudged onward, trying to decide if I was hungry enough to eat when I got to the cave, or if I was just going to collapse. As I neared the cavern, I saw the light flashing on my radio again.

I lifted it to my head. “I’m almost back, M-Bot. You can—”

“—general call to arms,” an operator said. “The admiral has called all pilots—cadets included—to base for possible deployment. Repeat: a seventy-five-ship Krell invasion has breached the debris field at 104.2-803-64000. All active pilots are instructed to assemble for a general call to arms. The admiral has called all pilots …”

I froze. I’d almost forgotten the original reason Cobb had given me a radio. But today? Of all days?

I could barely walk.

Seventy-five ships? Three-quarters of the Krell maximum flight capacity? Scud!

I pivoted, looking at the long hike back to Alta. Then, lethargically, I pushed myself into a jog.