Sunreach (Skyward Flight: Novella 1)

No.

I pulled my ship up, then ducked down again to avoid a tentacle that swung toward me and the enemy ships with a broad stroke. The enemy avoided it as well, but I wished a fiery death upon every one of them.

Jorgen had a ship full of hyperdrives. He should have been able to get out when his shield dropped. But if he did, the slugs would have teleported him somewhere out into space. If Jorgen wasn’t dead yet of depressurization, he would soon asphyxiate.

No.

“FM? Sentry?” Arturo said over the radio. “What’s going on up there?”

“Um,” Sadie said. “Um, Jerkface—”

I wasn’t going to make her explain this. “Jerkface is down,” I said.

“FM?” Arturo said. “Say again?”

“Jerkface is down,” I repeated. I didn’t know how I could sound so dispassionate. My voice was foreign to my own ears. “His ship was destroyed. Salvage irretrievable.”

Silence over the radio.

Finally, Kimmalyn was the one who spoke. “He got out, right? He had all those slugs. He must have gotten out.”

“FM?” Arturo asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I didn’t explain what the likely outcome was if he had. My friends already knew.

“All right,” Arturo said. “Mourn later. We have a mission.”

“Amphi—” Nedd started.

“Mourn later,” Arturo said firmly. He was first assistant, now our flightleader. “Flight, regroup. We’re going to make a run for the base, try to take out the remaining ships on the way.”

“Humans?” Cuna said. “I have lost contact with your commander.”

“This is Amphisbaena,” Arturo said. “I’m in command now.” His voice was tight, clipped. He was clearly struggling to follow his own orders, and I didn’t blame him. “We’re still coming to get you and your people out of there.”

“That would be appreciated,” Cuna said. “The ships are firing on our location, and our shield has been breached.”

Sadie wove among the tentacles of the starpod, headed for the edge of the creature where we could dive to the underside of the rock again. The enemy ships followed, and Sadie and I performed a double scissor, avoiding their fire. As one of the ships tried to chase us, a starpod arm slapped it from beneath. The ship stuck to the stalks and the tentacle carried it away down toward its mouth.

If ships weren’t nutritious, the creature clearly hadn’t figured that out yet.

“Status, FM?” Arturo asked.

“We’re on our way, Amphi,” I said. “Don’t wait for us.”

“Copy. All pilots, move toward Cuna and destroy the enemy ships.”

I rolled away from another tentacle as it arced toward me, shooting over the edge of the creature and plummeting down the side of the rock. Sadie followed right behind me, finally out of the starpod’s reach. My flightmates coordinated with each other over the radio as they engaged the enemy. I knew we had to join them—we were still outnumbered, and the more of us got involved in the fight, the greater chances we’d get out alive.

Though I wasn’t sure what the point was. We’d lost Jorgen, our only cytonic. Without him, what were the rest of us going to do? We’d be as stranded here as Cuna, waiting for the Superiority to send reinforcements to finish us. Cuna probably had a slug and a projector for their communicator, but without a cytonic we couldn’t use those to get home.

We’d lost. We’d gambled and we’d lost.

And so—despite my absolute agreement with Arturo that the time to mourn would come later—I felt tears forming in my eyes. Hot streams of them ran along my cheeks, and I pushed my ship faster, almost welcoming the g-forces as they overcame the GravCaps.

We were approaching our flight now, and as we did a shape popped into existence on my dashboard, causing me to jump.

Gill sat there, nuzzling my arm.

Had he tried to save Jorgen? If his body was lost in space somewhere, we wouldn’t be able to bring him home.

Gill slipped off the dashboard and onto my lap, quivering up against me like he wanted to comfort me. I didn’t blame the slugs for what happened to Jorgen. I was glad Gill had gotten out, and hoped the others had as well. Maybe Jorgen had opened the box at the last moment, realizing he wasn’t going to make it out, giving the slugs the chance to escape. The communications slug couldn’t hyperjump, so it had likely been consumed by the starpod.

Without cytonic abilities or a holoprojector, I couldn’t make Gill hyperjump, so his presence wasn’t useful to me. We were still in far too desperate a situation for me to feel relieved.

I couldn’t help but be glad that he was here though. I ran one hand up his back as I engaged my destructors with the other, distracting a ship that was tailing Kimmalyn. As if he could sense my distress, Gill cuddled closer, tightening around my waist like a leathery belt.

And then everything changed. My ship disappeared, my monitors, the whole of space. I was plunged into darkness.

And landed with a thud onto a cold concrete floor.

“Ouch!” I shouted, cradling my shoulder where I’d landed. Gill dropped off my waist, rolling over on the floor. I couldn’t see anything, but I was definitely not in outer space anymore. Or in my ship, as I lay on a slab of cracked concrete. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see a shadow up ahead, and I crawled toward it with one arm out.

My hand met wood. A doorframe, I realized, and there was the door, which moved on squeaky hinges. Gill had hyperjumped and taken me with him, though I didn’t know where or why. Technically we could be anywhere in the universe now, but the taynix didn’t tend to go far without specific instructions.

I stood, pushed the door the rest of the way open, and stepped into a shadowy corridor. What little light there was came from a thin band of tube lighting that ran along the ceiling, and I followed it, moving up this corridor and then down another. The air was warm, I realized. There was atmosphere for me to breathe and gravity to hold me down and heat to keep me from freezing to death. Wherever Gill had brought me, it appeared to be somewhere relatively safe.

And then I felt the explosion. It reverberated through the building, the stone trembling beneath my feet. This might be the source of the cracks, I realized. This building was under attack.

I had begun to suspect where I was, and so I was only slightly astounded when I reached the end of the corridor and stumbled into a room filled with creatures unlike any I’d ever seen.

A tall, slender humanoid with bright blue skin stood at a control panel of some sort, flanked by two similar creatures, though one of them had skin that was entirely red. They had ridges over their eyes that were similar to Alanik’s, though without the crystalline growths, and cheekbones too prominent to be human.

Next to the slender blue alien was Jorgen, looking out the glass window at the stars.

“Jorgen!” I said, and launched myself across the room to throw my arms around him. I overshot a bit, running into him and knocking him off his feet and into the console. I ended up mostly hugging his shoulder as I tried to keep from falling over.

Not my most graceful move, but given that Jorgen was alive and not currently suffocating in the vacuum, I could accept it.

“FM,” he said, “what are you—”

Sadie’s voice cut him off, crackling over the radio. “—her ship was empty, Amphi. I got a good look before it crashed. She wasn’t there.”

“Where in the stars did she go then?” Arturo answered. “She can’t have just disappeared.”

“She’s here,” Jorgen said, pushing a button on the radio. “She’s attached herself to my arm in a very awkward fashion, but FM is here and very much alive.”

I let go, taking a step back.

“How did you get here?” Jorgen asked me.

“Gill,” I said. I left him in the corridor, I realized, and he was just now catching up, lying on the floor by the doorway. I ran over and scooped him up, giving him a hug for good measure. He’d teleported me out of my ship in the middle of a fight, and it had apparently crashed into the rock, but he’d clearly been trying to help.

“Glad to hear it,” Arturo said over the radio. “Sentry, help Quirk. She’s got three tails. Scud, they’re firing on you again—”

The radio cut off as another explosion rocked the bunker where we stood.

The blue alien closed their eyes, then turned to Jorgen. They were wearing one of those translator pins, like the one we used with Alanik. “Our defenses won’t last much longer,” they said. I recognized their voice from the transmission. This must be Cuna. “They are targeting our life support generators. When those fail, so will the artificial gravity, the air field, and the heat producers. If we don’t go now, we may be out of time.”

Jorgen glanced over at me.

And all at once, I realized what Cuna meant.

“You’re not thinking of leaving them here,” I said. “Our flight. Our friends. We can’t go without them.”

“Cuna has the coordinates from their communicator,” Jorgen said quietly. “We have the ability to get home with Cuna and their staff. Those were our orders, FM.”

He didn’t sound happy about it. Of course he wasn’t happy about it. Jorgen didn’t want to leave our flight here any more than I did. “Can we get out of here?” I asked. “Do we have a slug that hasn’t been scared?”

“We have Gill and Chubs,” Jorgen said, gesturing, and I found Chubs sitting in the corner in a strange disk-shaped chair. “I don’t think I used either of them when I hyperjumped. I definitely didn’t use both. We should be able to use them to jump to the Detritus coordinates. It’ll take us to the location of our communicator on Platform Prime.”

I knew the right answer. The needs of the group outweighed the needs of the individuals. We were pilots. We signed up to protect the lives of the citizens on Detritus. We were willing to make this sacrifice, every one of us.

I would have been willing to die to save the lives of my friends, no question. But could we really just leave, sacrificing their lives for ours?

Rescuing Cuna was the mission. That was exactly what we were expected to do.

“Nedder, help Sentry,” Arturo said. “She’s overwhelmed. Quirk, do you have a line on that ship on my tail?”

Cuna slipped their thin fingers up onto the dash and pushed a button. The radio went quiet.

They were turning off the voices, trying to make this decision easier. It could have been a kindness, but it felt like a slap in the face.

Another explosion rocked the base, and the lights flickered out.

“We can’t leave them here,” I said. Stars, this was why I never wanted to be in command. I didn’t have the stomach for it.

“We’ll come back,” Jorgen said. “I’ll jump Cuna and their people out and I’ll come back—”

“You think they’re going to let you?” I asked. “You think they’re going to let their only useful cytonic come jumping back to probably die here? Will you really do that?”

Jorgen looked at me, and I could see the weight of the decision in his eyes. This wasn’t his fault. None of it was. We were all of us in a terrible position.

But it was our team that was going to pay the price.

“Fine,” I said. “I know you’re only doing what has to be done.”

“Fine!” Gill said in my arms.

“Not now,” I said to him. He’d saved my life bringing me here. I should have been grateful. But what I wanted was to be out there in my ship, fighting alongside my friends.

Gill must have sensed my despair, because he disappeared.

Jorgen closed his eyes, and I could see the grief on his face.

“All right,” he said to Cuna. “Prepare your people to go.”

Cuna put out a call for the rest of their team to converge on the control room, then Jorgen took control of the radio. “Flight,” he said. “Abandon the mission.”

“Say again, Jerkface?” Arturo said. “Abandon—”

“We are taking Cuna to safety,” Jorgen said. “All units pull back in a full retreat, delta formation. Go on full burn on a heading Arturo chooses, and we’ll try to come back for you once the minister is safe.”

He glanced at me. “I’ll come back for them,” he said. “I’ll bring a ship. I’ll get the coordinates again, fly back here, and bring them home—”

He was pleading with me to tell him I believed this was possible. Maybe it was. Maybe he was right.

But I worried that the politicians would overrule Cobb, if he was inclined to allow it. No way were six pilots worth risking our only cytonic. I didn’t even blame them, really. I understood the math.

But I hated it all.

“Fine!” Gill’s voice said. I turned around to find Gill in the doorway with Fine, the communications slug that had been in the communicator at Detritus.

Right there on the floor.

“What in the stars—” Jorgen said.

“Fine!” Gill said, sliding toward me and trilling louder, like maybe I hadn’t heard him. “Fine!”

He’d gone to retrieve Fine, all the way from Detritus. He’d done it because he thought that’s what I wanted. No one had to scare him into it. He’d done it for the same reason he’d taken me out of my ship. Because I was upset, and Gill was trying to help.

Help.

I grabbed Jorgen by the arm. “Send him an image of Sadie,” I said.

“What?” Jorgen asked.

“With your mind,” I said. “Send Gill an image of Sadie, like you do with the eyes, and with the locations you want them to travel.”

“Why would I—”

“Now!” I said, squeezing his arm tight enough that he winced. Bullying the flightleader wasn’t my finest moment, but we didn’t have the time for me to explain.

“Fine,” Jorgen said.

“Fine!” Gill replied.

“No, Sadie,” I said. “Go get Sadie.”

Jorgen closed his eyes.

Gill disappeared.

“FM,” Jorgen said. “We can’t send the slugs off. We need them to—”

Another blow rocked the base, and I felt the atmospheric production system go offline. My ears popped as the room began to depressurize. Two more of the strange aliens appeared in the doorway, stepping over Fine and moving into the room.

“We’re all here,” Cuna said. “It’s time.”

I shook my head. “Wait. Give Gill a moment.”

“FM—” Jorgen started.

And then Sadie appeared. She materialized a few feet off the floor and landed with a thump, her knees bending, arms stretched out to keep from falling over. Belatedly, she screamed.

And I gave my second awkward hug, throwing my arms around her and nearly bowling her over. “Jorgen!” I said. “Tell Gill to get the others. Send the images to Chubs too. We can pull them out. They want to help.” I scooped Gill up off the floor. “I’m going to give you a whole case of caviar when we get back,” I said. “Go get our friends.”

Jorgen blinked at me, but he must have done as I said, because both slugs disappeared.

“Commander,” Cuna said. “With all due respect, we need to go—”

Another blast made the floor shake, and Sadie and I clung to each other to stay upright.

“What’s happening?” she asked me.

“I’ll explain later,” I said.

This most recent blast must have hit the system that created the false gravity, because suddenly my feet were no longer stuck to the floor. Arturo appeared beside me, and then Kimmalyn. Chubs and Gill came with them, and then Twist appeared with T-Stall, and Drape with Catnip. Happy blinked in a moment later and Nedd appeared up by the ceiling, floating. The rest of our flight looked at each other in confusion.

“That’s everyone,” Jorgen said. “Huddle together!”

Another blast from the ships cracked the window, which fractured in a spiral pattern. T-Stall reached up and grabbed Nedd by the wrist, pulling him down with the rest of us, and we held on to each other. Cuna and their staff crowded in as well, linking hands. I let Sadie hold onto my waist and grabbed Gill in one hand and Chubs in the other and tossed them to Kimmalyn, who caught them while I gathered the rest of the slugs in my arms.

“Don’t scare them,” I said to Jorgen.

“FM,” he said, clearly exasperated. “What in the—”

“Home!” I shouted. “Home! Take us home.”

“Home!” Chubs and Gill trilled together.

Glass rained down over us as the ships above opened fire.

And then the entire world disappeared.