SWNOVELS Sunreach: Chapter 2
The world went silent except for the hum of my instruments. The ships around me made no sound as the battle raged on. For the first time I envied Spensa her AI-equipped ship. It chattered like Kimmalyn after too many desserts, but at least it wasn’t…silent.
Sadie and I flew in close formation so we didn’t lose sight of each other. The battle in front of me fractured; ships that had been flying together broke off into wingmate pairs, while the enemy formations stayed mostly the same, chasing our fighters in groups of three or four. They outnumbered us, but we flew better, leading them around in circles.
Sadie would be waiting for my lead. I needed to think of a plan, figure out how to use these new orders to our advantage and communicate it by the way I flew, since we couldn’t talk.
But stars, I couldn’t take this silence.
I reached around to the belt loop of my jumpsuit. I never used my transmitter while I was flying—Jorgen wouldn’t be happy if I transmitted unnecessary noise over the comm. My transmitter didn’t emit a ranged signal, but it did something even better.
It played music. Handheld transmitters were expensive and rare. My father had given it to me when I made pilot—I used it more than he did when I lived at home. Today I wanted something peppy, something that definitely couldn’t be played at my funeral by some three-piece band.
So I turned on one of my favorites, a song my father said was classified as “big band,” though many of the other songs featured far more instruments. I thought I understood: the band wasn’t big because of the number of players (which was still more than ever played together in the Detritus caverns), but because of the sounds they made, loud and punchy, like the music itself was trying to swing you around and toss you.
I tapped my feet against the floor, listening to the beat as I flew around the outskirts of the battle, watching and waiting for my move. Our orders were to stick to evasive maneuvers, but there were plenty of tricks we could pull that would do damage to the enemies while still being considered evasive.
I found my opening when three ships peeled off the mass of the main battle and bolted toward us. I darted out front, my head nodding to the rhythm of the drums, and the ships chased after me, leaving Sadie behind to shoot with her destructors. She still overused those—Cobb hadn’t taught her as a cadet, so we’d had to give her some extra coaching after she made pilot to get her up to speed.
The destructors wouldn’t do much while the Krell had their shields up, but there was no way I could use my IMP and still claim I was being evasive. The IMP would take out my shield along with the Krell’s, and I didn’t dare do that with my comms down—there was no way I’d be able to call for help if I got myself into real trouble.
We were supposed to fly defensively, but that didn’t mean I had to let these ships shoot us out of the sky. I bobbed my head to the beat and circled around to some debris that floated above the platforms, out of reach of the gun emplacements.
I grabbed one of the enemy drone pilot ships with my light-lance and fired my thrusters in its direction, dragging it after me toward the rock. Sadie dashed ahead, kiting the other two ships after her as I raced toward the debris. Then I rotated my thrusters and cut the light-lance at the last moment, propelling myself downward beneath the debris while the Krell ship crashed into the rock above me.
I overshot. My GravCaps maxed out and I was struck by g-forces that forced blood upward toward my head. For a moment my vision went red, but I reduced my speed and managed to maintain consciousness, though the music warped in my ears and the lights on my ship controls swam before my eyes.
I began to recover, my head still swimming, and found Sadie flying toward me, the other two ships no longer on her tail. I didn’t know if she’d lost them or taken them out while I was distracted, but I was glad either way. I lifted my finger to call her to tell her so before I remembered.
Silence. We were flying in silence.
And I still didn’t understand why. Sadie and I swung around as the music crashed toward a crescendo, and we soared toward the main battlefield again.
My proximity sensors beeped over the music, warning me of incoming ships headed straight for me at high speed. I didn’t dare turn the music up any louder, though I wanted to. I adopted a weaving pattern, moving in rhythm with a trumpeting horn—and the first enemy ship matched my flight pattern, almost as if it wanted to run right into me. I went into a dive, Sadie following after me—
And pulled out right as one of our own fighters passed in front of my nose.
Nightmare Seven. Lizard’s ship. Four Superiority fighters followed after her, only one of them breaking away to pepper me with destructor fire.
Scud. Where was Lizard’s wingmate? She’d flown so close to get my attention, because she couldn’t radio in for help. I pivoted my boosters, veering off in Lizard’s direction. Behind me, Sadie launched a barrage of destructor fire at the lone ship near us, the blasts seeming to shoot in time with a snare drum. Sadie executed an Ahlstrom loop to turn herself around and follow after me. That ship might chase her, but I had to trust her to deal with one tail.
With four ships behind her, Lizard was in much bigger trouble, and she needed help. We were better trained, but the Superiority forces had always had more powerful destructors and stronger shields. I accelerated to Mag-4 to catch up with the ships. Ahead of me, Lizard spun in a rolling twin-scissor, trying to shake her tails, but they stuck with her. This group were all piloted ships, and they were working together better than the Krell drones we usually fought. As Lizard pulled out of the scissor, one of the Krell pegged her with a destructor shot.
We had to help her. She still had a shield, but it was weakening. Lizard knew what she was doing—she was already headed toward the gun platforms where we could push the ships close enough to take fire. We were too far from them though. She wasn’t going to make it.
My whole body jittering to the syncopation of the music, I opened fire on the nearest Krell, forcing the ship to take evasive action and lose its bead on Lizard. Sadie caught up to me and then pulled ahead, speeding forward.
She was making herself a target, giving me an opening to take care of the other ships while she and Lizard took the destructor fire. It was a risky move—even though Sadie still had a full shield, the Krell destructors could quickly destroy it. If I’d had my radio, I would have yelled at her to pull back and stop being so reckless. Jorgen would never have approved that maneuver.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her anything. Instead I followed after her, darting forward to engage one of the other Krell fighters.
We were approaching the gun platforms now as one of the Krell fighters took the bait and went after Sadie instead. Sadie executed a perfect twin-S, dodging the destructor fire.
I missed with the light-lance, and the other two ships bore down on Lizard, both unloading their destructors on her at once.
Lizard evaded many of the blasts, but not enough. With a blink of light, Lizard’s shield went down.
I put my hand over the comm button, then pulled it back. We were on our own. I hit my overburn, speeding out in front of Lizard and trying to draw away the Krell fighters. If they followed me, I could evade them while Lizard escaped and got her shield up.
It didn’t work. The Krell maintained their focus on Lizard, and a destructor blast hit her boosters, sending the ship spinning toward the planet. I watched helplessly as Lizard’s ship spiraled into range of the gun platforms and exploded in a fiery burst. A crash of cymbals seemed to punctuate the explosion.
“No,” I whispered. No.
Sadie’s ship pulled close to mine. Lizard was gone, just like that. She’d never again tell me my boots looked stupid with my jumpsuit or challenge Nedd to a tower-building contest with algae strips. Nothing was going to change that.
I couldn’t even call in to Nose to let her know. We wouldn’t be able to retrieve Lizard’s pin—a ship destroyed like that in the vacuum wouldn’t even be good for salvage. She would get only a symbolic ceremony, not a real pilot’s funeral.
I focused on the music, though it was now nearing the end of the song, the music building up, the drums punching in an off-kilter syncopation. The ships that took out Lizard were turning around now, though Sadie seemed to have shaken the one that was after her. Together Sadie and I wove back and forth until the ships gave up on us and went to seek easier targets.
The song ended, and silence echoed in my ears.
Lizard was gone. I’d never hear her voice again. I reached for my transmitter, starting another song. I chose a haunting piece played by an instrument my father called a piano. He’d shown me an image of one from the records, but I couldn’t imagine how a large bench with buttons made notes like the ones in the song—nimble and lilting and all working together like a well-tuned machine.
This music was much more sedate than the big band music, but I’d suddenly lost the desire for pep. I pulled ahead of Sadie, leading her away from the battlefield. I needed a moment to clear my head. A lack of focus would get us both killed. I could grieve later—now I had to concentrate. I had to keep Sadie alive. I had to—
Suddenly, the blackness of space seemed to shift. As if the layers of space itself were being pulled apart, the whole of the battle before me rippled, one layer separating from another, distorting in waves and bends. I shook my head, afraid for a moment that the g-forces might have had some delayed mental effects. What would I do if I had an emergency out here? I couldn’t radio for help. I couldn’t request to retreat.
And so, even with Sadie flying at my wing, I was still completely and utterly alone when the deep shadow darkened the blackness of space, passing over it like a shroud. In the distance, beyond the circling ships, a mass appeared—another ship maybe, but unlike any I’d ever seen. A core with spires jutting from it like the head of a mace, enormous—perhaps as big as Detritus, but far enough away that it was difficult to tell. The mass was immediately obscured by clouds of dust and shapes that didn’t exist—couldn’t exist—that undulated as the folds of reality seemed to separate and reform across the battlefield, rippling out into the vastness of space. The piano music rose and fell, providing an eerie soundtrack.
Scud, what was that?
My finger hovered over the comm switch, trembling. The explosion of Lizard’s ship played over and over in my head, even as I tried to banish it. Was I losing my mind? Was this some kind of trauma response? I had to talk to someone, didn’t I? I had to report what I was seeing, though as I watched the reactions of the other ships in the battlefield, I became increasingly certain I wasn’t hallucinating.
I wasn’t the only one faltering. Ships that had been engaged in maneuvers flew off course, scattering. The battlefield widened as many ships skittered away from the main fight, probably trying to avoid being shot down while they reconciled themselves to what they were seeing.
Or tried. I didn’t know that there was any way to reconcile myself to this. It couldn’t be real—the colors and shapes were too maddening, too impossible.
It had to be a hologram, or an illusion like the one that had fooled Spensa’s father, convincing him to attack his own people. Except those tactics were supposed to only affect cytonics, people with defects—or assets, we were starting to learn—in their minds that let them travel and communicate across the vastness of the universe. Those shouldn’t be able to affect everyone.
And if this was a hologram, it was scudding big. What would be projecting that? The enemy battleships? They hadn’t done anything like that in the weeks they’d been parked above Detritus, and besides, the vision seemed to be having the same effect on Defiant and Superiority ships alike. I fired my destructors once and watched the dust ripple around the path of the blast, reacting to the force.
The dust at least was real. But what was it, and where had it come from?
I startled as Sadie’s ship shot out in front of me, then dropped back. She was flying dangerously close, near enough I could look out my window and see through the glass of her canopy.
Sadie looked right at me, eyes wide in terror. I didn’t know what to do—I couldn’t talk to her. Instead I simply shook my head. I didn’t know what was happening. From the looks of it, nobody knew what was happening.
And then with no preamble, the folds of space seemed to ripple, and the strange phenomenon vanished. The battlefield reformed once more, clear and crisp, all the dust moving away as if sucked into the cracks in reality from whence it came.
My finger shook above my comm switch, but then I dropped my hand, gripping the dash. I’d been ordered to turn off my comms, and I hadn’t been ordered to turn them back on.
For a moment the ships seemed to regroup, both enemy and friendly drawing back together, like they were all remembering we were supposed to be fighting each other.
And then the enemy force turned, almost as one, and started to withdraw toward the enormous carrier ship. Generally when the enemy withdrew, we didn’t chase them, but we also didn’t withdraw without orders.
Was it safe to turn comms back on? I scanned the battlefield, looking for other members of our flight, and found Nose and her wingmate hitting overburn, bolting toward us. When she got close, she reversed her thrusters to slow down and pulled up next to me, T-Stall and Catnip following behind her. Nose frantically waved a hand at me, pointing at her own radio.
I switched off my transmitter and flipped my radio on. “Nose?” I said. “What the scud was that?”
“Command says delver,” Nose said. “I don’t know what that means, but I’ve heard rumors.”
We’d all heard the rumors. Kimmalyn and some of the other members of Skyward Flight had been there when the engineers managed to break the encryption on the footage of what had happened to the people who used to live on our forgotten planet. I’d missed the footage, but I’d heard about it. Some giant thing had materialized in the space outside the planet and devoured everyone and everything who lived here. I’d expected it to be more…substantial, I guess. More material. That had hardly seemed like a creature at all.
If that was what this had been, why were we still alive?
“Nose,” I said. “Lizard went down over by the gun platforms. The Krell got her. We tried to save her, but—”
“Copy, FM,” Nose said. “You’re sure she didn’t survive?”
I swallowed. “Affirmative. She spiraled into range of the gun platform. Her ship was annihilated.”
The radio was silent again. Nose was Lizard’s flightleader. I’d failed to save Lizard, but Nose hadn’t even been there.
She’d feel as responsible for her loss as I did, maybe more.
“FM? Nose?” Sadie said, only now getting the message it was safe to turn her radio back on. “What just happened?”
“I’m sure we’ll know more soon,” Nose said. “Orders are to regroup, hold until we know the enemy is leaving, then head on back to base.”
That made sense. We couldn’t abandon the battlefield if they intended to rally and keep fighting.
The concern turned out to be unnecessary. The Superiority fleet gathered at the carrier ship, and then the carrier ship blinked out of existence as if it had never been there at all.
“They had a hyperdrive,” I said to Kimmalyn on a private channel. “Maybe we should have been trying to steal it.”
“Spin might have found us one,” Kimmalyn said.
I hoped she had, because the confusion of this fight made it clearer than ever that we were completely out of our depth. Yeah, we were better pilots than the enemy, and we had gained some ground by taking the fight into space. Platform Prime was a convenient place from which to fight, but it was also vulnerable to attack. It was one small step, barely meaningful if we didn’t find a way to get off this rock—if we couldn’t find a way to take the fight to our enemy rather than merely defending ourselves.
In general, I found self-defense to be a much more admirable pursuit than invasion, but a fish could only live in a vat for so long before it was fried.
We were trapped on Detritus, while the enemy could travel anywhere in the universe, had every resource at their disposal. We needed more. More resources. More pilots. More help. More than we could muster with only what remained of the Defiant fleet after it crashed here almost a century ago.
We lost Lizard today; we were dwindling one by one. I was a pilot. I could follow orders. And my team was the best there was, even when pieces of it were missing. But I also wasn’t stupid.
I might not have Cobb’s experience or Spensa’s vision, but I knew if we didn’t figure out how to change the course of the war soon, humanity wasn’t going to survive.