“They called in everyone,” Arturo said, running a cord from the radio to the wall. “Even the reserves from the lower caverns. This is going to be some fight.”
“Yeah,” I said. I looked down at my drink and fries, neither of which I’d touched.
“Hey,” Kimmalyn said, poking me in the side. “You sulking?”
I shrugged.
“Good,” she said. “This is a day for sulking!”
“Graduation day,” Nedd said, raising his cup. “For the washout club!”
“Hurrah!” Kimmalyn said, raising hers.
“You’re both idiots,” Arturo said, fiddling with the dials on the radio. “I didn’t wash out. I graduated early.”
“Yeah?” Nedd asked. “And did they call you in to fly this battle, mister full pilot sir?”
Arturo blushed. I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his pilot’s pin. Most everyone wore theirs every day—in uniform or not.
The radio started belting out chatter, and Arturo quickly turned down the volume, then tuned it further until he landed on a channel with a firm female voice. “There we go,” he said. “The Assembly monitoring channel. This should be a straight-up explanation of the battle for government leaders, not the sanitized version piped down to the people listening in Igneous.”
We settled in as the woman on the radio spoke. “With the launch of Ivy Flight, we have eleven flights in the air and five scouting trios. The Saints and the North Star watch us this day, as the glorious fighters of the Defiant League engage.”
Nedd whistled. “Eleven? Do we have that many flights?”
“Obviously,” Arturo said. “Seriously, Nedd. Do you ever think before you speak?”
“Nope!” He took a slurp of his green fizzy drink.
“A man who speaks his mind,” Kimmalyn said solemnly, “is a man with a mind to speak of.”
“We normally maintain twelve flights,” Arturo said. “Four on duty at any given moment, usually with one or two in the air patrolling. Four on immediate call. Four more on deep reserve duty, protected in the lower caverns. In the past, we tried to keep them at ten ships each—but these days we’re down to eleven flights, and most of them are only seven or so fighters strong.”
“Eighty-seven brave pilots,” the announcer continued, “are making their way to engage the Krell to rescue the salvage. Victory will bring our league unprecedented glory and spoils!”
She had a voice like the announcers I’d listened to down below. Strong, but almost monotone—with an air of reading pages as they were put in front of her.
“This is too sterile,” I said. “Can we hear the real chatter? Tune to the pilot bands?”
Arturo looked at the others. Nedd shrugged, but Kimmalyn nodded. So Arturo turned the volume down further. “We’re not supposed to listen to these,” he said softly. “But what will they do? Kick us out of the DDF?”
He tuned a few notches until he hit the general flightleader channel. The radios in Igneous wouldn’t be able to decrypt what they were saying, but obviously Arturo’s family was important enough to have a radio with an unscrambler.
“They’re coming in,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Scud. There’s a lot of them.”
“Get us counts,” Ironsides said. “How many flights? How many ships?”
“Scouts reporting in.” I recognized that voice—it was Cloak. She was one of the scouts who had fought alongside us before. “We’ll get you numbers, Admiral.”
“All active flights,” Ironsides said, “stay on the defensive until we get enemy numbers. Flight Command out.”
I pulled my seat closer, listening to the chatter—trying to imagine the fight. A different scout described the falling shipyard. An enormous, ancient construct of steel, with gaping holes and twisting corridors.
Scout numbers came back. The first wave of Krell had been fifty strong, but another fifty followed. The enemy knew how important this fight was. They’d sent every ship; they were as committed as we were.
“A hundred ships,” Nedd said softly. “What a fight that must be . . .” He looked haunted; perhaps he was remembering our chase through the bowels of the shipyard.
“That’s it, they’re fully committed,” Ironsides said. “Riptide Flight, Valkyrie Flight, Tungsten Flight, and Nightmare Flight, I want you to provide covering fire. Inner flights, keep the Krell away from that shipyard. Don’t let them detonate a bomb on it!”
A series of affirmatives came from the flightleaders. I closed my eyes, imagining the swarm of ships, the destructor blasts in the air. It was a relatively open battlefield, with little debris except for the one enormous shipyard.
My fingers began going through motions, as if I were controlling a ship. I could feel it. The rattling of my cockpit, the rushing of the air, the flare of the booster . . .
Saints and stars. I was going to miss it so much.
“That’s a bomber,” one of the flightleaders said. “I have confirmation from three ships.”
“Scout confirmation,” Cloak said. “We see it too. Flight Command, a bomber is heading toward the shipyard. It’s carrying a lifebuster.”
“Drive it away!” Ironsides said. “Protecting the salvage is our most important objective.”
“Yes, sir,” a flightleader said. “Confirm. We push back, even if it means driving the bomber toward Alta?”
Silence on the line.
“It would take two or more hours of flight at bomber speeds to get within range of Alta,” Ironsides said. “We’ll have time to stop it before then. Orders stand.”
“Two hours?” Nedd said. “They’re farther out than I thought.”
“Well, bombers are about half as fast as a Poco,” Arturo said. “So the shipyard is coming down around an hour out from us—which is about how long it took our forces to get out there. It adds up, if you think long enough to calculate it.”
“Why would I have to do that?” Nedd said. “When you’ll do the hard work for me?”
“Does anyone else feel . . . anxious?” Kimmalyn asked.
“They said a lifebuster was out there, potentially coming our way,” Arturo said. “So yeah.”
“Not about that,” Kimmalyn said, looking at me. “About just sitting here, listening.”
“We should be up there,” I whispered. “This is it. A battle like the Battle of Alta. They need everyone . . . and here we are. Listening. Sipping sodas.”
“They’ve scrambled every battle-worthy ship,” Arturo said. “If we were back at the DDF, we’d only be sitting around there and listening.”
“We’ve got it on the run,” one of the flightleaders said. “I confirm, bomber has veered away from the salvage target. But Admiral, it is trying to break toward Alta.”
“This bomber is fast,” Cloak said. “Faster than most.”
“Scout contingents,” Ironsides said, “move to intercept. Everyone else, don’t get distracted. Stay on that shipyard! This could be a decoy.”