“I’m down to three ships,” a flightleader said. “Requesting support. They’re swarming us, Flight Command. Scud, it—”
Silence.
“Valkyrie flightleader is down,” someone else said. “I’m going to absorb their remaining ships. Flight Command, we’re taking a beating out here.”
“All ships,” Ironsides said, “full offensive. Drive them back. Don’t let them reach the shipyard.”
“Yes, sir,” a chorus of flightleaders said.
The battle continued for some time, and we listened, tense. Not just because of the pilots dying trying to claim the shipyard, but because each moment of the battle, that bomber was drawing closer and closer to Alta.
“Scout ships,” Ironsides eventually said. “Do you have an update on that lifebuster?”
“We’re still on it, sir!” Cloak said. “But the bomber is well defended. Ten ships.”
“Understood,” Ironsides said.
“Sir!” Cloak said. “It is going faster than ordinary bomber speed. And it just sped up. If we aren’t careful, it will get within blast range of Alta.”
“Engage them,” Ironsides said.
“With only scouts?”
“Yes,” Ironsides said.
I felt so powerless. As a child, listening to war stories, my head had been full of drama and excitement—glory and kills. But today, I could hear the strain in the voices as flightleaders watched their friends die. I heard explosions over the channel, and winced at each one.
Jorgen and FM were out there somewhere. I should be helping. Protecting.
I closed my eyes. Without really intending to, I performed Gran-Gran’s exercise, imagining myself soaring among the stars. Listening for them. Reaching . . .
A dozen spots of white light appeared inside my eyelids. Then hundreds. I felt the attention of something vast, something terrible, shift toward me.
I gasped and opened my eyes. The pinpricks of light vanished, but my heart thundered in my ears, and all I could think of was that inescapable sensation of things seeing me. Unnatural things. Hateful things.
When I finally managed to put my attention back on the battle, Cloak was reporting a full-on conflict with the lifebuster’s guard ships. Arturo turned a few frequencies and found their flight chatter—twelve scouts had been unified in a single flight for this battle.
Arturo switched back and forth between the scout channel and the flightleader channel. Both battles raged, but finally—at long last—some welcome news came in.
“Bomber destroyed!” Cloak said. “The lifebuster bomb is in free fall, heading toward the ground. All scouts, pull out! Overburn! Now!” Her channel wavered and fuzzed.
We waited, anxious. And I thought I could hear the sequence of three explosions—in fact, I was sure of it—echoing in the near distance. Scud. That had been close to Alta.
“Cloak?” Ironsides asked. “Nice work.”
“She’s dead,” a soft voice said on the line. That was FM. “This is callsign: FM. Cloak died in the blast. There are . . . sir, there are three of us left in the scout flight. The others died in the fighting.”
“Confirmed,” Ironsides said. “Stars accept their souls.”
“Should we . . . return to the other battle?” FM asked.
“Yes.”
“All right.” She sounded rattled.
I looked toward the others, frustrated. Surely there was something we could do. “Arturo,” I said, “doesn’t your family have some private ships?”
“Three fighters,” he said. “Down in the deep caverns. But as a rule, they don’t get involved in DDF battles.”
“Even a desperate one like this?” Kimmalyn asked.
Arturo hesitated, then spoke more softly. “Especially a battle like this. Their job is to protect my family if we have to evacuate. The worse things get, the less likely my parents would be to commit their ships.”
“And if we didn’t ask them?” Nedd said. “What if we just took the ships?”
He and Arturo exchanged looks, then grinned. Both looked at me, and my heart trembled with excitement. To fly again. In a battle like this, like the Battle of Alta.
The battle where . . . where my father had broken. It was too dangerous for me to be up there. What if I did what he did, and turned on my friends?
“Take Kimmalyn,” I found myself saying.
“You sure?” Arturo asked.
“I’m not!” Kimmalyn said. She grabbed my hands. “Spin, you’re better than I am. I’ll just fail again.”
“My family’s ships are in a secure cavern,” Arturo said. “It will take us at least fifteen minutes to get them up the private ship elevator. That’s not counting the part where we have to somehow sneak in and steal them.”
I squeezed Kimmalyn’s hands. “Quirk,” I told her, “you’re the best shot I’ve ever seen, the best I’ve ever heard of. They need you. FM and Jorgen need you.”
“But you—”
“I can’t fly, Quirk,” I said. “There’s a medical reason I can’t explain right now. So you’ve got to go.” I squeezed her hands tighter.
“I failed Hurl,” she said softly. “I’ll fail the others.”
“No. The only way you fail, Kimmalyn, is if you’re not there. Be there.”
Her eyes watered, then she grabbed me in a hug. Arturo and Nedd rushed out of the room, and Kimmalyn ran out after them.
I sank down into my seat and leaned against the table, crossing my arms and laying my head down.
The radio chatter continued, including a new voice. “Flight Command,” the woman’s ragged voice said. “This is antiaircraft gun outpost forty-seven. We’re down, sir.”
“Down?” Ironsides said. “What happened?”
“That blast from the lifebuster hit us,” the woman said. “Stars. I’m just crawling out of the mess now. I tore this radio off my CO’s corpse. It looks like . . . AA guns forty-six and forty-eight are gone too. That bomb hit close. You’ve got a hole in your defenses, sir. Scud, scud, scud. I need medical transports!”
“Understood, outpost forty-seven. Sending—”
“Sir?” the gunner’s voice said again. “Tell me you have that on radar.”
“What?”
I felt a chill.
“Debris fall,” the gunner said. “North of here. Hold on a minute, I’ve got some binoculars . . .”
I waited, tense, imagining a single gunner climbing over the wreckage of her destroyed gun emplacement.
“I have visual on multiple Krell ships,” the gunner said. “A second group, coming down far away from the battle for the shipyard. Sir, they’re coming in right where our defenses are out. Confirm! Did you hear me!”
“We heard,” Ironsides said.
“Sir, they’re heading right for Alta. Scramble the reserves!”
There were no reserves. The chill inside me became ice. Ironsides had committed everything we had to the battle for the shipyard. And now, a second group of Krell had appeared from the sky—right where the bomb had knocked out our defenses.
It was a trick.