That still grated on me. I growled, spinning in that wide loop, trying to get one of the enemy into my sights. Almost . . . there . . .
My controls went dead. The ship stopped responding. During that loop, I’d redlined the g-forces, and the GravCaps had run out. Though my body couldn’t feel it here, if I’d been in an actual ship I’d have passed out.
A Krell ship disposed of me with a passing—almost offhand—shot, and my hologram fuzzed. Then my canopy vanished, and I was in the classroom. Jorgen managed to last another seventeen seconds. I counted.
I sat back in my seat, pulse thumping rapidly. That had been like witnessing the end of the world.
“Let’s assume you were approaching competence,” Cobb said. “A remarkable fantasy, I realize, but I’m ever an optimist. If you managed to fly better than the average Krell ship, you’d still be at a severe disadvantage using only destructors.”
“So we’re screwed?” FM said, standing up.
“No. We just have to fight differently—and we have to even the odds somehow. Strap back in, cadet.”
She did, and the holograms started again with us in the sky in a line. The Krell ships reappeared in a silent formation in front of us. I eyed them more suspiciously this time, index finger itching to spray them with destructor fire.
“Dragon-boy,” Cobb said to Arturo. “Press the buttons next to your third and fourth fingers. Hit them both at once.”
My ship shook, and a little pop of light exploded from Arturo, like a radiant splash of water.
“Hey!” Hurl said. “My shield is down.”
“Mine too,” said Kimmalyn.
“And mine,” Arturo added.
“Mine’s up,” Jerkface said, as did several others.
Arturo’s shield went down. I thought, as did those of the two ships next to him in line. I leaned forward, looking out the cockpit canopy, keenly interested. In my days of studying, I’d been taught booster specs, flight patterns, acclivity rings—basically everything about the fighters except weapon specifics.
“The IMP,” Cobb said. “Inverted Magellan Pulse. It will completely negate any protective shield a ship emits—including, unfortunately, your own. It has an extremely short range, so you’ll basically have to be crawling into a Krell’s engines before you activate it.
“The key to beating the Krell is not to pound them with destructor shots. It’s to outmaneuver them, team up against them, and outthink them. Krell fly individually. They barely support one another.
“You, instead, will fight in traditional wingmate pairs. You’ll work to engage the IMP in a way that gives your wingmate a clear, unshielded shot. But you also always need to be aware—engaging the IMP leaves you exposed and vulnerable until you reignite your shield.”
A sudden burst of light from nearby sent FM cursing softly.
“Sorry!” Morningtide said with her thick accent. “Sorry, sorry!” It was the most I’d heard out of her all day.
“What’s the third weapon?” Jerkface said.
“Light-lances,” I guessed. I’d read the term, but again, the specifics on what they did weren’t covered in the books.
“Ah, so you know about them, Spin,” Cobb said. “I thought you might. Give us a little display.”
“Um, okay. But why me?”
“They work very similarly to their smaller cousins: light-lines. I have a hunch you’ve got some experience there.”
How did he know? I wore my light-line to class, as I needed it to get in and out of my cavern, but I thought I’d kept it hidden under the long sleeve of my jumpsuit.
“Thumb and little finger,” Cobb said, “buttons on either side of the control sphere.”
Well, sure. Why not? I pushed the throttle forward and moved out of line, approaching the hovering Krell ships. I picked one, the wires at its rear floating down behind it. Like all ships, it had an acclivity ring—with a standard size of about two meters in diameter—glowing with a soft blue light underneath.
The Krell looked even more sinister up close. It had that strange, unfinished feel to it, though it wasn’t actually incomplete. Those wires hanging from the back were probably intentional, and its design was simply alien. Not unfinished, but made by creatures that didn’t think like humans did.
I held my breath, then clicked the buttons Cobb had indicated. A line of molten red light launched from the front of my ship and attached to the Krell ship. As Cobb had indicated, it worked just like the light-line, but larger—and launched from my ship like a harpoon.
Wow. I thought.
“Light-lances,” Cobb said. “You’ve probably seen their smaller cousins on the wrists of pilots; they were used by the engineering department in the old fleet to anchor themselves while they worked on machines in zero gravity. Spin has one, somehow—which I’ve decided not to mention to the quartermaster.”
“Thank—”
“You can thank me by shutting up when I’m talking,” Cobb said. “Light-lances work like a kind of energy lasso, connecting you to something you spear with it. You can use it to attach to an enemy ship, or you can use it on the terrain.”
“The terrain?” Arturo asked. “You mean we stick ourselves to the ground?”
“Hardly,” Cobb said.
The sky exploded above and I looked up, gasping, as the ubiquitous haze of debris began to rain down balls of fire. Superheated metal and other junk, turned into falling stars by the heat of reentry.
I quickly spun my ship, then pushed on the throttle and moved back toward the line. It took a few minutes for the debris to start falling around us, some chunks glowing more brightly than others. They moved at a variety of speeds, and I realized some of the falling junk had acclivity stone glowing blue inside it, giving it some lift.
The junk smashed into several of the Krell fighters, pulverizing them.
“The Krell usually attack during debris falls,” Cobb said. “The Krell don’t have light-lances, and though they tend to be maneuverable, a DDF ship with a good pilot can outpace and outfly them. You’ll often engage them in the middle of the falling debris. In there, the light-lance will be your best tool—which is why we’re going to spend the next month training on them. Any idiot with a finger can fire a destructor. But it takes a pilot to fly the debris and use it as an advantage.
“I’ve seen pilots use the light-lances to pull Krell into one another, stick them to space junk, or even yank a wingmate out of danger. You can pivot unexpectedly by attaching yourself to a big chunk and swinging around it. You can toss debris at your enemy, instantly overwhelming their shield and smashing them. The more dangerous the battlefield, the more advantage the better pilot will have. Which, when I’m done, will be you.”
We watched the debris fall, burning light reflecting against my canopy. “So . . .,” I said. “You’re saying that by the end of our training, you expect us to be able to use grappling hooks made of energy to smash our enemies with flaming chunks of space debris?”
“Yes.”
“That . . .,” I whispered, “that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”