“Skyward Flight here, Bog,” Jorgen said, taking point. “We have you. Hold on and try to bear left.”
We stormed after him and fired at will on Jorgen’s order. Our hailstorm of destructor fire didn’t bring down any enemy ships, but it made most of them scatter. Three went left—which would cut Bog off. Jorgen turned after those, and FM followed him.
“There’s still one on his tail,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
“All right,” Jorgen said with a moment’s pause. He obviously hated splitting the flight.
I fell in after the ship. Straight ahead, Bog was going through increasingly crazy maneuvers—reckless ones—to avoid being hit.
“Shoot it!” he screamed. “Please shoot it. Just shoot it!”
Desperation, frantic worry—things I hadn’t expected of a full pilot. Of course, he looked young. Though it should have occurred to me earlier, I realized he’d probably graduated in one of the classes right before mine. Six months, maybe a year, as a pilot—but still an eighteen-year-old boy.
I picked up two tails that concentrated fire on me. Scud. Bog had led our chase so far out, it was going to be hard to pick up support. I didn’t dare IMP, not with destructors flashing around me—but that Krell ahead of me still had a shield up.
I gritted my teeth, then hit my overburn. G-forces pressed me back in my seat, and I got closer to the Krell, sticking to its tail, barely able to dodge. I’d hit Mag-3, and at this speed, flight maneuvers were going to be difficult to control.
Just a second longer . . .
I got in close and speared the Krell ship with my light-lance. Then I turned, pulling the Krell ship out of line with Bog.
The cockpit trembled around me as my captive Krell cut in the other direction, fighting me, sending us both into a frantic out-of-control spin.
My tails turned and concentrated fire on me. They didn’t care if they hit the ship I had lanced; Krell never cared about that.
A storm of fire swallowed me, hitting my shield and drilling it down. The Krell ship I’d speared exploded under fire from its allies, and I was forced to pull into a sharp climb on full overburn to try to get away.
That was a risky move. My GravCaps cut out, and the g-force hit like a kick to the face. It pulled me downward, forced the blood into my feet. My flight suit inflated, pushing against my skin, and I did my breathing exercises as trained.
My vision still blackened at the edges.
Flashing lights on my console.
My shield was down.
I cut my acclivity ring, spun on my axis, then overburned right back downward. The GravCaps managed to absorb some of the whiplash, but a human body simply wasn’t meant to handle that kind of reversal. I felt sick, and almost threw up as I passed through the middle of the Krell.
My hands were trembling on the controls, my vision growing red this time. Most of the Krell didn’t respond in time, but one of them—one ship—managed to spin on its own axis as I had.
It focused on me, then fired.
A flash on my wing; an explosion.
I’d been hit.
Beeps screamed at me from my console. Lights flashed. My control sphere suddenly didn’t seem to do anything, going slack as I tried to maneuver.
The cockpit rocked, and the world rotated as my ship started spiraling out of control.
“Spin!” I somehow heard Jorgen’s shout over the chaos of the beeping.
“Eject, Spin! You’re going down!”
Eject.
You weren’t supposed to be able to think during moments like these. It was all supposed to happen in a flash. And yet, that second seemed frozen to me.
My hand, hovering as it reached for the eject lever between my legs.
The world a spinning blur. My wing, gone. My ship on fire, my acclivity ring unresponsive.
A moment frozen between life and death.
And Hurl, in the back of my head. Brave to the end. Not cowards. A pact.
I would not eject. I could steer this ship down! I was NO COWARD! I was not afraid to die.
And what will it do to them. something else within me asked, if you do? What would it do to my flight to lose me? What would it do to Cobb, to my mother?
Screaming, I grabbed the eject lever and yanked hard. My canopy exploded off, and my seat blasted out into the sky.
I woke to silence.
And . . . wind, brushing against my face. My seat lay on the dusty ground and I faced the sky. The parachute flapped behind me; I could hear the wind playing with it.
I had blacked out.
I lay there, staring upward. Red streaks in the distance. Explosions. Blossoms of orange light. Just faint pops, from this far down.
I shifted to the side. What was left of my Poco burned in the near distance, destroyed.
My future, my life, burned away with it. I lay there until the battle ended, the Krell retreating. Jorgen did a flyby to check if I was all right, and I waved to him to allay his worry.
By the time a rescue transport came for me—lowering silently on its acclivity ring—I had unbuckled. My radio and my canteen had survived the ejection attached to my seat; I had used one to call in and drank from the other. A medic had me sit on a seat in the transport, then inspected me while a member of the Survey Corps walked out and looked over the wreckage of my Poco.
The salvage woman eventually walked back, holding a clipboard.
“Well?” I asked softly.
“In-seat GravCaps kept you from smashing your own spine,” the medic said. “You seem to have only minimal whiplash, unless there’s a pain you’re not telling me about.”
“I didn’t mean me.” I looked at the salvage woman, then over at my Poco.
“The acclivity ring is destroyed,” she said. “Not much to salvage.”
That was what I’d been afraid of. I strapped into the transport’s seat, then looked out the window as it took off. I watched the burning light of my Poco’s fire fade, then vanish.
At last we landed at Alta, and I climbed out of the vehicle, stiff, body aching. I limped across the tarmac. Somehow I knew—before I even saw her face—that one of the figures standing in the darkness beside the landing site would be Admiral Ironsides.
Of course she had come. She finally had a real excuse to kick me out. And could I blame her, now that I knew what I did?
I stopped in front of her and saluted. She, remarkably, saluted me back. Then she unpinned my cadet’s pin from my uniform.
I didn’t cry. Honestly, I was too tired, and my head hurt too much.
Ironsides turned the pin over in her fingers.
“Sir?” I said.
She handed my pin back. “Cadet Spensa Nightshade, you are dismissed from flight school. By tradition, as a cadet who was shot down soon before graduation, you’ll be added to the list of possible pilots to call up should we have extra ships.”
Those “possible pilots” could be summoned by the admiral’s order only. It would never happen to me.
“You can keep your pin,” Ironsides added. “Wear it with pride, but return your other gear to the quartermaster by twelve hundred tomorrow.” Then without another word, she turned and left.
I held a second salute until she was out of sight, pin gripped in the fingers of my other hand. It was over. I was done.
Skyward Flight would graduate only two members after all.
PART FIVE
INTERLUDE
That is one problem handled. thought Judy “Ironsides” Ivans as she walked away from the launchpad. Rikolfr, her aide-de-camp, hurried along beside her, holding his ever-present clipboard full of things Judy needed to do.