Page 2 of Blightfall

“Looks clear,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Nedd and I ran for the two ships farthest from the door. These were Fresa-class starships—single-pilot fighters known for their speed and sleek design. We each climbed into a ship and ran system checks. My family’s ground team kept the ships well maintained and ready to fly at a moment’s notice, so we only had to do a few routine scans before takeoff.

I engaged the airlock, and the door between the maintenance rooms closed, cutting the crew off from the hangar. Above us, the ceiling rolled back to reveal the layers of platforms in the belt that filled the sky over Detritus, huge chunks of metal blocking out the stars.

“Ready when you are,” Nedd said over the radio.

“We are a go,” I told him, and we both engaged our acclivity rings, allowing our ships to lift vertically off the landing pad and float toward the open airlock door.

“Hey!” a voice shouted over my radio. “What the scud do you think you’re doing?”

“Doing!” Naga sang cheerfully, sliding out of my pack to rest along the side of my seat.

“Oh hi!” I replied over the radio. “Sorry, didn’t want to bother you. You all seemed busy! Arturo Mendez, taking the family ships for a routine flight. I’ll have them back inside of an hour.”

“Copy, Amphisbaena,” the voice said, using my callsign, as was customary over the radio. “But you’re not scheduled to take the ships today. Your parents’ orders are clear: If you want to take the ships, you’ll have to—”

“No need to bother my parents!” I said. “We’ll be back before you reach them anyway.” I hoped that was true. To avoid further argument, I changed my radio channel.

The hangar door finished rolling open, then started in the opposite direction as the ground crew overrode my commands. Nedd and I squeezed our ships through before the door closed, and we hovered side by side above the hangar platform, our acclivity rings keeping us aloft.

“Engage boosters,” I said. I shot off parallel to the hangar, flying through the wide space between the layers of the debris belt that orbited Detritus, like vat-grown meat between two slices of algae bread. Nedd followed at my wing, slow but steady.

“This is going well,” I said.

“Yes,” Nedd said, though his voice was strained. “I can take off in a straight line. Throw me a party.”

Flying took a surprisingly light touch, so using the prosthetic couldn’t be easy. As both Nedd’s friend and his flightleader, I had to encourage him, to push him. Nedd and I had flown together since the day we entered flight school. Since then, so many pilots had left us—for the diplomatic corps, for the new DDF space exploration forces. Jorgen Weight, our last flightleader, was our scudding admiral now—despite being only eighteen, like the rest of us—and many of our fellow cadets had died during the war. Nedd and I were the only remaining pilots from the original Skyward Flight, and I wasn’t leaving my buddy behind. Not if I could help it.

To make a case for a full return, we’d have to prove he could fly in combat. Dodging through the debris belt was a good first step—the metal platforms that orbited Detritus moved slowly and predictably, providing steady obstacles to navigate without the danger of being shot out of the sky.

“Ready for some maneuvering?” I asked.

“Not really,” Nedd said. It hurt to hear him so defeated. I’d been hounding engineering for weeks to design a ship specifically to fly one-handed, but so far it hadn’t been a priority. I was just the leader of one flight, even if we had recently been reclassified as “special forces.”

Not special enough to get accommodations, apparently.

“Here we go,” I said. “Try to tag me.” I switched my ship’s destructors to their laser function, which we used for target practice. This way, we’d be able to “hit” each other without doing damage. Nedd didn’t say anything, but a second later my ship’s monitor flashed green, meaning I’d taken a hit to my shields. When the light turned blue, my theoretical shields would be gone, and when it turned red, I was dead.

“Cheap shot,” I said.

“I think I paid what you’re worth.”

“Fine.” I spun into a barrel roll away from Nedd and then shot up at a sharp angle between two platforms in the next layer.

I tracked Nedd on my proximity monitors. He lagged behind, the nose of his ship bobbing erratically as he tried to ascend. We were high enough in the debris belt that there wasn’t enough atmosphere to experience drag, but he was still struggling with control. I didn’t want him to accuse me of going easy on him. I wouldn’t be doing him any favors—if he couldn’t fully control a ship with the prosthetic, he didn’t belong in combat. If I helped him cheat, I’d only get him killed.

I flipped an Ahlstrom loop, pointing the nose of my ship up and cutting over my own flight path in a vertical dive. I took the loop a bit fast and my GravCaps engaged, soaking up the g-forces to lessen the impact on my body. If they engaged for too long, the GravCaps could overload and I’d feel the full effects of the g-forces—which could result in temporary blindness, blackouts, or even death.

In this case, I only felt the press of my own momentum briefly before pulling out of the loop and heading back toward Nedd. It wasn’t hard to get him in my sights, and I wasn’t the best shot on the team. Nedd cut his boosters and spun with his nose pointed toward me, the rear of his ship skidding behind him. If he shot at me, he missed.

I got Nedd in my sights and slammed on my destructors. My dash light flashed yellow. Hit.

Nedd fired his boosters, soaring over me and away. His reaction time was sluggish, his flight path jagged. It was honestly impressive he could maneuver this well, new to the prosthetic as he was, but if he went into combat like this, he’d be dead.

He needed more practice. That was all. I followed him between two large metal facilities, each big enough to house a small city within it. And maybe they did house cities once. Centuries before our people crash-landed here, a lot of this space junk had been inhabited by humans bent on conquering the galaxy.

I didn’t try to tag Nedd again. I shot forward, sailing past him to forge a path through the highest layers of debris until empty space came into view, speckled with millions of stars. The sun was behind us, golden light shining across the rows of rotating platforms.