Page 3 of Blightfall

So much blackness, so much nothing. Before we were confined to this planet, our ancestors roamed the ocean of space, flying ever onward without a shore to return to. I used to wonder if they did so by choice, or if they simply had nowhere else to go. We’d lost Earth in the Third Human War—not to invasion, it had simply disappeared—the same war that destroyed much of our species. After our defeat, most surviving humans had been confined to “preserve” planets by the victors, an alien alliance known as the Superiority.

Still, we’d survived to fight back. I knew that other groups of humans had found other worlds to live on too. When I was a child, the idea of traveling the stars terrified me.

Now it wasn’t the wide universe that scared me. It was the thought of being left behind.

An alert flashed on my monitor. We’d risen through the debris close to one of Detritus’s weapons platforms—autonomous guns that shot down unidentified objects, protecting the planet from bombardment. I leveled out, staying below its firing range.

Nedd’s ship shot past mine, continuing to climb.

“Nedder, pitch down!” I said.

“Pitch down!” Naga agreed.

“I’ve got it,” Nedd said. His ship wavered, nose bobbing as he scrambled for control. He slid closer to the range of the autonomous gun.

I wanted to let him handle it, but couldn’t take the chance. I pulled up, accelerating. Nedd got his nose down, but the angle wasn’t low enough to be sure he’d clear the danger zone without clipping it.

I tagged Nedd’s ship with my light-lance—a beam of hard light that tethered my ship to his—and dove, pulling him to safety.

“Amphi, look out!” Nedd shouted.

A large chunk of damaged platform fell into my path, rapidly becoming larger as I barreled toward it. Nedd banked to the right, pulling me free of the debris before it scored the hull of my ship. His motion wasn’t elegant, but if he hadn’t, my ship could have sustained damage, maybe even lost a wing.

Nedd straightened his flight path, getting full control again.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Okay!” Naga said.

“I am,” Nedd said. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

I could hear the grin in Nedd’s voice. “Might want to keep your eyes on your own paper, flightleader.”

It felt good to hear him joke like that. “Sorry. I was worried you were going to—”

“I know,” Nedd said. “Scud, I’m more of a liability than anything.”

That was not the message I’d wanted to send. “It’s okay. You just need—”

“More practice, I know. But I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to dogfight. Can we stop?”

“Stop flying?” I asked. “Or stop talking?”

“Definitely the second one.”

“Yeah, okay.”

An alert flashed on my instrument panel—someone trying to call me over a private channel.

My private family channel.

Scud.

“Hey, Amphi?” Nedd said. “I think your mother’s calling.”

“I see it.” I could ignore her, but she’d keep trying, and if I didn’t answer, she might get one of the pilots from our family’s shipping business to chase us down.