odd angles, wings that had rips in them, patchwork creations of metal. My little cavern became a battlefield.
I sat down and watched in silence. M-Bot’s holoprojector didn’t produce sound. Ships went up in flares of muted death. They flew like gnats without wings or buzz.
I knew the battle. I’d been taught it, memorized the tactics employed. Watching, however, I felt it. Before, I’d imagined the great maneuvers as, against the odds, forty human fighters faced down two and a half times that many enemies. I’d pictured a bold defense. Bordering on desperation, but always in control.
Now that I was a pilot though, I could feel the chaos. The haphazard pace of the battle. The tactics seemed less grand—no less heroic, but far more improvised. Which actually raised my opinion of the pilots.
It went on for quite a while—longer than any of Skyward Flight’s skirmishes had gone—and I picked him out easily. The best fighter in the bunch, the one who led the charges. It felt arrogant to think I could single out my father’s ship from the crowded mess, but there was something about the way he flew . . .
“Can you identify the pilots?” I asked.
Little readouts appeared above each ship, listing callsigns and designations.
HOPE SEVEN, the ship’s label read. CALLSIGN: CHASER.
Arrogant or not, I’d called it accurately. Despite myself, I tried again to touch his ship, and found tears in my eyes. Fool girl. I wiped them as my father fell in with his wingmate. Callsign: Mongrel. Cobb.
Another ship joined them. Callsign: Ironsides. Then two more I didn’t recognize. Callsigns: Rally and Antique. Those five were all that remained of my father’s initial flight of eight. The battle casualties were very high; what had begun as forty ships was now twenty-seven.
I stood up and walked after my father’s ship as it swooped through the cavern. The First Citizens fought frantically, but their bravery bore fruit as they drove the Krell back. I knew they would—yet still found myself watching breathlessly. Ships exploded as little flashes. Lives spent to found what would become the first stable society and government on Detritus since the Defiant had crashed here.
That society and government were both flawed. FM was right about how unfair it was, how single-minded and authoritarian. But it was something. It existed because these people—these pilots—had defied the Krell.
Near the end of the battle, the Krell pulled back to regroup. From my studies, I knew they would make only one more push before finally retreating into the sky. The human battle lines re-formed, flights grouping together, and I could almost hear them making verbal confirmations of status.
I knew this moment. The moment when . . .
One ship—my father’s—broke from the pack. My heart about stopped. My breath caught.
But he flew upward.
I leaped onto a rock, then onto M-Bot’s wing, trying to follow my father as he flew higher into the sky. I reached up, and could imagine what he’d seen. I somehow knew what it was—my father had spotted a hole in the debris, like the one he’d pointed out to me. The one I’d only ever seen a second time, flying M-Bot, when the debris had lined up just right.
I read something into his disappearance. Not cowardice at all. To me, his move—flying upward—was obvious. The battle had been going for an hour. After this desperate stand, with the enemy regrouping for another push, my father had worried the fight would fail.
So he’d done something desperate. He’d gone to see where the Krell came from. To try to stop them. I felt a chill, watching him fly upward. He was doing what he’d always told me.
He had tried to aim for something higher.
His ship vanished.
“He didn’t run,” I said. I wiped the tears from my eyes again. “He broke formation. He may have disobeyed orders. But he didn’t run.”
“Well,” M-Bot said, “it—”
“That’s what they’re covering up!” I said, looking toward M-Bot’s cockpit. “They branded him a coward because he flew up when he wasn’t supposed to.”
“You might—”
“Cobb has known all this time. It must have torn him up inside. It’s why he doesn’t fly; guilt for the lies he’s perpetuated. But what did my father see? What happened to him? Did he—”
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’m jumping ahead a short time. Watch.”
A speck of light, like a star, dropped down from the top of the cavern. My father’s ship returning? I reached out toward it, and the holographic ship swooped down, passing through my hand. When my father reached the