Chapter One Arturo #2
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.
So I answered.
“Amphisbaena,” my mother said. She managed to utter my callsign in the same tone she used to call me by my full name when I was a kid. “What are you doing with two of our family starships outside the debris belt?”
If I was already in trouble, I might as well double down. “Just going for a joyride.”
“Is that Nedder with you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nedd said.
“Is he flying our starfighter with a prosthetic arm?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nedd said again, though I heard the tightness in his voice.
My mother didn’t have to say that she didn’t think he was fit to fly—and she wouldn’t, not with Nedd on the line.
She’d save that lecture for later, when she caught me alone.
I would do my best to ensure that didn’t happen anytime soon.
“There are procedures for use of the family ships,” Mom said. “Procedures to which you did not adhere.”
“That’s true,” I said.
Silence followed. Silence in which my mom was no doubt deciding if she was going to chew me out for my recklessness with Nedd listening.
“Turn those ships around and return to the hangar,” she said.
“Copy, Minerva,” I said, using her old callsign from her days in the DDF.
I didn’t turn my ship around, and neither did Nedd.
“Amphi?” Mom said. “I don’t see those ships returning.”
“I’m looking for the safest place to turn around. Wouldn’t want to put the ships at risk.”
I waited for my mother to call my bluff, but instead she said, “I have a meeting with Admiral Weight this evening. I intend to inquire about your advancement.”
I gritted my teeth. Advancement in the DDF would inevitably mean joining Command and giving up my wings. I didn’t want to advance to the point where I could no longer fly.
Removing me from a ship was, of course, my mother’s primary objective for my life, mostly because she loved me and didn’t want me to die. “I’m happy where I am. The flight needs me.”
“Your flight has been separated,” my mother said. “Almost all of your contemporaries have been promoted.”
“And I was promoted to flightleader,” I said. “Skyward Flight has new members, and I’m proud to lead them.”
“Alien members,” my mother said.
I bristled at the judgment in her voice.
Officially, she couldn’t object to me flying with aliens; my new flightmates were part of the larger galactic alliance of species that had helped us break free of the Superiority.
But old prejudices died hard. If my mother couldn’t accept me flying with aliens, she wasn’t ready to know how close I wished to be with one of them.
“Sorry, Mom, you’re breaking up,” I said, even though she wasn’t. “Must be interference from one of the platforms. We’ll bring these ships back right a—”
I switched the channel mid-word. My mother would know exactly what I’d done, but at least this way I had plausible deniability.
“You ready to turn around?” Nedd asked.
“No.” That conversation with my mother made me want to keep flying and never return. “Do you want to go back?”
“No.” Nedd was quiet for a moment. “Jorgen offered me a job.”
That didn’t surprise me, much as I hated it. Nedd was an excellent pilot and a better person. As admiral, Jorgen would want to find someplace Nedd could be of use. “You already have a job.”
“A job on the ground,” Nedd said. “With Command.”
It made sense, but if he took it, this might be the last time Nedd flew. “What did he offer?”