Chapter Five Arturo
Five
Arturo
The next morning, the Blightfall team met in the hangar on Platform Prime for last-minute flight preparations. Standard protocol called for a lot of checking and rechecking before missions. It was better to duplicate work on the ground than to have a preventable problem in the vacuum of space.
The flight filtered in, Gilaf cracking jokes like this was just another experimental run with the new taynix and Sadie bouncing her way to her ship.
Suki raised her fist at me as she, Dasha, and Katri arrived.
She was wearing a tiny flightsuit today, trimmed in white fur that I assumed didn’t come from a kitsen.
Alanik spoke quietly to Gilaf in their own language without their pins to translate.
Gilaf would pilot the two-seat Dulo with Nedd, who had arrived before all of us and sat in the copilot’s seat, going over the intel on Blightfall we’d received from Command.
Alanik was flying a ship on loan from the UrDail military; their controls were slightly different from ours, though the designs had obviously influenced each other centuries ago when the UrDail and the humans were allies.
Theirs were equipped with light-nets rather than light-lances, which projected a crisscross array of hard light instead of a single beam.
They were useful for catching ships or other objects in flight, but less useful for making a tight turn around an obstacle.
Alanik spotted me and strode over, turning on her translator pin. The diplomacy department had provided Gilaf and her with new pins for this mission, loaded with the languages we’d encounter on Blightfall.
I steeled myself. It didn’t matter that Alanik was gorgeous and intimidating. I was her flightleader, and I was going to be professional.
“You are my wingmate for this mission?” she asked in English.
Her accent was improving all the time, and she was getting better at the nuances of usage as well.
I’d been trying to learn her language by speaking phrases into a pin and then repeating what it said, but my translations were off base more often than not, and I didn’t have the courage to embarrass myself by trying in front of Alanik.
“Yes,” I said. Alanik had been my wingmate since I took over command of Skyward Flight—though, stars, keeping up with her was sometimes a challenge. “Sadie and Gilaf will fly as a pair, and you and me—”
“But you are responsible for this mission,” Alanik said. “You’ll need to stay with the carrier ship to ensure the safety of the diplomats, yes?”
Ah. I understood what she was getting at. “If you need to break off to investigate the cytonic activity in the area, I’ll come with you,” I said. “Nedd can be in charge of guarding the diplomats while you and I investigate.”
“And you think this is the best use of your time?” she asked in English. “As our commander?”
I hesitated, unsure how to respond. Alanik always seemed happy to spend time together—and we spent a lot of time together, both in a professional capacity and as friends.
But it never progressed beyond friendship, and I wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t want it to, or because I was just scudding bad at communicating that was what I wanted.
“You’ll need someone to watch your back,” I said.
“I trust Nedd to keep the rest of the team safe and call us back if necessary.” I’d only be distracted if Alanik was off investigating some strange magical phenomenon while I was stuck on guard duty, especially when we were guarding against people who didn’t even have starfighters.
“Very well,” Alanik said, sounding neither pleased nor displeased with this development—as utterly unreadable as always.
She sauntered back to her ship, and I tried and failed not to watch her go.
I was always making a fool out of myself with Alanik, especially when I wanted to impress her.
It felt like an impossible task, like a flashlight trying to impress the sun.
That was why I never managed to outright ask Alanik if she was interested in evolving our relationship—she was too good for me in every way.
I felt like a fool even thinking I deserved her romantic attention.
The ground crew finished clearing my ship, and I climbed in and ran through the pilot’s checklist before addressing the flight over the general channel. We were only seven ships—one diplomatic transport, two scout ships, and my flight’s four fighters.
“All ships,” I said over the radio. “Sound off.”
“Orator One, ready,” Ferret called in. Orator One was our diplomatic passenger ship, and the only ship of its designation on our team.
“Ranger One, ready,” a female voice replied.
That was Blaze, the flightleader for Ranger Flight and our primary scout pilot for this mission.
Her flight had their own hyperslugs—Pookie and Song, the latter of whose handler had outfitted her with a little vest with her name embroidered on the side—but their slugs were staying home for this mission since Naga and Twist were already riding along.
“Ranger Three, ready,” a male voice chimed in.
That was Underscore, Blaze’s wingmate. Underscore and Blaze had been flying together for a while, and had a reputation for sniffing out enemy ships with precision.
If there was a threat to be found on Blightfall, Blaze and Underscore would alert us to it.
They both flew Val-class ships, which were significantly less armed than the Sigos Sadie and I were flying, but much better equipped for long-range surveillance.
“Skyward Three, ready,” Alanik said. I was Skyward One, and Alanik was my wingmate, but Skyward Two was designated for the assistant flightleader, who was currently hanging out in Skyward Five with Gilaf.
Alanik had Bob riding along with her. She hadn’t seemed thrilled with it, which I understood, though he was no less her commander if he rode in another ship.
“Skyward Four, ready,” Sadie said. She managed to sound enthusiastic about her readiness.
I’d heard her gushing earlier about how excited she was to see a river!
With trees! Which, granted, were both things we mostly lacked on Detritus.
Sadie had Nope as her own ride-along, in case we encountered any cytonics during our investigation and needed to protect ourselves.
“Skyward Five, ready,” Gilaf said. He and Nedd were in the sleek Dulo, and they were accompanied by Wham and Squeeze, our team concussion slug and boomslug. Hopefully we wouldn’t need them on this mission, but it was DDF protocol to send one slug of each type, just in case.
“All ships,” I said. “Connect via light-lances.”
I connected my light-lance to Alanik’s ship, and she attached to Gilaf’s ship with the edge of her light-net, and so on around the hangar until all the ships were touching using our hard-light beams. Hyperslugs could only bring our ships with them if they were touching each other, and fortunately the hard-light connections were enough.
Orator One didn’t have a light-lance of its own, but Underscore hit it with his beam so it wouldn’t be left behind.
“All right,” I said to Naga, who reclined in the sling alongside my seat. “We are a go to hyperjump.”
Alanik had already given Naga the destination codes. I could have filed the paperwork to schedule a hyperjump today, but I wanted to try this new system where we had to wait for Bob’s permission. It would take us extra time today, but I didn’t want to test it for the first time under fire.
“Hyperjump!” Naga said.
Then we waited. The hyperjump would be instantaneous, of course, but the permission from our delver overlords was not. I tapped my fingers on the dash, waiting tensely as the minutes ticked by.
“Delvers are taking their time,” Underscore said over the radio.
“We’re still popping out of one place in the galaxy and into another, right?” Sadie said. “Are we really complaining that interstellar travel might take us up to thirty minutes?”
“It is pretty incredible we can do it at all,” I admitted, “even if the treaty makes it take longer.”
“Hey! Would this be a good time to practice new insults to hurl at our enemies?”
I sighed. This was exactly the reason I hadn’t wanted to bring Sadie along. I knew she didn’t mean any harm, but this wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted her announcing over the radio with the scouts and diplomats listening.
“Some of my people do that before battle,” Suki said. “They say it’s to make themselves more intimidating, but this seems impractical if the enemy can’t hear you.”
“You can intimidate them in spirit!” Sadie said. “I’ll start.”
“Let’s not, Sentry,” I said, using Sadie’s callsign. “We’re not going into battle. This is a diplomatic mission.”
“Good point! So…should we boast about our amazing diplomatic conquests? Last week I got Arturo to give me his cheesecake just by talking to him. That’s impressive, right?”
“I gave it to you to get you to stop talking,” I said.
“See?” Sadie said. “Clearly a diplomatic success. Watch out, humans of Blightfall! We will…talk to you so politely you’ll have to talk back!”
“Talk back!” Naga echoed at my side.
“We’re not doing the talking!” I reminded her. Stars, I should have opened a private channel to scold her, but I was in too deep now. “Our role here is to be very quiet, remember?”
Sadie didn’t respond, which I took to mean that she did, in fact, remember.
Still nothing happened.
I eyed the sling on the left side of my seat. “Hyperjump?” I asked Naga.
“Hyperjump!” she responded.
But we didn’t. Naga tipped her bulbous yellow head upward, indicating she wanted chin scritches.
I obliged. “Alanik?” I said. “How’s Bob? Any word?”
“Word!” Bob fluted over the channel. Engineering had attached clip-on microphones to the slugs’ hammocks so we could hear the taynix during flight.
“That’s all the information I have,” Alanik said.
Of course it was. I sighed again.
“So,” Nedd said. “Anyone know any good jokes?”