Chapter Five Arturo #2
I should have told him this wasn’t the time, but apparently we had nothing but time.
“Your mom is a good joke,” Gilaf said.
“Good one, Ghost,” Nedd said, using the callsign Gilaf had given himself. Nedd was, of course, the one who had taught Gilaf about your-mom jokes in an attempt to help him fit in with the team.
“Was it?” Alanik asked. “I still do not understand why this joke is funny.”
“It is,” Nedd said. “Trust me. Your-mom jokes are classic.”
“Your mom is a classic,” Gilaf said.
“Are we going to hear this the whole trip?” I asked.
“Your mom is the whole trip,” Gilaf returned.
“Gilaf isn’t being very quiet,” Sadie said.
“Your mom is very quiet,” Gilaf added.
“I really do not get it,” Alanik said.
“You’re probably better off,” I told her.
“Your mom is better off,” Gilaf said.
“Huh,” Nedd said. “That last one doesn’t work as well. I’m not really sure why.”
“Your mom is—”
We were all spared the punch line when the hangar disappeared and we hung suddenly in a black sky filled with stars.
“—not sure why,” Gilaf said.
So we weren’t spared the punch line for long.
We’d emerged at the edge of a debris belt—huge chunks of rock floating just a few klicks away.
Unlike the platforms around Detritus, built hundreds of years ago by human hands, this collection of rocks and dust looked natural.
While our platforms encircled the planet, blocking it from sight, this field was looser, the rocks and dust farther apart and easier to fly through, offering a view of the planet beneath.
From here, the surface was a mottled purple-grey, but I wasn’t sure how much was the color of the planet and how much was filtered by the dust belt.
“Angel,” I said, using Alanik’s callsign, “can you sense the inhibitor field?”
“We’re right outside it,” she said. “Naga brought us as close as she could. Once we fly in, I won’t be able to use my powers and neither will the taynix.”
“Any insight about its source?” Any information she could gather out here might help us know where to look once we were inside the field.
“None,” she said. “The field feels…smooth. Impenetrable. I don’t know why it’s here or what’s causing it. If there’s an uninhibited pocket around the planet, I can’t feel it from here, but maybe we will understand more when we reach it.”
I hoped so, or we were bound to fail an important part of our mission. “Ranger Flight,” I said, “can you detect any threats in the debris?”
“Negative, Amphi,” Blaze said. “Looks clear.”
“Where would you like us to stop for your next surveillance?” I asked.
“We can scan as we go, but we can’t get good readings on the planet itself due to debris interference. Maybe stop a klick or two on the other side of the belt, so we have some cover while we decide the best approach?”
“Copy,” I said. “All flights, proceed toward the planet. Let’s take it slow and careful. It’ll take us a few hours to fly through, but I don’t want any ships getting wrapped around a rock.”
“Copy, Amphi,” Blaze said, and Ferret responded in kind.
“Ranger Flight, take point,” I said. “Skyward Flight, star formation around Orator.” We didn’t have enough ships for a proper star formation, but my flight surrounded Orator anyway, with Alanik flying in front, Gilaf’s and Sadie’s ships on either side, and me at the back.
From this vantage, I could keep an eye on everyone in the unit.
“Nedder, plot the best course toward the planet.”
“Copy, Amphi,” Nedd said. “Already working on it.”
We moved toward Blightfall, passing easily between the first layer of debris.
The dust was thin, mostly invisible around us, forming a hazy cloud around the larger pieces of orbiting rock in the distance.
Chunks of rock and ice spun slowly around the planet.
Our formation flew easily around them, but as soon as we passed, more appeared ahead.
Nedd sent the clearest path to our navigation systems, and we were able to reach dogfighting speeds.
“At this rate, we will reach the edge of the debris field in two hours,” Blaze said.
“Good,” I answered. “Everyone stay alert.” Our formation coasted around a chunk of rock as big as the city-sized trees that floated in the atmosphere of ReDawn.
Through my canopy I eyed it, towering over us.
If the citizens of Blightfall had been spacefaring, they could have built a space station on it, much like Platform Prime.
I skimmed along the side of the rock—and noticed something sticking out of the stone: a metal beam in an H shape.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “Take a look at this.” I slowed to get a better look while the rest of my formation swung around.
That beam was definitely human-made. I’d seen similar ones in our installations, and even in some of the taller structures in the city-sized caverns beneath Detritus. Above it, also lodged in the rock, was more metal, gnarled and twisted beyond recognition.
“Um, Amphi?” Sadie said. “Are we sure Blightfall hasn’t blown up?”
“The intelligence from the Superiority wreckage said that the debris field predates the current human settlement,” Dasha said. “It looks similar to debris that leaks into the nowhere, so it’s possible there was a nowhere portal on this planet at one time.”
We’d encountered portals into the nowhere before.
While a cytonic could hyperjump through the nowhere from any uninhibited place, the only way to go into the nowhere and remain there was through one of the mysterious doors located around the galaxy.
They were more of a hazard than anything, though.
More than a few people who went in never found their way back out.
“Looks more like a planet blew up and the pieces got captured by Blightfall’s gravity,” Nedd said, and by the look of the debris, he wasn’t wrong.
“It would take a tremendous amount of energy to explode a planet,” Suki said. “More likely a collision between planetary bodies, but such things are exceptionally rare.”
“Well, something happened here,” I said, “though it’s not part of our mission to figure out what, unless it’s connected to the strange inhibitor field. Let’s get back in formation and keep moving.”
We flew the next two hours in blessed relative silence, free from both your-mom jokes and Sadie’s intermittent outbursts.
The planet loomed larger as we approached, its surface less obscured by rock and debris.
Its mottled areas were still tinged a purple-grey even as we cleared much of the dust field, though the southern oceans began to appear more blue.
“Hey, Amphi?” Underscore said over the general channel. “I’ve got motion on my proximity monitor at three o’clock.”
I looked at my own monitor in the direction he indicated. “We’ve got motion all over,” I said. “There’s a ton of debris spinning out there.”
“I saw it too,” Blaze said. “I think it’s loose rubble stripping off the larger chunks of rock.”
“How close?” I asked.
“About a klick,” Underscore said. “It wasn’t moving like a rock, though. It swerved around a piece of debris, like a ship.”
“Underscore and I will check it out,” Blaze said, and the two scout ships cut in that direction.
“Alanik,” I said, “any cytonic activity?”
“We’re still in the inhibitor field,” she said. “I can’t sense anything.”
“Oh, there it is!” Sadie said.
This time I saw it too. The blip appeared on my monitor next to one of the larger pieces of debris and then disappeared again, as if it had taken off from the rock and then landed.
“What the scud is that?” Nedd asked.
“All ships, wide sweep formation,” I said. The object looked too small to be a crewed ship, and most of the remotely piloted drones we encountered were the same size as our fighters. We needed to determine what it was and whether it presented a threat.
“I have visual on the object,” Underscore said. “Scud, what is that thing?”
“Underscore?” Blaze said. “What are you seeing?”
Underscore didn’t immediately respond. As I passed a smaller chunk of debris, my own proximity monitor blipped: an object heading straight for me. Others appeared on my monitor, lifting off pieces of debris all around us like a cloud.