Starsight

The ship managed to recover enough to course correct and hit the atmosphere at a better angle. Whoever was flying that drone didn’t want it to . . .

Wait. I couldn’t hear anything—no commands being directed through the nowhere to the ship. Which meant that was no drone. There was a live pilot inside.

Air friction from reentry made my shield begin to glow, and my ship trembled as the atmosphere grew thick enough to be noticeable.

That ship is going to tear itself apart if it stays at that angle, I thought.

“Command, it’s coming in hard,” Kimmalyn said. “Orders?”

“I’m going to try to snare that ship before it crashes,” I said.

“That could be dangerous,” Cobb said.

“It jumped in using a hyperdrive. Do you want to let it pulverize itself, or do you want to try to grab the technology? Maybe if we save it, we won’t need to try Rodge’s plan after all.”

“Go ahead and chase the ship,” he said. “But I’m scrambling the rest of Skyward Flight in case you need backup.”

“Confirmed,” I said. “Quirk, cover me. I’m going in for the ship.”

“Sure,” she answered, “but what if this is some kind of trap?”

“Then try not to laugh too hard while you haul me out of it.”

“Spensa! What do you think I am? I would never gloat at you when you could see me.”

I grinned, then slammed my throttle forward, hitting overburn and darting after the ship. Its barely controlled descent had thrown off M-Bot’s intercept calculations, which he quickly redid.

Scud, it was going to be close. At these speeds, the ship would almost certainly destroy itself when it hit. The pilot seemed to know it; the ship jerked upward—trying to level out—but then dove right back down. The acclivity controls were obviously malfunctioning.

That got worse as the atmosphere thickened and the increasing rush of wind caused the alien ship to start spinning in a deadly rotation. Fortunately, my atmospheric scoops redirected airflow, giving me more control. My cockpit barely trembled, despite the speed of my acceleration straight toward the ship.

The incredible g-forces pushed through M-Bot’s advanced GravCaps, and the familiar sensation of weight pressed me backward. It pulled my lips away from my teeth as I gritted them. It pulled my arms back, making them feel like they were tied with weights.

Behind me, Doomslug made an annoyed fluting sound. I glanced at her, but she’d hunkered down against the wall and gone rigid. She seemed to be able to handle this. I turned my attention back to the spiraling ship and focused on keeping it in the center of my vision. Its movements were growing increasingly erratic, and suddenly I was hit with a wave of emotion from inside that cockpit—an anxiety that somehow I connected to. A frantic, desperate panic.

I recognized something about the “tone” of those emotions—it felt as if they were being intentionally broadcast. Whoever was in there . . . they were the one who had spoken to me earlier, the one who had said they heard me.

This wasn’t just an alien pilot. This was another cytonic.

I’m coming, I thought, hoping they could hear. Hang on!

“Spin?” Cobb’s voice, over the intercom. “Spin, you need to catch that ship. Our analysts think it might be manned.”

“Trying,” I said through gritted teeth.

M-Bot’s readout on my canopy told me we were under fifteen seconds from impact. We blasted down through the atmosphere, pointed straight toward the dusty surface below. The front of my ship was aglow, and I knew I was trailing my own burning line of smoke. Not from damage, but from the raw energy of cutting through the atmosphere like this.

Now! I thought, drawing just close enough to the alien ship. I launched my light-lance and speared it right between its twin boosters.

“Use cockpit rotation!” I screamed, pulling up—switching on my acclivity ring to counter the planet’s gravity—and bracing myself as I frantically leveled off my dive.

Blackness crept across my vision as all the blood rushed to my feet, the g-forces now pointing down. M-Bot rotated my seat in an attempt to compensate—the human body is far better at taking forces straight back than it is at taking them downward.

The cockpit trembled as I slowed our descent. Scud . . . I hoped the g-forces didn’t scramble the pilot. They nearly scrambled me. My vision blacked out completely for a few seconds, and my pressure suit constricted around my waist and legs, trying to force the blood back up into my brain.

As my vision returned I found myself trembling, my face sweaty and cold, a rushing sound in my ears. The ship slowed—mercifully—to a steady Mag-1. My cockpit seat rotated back as I pulled out of the dive completely.

I glanced over my shoulder to Doomslug, who was fluting in an annoyed tone from where she’d been pressed against the wall. Did not having bones make this harder or easier for her? Either way, we both seemed to have weathered the moment.