Kimmalyn fell into line as, up above, several chunks of space debris fell at once. The regular fighters moved out of the way, letting them pass. We were flying relatively high, to give us time for good dives, so the ground was far below—though we were still very far from the rubble belt itself, the lowest layers of which flew three hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet.

Nedd picked one of the chunks and fell in behind it, ignoring the other three. So Kimmalyn charged her destructors for long range and then sniped all three pieces, tagging one right after another, without missing a single time.

“Stop showing off, Quirk,” Cobb said.

“Sorry, sir.”

I frowned, then called Cobb in private. “Cobb? Do you ever wonder if we’re doing this wrong?”

“Of course you’re doing it wrong. You’re cadets.”

“No,” I said. “I mean…” How could I explain? “Quirk, she’s a really good shot. Isn’t there a better way to use her? She feels like a failure in most of our exercises, because she’s the worst pilot. Maybe she could just snipe for us?”

“And how long do you think she’d sit out there popping off Krell before they swarmed her? Remember, if they decide any one pilot is too dangerous, they focus on that person.”

“Maybe we could use that. You said that anytime you can anticipate an enemy, that’s an advantage, right?”

He grunted. “Leave the tactics to the admirals, Spin.” He turned off the line as Nedd successfully tagged the debris.

“Good night, sweet prince,” M-Bot whispered as the junk crashed to the ground. “Or princess. Or, most likely, genderless piece of inanimate space junk.”

I looked up above, watching for more debris. Hurl would be on the next run, and I’d be her wing. Some junk was definitely moving up there. Several pieces of it… swarming down…

Not junk. Krell.

I bolted upright, hand going tense on my control sphere. Multiple flights of the enemy emerged from the rubble belt, and the full pilots moved to engage them.

“Fly down to twenty thousand feet, cadets,” Cobb said. “You’ll be here as reserves, but those pilots should be able to handle this. Looks like… only about thirty enemy ships.”

I settled back, but couldn’t relax as explosions began to light the sky. Soon, the debris falling around us wasn’t solely from the rubble belt. Cobb called for Hurl to do her run. Apparently we were going to continue despite the fighting, which was probably good training, as I thought about it.

Hurl performed an excellent maneuver, with a precise set of shots at the end. “Nice,” I told her as we fell into line. I didn’t get a reply, of course.

“Alas, poor space junk,” M-Bot said. “I would have pretended to know you, if I were capable of lying.”

“Can’t you do anything useful?”

“… This isn’t useful?”

“What about those Krell up there?” I asked him. “Can’t you… I don’t know, tell me about their ships or something?”