A dozen spots of white light appeared inside my eyelids. Then hundreds. I felt the attention of something vast, something terrible, shift toward me.

I gasped and opened my eyes. The pinpricks of light vanished, but my heart thundered in my ears, and all I could think of was that inescapable sensation of things seeing me. Unnatural things. Hateful things.

When I finally managed to put my attention back on the battle, Cloak was reporting a full-on conflict with the lifebuster’s guard ships. Arturo turned a few frequencies and found their flight chatter—twelve scouts had been unified in a single flight for this battle.

Arturo switched back and forth between the scout channel and the flightleader channel. Both battles raged, but finally—at long last—some welcome news came in.

“Bomber destroyed!” Cloak said. “The lifebuster bomb is in free fall, heading toward the ground. All scouts, pull out! Over-burn! Now!” Her channel wavered and fuzzed.

We waited, anxious. And I thought I could hear the sequence of three explosions—in fact, I was sure of it—echoing in the near distance. Scud. That had been close to Alta.

“Cloak?” Ironsides asked. “Nice work.”

“She’s dead,” a soft voice said on the line. That was FM. “This is callsign: FM. Cloak died in the blast. There are… sir, there are three of us left in the scout flight. The others died in the fighting.”

“Confirmed,” Ironsides said. “Stars accept their souls.”

“Should we… return to the other battle?” FM asked.

“Yes.”

“All right.” She sounded rattled.

I looked toward the others, frustrated. Surely there was something we could do. “Arturo,” I said, “doesn’t your family have some private ships?”

“Three fighters,” he said. “Down in the deep caverns. But as a rule, they don’t get involved in DDF battles.”

“Even a desperate one like this?” Kimmalyn asked.

Arturo hesitated, then spoke more softly. “Especially a battle like this. Their job is to protect my family if we have to evacuate. The worse things get, the less likely my parents would be to commit their ships.”

“And if we didn’t ask them?” Nedd said. “What if we just took the ships?”

He and Arturo exchanged looks, then grinned. Both looked at me, and my heart trembled with excitement. To fly again. In a battle like this, like the Battle of Alta.

The battle where… where my father had broken. It was too dangerous for me to be up there. What if I did what he did, and turned on my friends?

“Take Kimmalyn,” I found myself saying.

“You sure?” Arturo asked.

“I’m not!” Kimmalyn said. She grabbed my hands. “Spin, you’re better than I am. I’ll just fail again.”

“My family’s ships are in a secure cavern,” Arturo said. “It will take us at least fifteen minutes to get them up the private ship elevator. That’s not counting the part where we have to somehow sneak in and steal them.”

I squeezed Kimmalyn’s hands. “Quirk,” I told her, “you’re the best shot I’ve ever seen, the best I’ve ever heard of. They need you. FM and Jorgen need you.”