“But you—”

“I can’t fly, Quirk,” I said. “There’s a medical reason I can’t explain right now. So you’ve got to go.” I squeezed her hands tighter.

“I failed Hurl,” she said softly. “I’ll fail the others.”

“No. The only way you fail, Kimmalyn, is if you’re not there. Be there.”

Her eyes watered, then she grabbed me in a hug. Arturo and Nedd rushed out of the room, and Kimmalyn ran out after them.

I sank down into my seat and leaned against the table, crossing my arms and laying my head down.

The radio chatter continued, including a new voice. “Flight Command,” the woman’s ragged voice said. “This is antiaircraft gun outpost forty-seven. We’re down, sir.”

“Down?” Ironsides said. “What happened?”

“That blast from the lifebuster hit us,” the woman said. “Stars. I’m just crawling out of the mess now. I tore this radio off my CO’s corpse. It looks like… AA guns forty-six and forty-eight are gone too. That bomb hit close. You’ve got a hole in your defenses, sir. Scud, scud, scud. I need medical transports!”

“Understood, outpost forty-seven. Sending—”

“Sir?” the gunner’s voice said again. “Tell me you have that on radar.”

“What?”

I felt a chill.

“Debris fall,” the gunner said. “North of here. Hold on a minute, I’ve got some binoculars…”

I waited, tense, imagining a single gunner climbing over the wreckage of her destroyed gun emplacement.

“I have visual on multiple Krell ships,” the gunner said. “A second group, coming down far away from the battle for the shipyard. Sir, they’re coming in right where our defenses are out. Confirm! Did you hear me!”

“We heard,” Ironsides said.

“Sir, they’re heading right for Alta. Scramble the reserves!”

There were no reserves. The chill inside me became ice. Ironsides had committed everything we had to the battle for the shipyard. And now, a second group of Krell had appeared from the sky—right where the bomb had knocked out our defenses.

It was a trick.

The Krell wanted this. They wanted to draw our fighters into a battle far from Alta. They wanted to convince us that all of the Krell ships were engaged, so that we threw everything we had at them. Then they dropped a lifebuster on our AA guns to open the path.

That way, they could bring in more ships and another bomb.

Boom.

No more Defiants.

“Riptide Flight,” Admiral Ironsides said. “I want you back at Alta immediately! Full speed!”

“Sir?” the flightleader said. “We can disengage, but we’re a good thirty minutes out, even at Mag-10.”

“Hurry!” she said. “Get back here.”

Too slow. I thought. Alta was doomed. There weren’t any ships. There weren’t any pilots.

Except one.

49

Still, I hesitated.

I’d decided not to go with Nedd and the others because it was too dangerous. What about the defect?

In that moment, Hurl’s voice returned to me. A pact. she seemed to whisper. Brave until the end. No backing down, Spin.

No backing down. Alta was in danger, and I was just going to sit here? Because I was afraid of what I might do?