Jerkface fell silent. Together, the four of us flew in an intercept course, picking up speed, moving to cut in front of the enemy fighter before it could get too close to Alta. I was worried we wouldn’t reach it in time, that it would zip right past us. But I needn’t have been so worried.

Because the moment we drew close enough, it swooped around and came straight for us.

11

My pulse raced. My face went cold.

But I realized, in that moment, that I wasn’t afraid.

I’d always worried that I would be. I talked big, I pretended like a champ. But how many fights had I actually been in? One or two scuffles with other kids when I was younger? Some sparring matches in judo classes?

A part of me had always worried that when I got into the sky, I’d panic. That I’d prove myself to be the coward everyone claimed I was. Like… like the lies said my dad had been.

But with a calm and steady hand, I eased up on the throttle and pulled into a turn, trying to position myself behind the enemy. I knew dogfighting techniques. I knew them backward and forward; I’d drawn them out in the margins of basically every set of notes I’d taken in class, regardless of the subject.

I was still hopeless. I made the curve way too wide, and Hurl nearly smashed into me because we had banked at different times.

“Wow,” Hurl said as the two of us recovered. “This is harder than it seems, eh?”

The Krell ship chose Jorgen to attack, letting out a blast of glowing destructor fire. I tried to help, but my turn was too sharp this time. Jorgen, Nedd, and the Krell ship all zipped away behind me in a sequence of dogfighting maneuvers.

I blushed, feeling useless. I’d always assumed I’d just… well, take to this naturally. But I struggled to get my ship even pointed in the right direction.

The Krell pulled into position again behind Jerkface—who cursed softly, and then did a near-perfect twin-S dodge. Suddenly all of this became so much more real to me. That was one of my flightmates. And the enemy was doing its best to kill him.

“Nice work, Jorgen,” Cobb said. “But be careful with those maneuvers in the future. If you fly too much better than your companions, the Krell will immediately target you. If they can identify flightleaders, they attack them first.”

“Shouldn’t they attack the weakest pilots first?” FM asked. “The easiest to kill.”

But that wasn’t the way the Krell thought. They always targeted the best pilots they could find, in an attempt to destroy our chain of command.

“I’ll explain later,” Cobb said, voice tense. “Nedd, you need to stick closer to Jorgen, if you can. Make the Krell have to worry about you tailing it if it tries to tail him.”

It was fortunate the Krell focused on good pilots, because Hurl and I would have made easy target practice. We could barely steer. Jerkface though… he performed a perfect Ahlstrom loop, almost losing the Krell ship.