Dove Alight

by Karen Bao

  A glittering icosahedral satellite approaches in the foreground—the Vela. Alex’s Pygmette chases after it, scalding it with a laser until patches of it glow orange. But the Vela is still whole and should it crash, its impact on Earth will be massive. We have to blast each satellite apart, not turn them into superheated missiles that’ll cause even greater destruction.

  We need more.

  “Pig A3, watch out!” Yinha calls. “Projectile on your right!”

  I don’t waste time looking behind us, instead pulling a loop-the-loop that slams Wes and me into our seats. A loyalist missile jets underneath our ship at its zenith and collides with the ISS, knocking off a dangling module. Way to go, Committee. That module equates to several kilotons of mass that won’t smash into Battery Bay. I allow myself a deep recovery breath to celebrate the narrow miss.

  But I’ve let down my guard too soon.

  In the next instant, three things happen at once. The main body of the ISS smashes into the Vela, sending fragments flying into space and knocking the smaller satellite toward Earth. Loyalist ships’ missiles incinerate Dovetail’s sole Omnibus ship, sending up a vermilion flare that burns for a moment before the vacuum outside snuffs it out. And an armada of sleek Militia ships speeds into sight behind us—Committee reinforcements, fresh from Base I.

  As my headset bursts with Dovetail’s cries of despair, the hope seeps out of me, bit by bit, and I search in vain for a reason to hold on.

  “NEVER MIND THE ENEMY SHIPS!” SHOUTS Chief Airman Roy, above the noise of his jostling spacecraft as it dodges enemy fire. “You Dovetailers have superior weapons—use those to stop the cascade. We will cover for you!”

  “Cover?” Wes yells as I twist our ship in a corkscrew. “How can you cover us from that?”

  Behind us, dozens of Batterer crafts aggregate, facing the enemy ships head-on and spraying them with bullets and the occasional precious missile. It’s a shield—a shield made of our allies’ bodies and the thin-walled old spacecraft encasing them. If they were fighting Pacifian ships, I wouldn’t feel so sick with worry, but none of those blocky spacecraft are in sight. Maybe the Committee didn’t trust their spacefaring skills . . . or the Pacifians have refused to help after the Committee’s brutal bombing of the metro tunnel.

  “No, Roy!” I let out forward exhaust to slow us down. “We won’t leave you all behind. That’s abandonment.”

  “Not quite,” Roy says gruffly. “It’s partitioning.”

  Moment by moment, the sky around our ship becomes darker and clearer as the Committee ships’ barrage of lethal armaments thins out. It makes our flight easier, but I know that the Batterers’ spacecrafts, which we’ve left behind, are taking the brunt of the assault.

  “It’s not right!” I say, amidst enthusiastic agreement from Yinha, Alex, and several other Dovetailers.

  “Listen up.” Roy sounds impatient. “If we die for our city, then we will have done our jobs. I know all about you Dovetail pilots’ accomplishments, about the weapons and skills you have that my troops do not. We are giving you the space to do what you need to do. In other words, we trust you to help save Battery Bay. Do not put that trust to waste. Understood?”

  I nod, and then remember that Roy can’t see me.

  “Understood,” I say, full of guilt for what will almost certainly come. The Committee sacrificed hundreds of Pacifian troops when they tried to take the metro tunnel—how is this any different?

  I have a horrible feeling that the outcome will be the same: Earthbound troops marching or flying into grave danger and dying in droves. But today, the Batterers had a choice. And they’re fighting to defend their families, their city—not ours. Dovetail must respect their decision.

  Foreboding and gratitude clash within me as I push our Pygmette closer to the ISS, dodging other satellites and chunks of debris still in orbit. Like an automaton, I tap the joystick in different directions, making myself queasy and causing Wes’s face to turn green with spacesickness. If we flew a straight path, a collision would kill us within seconds. As we approach geosynchronous orbit, where old Earthbound civilizations put the majority of their satellites, the space around us becomes a minefield.

  Nine Dovetail ships follow us—but within five seconds, it’s eight. Another Pygmette, trying to dodge a loyalist missile, careens into a spent satellite and explodes. I cry out before I can switch off my headset. Dovetail’s lost one ship and two lives.

  But what about the Batterers? How many of them have perished since I last looked back?

  “Eyes on the road, Stripes!” Yinha shouts.

  I return my eyes to our path to see both the ISS and the Vela crash into clusters of defunct comsats, which begin curving toward Earth as well. Gritting my teeth, I decrease our speed, wiggle the Pygmette’s joystick to dodge the rubbish in our way, and chase the satellites around the Earth. Now that we’ve descended into geosynchronous orbit, the time to circumscribe Earth is twenty-four hours. Looking at the continents and oceans speeding by beneath us makes me dizzy with the enormity of what we’re trying to do.

  In spite of our turbulent flight path, Wes continues shooting at the ISS and its smaller compatriots. One explosion, and the tiny Echo-3 splinters. Another, and the Astra 49 loses a solar panel. I watch the destruction with a mixture of satisfaction and resignation. Wes’s aim is good, but we need about four of him at four sets of controls.

  I crank the engines harder as we meet with air resistance in Earth’s upper atmosphere. The atmosphere—we’ve arrived too soon. There’s no hope of changing the falling satellites’ paths now, of yanking them from Earth’s gravitational clutches—all we can do is shoot them into pieces small enough to spare Battery Bay from being flattened.

  The falling satellite chunks begin to glow as atmospheric drag scalds their surfaces. Friction will eventually stop the fragments’ acceleration downward—but it won’t be enough. Terminal velocity will turn them into virtual bombs.

  Wes scores another hit on the ISS, taking off an antenna unit. Good. Rip that thing apart.

  A squat Batterer ship comes zipping into view, hurling missile after missile at the ISS, like a mosquito pestering an elephant. For a second I’m elated. Then I count one, two, three, four ships following it. And no more.

  “We got the loyalists off everyone’s backs,” a Batterer fighter says into our headsets. It’s a woman this time, not Chief Airman Roy, and her voice lacks the ringing tones of victory. I shudder and look in the rearview camera, at the empty space behind us, where the skeletons of angular ships glint against the dark sky.

  “At what cost?” I ask.

  “The ultimate one,” she says quietly. “Three quarters of the fleet is gone.”

  I fight down the sadness that’s breaking my concentration. That’s breaking me, opening a throbbing crack straight between my ribs. I knew what was going to happen when the Batterers stayed behind, but there was no way to predict how the pain would feel until I actually lived it.

  “It’s a cost each of us was willing to incur,” the woman says. “No one was fooled into dying for our home, understood?”

  Taking a deep breath, I nod and say, “To all of us in the sky today—destroy the satellite cascade. Shatter them. Our comrades didn’t die for Battery Bay to fall.”

  The remaining fighters, Dovetail and Batterer alike, train our wingtip weapons on the intact satellites, streaking the atmosphere with lasers, missiles, rockets, and torpedoes. Giving the Earthbound at the surface a light show.

  Do they think that they’re seeing shooting stars in the daytime? I wonder. Or do they know better now?

  Down below, Battery Bay glistens a million different colors, a sickeningly obvious target. It’s flanked on one side by Australia’s emerald-hued northern coast, and on the other by the sparkling ocean, which is a beautiful turquoise color I hadn’t imagined nature could dream up. Wes’s family is down there, on
that floating city. Sear, too, and our gruff taxi driver, and the revelers at the Moon Festival. This is for them.

  We don’t let up our assault until Yinha calls out, “Stop!” She’s afraid we might start hitting human-inhabited territory rather than satellites. Now we must watch the metal pieces fall.

  The first fragments make impact on and around Battery Bay. Gray clouds of debris rise, and fires catch. As the air above the city thickens with soot and brightens with flame, pockets of the city itself go dim, and I know that the lives within have been extinguished. Fewer than we’d worried we would lose, but still far, far too many.

  The majority of the satellite slivers don’t crush Battery Bay. They slice into the vibrant turquoise sea instead, cutting through the tan ropes of reef crisscrossing the coastal waters and ripping apart marine cities of coral that took millennia to grow.

  One of the last remaining on Earth, the Batterer soldier said.

  I should feel grateful that the reef took the brunt of the damage, but that gratitude is tempered by the knowledge that we’ve shifted the burden of death to nonhumans, to the spotted and striped fishes, spiraling and scalloped shells, and other strange creatures whose ancestors were on Earth before the human species even appeared.

  “Look at this,” I say to Wes. “Look at all of this.”

  He can’t. After taking in the patchily burning city and the dying reef, he turns and directs his steely gaze at me instead. Hugs me, holds me tight, presses his cheek against mine. Touching him grounds me in this tiny ship teetering above Earth, reminds me of the specks of goodness that endure amidst so much evil.

  For a moment, I shut my eyes, blocking out the horrors of the world around us, and pretend he’s the only thing that’s real.

  “GET A GOOD NIGHT’S REST,” MINISTER COSTA says, patting me on the back. “You’ll need it, for tomorrow.”

  Costa’s water-hair sits like putty on his scalp. His teal suit is wrinkled and sweat-stained. Today, the Batterers lost many of their best pilots and their space forces commander—and Costa had to report it to his people. To his credit, he hasn’t talked about the extensive damage that Battery Bay sustained; he’s turned all his attention to ending the Lunar branch of the war as quickly as possible.

  The leaders and I sit in the InfoTech room, from which Rose’s team of hackers watches everything happening on the Moon. Protests on Base III, Committee rallies on Base V, and Dovetail construction on the Free Radical are among the many scenes playing on the HeRPs.

  Tomorrow. Costa’s words wring out the last of the energy in my body. I’ll do as my superiors ask me, but at some point, I worry that I’ll hit a wall and stop functioning.

  “If you’re planning skirmishes tomorrow, can you write in a coffee break?” Alex asks.

  “Skirmishes aren’t what we have in mind,” Andromeda says. “We discussed our next move while you were all . . . out there. The Committee’s attempt to destroy Battery Bay has backfired, to say the least. A fifth of their own fleet was destroyed today. And Base III’s uranium miners took advantage of the chaos to start an insurrection against occupying Militia forces.”

  Put like that, our situation sounds promising, and victory seems within reach. Yinha sits up straighter, seeming to shake off her exhaustion. Seeing her move lifts my flagging spirits.

  “No Pacifians were fighting today,” I say.

  “I dug into that,” Rose says. “Tried to find Pacifian voice records, or text documents—seems the Committee hasn’t been involving them in key decisions.”

  Costa sneers. “Unsurprising. Commander Jang may consider himself a leader, but he’s as obedient to the Committee as the rest of his countrymen are to the Pacifian Premier.” He wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Let us move on. As a response to today, Battery Bay’s voters have agreed to send three thousand additional troops to the Moon. They are en route now. The ones that were already here have left the Dugout in rovers to set up behind the mountains north of Base I. The peaks of eternal light, as you call them.”

  “With the lunar eclipse tomorrow, the peaks will be shrouded in darkness for four hours,” Asterion says. “The Batterer troops stationed there may approach invisibly.”

  “The loyalists won’t have a clue,” Rose adds. “My people are wiping the rovers’ signatures from the Committee’s satellite images every time those things pass over. And after the eclipse ends, there’ll be a pretty big solar storm that could keep the Committee on Base I for a few hours.”

  “There won’t be a better time to end this war,” Asterion concludes.

  The enormity of what we are about to do, the immediacy of it, twists its way into my brain. Suddenly, I recall what my siblings looked like before the war started—their innocent faces, so obviously enamored with life. Things could be that peaceful again.

  “All our engineers are repairing equipment and preparing vehicles and weapons for tomorrow,” Asterion says. “We’ve sent messages to our brothers and sisters on other bases and moved all civilians into the bunker. By this time tomorrow, Base I will be Dovetail’s, III and V will join us, and the Moon will be free.”

  He surveys the room, takes in the chaotic scenes playing on each HeRP, perhaps envisioning how each could end. “Or we will all have returned to dust.”

  DEEP BENEATH THE VOLCANO, IN THE UNDERGROUND bunker, eighty-year-old electric bulbs illuminate the worry on thousands of Dovetailer and Batterer faces, old and young alike. The old light bulbs are strung together in rows on the low ceiling, like a sky of flickering orange stars. Many people have gone to bed for the night, tossing and turning on thin cots stacked three on top of each other. The scene reminds me of the camaraderie of the Militia bunks, but on a larger scale and in a direr situation.

  Dug out of dark gray rock, the underground bunker zigzags for kilometers beneath the base. In an emergency, it could hold the residents of Bases I and II combined. Impossible to bomb from the lunar surface, airtight, impervious to solar flares and meteoroid storms, it’s everything one could want in a secure location. But if soldiers or toxic gas were to breach the bunker, it would turn into a mass murderer’s paradise.

  Dovetail and Batterer soldiers are still descending via the endless spiral staircases; I’m glad to see them reaching out to one another, keeping each other from falling.

  Although the strategy meeting for all troops didn’t last long, our mission tomorrow weighs heavy on all our minds. Our many tasks seem impossible: invade the base from above, while minimizing civilian casualties. Because I’ve escaped Governance once before, I’ve volunteered to go after the tyrants with Wes and Alex. Yinha let Wes off house arrest again, knowing that leaving him in the Dugout would waste his skills.

  Even though we’re only three people strong, our mission doesn’t have room for a less experienced team member’s mistakes. A single slipup—like Umbriel’s several days ago—could cost us our lives, and so we’ve decided not to let anyone else join us.

  Another small group, made up of Battery Bay’s best sneaks, will attempt to capture the Committee using a different route. But we all know they’re unlikely to make it halfway up the Committee’s tower. The burden’s on us.

  We will flush out the Committee and force them to negotiate with Dovetail.

  Put like that, our plan sounds ludicrous. Something or someone could capture or kill us before we get close to them. And would the Committee ever agree to peace talks? Since when has the Committee ever listened to anyone but themselves?

  “You and your friends picked the most dangerous job, Phaet. No surprise there, but . . .” Anka sits beside me on the cot, picking at the hangnails on her dry fingers. “Do you know how it feels for me, having to sit here while you try to sneak onto Base I?”

  I put my finger to my lips. Cygnus is sleeping—or trying to sleep—in the cot below. He lies on his side, pressing one ear into the thin mattress and covering the other with his hand. This innocent
-looking, fragile boy saved Battery Bay. My brother, who can’t keep the nightmares away but made sure millions of children could still have sweet dreams.

  “It’s not about wanting to fight the Committee,” Anka says, “even though you know I hate them. It’s about wanting to be with you every second. In case something happens and I can help out.”

  Anka feels restless too. I feel a pang of guilt for putting her in this situation—wanting to contribute to a battle she’d be better off avoiding. Thankfully, at thirteen years of age, she can’t join or be drafted into the invading Dovetail force. Her actions won’t cause me the same anguish the twins have caused their father. The Phis sit two rows down from us, deep in conversation; Ariel’s still off-duty. Umbriel looks as if he’s going to be sick, even though he has one of the easier tasks: standing guard outside the bunker tomorrow.

  “Anka, you can help Cygnus by being here.” My suggestion almost sounds like an order. Back in Shelter, she put herself in danger whenever she felt a situation was unjust, narrowly escaping debilitating injuries on several occasions. I can’t stomach the idea of anyone or anything hurting her again. “Remember, make sure Cygnus is always wearing earplugs. But if you hear strange noises from above or Dovetail announcements, take them out so he has all his senses and can protect himself. If the loyalists breach the bunker—”

  “I know what to do tomorrow,” Anka snaps. “But what if tomorrow goes by, and you don’t come back?”

  “If I ‘bite it,’ as they say in Militia?”

  Anka bows her head. “Yeah.”

  My death is a real possibility, as ever-present as my shadow. My brother and sister know it, though I’ve always skirted the issue with them. Now I picture the Moon without me. Strangely, the mental image doesn’t induce panic or fear. In fact, the Moon looks the same as it does now. Maybe we don’t notice ourselves and our impact in everyday life, but we underestimate the effects we have on others? I study the angles in Anka’s face and the new curves on her body—she’s always changing, and I find something new about her every day to take pride in.