Difference between revisions of "Summary:Skyward"

Spensa settles into the cockpit of her Poco-class starfighter for the first time since Bim and Morningtide died. The rest of Skyward Flight and hershe are going on another training routine. Cobb directs them to a set of coordinates, where five full-fledged DDF flights are monitoring a large group of falling debris, having lost orbit. They are all present in case the Krell come to prevent the humans from obtaining more acclivity rings. Skyward Flight is there to have some target practice, as their destructors have been outfitted with beacons to tag valuable space junk. The members of the flight go out in pairs to tag the junk for a while, as Spensa and Cobb argue over radio about whether or not they're using Kimmalyn's talent as a gunner and poor skills as a fighter pilot correctly. After a while M-Bot begins to talk to her, when all of a sudden, the sky begins to darken and an absolute behemoth of a piece of space junk slowly comes into view, descending towards Detritus. On the bottom of it are hundreds ifof decaying acclivity rings, and with the falling piece of junk come 30 Krell fighters. Cobb instructs the flight to flee the fight, only for Spensa to get tailed on the way out. While she's being chased, M-Bot reveals that the behemoth rock is in fact half of a C-137-KJM orbital shipyard with an added delver training facility. Kimmalyn snipes the Krell after it breaks Spensa's shield, and Nedd sees six Krell tailing two members of Nightstorm Flight, who he follows. Spensa goes after him to act as wingmate, but the two members of Nightstorm Flight go through a hole in the shipyard, along with the six Krell and Nedd, forcing Spensa to follow.

Spensa heads down the elevator to Igneous, and when she exits, the people there part, letting her through, some soldiers even saluting her. Spensa goes to where her mother sells algae wraps to off-shift workers, her mother sees her, and runs over to embrace her. They go back to selling wraps, and Spensa realizes her mother thinks she's been kicked out of Flight School. Spensa shows her the jumpsuit and cadet pin and tells her that she'll graduate in two weeks. Spensa tells her mother that once she graduates, they can move into a bigger apartment and mebe rich, to which her mother tells her that the DDF made the same promise if she would simply publicly accept that her father was a coward. She opted not to, so remains poor and selling algae wraps as a show of public defiance. Spensa tells her mother of her fear of the defect, and her mother tells her it's made up, but that her Gran-Gran has a different opinion. Spensa goes to her old apartment and sees her Gran-Gran, near blind, sorting beads by color. She starts to help her, and her Gran-Gran asks her if she wants to hear a story about Alexander the Great, or Hervor, or Beowulf. Spensa tells her she is scared and confused and doesn't want to hear any more stories, and she asks her Gran-Gran if any of the people in the stories she tells Spensa are real. Gran-Gran tells Spensa it doesn't matter, as stories bring normal people hope. Spensa then tells Gran-Gran that she saw the holorecording of the Battle of Alta, and that it's true that her father turned coward. Gran-Gran considers this for a moment, then tells Spensa she's going to tell her a story. Spensa protests, but Gran-Gran tells her it is her own story, and Spensa stops, intrigued, as she's never heard a story about Gran-Gran before. Gran-Gran tells her a story about back when she was a little girl aboard the ''Defiant'' and her father, a historian, would tell her stories about great heroes from their days on Earth. It was Gran-Gran's mother who could hear the stars and power the ship to far away places. She then tells Spensa that the ''Defiant'' and its small fleet became involved in an intergalactic war, and the Krell began fighting them. They fought back, and the Captain of the ''Defiant'' ordered Gran-Gran's mother to take the ship somewhere, but she refused, and used all of her strength to send the ''Defiant'' to Detritus. Gran-Gran believes this is why the others hate Spensa and her , because they control where humanity can ultimately travel to, and now that they have no communal starship capable of traveling great distances, the others have no need of Spensa and her family's ability. As Spensa begins to climb down the ladder, Gran-Gran forcefully tells her to stop, and tells her that if the humans are to ever truly win and escape the Krell, they need someone like Spensa who can hear the stars.