Skyward

Spensa attends graduation, struggling with her emotions and her shattered self-confidence. The ceremony is short so that the full DDF force can fly out for the anticipated battle over the shipyard. Cobb stops her and argues that they can fight Ironsides’s dismissal of her, even if it only gets her a full pilot’s pin and an honorable discharge, like Arturo. However, when she admits that she has heard the stars and seen the eyes, he goes pale and no longer believes that she should be in the air with their pilots.

Nedd finds Spensa and drags her to a party meant to celebrate the now-absent graduates. There, they find Arturo and Kimmalyn. Arturo’s parents have access to radio descriptions of the battle, but the four of them quickly realize that even this account of events has been sanitized. Spensa suggests that they tune into the live battle radio feed so that they can hear the pilots and Command.

As they listen, Spensa closes her eyes, hears the stars, and sees the eyes again, then shakes away the image. The Krell have committed their full force of 100 ships. After a struggle, the pilots destroy a lifebuster, but most of them are unable to outrun the blast. FM’s voice announces that very few scouts survived. Ironsides orders them to return to the main battle over the shipyard. Spensa notes that the pilots need help, but Arturo says that the entire DDF force is already in the battle. His family, however, has three ships of their own; his parents forbid their use and reserve them for escape. Now, the group agrees to steal the ships and fly them to the battle. Spensa convinces Kimmalyn to go on the third ship in her place, explaining only that she has a medical reason that prevents her from flying.

A call comes through from those manning the guns on the surface. Those guns and the surrounding area have been destroyed by the lifebuster, and there are few survivors. This is followed by a report of a debris fall near their area, and even more Krell are coming through the opening. Spensa’s realization mirrors that of Ironsides: The shipyard is a distraction. The Krell wanted the DDF to commit their full forces to taking the shipyard while a lifebuster made a hole in the base’s defenses so that another bomb would then destroy both Alta and Igneous. Ironsides orders pilots toward the area, but Spensa knows that more help is needed. There are no ships left, but she heads toward M-Bot.

Spensa pauses before leaving, wondering if she is making the right decision. She might put the others at risk, but she decides that the threat of the Krell is worse than anything her “defect” would cause. She realizes that M-Bot will not wake up, so she heads to the base to get Arturo’s old ship, which was badly damaged in a battle. She demands that the ground crew retrieve the ship for her even though it has no shield and the controls are off. They also ask if she has clearance from Ironsides, but Spensa bluntly asks if they want to waste time calling a woman who has an irrational dislike of Spensa while pilots die. The crew preps the ship. Ironsides sees a lone ship leaving base and wonders if any of the rich families have answered her call for aid, then realizes that “the defect,” as she sees Spensa, has joined the battle.

Despite her fear over the defect, Ironsides accepts the reality that Spensa may be the only fighter able to reach the lifebuster in time. She orders Spensa to shoot the bomb if she can. Spensa knows that her friends likely won’t reach Arturo’s family’s ships and get into the air in time; the lifebuster will reach Alta in eight minutes. As Spensa flies the rickety ship, she hears voices again and realizes that she is somehow hearing the orders sent to the Krell. Meanwhile, Ironsides recognizes the flying skills that Spensa’s father exhibited.

Shots across the ship’s nose kill Spensa’s destructors. She knows that the bomb’s shield is close to quitting, but now, her only option for stopping the bomb is to ram her ship into it, killing herself in the process. She relays this over the radio, and Ironsides offers a blessing. However, the ship starts breaking down before she can reach the bomb.

Spensa regains minimal control of her ship and plans to use speed to gain altitude and still hit the bomb. She only manages to pull up her nose and skid across the ground. The ship is destroyed but does not explode, so Spensa reports that she is down, and Command warns of a Krell fighter nearby. Spensa senses that the fighter is aware of her ability to hear them, and she knows that it will continue to come after her. Jorgen calls that he is on his way to help, but he is too far away. Arturo, Nedd, and Kimmalyn approach the bomber in the stolen ships and take over the fight.

Suddenly, another ship appears and destroys the enemy ship. It is M-Bot, flown by Cobb. He lands near Spensa and exits the ship so that she can fly it instead. M-Bot explains that he didn’t shut off completely and could hear Spensa calling on him for help. He rewrote some of his code to make her his pilot instead of a long-dead human. Cobb tells Spensa to drive the bomber back into the sky so that it will not destroy Alta or him. They fly back toward the bomber to help destroy it. Now, Spensa feels a new confidence and knows that when pulling out of a fall could have saved humanity, she did it and did not eject. She now knows that she is not a coward.

Spensa races toward the bomber. As Nedd, Arturo, and Kimmalyn arrive, she orders Kimmalyn to hover below the battle and take aim at the bomber. Jorgen and other pilots arrive, and Spensa orders them to help create distractions while Jorgen and FM get close enough to break through the bomb’s shields. Spensa hears the Krell ordering the bomb to be dropped. Kimmalyn hits the exact spot where the bomb connects to the ship, causing the bomber to move forward while the bomb itself falls toward the ground. All the pilots except Spensa flee to avoid the blast. Spensa dives.

Ironsides and her staff wait for the bomb to hit Alta base, relieved that it will not destroy Igneous. Spensa, however, spears the bomb with her lightlance and starts dragging it away as fast as M-Bot can go. He tells her that they will not be able to avoid the blast if they fly far enough to get it away from Alta before it explodes. He starts checking all his equipment to discover another way to escape, and Spensa feels herself leaning into her seat and “becoming” M-Bot’s processors. To M-Bot’s surprise, his cytonic hyperdrive, which Spensa had never understood when he mentioned it, is now suddenly functional. Spensa activates it with her mind, and they escape the blast.

Spensa feels as if she is in a place away from reality. The eyes watch her, and she knows that they are unhappy. She wonders if they are the reason why M-Bot’s cytonic hyperdrive did not previously function. She shakes herself out of this strange trance and finds herself still inside M-Bot, who doesn’t understand what happened. The hyperdrive no longer functions.

Spensa hears the stars calling and sees an opening in the debris that seems too convenient to be a coincidence. M-Bot informs her that Ironsides is calling on the radio. Spensa puts her helmet back on, and Ironsides thanks her, noting that she will have to pardon Spensa’s father now. Spensa tries to turn her controls toward the ground, but the nose of the ship turns skyward. Ironsides tries to stop her, telling her that even being in the sky puts her at risk. Spensa notes that her ship has no destructors, so other pilots can shoot her down without a problem if she comes back like her father. Ironsides urges her to return to base with honors, but Spensa flies toward the sky.

As she moves through the debris belt, Spensa realizes that people once lived in that belt; the debris are pieces of space stations. She hears more chatter from the Krell in her mind. Suddenly, something slips into her mind, and she sees flashes of images. As she screams, M-Bot puts up a shield to block what the Krell are doing to her. She realizes that they must have sent similar images to her father; when he attacked DDF fighters near the planet, he was attacking them because he thought they were Krell and believed that all the humans were dead. She realizes that he believed himself to be protecting his people and could no longer perceive reality.

A ship approaches. M-Bot translates its label and says that the ship is used for penitentiary maintenance and containment of Earthlings. Spensa tells him to mostly release the shield but to snap it back up if she screams again. She listens to the Krell communications in her head and hears one of them noting that she is staring at it and looks like she wants to eat it. The Krell sounds frightened. Its fellows note that they have “overwritten” her vision so that she is not seeing the Krell themselves. M-Bot breaks into their communications, but the Krell quickly revoke his access. Spensa tells M-Bot to help her navigate through the debris belt and back to the planet. The Krell who had been coming for her ship retreat. M-Bot has hacked into portions of their systems, and he tells her excitedly that he has “answers.”

Back in Command, Spensa is now surrounded by DDF commanders, NALs, and flight leaders waiting for answers. She starts to realize that they no longer believe that she will turn on them. She waits to provide answers until Cobb, Jorgen, and Rodge all arrive. Ironsides tries to claim M-Bot as DDF property, but Spensa tells her that M-Bot will fry his systems if the DDF tries to take him or inspect him without permission. She states that the DDF will get his technology only on M-Bot and Spensa’s terms.

Spensa explains what she found in Krell systems. Before the humans came to Detritus, there was a vast intergalactic war between humans and aliens. Humans lost, and the aliens created a coalition, deeming humans too aggressive and uncivilized to be part of the intergalactic community. They demanded that human fleets surrender their authority, but the Defiants’ ancestors believed themselves innocent because they never participated in the war, so they refused to turn themselves in. The Krell, which didn’t exist at the start of the war, were sent to capture or contain those humans. They cornered the humans, and Spensa’s great-grandmother brought them all to the long-abandoned planet of Detritus.

The Krell set up a station to watch the humans. The Krell are not murderous; they just act as prison guards. The alien coalition believes that if humans ever escape Detritus, they will try to conquer the galaxy. The lifebusters are meant to destroy the humans only if they get close to escaping Detritus, but the aliens are not actively trying to destroy humans in general because they have laws against destroying an entire species. The regular Krell attacks are meant to occupy the humans and prevent them from conducting the necessary research to escape the planet.

The aliens’ political landscape has changed, and there are now debates over whether to continue tolerating the humans’ defiance. The most recent lifebuster was indeed meant to destroy the humans, and humanity’s defeat of the Krell in the recent attack has left them scared.

Hearing this intel, Ironsides argues that it changes nothing because the Krell still outnumber them. However, Spensa knows that the way to defeat an enemy is by predicting their next moves. She knows now what the Krell didn’t want humans to discover—that the so-called “defect” gives certain humans the ability to navigate through space. She recognizes that the Krell have always targeted particularly good pilots because they know of the defect’s existence and want to prevent humans from figuring out how to fly to the stars. As Gran-Gran told Spensa, the defect is the key to survival and to escaping Detritus.