A wonderful new book is coming from Random House Children''s Books.

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Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson

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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson comes the first book in a new, high-flying trilogy featuring the legendary Skyward Flight as they undertake a deadly intergalactic mission to explore a mysterious alien world.

After decades of war against alien oppressors, the humans of the Defiant Defense Force are finally free. Yet for Arturo Mendez, leader of Skyward Flight, freedom isn’t what he thought it would be.

His first postwar assignment seems simple: The DDF has found evidence of other settlements of humans who were isolated during their long war against the aliens, and Arturo and his flight of pilots are to escort a team of diplomats as they attempt to make contact. It’s an easy mission—get in, guard the diplomats, and get out.

But no element of this mission turns out to be simple. Blightfall is inhospitable, surrounded by mysterious debris and covered in giant, invasive forests that have swallowed most of the planet. Upon arrival, Arturo’s team is attacked, and it quickly becomes clear that this human settlement isn’t what it appears to be.

Now trapped in an unfamiliar world and unsure who to trust, Arturo and his team must find allies and uncover long-buried secrets if they hope to escape and return home.

Leseprobe
One

Arturo

Three Days Earlier

We were entering a new era, my mother said. An era of freedom. No longer trapped on a forgotten rock, no longer imprisoned by an oppressive galactic empire, no longer living in a preserve like endangered but fearsome predators. An era of possibility, where we would become what humankind was always meant to be.

A new era in which there was money to be made, because if we didn’t capitalize on the Defiant Defense Force’s new need for interstellar trade infrastructure, someone else surely would. So it only made sense that my family’s starfighters were moved up to a docking platform in the rubble belt around Detritus, the planet we called home, to support our quest to secure intergalactic trade agreements, profiting off humankind’s new galactic freedom.

“Your mom is going to kill you,” Nedd said, peering around me through the doorway of the private hangar. We’d snuck past the ground crew huddled around a screen in the break room, watching clips from last night’s digball ­championship.

“Kill you!” added the yellow-­and-­blue slug peeking out of my backpack. She was the length of my forearm and twice as thick, with long rows of flexible spines that waved along her back.

“Thanks for your concern, Naga,” I said, scritching behind her first plume of spines.

“Hey, I was also concerned,” Nedd said. He curled the fin­gers of his prosthetic arm. On his shoulder perched another slug, this one entirely black with an iridescent blue shimmer. The slugs, also known as taynix, had powerful cytonic abilities. This one could send out a concussion blast that stunned anyone nearby, which had earned him the name Wham.

Wham watched the movement of the prosthetic with interest as Nedd bent the fingers one at a time. Nedd was shot down during the war for our freedom just weeks ago, and the crash left him with a limb ending just above his elbow. The prosthetic’s joints could bend, and its fingers could clench and relax. He manipulated the motion with electrodes tied to the remaining nerves in his upper arm, and he had been practicing in a flight simulator every day, trying to improve his control. The prosthetic was steady as he moved, his finger motions smooth.

But our holographic mockpits weren’t the same as flying actual starfighters. Nedd’s biological hand was shaking.

“You’re only concerned about me?” I asked.

“Of course,” Nedd said, though we both knew he was bluffing. His pale skin was even paler than usual. “Your mom won’t stay mad at me. I’m a delight.”

I was her son, but that only meant she’d be twice as angry at me for taking this risk with our family assets. I was supposed to be better than that.

Yet when I found out Nedd and I both had the afternoon off, I commissioned Naga to hyperjump us into my family’s hangar without a second thought. Under the new Defiant Defense Force hyperjumping regulations, I had to put in a request for a jump and wait for approval, but even my mother’s status as an assembly leader didn’t grant her access to the hyperjump logs, so she was none the wiser.

“These ships don’t see enough flight time,” I said. “In a way, we’re doing my mother a favor by taking them for a spin.”

“Totally,” Nedd said. “I’m sure your mother will see it that way.”

“Your mother will see it that way!” Wham added.

Ah, taynix. Ever the optimists.

“Looks clear,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Nedd and I ran for the two ships farthest from the door. These were Fresa-­class starships—single-­pilot fighters known for their speed and sleek design. We each climbed into a ship and ran system checks. My family’s ground team kept the ships well maintained and ready to fly at a moment’s notice, so we only had to do a few routine scans ­before takeoff.

I engaged the airlock, and the door between the maintenance rooms closed, cutting the crew off from the hangar. Above us, the ceiling rolled back to reveal the layers of platforms in the belt that filled the sky over Detritus, huge chunks of metal blocking out the stars.

“Ready when you are,” Nedd said over the radio.

“We are a go,” I told him, and we both engaged our acclivity rings, allowing our ships to lift vertically off the landing pad and float toward the open airlock door.

“Hey!” a voice shouted over my radio. “What the scud do you think you’re doing?”

“Doing!” Naga sang cheerfully, sliding out of my pack to rest along the side of my seat.

“Oh hi!” I replied over the radio. “Sorry, didn’t want to bother you. You all seemed busy! Arturo Mendez, taking the family ships for a routine flight. I’ll have them back inside of an hour.”

“Copy, Amphisbaena,” the voice said, using my callsign, as was customary over the radio. “But you’re not scheduled to take the ships today. Your parents’ orders are clear: If you want to take the ships, you’ll have to—­”

“No need to bother my parents!” I said. “We’ll be back be­fore you reach them anyway.” I hoped that was true. To avoid further argument, I changed my radio channel.

The hangar door finished rolling open, then started in the opposite direction as the ground crew overrode my commands. Nedd and I squeezed our ships through before the door closed, and we hovered side by side above the hangar platform, our acclivity rings keeping us aloft.

“Engage boosters,” I said. I shot off parallel to the hangar, flying through the wide space between the layers of the debris belt that orbited Detritus, like vat-­grown meat between two slices of algae bread. Nedd followed at my wing, slow but steady.

“This is going well,” I said.

“Yes,” Nedd said, though his voice was strained. “I can take off in a straight line. Throw me a party.”

Flying took a surprisingly light touch, so using the prosthetic couldn’t be easy. As both Nedd’s friend and his flightleader, I had to encoura…