Page 17 of Blightfall

But we didn’t. Naga tipped her bulbous yellow head upward, indicating she wanted chin scritches.

I obliged. “Alanik?” I said. “How’s Bob? Any word?”

“Word!” Bob fluted over the channel. Engineering had attached clip-on microphones to the slugs’ hammocks so we could hear the taynix during flight.

“That’s all the information I have,” Alanik said.

Of course it was. I sighed again.

“So,” Nedd said. “Anyone know any good jokes?”

I should have told him this wasn’t the time, but apparently we had nothing but time.

“Your mom is a good joke,” Gilaf said.

“Good one, Ghost,” Nedd said, using the callsign Gilaf had given himself. Nedd was, of course, the one who had taught Gilaf about your-mom jokes in an attempt to help him fit in with the team.

“Was it?” Alanik asked. “I still do not understand why this joke is funny.”

“It is,” Nedd said. “Trust me. Your-mom jokes are classic.”

“Your mom is a classic,” Gilaf said.

“Are we going to hear this the whole trip?” I asked.

“Your mom is the whole trip,” Gilaf returned.

“Gilaf isn’t being very quiet,” Sadie said.

“Your mom is very quiet,” Gilaf added.

“I really do not get it,” Alanik said.

“You’re probably better off,” I told her.

“Your mom is better off,” Gilaf said.

“Huh,” Nedd said. “That last one doesn’t work as well. I’m not really sure why.”

“Your mom is—”

We were all spared the punch line when the hangar disappeared and we hung suddenly in a black sky filled with stars.

“—not sure why,” Gilaf said.

So we weren’t spared the punch line for long.

We’d emerged at the edge of a debris belt—huge chunks of rock floating just a few klicks away. Unlike the platforms around Detritus, built hundreds of years ago by human hands, this collection of rocks and dust looked natural. While our platforms encircled the planet, blocking it from sight, this field was looser, the rocks and dust farther apart and easier to fly through, offering a view of the planet beneath. From here, the surface was a mottled purple-grey, but I wasn’t sure how much was the color of the planet and how much was filtered by the dust belt.

“Angel,” I said, using Alanik’s callsign, “can you sense the inhibitor field?”

“We’re right outside it,” she said. “Naga brought us as close as she could. Once we fly in, I won’t be able to use my powers and neither will the taynix.”

“Any insight about its source?” Any information she could gather out here might help us know where to look once we were inside the field.

“None,” she said. “The field feels…smooth. Impenetrable. I don’t know why it’s here or what’s causing it. If there’s an uninhibited pocket around the planet, I can’t feel it from here, but maybe we will understand more when we reach it.”

I hoped so, or we were bound to fail an important part of our mission. “Ranger Flight,” I said, “can you detect any threats in the debris?”