“…delver destroyed my homeworld!”
“…can’t be fought…”
“…more careful…”
Winzik held up his clawed hands, and the crowd of aliens stilled. “You will be required to give us a certification of willingness. Please read the entire document, as it indicates the dangers you might be duty bound to face.”
A Krell in a blue-red shell emerged from the building and started handing out tablets. Again, I was struck by how…awkward the Krell looked in person. I’d always imagined them as these beastly monsters with terrible armor, like old-school knights or samurai. But Winzik and the official handing out tablets seemed somehow spindly, despite the exoskeleton. More like boxes with sets of too-long legs.
I slipped off my cargo container and snagged a tablet from the passing Krell. The form it contained was long and dry, but a quick read told me that it was a release intended to absolve the Superiority of responsibility for any harm that might come to us during the testing or subsequent military duty.
At the bottom, it asked for my name, travel identification number, and home planet. Then I was supposed to check a bunch of boxes, each one beside a sentence that was some variation on “This will be dangerous.” Did they really need to write it out seventeen different ways?
I could fill most of it out, but I didn’t think Alanik had an identification number. I walked up toward the dais at the front of the crowd, where a dione official was helping pilots with questions. They were busy, however, talking with the little gerbil creatures. These had a small platform with an acclivity ring on the bottom, which held them up to eye level.
Upon closer examination, I realized gerbil might have been the wrong term. Though they were only a handspan tall each, they walked on two legs and had long peaked ears and bushy white tails. A little like the foxes I’d studied in my Earth biology classes.
The small creature at the front, whose flowing red silken clothing looked very formal, was speaking. “I do not mean to imply lack of faith in the Superiority,” he said in a deep, aristocratic voice. I found it strange to hear such a regal voice coming from such a small creature. “But if I am to risk my crew, I wish more than vague promises and half implications. Will, or will not, this service entitle my people to be advanced in citizenship?”
“I am not a politician,” the dione replied. “I have no authority over the citizenship review committees. That said, I have promises that the committees will look favorably upon species who lend us pilots.”
“More Superiority vagueness!” the fox-gerbil said, then clapped his hands in a ritualistic way. The other fifteen fox-gerbils on the platform did so in unison. “Have we not proven ourselves time and time again?”
The dione drew their lips to a line. “I’m sorry, but I’ve told you what I know, Your Majesty.”
The gerbil hesitated. “ ‘Your Majesty’? Why, you misspeak, of course. I am but a humble and ordinary citizen of the kitsen people. We abandoned the monarchy upon our path to greater intelligence and citizenship—as required by the Superiority’s laws of equality.”
Behind him, the other fox-gerbils nodded eagerly.
The dione simply took their forms—which the gerbils had printed off at their size and filled out in red ink, with exaggeratedly large check marks. I tried to talk next, but one of the balloonlike aliens had been waiting, and began speaking immediately.
I frowned, stepping back. I would have to wait.
“Emissary?” a voice said from my side. I looked over and found Winzik approaching, the glass faceplate of his armor revealing his true form, the small crablike creature floating inside.
I steeled myself and tried not to let my anger show. This was the creature who kept my people imprisoned.
You, I thought at him, will someday cry out to your elders in shame as I extract your blood in payment for crimes committed. I will see you mourn as your pitiful corpse sinks into the cold earth of a soon-forgotten grave. There wasn’t a lot of cold earth to be found up here in space, but I figured Conan of Cimmeria wouldn’t let something like that stop him. Perhaps I could get some imported.
“Is there something you need, Emissary Alanik?” he asked. “You know, you need not participate in this test. Your species is quite close to primary intelligence. I suspect we could find a way to come to an accommodation without wasting your time here.”
“I’m intrigued, and want to participate,” I said. “Besides, Cuna thinks this would be best for us.”
“My, my,” Winzik said. “Is that so? Cuna is very helpful sometimes, aren’t they? My, my.” Winzik took my tablet and looked it over.
“I don’t have an identification number,” I said.
“I can give you a temporary one,” Winzik said, tapping on the pad. “There. All done.” He hesitated. “Are you a fighter pilot, Emissary? I would assume you to be a messenger or courier, considering your…special skill. Are you not too valuable to your species to be wasted in crude, aggressive displays of combat?”
Crude? Combat? My hackles rose, but I cut myself off from quoting Conan of Cimmeria. I doubted Winzik wanted to hear how great it was to listen to the lamentations of your enemies.
“I am among the best pilots of my kind,” I said instead. “And we consider it an honor to be skilled in the arts of defense.”
“An honor, you say? My, my. You were in close contact with the human scourge for a long time, weren’t you.” Winzik paused. “This test might be dangerous. Please understand that. I wouldn’t want to accidentally cause…an unintentional unleashing of your talents. So dangerous those can be.”
“Are you forbidding me?”
“Well, no.”
“Then I will take the test,” I said, holding out my hand for the tablet. “Thank you.”
“Very aggressive,” Winzik said, handing back my form while gesturing with his other hand. “Cuna believes in your kind though. My, my.”
I handed in my form to the dione accepting them, then joined the crowd of pilots who were walking—or slithering—toward their cockpits. Beside my ship, I found a familiar tall, blue-skinned figure in robes, standing with fingers laced together. I had been right, of course. Cuna was here.
“Did Winzik try to talk you out of participating?” Cuna asked.
“Yeah,” I said, then thumbed over my shoulder. “What’s up with him, anyway?”
“Winzik does not like the idea of me inviting aggressive species to take this test.”
I frowned. “He doesn’t want aggressive people to join the military? I still don’t understand that, Cuna.”
Cuna gestured toward several of the squid-faced aliens, which were climbing into their ship near mine. “The solquis are a longtime member of the Superiority. Stalwart and loyal to our ideals though they are, their species has been turned down for primary citizenship over two dozen times. They are seen as too unintelligent for higher-level ruling positions. One cannot fault their calm natures, however.
“Winzik sees these as our best potential soldiers. He feels that a species who is naturally quite docile will best be able to resist the bloodlust of warfare and approach combat in a logical, controlled way. He assumed their kind, and species like them, would make up the majority of our new recruits.”
“I read that most of the species trying out in this test are already members of the Superiority,” I said. “How many are like me? People from outside civilizations wanting in?”
“You are the only one who accepted my offer.” Cuna made a sweeping motion of their hands. I didn’t know what the gesture meant. “Though I did get several other Superiority races—like the burl, who are citizens but considered aggressive—to join this test.”
“So…what is your gain here? Why did you go against tradition and invite my people?” I could halfway understand the reasoning of choosing docile species for war, silly though it seemed. But Cuna t
hought differently. Why?
Cuna walked around M-Bot, inspecting him. For a moment, I worried that they would touch his hull and see through the illusion; the one making him look like Alanik’s ship was far more precarious than my own disguise. Fortunately, Cuna just stopped and gestured toward the light-lance turret on the underside of the ship.
“Human technology,” Cuna said. “I’ve long wanted to see these light-lances in action, as I’ve heard stories of how they can make a ship weave and dodge in near-impossible ways. We tried installing them on some of our fighters, but found that our drone pilots were unsuited to using them. Now, aside from industrial use, we only equip them on the ships of our most talented. You see, to swing around on a light-lance, you have to commit fully to the maneuver—and if you miss, you will often crash and destroy yourself. Most of the pilots simply don’t have the temperament for that kind of flying.
“Our officials, they consider this hesitance a good thing. They want pilots who are inherently careful, pilots who won’t become a danger to us or our society.”
“But you think differently,” I said. “You think that the Superiority would be served better by more aggressive species, don’t you?”
“Let us simply say that I am interested in those who are not possessing…classical virtues.” Cuna smiled again, that same creepy smile that was too wide, too full of teeth. “I am very curious to see you fly, Emissary Alanik.”
“Well, I’m eager to show you.” I glanced to the side to see the split-color-faced pilot pass by. “There’s one of your kind here. A dione.”
Cuna paused, then looked toward the pilot and made an odd expression, their top lip curling back in a way no human’s could. “How odd. I…I am honestly surprised.”
“Why? Is it because they’re not supposed to be mingling in the activities of lesser species like us?”
“Mingling with lesser species is fine,” Cuna said, as if not understanding that I considered the term lesser to be an insult. “But trying out for a test like this? It is…odd.” They stepped back from my ship. “I shall watch your performance with interest, Emissary. Please be careful. I am not yet sure what this test will entail.”
Cuna retreated, and I sighed, climbing up and into my cockpit.
“Could you make any sense of that exchange?” I asked M-Bot as the cockpit closed.
“It seemed straightforward,” M-Bot said, “and yet not, at the same time. Organics are confusing.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, then—upon receiving terse orders via radio—took off and headed to the edge of the asteroid field.
I fell into line with the other ships—the wide variety of which was still astounding to me—and looked out at the tumbling asteroids. They were closer together than I had expected, and we’d barely have room to maneuver through some of them. Perhaps they had been towed here for processing.
While we waited for instructions, another vessel pulled into line a few ships down from me. It was a sleek, black-canopied Krell fighter. The type that I had fought back on Detritus, the type that always carried a Krell ace.
My mind immediately went on alert, my body rigid, my hands tight on my controls. In a line of bulky shuttlecraft, this ship looked like a knife ready to cut.
Calm down, I told myself. It’s not surprising that someone would bring a ship like this to a piloting test.
It still set me on edge, and I kept finding myself glancing out of the corner of my eye toward it. Who was piloting the thing? That dione with the two-tone face? No, I’d seen him getting into a simple shuttlecraft, not some sleek fighter. In fact, I was sure I hadn’t seen this ship on any of the launchpads. Who…
I felt a sense from the ship as I glanced at it again. A kind of…ringing sound, soft and distant, and I immediately knew who it was. The human was here.
Cuna and Winzik were playing some political game, and using cytonics like me and Brade as their pieces. However, the knowledge—the surety—that Brade was in there left me feeling even more disturbed. That was a human flying a Krell fighter. It was wrong on an indescribable number of levels.
“Thank you for answering our call,” Winzik’s voice said over the general instructions channel. “As a reminder, we are removing ship-to-ship radio rationing for this exercise. Permit 1082-b, authorized by me. So you may communicate with one another, if you find reason to do so.
“We recognize and commend your bravery. If at any time during this test you feel excessive anger or aggression, please remove yourself from contentions by powering down your ship and flashing your emergency signal lights. One of our ships will come and tow you back to the mining station.”
“Seriously?” I asked softly. My mute button was on, so I was speaking only to M-Bot. “If we feel ‘aggression’ during a fighting exercise, we’re supposed to pull out?”
“Perhaps, unlike you, not all people are accustomed to turning every single item in their lives into a competition,” M-Bot said.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I’m not that bad.”
“I recorded you trying to get Kimmalyn to have a tooth-brushing contest the other night in the barracks.”
“Just a little fun,” I said. “Besides, gotta kill that plaque good and dead.”
Winzik continued on the general channel. “Today, we will test not just your flight skill, but how well you maintain your composure under fire,” he said. “I implore you not to be reckless! If you are concerned by the danger of this fight, please power down and flash your emergency lights. Do be aware, however, that this will remove you from further consideration as a pilot. Good luck.”
The comm cut off. And then my proximity sensors went insane as dozens of drone ships detached from the bottom of the mining platform and began swarming toward us. Scud!
I started moving before my mind specifically registered the danger. Accelerating to Mag-3, I maneuvered around large clumps of asteroids, my back pressing into my seat.
Behind me, the five hundred other hopefuls basically went crazy. They scattered in all directions, looking like nothing so much as a bunch of insects suddenly discovered hiding under a rock. I was glad my quick instincts got me out ahead of them, because not a few bumped into each other as they failed to coordinate flight paths. I didn’t see any full-on collisions or explosions, fortunately. These ships were shielded, and the pilots weren’t incompetent. Still, it was immediately obvious that many of them had never flown in a battlefield setting.
The drones swarmed in behind us, using normal Krell attack patterns—which meant picking on stragglers and using superior numbers to overwhelm ships. Outside of their general tactics, Krell didn’t actually synchronize well with their compatriots. They didn’t fly in pairs or organized wingmate teams, and they didn’t coordinate different groups of ships to fulfill different roles on the battlefield.
We’d always wondered why this was, and had theorized that Detritus’s shell interfered with their communications. Now, as I pulled out farther away from the rest, I had to wonder. My people had been forged in constant battle, forced to field only our very best pilots in an endless and grueling fight for survival. The Superiority, in turn, had massive resources, and their drone pilots weren’t risking their lives.
I checked, and could hear the instructions being sent to these drones via the nowhere. Since such communication was instantaneous according to the DDF’s research, it was possible that these ships were piloted by the very same people who fought us on Detritus. But could it really be true that the Superiority had only a single group of drone pilots?
There was no way to know. For now, I pivoted through the asteroid field, using my light-lance to take a few quick turns. “No drones are chasing us,” M-Bot said. “I am scanning for any potential ambushes.”
He was faster and more responsive than anything else I saw on the battlefield. Though he was larger than a lot of our DDF fighters, M-Bot wa
s what we called an interceptor. A very maneuverable and fast ship, intended for quick battlefield movements and assessments.
Back home, I’d been part of a team with specialized roles. Jorgen, for example, usually flew a largo—a heavy fighter with a large shield and a lot of firepower. Kimmalyn flew a sniper—a small, highly accurate craft that could pick off ships while their attention was diverted toward me or Jorgen. Fighting these last few months had been a group effort, usually with our flight being made up of six interceptors, two heavy fighters, and two snipers.
It felt strangely isolating to be flying into battle alone this time, after fighting for so long as part of a team. However, that emotion made me feel guilty. I hadn’t truly appreciated what I’d had, instead often flying off on my own. I would have given a great deal to have either Jorgen or Kimmalyn out here with me now.
I forced myself to concentrate on my flying. It was good to be in a cockpit doing some training. I let myself focus on that instead, the feel of the boosters humming behind me, the quiet sound of M-Bot giving battlefield updates. This I knew. This part at least, I could do.
I swung back around, skimming through the asteroid field beneath where most of the other ships were dodging drones. I wanted to get a view of the battlefield and try to decide how exactly the test would play out.
“Flight Command,” I said, calling in. “This is Alanik, the pilot from ReDawn. Can you detail our objective for this test?”
“Objective, pilot?” the reply came, an unfamiliar voice. “It’s simple. Stay alive for thirty standard minutes.”
“Yes, but what constitutes a ‘death’ in this exercise?” I asked. “A broken shield? Or are you using paint rounds instead?”
“Pilot,” the reply came. “I think you mistake us.”
Above me, the drones started firing sweeping sprays of destructor blasts. A straggling ship nearby went up in a series of flashes, its shield going down, and then the ship itself exploded. Elsewhere, stray destructor fire detonated against asteroids, flashing before being consumed by the vacuum.
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