My hand froze on the call button. But before I could speak, everything went back to normal. In the blink of an eye I was in my cockpit again, hanging in that ancient room, Vapor moving her ship toward the exit.
“—coming, Alanik?” Vapor’s voice crackled onto my communication channel midsentence. “Or are you just going to sit there?”
“I’m coming,” I said, trying to shake the creepy feeling. “What do you see back there?”
“Just a room,” Vapor said. “Why?”
“I…” I shook my head, then guided my ship back out into open space, where I breathed a sigh of relief.
Outside, Vapor had me run the team through a few scatter formations—a maneuver where the flight would break apart and fly in different directions, then regroup. I figured those would be useful when fighting something like the embers, which would try to smash into us.
The others must have felt my shift in mood, because nobody gave me lip, and even Brade went through the exercises without complaint. Before long, it was time to head back to the Weights and Measures, the day’s training finished.
I landed my ship in the docking bay, then gave her console a fond pat. She wasn’t M-Bot, but she was a solidly built fighter. I popped the canopy and hopped down to join the others—and I could read in their attitudes a kind of exhausted enthusiasm. Exhausted because it had been a long day of training, but enthusiastic because it had been good training. We’d made progress, and were already starting to feel like a team.
Hesho laughed heartily at something that Morriumur said, and was again joined by the female kitsen in the red uniform, carrying a shield. I’d learned she was named Kauri, and was the ship’s navigator—as well as Hesho’s shieldbearer, though I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant in this context.
As we walked together, I found that I could pick out a few of the other kitsen by their voices. It was strange to think that our flight included not just the five pilots, but all fifty-seven kitsen crew members as well.
I liked it. I liked how much energy it brought us. It almost helped me forget the strange things I’d felt and seen in the maze.
We were ordered back to the jump room, and though a drone arrived to lead the way, Brade tried to rush on ahead. Perhaps to keep from being forced to interact with us.
I walked faster to catch up to her.
“Hey,” I said. “I like that maneuver you pulled just before we ended. The one where you wove between other members of the flight, without hitting them?”
Brade shrugged. “It was simple.”
“You’ve got flight experience,” I noted.
“Obviously.”
“Well, I’m glad to have you on the team.”
“You sure about that?” she said. “You know what I am. Sooner or later I’m going to lose it, and there will be casualties.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said.
She stopped in place, standing in the red-carpeted hallway, frowning at me. “What?”
“Where I come from,” I said softly, “a little passion is a good thing to have in a pilot. I’m not afraid of a little aggression, Brade. I think we can use it.”
“You have no idea what you’re asking for,” she snapped at me, then hurried on.
I lingered until the others caught up, then walked with them to our jump room. This time, I didn’t try to continue on toward the engine room—the guard there was already suspicious of me, judging by how their eyes followed me as I passed.
As we settled into our seats, I focused on doing Gran-Gran’s exercise. I closed my eyes and let my mind float out, imagining myself soaring among the stars, and I listened.
The voices of the chattering kitsen faded away. There. Hyperdrive ready, a voice said. It wasn’t in English, but as always, language didn’t matter. My mind picked out the meaning. Why were they communicating via cytonics? It was just the bridge calling the engine room.
Excellent. That was from Winzik. Engage.
I braced myself, waiting…but nothing happened. What?
A moment later, another communication was sent. Engine room, is there a problem?
Yes, unfortunately, the reply came. We’re reading cytonic interference from localized sources inside the ship.
I felt a spike of alarm. They…they knew I was here.
Oh, that, Winzik said. Yes, that’s to be expected. We’ve got two of them traveling with us now.
It’s going to cause a problem, sir, Engineering sent back.
How much of one?
We’ll have to see. We’re swapping out the hyperdrive unit now. A fresh one might work, as long as we engage it immediately.
I waited, tense. A few minutes passed.
Then it happened again. Another dump of information into my mind—this one pointed toward Starsight. Then a scream.
I felt that same disorienting sense of being thrown into a vast blackness. Again, the delvers didn’t see me. They were focused on the scream.
I slammed back into my seat, my mind throbbing. Again I sagged in my straps, though none of the others even broke conversation. They didn’t realize it had happened.
That sensation I’d felt, that dump of information…it told me where the hyperjump was going to go. I could have used that information to jump myself to Starsight. That information was fading, but slowly. I might…I might be able to jump myself from here to the delver maze and back again, if I needed to.
The random numbers that M-Bot had told me didn’t work, but something about this information injected directly into my mind…that did. It proved what I had suspected—that I needed to be able to do more than just know my destination; I had to be able to feel it. It was a clue, my first solid one, on how I might be able to control my powers.
Worn out, I rose with the others and trudged to the pickup bay, which looked out toward Starsight: a vibrant, glowing blue platform with buildings sprouting from it like stalactites and stalagmites.
I bade farewell to the others, then climbed into my assigned shuttle. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allotted my own this time, as an official sent a trio of reptilian aliens in after me. Apparently their housing was near mine. They gathered in the back seats, chatting softly in their own language, my pin translating helpfully. Since they were just talking about dinner plans, I flipped off the translator.
The shuttle took off, and the moment we left the docking bay a voice erupted through my earpiece. “Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “Spensa, I’m picking up your signal again. Are you well? Is everything all right? It’s been eight hours without communication!”
Hearing that voice was shockingly welcome, and I found myself sighing in relief. My task was feeling increasingly more intimidating by the moment, but this one point of familiarity reminded me I wasn’t completely alone.
“I’m back,” I whispered to him, then eyed the aliens behind me. “I’ll explain more when I get to the embassy.”
“Scud, that’s good to hear!” M-Bot said. “Did you hear that? I just swore. If I started swearing, do you think it would prove that I’m alive? Lifeless computers don’t swear. That would be weird.”
“I don’t think you can argue that you’re not weird.”
“Of course I can. I can argue basically anything, if I’m programmed for it. Anyway, they must have some kind of communications shield over the Weights and Measures! When I lost your signal, I feared I’d been left alone with the slug forever.”
I smiled, and was actually starting to feel excited as we approached my building. I had so much to explain to M-Bot. The delver maze. Vapor. I’d made some inroads with Brade, hadn’t I? Unfortunately, as the shuttle approached, I found that Mrs. Chamwit—the Krell housekeeper that Cuna had assigned me—was waiting at the front door.
“What’s she doing here still?” I whispered, eyeing the armored alien woman as my shuttle settled down.
/> “Once she finished cleaning, she spent the time waiting for you to return,” M-Bot answered.
She was really committed to her spying, wasn’t she? As I climbed out of the shuttle, she bustled over, speaking with an energetic voice. “Welcome back, mistress! I’ve looked into your species’s nutritional requirements, and I think I have just the recipe for dinner tonight. Akokian pudding! It’s a wonderful mixture of sweet and savory!”
“Um,” I said. “No thanks? I’ve got some food already. I ordered it a couple days ago.”
“Mistress? The algae strips in your refrigeration unit?”
“Sure,” I said. “They’re fine.” Bland, but fine.
“Well…maybe I could work those into a side dish?” Mrs. Chamwit said. “Or maybe just make you a dessert?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really. Thanks. I have some work to do tonight, and don’t want to be interrupted.”
She gestured in a crestfallen way, though I didn’t buy the act. If the Krell woman was sad, it was only because I wasn’t giving her the chance to spy. Eventually—after three more reassurances that I was fine—she tromped off down the street to leave for the day.
I sighed, wiping my brow, then hiked up the steps to the top of the building and climbed into M-Bot’s cockpit. “Dim the canopy,” I said. “And make sure the alien spy has really left.”
The canopy dimmed. “I’m not convinced she’s a spy, Spensa,” M-Bot said. “She didn’t look through your things. She just straightened up your room, then spent the time doing word puzzles on her tablet.”
“Straightening up is a perfect cover for spying.” I leaned back in the seat and scratched under Doomslug’s chin.
The slug trilled piteously, and looked lethargic as she inched toward me. So I picked her up and settled her into my lap. I’d never seen her move this slowly; something about this place seemed to be making her feel sick.
“All right, M-Bot,” I said. “We have a problem. We might need to hijack that entire carrier ship.”
“Excellent,” M-Bot said. “Would you like your corpse cremated or ejected into space?”
I grinned. “Nice.”
“Humor is an essential identifier of a living being,” M-Bot said. “I’ve been working on some subroutines to help me better recognize and make jokes.”
“You can just do that, huh?” I said. “Reprogram yourself to be something new.”
“I have to be careful,” M-Bot said, “as another essential part of being alive is persistence of personality. I don’t want to change who I am too much. Beyond that, there are certain things that, if I try to rewrite, will send me into…” Click. Clickclickclickclick.
I sighed and settled back in the seat, petting Doomslug. She was soft and springy—even the spines on her back, which she fluted out of, weren’t that stiff.
“I’m back,” M-Bot finally said, then heaved an exaggerated sigh. “That is annoying. Anyway, you were saying something about a suicide mission trying to hijack an entire Superiority capital ship?”
“It’s not a full capital ship,” I said. “There’s probably only, say, fifty or sixty crew members on board…” I launched into an explanation of what had happened to me today: the conversations I’d overheard, the delver maze, the interactions with the other pilots and Vapor. Even the strange experiences inside the maze itself.
“So,” I said, summing up, “I’m not going to be given a ship with a hyperdrive, which means we’ll have to find another way.”
“Curious,” M-Bot said. “And you can hear the orders that Winzik is giving the engine room? Why?”
“I guess they’re communicating through the nowhere.”
“From one end of the ship to the other?” M-Bot asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. Simple wired communication should be enough. Are you sure that’s what you’re hearing?”
“No,” I said, honestly. “And hearing isn’t even the right word.” I sat, thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “We might not need to hijack the entire ship.”
“Good, because the slug would be the only one left after you get yourself killed, and I’m not sure I want her to be my pilot.”
“I feel like something odd is going on in that engine room,” I explained. “Plus, on our way back from the delver maze, something went wrong with the hyperdrive because of me. They swapped it out with another, so the hyperdrive units must be small enough to replace quickly.”
“We knew that already,” M-Bot said. “I used to have something in that empty box in my hull where my hyperdrive was supposed to be.”
I nodded, thinking everything through while rubbing Doomslug’s head. She fluted in contentment.
I’d teleported M-Bot twice on my own, but his systems did claim to have a “cytonic hyperdrive.” I’d assumed that his previous pilot—Commander Spears—had been the actual hyperdrive that had gotten M-Bot to Detritus. But why have the empty box? There was a huge piece of this that I was missing.
“We need to find a way to sneak in there and watch them servicing or engaging the hyperdrive. Scud, maybe if I could steal the device they use to indicate their destination, I could use it to make my own powers work, and at least get us home.”
“By your account, that is a secure location,” M-Bot said. “Inside a well-patrolled military ship. Sneaking in will not be easy.”
“Fortunately, we have access to a spy ship and an advanced AI designed for stealth operations. We need to retrieve data from a secure enemy location. What does your programming think we should do?”
“We should plant espionage devices,” M-Bot said immediately. “The best solution would be to use autonomous drones, which could infiltrate the location and make recordings. The carrier’s shielding will prevent signals from being sent out, but that would be inadvisable anyway, as it would let scanners detect them. Instead we would retrieve the devices manually, then download their information.” He paused. “Ooooh. That’s a good idea! I’m smarter than myself sometimes, aren’t I?”
“Maybe,” I said, leaning back in the seat. “Do we have any such devices?”
“No,” M-Bot said. “I have berths for housing a few small remote drones, but they are empty.”
“Can we build a new one?” I asked, holding up my arm and inspecting the bracelet that projected my hologram. “Like we built a new one of these?”
“It’s possible,” M-Bot said. “We’d need to cannibalize some of my sensor systems and order some new parts—and we’d have to do so without the orders looking suspicious. Hmm…A curious challenge.”
“Mull it over,” I said, yawning. “Let me know what you come up with.”
He settled in to do some computing, and I must have drifted off, because I woke up a short time later to the sound of Doomslug imitating someone snoring. Which totally couldn’t have been me. Warriors, of course, never snore. That would alert our enemies to our sleeping locations.
I stretched, then climbed out of the cockpit into a city that—regardless of the hour—was in constant motion. I stood at the edge of the rooftop, looking out over the endless metropolis, and couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. Igneous, the greatest city my people had ever built, could have been swallowed up by a few city blocks of Starsight.
So many people. So many resources. All focused on destroying or at least suppressing Detritus. It was a miracle we were doing as well as we were.
A light on the computer up here—used for doing ship diagnostics and for monitoring the building—indicated that I’d gotten a delivery. I climbed down the steps, thinking at first that M-Bot must have already ordered some parts for building our spy drone.
In the delivery box, I instead found a small pastry with the note, Just in case the algae is stale. —Mrs. Chamwit.
The warrior inside me didn’t want to eat it. Not out of fear of poisoning—if Cuna wanted me poisoned, all they�
��d have to do was inject something into my building’s water supply. But because it felt like admitting defeat to Mrs. Chamwit.
It turned out to be the tastiest defeat I’d ever suffered.
A week later, I swooped through a complex dodging maneuver, boosting my ship between multiple enemies, the embers—the burning asteroids that the delver maze would eject to intercept fighters. Although the illusion was disturbed by the fact that these ones were just Superiority drones wearing a disguise, the combat was exhilarating. I had some ten tailing me now, increasing speed, accelerating even faster than I could in my quick interceptor.
I swept up alongside one face of the delver maze. From this close, it was like I was flying across a large polished metal surface. The structure was so huge it had noticeable gravity, and I had to monitor my acclivity ring to keep from being pulled off course.
Embers chased after me, burning from within with a molten light. More came in from the side, trying to press me in against the maze—removing my options for escape. It was like a game of cat and mouse, except there were fifty mice trying to herd one cat.
In my case, one very dangerous cat.
A group of embers rushed in to try ramming me from the front, and I opened fire. I blasted them into dust—swerving left to avoid the debris—then rotated my ship and fired back at the ones that came in too close. I had to immediately spin back around and veer upward to avoid another group approaching from that direction.
As much as I missed M-Bot’s voice, a part of me was glad for the chance to prove myself in these contests. I ignored my cytonic senses—they’d be useless against the real embers—and I didn’t have an advanced AI to project and calculate for me.
It was just me, the embers, and a wingmate. Today, that position was filled by a second force of carnage in the form of Brade. As I blasted ember after ember, the two of us finished our maneuver, swooping back together. We flew side by side for a moment, me firing forward while she rotated to fire backward, each of us covering a 180-degree arc.
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