Hesho and I gave chase, followed in turn by a few more drones. I could hear the sound of Brade’s mind growing louder, an increasingly demanding cytonic scream. The power of it made me tremble, and that interfered with my ability to fly—as it took me a moment to notice that one of the drones chasing us was behaving oddly. It fell out of line with the other two, then shot them down from behind.
“So,” Vapor said over a private channel to my ship. “You’re from this planet? Not ReDawn? A human from one of the preserves. Does Cuna know?”
“I told them,” I said, adding her to the line with Hesho. “Right before this mess happened. I’m sorry, Vapor, for lying—”
“I don’t really care,” Vapor said. “I should have guessed the full truth. Anyway, my mission was—and still is—to keep a watch on Winzik and his minions. Is Brade doing what I think she’s doing?”
“She’s trying to summon a delver,” I said. “She’s calling to them—well, more like screaming at them. I get the feeling she hasn’t done this before.”
I glanced at my canopy, and—alongside the growing headache I felt from Brade’s yelling—I started to see their reflections. The eyes opening up, looking at us from the nowhere.
“It’s working,” I added to the others. “The delvers are watching us right now. I can feel them…stirring.”
Vapor said a string of words that my pin simply translated as, “Increasingly vulgar curses involving foul stenches.”
“I didn’t think they’d go this far,” Vapor said. “This is bad—many would call this treason against the Superiority.” She was silent for a moment. “Others would call it true patriotism.”
“Surely there can’t be many of those!” Hesho said.
“It will probably depend on whether this attack works,” Vapor said. “A lot of people in the Superiority really hate humans, and policy often favors the successful. Does he have a plan for sending the thing away after he summons it?”
“I think he just plans to use his space force to keep it distracted,” I said. “Brade indicated that delvers in our realm would sometimes spend years between attacks.”
“Sometimes they would,” Vapor replied. “But sometimes they’d attack relentlessly. This is extremely shortsighted.”
She fell in on my left, Hesho on my right, as I steered my ship after Brade. She was making for the shells around Detritus, trying to get as close to the planet as she could.
Knowing where she was going gave us a slight advantage, as we could aim to head her off. I set us on that heading, but a distressing thought occurred to me: I wasn’t certain the three of us could stop Brade. She was good—even better than I was. Plus, a delver could appear at any moment.
Maybe I could do something to mitigate the disaster of that occurring. I called in on the general DDF line. “Flight Command? This is Spin. I need to talk to Cobb.”
“I’m here,” Cobb said in my ear.
“I need you to turn off all communications with ships out here. Have every DDF ship go silent, turn off all radios in Alta—maybe even power down Platform Prime and go dark.”
I braced myself for an argument. But Cobb was strikingly calm when he replied. “You realize, Spin, that would mean leaving all of the pilots to fight on their own. No coordination. No ground support. Not even the ability to call for help from wingmates.”
“I realize that, sir.”
“I would want to be absolutely certain it was necessary before taking such an extreme action.”
“Sir…one of them is coming. A delver.”
“I see.” Cobb didn’t curse, or shout, or even complain. His calm tone was somehow far, far more disturbing. “I’ll warn the pilots, then initiate communications silence. Stars watch over you, Lieutenant. And the rest of us sorry souls.” He cut the line.
I felt a chill, a mounting horror, as Brade—like I’d hoped—turned toward us. We were seconds from intercepting her.
“Vapor,” Hesho asked. “Can you take over her ship, like you’ve done with the drones?”
“It’s harder for a crewed ship than it is for a drone,” Vapor said. “She’ll have a manual override, developed for resisting my kind. I could probably lock her out of flight control and force the ship to go immobile, for a little time at least. I’d need to touch her ship—which will mean ejecting from this drone and trying to get to her. So far, she has known to stay away from ships I’m flying, and hasn’t let me get within range of seizing her vessel.”
“Understood,” I said. “Be ready to try.” I didn’t order radio silence among the three of us—I hoped to protect Detritus, but for now our communication was vital to our last-ditch attempt at stopping this.
By shooting down one of my friends.
I opened a line to her as our ships drew closer. “Brade. You know why we’re here.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I don’t blame you. You were born to kill.”
“No, Brade—”
“I should have seen what you were. I knew you felt it. The need to destroy, like a dragon coiled inside, stoking its flame. Waiting to strike, longing to strike. Lusting to strike.”
“Please don’t make us do this.”
“What, and give up the fight?” she said. “Admit it. You’ve been wondering all along, haven’t you? Which of us is better? Well, let’s find out.”
I gritted my teeth, then switched back to the private channel to Hesho and Vapor. “All right, team. We need to take her out.” Her screaming mind echoed in my brain, louder than her words had been. “And we can’t simply shoot to disable. She’ll keep trying to bring that delver as long as she’s alive. So if you have the chance…kill her.”
We split apart as we drew close, the three of us trying to swing around and coordinate an attack from all sides. I swooped down closer to the shell around the planet, anticipating—correctly—that Brade would dodge that way first.
Her screaming grew softer as we forced her to concentrate on her flying. I could feel that I was right about her—she didn’t know how to do this, not fully. She could project a scream into the nowhere, and I could see delver eyes watching from the reflection in my canopy, but whatever crucial step remained in bringing one here, Brade hadn’t figured it out yet.
Likely she’d assumed it would be easy. Each time I went into the nowhere, I worried one of these things would pounce on me—or worse, follow me out. Fortunately, it didn’t seem quite so easy to pull one through.
At my mark, the three of us cut in, trying to hit Brade from every angle. I anticipated that she’d accelerate and get out of the way. Instead, she spun around and didn’t dodge at all—letting our destructor blasts hit her. What?
The maneuver put us too close to her. By instinct, I spun my ship and tried to boost away—but wasn’t able to do so before Brade hit her IMP, breaking down everyone’s shields.
Scud! That was what I would have done, and I’d fallen right into it. Always before, I had been the single pilot fighting against superior numbers. I didn’t know how to think from the other direction—as someone trying to gang up on a single ship.
Warnings blared on my dash as I belatedly boosted away. The kitsen—who had dedicated gunners—got off some shots at Brade as she zipped off, but none landed.
I looped around, picking up Vapor as a wingmate. In the near distance, the enormous space battle continued—and I could sense a more frantic feel to it. Perhaps that was my own interpretation, but it seemed as if the fighters were more desperate. I tried not to think about how Kimmalyn and the others must feel to suddenly fight blindly, without communications.
Brade tried to bolt away, flying in closer to the defensive platforms. Enormous sheets of metal curved into the distance as we swooped down—but I refused to be caught in a trap like I had once used against drones. Vapor and I stayed out of range of the defensive guns until Brade was forced by t
heir shots to pull up.
She couldn’t let us fall too far behind, or we’d have a chance to reignite our shields. Indeed, as I tried, she came right at me, forcing me to go into a defensive pattern. I had to abandon reignition, since I would need time flying straight—without much maneuverability, and all power diverted to the igniter—to get my shield back up.
“Hesho,” I said over the private line, “on me. Vapor, take a sniping position and be ready to shoot her while we distract her.”
“Affirmative,” both of them said, Vapor falling back and Hesho coming in beside me.
Brade swooped around, and we intercepted her with destructors blaring. We couldn’t aim very well, sweeping in as we were—we just needed to distract her from Vapor. Again she anticipated our tactics. Instead of engaging me and Hesho, she spun backward in a reversal that must have seen her pulling ten or fifteen Gs. I swooped around, but by the time I got on her tail she was already firing at Vapor.
Vapor tried to dodge, but one of the shots caught her. The wing blasted off her ship—which wouldn’t have been deadly in space, but the next shot ripped apart her hull, venting the cockpit. Including her.
She can survive that, I thought at myself forcibly, firing at Brade. I came so close to hitting her, the shots narrowly missing her canopy as she dodged around, weaving between my destructor blasts.
Brade got off a shot as she turned, and it nailed the Swims Upstream.
“We’re hit!” a kitsen voice shouted. “Lord Hesho!”
A dozen other kitsen voices cried out reports, and the Swims Upstream floundered, venting air. I couldn’t focus on that, unfortunately. I gritted my teeth and got in behind Brade.
The scream in my mind slacked off even further as the dogfight narrowed to just the two of us. Woman against woman. Pilot against pilot. We swooped past some ancient rubble, spinning and tumbling, trapped in orbit, and Brade pivoted around it with her light-lance.
I followed, staying on her—but just barely. We spun through the darkness, neither of us firing, focused only on the chase. I had the upper hand from the rear position, but…
But Saints she was good. All else faded. World beneath me, stars above, set against the backdrop of a terrible battle. None of it mattered. The two of us were a pair of sharks chasing one another through a sea of minnows. She managed to draw me in close to the defensive platforms, then loop around me as I was forced to dodge a shot.
I stayed ahead of her in turn, then threw us both into a spiral where I barely managed to cut out and swing around her, taking position on her tail again.
It was thrilling, invigorating. I felt as I rarely had before, challenged to the absolute limits of my ability. And Brade was better. She stayed just ahead of me and dodged each shot I took.
I found that exhilarating.
I’d often been the best pilot in the sky. Seeing someone who was better was perhaps the most inspiring thing I’d ever experienced. I wanted to fly with her, chase her, pit myself against her until I covered that distance and matched her.
But as I was grinning, I again heard her screaming into the nowhere. It was faint, but in its wake my illusion of enjoyment came crashing down. Brade was trying to destroy everything I loved. If I couldn’t stop her, if I wasn’t good enough, that spelled the end of the DDF, Detritus, and humankind itself.
In that light, my inability was terrifying.
I don’t have to beat her alone, I thought. I just have to get her to go where I want…
I broke off and darted away. I could feel Brade’s annoyance. She’d been enjoying this too, and suddenly she felt angry at me for my cowardice. I was running?
She gave immediate chase, firing at me. I had to stay ahead for only a short while longer. I dodged around a specific collection of space debris, and Brade followed. I held my breath…
“Got her!” Vapor said over Brade’s own channel.
I spun my ship around and boosted back toward Brade’s ship—which had followed me through the rubble of Vapor’s destroyed drone—as it slowed. I could see right into the cockpit, where she pounded on her console in frustration.
Her ship powered off anyway, Vapor locking down the systems. We had her. I slowed my own ship, then pointed the nose right at Brade. My own words seemed to echo back at me.
We can’t simply shoot to disable. She’ll keep on trying to bring that delver as long as she’s alive…
As if in direct proof of that, she met my gaze, then projected a scream into the nowhere. The eyes—which had been fading—snapped their attention back on us, particularly one pair that seemed larger than all the rest.
I squeezed the trigger. In that moment, Brade’s scream went shriller than it ever had before. In the panic of knowing she would die, Brade finally accomplished her goal.
And something emerged from the nowhere.
The delver’s emergence distorted reality. In one blink of an eye, Brade’s ship went from being in front of me to being shoved aside. Something vast entering our realm pushed us back, like we were riding a wave rippling through reality itself.
The shot I’d taken at Brade missed, and was instead absorbed by the expanding blackness.
My ship rocked as I was thrust away. The blackness grew so large that it dominated my view. I thought I saw the core of the delver for a moment, that deep shadow. An absolute darkness that seemed too pure to actually exist.
And then the maze appeared, matter coalescing around the thing like…like condensation forming on a very cold pipe. It grew around the core, shooting out terrible spires, gathering to be the size of a small planet. Much larger than the maze we’d trained in.
That maze was soon shrouded in dust and particulate matter, a haze that obscured it. Dark spires cast shadows within, lit by flares of deep red, the color of molten stone. Storms of terrible colors and mind-bending shadows. A vast, nearly incomprehensible thing, hidden within the floating dust.
This enormous thing now loomed like a moon over Detritus—far too close. My sensors went crazy; the delver had its own gravitational pull.
Two weeks ago, I’d watched a recording of a thing like this consuming the old inhabitants of Detritus. Now I cowered before one in real life. A speck. We were all specks to this creature.
My hands fell limp from my controls. I’d failed. And I was pretty sure that the very action I’d taken to stop this—shooting at Brade—had given her the push to achieve her goal.
I felt a sudden crushing sense of hopelessness. This thing was so immense and strange.
Then another emotion pushed through the despair. Anger. We’d die here—everyone in the Defiant Caverns—while the people of Starsight ate, and laughed, and ignored what their own government was doing. It didn’t seem fair. Those insects. Those bugs that slobbered and skittered and clicked and…and…
Wait. I pushed through those overwhelming emotions. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t how I was feeling.
The battle had stilled. Detritus had gone silent, as I’d ordered. It was as if the entire planet held its breath. A mind—a vast, incomprehensible mind—brushed against mine. Something so oppressive, it threatened to crush me.
There’s nothing here, I thought in a panic. Nothing to destroy. You see? No buzzing, no annoyances here. Go somewhere else. Go…go that way.
I fed it a destination. Not really by intent—more like the way you’d throw something hot after touching it unexpectedly. I pointed it toward a place in the far distance. The direction where Winzik’s broadcast was going, the direction where the stars were singing.
I felt the delver’s attention turn. Yes, there were things nearby—Superiority ships—making noise, but it wanted something larger. It could hear that distant destination, the place where I’d nudged its attention.
It vanished, following that distant song.
I was sucked forward by the ripple in reality, s
ame as I’d been pushed back by it earlier. Sweat beaded on the sides of my face as confusion fought relief. It was gone. Just like that, it was gone.
I had sent it to destroy Starsight instead.
“Hello?” a kitsen voice said over my comm.
I stared out into the void, numb.
“Alanik…I…I don’t actually know what your name is. It’s me, Kauri. We…we sustained great losses. Lord Hesho is dead. I’ve taken command, but I don’t know what to do.”
Hesho? Dead? The kitsen ship hovered up by mine. A black gouge had been blasted out of the side, but the crew had patched it with a shield.
“The Superiority forces are retreating,” Vapor said. “Ships are disengaging from the humans and flying back toward the Weights and Measures. Perhaps they are frightened, now that their terrible weapon has failed.”
“It didn’t fail,” I whispered. “It’s gone to Starsight instead. They…they didn’t quiet themselves enough. They’ve come to rely on their communications. It heard them.”
“What is this?” Kauri said. “Could you repeat that, please? You said the delver has gone to Starsight.”
“Yes.” I sent it.
“No! We have family on the station! And crew members who were too sick for duty. There are…there are millions of people on Starsight!”
A drone hovered up beside me. Vapor had stolen herself a new ship. I barely noticed. I was watching the stars, listening to their sounds.
“Winzik…that monster,” Vapor said. “This is exactly what happened when humans tried to control a delver during the second war. It turned against the very ones who’d summoned it. His broadcast of these events gave the thing a pathway right back to his home!”
It had been that, yes, but more my own interference. I had done this. Saints and stars…I’d sent it to destroy them. Brade was right. We could control these things.
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