“Don’t die, okay?” M-Bot said. “If you do, I’ll probably have to make Rodge my pilot. It would be the most logical move, and we’d both hate it so much.”
“I’m not going to die,” I said, leaning back, tapping my helmet against the seat’s headrest. “I do have a defect. A hole inside me.”
“Humans have many holes in them. Would you like me to provide you with a list?”
“Please don’t.”
“Ha ha. That was humor.”
“I have a hole in my brain,” I said. “It can see into the nowhere, but they can use it against me. I think…I think my father was shown some kind of mind hologram. When he flew back down to Detritus, he saw what the enemy wanted him to.”
I remembered what he’d said. I will kill you. I will kill you all…He’d been so mournful, so soft. He thought the humans had lost—that his friends were already dead. What he’d seen hadn’t been reality.
“When he blew up his friends,” I whispered, “he thought he was shooting down the Krell.”
A small number of the boxy ships approached M-Bot in the blackness. They struck me as couriers or maybe towing devices. Through the wide glass fronts, I saw creatures that looked vaguely like the drawings we had of Krell. Dark forms in armor, with red eyes.
Only here, they were bright colors—a perky red and blue, not dark at all. They reminded me a little of the pictures of crabs I’d seen from Old Earth, during my ancient biology courses. And the “armor” they wore seemed more like some kind of living apparatus, with open plates on the “head” portion for the creatures to see out of.
The sides of the little ships were stenciled with what looked to be words in a strange language.
“Ketos redgor Earthen listro listrins,” M-Bot said, reading the words. “Roughly, in English, that means ‘Penitentiary maintenance and containment of Earthlings.’ ”
Scud. That…sounded ominous. “Can you tell me what they’re saying?”
“There’s some radio chatter nearer the station,” he said, “but I suspect these ships are communicating using faster-than-light cytonic devices.”
“Relax whatever you’re doing to shield us,” I said, “but don’t put it down entirely. If I scream again, or go crazy, put it back up.”
“Okay…,” M-Bot said. “You already seem crazy to me, but I guess that’s nothing new.”
Awareness returned to me, the voices in the darkness of space. I could hear their words, the ones they were sending through the nowhere. I knew them, even without needing a translation, because in that place all languages were one.
“It’s looking at me!” one of the creatures was saying. “I think it wants to eat me. I don’t like this at all!”
“It should be incapacitated now,” a communication returned from the space station. “And if it’s looking at you, it doesn’t see you. We are overwriting its vision. Tow the ship in for study. That’s not a standard DDF model. We’re curious how they built it.”
“I don’t want to get anywhere near it,” said another one of the creatures. “Don’t you know how dangerous these things are?”
Curious, I looked out of my canopy at a ship drawing closer, then I made a kind of growling face—baring my teeth. The creature screamed and immediately turned its ship around and fled. The other two tugboat-style ships backed away.
“This is a job for fighter drones,” one said. “Not manned ships.”
They sounded so scared. Not like the terrible monsters I’d always imagined.
I relaxed in my seat.
“Would you like me to try to hack their systems?” M-Bot said.
“Can you do that?”
“It’s not as easy as it might sound,” he said. “I have to piggyback on an incoming signal, and then decrypt their passwords and create a dummy login, then transfer files while spoofing an authorized request—breaching local data defense lines—all without tripping any of their alarms.”
“So, can you do it?”
“I just did,” he said. “That was a very long explanation. Beginning data transfer…And, they caught me. I’ve been booted, and security protocol is preventing my reentry.”
Lights flashed on the station, and a moment later a squadron of small ships ejected from one of the bays on its side. I knew those flight patterns. Krell interceptors.
“Time to go,” I said, grabbing the controls and sweeping us around. “Do you think you can navigate us through the debris layers without triggering any of the defense platforms?”
“Supposedly, the Krell do that each time they attack the planet,” he said, “so it should be possible.”
I hit the overburn, launching us back toward the outer layer of debris. M-Bot put some directions on my canopy, and I followed, tense for the first bit. We skimmed close to some of the platforms as we weaved toward the planet, but none of them fired at us.
I felt…strangely alert. The sense of fascination I’d experienced earlier—the draw to seek out what was causing the stars to sing—had faded. It was replaced by stark realism.
Coming out here really had been crazy. Even for me. But as we wove past another layer of debris, the Krell interceptors fell back. It seemed, increasingly, that I’d be able to return to the planet safely.
“Did you get anything?” I asked. “From their computers?”
“I started with the station’s core orders and worked outward,” he said. “I didn’t get much, but…Oooh…You’re going to like this.”
“What?” I asked as I hit the overburn, flying back down toward Detritus. “What did you find?”
“Answers.”
Two hours later, I sat in the DDF command center, holding a blanket around me, with my legs up on my seat. They’d given me Admiral Ironsides’s chair.
Ever since that moment in the nowhere, I’d felt cold. A chill I couldn’t shake, and which the blanket could barely help. My head still pounded, despite the metric ton of painkillers I’d swallowed.
A group of important people surrounded my chair, crowding me in. National Assembly Leaders, junior admirals, flightleaders. I was growing confident that they believed I wouldn’t turn against them, though at first—after I’d reentered the atmosphere—they’d been very cautious.
The door to the command center opened, and finally Cobb limped in. I’d insisted on waiting until the transport fetched him and brought him back, and until he’d gotten his afternoon cup of coffee.
“All right,” Ironsides said, folding her arms. “Captain Cobb is here. Can we talk now?”
I held up a finger. It might have been petty of me, but it felt really good to make Ironsides wait. Besides, there was someone else who deserved to be here before I explained.
As we waited, I reached for the radio at my side. “M-Bot,” I said. “Everything all right?”
“I’m trying not to be offended by how the engineers in this hangar are looking at me,” he said. “They seem overeager to rip me apart. But so far, nobody has tried anything.”
“That ship is DDF—” Ironsides began.
“That ship,” I said, “will fry all his own systems if you try breaking into him. The DDF will get his tech, but it will be on our terms.”
The way she looked—red-faced—when I said it was also extremely satisfying. But she didn’t challenge me any further.
Finally the door opened again, and Jorgen entered. He was actually smiling, and it occurred to me that the expression—while pleasant—didn’t really suit him. He just looked more like himself when he was being serious.
He wasn’t the one we’d been waiting for, however. Instead, it was the lanky young man Jorgen had been sent to fetch. Rig grinned like a fool as he stepped into the room, then he blushed as the flightleaders and admirals parted for him, saluting. Though Ironsides was angry that Rig and I hadn’t turned the ship in immediately, most seemed to
agree that when working with an insane AI that threatened to destroy itself, Rig had performed admirably in getting technology to the DDF.
“Now will you talk?” Ironsides demanded.
“The Krell are not what we think,” I said. “My ship downloaded some of their databases, and discovered what happened before our ancestors landed here on Detritus. There was a war. A vast intergalactic one. Humans against aliens.”
“Against the Krell,” Ironsides said.
“There were no Krell at the start of it,” I said. “Just us versus the galaxy. And humankind lost. The victors were a coalition of aliens who, as best M-Bot and I can tell, considered humankind too brutal, too uncivilized, and too aggressive to be allowed to be part of the intergalactic community.
“They demanded that all human fleets, independent or not, surrender to their authority. Our ancestors, on the Defiant and its small fleet, considered themselves innocent. They weren’t part of the war. But when they refused to turn themselves in, the alien coalition sent a group to capture or contain them. That is what we call the Krell.”
I closed my eyes. “They cornered us. And—after a conflict on board the Defiant—my great-grandmother brought us here, to Detritus. A planet we knew about, but which had been abandoned centuries before.
“The Krell followed us, and set up a station to watch us once we crashed. They’re not murderous aliens. They’re prison guards. A force designed to keep humankind trapped here, as some of the aliens are absolutely sure we will try to conquer the galaxy if we’re ever allowed to get back into space.
“The lifebusters were designed to annihilate our civilization if we seemed to be getting close to escaping Detritus. But most of the time they attacked, I don’t think they were trying to actually destroy us. They have laws against destroying a species entirely. They consider this planet like…a preserve for humankind. They sent ships to keep us focused on the fight, to occupy us, so we wouldn’t have time to research how to escape. And while the fighters always tried to keep our fleet down to size, they were only authorized to use a certain amount of force against us, lest they accidentally cause us to go extinct.”
I shivered despite the blanket. “Something changed recently, however,” I said. “It seems this last bomb really was meant to destroy us. There have been…politics about how much they should tolerate from us. They tried to destroy Alta and Igneous, but we defeated them. That has them scared.”
“Great, wonderful,” Ironsides said, folding her arms. “But this doesn’t change much. We know why the Krell are attacking, but they’re still a superior force. This will only make them more determined to extinguish us.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But the aliens who contain us? They aren’t warriors. They’re prison guards who fly mostly unmanned drones that don’t have to fight well—because they can overwhelm us with numbers.”
“Which is still the case,” Ironsides said. “We are low on resources, while they have better technology and an orbital fleet. We’re still basically doomed.”
“This is true,” I said.
“Then why are you smiling?” Ironsides demanded.
“Because,” I said, “I can hear what they’re saying to each other. And anytime you know what your enemy is going to do, you have an advantage. They think we’re trapped on this planet.”
“Aren’t we?” Jorgen asked.
I shivered again and thought of that moment when I’d been nowhere. The Krell knew they had to target any of us who flew too well—because they knew about the defect. They knew that someone who had it might be able to do as I’d done.
I didn’t know how I’d teleported my ship. I didn’t know if I dared do it again. But I knew, at the same time, that Gran-Gran was right. Using that power was the key. To survival. To escaping this planet.
To being truly Defiant.
To make this book, I channeled my own emotions as a young man. My passion wasn’t becoming a fighter pilot, but it was instead to become a writer. But at times, that road seemed as hopeless as Spensa’s. I still feel like I’ve been given the world, since I get to do what I do for a living.
And like Spensa, I’m the beneficiary of some supremely good friends and colleagues. Krista Marino was the editor on this book, its primary champion and a wonderful flightleader. Eddie Schneider was the agent on the contract, along with help from Joshua Bilmes. Those three, along with the publisher Beverly Horowitz, were exceptionally patient with me as I pulled another book out from under them and made them publish this one instead.
I’m constantly amazed by the skills of visual artists. Charlie Bowater’s brilliant cover really brought Spensa to life for me, while Ben McSweeney did his usual technical magic, taking my vague scratches on a piece of paper and making the cool ship designs that you saw in this book. Finally, my good friend Isaa« Stewart did the maps, and was art director for the interior art.
All the typos that aren’t there are the result of the Inconsecutive Peter Ahlstrom hunting them down for their meat to sell on the open market. As always, many thanks to him for his tireless efforts and for cheering me on.
Likewise, the rest of the team here at Dragonsteel have been an excellent “ground crew” for my piloting shenanigans. Kara Stewart handles shipping out all those T-shirts and books you guys order from my website store. Adam Horne is my executive assistant and publicist. And, of course, my wife, Emily, is the one who keeps us all pointed in the right direction. In addition, Emily Grange and Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson need a hearty thanks for their general help on all kinds of sundry things. (Which includes listening to my five-year-old explain in detail how he likes his sandwiches. Mayo on the outside, if you’re wondering.)
Karen Ahlstrom (who got the special dedication for this book) is my continuity editor. You all have no idea the mess some of these books are before she gets ahold of them and forces me to acknowledge people can’t be in two places at once. Other help was provided at Penguin Random House/Delacorte Press by Monica Jean, Mary McCue, Lisa Nadel, Adrienne Waintraub, and Rebecca Gudelis. The copyeditor was Barbara Perris, and the proofreader was Shona McCarthy.
My writing group and flightmates for the book were the usual suspects: Karen Ahlstrom, Peter Ahlstrom, Alan Layton, Kaylynn ZoBell, Emily Sanderson, Darci Stone, Eric James Stone, Ben Olsen, Ethan Skarstedt, and Earl Cahill.
Beta readers included Nikki Ramsay (callsign: Phosphophyllite), Marnie Peterson, Eric Lake (callsign: Chaos) Darci Cole (callsign: Blue), Ravi Persaud (callsign: Jabber), Deana Covel Whitney (callsign: Braid), Jayden King (callsign: Tripod), Alice Arneson (callsign: Wetlander), Bradyn Ray, Sumejja Muratagic-Tadic (callsign: Sigma), Janel Forcier (callsign: Turnip), Paige Phillips (callsign: Artisan), Joe Deardeuff (callsign: Traveler), and Brian T. Hill (callsign: El Guapo).
And, calling out two of those in specific, Jayden King and Bradyn Ray lent me their fighter pilot expertise, explaining (sometimes at length) the stupid things I was getting wrong about flight. Eric Lake was also a big help with calculating speeds, distances, and the coordinate system. (Make friends with physicists and mathematicians, writers. It pays off.)
We did a special teen beta read for this book, and those members were: Liliana Klein (callsign: Sentinel), Nathan Scorup, Hannah Herman, Joshua Singer, Eve Scorup (callsign: Silverstone), Valencia Kumley (callsign: AlphaPhoenix), Daniel Summerstay, Chrestian Scorup, Rebecca Arneson (callsign: Scarlet), Cole Newberry, Brett Herman (callsign: Hermanator), Aidan Denzel (callsign: Cross), Evan Garcia, Kathryn Stephens, and William Stay.
Our gamma proofreaders included many of the betas plus Trae Cooper, Mark Lindberg (callsign: Megalodon), Brandon Cole (callsign: Colevander), Ian McNatt (callsign: Weiry), Kellyn Neumann (callsign: Jumper), Gary Singer, Becca Reppert, Kalyani Poluri (callsign: Henna), Paige Vest, Jory Phillips (callsign: Bouncer), Ted Herman (callsign: Cavalry), Bob Kluttz (callsign: Tasil), Bao Pham (callsign: Wyld), Lyndsey Luther (callsign: So
ar), David Behrens, Lingting “Botanica” Xu (callsign: Hasan), Tim Challener (callsign: Antaeus), William “Aberdasher” Juan, Rahul Pantula (callsign: Giraffe), Megan Kanne (callsign: Sparrow), and Ross Newberry.
Many thanks to all of them. Though there are, as always, some new names on that list, many of these people have been supporting my writing for years—or even decades at this point. So if you need a good wingmate, I can point you toward a few.
BRANDON SANDERSON is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Reckoners series: Steelheart, Firefight, Calamity, and the e-original Mitosis; the internationally bestselling Mistborn trilogy; and the Stormlight Archive; and he was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. His books have been published in more than twenty-five languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Brandon lives and writes in Utah. To learn more about him and his books, visit him at brandonsanderson.com or follow @BrandSanderson on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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