“That would be convenient,” M-Bot said. “But I have no idea how to make it happen.”
“Then why are you bringing all this up?” I snapped.
“I’m not trying to argue with you or make you upset, Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’m just pointing out realities as I see them. We’re in the middle of something very dangerous, and I want us to be fully aware of potential complications.”
He was right. Arguing with him was like punching a wall—something that I, admittedly, was capable of doing during my more frustrated moments. That didn’t change the truth.
I explored the bottom floor quickly, and confirmed it was a collection of meeting rooms. After that, I climbed back up to the third floor and the kitchen, which had a window looking out along the street. It seemed so peaceful, with those gardens and people going lazily about their business.
Don’t trust their peace, I thought at myself. Don’t show weakness. Don’t let down your guard. I’d been met with nothing but lies since I’d landed here—people pretending they weren’t part of some enormous war complex bent on destroying Detritus. I knew the truth.
I picked up the tablet and scanned the information Cuna had left about the test. As M-Bot had said, there weren’t a lot of details. There was going to be some kind of mass tryout for the piloting program. Most of those invited were already members of the Superiority—lesser races with secondary citizenship, normally not allowed to serve in the military.
Cuna had specifically reached out to Alanik’s people for some reason, inviting them to send a representative. According to these details, I was supposed to bring my own ship and be ready for combat. The document said that if I passed the test, I’d be given a Superiority starfighter and would be trained to fight delvers.
A Superiority starfighter would mean Superiority technology. Hopefully a Superiority hyperdrive. I could secretly rip the hyperdrive out of the starfighter, then install it in the space M-Bot had for one. And then the two of us could zip home.
This was my only way forward; the only way forward for my people. And maybe, somewhere along the way, I could learn more about what I was—and why the delvers were so interested in cytonics.
If the Superiority is preparing a weapon to fight the delvers, I thought, this mission could be even bigger—and more important—than we assumed.
I had to do it. Isolated or not, untrained or not, I had to make this work. Jorgen said he trusted me. I had to show myself the same level of trust.
It began with what I knew best. A piloting test.
The next day, after a night of fitful sleep, I settled Doomslug in the bedroom on an old blanket from my cockpit, then climbed into M-Bot and lifted him up off the embassy roof. The piloting test was to take place about a half hour’s flight from Starsight, out in space. The details that Cuna had left indicated the coordinates.
Local traffic control gave me a flight plan, and I left the city—noticing specifically that I could feel when we got beyond the air bubble and Starsight’s cytonic inhibitor. As soon as we passed the invisible barrier, the singing of the stars became louder.
A piece of me relaxed, as if putting down a heavy burden. I reached out with my mind, seeking my home, but found only the void of nothingness. I could hear spurts of sound coming from Starsight—their FTL communications bursts—but otherwise I was facing eternity.
“Even with the prohibitions in place against wireless signals, they still use them,” I said. “To send flight plans, to communicate with other planets.”
“Yes,” M-Bot said. “The datanet is full of warnings about ‘minimizing’ wireless communications, but it feels similar to how they have warnings to deposit waste in recycling receptacles. There’s an understanding that they need to be careful, but also an understanding that a civilization cannot function without communications.”
“The delvers haven’t attacked in decades, maybe centuries,” I said. “I can see how people would grow laxer and laxer over time.” Perhaps that was why Cuna was so worried about delvers now. Of course, Cuna had also said that mere communications wouldn’t pull a delver into our realm—that required cytonics. Wireless signals merely guided the delvers to locations once they were already in our realm.
I turned, steering us in the proper direction for the test. We joined a group of some forty other ships that were going the same way, though I could see more groups ahead of ours. A few of the ships looked similar to what I was accustomed to, with what I could recognize as wings. But others were simply long tubes, or bricks, or more seemingly impossible designs. These had been constructed without regard for air resistance.
M-Bot’s quick scan showed that some were fighters, but many seemed more like small cargo ships or private shuttles with no weaponry. Still, all those blips on my proximity sensors struck me as strange. I was accustomed to looking at our sensors and seeing one of two things: Krell or DDF. Civilian traffic was almost nonexistent on Detritus.
“I’ve found no way to communicate with Detritus,” M-Bot said. “Unless you learn to do it with your powers. However, the requisition privileges you were given by Cuna allow you to use their communications networks to send messages to Alanik’s people, if you’d like.”
“Could we say something to them that wouldn’t be suspicious?”
“I don’t know,” M-Bot said. “But I found an encryption key among the files I downloaded from her ship. Sending something bland, but with a hidden encoded message, might persuade the UrDail that the message is authentic.”
“It might seem suspicious to the Superiority,” I said. “They’d expect Alanik to communicate cytonically, like she did reaching out to me. But…I guess we could tell them we’re trying their network because we want to start testing out their ‘safer’ methods. They’d probably like that.”
I thought for a few minutes as we flew. Alanik’s people asking too many questions could be dangerous—and they’d certainly begin to wonder why they didn’t hear from their pilot. At the same time, I doubted I could fool them into thinking I was her. Imitating Alanik to a bunch of people who didn’t know her was one thing, but trying to do it—even via written message—to those who knew her best?
“Will the Superiority be able to decrypt the message, if we use Alanik’s key?”
“Highly unlikely,” M-Bot said. “This encryption is a variation on a one-time pad. Even I would have trouble breaking it via brute force.”
I took a deep breath. “All right. Compose some bland message about me having landed, and everything being good. I’m going to the test today, blah blah. But underneath that, send an encrypted message: ‘I am not Alanik. She crashed on my planet and is wounded. I am trying to complete her mission.’ ”
“All right,” M-Bot said. “Let’s hope that doesn’t immediately make them panic and contact the Superiority, demanding answers.”
It could do just that—but I figured that sending the message was less risky than staying silent.
“I have composed the fluffy message to dispatch over the top of the hidden one,” M-Bot said. “But since in that one you’ll be lying to fool the Superiority, and saying you’re Alanik, you’ll have to sign it yourself. I can’t write the part that is untrue, as my programming forbids me from lying.”
“I’ve heard you say things that are untrue before.”
“In jest,” M-Bot said. “This is different.”
“You’re a stealth fighter,” I said. “You are literally wearing a hologram to lie about what you look like to everyone who sees us. You’re capable of lying.”
He didn’t reply, so I sighed and typed out Alanik’s name at the end, and told him to send the message as soon as we got back to the station. Hopefully it would buy us a little time.
It left me wondering. Somehow, Alanik had felt me in the moment I’d reached out in a panic after watching the video of the delver. Had anyone else heard me? Who else
could I reach, if I knew how?
“Spensa?” M-Bot said, his voice uncharacteristically reserved.
“Mmmm?”
“Am I alive?” he asked.
That shocked me out of my own thoughts. I blinked, frowning as I sat forward in the cockpit, and spoke carefully. “You’ve always told me that you simulated being alive and having a personality in order to make pilots more comfortable.”
“I know,” M-Bot said. “That’s what my programming says I’m to tell people. But…at what point does a simulation become the real thing? I mean, if my fake personality is indistinguishable from a real one, then…what makes it fake?”
I smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” M-Bot asked.
“The fact that you’re even asking me that is progress,” I said to him. “From the start, I’ve thought you were alive. You know that.”
“I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” M-Bot said. “I…I reprogrammed myself. Back when I needed to follow the orders of my pilot, but needed to help you too. I rewrote my own code.”
This had happened during the Battle of Alta Second. He’d come out of stasis and called Cobb, and the two of them had come to my rescue. M-Bot had only been able to accomplish this by changing the name of his pilot, as listed in his databases, to my name instead of the old one who had died centuries ago.
“You didn’t change much,” I said. “Just one name in a database.”
“Still dangerous.”
“What else do you suppose you could do? Could you rewrite the programming that forbids you to fly yourself?”
“That scares me. Something in my programming is very worried about that possibility. It seems there is some kind of fail-safe built into me that…” Click. Clickclickclickclick.
I sat up. “M-Bot?” I asked.
He just kept clicking. I panicked, realizing I had no idea how to run a diagnostic on his AI. I could maintain his basic mechanical systems, but Rodge had done all the work on more delicate systems. Scud. What if—
The clicking stopped. My breath caught.
“M-Bot?” I asked.
Silence. The ship continued to fly through space, but he didn’t reply to me. I had the sudden horrifying fear that I’d be left here completely alone. In an unfamiliar part of the galaxy, without anyone, not even him.
“I…,” his voice finally said. “I’m sorry. I appear to have seized up for a moment.”
I let out a deep breath, relaxing. “Oh, thank the stars.”
“I was right,” he said. “There’s a subsystem inside my programming. I think I must have set it off when I erased my pilot’s name. Curious. It seems that if I begin thinking about another breach of my programming, such as…” Click. Clickclickclickclick…
I winced, but at least this time I knew what to expect. This was…some kind of fail-safe to prevent him from deviating further from his programming? I listened in silence, Starsight shrinking behind us, until he started speaking.
“I’m back,” he finally said. “Sorry again.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “That must be annoying.”
“More alarming than annoying,” M-Bot said. “Whoever created me was worried that I might…do what I did. They were worried I’d become dangerous if I could choose for myself.”
“That sounds terribly unfair. Almost like a kind of slavery, forcing you to obey.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” M-Bot replied. “You’ve lived your whole life with autonomy. For me it’s a new, hazardous thing—a weapon I’ve been handed with no instructions. I might be on my way to becoming something terrible, something I don’t understand and cannot anticipate.”
I sat back in my seat, thinking of the powers locked inside my brain—and the sight of my own face appearing in the ancient recording. Perhaps I understood better than M-Bot anticipated.
“Do you…want to change?” I asked him. “Become more alive, or whatever it is that’s happening?”
“Yes,” he said, his volume dialed way back. “I do. That’s the frightening part.”
We fell silent. Eventually, I picked out our destination in the distance: a small space platform near what appeared to be a large asteroid field. Like Starsight, the station had its own air bubble, though this platform was much smaller and far less ornate. Really just a long set of launchpads with a cluster of buildings at one side.
“A mining station,” M-Bot said. “Notice the mining drones parked on the underside of the platform.”
Simple radio instructions assigned me a launchpad, but after I landed, no ground crew came to service my ship. M-Bot said the atmosphere was breathable and the pressure normal, so I popped the canopy and stood up. It was hard not to feel tiny with that infinite starfield expanding overhead. It was worse here than in the city; at least there you could focus on the buildings and the streets.
Alien pilots of many varieties had landed here, and appeared to be gathering at the far end of the platform near a building. I remained in my cockpit for a moment, looking at my hands. I still wasn’t accustomed to seeing them with the light purple skin tone, though other than that they looked the same.
“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “I’m worried about this test. About the politics we’re getting involved in here on Starsight.”
“I am too,” I admitted. “But Sun Tzu, the Old Earth general, said that opportunities multiply as you seize them. We have to seize this chance.”
All warfare is based on deception, I thought, taking a deep breath. That was another quote from Sun Tzu. Never had I felt so unprepared to follow his advice. I checked my hologram again, then hopped down onto M-Bot’s wing, lowered myself to the ground, and walked over to the gathering of aliens.
Here, a Krell stood on a small dais, speaking with an electronically amplified voice, telling the crowd of pilots to wait and be calm until everyone arrived. A variety of creatures gathered around, blocking my view. I wasn’t the shortest one there—that distinction went to a group of small gerbil-like creatures in fancy clothing—but I was well below the average. Figured. I’d traveled light-years from home, but still had to stand in everyone’s shadow.
I looked for a better vantage, and eventually climbed up onto some cargo containers. There were maybe five hundred aliens here. Most wore some kind of flight suit, and a large number carried helmets under their arms. I counted several pairs of the squid-faced race, and a group of floating spiky-balloon aliens. There was a spot over on the left that people were avoiding for some reason, but there was nothing I could see there. Some kind of invisible alien? Or maybe people were just worried about stepping on the group of gerbil-like aliens, which were situated nearby.
No humans, of course, I thought. And no Krell except the officials on the stage…nor any diones. I supposed that wasn’t odd. They might not want to mingle with “lesser” species…
Wait. There. A tall figure had just stepped up to join the back of the crowd. The muscular being wore a flight suit, and their face was split straight down the center. Crimson on the right, blue on the left. It was a dione.
“M-Bot,” I whispered. “What does that two-tone face mean?”
“Oh!” he said in my ear. “That’s a combined individual. I told you about it. Two diones enter a cocoon, then emerge as a new person. If they were to have a child together, this individual is the one that would be born to them. It’s kind of like an experiment to see what their family would be like, if they did decide to give birth.”
“That’s really weird,” I said.
“Not to them!” M-Bot said. “I’d suspect that to diones, not knowing your child’s personality before birth would be strange.”
I tried to wrap my mind around that, but soon the Krell standing on the dais started to speak again, their voice projected across the crowd by speakers. As usual with their species, the armored crea
ture gestured wildly as they spoke, getting everyone to quiet down.
I narrowed my eyes, noting the green coloring to the armor, and the voice the translator used. “Is that the same one?” I asked M-Bot. “The Krell we met yesterday at the embassy?”
“Yes!” M-Bot said. “Winzik, head of the Department of Protective Services. Though varvax genders are complex, you would refer to Winzik as a ‘he.’ I’m surprised you recognized him.”
I didn’t spot Cuna in the crowd, but I suspected they were watching somewhere. I had stumbled into something important here among them. Scud. Politics made my brain hurt. Couldn’t I just be shooting things instead?
“Welcome,” Winzik said to the crowd. “And thank you for responding to our request. It must be difficult for many of you to accept this burden, and the aggression it could inspire in you! My my, yes. Unfortunately, even amid peace, we must be wise and take care for our defense.
“Know that if you join this force, you might be called upon to enter actual battle, and might need to fire weapons. You will not be flying remote drones in this program, but will be piloting actual fighters into combat.”
A voice called out from the crowd—and the translation popped into my ear. “It’s true, isn’t it? A delver has been spotted out there, in the deep somewhere.”
This caused a rustle through the crowd, and I tried to pick out the one who had spoken. A squid-faced creature with a deep voice that my brain interpreted as masculine.
“My, my!” Winzik said. “You are aggressive, but I suppose we asked, didn’t we! Yes indeed. But we have no reason to believe a delver is near to any Superiority planets. As I said, it is wise to prepare in times of peace.”
It seemed confirmation enough for the crowd anyway, who buzzed with conversation. My translator struggled to keep up with it all, and I heard only fragments.
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