Hopefully, you’ll never have to find out, I thought. Hesho and I took the right-hand exit and flew through a corridor that appeared to me to be crystalline, but Hesho saw flames. Both of us, however, saw a large boulder at one side of the room—so we flew over and inspected it. A tug on it with a light-lance proved it was real, and it tumbled out into the room.
“How odd,” Hesho said. “Did someone come and install that boulder specifically to hinder our path?”
“Supposedly,” I said, “this maze is built to replicate the kind of oddities and mysteries we’ll find inside the real delver maze.”
“Our scanners are useless,” Hesho said. “I have reports from my instruments teams—and they can’t tell what’s fake and what isn’t. It seems that the Superiority has programmed our ship to be fooled by this place, something I find disconcerting. I don’t like the idea of seeing what the Superiority shows me, even if it is for an important training simulation.”
As we flew deeper, I was glad to have the kitsen with me. Bringing a wingmate made all kinds of practical sense, not just for identifying what was real. On a more basic level, it was comforting to have someone to talk to in this place.
We passed through several other strange rooms with a variety of odd visuals—from the walls melting, to the shadows of enormous beasts passing just out of sight. We were attacked by embers in one, which I fired upon—before realizing Hesho couldn’t see them. My shots hit the wall, blasting off pieces of metal, and the entire structure rumbled in a way that I could swear was threatening.
“How can we hear that?” Hesho asked. “Instruments report a vacuum outside the ships. There is no medium for sound to pass through.”
“I…” I shivered. “Let’s try that tunnel over there.”
“I don’t like this,” Hesho confided as we moved down the tunnel. “It feels like it’s training us to rely upon one another’s eyes.”
“That’s a good thing though, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Hesho said. “While all experience is subjective, and all reality in some ways an illusion, this offers a practical danger. If we come to rely upon consensus to determine what is real, the maze could simply exploit this assumption and trick us.”
In the next chamber, we were attacked by embers that were real this time—and I almost ignored them, a mistake that could have been deadly. I responded to Hesho’s warning at the last moment, dodging as a barrage from the heavily armed fighter vaporized them.
We were left in a room with junk bouncing around and hitting the walls before starting to pool toward the bottom. Sweating, my heart thumping, I led us through the next passage. Scud, was I ever going to get used to this place?
We reached the end of the tunnel, and my floods shone on a strange membrane covering the opening. It ran from the floor to the ceiling, and pulsed softly with a rhythm I could hear.
That sound suddenly seemed to ring through the entire structure. My fighter thumped under my fingers.
I stared at the membrane, shocked. We’d only been in the delver maze for…what, half an hour? Maybe a little longer? I’d expected it to take hours upon hours to find the heart.
“That’s it,” I said. “The membrane. The thing we’re looking for. The…the heart of the delver.”
“What?” Hesho said. “I don’t see anything.”
Oh. I took a deep breath, calming myself. An illusion. Which meant—
I saw the entire universe.
In a blink everything vanished around me, and somehow my mind expanded. I saw planets, I saw star systems, I saw galaxies. I saw the scrambling, useless, tiny little insects that covered them like chittering hives. I felt revulsion. Hatred for these pests that infested the worlds. Hordes of ants swarming on a dropped piece of food. Buzzing and mindless, disgusting. Painful, as they’d swarm me, occasionally biting—for though they were too small to ever truly destroy me, they hurt. Their noise. Their painful scraping. They infested my home, after swarming all of the rocks that broke the endless nothing that was this universe. They would not ever leave me alone, and I wanted so badly just to smash them. To smother them beneath my foot so they’d stop piling, and crawling, and clicking, and snapping, and biting, and corrupting, and—
I snapped back into my cockpit, slamming against my seat as if I’d been thrown there.
“Another illusion then,” Hesho said, sounding bored. “You want to move forward first? I’ll cover you, in case further embers guard this chamber.”
I trembled, the horrible vision resting on me like the darkness in a cavern far, far underground. I breathed in gasps, trying to recapture my breath. The room looked normal to me now, but…
“Captain Alanik?” Hesho asked.
What had that been? Why…why did it linger in my mind, making me revile Hesho’s words, as if they were coming from something slimy and horrible?
“I…,” I said. “Sorry, I need a moment.”
He gave it to me. I recovered slowly. Scud. SCUD. That had felt like…like Vapor had said the delvers regarded all of us.
“Flight Command,” I said, calling in. “Did you just show me something strange?”
“Pilot?” Flight Command called back. “You need to learn to fly the maze without contacting us. When you enter one for real, you won’t—”
“What did you just show me?” I demanded.
“The log indicates that your ship’s illusion for that room is of darkness hiding an exit. That is all.”
So…they hadn’t shown me that sensation of the universe?
Of course they hadn’t. That was far beyond the powers of a holographic projector. I’d seen something else. Something…something that my own mind had projected?
Scud. What was I?
At Hesho’s urging we continued, and spent another fifteen minutes moving through rooms, familiarizing ourselves with the way the maze worked. I didn’t experience anything else approaching the feeling of that strange moment when I’d seen the universe.
Eventually, we hit our predetermined exploration time limit, and so we turned around and flew back. Outside, we found the others gathering—including a furious Brade who, as Vapor had guessed, had gotten stuck in one of the early rooms, unable to tell what was real and what wasn’t.
None of them had seen any membranes or had any idea what I was trying to explain when I tried—and failed—to talk about what I’d seen. I couldn’t put it into words, but it remained with me. Like a shadow over my shoulder, lingering as we reported back to the Weights and Measures.
We entered the nowhere.
As always, it started with a scream.
Absolute darkness, broken by the eyes. White hot, they stared in the wrong direction. The more often I did this, the more I could sense the…shadow of what they were. Enormous, mind-bending things whose shapes didn’t conform to my understanding of how physical forms should work.
I seemed to hang there for an eternity. Aside from Brade, who wouldn’t talk about it, the others of my flight said they didn’t sense any time at all passing in the nowhere. To them, the hyperjump happened instantaneously. They never saw the darkness or the eyes.
Finally, I felt the end coming on. A subtle fading sensation that—
One of the eyes turned and stared right at me.
The Weights and Measures popped back into regular space outside of Starsight. I gasped, my pulse going crazy, battle senses coming alert.
It had seen me. One of them had looked right at me.
We were traveling back to Starsight after another day of training—my tenth so far in the military here. I was extra tired today from putting the others through their exercises. Was that why it had seen me?
What had I done? What was wrong?
“Captain Alanik?” Hesho said. “Though I am not familiar with your species, you do seem to be exhibiting some traditional signs of di
stress.”
I glanced down at the kitsen. Hesho’s ship engineers had transformed several of the jump room’s seats into kitsen travel stations—basically, little buildings several stories high, secured to the wall and complete with smaller seats inside for their whole crew.
They chattered together inside the open-walled structures, though Hesho had the roof all for himself and his servants. It was about eye level for me, and was set with a luxurious captain’s chair. It also had a bar and several monitors for entertainment, which seemed a ridiculous amount of luxury for the short half hour or so we spent on the Weights and Measures each day, flying out of and back to Starsight.
“Alanik?” Hesho asked. “I can call my ship’s surgeon, who is here below. She has little experience with alien species, however. How many hearts do you have?”
“I’m fine, Hesho,” I said. “Just a sudden chill.”
“Hmmm,” he said, leaning back in his seat and putting his feet up. “A moment of frailty in an otherwise powerful warrior. This is a beautiful moment, which I shall treasure.” He nodded to himself, then sighed and tapped a blinking button on his armrest, causing a screen to rotate toward him.
We weren’t supposed to use wireless communications except in emergencies. Hesho, however, had a loose definition of the word emergency, and he had been granted—upon persistent request—a bypass for the anti-communication shield around the Weights and Measures.
It probably wasn’t polite to listen in. At the same time, he was sitting right next to me. And my pin translated and transmitted the words to my earpiece, whether I wanted it to or not.
A kitsen appeared on his screen, a female—judging by the pattern of light and dark fur—wearing a very formal-looking outfit of colorful silk, with matching headdress. She bowed to Hesho. “Unexalted One Who Is Not King,” she said. “I have called to request guidance upon my vote tomorrow in the matter of the national taxation fund.”
Hesho rubbed the fur underneath his snout. “I fear this is not working, Senator Aria. When I spoke to our monitors at the Superiority, they claimed that I was still having undue influence upon the functioning of our senate.”
The senator looked up. “But, Unexalted One, the senate voted exactly the opposite of your expressed preference.”
“Yes, and they did well,” he said. “But the Superiority seems to think that I simply told you to vote opposite my desires, and therefore continue to manipulate you.”
“A difficult situation,” Senator Aria said. “How would you like us to proceed?”
“Well,” Hesho said. “It seems…the Superiority would very much like you to choose what you would like.”
“My greatest desire in all of the universe is to see the king’s will made manifest.”
“And if his will is for you to be yourself?”
“Of course. Which type of myself would you like?”
“Perhaps, choose randomly how you vote each time?” Hesho said. “Do you think that would work?”
“Certainly, in that case the Superiority cannot claim we are being influenced by anything other than fate.” Senator Aria bowed again. “We will seek your influence upon the universe as it manifests in drawn lots to determine the vote. A wise solution, Unexalted One.” She cut the communication.
Hesho sighed.
“They seem very…loyal,” I noted.
“We are trying,” Hesho said. “This is difficult for us. All my life, I was taught to be very careful in how I expressed my will—but I do not know how to avoid expressing it at all.” He rubbed his temples, his eyes closed. “We must learn the Superiority’s way or leave ourselves exposed to be conquered, should the humans ever return. They are my true fear—they attacked us first, during the initial human war. Their leader claimed our shared past made us practically a human colony already. Bah. My fur prickles to even speak the words.
“We must change to be prepared, but change is difficult. My people are not foolish or weak-willed. It is simply that for many, many centuries, the throne was the one immutable force upon which they could depend. To have it ripped away suddenly is to pull off a bandage before the wound has properly healed.”
I found myself nodding, which was silly. It was better that Hesho’s rule be replaced. What kind of backward culture still had a hereditary monarchy? A military stratocracy—with the strongest pilots and admirals coming to rule by proving their merits in battle—made far, far more sense.
“Maybe you don’t need to worry so much about the humans?” I said to Hesho. “I mean, they might not even come back.”
“Perhaps,” Hesho said. “I was trained since I was a pup to put the needs of the planet before all else. We spent centuries seeking to recover the shadow-walkers, but we must face the truth. We will never again have cytonics among us. We lost that privilege long ago.”
He looked to me. “Do not pity me for my loss of authority. Many years ago, my great-great-great-grandfather rode to battle at the head of our armies to fight humankind’s invasion. He fought the giants with a sword. Before that, the daimyo of the seventeen clans were constantly ready to lead their people in war. But I always fancied this role, being a captain of my own ship. It will be good. So long as my people do not simply vanish into the Superiority like drops of blood in an ocean.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, Hesho,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “All this work to bend to what they want us to be.”
“It’s either that or be trapped on our planets with no hyperdrives. My people have tried that, and it is stifling us. The only way to exist with any relevance is to play by the Superiority’s rules.”
“And yet, the diones and the other primes call themselves the greater races,” I said. “So proud of how advanced they are, all the while basically enslaving everyone else.”
“Hmm,” Hesho said, but did not reply further. I followed his glance over his shoulder, then I blushed, seeing that Morriumur was sitting right behind him. Scud. When would I learn to think a little before I spoke?
Once the Weights and Measures had docked, Winzik gave leave for the pilots to head off to their shuttles to ride back home for the evening.
“Enjoy your day off,” Hesho told me as the kitsen flew out of our room. Morriumur hurried ahead, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. Great. Well, it wasn’t my fault their species was an oppressive group of dictators.
“Hey,” Brade said as I collected my bag to leave.
I glanced back at her, a little surprised to hear her speak. Normally, she didn’t interact with us after the day’s training was done.
“Nice work today,” she told me. “I think this group is finally getting it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot. Really.”
She shrugged and brushed past me, out the door, as if embarrassed to have been caught in a moment of sincerity. I just sat in my chair, stunned. Remarkably, it seemed I was making progress with her. Maybe I could do this.
Full of newfound determination, I hurried out of the room after the others. I had work to do today.
A hero can’t pick her own trials. Remember that.
As we reached the intersection near the engine room, I took a deep breath, then approached the guard there.
M-Bot was confident we could put a spy drone together and program it, but once I snuck it onto the ship here, it might take a few minutes to set up. I couldn’t exactly do that with the other members of my flight around. The simplest option seemed to be the best.
“I need to use the restroom,” I told the guard standing watch over the path to Engineering. It was a Krell—female, I thought, guessing by the carapace formations along the outside of the small crustacean piloting the armor.
“Understood,” she answered. “I’ll send for a drone.”
Security on the Weights and Measures was tight. Though we could walk from the flight docks to
our jump room, anywhere else we wanted to go—even if called to meet with command staff—required us to be accompanied by a watchful remote drone, piloted by some security officer.
The guard, of course, didn’t leave her post. Behind me, Hesho, Kauri, and several other kitsen waited until I waved them on. Then I peeked past the guard, down the hallway. Could I come up with some way to get information out of the guard while I waited?
“Hey,” I said. “How does one get a job in the infantry?”
“Mine is not a post for lesser species, pilot of starfighters,” the guard said, moving her armored hand in several intricate motions. “Be glad you are allowed the privilege of training as you do now.”
“How is it though?” I asked. “You have to stand here at this corner basically all the time. Do they at least let you go other places? Maybe…um…”
“I’m done with this conversation,” she said.
Scud. I was terrible at this part of being a spy. I gritted my teeth, frustrated by my own inability, until a small drone arrived to escort me to the restroom. Our starfighters, of course, had waste reclamation facilities that hooked to our flight suits—we spent hours upon hours of time out there, after all. So far I hadn’t needed to use the facilities on the Weights and Measures.
My heart gave a little leap of excitement as the drone led me past the guard, toward the engine room. Unfortunately, we only walked a short distance before turning right into another hallway, one with several bathroom signs on the wall. Like others I’d seen, they were organized along species lines. I was directed to the one that the diones used, as we had similar enough biology.
The drone accompanied me into the bathroom, but not into the stall, so that was good. I tapped my wrist—starting a timer on my hologram bracelet to give us a rough estimate of how long all this would normally take me—then entered the stall, dropped my backpack, and did my business. The drone pilot didn’t say anything—though as I washed my hands, I heard them chatting absently with a coworker, their speaker accidentally left on. So perhaps the pilot wouldn’t be paying the best of attention.
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