It shows me real hallucinations. It’s not a fabrication. Not completely.
“I think it must be a corpse,” I said. “A delver’s corpse, repurposed to train on.”
Brade frowned at that. “I don’t know if they can even die, Alanik. You’re making assumptions.”
Maybe she was right. Still, I kept my helmet on as we scouted through the cavern, sticking close together. The moss on those rocks was alive, as best as I could tell from picking at it. What if it released, like, dangerous spores or something? I would have felt a lot more comfortable if Brade would put her helmet back on.
As we reached the far side of the room, I spotted something on the floor. A web of deep green, hidden behind a pile of rocks. I waved Brade forward and approached the patch. It looked like a spiderweb of green fibers, and was about a meter in diameter, circular.
“You see this?” I asked.
“A membrane,” she said. “Made of green fibers.”
So it wasn’t a hallucination. I knelt, poking at the fibers, then looked at Brade. She didn’t seem eager to push through it, and I found that neither was I.
“I was furious,” Brade finally said, speaking in a soft voice.
“Huh?” I asked.
“You asked earlier,” she said. “What it felt like to be taken from my parents when young. It made me angry.”
She knelt, yanking at the spiderweb of fibers, pulling it back and revealing a hole in the ground. It looked to be about two meters deep, and the light on my helmet showed a metal floor at the bottom.
“It seethed inside me for years,” Brade continued. “A molten pit, burning like destructor fire.” She looked back at me. “That’s when I realized the Superiority was right. I was dangerous. Very, very dangerous.”
She met my eyes for a moment, then pulled on her helmet again and activated the channel to call in to Flight Command. “We’ve found the heart,” she said. “Entering now.”
She lowered herself down through the opening. I hesitated only a moment, then climbed down after her. My heart began beating faster, but our headlights showed only a small, empty chamber with a very low ceiling.
“Well done,” Winzik’s voice said in our ears. “Alanik of the UrDail and Brade Shimabukuro, you are the seventh pair to reach this room in the training.”
“What happens now?” I asked. “I mean, if we were in a real delver maze? What would we find?”
“We don’t know what it will look like,” Winzik said. “Nobody has ever returned after entering the membrane. But in the event of a true delver emergency, you must detonate the weapon. The lives of millions may depend on it.”
The weapon. We’d been told several times that one existed, though we had been given no details on it. We were assured that if a real delver emergency happened, we’d each be given ships equipped with one of the weapons, which was apparently like some kind of bomb that we were supposed to detonate near the membrane room.
“Great,” Brade said to Flight Command. “Now that we’ve gotten here, I think we’re ready. Brade out.” She leaped up and pulled herself up from the room through the hole, entering the chamber with the moss.
I followed, turning off the line to Flight Command. “Ready?” I asked her. “Brade, we’ve only made it to the heart once. We need to run this mission many more times.”
“To what end?” she asked. “The rooms are starting to repeat; we’ve seen everything this test maze can show us. We’re as prepared as we’re going to be.”
I caught up to her. “I doubt that. There’s always room for more training.”
“And if this fake maze makes us grow complacent? The real thing will be unexpected. Insane, or at least beyond our kind of sanity. If we just run through these same rooms, we’ll get too comfortable with them. So the more we train, the worse off we could be.”
Once we reached our ships, I hesitated, thinking of what she’d said earlier about being angry. Then, after a moment of indecision, I pulled off my helmet. I didn’t want to risk my microphone picking up what I was going to say, just in case.
Brade had been about to haul herself onto her ship’s wing, but stopped when she saw me. She cocked her head, then pulled off her helmet too. I put mine aside, then gestured for her to do the same.
“What?” she asked.
Again, I nearly told her. I nearly turned off my bracelet, revealed my true face. In this place of lies and shadows, I nearly exposed to her the truth. I wanted so badly to have someone to talk to, someone who might understand.
“What if there were a way to change things?” I said instead. “A way we could make it so humans didn’t need to be treated like you are? To show the Superiority they’re wrong about you?”
She cocked her head and drew her lips together in a dione sort of expression. “That’s the thing,” she said. “They aren’t wrong.”
“What was done to you was unnatural, Brade. You were right to feel angry about it.”
She grabbed her helmet and put it on, then climbed up into her cockpit. I sighed, but did the same. So my helmet was back on when I caught what she said next.
“Flight Command,” Brade said. “We’ve reached the center, so I’m going to test the weapon now.”
“Affirmative,” Winzik said.
Wait. What?
“Brade!” I said, looking across at her cockpit. “I’m not even strapped into my—”
She pushed a button on her console, and a flash burst from the center of her ship. It hit me like an invisible wave, connecting not with my body, but with my mind.
In that moment, I immediately knew the way home.
I knew the way home.
I saw it—the pathway to Detritus—as clearly as I could remember the way to the hidden cavern where I’d found M-Bot. As clearly as I remembered that day when my father had flown for the last time against the Krell.
It was burned into my brain. Like an arrow made from light. I knew, somehow, not just the direction—but the destination. My home. This weapon, the secret one created to fight the delvers, was not what I’d assumed it to be.
“Weapon test successful,” Brade said. “If this were a real delver, I am one hundred percent confident this would have diverted them to the human refuge of Detritus.”
I heard, in the background, cheers and congratulations. I heard Winzik telling the other government officials that their anti-delver system was operational, and their pilots perfectly trained. He ended with a simple, stunning conclusion. “If a delver did ever attack the Superiority, my program ensures that we will be able to send them to destroy the humans instead. We will fight the two greatest threats to the universe by turning them against one another!”
The terrible understanding loomed over me. I threw off my helmet and leaped out of my cockpit, crossing the spongy ground toward Brade’s ship. When I arrived, I found her lounging on the wing, her helmet off and beside her.
“You knew about this?” I demanded of her.
“Of course I knew,” she replied. “Winzik’s scientists used my mind to develop the weapon. We’ve always known that there was a connection between cytonics and the delvers. We cause them pain, Alanik. They hate us, maybe even fear us. We tried for years to exploit this, and came to the logical conclusion. If we can’t destroy delvers, we can at least divert them.”
“That’s not a good solution! At best, it delays a catastrophe! It doesn’t stop one!”
“It can if we play this right,” Brade said. “We don’t need to defeat the delvers. We simply need to control them.”
“This isn’t controlling them!” I snapped. “A single barely tested blast that might divert them away? What happens when they come back? What happens after they destroy your target, then continue to rampage across the galaxy?”
I was growing so used to the way diones and Krell responded to outbursts like this
that a part of me was surprised when Brade just smiled, instead of pulling back and chiding me for my aggression.
“You act as if Winzik hasn’t thought about any of that,” she said.
“Considering my experiences with him and his military tests, I think I’m allowed to question his foresight!”
“Don’t worry, Alanik,” Brade said. She nodded toward her ship. “Today’s ‘test’ was a way to show off for the officials back on the Weights and Measures. This isn’t the first time we’ve tested the weapon—we’ve been planning this for years. We know that we can handle a delver.”
She slipped off her wing, her boots scraping the mossy rock beneath her as she landed. She stepped closer to me. “This training program and all of these pilots are an insurance policy. Their job will be to use diversionary bombs to shuffle a delver around between locations until the real weapon gets there.”
“Which is?”
She pointed at herself. Then she pointed at me. “In joining these flights, you provided us with a gift. Another cytonic. We have so few. Winzik told me to befriend you, recruit you. So here we are.”
Recruit me? This whole time, Brade had been trying to recruit me? Was that why she’d been warming up to me lately?
Scud, she was as bad at this as I was.
“This is insane, Brade,” I said. “The humans tried to control the delvers, and look where it got them!”
“We’ve learned from their mistakes,” Brade said. “If you are willing, I can show you things about your powers. Things you never dreamed were possible. We can control the delvers.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Are you really sure?”
She hesitated, and I saw that she wasn’t, even though she made a dione gesture of assurance by raising her hand and tapping two of her fingers together.
The chinks in her armor were there. She wasn’t nearly as confident as she pretended.
“We should talk about this,” I said. “Not be so hasty.”
“Maybe,” Brade said. “Maybe there isn’t time, though.” Brade turned back to her ship. “The Superiority is losing its stranglehold on travel. Others are close to figuring out its technology. Something new is needed. Something to keep everyone in line, and prevent wars.”
The horror of it hit me. “The delvers. You’ll have them looming over everyone—a threat. ‘Obey, play along, or we’ll send one to your doorstep…’ ”
“Just think about the offer, Alanik.” Brade put on her helmet. “We’re pretty sure we can handle keeping a delver distracted when it’s in our realm. In the past, they’d sometimes spend years between attacks floating in space, doing whatever it is they do. So if our force can be ready when one approaches a populated planet, it should be safe enough—particularly with cytonics like us as a backup. Winzik can explain it better than I can. He’s a genius. Anyway, we should get back.”
She slid into her cockpit. I stood in stunned silence for a moment longer, trying to wrap my brain around everything she’d told me. Whatever they said they’d practiced, whatever assurances they thought they had, they were wrong. I’d felt the delvers. Winzik and his team were like children playing with an armed bomb.
But as I walked back to my ship, I had to admit that a small portion of me was tempted. How much did Brade know about my powers? What could she show me? I’d played along with joining the Superiority’s military to get access to hyperdrives. Could I play along with this offer to learn what Brade knew?
Too far, I thought as I climbed back into my ship. No. I wanted nothing to do with the delvers. Though it was unrealistic, I never wanted to feel their eyes on me again. I never wanted to feel their thoughts intruding on mine, making everything and everyone seem so insignificant.
Whatever Brade and Winzik were up to, I couldn’t join it. I had to find a way to stop it.
“Brade,” I said as we got back on the comms, “don’t you care at all that they’re planning to use this to destroy an entire planet of humans? Your people?”
She didn’t respond immediately. And when she did, I thought I heard a hesitance to her. “They…they deserve it. It’s what has to be.”
Yes, there were obviously cracks in her confidence. But how could I exploit them?
The two of us flew out of the maze, then headed to join the rest of our flight. However, we got a call from the Weights and Measures before we arrived.
“You two,” the official said, “Alanik of UrDail and the human. Report in early.”
I felt an immediate surge of panic. Was this more of Winzik trying to recruit me, or was it about my spy drone? In the face of the overwhelming discoveries that Brade had dropped on me, I had almost forgotten about my plan and the little robot that was hiding back on the Weights and Measures.
I looked out into the stars. I didn’t need coordinates to try to judge the direction to Detritus. I could feel it out there, the pathway burned into my head. It was fading, like the path to Starsight that Alanik had put in my head, but much more slowly. I felt I’d have this arrow for days at least.
She’d been weak, near death. That was why her coordinates had faded so quickly. This was a more powerful impression.
I could go. I could jump home, right now. I was free.
But M-Bot and Doomslug were back at the embassy. No—I still had a mission here. It wasn’t time to leave yet. Not quite.
Winzik can’t have discovered the drone, I told myself, shoving down my earlier anxiety. Why would they call us both back, in that case? Why would they call me back at all? If they suspected me, they’d start shooting, right?
I then turned my ship toward the Weights and Measures, which seemed like a small rock compared to the dominating polyhedral boulder that was the delver maze. As soon as I drew close enough to the carrier, my wristband buzzed, indicating that I’d re-established communication with the drone.
Status? I sent to it, tapping on the bracelet.
Have infiltrated engine room, it sent back. Am hovering in a corner. Good visibility. Algorithms determine a very low chance of discovery. Continue, or return to meeting point?
Seen anything interesting?
Not capable of answering that question. But my chronometer indicates I arrived after hyperjump occurred.
I’d want it to stay in place at least until we hyperjumped back to Starsight. That would give me the best chance of capturing sensitive information.
Remain, I sent.
I landed behind Brade in the fighter bays, and handed off my ship to the maintenance crew. I caught up with her as she climbed down from her ship.
“Any idea what this is about?” I asked. “Is it about recruiting me?”
Brade gave a noncommittal swipe of her fingers, a dione gesture.
We were met by a guide drone, which led us away from the fighter bay, down an unfamiliar red-carpeted path through the Weights and Measures. Irrationally, I felt like I was being walked to a cell—right up until the moment when we stepped through a set of double doors and entered a party.
Krell and diones in official uniforms or robes stood about, sipping fancy drinks. A large screen on the far wall showed shots of training fighters, alternating with slides of text that explained the philosophy behind our training. From the little bits my translator read to me, it looked like the Department of Protective Services was making great efforts to prove how important their project was.
Indeed, I noted other pilots from other flights standing throughout the room, speaking with officials. I’d been called in to be used for propaganda purposes, it seemed. Soon, Winzik gestured me over to stand by him—though the drone instructed Brade to wait behind.
Winzik was in good spirits, judging by the excited way he waved the arms of his green exoskeleton. “Ah, here she is! The only one of her species on Starsight. And now she serves in my program. Proof that it has merit indeed!”
&
nbsp; The two Krell he was speaking to looked me over. “Ah,” one said. “Your people once served the humans, did they not? How do you feel at finally being invited to join the Superiority?”
“Honored,” I forced myself to say. Scud, did this have to happen today? Now that I wasn’t actively fighting, my worry about the spy drone was growing nearly unbearable.
“I’m more interested in your human, Winzik,” the other Krell said. “Has she killed anyone by accident?”
“My my, no! She’s very well trained. Let us focus on my project, Your Honors. A reasonable plan for protecting against the delvers, at long last!”
“That,” a voice said from over my shoulder, “and the Superiority’s first actively piloted space force in a hundred years. One composed entirely of lesser species, at that.”
I spun and found Cuna there behind me. Even in a room of diplomats and politicians, Cuna stood out—tall, with deep blue skin, shrouded in robes such a dark violet they were nearly black.
“It’s not completely made up of lesser species,” Winzik admitted. “We’ve got one dione. A draft, strangely.”
“Still, an incredible undertaking,” Cuna said. “That leaves me wondering at the Department of Protective Services…and its ambitions for this force it is training.”
I could practically feel the tension between Cuna and Winzik. The other officials did the Krell equivalent of clearing their throats—making a crossing gesture—before withdrawing. That left just me, Winzik, and Cuna.
The two didn’t speak. They only stared at each other. Finally, Winzik turned around without a word and responded to someone speaking nearby. The cheery Krell walked over and jumped right into that conversation, explaining enthusiastically about his plan to defend against the delvers.
How much does Cuna know? I wondered. Cuna was the one to invite Alanik here, a cytonic. They must suspect what Winzik is doing, but how much can I trust either of them?
“I don’t know what any of this means,” I said to Cuna. “But I’m not interested in your political games.”
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