“Can’t you hear how selfish that is? You’d sacrifice hundreds of thousands of human lives so that maybe you can live a little better?”
“What do you know about it?” Brade snapped. “You can’t possibly understand how it feels to make a decision like this.”
I can’t, can I? I pulled her down from the ladder. She let me do it, moving limply as if her confidence had been replaced with uncertainty. In the shadow of the wing of her ship—sheltered, at least a little, from everyone else—I did it again. I turned off my hologram.
“I know exactly how it feels,” I hissed at Brade. “Trust me.”
She froze, my image reflecting back at me in the surface of her sunshield as I put my hologram back up.
“I came from Detritus expecting to find only enemies and monsters,” I whispered to her. “I found you instead. Hesho, and Morriumur, and all of you. I can’t conceive how difficult it was for you growing up, but I do know what it feels like to be hated for something you never did. And let me tell you, destroying Detritus isn’t going to help. It’s just going to further convince the Superiority that they were always right about us.
“You want to change this? You want to try to fix this? Come with me back to Detritus. Tell us what you know about the Superiority and about Winzik. Help us figure out a way to prove to the people of the Superiority that we’re no threat. Winzik wins only as long as he can convince everyone that we really are an enemy they have no choice but to destroy.”
Brade hadn’t moved. She just stood there, her eyes hidden. Finally, she put her hand up to the side of her helmet, hitting the button that pulled the visor up.
Then she pulled her lips back and showed the front of her teeth—an alien expression—and gestured sharply.
“Human!” she screamed. “I’ve found the human spy!”
Brade scrambled away from me, screaming—as if she hadn’t heard a single word of my impassioned plea.
“Human! Alanik is secretly a human!”
I stepped toward her, a piece of my mind refusing to admit what was happening. Surely she’d believe, if I showed her. Surely she’d accept the reality about her heritage, not the lies that she’d been told.
I’d gambled on revealing myself to Cuna, and that had worked. How could it backfire so completely when trying to talk to one of my own kind?
Scud. Scud!
I scrambled away, ducking past a confused Morriumur and skidding up to my ship. The ground crew member there—a creature with insectile features—tried to bar my way, but I shoved them aside and scrambled up to my cockpit. I pulled my helmet off the seat and slid down into place, hitting the button that closed the canopy.
I was saved by the fact that everyone was so excited about getting ready to go into battle. The general clamor of people shouting instructions was accompanied by the thumps of last-minute supply ships landing in the hangar. The noise prevented most of them from hearing Brade.
She, however, ran right for Winzik. So my time was tight. I powered on my boosters and flipped on the acclivity ring, praying that there wasn’t some kind of remote kill switch for these starfighters. I briefly heard alarms going off as I hit the boosters and roared across the floor of the hangar, shooting my destructors at the invisible air shield that kept out the vacuum.
The blast went right through, indicating the shield was still open for ship passage. I soared out into space and immediately ducked in close to the docks, to give me cover if the Weights and Measures started firing at me.
“M-Bot!” I shouted.
Click. Clickclickclick…
Scud. I swerved my ship along the docks, but my proximity sensor showed the Weights and Measures belching out dozens of fighters on my tail.
I soared in close to Starsight’s shield, the bubble of air that protected the city. I didn’t have any idea what kind of defenses the place might have—surely at the very least there would be gun emplacements along the rim. Maybe even that entire air shield could be configured to not let ships in or out.
Winzik worked quickly. I already saw ships diverting inside, moving toward the rim—and toward me.
“M-Bot!” I said. “I’m not sure if I can get to you!”
I got only clicking in return. I couldn’t just leave him. I had to…
I knew the truth. I didn’t have time to get to him. The knowledge I had inside me—the secret to Superiority hyperdrives, the power I had to teleport myself—was far too important to risk. I had to get back to Detritus, and I had to warn them about the impending attack.
This wasn’t just about me or him, or even Doomslug—vital though her kind were. I fought with myself for a moment, watching all those ships—hundreds of them—swarm toward me. Then I turned my control sphere and hit my boosters, heading deeper out into space.
I needed to do Gran-Gran’s exercise. As my acceleration increased—my back pressing into my seat—I imagined myself soaring. Among the stars. The singing stars, who serenaded me with their secrets…
“Spensa?” M-Bot’s voice. “Spensa, I’m back. What is happening?”
I could feel it. That glowing arrow pointing the way home. The one embedded into my brain by the strange weapon. But I didn’t know for certain if I could use my powers without M-Bot. Did I need some of the mechanical parts in his ship?
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I’ve been trying to change my programming, but it’s hard. What are you doing? Where are you going?”
The other fighters were gaining on me. But I saw in front of me a roadway of light…
“Spensa?” M-Bot said softly. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my heart wrenching. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to enter the nowhere. It worked.
This time, I didn’t have the protection of Superiority technology. Delvers loomed in the darkness, their terrible eyes locking onto me. I screamed beneath the scorn I felt from them, but then that seemed to fade as a single delver drew close. It surrounded me in that place between moments. Like a shadow blocking off the attention of all others.
A single hateful entity. I felt a torrent of emotions from it, omnipresent, smothering. It detested the sounds we made, the way we invaded its realm. People were like a persistent ringing tone constantly in the back of your mind, driving you to madness.
It drew so close that as—thankfully—I left the nowhere, I felt it try to follow. It tried to slip through to the place where we lived. The place where it could find all of its annoyances and smother them.
I came out of the nowhere screaming, alone, feeling like I’d barely slammed the door closed on a monster that had been chasing me. I had to physically fight against my trembling hands as I turned my ship.
Then I saw one of the most blessed sights of my entire life. Detritus, glowing in the sunlight, a planet surrounded by radiant metal shells. I was home.
I approached the planet’s shells at a quick speed. The Superiority battleships still hung a moderate distance away, but I didn’t see any dogfighting right now.
Unfortunately, as I drew close, I realized that without M-Bot to guide me I’d need a flight course from Command to get through the defensive shells. I scrambled to input the DDF communication codes and tune the radio to the proper channel.
“Hello?” I said. “Hello, anyone? Please acknowledge. This is Skyward Ten, callsign: Spin. I’m in a stolen ship. Um, please don’t shoot me down.”
They didn’t respond immediately—though I wasn’t surprised. I imagined that the soldier monitoring communications would immediately call their duty officer, instead of engaging the mysterious voice of the teleporting teenage pilot. They must have called a member of my team to confirm it was me though, because the voice that finally responded was familiar.
“Spensa?” Kimmalyn’s lightly accented voice said. “Is that r
eally you?”
“Hey, Quirk,” I said, closing my eyes, savoring that voice. I’d missed my friends even more than I’d realized. “You have no idea how good it is to hear someone speaking English without a translator.”
“Saints above! Your grandmother said she was confident you were alive, but…Spin, you’re really back?”
“Yeah,” I said, opening my eyes. My proximity sensors suddenly flashed a warning, though I had to zoom them out to see what had happened. A new ship had appeared out of the nowhere, popping into existence near where I’d come in a few minutes earlier. It had a familiar shape, long and dangerous, with numerous hangar bays for launching fighters.
The Weights and Measures.
“Don’t throw any parties yet, Quirk,” I said. “Get Cobb for me ASAP. I’m back, and my mission was a partial success…but I’ve brought company.”
I landed my stolen ship in a starfighter dock on Platform Prime, then popped my canopy. I’d turned off my hologram, and it felt odd to see my hands with their natural skin tone.
And this place. Had these walls always looked so bleak? Everything on Starsight had been ornamented with color. Had this air always smelled so stale? I found myself missing the faint scent of trees and soil, or even the hint of cinnamon from Vapor’s presence.
Kimmalyn met me at the cockpit, grinning like a fool as she climbed up the ladder, then grabbed my helmeted head in an embrace. She smiled, and I found the expression strange. Aggressive.
Saints and stars. I hadn’t been away that long. But as I stood up and embraced Kimmalyn, I felt a lingering sense of disconnect. The feeling that everything in this universe was a painful noise. A remnant of the emotions the delver had forced upon me.
I tried so hard to banish that feeling. Hugging a friend should have been the most relaxing thing I’d felt in weeks. Yet a part of me writhed at it. Not because of Kimmalyn, but because of me. I imagined that she was hugging some kind of strange creature, like an alien grub, instead of a person. Did she know…what I was?
Did I even know that?
“Oh, the Saint be praised,” Kimmalyn said, pulling back. “Spin, I can’t believe it’s really you.”
“Jorgen?” I asked.
“He’s down below, planetside, on leave. I haven’t seen him in a few days. Something about needing R&R?”
Well, it happened to the best of us. I’d just been really hoping to see him. Maybe…maybe he could knock me out of this strange funk I was feeling.
“What…,” Kimmalyn said. “I mean, Jorgen explained he sent you on a mission. You really did it? You stole one of their hyperdrives? What about M-Bot?”
My heart felt like it would rend in two. “I—”
The klaxon alerts went off, blaring about an imminent attack. We both looked at the lights, listening as the intercom called all on-duty fighters to battle.
“I’ll explain,” I promised my friend. “I’ll try to, at least. After…”
“Yeah,” Kimmalyn said. She gave me another quick hug—I was still standing in my cockpit, she on the ladder. Then she rushed down it and ran for her ship. My instincts fought for me to sit back down and fly into the fight, but Cobb had been firm. I was to come and report first.
I climbed down and met Duane, of the ground crew. He gave me a grin and a thumbs-up, then slapped me on the back for my heroic return. I looked at him, befuddled, trying to read the emotions on his face—which suddenly seemed strange and bizarre. I understood his expressions as if on a time delay. Like I had to wait for an interpreter to translate them for me. Scud, what was wrong with me?
You’re just tired, I told myself. You’ve been pushing yourself hard for two weeks—all while living as someone else. Indeed, I was hit with a wave of exhaustion as I opened the door to walk into the hallway, but stopped and gave the unnamed Superiority fighter a fond look. She was no M-Bot, but she’d served me well. Would I ever fly her again? Probably not. She’d be torn apart and analyzed; access to an undamaged Krell fighter was a unique privilege for the DDF.
In the sterile, too-metallic hallway, I found a pair of men from the infantry waiting for me. They offered an escort to help me find the way to Cobb, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the guards and guidance drones who’d accompanied me aboard the Weights and Measures. It wasn’t that the DDF didn’t trust me. It was just that the enemy was known to be able to affect the minds of people, particularly cytonics.
So…well, I guess they probably didn’t trust me. Not entirely. It wasn’t exactly the celebratory welcome home that I’d been anticipating.
The men led me to a command chamber with a large viewscreen on the wall and several dozen small computer stations underneath, where members of Flight Command monitored individual flights and kept tabs on the enemy. They’d been busy while I was gone; the whole operation looked more smooth—with far fewer exposed panels—than I remembered.
Several junior admirals were directing the battle from command positions. Cobb stood behind them at the back of the room, looking distinguished in his white uniform, his silvery mustache bristling from his upper lip. They’d given him an imposing admiral’s throne that overlooked everything. He used the seat to hold several stacks of paper, and the armrest for his coffee as he inspected reports and muttered to himself.
“Nightshade?” he asked as the guards marched me up. “What the hell have you done here? Wasn’t the mission Jorgen sent you on to be a stealth mission? You look like you’ve damn near brought the entire Superiority down on us.”
For some reason, hearing Cobb swear at me was the most comforting thing that could have happened to me right then. I let out a soft sigh. My entire universe was turning upside down, but Cobb was as constant as a star. An angry, surly star that drank too much coffee.
“Sorry, Cobb,” I said. “I got involved in Superiority politics and…well, I don’t think I’m entirely to blame for this attack, but my actions did seem to provide some excuses for them to come here.”
“You should have come back sooner.”
“I couldn’t. My powers…I’m learning, but…I mean, you try to learn how to teleport using your brain. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“Sounds scudding hard.”
“That’s my point.”
He grunted. “And the mission? The one you two made up, without proper authorization?”
“It worked. I pretended to be that alien who crashed here—I used M-Bot’s holograms to pull it off—and lived among the Superiority long enough to figure out the secret of their hyperdrives.” I grimaced. “I…might have screwed things up here and there.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t make my life more difficult at every turn, Spin.” He nodded to the guards, and they withdrew. This conversation had in part been a test—and I’d passed it. Cobb was reasonably sure that I wasn’t an impostor.
Cobb took a sip of his coffee and waved me closer. “What’s really going on out there?”
“The Superiority has a bunch of factions. I didn’t learn much; it’s kind of over my head. But a military faction is reaching for power, and they’re going to try to exterminate us to bolster their credibility. Getting rid of the ‘human scourge’ as a way of proving themselves.”
On the screen at the front—which held an abstract battle map with dots of light representing ships—the Weights and Measures was deploying flights of fighters. It looked like several hundred drones of the normal style we fought. And fifty other ships, glowing brighter than the rest.
“Piloted ships,” Cobb said. “Enemy aces. Fifty of them.”
“They’re not aces,” I said. “But they are piloted ships. The Superiority has been preparing a group of real pilots to fight us. I…um, trained some of them.”
Cobb’s cup stopped halfway to his lips. “You really managed to join their space force and train with them?”
; “Er, yes. Sir.”
“Damn. And that ship you stole? It has a hyperdrive?”
“No. But I know the secret. You know that yellow slug pet I have? The one I found in M-Bot’s cave? Those are what the Superiority uses to hyperjump. We need to send an expedition into the caverns on Detritus and see if we can catch any others.”
“I’ll put several teams on it immediately. Assuming we survive this battle. Any other bombs you want to drop on me?”
“I…um, revealed myself to one of the highest functionaries in the Superiority government, and we got along pretty well. I think we might be able to leverage this other faction in the government into making peace with us. Uh, assuming we survive the aforementioned battle.”
“And your ship? The one with the annoying attitude.”
I felt a spike of shame inside me. “I…left him behind, sir. And Doomslug. I was being chased by enemies, and they were getting close and—”
“It’s all right, soldier,” Cobb said. “You’re back, which is more than we had any right to expect.” He turned his eyes toward the screen and the growing flood of little blips of light. “I want you in a debriefing room with a recorder, telling us everything you can remember about their military capacities. I’ll stay here and do what I can to survive this invasion. Scud, that’s a lot of fighters.”
“Cobb,” I said, stepping closer. “Those aren’t bloodthirsty monsters out there; they’re just people. Normal people, with lives, and loves, and families.”
“And what did you think we’ve been fighting against all these years?” Cobb asked.
“I…” I didn’t know. Red-eyed, faceless creatures. Relentless destroyers. Not far from how they saw humans.
“That’s what war is,” Cobb told me. “A bunch of sorry, desperate fools on both sides, just trying to stay alive. That’s the part that those stories you love leave out, isn’t it? It’s always more convenient when you can fight a dragon. Something you don’t have to worry you’ll start caring about.”
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