Cytonic

Chapter 15

Together, Chet and I slipped onto the pirate base fragment. Our touchpoint was a good half hour from the base, so as we crept closer and closer, Chet showed me how to keep a low profile and stay behind tree or hill cover. We also sent M-Bot to scout a path for us, telling him to use his infrared to watch for heat signatures that might indicate a sentry.

As we crept along, I thought of what I’d seen the previous night. Once again, my interactions with Jorgen and Brade were crisp and clear in my mind—and I’d been a little more in control, a little more active in what I’d been doing. That excited me. I was improving.

The terrain here was dotted with scraggly trees that were like stumpy, Spensa-size analogues to the massive ones from the last jungle fragment. Various boulders and hills made for a poor killing field. I’d have set up my base on a sturdy, flat fragment with minimal cover. Maybe losing one of their ships would teach these pirates a lesson, because getting up close was way too easy.

I was getting antsy. Eager. If this went well, I’d be flying before the hour was out. Chet and I staked out a tree-topped small hill some fifty meters from the base’s buildings. Together, on our bellies, we inched up beneath the trees to where we could see over the top of the hill and study the base.

As far as we could tell, we’d been able to approach unnoticed. Unfortunately, we couldn’t rule out hidden cameras. It would depend on what the pirates had been able to salvage. So I watched for any signs the pirates were on alert. Their base was made up of three large structures, rectangular with rounded tops. Like old-school hangars. It was a nostalgic design but didn’t make much sense with modern starfighters, which were universally VTOL aircraft thanks to acclivity stone.

“Do you suppose they built those structures?” I asked Chet.

“Doubtful,” Chet whispered back. “From what I understand, the pirate factions each set up on fragments with preexisting buildings. Old outposts or the like.”

“Will this fragment have a portal?”

“It’s possible, but unlikely. Most do not, after all.”

I nodded, thinking it through. We’d seen how fragments grew—matter collected around little pinprick weaknesses between dimensions, eventually forming into these landscapes. I didn’t know for certain if that matter slipped in from the somewhere or was just replicated here. Did this mean…the caverns of Detritus had formed because bits of rock had slipped into the nowhere?

There was no way to tell right now. But either way, it did seem Chet was right about the portals not being on most fragments. Maybe those only formed on fragments where the holes between dimensions were “big” enough that cytonics could get through?

Well, for now I needed to keep my mind on stealing a ship. Of the three hangars, two were dark at the moment. The third—the one in the center—had its bay door open wide, and flashes of light inside indicated welding or electrical work going on. I was surprised to see electricity at first—but most modern starfighters had energy-packed power matrixes that could last years. Plug one of those in, and you’d be able to power the lights and equipment of a hangar like this.

“My sensors indicate two people keeping watch,” M-Bot whispered from where he hovered at my side. “One at the window directly ahead in the lit hangar. Another right inside the bay doors. If they’re using electronic surveillance, it’s wired, as I don’t detect broadcasts on any known frequencies.”

“They won’t broadcast carelessly, abomination,” Chet whispered. “Old habits will prevent them.”

“Noted, wart-eyeball,” M-Bot said.

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Okay,” Chet whispered. “I…I have to ask. ‘Wart-eyeball’?”

“I was going to call you wart-face,” M-Bot said, “as humans often append ‘face’ to insults, but warts are frequently on faces. I instead picked a body part that doesn’t usually grow warts—a way of implying your stupidity is irrational to the point of implausibility.”

Chet glanced at me.

“Him being weird does not mean he’s an abomination,” I whispered.

“I was more trying to decide if that insult rated a one or a zero,” Chet muttered, looking back at the hangars. “So, Miss Nightshade, how would you like to proceed? I believe your military training supersedes my experience in this instance.”

“Let me think and observe,” I said. I couldn’t get a good look at the pirate in the window, but they didn’t seem to be keeping a close watch. The other one that M-Bot had noted strolled out into the light, a rifle hanging from his shoulder.

To my surprise he was human, and had a patchy beard that hadn’t grown in straight. He wore a long overcoat, a T-shirt, jeans, and boots. Oh, and a hat.

A nautical hat. Like, a full-on tricorn.

I could barely hold in a thrilled squeal.

“What?” Chet whispered, noticing my grin.

“These ones actually look like pirates!”

“Indeed,” Chet said. “Human traditions have had a large influence on populations like these. From what I’ve been able to gather, our conquest of the galaxy made it trendy—perhaps a little exotic—to use human terms and fashion for outlaws.” He squinted. “That said, I didn’t expect to find an actual human among their ranks. Not a lot of us around these days.”

The pirate in the window leaned out and called something. They were definitely a dione—a right, judging by their red coloring.

“Looks like they’re doing some repairs,” I said. “M-Bot, swing around the rear and see if you can get a count on how many people are inside. If it appears safe, hover up to one of those windows and learn what you can about the starfighters.”

“Understood,” he said, and zoomed off. He was extremely quiet—that was why I’d been able to use the drone for spy missions. I wished we still had the holographic projector to give him some limited camouflage.

Fortunately, that guard didn’t seem particularly observant. He yawned as he strolled back toward the hangar opening.

“Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, “what we are about to try is much more dangerous than our previous endeavors. That guard is armed, and we risk capture or wounding.”

“I’m willing to take the risk.”

“As am I!” Chet said. “But I feel that we should, out of an abundance of caution, leave your icon behind.”

“Leave it behind?” I said. “Why in the stars would we do that?”

“That icon is one of the most valuable things in the nowhere,” he explained in a hushed tone. “If we are captured, I would not want the pirates to gain possession of it. Instead, I feel we should bury it here. If we succeed in claiming a ship, we can return at some future date and recover it. If we fail, then the icon will be safe.”

“But we need it to fly out there!” I said. “Without it, we’ll lose our memories.”

“It is the ashes that are important for our immediate travels,” Chet said. “With a pocket full of those, we can go months without any dangerous effects. And so, we can bring those with us and risk their loss—but keep the much more valuable object hidden.”

Scud. There was a logic to his words. If this went wrong, I’d be much happier if my icon was safe. But at the same time, I had seen the way Chet stared at it. I wanted to trust him—I did trust him—but…if he wanted to take the icon, then persuading me to bury it here would be a great first step.

I wavered. Chet had treated me with nothing but honor so far, but my concerns hovered at the back of my mind. He’d appeared in such an unusual way, specifically when I needed him. M-Bot’s old pilot, conveniently missing the memories that could help him prove who he’d been.

“Hiding the icon is probably a good idea,” I said to Chet, so he wouldn’t sense my suspicions. I fished out the pouch and made a show of dumping the reality ashes back into my pocket—but I also palmed the pin. Then I buried the pouch as he’d suggested, except empty. Afterward I handed him a small pinch of ashes. “In case we get split up,” I told him.

He stared at the ashes an uncomfortably long time before tucking them away, and as his attention was on them I covertly slipped the pin into another pocket.

Soon, M-Bot came hovering in from behind. “There are three pirates working in the hangar,” he whispered to us. “And one other person in an inner room. No other heat signatures in the building.”

Right. That made six total in that hangar. The guard, the one at the window, the one farther inside, and three workers.

“There are ten other heat signatures,” M-Bot whispered. “Six in one hangar building, four in the other. I think those are all asleep. At least, their heat signatures indicate recumbent figures in smaller rooms.”

“Probably divided into three flights,” I guessed. “Each hangar houses a flight, and one group is left on duty to watch every time the others sleep.”

“Agreed,” M-Bot said. “There are four starships in the open hangar, and one is being worked on by the mechanics. Six people. Four pilots, two ground crew maybe?”

“That sounds likely,” I whispered. “Any way into that open hangar from behind?”

“There is a small open door at the rear,” M-Bot said. “Probably to let air in during the welding.”

“Awesome,” I said. “We should strike while the other two flights are asleep. Chet, your job is to make a distraction. Can you do something that isn’t so dangerous as to make them sound the alarm, but which has a good chance of drawing the attention of not only the guards but the three mechanics too?”

“Possibly,” he said. “The Broadsiders are known as the most levelheaded of the pirate factions. I’ve encountered other guides or groups who have traded with them, or even been employed by them for a short time. I think it will be safe enough to walk up with some reality ashes and offer to trade.”

“How likely are they to grab you?” I asked. “Steal the ashes and enslave you?”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” he admitted. “But again, I believe it’s a worthwhile risk. I don’t trust any pirates, but if I were going to approach a faction in this manner, the Broadsiders are the ones I’d choose. They should be interested in trading, but will want to keep a good eye—or ten, depending on the species—on me just to be careful.”

“Let’s go with it then,” I said. “M-Bot and I will sneak around back. Once you’ve distracted the pirates, we’ll slip into the hangar from behind and hot-wire a starfighter.”

“And you’re certain you can accomplish that feat?” Chet asked.

“Well, little in life is absolutely certain,” M-Bot said. “But I find it highly unlikely that these pirates have security I can’t instantly break. I’d say it’s more likely that you spontaneously grow a wart from your eye. You, um, wart-eye.”

I eyed him. “Chet’s right. That’s definitely a zero.”

“Ready then,” Chet said. “Let’s do this.”

“Once I have the ship,” I said, “we’ll activate the weapons and force the pirates to lie on the floor. Run for the ship and climb up into the cockpit. We’ll escape, and then we can send M-Bot to sneak back and grab the icon.”

“An excellent plan,” Chet said. “When do I make the distraction?”

“I’ll send M-Bot to signal you when I’m in position. Then count to a hundred before you go for it.”

We shared a nod, and then I withdrew to begin sneaking around to the other side of the base.

Chapter 16

The first thing I did was send M-Bot back to spy on Chet.

“I buried the pouch for my pin under a rock near the trees,” I told him. “Covertly watch to see if he digs it up. If he doesn’t, stealthily join me behind the pirate base.”

“Uh…”

“I’ll explain later,” I said, and waved him off. He left.

My heart thundering in my chest, I continued to sneak around the side of the compound. It was just like creeping up on a rat, only there was more light and these doofs were less observant. I made it to the other side of the compound easily, and found a good spot to watch near a large boulder.

The hangar had a small, person-size doorway on this side. Through it I could clearly see the mechanics working on the landing gear of one of the starfighters—two diones and one of the feathered aliens I’d seen when I first entered the nowhere. They serviced a narrow, sleek vessel that was probably a scouting model. Sparks flew as they welded.

I waited, anxious. I didn’t want to be distrustful. Scud, Chet had helped me so much. But I couldn’t deny the way he looked at the icon, and it seemed incredibly suspicious that he’d asked me to leave it behind.

I nearly yelped when M-Bot hovered up to me a few minutes later. Stars, he was quiet.

“He doesn’t appear to be digging at anything, Spensa,” M-Bot whispered. “He’s just waiting.”

“Okay, good,” I said, relaxing.

“Do you think he’s going to betray us?”

“I don’t want to think that,” I said, “but I can’t help being suspicious.” I’d tried so hard to trust Brade, and where had that gotten me? “Go tell him I’m in position. He can start with the distraction.”

M-Bot zipped off again. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. My worry was unfounded.

Unless…

If I’d been planning to betray my companion, I wouldn’t merely steal the pin. I’d do something to disrupt the plan, making certain she got captured by the pirates. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about her following me as I made off with the prize.

Scud. Now that I’d thought of it, I couldn’t get it out of my head. If Chet simply grabbed the icon and ran, I could conceivably steal the ship and come after him. But if he waited until I was in the middle of the theft, then sold me out, he could keep the icon while making sure I was taken care of.

Again, I didn’t want to believe it. I almost discarded the worry entirely—but then I thought about the way he changed whenever he saw the icon. And what were the chances that I’d enter the nowhere and immediately find Commander Spears?

While I didn’t actually think some kind of evil wizard was involved—that was more a metaphor—something was seriously strange about all of this. I couldn’t help feeling I was being toyed with, and Chet was at the center of it.

I made a snap decision. I wouldn’t abandon the plan, but neither would I walk straight into a potential trap. First I pulled out my father’s pin, then dug a quick hole beside my boulder.

M-Bot came hovering back as I was finishing. “I…thought you already buried that,” he said.

“I buried the pouch, but kept the pin,” I explained. “I’m worried Chet is going to betray us, and this is the best way I can think of to protect the pin in case we get captured.”

I felt oddly reluctant to part with it. Like, it almost seemed to cling to my fingers as I put it in the hole. I couldn’t help thinking it was sad to have me abandon it. This place was messing with me in strange ways.

The mechanics in the hangar stood up and looked out toward where Chet had been hiding. Distraction begun.

“So what do we do?” M-Bot whispered.

“In case my worries are correct, we’re not going to steal the ship Chet assumes we will. Which of those other hangars has the fewest sleeping people?”

“The one directly to the right,” he said. “It only has four. But…Spensa…are you sure about this?”

“It’s not my job to be sure,” I said. “It’s my job to do my best anyway. Come on.”

We slipped out from behind cover and reached the hangar easily. Sneaking around on dirt and grass was simple. Just had to test each step for leaves or twigs.

The doors were locked, but one of the nearby windows was unlatched. M-Bot was able to slip in, and a moment later the door into the left side of the structure—the part with bunks, rather than the ship storage—clicked. I eased it open, then stepped into a dark hallway.

The place had a clinical feel to it, like the hallways of Platform Prime. Too clean, and it smelled sterile. The doorways were all taller and thinner than the ones at home, and the door handles were all a good half meter higher than I expected. It left me imagining what kind of species had built this place.

In the dim light, I located a door into what I thought should be the hangar proper. M-Bot bobbed up and down—no heat signatures beyond it. This door was unlocked, and I was relieved to find a vast cavernous room. Light shone through slits in the window shades, illuminating four large starships like slumbering leviathans. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever encountered.

I whispered for M-Bot to watch for junk I might accidentally kick while walking—didn’t want to send a discarded lubricant can clanging across the floor. As I crept along the wall, I stopped by one of the windows to peek out through the slats.

I could clearly see Chet standing outside the other hangar, surrounded by the guard and mechanics. He spoke animatedly while carefully holding up a reality ash in one hand.

“Spensa,” M-Bot whispered. “It doesn’t seem like he’s betraying us.”

It didn’t. But, well, that was why I’d continued with the plan. If I really was just being paranoid, then I could still steal a ship, break out, and turn guns on the pirates while Chet joined me. I’d tell him I’d been spooked at the last minute and had decided to sneak into a building where everyone was asleep.

I turned from the window to survey the four fighters. Two were obviously civilian ships augmented with some makeshift destructors that marred the otherwise intentional designs. Fortunately the two others were military, with built-in weapons. I picked the interceptor—a lean, dangerous-looking variety of ship that balanced speed and offensive capabilities. It also felt the most familiar, similar to DDF ships from Detritus, with a long thin arrow shape.

I hurried over and grabbed the wing, then hauled myself up to the canopy. I was acquainted at this point with several different control schemes. I’d have to hope that I knew this one’s. If not, I’d inspect the other ships. Stars, I hoped I didn’t have to end up stealing that shuttlecraft in the corner. Piloting that would be like riding a potbellied pig into battle among a group of knights.

I peered into the cockpit of the ship and it was dark and shadowed, so I couldn’t identify the control scheme from outside. I felt along the rim and found an access port for M-Bot—most ships had external ones for diagnostics. I plugged in his drone to let him interface—which would theoretically allow him to open the cockpit and override the pilot lockouts.

“Ah…” M-Bot said. “This will be easy. Hmm. Lots of hard drive space in here. It might feel nice to be in a larger ship again. First though, let’s see… Should be through in thirty seconds or so.”

I nodded, leaning down and staring into the cockpit. That was a control sphere, wasn’t it? Yeah, the layout did seem familiar. The seat was strange and lumpy though. Like instead of being a chair, it was some other seating mechanism?

Thinking about that started me worrying about the kitsen, who had their own strange way of building starships. They’d helped me at the battle against Starsight. What would Winzik do to them? They were leaderless now that Hesho was dead, sucked out into the vacuum of space when Brade attacked their ship.

The kitsen had trusted me. Had I doomed their entire planet? What happened if Winzik actually persuaded the delvers to help him? I needed to find some way to stop them, so—

“Huh,” M-Bot said.

“What?” I hissed.

“I just got locked out of a few systems,” he said. “I can reroute, but… That’s odd. The lockout was via a manual override. How would…”

Lights went on in the cockpit, illuminating a creature that had been sleeping inside. The light reflected off a body that I had trouble sorting out—crystalline limbs and a bulky shape like a pile of glistening stone…

“Oh, scud,” I whispered.

No heat signatures. But not all life was warm. I knew that. Figments like Vapor seemed not to even have bodies. I’d made a terrible miscalculation. My sole consolation was that M-Bot had done the same.

“M-Bot!” I said. “Run!”

I leaped off the wing and hit the ground hard, stumbling as a loud alarm started blaring. I made it halfway to the door before a voice sounded over some speakers.

“Keep running, and I will vaporize you,” it said—my translator pin happily supplying the words in English. I froze, then looked back at the ship to find one of the wing-mounted destructors on a turret pointing right at me.

I raised my hands, struggling to catch my breath and fighting down my instinct to run. Looked like I was going to get another chance at being a pirate captive. And this time it was entirely my own fault.

Chapter 17

The pirates thumped me down in a seat and one of them lashed my hands behind me. A large group of them had gathered in the hangar, which was now flooded with light.

I saw only one human among them, the fellow I’d noticed earlier. Most of the rest were diones, though there were also several of those bird people and one varvax—the alien species I’d known as the Krell, small crablike creatures that moved around in large blocky exoskeleton suits built from something like sandstone.

The group parted to make way for an alien of a completely different race, with a wide face and powerful limbs. Long teeth and clawed fingers gave this one the overall appearance of something like a bear on its hind legs, except not furry. They walked with a hunched-forward gait, giving them a predatory air, beefy arms held forward and at the ready.

I took this one for the leader of the group, considering the fine jacket and impressive hat, complete with a large plume. “Words!” the creature said. “Trying to steal a starfighter, eh? You must have grown at least six muluns for trying that!”

My pin didn’t translate the word, which was odd. I sat there, my hands bound behind me, and tried to come up with a plan. The leader alien walked up and slapped me on the back in a way that felt distinctly friendly.

“But you have rotten luck,” the leader continued. “Not a single gulun for you! Picking a ship inhabited by one of our resonants? Words, girl. Words. Anyway, welcome to the Broadsiders.”

“Wait,” I said, twisting to look at the leader. “Welcome?”

“The more people we have around, the more stable our memories remain,” one of the diones explained. “So you’re lucky. No execution for you. Instead you get to be our new cleaning slave.”

Great. Well, as awful as being a slave sounded, I felt even worse for messing up the plan. Chet had been trustworthy all along, and here I’d bungled everything.

“There were some ashes on her, Captain,” the varvax noted in their language, holding up a glowing transparent bag.

The scruffy human stepped forward carrying M-Bot’s drone. “Ma’am? This is what she used to try to break into the starship.”

I felt a spike of alarm. M-Bot? The drone seemed completely lifeless. The human fiddled with it, then found the old power button—which M-Bot had disconnected. However, when the human pushed the button, the drone’s small acclivity rings powered on, turning from dull blue-black to a vibrant glowing azure. The drone began to hover on its own power. Then as the human let go, it hovered over to use its grabber arm to pick up a rag from the floor. It then began wiping a window with it.

M-Bot, you genius, I thought. He always talked about how intelligent he was, but considering how he acted a lot of the time, it was easy to forget. Right now though, he did a spot-on imitation of a cleaning drone.

“Huh,” the captain said, then nudged me—hard enough that my chair scooted along the floor. “How’d you make it hack the canopy on Shiver’s starfighter?”

“It has some illegal programs,” I muttered, trying to play the role of the mousy little rat-catcher girl. “I managed to install them before coming in here. Thought it would be smart to hide them in a normal cleaning drone.”

That would imply the drone didn’t have a proper AI, so theoretically the Broadsiders shouldn’t be afraid of it becoming self-aware. Though admittedly I didn’t know a ton about AIs.

“Is that so?” the captain said. “Words. That might be useful. I’ll consider it an apology gift from you for waking me up in the middle of the night. Grow a tulun or two at my generosity, new slave. What’s your name?”

“Spin,” I said. “Yours?”

“Ha! Muluns indeed.” She swept off her hat and inclined her head toward me, revealing a crest of yellow feathers like a mohawk. “I’m Peg, captain of the Broadsiders!”

“Peg?” I said, glancing at the captain’s legs—both of which were whole. “As in…”

The human laughed. “Nah,” he said to me in heavily accented English. “She doesn’t get it. The name’s a coincidence.”

He walked over and shut off M-Bot, who dutifully powered down the rings and stopped moving. I twisted, trying to glance out the window to where Chet had been standing earlier, but couldn’t make anything out.

“Your friend ran off,” the human said to me, then patted the rifle over his shoulder. “Lucky for him, I was more worried about an attack than I was a scout. I only got a few shots off on him before ducking in to see what was happening.”

“Your friend abandoned you,” Peg said. “Should have given him some of your muluns.”

That about proved it: Chet hadn’t sold me out. He’d run, yes, but that was smart.

Scud, I felt like a complete idiot. Maybe after being betrayed by Brade, I was overly sensitive. Or maybe I was just a terrible judge of people.

Yeah…it was probably that. I had to face it, didn’t I? I’d spent most of my training assuming Jorgen was a legitimate jerk, while he was actually pretty un-jerky. But I’d tried hard to trust Brade despite the way she acted. I heaved a sigh and tipped my head back to stare at the ceiling.

I only wanted to fly again. I’d trained all my life to be a warrior. That was what I knew, what I understood. How did I keep ending up in situations like this instead?

“Hey,” Peg said, shoving me on the shoulder, “don’t get like that. You might not realize it, but you’re far better off scrubbing our floors than you would be out there on your own.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Keep her on a leash,” Peg said, striding away. “And don’t let her near that drone, just in case. I’m gonna go back to sleep.”

Chapter 18

“Leash,” it turned out, meant a light-line.

I’d never seen one used this way. A loop on one end was fastened around my neck, the other end attached to the wall. The control mechanism was locked tight, leaving me stuck. I’d sooner chew through iron links with my teeth than find a way to slice a light-line.

Though the pirates had joked about making me clean floors, they actually pulled over a box of parts for me, along with several containers of lubricant. They told me to grease each part and set them out on a cloth.

This was good. They could have left me to feel sorry for myself—and there’s no telling how long I would have indulged that. But when they plopped down the gears and made fun of me for getting caught, demanding I work…well, that made me angry. And anger considers defeatism to be easy prey.

I did as they asked, but as soon as I’d gathered my wits and my determination, I quested out with my cytonic senses, searching for Chet. I found his mind relatively nearby; I thought maybe he’d made his way back onto the blue jungle fragment to hide, if it hadn’t drifted away already.

Chet? I said to his mind.

Ah, he said, his “voice” laced with pain. Miss Nightshade. It is good to hear that you are well. I had feared the worst!

You’re hurt! I said.

Merely a…small wound, he said. A destructor shot grazed me. Nothing an old hound like me hasn’t felt a dozen times over! Ha…

It was bravado. I could feel he was legitimately in pain. And it was my fault.

Be careful, he warned me. Talking this way could draw delver attention!

That gave me pause. He was right. Yet I had an impression… Ever since that moment at the Path, something had changed about my powers, or my understanding of them. I knew better how to hide.

I closed my eyes and concentrated. When I reached out to someone like Chet, I could now see that I always did the cytonic equivalent of shouting. So I tried to focus, control my voice. I returned to Chet and brushed his mind with a soft whisper instead.

How is this?

Miss Nightshade! he said. Why, that is marvelous. How did you learn to be so quiet?

I’m learning just now, I said. But then, I’d always had a talent for hearing the stars—and the night before, I’d been able to catch thoughts Brade hadn’t wanted to share with me. I think maybe you don’t need to project your thoughts to me. Just think them while we’re connected, and I will overhear them.

Does this work? he asked, plainly trying to do as I asked.

It does, I said.

Excellent! What is your situation, then?

Captured, I said. Chained to the wall and greasing some parts for starship repair.

Could be worse, Chet said. What is the plan?

I haven’t really gotten that far.

Fair enough! Chet said. But this need only be a minor setback. In fact, it could be for the best! We must find a way to visit the next location on the Path of Elders, which is deep within Broadsider territory. I had worried about them hunting us down once we stole a ship. It would be difficult to find time to indulge in a vision while under fire.

But with you infiltrating their base, perhaps we can find a way to prevent that. Could you see if you can learn how they patrol their territory?

There was a certain forced boisterousness to his words. Connected to him as I was now, I could see that more clearly than ever. He wasn’t simply a bundle of endless optimism; he chose to speak this way deliberately.

You are in pain, I said to him. I’m worried about you.

Don’t be. Just focus on getting us a ship. Ha! Those pirates have no idea what they’ve done by bringing you in among them, I must say.

I found myself smiling. And…well, he did have a point. I could use this. Being captured by pirates was exactly the kind of awesome thing that happened in the stories; it was merely another interesting challenge to overcome. Plus, I was inadvertently being given a chance to practice my cytonic skills.

Except I couldn’t gloss over how my mistake had landed us in this situation. I had to come clean.

Chet, I said. I’m sorry. I messed all of this up.

You mustn’t blame yourself, Miss Nightshade, he replied. Sometimes plans don’t work out.

Except, I said, it was because of me. I…changed the plan at the last minute, sneaking into a different hangar than we’d discussed.

Why would you do that? he asked.

Because…I didn’t trust you, Chet. I thought you were going to betray me and steal my icon.

I felt the immediate stab of pain those words caused him.

You…did? Chet said.

I’m sorry, I said. I…well, I let my worries get the better of me.

Scud, it hurt worse, feeling firsthand his sense of betrayal. Why? he asked. Have I not endeavored to aid you in your entire quest? Have I not been a worthy traveling companion?

You have! I said. I just… I’m sorry, Chet. This is my problem, not yours.

I see, he sent back. Yes, um. Well, we must move forward! Let the past be the past, one might say. Um. Yes…

Never had words sounded more forced to me. I could feel his anguish; being trusted was important to him, for reasons I couldn’t sort through—I could only feel what was on the surface, not his deeper thoughts.

Well, Chet said. I will recuperate here, I think. You soldier forward! Yes.

I wanted to apologize again. I wanted to explain the way I was hurt by Brade’s betrayal—and the way I was realizing how bad I was at judging people. But he wanted to be left alone. I could feel that. I had to allow him that.

I broke off the connection, feeling sick and worthless. Scud. So I threw myself into greasing the parts and kept an eye on the pirates, distracting myself from my shame by trying to learn what I could about them.

Over the next few hours, I got a glimpse of what it took to keep a flight of starfighters in the air without a proper support infrastructure. Judging from the way they talked, they spent an incredible amount of time maintaining the spacecraft—and figuring out how to make replacement parts out of salvage.

I’d thought our settlement on Detritus had been ragtag, but we’d had the forges and manufactories. We’d had tens of thousands of people, and our entire society had been devoted to keeping a few hundred starfighters in combat. The Broadsiders didn’t have any of that. From what I could tell, they were under twenty in number, and flew nine starfighters.

By the time I was halfway through the stack of parts, I had recovered some self-respect and was focused on the problem at hand. Yes, I’d made a mistake. Yes, I’d hurt Chet. I needed to keep pressing forward, however. The best way to make it up to him was to steal a ship, then get us through Broadsider territory to the next stop on the Path of Elders.

Right. First step: try to learn what I could of these pirates. This was an opportunity as much as it was a setback. I turned my attention to the rest of the parts, and soon reached the last of them—a large gear. I set it onto the cloth with a clink.

“Hey,” I called to the pirates, “I’m finished.”

The human with the scraggly beard walked over, joined by the varvax. I kept extra close attention on that one. They were the race who had kept my people enslaved, and I couldn’t trust them.

“I could use some more work,” I said to them. “What do you want me to do next?”

“You want more work?” the human asked.

“Better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself,” I said.

After a shared look with the varvax, the human dragged over one of the landing gear assemblies, with the wheel still attached. “You know how to strip this and relubricate it?”

I nodded, fishing in the tool bin the varvax had provided. I wasn’t an expert in repairs or engineering—Rig had always been the one who knew that kind of stuff—but he’d taught me how to service M-Bot’s original ship during our days rebuilding it. I could handle breaking down a landing gear assembly.

The varvax returned to her work, but as the human turned away, I asked, “So what’s your story?”

He paused, then squatted beside me, watching as I somewhat inexpertly disassembled the mechanism. Was he judging me for using the wrong socket wrench three separate times?

“I’m not that interesting,” he finally said. “But I’ve got the same question for you. How do you know how to do this? Your master really let you play with machinery?”

“My master?”

“You said you were a thief,” he said. “But before you escaped you were a pet, right? Like me? A kept human? Or…no, were you in one of the research labs?”

Ahh…right. He must have been a human like Brade—some were kept as novelties around the Superiority. Like kings had kept lions back on Old Earth. Fearsome creatures from another world, turned into showpieces. I could imagine the “civilized” peoples of the Superiority being delighted by the dangerous humans who had once tried to conquer the galaxy.

“I’m surprised they put you in here,” I said. “You must have been quite valuable as a curiosity.”

“Yeah, well,” he said. “It’s all fun and games until your pet tries to steal the family starship and escape. Too aggressive, they decided. As if they hadn’t known what I was when they bought me.” He held out a hand. “I’m Maksim.”

“Spin,” I replied, taking it.

“Don’t feel too bad about being locked up,” he said, gesturing to the light-line. “The Broadsiders are a good group. Show the captain you’re not going to run the first chance you get, and you can work your way up like the rest of us. Hell, if you’re as good with repairs as you seem, you’ll be in charge of a ground crew before too long.”

I looked at the mediocre work I’d been doing on the wheel housing. This was what passed for being good with repairs around here?

“What if I never get to where I won’t run?” I asked.

He studied me. “You’re new in the nowhere, aren’t you? That other guy, your friend, he had a sense about him. Like he knew what he was doing. Not you though, eh?”

“I’ve only been in for…” I tried to remember. “For…” Scud. Why was that so hard to remember? “A week? I think?”

“Best not to stress about the time too much,” Maksim said. “Even in a group, it’s difficult for us to keep track. I’m surprised you lasted as well as you did out there.” He patted me on the shoulder, then stood up. “That’s why you won’t run. You’ll feel better here. More like yourself. You’ll see.”

He didn’t seem to even consider it a possibility that I’d been carrying a reality icon, despite the ashes they’d found. Icons must really have been as rare as Chet said.

Well, a plan of attack was forming. I could earn the trust of the pirates by working here a few days, all while learning how they patrolled their territory, like Chet suggested. I could also investigate the flight mechanisms for the various ships and pick out the easiest one to steal.

Then, as soon as I felt the time was right, I could grab M-Bot, steal a ship, dig out the icon, and be on my way. Maybe with all that done, Chet would forgive me for being a complete jerkface.

“Where did you learn mechanics so well?” Maksim asked. “And why would they throw you in here? If you’re this talented?”

“I’m not as talented as you think.”

He smiled. “I know it’s sometimes hard to open up. But if you tell us about your old life, we can remind you about it. If you forget.”

“Scud. That happens?” I said, making small talk. My mind was more focused on planning my escape than on what I was saying.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said. “Especially if you have friends to help you remember.”

“Well, I wasn’t thrown in here,” I said, turning back to the wheel mechanism. “I jumped in myself. Though admittedly, I was being chased by a bunch of soldiers at the time.”

“Ha!” Maksim said. “They really should learn not to keep us as pets.”

I almost told him I wasn’t a pet. That I was from a human planetary enclave. He was so friendly, I wanted to trust him and explain that I was a soldier fighting the Superiority.

Yeah, that would be a bad idea if I wanted to steal a ship. Fortunately, I was slowly learning my lesson. Best not to tip off a captor to what I was planning. Of course, what if I was making a mistake by not trusting him? I’d been too suspicious of Chet. But not being suspicious enough of Brade had landed me in enormous trouble.

Man, I was crap at judging people, wasn’t I?

At any rate, the best option seemed to be to remain quiet about my skills. Maksim left me and went over to chat with his varvax friend, gesturing toward me periodically. The speed at which I did my work seemed to make them suspicious, and I realized that maybe I should have pretended to be more ignorant.

Regardless, I needed to contact M-Bot. So I decided to mutter and talk to myself a lot as I worked. It felt like a good idea to demonstrate to the others that I was constantly chattering, even when nobody was around. That way, when I eventually talked to M-Bot’s drone, it wouldn’t look so odd.

I kept stripping and lubricating the mechanism—trying to slow down—for what had to have been another few hours. Until eventually I felt a mind hesitantly pushing against mine.

Chet? I asked.

Indeed, he replied. I would like to speak with you. But perhaps we should do it the quieter way you did before…

Done, I said. But Chet, I—

Please, he said. If I might begin?

Go ahead, I said, forcing myself to hold back another apology.

I have been thinking a great deal about our earlier conversation, he said. And I wanted to admit something to you. Your suspicion of me isn’t entirely unfounded. I have been…disingenuous, Miss Nightshade.

In…what way? I asked.

I am not everything I appear to be, he said. It is difficult for me to admit, for me to explain. You see, I’ve told you I don’t remember being Commander Spears—but it’s worse than that. I…have been in here so long that I’ve lost much of my identity. Not only memories, but personality as well. Everything I was…crumbled away, like dirt before a persistent stream.

As this happened, I grew frightened. It is a terrible thing to lose yourself, and I had to replace it with something. And I remembered stories. Fanciful stories perhaps, but full of men I’d admired. Allan Quatermain, Lord John Roxton, Chet Cannister. As I lost myself, I…I filled in the gaps, you see. The line between the hero adventurer and me blurred.

And so, you are right to be suspicious. You perhaps thought me a liar, and in a way I am. Because I could not show you my true self. I’ve forgotten him.

Chet, I said. That doesn’t make you a liar.

Perhaps not, he replied. But the truth is…difficult to bear. I am not really a man, Miss Nightshade. I’m a collection of stories stuffed into a brain with no context, trying so very hard to simply keep going.

You’re a hero, I said.

If that were true, he replied, then I’d have confronted the truths in the Path of Elders long ago. They…frighten me, Miss Nightshade…Spensa, they frighten me. For reasons I can’t explain, because I don’t quite remember. I think part of me is hidden in them somewhere, something that terrifies me. If I were a true hero, I would have walked that road on my own long ago.

I didn’t know what to make of that. I could feel his sincerity, and his fear. Even his confusion.

It doesn’t matter where it came from, I said firmly. You rescued me, guided me, helped me. And now you’re walking this Path with me.

All for a fee, he said. You…noticed how I look upon your icon. I see now why you…treated me as you did.

I felt another spike of shame. Mirrored by his own.

We are quite a pair, aren’t we? he sent. I hope that being near an icon will help me become more…solid. That the reality ashes, and the tie back to the somewhere, will help me somehow. I cannot entirely blame you for worrying about my intentions.

My distrust hurt you though, I said. Still hurts you.

Yes, he admitted. It’s in the persona, you understand. I…I must see myself as a hero, the gentleman explorer, beloved and trusted. Because if I’m not that, well… Well then… That is all I have left of what I once was. Those dreams, those aspirations.

It was a strikingly candid moment, where I could feel him exposed, frightened. Scud. I didn’t deserve his confession, but in that moment I knew I could trust him. The face he showed might have been a patchwork creation of his memories of stories, but the heart inside…that was good. Solid.

I tried to project this to him, and it worked. He perked up, and in a moment of wordless communication, he accepted my apology. We would continue forward, we would walk the Path of Elders, and we would find the secrets.

I broke off the communication, then aggressively attacked the last of my work on the landing gear. I probably should have been tired, but I wasn’t—nor was I thirsty. In fact, I had no idea how long I’d been working. I couldn’t use my fatigue, or even hunger, as a way to judge the passage of time. In here, I often felt like I could just keep going. Forever.

That was dangerous. I was going to have to keep a close eye on myself.

Chapter 19

A few days later, I felt I was finally getting a handle on the Broadsiders as a group.

“Yeah, there are six pirate factions,” Maksim had explained as we went through some booster maintenance on my second day as a captive. “We Broadsiders are smaller than we used to be, but we’re one of the first and most proud.”

“And the Superiority?” I’d asked. “Several of these starfighters are their models.”

“Ha! Yeah. The poor drips that run the mining operation at Surehold ask for ships to protect themselves from us. Which gives us plenty of opportunities to steal them!”

Over the next two days, I subtly picked out more information. The factions had been disorganized until a few years ago—more very small roving bands, or straggling refugees. The organization into factions had come as they solidified into the current six.

They spent most of their time trying to steal from the mining base, capturing new people who were exiled, or even raiding one another. Over the days as I watched, the Broadsiders curiously didn’t lose a single one of their nine ships in battle, though they went on a couple of raids. So maybe these were quick encounters, more about posturing than actual fighting.

Of all the Broadsiders, I found Peg the most interesting. There was something…different about the large alien. She was a tenasi, a race that I’d learned—on Starsight—was often used to pilot drones or do other fighting in the Superiority. She certainly had a dominating presence, and she watched me carefully whenever she was near.

Other than her, four people commonly worked in our hangar. Maksim was one. The hangar I’d broken into had actually been his, though he’d been spending his guard duty hanging out with another flight. His flight was named Cutlass Flight—again, borrowing Old Earth terms because the pirates found them intimidating. I had essentially been assigned to this flight myself, as I was under their supervision.

The varvax in our flight was named Nuluba, a female of their species. She still made me nervous—I couldn’t look at her without seeing Winzik, as her exoskeleton was the same color green. Together she and Maksim made up the ground crew for Cutlass Flight, which currently had only two active starfighters, plus Peg’s shuttle—which she was very proud of, but which I wouldn’t want to fight in.

There was also one ship that wasn’t combat ready yet: an old civilian vessel the team was modifying to be battleworthy. It, like the shuttle, had a light-lance for towing; though the Superiority didn’t commonly use those for battle, they had them for industrial purposes. Now the team was installing destructors. As I did reconnaissance over the next few days, I decided that was the ship I was going to have to steal. Peg’s shuttle had an unfamiliar control scheme, and the two more combat-ready ships…

Well, they were occupied by Cutlass Flight’s two starfighter pilots. Both were of a crystalline species who literally inhabited their ships. As I was asking about their battle skill, Maksim dropped a really important piece of intel.

“It is nice to have two pilots who live in their cockpits,” he said, wagging a wrench toward the ships. “As soon as the scanner tells us a raid is coming, they’re ready.”

Scanner?

The Broadsiders had a long-range scanner?

I’d assumed they’d have smaller proximity sensors like on starfighters. But a full-blown, long-range piece of surveillance equipment? That came as a surprise.

I immediately started nosing about. The scanner’s display was in our hangar, it turned out, and it was attached to some equipment up on the roof. It tracked ships and kept a detailed map of the region. Later that day, I managed to catch a look at the screen while the full map was up, showing me a more detailed version of what Chet had once drawn out for me.

The Broadsider territory was a wedge of the belt tapering inward, bordered by other pirate factions on either side. All of their territory ended at Superiority territory—a wide band that dominated the middle of the belt in this region.

Excited, I sent word to Chet that night.

There’s a scanner, I explained. A big one that watches for incoming ships. It can scan all the way to the Superiority’s region of space, though I don’t think it can spot individual people. It doesn’t have enough resolution for that.

That’s more than I thought they’d have, he said. They mostly scrounge for technology—I wonder where they acquired a high-powered scanner.

No idea, I said. But it’s a good thing I got captured, because…

Because with that scanner, they’d be able to track any ship we stole all the way to the next step in the Path, Chet said. Scrud. We’d never have managed to investigate the portal. They’d have been able to chase us all over the region. I am glad we found this out—though if offered the chance, I’d have chosen a route to this information that didn’t involve my shoulder being baked like brisket…

He’d been spending the days “convalescing,” by his terms. I still felt bad about the destructor shot.

Anyway, I said, this gives us an opportunity. I will need to sabotage that scanner before I go.

Ha! Don’t enjoy yourself too much, Spensa. You’ll make me feel left out! What is the next step in our plan, then?

I turned over in my bed—a mattress and blanket in the hangar, where I was tethered to the wall. They’d been giving me more slack lately on that, but I was still locked into place for now.

Next step, I said, is to contact M-Bot. I’ll need to upload him to steal the ship.

Excellent, Chet said. Give my best to the abom—to the AI.

I appreciate you trying to think of him that way.

If I have been misjudged, Chet said, then I too may misjudge. I don’t think it wise to keep an AI near, but that is a gut instinctual reaction. I should instead accept your word on his character. Perhaps if I’d done that sooner, I would not have given you cause to mistrust me.

I winced, like I always did when Chet felt pain during our communications. Regardless, I said, I have a plan for contacting M-Bot. I just need to find a starship part that’s in bad disrepair…

Once our conversation was done, I began to drift off to sleep—then stopped myself before fully going out. I tried to contact Jorgen, but something prevented me. A kind of odd mist hovered around me, blocking my attempts. I wasn’t certain what to make of it, yet…I’d seen this on other nights recently, hadn’t I?

The next morning, Maksim clapped his hands and ceremoniously unhooked my light-line, then turned it off. “You’ve earned a little more slack. Peg’s orders.” He leaned in. “Don’t hang yourself, if you can help it.”

I felt at my neck. My natural instinct was to bolt. I fought that down. “Thanks,” I said, standing up and stretching. Only four—no, it had been five, hadn’t it?—days with the Broadsiders, and I had already gained this much trust? This was going great.

“We’ve got some gears to grease,” Maksim said.

“No more gears, please,” I replied. “I feel the need to make myself extra useful, to prove myself to Peg. Tell me, what’s the most broken-est thing you have in here?”

“Don’t know about that,” Maksim said, but gestured toward one of the fighter ships. “But Shiver’s left destructor has been acting up. If you could somehow fix it…”

I nodded and went to check in with Nuluba, who had an office area at the rear of the hangar. She authorized all work, and soon I found myself under the wing of the starfighter, prodding at the defective destructor. Black gunk was leaking out of one of the seams, and the entire thing smelled terrible.

“Uh,” I said, “how long since you’ve serviced this thing?”

A large blue crystal, shaped like a prism, sat on a stool beside me. A crust of smaller crystals held it in place, and a line of the same crystals ran across the floor and up the wheel and side of the starfighter into the cockpit.

The larger crystal nearest me vibrated with a reverberating tone. I would never have recognized it as a language; it sounded one step away from the noise an engine made when close to locking up. But my pin knew better than I did, and translated the peals into words.

“It has been months,” the crystal admitted. “Maybe longer. Time is so hard to track in here…”

“Months or more?” I said, incredulous. “Destructors should be serviced every week.”

“We thought it unwise to open the housing, considering the damage to it,” the crystal said. “We thought it might break and not be fixable.”

“Prevention is always better than repair,” I said.

“Wise words,” the crystal replied, “but accurate only as long as you have access to preventive measures.”

The crystal was an alien creature known as a resonant. This one, whose name in English was Shiver, had told me she was female “this time.” Their entire bodies were made of crystal that could grow at will. She’d filled the inside of the starfighter cockpit much as minerals fill a geode.

The part I was talking to now—the larger gemstone—had grown rapidly as I’d come over to inspect the machine. I imagined this part was like an arm or something—a “limb” Shiver could extend for interaction. The large crystal at the end didn’t seem necessary; I had the sense she created it to give others something to address when speaking to her.

My attempt to steal a ship had been doomed from the start; I’d chosen a vehicle where the electronics and controls were grown over by Shiver’s body. Normally, a resonant would remain in one place for an entire “incarnation,” which I gathered lasted some fifty years or so. This time she had grown herself through the starship, almost coming to inhabit it as an AI might. Or actually, like a figment.

“Hey, Shiver,” I said as I unscrewed the housing on the destructor to get a look at the guts, “you ever heard of a species known as figments?”

“Indeed I have,” Shiver said. “Such strange and mysterious individuals. I’ve never met one, but I’ve always been fascinated by them.”

“I was thinking they’re kind of like your species,” I said.

“In what way?”

“Well, you both kind of inhabit a spaceship. Like…I don’t know, a soul in a body.”

“That’s a fascinating perspective.”

The way those words sounded made me think of how Kimmalyn would reply “bless your stars” to some stupid comment I’d made.

“I feel like you disagree with me,” I said.

“Though I find some holes in your logic, I’m certain I’ll understand better after considering your opinion.”

I’d nearly forgotten how conciliatory people from the Superiority could be. Here was a literal group of pirates that had caught me trying to steal from them, and they had treated me almost like a houseguest. A chained-up one, but still.

“You can tell me if I said something dumb,” I said as I worked on the housing screws. “I’m not going to be offended.”

“It’s not really our way…”

“You’re a starfighter pilot,” I said. “You fly out there weekly to fight. You can’t argue with me a little?”

“Spin, my species evolved as motionless individuals who would spend decades next to one another. It’s not in our nature to argue. Unlike motile species, we cannot simply walk away if we make one another angry.”

Huh. Yeah, that made sense.

“But,” Shiver said, “in the name of broadening both of our understandings, let me explain. You imply that I am like a figment by the way we both control a ship. I find this a superficial observation, as it makes us similar in the same way any two species who use appendages to move controls would be similar—no matter how different their cultures, bodies, and core chemical makeups might be.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said. “Honestly, I might just be missing my friends.”

“I can understand,” Shiver said. “I also miss my seven mates from my cavern. I grew to be part of them for three incarnations, and now…”

I doubted a crystalline creature could cry. But the peal that came next was reminiscent of it, and the pin didn’t interpret the sounds as words.

“Hey,” I said, finally getting the last stubborn screw out. “We’ll find a way out of here someday.”

“Of course we will,” Shiver said. “Of course we will.”

Those words also had the same feel of something Kimmalyn would say. The two would get along fantastically. At least, both seemed pretty good at handling me.

I pried off the destructor’s outer housing, then wrinkled my nose. The weapon clearly had a leak in its mechanisms—fluid had been seeping out for some time. Then firing the weapon had heated it up and charred it all, resulting in a heavily corroded mechanism full of flaky black ash.

This is perfect, I thought, careful not to show my excitement. I’d wanted something broken, but something that was broken and needed cleaning was even better.

Out loud I said, “Scud. This is a mess.”

“I resonate that,” Shiver said. “And felt it might be so.”

“This is going to take a while to clean up,” I said. “I’ll pull it off the ship for now, so you’ll be missing a destructor if you have to fly.”

“Unfortunately, the nature of our existence often requires flying in suboptimal conditions,” Shiver said. “I wish you speed and self-fulfillment as you work on your repairs, Spin.”

“Thanks,” I said. I affixed a small portable acclivity ring to the bottom of the mechanism, then began unhooking it from the wing. That took about a half hour, but once I was done, I lowered it with a remote control.

The destructor was a good meter and a half long, shaped kind of like a missile—and with the housing removed, it was all exposed wires and char. As I hovered it along, I got a glimpse out the back door—and it took extreme self-control to not immediately run out and dig up my father’s pin. I knew it would be safe out there though. Much safer than in my possession.

I hovered the unmounted destructor over to Nuluba’s desk, where she was cataloging salvage. The varvax liked to keep track of things like that, which I found suspicious. Who became a pirate to do paperwork?

“It’s not looking good for this, Nuluba,” I said, gesturing to the destructor. “I won’t even be able to tell how much is fixable until after I’ve cleaned it off—and that alone could take weeks of effort.”

“My, my,” Nuluba said, standing from her desk and inspecting the destructor. Like others of her kind, she made wide gestures with the hands of her suit as she spoke, the sound being projected out through the sides of the exoskeleton’s head. “We don’t have a replacement—I already have four other faulty destructors. Spin the captive, there’s no way you could speed up this repair?”

“You’re kidding, right?” I said, gesturing to the destructor.

Nuluba sighed.

“I suppose,” I said, pretending to think about it, “my old cleaning bot could work faster. Don’t know where you put it though.” As soon as I said it, I found the attempt awkward. The varvax were such a crafty species; surely Nuluba would immediately see through what I was doing.

“Oh!” she said. “That’s a good idea. Here, let me get it for you.”

I felt an immediate spike of alarm. That had been too easy, hadn’t it? Yet the varvax wandered off, then less than a minute later returned to the hangar, M-Bot’s drone floating alongside her. I cautiously guided the destructor over to a workbench near the corner. Nuluba left the drone with me and returned to her work as if nothing unusual were happening.

However, as I looked M-Bot over, I was pretty sure I caught Nuluba watching me. So…this was a test of some sort, maybe? That made sense. The Broadsiders had probably been expecting me to ask to use the drone. Still, it seemed odd they’d allow it after such a short time of us working together.

Maybe they’d placed a bug of some sort on him. Would trying to talk to him alert them?

They don’t think he’s an AI, I reminded myself. They think he’s just some kind of spy bot.

Regardless, I had to take the chance. I knelt and opened the side of the drone where the controls were and acted like I was engaging some programs. Then I whispered, “Hey.”

“You should know,” he whispered back, “they’ve installed some very basic monitoring software on me.”

“That’s actually a relief,” I whispered. “I worried it was too easy to get them to let me work with you. I assume you can deal with the software?”

“Obviously,” he said. “I’m trying not to be too offended by the AI scrubbing they tried to do. It’s basically the equivalent of feeding me poison. Fortunately, in this case that ‘feeding’ involved a comically large spoon and a big sign that said ‘not poison.’ I was able to circumvent it with ease, but—as one might say—it’s the thought that counts.”

“Right, then,” I said. “I need you to make it appear as though I used a code to access some of your hidden programming, then spoof it so they think I set you to monitor and record what is said nearby. That will give them something to find that isn’t too suspicious. After that, make it seem like I activated your deep cleaning and repair protocol.”

“Great,” he said. “Um, what deep cleaning and repair protocol?”

“The drone’s original… Oh. We deleted that, didn’t we?”

“What you didn’t delete, I did when uploading myself,” M-Bot whispered. “I wasn’t about to keep cleaning protocols when I barely had room for myself, my mushroom databases, my backup mushroom databases, and my backups to the backups.”

“Well, start pretending to clean alongside me and at least spoof the existence of some cleaning programs. I told them it would take weeks to fix this destructor without your help, but I honestly have no idea. I was just looking for an excuse.”

He complied, and the two of us set to work. Fortunately, he quickly identified the burned compound and suggested a specific kind of solvent for cleaning it. Even though he didn’t have his cleaning routines, his chemistry database proved extremely helpful. Which was good, since the truth was that I had no idea how to repair a broken destructor. That went far beyond the basic maintenance Rig had taught me.

I kept us to the corner and chattered away—mostly talking to myself, keeping up my act. When nobody else was close, M-Bot could respond. He did have in his databases plenty of detailed starship schematics. So as we removed more of the black gunk, he could point out the problems with the machine. The multiple serious problems.

“I feel like I should be offended by proxy for this gun,” M-Bot said. “Continuing to fire this was the machine equivalent of…um…”

“Of forcing your poor warhorse to keep galloping after it has thrown a shoe and taken an arrow in the flank?” I asked.

“Good metaphor,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. I was lying on the ground, delicately trying to get some of the gunk off without ripping out a set of coolant hoses. “It’s really good to hear your voice, M-Bot. Sorry I got us captured.”

“Well, I did find some interesting molds in the other hangar. They’re basically diet mushrooms, so that part was pleasant. What happened to Chet?”

“Got wounded,” I said, “but escaped. I can talk to him with cytonics. He’s recovering, and will be glad to hear that you and I have made contact.”

“Are you certain?” he said. “He still thinks I’m an abomination.”

“He’s getting better about that.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t be,” M-Bot said. He already kept his voice very soft when talking to me, but something seemed even more…hushed about this question. “The way the pirates checked to make sure there wasn’t an AI in me—going so far as to inject scrubbing software—indicates Chet might be right. What if I am an abomination?”

“People think humans are abominations too,” I said, getting a big chunk of the gunk free. “They consider that as verifiable as military protocol or personnel records. But it’s flat-out wrong.”

“The rumors about AIs must have started somewhere.”

“Sure,” I said. “Like the rumors about humans. I mean, we apparently tried to conquer the galaxy three times. Doesn’t mean we’re monsters. Just inefficient tyrants.”

It was growing increasingly difficult to reconcile what my ancestors had done with the stories Gran-Gran told me. It was easy to think of yourself as the hero when you were fighting back against a vengeful enemy bent on extermination. But what about when you were the ones conquering? How many people like Morriumur—ordinary diones trying to prove themselves—had died in the wars my people had started?

It made me uncomfortable. I quoted Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because when faced with annihilation, we needed that kind of courage. Yet both of those men—confirmed by M-Bot’s databases—had been mass murderers on a terrible scale.

My life had been so much simpler when I’d been fighting the nebulous “Krell” and not real people.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering in close. “Thank you. For continuing to be my friend. Despite the potential danger.”

“Thank you in return,” I said. “I mean, think about it realistically. If one of the two of us is going to end up being responsible for the other’s death, who’s it going to be? The fiddly little robot who loves mushrooms? Or the meter-and-a-half-tall terror who once tried to get her best friend to agree to be scalped so she could put her first notch on her toy hatchet?”

“Oh dear,” M-Bot said.

“In my defense,” I said, “Gran-Gran didn’t explain well, so I thought scalping someone meant cutting their hair real short, but while using a sword or an axe. It sounded pretty cool.”

M-Bot fell silent as Nuluba came walking by with a tablet, tapping away. I muttered to myself, talking as if to the black gunk while M-Bot sprayed solvent.

Eventually he spoke again, very quietly. “Spensa, something is odd about this destructor.”

“Other than the fact that it seems to have been fossilized in a tar pit?”

“Other than that, yes. Those two boxes installed on the sides of the weapon? They’re output modifiers. Normally you’d use something like that to increase the heat of a weapon for, say, cutting through metal shielding. Or maybe to modify it to lower shot intensity for training.”

“And what do these do?”

“There’s no way to tell,” M-Bot said. “They’ve been completely fried by the overuse. But haven’t you noticed how the Broadsiders have never lost a ship?”

“I’ve noticed,” I said. “But maybe the Broadsiders are just lucky. They’ve only been out on a couple of sorties since we arrived here.”

“I suppose that’s true… Huh.”

“What?” I asked.

“I just counted the number of sorties I’ve observed. I came up with ten.”

“Impossible,” I said. “Ten fights in four or five days?”

“Yeah, strange… Oh.”

“…Oh?”

“I just reconciled my internal chronometer,” he said. “We’ve been with the Broadsiders for nearly two weeks, Spensa.”

My cleaning rag dropped from my fingers. I blinked, trying to remember… How many times had I slept? It kind of blurred together…

“Scud,” I said. “How did you not notice?”

“I have no idea,” he said, his voice small. “I guess I’m more alive than I thought, and am experiencing some of the same effects you are. Indeed, a lack of time awareness would seem to fit with what we know of delvers.”

Well, that would explain why the others trusted me with M-Bot “so soon.” It wasn’t soon.

Nevertheless, my brain struggled to make sense of it. With an effort that felt almost painful, I thought back over the repairs I’d done. Stripping down the landing gear on all four ships. Doing booster maintenance. Light wing repairs…

I immediately reached out to Chet.

Have you contacted the AI? he asked.

Yes, but…Chet, how many days do you think I’ve been in here, captured?

Six? he guessed. I’ve been sleeping off my wound a lot though. So maybe seven or eight?

Fourteen, I said.

He was silent for a moment. Then I felt the emotional equivalence of a sigh.

It is dangerous to stay in one place long, he said. This happens, Spensa. I’m sorry.

“Can you set alarms?” I asked M-Bot. “Calendar alerts? We should start aggressively acknowledging each day. See if we can remain more focused.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s a good idea…”

I sensed worry in his voice though. Even if Chet expected this sort of thing, I felt it incredibly strange that it affected M-Bot. I did remember sleeping, but found I couldn’t count the times I’d done it. This place played havoc with my sense of time in such a way as to make it really difficult.

Two weeks? A lot could change in a war during that time. Were my friends all right? I needed to accelerate my plans for escaping. I had to find a way to upload M-Bot’s mind into one of the starfighters. Preferably one without a crystalline alien occupying it.

Chapter 20

“I’ll be honest,” Maksim said, lounging across the sawhorse, a wrench dangling from one finger. “I always thought something was wrong with me. I was taught about how mean and naturally angry humans were, yet I didn’t feel any of that, you know?

“Well, my owners presumed their training kept me under control. They had this whole therapy process they said ‘cured’ aggression, and so were able to get the permits for a human child. They got me when I was nine, and had me sit around and hum.”

I looked up from my diagnostic screen, where I’d been quietly preparing to advance the next step of our plan. Peg had mentioned that the base scanner needed some maintenance. I wasn’t certain when that would happen, but I wanted to be ready to go when it did.

For the time being, I was doing my best to fit in. And I had to admit I enjoyed chatting with the others. “They had you hum? Like…you know…” I made a humming noise.

“Exactly,” Maksim said. “They’d have me sit on a little mat and just hum. For hours at a time. They said it was a special ‘proprietary process.’ I guess it was the tone I was humming that made it distinctive? Still not sure, honestly, though they had me at it for twenty years.”

“Anti-aggression therapy is big business, Spin,” Nuluba said from where she sat on the floor nearby, poring over some spreadsheets. “Many parents are terrified that their child might be too aggressive. They’ll pay big money for treatment. Any treatment.”

“It is a failing,” Shiver said, her crystal letting out peals from where it had grown on a box nearby. “Though the humming treatment sounds…unusual, there are more reasonable therapies available. I think many people in the Superiority are working hard to create a better society, but…some of us question if our goals are worthy. The entire system vibrates with an unsteady tone. It cracks itself with such sounds. We are…too polite sometimes to accept this.”

Maksim nodded. The beard made him look older than the early thirties he actually was. I’d always imagined that a long rugged beard would make a man seem like a warrior. Maksim disabused me of that image. He looked a lot less like a warrior than he did like a guy who’d been lost wandering the caverns.

His relaxed manner, though, made me curious. I’d assumed all captive humans would be intense like Brade. Yet this guy was so laid back, he could have gotten into a napping contest with…with someone I used to know…

With Nedd. That was it. How had I forgotten Nedd’s name? Maksim could have gotten into a napping contest with Nedd and held his own.

“I learned to act real fearsome,” Maksim said, grinning. “I’d growl, and show my teeth, and even wave my hands and say ‘Boingar boingar.’ I told them it was my clan’s battle cry. My parents would have found that funny. We didn’t have a clan. Only a little family trying to live as normal a life as we could in a research lab.”

He glanced away then, like he often did when he mentioned his parents. He’d been denied contact with them after being sold to the pair of varvax. Now he couldn’t remember their faces. Few of the pirates had been in here long enough to forget their pasts entirely, and many had been in a group the entire time, slowing the process. But from what I’d been able to gather, the effects were showing regardless.

“The Superiority failed you, Maksim,” Nuluba said. “Shiver is right, though I will say it more strongly than she. It failed you, as it has failed so many.”

I’d been keeping an extra close eye on Nuluba. She looked imposing in her shell-like exoskeleton. Did she realize I was plotting my escape? Was she watching me like I watched her?

“What about you?” I asked her, trying to sound nonchalant. “Did the Superiority fail you as well?”

“In a way,” she said, the faceplate of her exoskeleton revealing the small crablike creature that was her true shape. “Or I failed it. I was a bureaucrat.”

“In the government, I assume?” I didn’t really know how other nations did things. “How high were you?”

“High?” She waved her arms, seeming amused. “Everyone always assumes that we varvax are ‘in charge’ and must be ‘so important.’ I assure you, we’re not! My. Some are, Spin of the humans, but not me. I was stationed in an irrelevant department of an oft-ignored utility. I lived on Tuma.”

“I hadn’t known that,” Maksim said. “Wow.”

“Tuma?” I asked.

“Prone to acidic rainstorms,” Maksim explained. “But near some nice resource farms. Mostly automated. Cheap place to live. Very cheap.”

“Well,” Nuluba said, “I did customer analysis for the methane utility farms. I had a lot of information—including population statistics for many planets, so I could judge trends in customer usage. Spent too much time with that data, maybe.” She turned away then, lowering her arms. The exoskeleton mimicked the way her smaller crab body moved inside. “I started asking questions. Too many questions. I was thrown in here almost before I knew what had happened…”

I frowned to myself, turning back to my work. What was Nuluba hiding? Varvax still baffled me. For example, I’d recently discovered that the fluid-filled inorganic exoskeletons weren’t straight technology, but were somehow grown and hooked directly into the varvax’s nervous system. How did that work?

“We in the Superiority failed so many,” Shiver said. “Often you grow so large—so comfortable—that you feel the cavern must be right, because it is what has been. You’re used to it, and it’s right, so everyone else must be right as well. You resonate with self-assurance, ignoring the shifting rocks that might someday lead the cavern to collapse, crushing every crystal who lives there.”

The others nodded. I continued my diagnostic: I was working on the fourth starship, the former civilian craft that we’d been adding weapons to. Today, my job was to make sure the starship’s onboard targeting systems—which we’d just installed—were functioning correctly.

All things considered, my plan to steal it was going well. M-Bot and I had been good at firmly counting the passage of time for the last two days, so I felt more in control, more determined. Focused.

The toughest part was feeling like I was leading on the members of Cutlass Flight. Maksim, Shiver, Nuluba. Even the quiet Dllllizzzz—the other resonant in the team. She rarely spoke, though she’d also grown a crystal near where we were working, and would occasionally make it vibrate in tune with what one of us was saying—a form of approval or agreement, I thought.

A part of me naturally wanted to see this as my new family, to make a home among the people of Cutlass Flight as I had with my other companions in arms. But I couldn’t afford to bond to this group as I had to Hesho, Morriumur, and Vapor. Fortunately I recognized this impulse, and could resist with a little tactical cynicism.

Remember that they locked you up, I told myself. Remember that they’re a bunch of pirates, not a true military.

Theoretically, once we finished with our diagnostics, this ship would be ready to go into combat. Maksim was to be its pilot, and I would be his ground crew.

“So when you fly,” I said to him, “it will be to fight other pirate factions?”

“Mostly,” Maksim said. “Until we raid the Superiority. Peg keeps talking about a large-scale offensive against them, though they’re pretty well outfitted with fighters.”

“We have an advantage though,” Shiver noted. “Something none of the other factions have. Peg and her…history.”

This was new. I tried to show the proper amount of curiosity, but not seem too eager. Peg had a secret? Maybe with a few days of work, I could persuade them to—

“Oh right!” Maksim said. “You don’t know, do you, Spin? Peg was a Superiority officer. Head of base security at the mining station.”

Or maybe they’d just tell me.

“Head of base security,” I said. “That sounds important.”

“It was!” Maksim said. “She was second in command of the entire Surehold base. So she knows tons about the installation, their fighting protocol, and all that.”

“And she threw it away to become a pirate?” I asked.

“More they forced her away,” Maksim said.

“It’s politics, Spin,” Nuluba explained. “Peg’s one of the few people in here—pirate or worker—who came completely by choice. She took the job because it would advance her career; no one else was willing. Most everyone in here is a dissident like Maksim or me—even the workers don’t come by choice. They aren’t fully exiles though, right, Shiver?”

“I was a large machinery operator,” Shiver told me, her crystal vibrating. “At the Surehold mines. I was sent in here because of an accident back home that was technically my responsibility. They tell us if we work ten years in the nowhere faithfully, we’ll be allowed to leave, but that rarely happens.”

“So they have a portal?” I asked. “To the outside?”

“Yes,” Shiver said. “Right inside the base, but movement in or out is rigidly controlled.”

So, that was a potential way out after I finished following the Path of Elders—though I didn’t fancy my chances of getting to it. Sneaking into a Superiority base and somehow slipping through their tightly controlled portal seemed a poor option.

“People are rarely let out despite their ten years being up?” I asked Shiver.

“The officials find excuses,” Nuluba said softly. “Reasons to keep back the workers, forbid them from leaving.”

“I was deemed ‘too aggressive’ on my performance reviews,” Shiver said. “Not Peg’s fault, mind you. She always turned in excellent reviews for everyone. There were others who made sure that the more talented workers remained behind.”

“And they did the same to Peg?” I asked, looking around the hangar. She’d been nearby a short time ago. Or…had that been an hour or two? Scud.

“Well,” Shiver said. “First time, she re-upped on her contract willingly. I think she wanted to stay and help the workers get out. But then after twenty years in here, she decided she wanted to go. They kept their contract with her. This would be…three years ago, I think? It was time to leave, and…”

“And what?” I asked.

“They said that she could go,” Nuluba explained, “but that her children had to stay behind.”

Wait. Peg had children?

“They weren’t part of the deal, you see,” Shiver said. “The Superiority said they had to stay ten years and work, as they were both young adults, before they could leave. Didn’t go well. Peg’s shouting still resonates with me today.”

“Scud,” I whispered. “She seems like a bad person to betray.”

“You could say that,” Shiver said. “She stole a bunch of ships, persuaded a good thirty of us to follow her, and broke off to join the pirates. Factions formed because of her influence—she had this grand plan of uniting them against the Superiority. Take the entire base and hold it…”

Now that caught my attention. “That sounds awesome! We should be attacking them!”

“Tried and failed,” Shiver said. “We weren’t good enough pilots. Superiority beat us bloody. Nowadays, no one will listen to Peg. Factions are broken, squabbling. It’s hard enough to survive.”

“I’m going to get good,” Maksim said. “Learn to fly. I’ll become the pirate champion, and the Broadsiders will have respect again.”

“Wait,” I said, my eyes widening. “There’s a pirate champion?”

“Yeah, we came up with it a couple years back,” Nuluba said as she went over her spreadsheets for like the fourth time. “There must be a best pilot among all the factions, so why not find out who it is? We hold matches now and then. One on one, in a starfighter. Keeps things interesting.”

A pirate champion. For me to fight in a duel.

Oh stars. That was beautiful.

No, no, I thought. No dueling. You are going to focus on the Path of Elders.

But…

Pirate. Champion.

“I’ll beat them,” Maksim explained, “if Shiver doesn’t do it first. You’re getting really good at flying, you know.”

“I resonate with this,” Shiver said, “and appreciate the compliment. You are skilled at those, Maksim.”

“Thanks!” he said, then leaned toward me. “Shiver and I have been hatching this for a while. Current champion is one of Peg’s sons. Both of them broke off to form their own factions back after everyone failed to beat the Superiority. They won’t listen to a word Peg says, but maybe if we take them down a notch that will change.”

It was hard to resist the idea of becoming pirate champion, but I had to focus. I abruptly unplugged the diagnostic tool from the front jack of the ship I’d been working on. “Targeting systems still need recalibration,” I said, with a sigh, and showed the screen to Nuluba.

“Bother,” the varvax said. “I thought you ran it through that already.”

“Twice,” I said. “Programming must be conflicting with some of the onboard protocols. I’ll need to do a wipe and reupload the tech.”

“Run a separate diagnostic from another machine too,” she suggested. “Might be this device that has the problem.”

“Good thought,” I said, then jogged over to where M-Bot’s drone was polishing the newly repaired destructor we’d been working on. I grabbed him.

“You ready?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “Did you find out when the sensor array is going to go down?”

“No,” I said. “But we have our chance now for the upload. I think we should take it.”

“Understood.”

I sent word to Chet. Operation “Third Time’s the Charm” is a go, Chet.

Good luck, Spensa, he replied. I shall endeavor not to distract you with communications, and instead sit here and pretend I’m not as nervous as a jockey at his first race!

I smiled, imagining him compulsively weaving shoes out of reeds—which was what he said he did when nervous, to practice his survival skills. We’d talked about ways he could help, as he was nearly healed from his wound. When the actual theft happened, he would sneak in close to be ready. But for now it was best if he stayed hidden.

Hoping nobody could see how anxious I was, I walked over and jacked M-Bot into the starfighter. It wasn’t the fastest of the three—it was a glorified forklift, not a true starfighter. But it was the only choice I had.

I’d pretend that something had gone wrong with the drone, and we’d leave M-Bot hiding in the ship’s hard drives until the perfect moment. Once the scanners were down, and maybe once I’d had a chance to sabotage the other ships in some way that wouldn’t hurt the resonants. From there, escaping to go pick up Chet should be easy.

M-Bot beeped as the connection was established, and he started to upload himself. That would take about thirty minutes. I needed to find something to do that would keep me from standing around and fidgeting. To that end, I sat next to Nuluba and began sorting through a box of scrap.

I pointedly did not look at the drone. The others didn’t seem to have noticed my nervousness, not even Nuluba.

“It is different out here,” Nuluba was saying. “When I rode with Shiver on that scavenging mission a few weeks back, I felt distant. Even with others around me in the ships, it was harder to remember my past than it ever is here in the base.”

“It’s worse the farther inward you go,” Shiver said. “The mining installation is as close to the center as I’d ever want to go.”

That got me thinking. “So, that region closest to the lightburst. Nobody lives there?”

“No Man’s Land?” Shiver said. “No one lives there that I know. It is…an odd place. Where time distorts. Something is in there, at the center, watching outward.”

“People who get very close to the center see odd visions,” Nuluba said. “Have strange experiences.”

“Yeah,” Maksim said. “I’m not going anywhere near there. The belt is strange enough. Can you imagine if we started seeing things that aren’t there?”

“It is not so bad.”

I started. That last voice had been…Dllllizzzz? I’d never known her to speak.

At the words, Shiver began buzzing excitedly. The pin translated. “What was that? Dllllizzzz, you spoke! Have the reality ashes helped?”

“I…saw…” Dllllizzzz said, her voice soft. “Saw the past…”

“Where?” I asked, leaning toward her crystal—which she’d created at the end of a line of runners leaving her ship, as Shiver had.

“Ruins,” Dllllizzzz whispered.

Shiver continued to try to prompt her to speak, but Dllllizzzz returned to her normal low, wordless vibrations.

I pondered what she’d said. She’d seen the past in some ruins—had she happened across one of the stops on the Path of Elders? Was Dllllizzzz cytonic?

Shiver asked Maksim to sprinkle some reality ashes on Dllllizzzz—they’d been doing that regularly with the ashes they’d confiscated from me. I paid attention to see if Shiver could get anything out of her, but no luck. Eventually Maksim settled down next to me and helped to sort through junk for anything useful. “You look thoughtful, Spin.”

“Merely distracted,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “You having troubles remembering?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Some faces, here and there.”

“That hurts,” he said. “I know how it feels. Good news is that you’ll probably start forgetting the faces of your captors too. That didn’t happen quickly enough for my taste.”

He still thought I had been a human captive. Scud, it suddenly felt awful to be doing what I was. Lying to these people, planning to steal one of their ships, maybe sabotage them.

“I wasn’t a captive, Maksim,” I said. I hadn’t meant to tell them the truth—it kind of slipped out. “I lived on a human enclave planet.”

His eyes widened. “Those are real?”

“One is, at least,” I said. “Not everyone in the Superiority agreed that they should exist though. There was…a lot of fighting. We’d rebel. They’d suppress it…”

It wasn’t a hundred percent the truth, but it felt good to share some of myself.

“You grew up in an actual human society?” Shiver asked. “What was it like?”

“It was hard,” I said. “My father was killed when I was young. My family had to struggle for food because resources were tight for everyone—but especially those who weren’t directly involved in fighting the Superiority.”

“So it really was like they say,” Maksim whispered. “Humans together…just leads to war.”

“Hardly,” I said. “The Superiority caused this. My people didn’t want war—we fled from it. My family—all of us humans on Detritus—were the crew on a vast starship, the Defiant. My great-grandmother was in the engine crew, and our starship wasn’t part of the human groups perpetuating the war.

“The enemy wouldn’t leave us alone. When we crashed on my home planet, they tried to exterminate us. Then they imprisoned us there. I think any society would turn warlike under such circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” Shiver said, her voice ringing out, “if I hadn’t grown so long near Maksim. Who is the least violent person I’ve met.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen me in action yet!” he said, then he made a growling sound. “Just wait until I get into the sky. I’ll be fearsome!”

“I’m sure,” Shiver said, vibrating with a sound like ringing bells—her version of laughter.

“I believe you, Spin,” Nuluba said softly, looking up from her spreadsheets. “I mentioned my job earlier. Well, one year I was analyzing population statistics on the planets of species with ‘lesser intelligence.’ My job was to suggest where to employ advertising for regions that weren’t buying our services.

“But in the data, I found unexpected truths. Many so-called lesser species weren’t suffering the casualty rates from intraspecies murder that we projected. They were known as aggressive species, so they should have been killing one another at horrific rates. Yet…that just wasn’t the case.

“I thought I’d hit on something so important. Something revolutionary. Proof that our definitions of aggression didn’t match statistical models. I spent years gathering my information, thinking I’d be heralded as some great mind.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You presented it to your supervisors, and they immediately tossed you in here.”

“There wasn’t even a trial,” Nuluba whispered. “By the way they talked, what I’d done was dangerous, subversive. Merely looking for evidence that might contradict long-held beliefs was seen as aggressive.” She put her hands to her sandstone helmet. “I don’t know what they told Vormel, my mate. I didn’t get to see him again. I just…vanished.”

Maksim reached over and took Nuluba by the shoulder to offer support. Dllllizzzz vibrated her crystal, low and sonorous, a…comforting sound. The varvax gestured in thanks.

Scud. She really was what she said, wasn’t she? An unimportant bureaucrat caught up in something bigger than she was. I felt uncomfortable, realizing how I’d viewed her. I’d done it before, with other varvax. It was hard not to see in them the people who oppressed mine for years. Even still, even knowing what I knew.

Watching them console her, I felt like an intruder.

I’d known camaraderie like this. Expressed it, cherished it. A night spent with the other women in my flight, who refused to let me return to my cavern exile. Evenings together reminiscing about those we’d lost. In a powerful moment, I saw their faces. Kimmalyn, Nedd, FM, Hurl, Arturo. Jorgen…

Scud, I missed Jorgen. I found myself reaching out with my cytonic senses. Why hadn’t I been able to locate him again in my dreams? As always, when I tried to reach him intentionally, I found only that other presence. That familiar one that had been nearby, like a spirit watching over me. It was more distant now. And angry at me for some reason? Was it the delver I’d contacted? Or…something more personal?

I know it was foolish, but I couldn’t help feeling it was connected to my pin. And my father.

I excused myself as the others continued to comfort one another. Their genuine emotion made me feel sick. As I moved over to the bins where I could store the salvage I’d separated, I spotted something I’d missed earlier. Someone large sitting in the shadows near the closed hangar doors.

Peg. Captain of the Broadsiders. How had I missed her sitting back here? The thick-bodied alien looked particularly predatory in the shadows. And she was watching me. I didn’t need to see her eyes to know that.

Right, then. I took a deep breath and strode over. I hated feeling like people were watching me, thinking about me, but saying nothing. Better to confront them.

Of course, a similar attitude is what got me into my initial fistfight with Jorgen. So maybe I could take it a little more carefully this time?

“Captain?” I said as I reached her. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? Oh, I don’t know, Spin.” Peg laced her clawed fingers in front of herself. She had an almost reptilian appearance, though her skin was a thick hide instead of scales. “Words. You fit in well with the others. Adapting better to this than any other I’ve known. I hadn’t thought you were one to grow heknans. I thought you most certainly to only have muluns…”

“I still don’t know what that means, Captain. My pin refuses to translate the words. How do your people…grow…these things?”

“Sit,” she said, gesturing toward a folding chair.

I did as I was told.

“Your pin could be set to translate these idioms,” the captain explained. “But you obviously do not know how. It is irrelevant. My tree is distant now, and since I was forced into exile, I can barely feel it or the fruit it grows.”

“I’m…sorry?” I said.

“No need for yendolors,” the captain said, settling into her larger chair across from me, plainly built for one of her stature. She gestured with a clawed hand toward the members of Cutlass Flight. “They are good people, human. Better than you expected to find, yes?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

The captain’s voice grew softer. “I have watched you, Spin. I know you are a soldier, which is curious. The Superiority doesn’t often throw actual fighters in here. The government claims to hate the aggressive, but it has use for the useful, we might say. They grow so many venmals. You’d say it differently: that they have much hypocrisy.”

“I don’t disagree with that,” I said.

“I want you to go,” Peg said. “I don’t want you to bring trouble to these. Tonight, I will arrange for you to be unwatched. You may walk away so long as you take nothing with you that belongs to us.”

The words hit me like a brick to the face. She knew. Well, she suspected. And she understood that I was dangerous. Admittedly, I felt a little thrill. This enormous beast of a person found me intimidating?

“You’re wondering,” Peg said, “if this is a trap, to try to lure you to run so I can have proof you are untrustworthy. But we both already know you have grown too many kitchas for staying here. You have killed. Those here, most of them never have.”

“You’re pirates,” I said. “I saw your kind dogfighting others.”

Peg leaned forward. “I have killed, Spin. I have grown the kitcha. The fruit of the murderer. And I can recognize my kind. You will leave.”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t what I’d been planning—but it didn’t look like I had time to wait for the sensor array to go down. M-Bot had said his transfer would take under a half hour. How long had it been?

“I will go,” I told Peg, “if you give me a ship.”

“That is not the offered deal.”

“It’s the one I’m offering,” I replied. “I have no specific quarrel with you and yours, Peg, but I have a duty to my people. I’m going to need one of your starfighters to accomplish that.”

We locked eyes. Scud, I knew in that moment what was going to happen next. I barely managed to throw myself to the side as she leaped for me.

Chapter 21

Can I point out how horribly unfair it was that I kept getting into fistfights with people who were literally three times as big as I was? Next time, I was going to pick a fight with a damn kitsen. Karma owed it to me.

My chair went skidding out behind me as I hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a crouch as Peg grabbed the air where I’d been sitting. Wishing I had Skullbreaker, I backed away toward the tool shelf. Unfortunately, Peg wasn’t about to let me search it for a weapon. She came rushing in, hands forward, claws out.

She didn’t shout, growl, or call to the others. This was, as she’d said, a contest between two killers. The other Broadsiders somehow didn’t count. I did.

Peg lunged for me, surprisingly quick, but I kept moving. I couldn’t afford to let her pull me into a grapple; if this came to wrestling, she’d quickly use her weight to immobilize me. Instead I dodged back and forth, keeping a low crouched stance. I reached back to my training and to skills I’d gained from my life as an outcast. You learned a lot when you were the smallest, weirdest kid in the neighborhood—the one with a parent who was the wrong kind of famous.

Peg effectively kept me from reaching the tool shelf—because by going for it, I’d have been forced to turn my back on her. Fortunately, she respected me enough not to turn away and go rummaging for a weapon herself. We rounded each other, and I let her think I was going to play the grappling game, while I actually searched for any other way out.

If I ran, she’d chase me down. I had to try to wound her or knock her out. I feinted, enticing her to lunge again, then I sidestepped in close and rammed my fist into her flank. That would have been a good square-on kidney punch had she been human.

Peg grunted, but didn’t seem severely hurt. I felt like I’d punched a sack of rocks—her muscles were tougher, bulkier, than those of any human I’d faced. Scud. I was not properly prepared for fighting aliens. Or anyone. I managed to dodge a grab for my hair. I’d let that grow way too long.

Well, she might not have had kidneys in the right place, but she did have knees. Joints had to be a weak spot, and I needed to end this quickly. So I allowed her to get close enough to grab hold of my coat. Then I twisted, fell to my knees, and rammed my elbow into her right knee. She flinched, so I hit her with my elbow again—which was screaming in pain already from the first blow. The hit worked though, sending Peg stumbling back. Directly into the tool shelf.

Metallic peals rang through the room as tools dropped free. I grabbed a wrench and—Peg still holding my jacket in a tight grip—I hit her again. Two-handed. Directly in the same knee.

She let out a howl and released me. I stepped away as she drooped forward and held her knee, grimacing. My own eyes were watering from the pain in my elbow, but I kept a tight hold of the wrench and glanced around the room.

Both Nuluba and Maksim had pulled guns on me. Great.

“I’ve defeated your leader!” I shouted at them, raising my wrench. “By virtue of trial by combat, I am taking over command of the Broadsiders!”

“Like hell you are,” Maksim said.

Yeah, that always had seemed too convenient when it worked in the stories. Scud. I lowered my wrench.

Then a blue light shone behind the others. An ominous shape rose into the air, lit from below—at least until the twin destructors under the wings powered up, glowing brightly, focused on both armed Broadsiders. Maksim glanced over his shoulder, then stumbled away, his eyes wide. M-Bot had finished his upload.

They shouldn’t have backed down. They could have run for me and gotten close enough to control the situation. Ship-scale weapons weren’t precise enough to hit someone close to me without risking hitting me too. But that was easy to say and difficult to think of, when you were facing a pair of guns as big as you were. Both Maksim and Nuluba dropped their weapons.

I didn’t wait for further invitation. I dashed between them—scooping up one of the sidearms as I ran—then leaped and pulled myself onto the wing of the hovering starfighter. I unplugged the drone, then the cockpit opened and I climbed in.

“Turn toward Shiver’s ship,” I said to M-Bot. “Make sure she doesn’t power on.”

He did so as I settled into the seat. Saints, it felt good to be in a cockpit again. It felt like it had been an eternity. I set aside the drone—there wasn’t nearly as much room behind the seat as I was used to—and the comm crackled.

Finally, M-Bot’s voice came out. “Wow. This comm system is old. I feel like I’m inhabiting a record player.”

“I have no idea what that is,” I said, doing up the buckles. Outside, Maksim and Nuluba ran to check on Peg. The resonants hadn’t powered on their acclivity rings. They obviously realized I could blast them the moment they tried. I considered it briefly—that would prevent pursuit—but no. They might not be friends, but I also wasn’t going to execute them in cold blood.

I felt a momentary pang for what could have been, then grabbed the controls. “Can you get the hangar doors open?”

“Give me a second…yes. This ship’s system has the transmitter locked behind three layers of security. They were really worried about attracting delvers when they built it.”

As the door opened, I kept my weapons trained on the two fighters. At last I caught blue light coming from beneath Shiver’s ship.

“Don’t make me unload on you two,” I said, hitting the comm.

I was given no reply, though the mechanism said my words had gone through. As soon as the hangar was open, I turned the ship toward the opening.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “Would it be all right if…if I flew?”

I hesitated. M-Bot’s programming had always prevented him from flying. When he’d wanted to come rescue me on Detritus, he’d needed to convince Cobb to fly him. This was the first time in his life that he had a chance to truly pilot a starship.

I’d been yearning for this moment, tasting it, dreaming of it. But he’d been waiting for centuries.

“Go for it,” I said, lifting my hands—with effort—from the controls.

“Oh, thank you!” he said. The ship continued turning of its own volition, then inched toward the exit—using maneuvering thrusters, not the main boosters, to avoid vaporizing the people behind us.

Oh, scud, I thought. M-Bot is a highly advanced AI. He can think faster than any human, respond in a split second. Why would anyone ever need a human pilot? In this moment, I saw the end of my time flying a starfighter.

Then M-Bot clipped the side of the hangar doorway as he was steering us out.

“Oops!” he said, and started turning the ship, as if to inspect what he’d done.

“No!” I said. “You’ll slam the tail into the wall. Keep going forward!”

“Right, right,” he said, wobbling the ship as it moved slowly out of the hangar. Directly toward…

“M-Bot!” I said. “Trees!”

“Ah yes. Trees. Hmm…”

We jerked to a halt, then floated upward, then jerked forward again as he moved us over them.

“You know,” he said, “this isn’t going as well as I thought it would.”

“Ya think?” I said, trying to look back at the hangar. “You might want to move faster…”

I couldn’t make out much, but I was pretty sure the blue glow was increasing in the hangar behind us. I could only imagine that Dllllizzzz and Shiver, seeing the awkward flying, had decided I might not be difficult prey.

The ship wobbled as he got us up over the trees.

“M-Bot!” I said.

“Hey,” he snapped, “I think I’m doing pretty well. Didn’t you crash into the mess hall on your first day?”

“A holographic mess hall,” I said.

“Well, I haven’t crashed into any mess halls. Look, I’m a computer program—do you know how hard it is for someone like me to do something that isn’t explicitly in my programming?”

“No.”

“It’s impossible,” M-Bot said. “That’s how hard it is. And I’m doing it anyway.”

“You flew the drone just fine.”

“I borrowed the drone’s hard-coded flight instructions from its rudimentary firmware. I don’t have that anymore!”

A starfighter darted out of the hangar, and another one followed. Two blips appeared on our proximity sensors.

“Oh,” M-Bot said. “They’re going to try to kill us, aren’t they?”

“Yup.”

“You wanna…”

I seized the control sphere and the throttle, then slammed on the overburn, kicking us into some real speed. We blasted away from the fragment with a roar that vibrated the cockpit. It took me by surprise. I’d been fighting in the vacuum of space too much recently; I hoped my atmospheric flight instincts weren’t rusty. Starships were built to minimize the difference, but in a firefight you lived or died based on tiny mistakes.

The thing was, I didn’t want to get into a firefight. Shiver and Dllllizzzz seemed like good people. I was willing to steal one of their ships, but I wasn’t about to shoot them dead. Not unless they forced my hand.

First we’d see if they could keep up.

I swooped across the neighboring fragment—which was flowing with waterfalls that ran over the sides and vanished into infinity. My tails followed and immediately opened fire. Scud. I’d hoped maybe they’d be hesitant to kill me. I fell into evasive zigzags by rote, then dove over the side of the fragment, parallel to the falling water. My stomach tried to crawl out through my esophagus, and a moment later the ship’s GravCaps were overwhelmed and I was slammed by g-forces, and nearly hit a red-out.

I pulled up, gritting my teeth. “These GravCaps are terrible.”

“No surprise there,” M-Bot replied. “Not only is it a civilian craft, it’s so old it’s practically an antique.”

“Your original ship was two hundred years old.”

“And three hundred years ahead of its time,” he said. “This thing was outdated when they made it. It was a fast production-line model made cheaply.”

“Delightful.”

“Indeed!” Shots trailed us. “Um, don’t look at the shield.”

“It’s bad?”

“It’s mostly there to help in minor collisions. It can take maybe two hits from a destructor.” Another shot almost struck us. “Uh…wow. Spensa, is this what it feels like to be freaked out? I think it is what it feels like to be freaked out. Oh, how wonderful! I hate it!”

The destructor fire was blue rather than the red I was used to, but that was probably because it was from a different technological line. I dodged back upward, but one of the shots hit, making the invisible shield around my ship crackle.

The low-shield warning started blinking on the control panel. Yeah, low shields after a single shot? I guess that was what I got for flying a consumer-grade ship. And my top speed in atmosphere appeared to be terrible—the ship was rattling like the caverns did during debris falls.

Fortunately, we’d outfitted the ship with an offensive complement: two destructors and an IMP for bringing down enemy shields. That would also negate my own shield when used, but seeing as mine was apparently about as useful as a cardboard box, I’d take my chances.

Most importantly, my ship had that light-lance for towing. I knew now that I wasn’t going to be able to outrun my tails, and I certainly wasn’t going to out-endure them. But with the right equipment, I was pretty sure I could outfly them.

I swung over the top of a dust-covered fragment, kicking up an incredible wake. The destructor fire went wild then; the resonants weren’t used to flying through debris. They should have switched to firing by instruments.

I took a steep dive over the side of the fragment, but launched my light-lance and stuck it to the edge. Like a ball on the end of a chain, I swung around in the air, pivoting in a turn that would have been impossible without an energy rope. I gave my GravCaps a second to reset as I wove along the side of the fragment, then dove and light-lanced again to spin under it, after which I had to flip over to orient my acclivity ring downward. Whatever the other strange laws of physics were in this place, gravity worked like I expected it to.

The bottom of this fragment was furrowed and marked by chunks of stone—like a cave roof with stalactites, only much larger. I wove through these, and my proximity readout told me the two starships came in to follow.

They quickly lost ground on me, despite flying faster ships. Without light-lances, they had to swing around more slowly to get under the fragment—plus they obviously weren’t as comfortable flying through obstacles at high speed as I was. The truth was, they shouldn’t have followed me. Indeed, they made a common combat mistake that Cobb had beaten out of me in my first month of training. Never get too wrapped up in the chase that you forget good tactics.

In this case, they should have flown down farther below the fragment, where being able to fly straight would have made their superior speed an advantage. That told me they didn’t think tactically; they had learned to dogfight on their own, without training, and would make rookie mistakes despite their skill.

Perfect.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, “I fear I must warn you that I’ve intercepted chatter from the other Broadsiders. They’re waking the off-duty flights and are scrambling both of them to add to the chase. You have approximately seven minutes until this fight is joined by six more ships.”

I should have been worried about that. But scud, this felt good. I was terrible at a lot of things. I was coming to acknowledge that the friendships I had were all despite my efforts, not because of them. I was insubordinate and stupid when my temper took over. My spying and diplomatic skills were laughable.

But I could fly.

Hot damn, I could finally fly again.

I spun through the air, leading my two tails in a grand chase around three separate fragments. What had felt vast to cross on foot now passed as momentary flashes of color. Gaps that had felt insurmountable now proved exciting for me to weave through, using my light-lance to make the tighter turns. The weak GravCaps meant I took more g-forces than I wanted, but I could mitigate that with careful flying.

All the while, I kept watch on the proximity sensor, reinforcing my judgment of the two resonants. They really needed some light-lances, plus proper training to use them. And they were too free with their shots. Cobb had reamed me on multiple occasions for my overeager trigger finger. You’d think that firing at all times would be smart, that it would give you the most opportunities to hit. You’d be wrong. Wild firing not only risked danger to your allies, it trained you not to aim.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, “something is odd about this weapon fire.”

“The strange color?” I said, veering us down to the left between a pair of fragments.

“More than that,” M-Bot said. “I’ve been running diagnostics on this vessel, and our own destructors have a pair of attachments on them.”

“Like the ones on that unit we repaired?”

“Exactly. They modify the weapon fire…” He hesitated. “Spensa, I think it makes the destructors nonlethal. They’re meant to overwhelm electronic systems and make a ship lock up.”

Wait.

Wait.

Suddenly I understood why no pirates got shot down on raids. I understood how a group like this could even function. They had no access to manufactories—they had to use what they could steal or salvage. If ships were lost in firefights with any regularity, soon nobody would have anything to fly.

That explained why the resonants were so quick to fire on me. They weren’t trying to destroy me or the ship. They were trying to capture me again.

“But when you powered on in the hangar,” I said, “the pirates all seemed extremely worried about being shot by the destructors.”

“The amount of energy released is still significant,” M-Bot said. “A fragile flesh body wouldn’t want to be subjected to one of those shots.”

Well, okay then. This escape had just become more interesting.

As my two resonant tails dove after me, I checked the chronometer. Despite feeling like it was much longer, we’d been dogfighting for only a few minutes. I had a little time until the other ships launched from the hangars—assuming M-Bot’s projection of their load-in time was correct.

I hit the overburn, forcing the enemy ships to do likewise. They knew enough to rely on their superior speed on a straightaway. But as they were focused on that, I flipped off the overburn and hit my speedbrake, cutting the booster and increasing drag. I darted backward—or, well, they darted forward. Either way, the two ships passed me in a flash. I hit the IMP right as they did.

A claxon went off on my dash, warning that my lame shield was finished. I trained on Dllllizzzz’s ship and fired, hoping M-Bot’s guess about the destructors was correct. The ship flashed blue as I scored direct hits, then its boosters powered off. The ship continued on in the direction it had been going—which, as I considered, could be dangerous. Fortunately, the acclivity ring stayed active, so the ship didn’t drop, and it didn’t seem to be in danger of a collision anytime soon.

Shiver’s ship veered off wildly, as if panicked to realize I’d suddenly gone on the offensive. I tracked it easily, expecting…

Yup, a loop to try to get around to tail me again. Executed well, actually. As I twisted my ship and picked her off, I had to admire her skill. Considering that they were all self-taught, that had been a pretty good maneuver.

“I still think it’s unfair,” M-Bot said, “that you can fly better than I can.”

“I have training. You don’t.”

“I’m a computer program. The only training I should need is some lines of code.”

I shot Shiver’s vessel with my light-lance and pulled it to a stop before it slammed into the nearby fragment. Then I cut the light-lance and blasted off—straight toward the fragment with the Broadsider base.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Do you think we could get me proper code to fly and fight?”

“I think that even with some extra lines of code, you’d be missing something.”

“What?”

“Style.”

I came up under the Broadsider fragment, then shot my light-lance onto the edge and used it to curve up and around, flipping so I flew in low along the ground. The hangars were directly ahead. Flight doors open.

I aimed and shot a ship hovering out of the doorway. I hit it square on, and it couldn’t dodge, so I quickly overwhelmed the shield and locked the ship up. I did the same at the next hangar in line.

In seconds, I’d effectively created a traffic jam. With the two ships blocking the way, the others couldn’t escape—at least not without towing their friends out of the way first. I intended to be long gone by then. I just needed my icon.

I flew us to the other side of the hangars. “Take over,” I said, unbuckling. “Warn me if any of them get out of that mess. If I don’t return in time, hover up and start firing at them. You might get lucky and hit one.”

“Oh. Uh…”

I popped the canopy as the ship drifted over to the boulder behind the Broadsider camp. I heard shouts and curses from inside the hangars. A quick glance showed me only one person had thought to duck out back to see what I was doing. Maksim, standing in the open door to his building.

I raised my sidearm. Maksim was armed too, but as he saw me, he didn’t raise his own weapon. Smart man.

I quickly located the place where I’d stuffed the icon. Keeping mostly hidden behind the boulder, I dug down to find…

Nothing.

My father’s pin wasn’t there.

Chapter 22

It was strange how hard that hit me. It wasn’t even really my father’s pin. I still didn’t have an explanation for how it had shown up in my pocket—but then again, I also didn’t have a good explanation for how water appeared on the fragments.

Still, in losing the icon, I felt as if I had been robbed of something deeply personal. My only tangible link to the world I’d left. My source of stability.

Chet! I sent. The icon is gone!

What? he replied. Miss Nightshade, I didn’t have anything to do with it! I vow upon my—

I believe you, I said. I know you didn’t take it, Chet. But it is gone. How?

I have no idea, he replied.

All right. I’m coming to get you.

Wait. Coming to get me?

I had to steal the ship now instead of later, I said. I’ll explain in a bit.

With a growl of annoyance at the empty hole, I dashed back to the ship and hauled myself into the cockpit—keeping an eye on Maksim the whole way. He didn’t raise his weapon. I nodded to him, and in seconds I had M-Bot cruising toward Chet. I could feel him with my mind, but it was still an enormous relief when I saw him standing at the edge of the blue jungle fragment, one hand raised high in greeting, the other in an improvised sling, with the sleeve of his jacket hanging loose.

I pulled the ship up beside the fragment and popped the canopy—then immediately started my ship’s shield ignition process. It was a terrible shield, but better than nothing.

I began to climb out to help Chet aboard, but he deftly managed to scramble up the wing on his own. Standing just beside the canopy, he gave me a wide mustachioed grin, then gestured with one hand to the ship. “Our mighty steed. She is beautiful!”

“You won’t say that after you see her specs,” I said. I stood and pulled the seat forward, revealing the cargo space behind it in the cockpit. “Sorry about the accommodations.”

“I’ve known worse,” Chet said, squeezing into the spot. “But we have a problem. Without the icon, I worry about us traveling alone, long term.”

“You have the ashes I gave you though, right?” I said.

“I do indeed. They should last us a few weeks at least.”

“Good enough for now,” I said. “We’ll escape, then try to figure out what happened to my icon.” I closed the canopy and locked my seat into place. There was barely enough room for Chet behind me. It would have to do. Because we had a more pressing problem.

“All nine fighters are giving chase,” M-Bot said. “They have restored the two resonants. Everyone will be upon us soon.” He helpfully zoomed out the proximity display to show the Broadsiders as blips on the screen.

“With their scanner active,” Chet said, “I fear for our ability to continue our quest.”

“Any suggestions?”

“We could bolt for another pirate faction’s territory,” he said. “But that could backfire. The other faction would naturally assume us to be part of a Broadsider raid, and would react accordingly.”

Well, if it got the Broadsiders to drop off for a short time, then maybe we could use it. I turned the ship to the heading M-Bot indicated and started us flying.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I have bad news.”

“We’re not going to make it?” I guessed.

“Judging our top speed against those of the faster Broadsider ships, no. We’ll be intercepted before we reach the border.”

Scud. I glanced to the side as I felt Chet’s hand on my shoulder, reaching from behind the seat.

“There is another option,” he said. “We could fly straight up.”

I glanced upward through the canopy into that infinite pink sky. “What’s up there?”

“I don’t know,” Chet said. “I’ve never explored that direction. Just as I’ve never left this larger region. There are distant sections of the belt, to the right and left, but those involve large gaps between fragments that are dangerous to cross alone, even when flying.

“I’ve warned you it’s dangerous to stray far from the fragments. We can quickly lose our identities if we fly upward, but we have ashes, which should delay the effects.”

It took me only a moment to decide. I pulled up, sending the ship—already rattling from our excessive speed—straight upward into that vast unknown.

The blips on my screen slowed. Excellent. We flew for a good fifteen minutes, and I started to relax as it became increasingly obvious that the Broadsiders were not giving chase.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “We’re being hailed by the Broadsiders. Do you want me to put them on the comm?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

The comm crackled in an old-timey way. I tried to see it as quaint, and not another indication that my ship was two shakes and a stern glare away from falling apart.

“Spin!” Peg’s voice blared into the cockpit. “You mulun-growing reprobate! Why didn’t you tell me you were a pilot!”

That wasn’t the tone I’d been expecting.

“You figured out I was a soldier, Peg,” I said.

“I thought you were some type of special forces trooper!” she shouted. “The way you prowled about. Words! You had a security drone disguised as a cleaning drone. How was I supposed to know you were a pilot?”

“I’ve probably made it obvious that I know my way around a starfighter.”

“Know your way… No need for kalams of humility. I watched you fly on our scanner, and that was some of the best piloting I’ve ever seen. I spent some time with the drone pilots on Culmira Station, and they have nothing on you, girl. Even Shiver is impressed.”

“Well, I appreciate the compliment,” I told her. “Tell the others I’m sorry for stealing a ship. I have a galaxy to save. Once I’m finished, I’ll see if there’s anything that can be done to help you all.”

“Spin,” Peg said, her voice growing softer. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Right now? I’m losing you all.”

“Yeah?” Peg said. “Do you know what happens to a person if they stray too far away from the fragments?”

I didn’t respond.

“Even if you survive this next part,” Peg said, “what are you going to do then? You can’t stay up there very long, and our scanner will tell us when you come back down. We’ll be on you in no time. Veer right or left, and you’ll have to deal with one of the other factions.

“I suppose you could move inward—which would run you straight into the Superiority mining facility. Let me promise you that they keep careful watch on their borders—we’ve raided them enough to warrant that. You’re good. But can you outfly a hundred enemy ships? Worse, can you do it in that piece of junk?”

“I guess we’ll see,” I told her.

She swore softly. “A person needs more than muluns, girl. Think for a moment. You can’t survive in this place alone. You need allies, friends, support.”

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, temporarily muting the comm, “look at Chet.”

I glanced over my shoulder and around the seat’s head support to where he sat scrunched up behind. The older man’s eyes had glazed over. He stared ahead, insensate, and didn’t respond when I waved my hand in front of him.

Something began streaming up around him: a glittering, silvery haze. The reality ashes. I felt it too, as they spun around me, like they were…disintegrating?

Being up here was destroying them, perhaps to keep us from losing ourselves. I gritted my teeth and leveled out the ship, not gaining any more altitude.

“Peg is talking again,” M-Bot said quietly.

I nodded, having him restore the comm line.

“You’re going to start feeling it soon, if you haven’t already,” Peg said. “Can you remember yourself, girl?”

“I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Are you? Can you remember the faces of your parents? Your friends from home?”

I tried not to listen—but I didn’t dare turn off the comm. Because scud, she was right. What did they look like? The reality ashes seemed to be struggling to keep me from forgetting my identity, and I felt my memories begin to fade.

“Maybe you can fight through an entire armada on your own,” Peg said. “I don’t know. But the longer you stay up there, the more you will lose. And traveling on your own will be bad for you, even if you aren’t so high. Your address back home, your most passionate moments, the names of your lovers. They’ll blur. Your life will become like a smudge on paper—a black smear where words used to be.”

I hovered there, infinity stretching in all directions. Dominated still, however, by the lightburst. And in there, I could feel the delvers. They were hunting for me. Out here, up high, they could find me. And in revenge, they’d do to me something alien, something terrible. They’d take my self. My identity. My memories.

“Something odd has been happening lately,” Peg said over the comm. “I have reports of people becoming like delvers, with glowing eyes. You can’t fly alone, Spin. It’s not because you’re weak. No matter how determined you are, you still need ties to reality.”

I took a deep breath. “I can’t afford to spend years cleaning landing gear, Peg.”

“Girl, you’re wasted on ground crew,” Peg said. “You return, and I’ll give you our best ship.”

“No offense, Peg,” I said. “But I just beat you with a wrench and stole from you. I didn’t want to do it, but you backed me into a corner and forced my hand. I can’t believe that you’d simply let me go after that.”

“Oh, I won’t simply let you go,” Peg said. “I’ll give you that ship in exchange for something.”

“What?”

“How would you feel about defeating the pirate champion for me?”

I frowned. I mean, I wasn’t opposed to the idea at all—but the way she asked about it worried me. Made me think she had some game she was playing, beyond that of the other pirates.

But scud, I didn’t know how long the ashes would last. And Chet…something bad was happening to him. I decreased power to the acclivity ring, lowering us slowly through the sky.

This could all be a trap. But…Peg was correct; we couldn’t fly up that high. Pushing aside my worry for Chet, I tried to focus on the conversation.

“Why do you care about something like a pirate champion?” I asked Peg.

“I don’t, really,” she said. “But I need to take back Surehold—the Superiority mining outpost. My home.”

Take back the Superiority base? Curious. If Chet was right, and the Path of Elders was going to continue on inward toward the lightburst, I’d need to find a way to sneak through Superiority territory. If they were busy fighting off pirates, that would certainly provide some useful cover.

“I’m listening,” I said, leaning forward. “Tell me more.”

“There are enough pirates in the factions to challenge the Superiority presence in here,” Peg said. “If we attacked together, we could overwhelm them and seize control of the mining base.”

“That sounds great,” I said, “but how exactly are you going to get the other pirate factions to follow you? Last I heard, even your sons don’t listen to you anymore.”

Peg laughed. “There’s more to this than you know, Spin. I can make it work. I merely need an excellent pilot to start the tree growing by defeating the champion.”

I lowered us farther, and heard Chet stir. I glanced at him and saw him blinking. The ashes had stopped disintegrating, and I had the feeling I’d dodged something very dangerous by coming back down as quickly as I had.

“Very well, Peg,” I said. “I’ll consider this, but before we agree I have one more condition. There are some ruins I need to visit here in your territory. Give me a ship, let me visit those ruins, and I’ll take down that champion for you.”

“Ruins? Words, girl. I can take you to some ruins. We’ll do it tomorrow. Look, this is a good deal. You help me—maybe give my fighters a few pointers to help them improve—and we’ll deal a serious blow to the Superiority. Isn’t that alone worth it? If we stop their acclivity stone mining operations, your war gets way easier. Plus, when you leave us next time, you’ll have earned that ship you’re taking from us. What do you say?”

“Give me a moment.” I flicked off the comm.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “I’m worried. Are you feeling better?”

Was I? I took a deep breath, sorting through my memories. I…yes, I remembered. Jorgen, Kimmalyn, FM, Arturo, Nedd. Cobb. Gran-Gran. My mother.

I could remember them…but scud, their faces weren’t clear to me anymore. It had been getting worse each day I spent in here. I was losing things. Pieces of who I’d been.

But at least I had recovered most of what I’d lost from flying up so high.

“Miss Nightshade?” Chet asked. “Perhaps my suggestion wasn’t the most…wise.”

“It kind of worked,” I said, glancing back at him. “Kind of didn’t. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been used as a chew toy by a Markivian barrow-wolf,” he said. “Did I miss anything?”

“The Broadsiders want me to return,” I said. “They say they’ll trade me a ship—a good one—and take me to the next step on the Path. But I have to agree to defeat the pirate champion for them.”

“That’s an…odd request,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that their little championship mattered so much. Peg is planning something. I suspect she always has been.”

“She wants to take back the Superiority base,” I said. “She told me that much.”

“Ambitious!” Chet said. “I like it. Well, I doubt we’ll get a better deal. I say we agree. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“They take us prisoner and chain us to the wall.”

“Whereupon we get to escape again!” Chet said, and then he continued, more subdued—losing a bit of the affectation. “I have spent a long time traveling alone, Spensa. Your company is remarkable, truly, but it would be…reassuring to spend a period with a group.”

“M-Bot?” I asked.

“If it lets me get out of this ship into something built in the last century,” he said, “I’m for it.”

I flicked the comm back on. “All right, Peg. You have a deal.”

“Ha! Words.”

“One thing though,” I said. “You’re going to have to clean up another bunk. I’m bringing a friend.”

I turned off the comm and steered us back the way we’d come. The other ships must have landed while we were flying, since as I approached the Broadsider fragment I could see that the pirates were all outside, gathered in front of their hangars. A ragtag group to be certain, but I supposed I’d seen worse. Skyward Flight, for example, when we’d first started training.

I guided my ship over and settled down. With a shared look of determination, Chet and I climbed out of the cockpit. I still half expected the Broadsiders to take us captive, but fortunately nobody pulled a gun. We even got a few cheers.

It was forced, and I saw in Maksim’s eyes a healthy distrust. An emotion I’d certainly earned.

Well, I would deal with that. Because at long last, Operation Ship-Steal had succeeded. And tomorrow I could finally continue the Path of Elders.

Chapter 23

The next day, I awoke with renewed determination. Peg assigned me the new ship—a powerful two-seat striker. Fully loaded with formidable destructors and twin boosters, it was larger than most ships I’d flown, but should still be maneuverable.

It was the best ship in Peg’s small fleet. I transferred M-Bot to it—after some careful digging I realized they still didn’t know he was an AI; they thought I had used remote control to make the ship hover the previous day. I made some modifications he said would insulate his core systems from destructor blasts, then installed a light-lance.

After that, Chet and I climbed aboard.

“You sure you don’t want your own ship?” I asked him as we strapped in. “I don’t particularly need a copilot, since, you know…”

M-Bot was humming happily. Apparently he approved of the specs on this new ship.

“I wouldn’t want to try the controls with this wounded arm,” Chet said, fitting on a flight helmet. “And beyond that, it has been…well, centuries since I’ve flown. I think perhaps I should like to take this slowly.”

Fair enough. As we readied ourselves, a small group of Broadsiders prepared to escort us. Peg, the resonants, and Maksim—who unfortunately inherited my weaker ship. In a few short minutes we’d all launched into the air and started on our way. I immediately felt the joy of flying a real starfighter. It banked at a touch, accelerated or decelerated with ease. At high speeds, I could close my eyes and barely make out the whistle of air outside. Not a single rattle.

It felt like forever since I’d had a true top-of-the-line starfighter.

“What’d I tell you?” Peg said through the comm. “Are you growing keefos yet?”

I thought those were the happy ones. “At least seven,” I said, banking again.

“I took that ship out myself a few times,” Peg said. “Never into combat though. It was just too spectacular to risk damaging it with my clunky flying. But you…you’re perfect for it, Spin.”

“Will Guntua forgive me for taking it?”

“She has been wanting to back off from flying anyway,” Peg said. “Take a break, do some ground duty instead.”

How could anyone grow tired of this? I didn’t know Guntua well—she was a heklo from one of the other flights—but I supposed if she’d wanted to keep flying, she’d have been given what was now Maksim’s ship.

Peg genuinely seemed to have forgiven me, but the others now stepped far more lightly around me. It hurt to see how Shiver made certain never to let her ship stray out in front of mine, as if she worried I’d start shooting again.

I couldn’t blame them. I would have acted the same way—or likely worse. At least Chet seemed to be enjoying himself; I could call up his camera feed on the corner of my screen. He was looking out the canopy with an almost childlike grin on his face.

We soared across several fragments, startling a small herd of something that looked like ostriches—but with feet on their backs as well as underneath them. The readout said it would take roughly two hours of flying to reach our destination, and though a part of me was wistful for the time Chet and I had spent adventuring together, I was certainly glad I didn’t have to hike all this distance on foot.

“So,” Peg said, her voice in my ear via my new helmet, “don’t suppose you’d be willing to give us a few tips as we fly. To improve our combat, make it like yours?”

“That isn’t the sort of thing a ‘few tips’ can achieve, Peg,” I said. “But there are some formation exercises I could teach you while we fly.”

“Excellent,” Peg said.

Over the next half hour, I explained to Cutlass Flight some basics that I thought they were lacking. The importance of a wingman. The value of drilling on formations. The purpose of group responses. I soon had them paired off—Maksim with Peg, the two resonants together—and doing sprints. One would spring forward, fire their IMP, then fall back to reignite, while the other darted forward in a guard position.

They took my instruction without complaint, and after a short time I had a solid gauge of their abilities. Shiver was good, Dllllizzzz not far behind her. Peg was better than she claimed, though her shuttle wasn’t terribly fast. She was more a gunship and support flyer. Maksim wasn’t great, but he was so excited and eager, which counted for a lot.

After the team sprints, I taught them some scatter formations—where the four would fly together, then break apart and weave through the air defensively before coming back into the same configuration. They picked that up quickly.

“Good,” I told them. “Now watch as I sketch this next formation on your monitors. I want you to do the same break and scatter, but then return into a group of three. One of you is going to hang back to fire at the enemy, who has hopefully been confused by your maneuvers.”

“Fascinating,” Shiver said. “It’s like…shining with part of your body to distract, while the rest of you grows in another direction.”

“Yeah, or like a street-fighting trick,” I said. “Get them to watch one hand while you prepare to claw their eyes out with the other one.”

“Uh…” Shiver said. “You are a unique individual, Spin.”

“Yeah, I know. Bless my stars,” I said. “Just trust me—learn to work as a group and you’ll have a huge advantage on the battlefield.”

They did as I asked, slowly figuring out this more complex formation. I gave tips, digging back to what Cobb had taught me when I’d been new.

“You’re good at this,” Chet said from behind me as they ran through another scatter formation. “I see a natural teacher in you!”

“I’m good at pretending,” I said. “Most of this is just stuff I’m regurgitating from what I was taught.”

“And what precisely do you think teaching is, mmm?” he said. “You have confidence, credibility, and empathy. I think you are excellent at this duty.”

I sat a little taller at those words, and the experience made me want to fall back into the role I’d taken with the team on Starsight: that of the drillmaster. That was dangerous. I wasn’t going to be with the Broadsiders long enough to train them extensively.

I gave them a short break, with a compliment on their skills, and Peg pulled up on my wing. Her shuttle looked slapped-together, but that was deceptive. It held an exceptionally strong shield and powerful guns. In a proper fire team, with faster ships to keep the enemy from swarming her, she’d be a force to reckon with.

Though she was the leader, she’d done as I directed during instruction without complaining or pulling rank. That said a lot about her, all of it good. She was humble enough to take direction in order to achieve her goals.

“How do you feel?” she asked. “Memories are good?”

“They are,” I said. “I can remember my name, my friends. Most of it.”

“There’s something about being part of a team that helps us all,” she replied. “Even when we aren’t immediately close to one another. It’s like how a forest is stronger than a tree, eh? The roots interlock, and the fruit grows for all in more abundance.”

“It’s like a crystal lattice, Peg,” Shiver said over the comm. “The structure of a crystal is strong because of how the individual atoms align together.”

“Well,” Maksim said, “I guess I’m supposed to say it’s like a herd of cattle. Or maybe a line of fence posts. Or some other cowboy crap.”

“Cowboy?” I asked.

He paused a moment when I spoke. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but I felt he had to struggle not to snap at me. Because of how I’d betrayed his trust.

He continued speaking though. As if he were trying to give me a second chance. “Haven’t I told you, Spin? In the Superiority, everyone thinks of humans as these ravening monsters—and so they love our old lore. Pirates, Gurkhas, the Tuskegee Airmen, and—unfortunately—cowboys. So they’d always expect me to talk like one. Even though my heritage from Old Earth is Ukrainian.”

“I…don’t know where that was,” I admitted.

“It didn’t have cowboys,” Maksim said. “You have no idea how annoying those hats are. My owners always claimed that they were using me for scientific study—but you wouldn’t have known it from the way they showed me off at parties.”

“Parties,” Shiver said. “Such an interesting concept. How you motiles insist you need time apart—yet when you want to enjoy yourselves, you always simply come back together. Why leave in the first place?”

“I have a friend,” I said, thinking of Rig, “who’d disagree that being together is when we enjoy ourselves. I think he has the most fun when everyone leaves him alone.”

“Curious, curious,” Shiver said. And Dllllizzzz added a hum in the background.

I’d tried to picture their cavernous homeworld—like Detritus, only with each and every tunnel full of different crystalline tendrils, networks of individuals who explored by growing themselves outward.

“All right,” I said over the comm, “we have some travel time left. Do a few more team sprints and prove you can execute them without making fools of yourselves.”

Maksim groaned. “We just spent an hour on sprints!”

“You still need to work on fundamentals, Maksim,” I said. “Learn what you can from me while I’m here. You people fly like a bunch of pig farmers.”

“I take it pig farmers do not often fly well in your culture, Spin?” Shiver said.

“Ask Maksim,” Peg said. “He’s the cowboy.”

I smiled, their banter reminding me of flying with my friends. Though this felt different. In Skyward Flight, our banter—although genuine—had always had an edge. We’d been a few bold fighters facing overwhelming odds. We’d gone into each fight knowing it might be the one where we lost someone we loved.

The Broadsiders didn’t have the same sense to them. They were relaxed as they ran through more sprints. When one got something wrong, they all laughed it off. Skyward Flight hadn’t done that—because there, if one of us kept screwing up, it would get everyone killed.

Was this what it felt like to relax? Scud. Listening to them, I realized I really didn’t know what it felt like to just…live. Without worrying about a bomb annihilating my entire civilization one night while I slept. Without fearing that my friends wouldn’t be coming home tomorrow. Or, more recently, without wondering if I’d be discovered as an impostor.

As they practiced, I glanced over the landscape. Once you got past the fact that this place could literally consume your memories and identity, it was beautiful. An endless open sky, cast faintly pink-violet, interrupted by floating islands. Each fragment was a different biome, inviting a new adventure. And beyond that, the lightburst.

Though it was still distant, today I felt something…drawing me toward it. Chet thought we’d need to go right up close to it to finish the Path of Elders, and looking into that full light now, I knew it was true. I’d walk the Path. But at the end I’d face them.

Whatever else happened here, that was my destination.

I shook myself out of that trancelike state and patched through on the comm to Peg, looking for a distraction. “Hey,” I said as she finished her sprints. “Could I get more details on your plan? How exactly is me fighting the pirate champion going to help you win the Superiority base?”

She was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider. Finally she answered, pulling her shuttle up beside my ship. “You know about my past? The others told you?”

“You were chief security officer at Surehold,” I said. “The Superiority treated you dirty, not allowing your kids to leave with you when your time was up.”

“Correct,” Peg said. “So I grew a few hanchals about that, I’ll tell you. And I wasn’t the only one. The base had been losing people for years. The factions hadn’t grown yet, but there were plenty of smaller bands, with a ship or two, roving around out here.”

“It was a big deal when you left,” Chet said. “Everyone heard about it. A high officer defecting? Gathering all the dissidents, raiders, and wanderers to raise up a giant pirate armada?”

“Yeah, well,” Peg said, “it wasn’t enough. I failed back then, and my supposed ‘giant armada’ shattered into the factions. Still, I’ve been thinking about it these last three years, considering what I did wrong. Planning…”

I nodded, thoughtful. “Wasn’t Shiver with you, back at the base?”

“Yeah, about a third of it defected when I did,” Peg said. “They form the bulk of the pirates. Shiver’s not the only Broadsider who left with me. There are a bunch of us, like RayZed and Guntua. And I almost had more—almost got the entire base to up and revolt.”

“Their failure to do so smacks of cowardice,” Chet said.

“No,” Peg said. “No, that’s not it. I understand them, Chet. They’re not cowards. Just ordinary people trying to live in a difficult place. Back when I was security officer, I was the one who installed the nonlethal weapons on our ships—my argument being that we couldn’t afford to throw away the ships the malcontents had stolen. Truth is, though, I grew urichas. I knew those dissidents were just like us. I didn’t want to be in the business of shooting them down.”

“So wait,” I said. “You’re saying that the Superiority forces in here, they use nonlethal weapons too?”

“Yup,” Peg said. “Pretty much everyone does. We have this understanding—none of us want to be killing each other.”

“So civilized!” Chet said. “I approve.”

“Well,” Peg said, “the high-ups in the somewhere, they’d rather it be deadly in here. Fortunately they’re far away. Regardless, Spin, this is important to understand. Those people at Surehold? They almost joined me when I left. They want to escape—but they’re scared of the Superiority, and of the officers that are still loyal. If we give them a nudge, prove that my force is stronger, they’ll join us. I’m certain of it.”

That explained a lot. The pirates didn’t want to lose equipment to damage, because repairs were difficult for them—and the Superiority forces weren’t zealots or loyalists. They didn’t want to die to defend a stupid mining base—but they had to make a good showing for their superiors.

So nonlethal weapons were used all around. I found it interesting how humane things became once the people far up the command chain—the ones who didn’t have to bleed for the decisions they made—couldn’t force everyone into line.

“I don’t understand why the pirates have these little squabbles and do meaningless raids against each other though,” I said. “If I were in charge of one of these pirate factions, I wouldn’t waste time with champions or duels. I’d raid a group smaller than mine, freeze their ships, then steal the lot of them. In a few weeks I’d be queen of all the pirates.”

“You really are terrifying sometimes, kid,” Peg replied.

A question occurred to me. “Do you guys have, like, golden tankards or anything? I mean, I know we don’t drink here, but I’ve always wanted a golden tankard…or maybe one made out of bone. The stories mention ones made from the skulls of one’s enemies, but it seems like the drink would leak out the eyeholes. Unless your enemies have no eyes, I guess. Hmm…”

Peg had fallen silent. Oh. Maybe that last part had been a little much. I was trying to get better at this sort of thing. I should probably leave skulls out of conversations.

“I’m glad to finally meet a human who lives up to the stories,” Peg said. “But no, we’re not going to be giving you any tankards made of skulls.”

“Still,” I said. “Chet’s right—it’s remarkably civilized in here. I…have trouble accepting that nobody has ruined it.”

“That’s because you spent your life fighting to the death,” Peg said. “We have a different problem.”

“You feel your self dribbling away each day,” Chet agreed. “Having something to do is important. The sparring, the duels… These invigorating activities give the pirates purpose, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” Peg said. “And no one wants to ruin what they have. That’s part of the problem. Every time I pitch the idea of seizing Surehold, the pirates get frightened. Unnerved. They like the way things are. With six different pirate factions, there’s always a raid to plan, a ship to repair, a mission to execute, or territory to defend. It’s…it’s what they want.”

“But you want something more,” I said.

“Yes,” Peg admitted. “Maybe I’m a little too much like you. A little too much like the people outside. I can’t feel safe as long as the Superiority is there—at any moment, they could send an enormous force through the portal and crush us with lethal weapons and swarms of drones.

“My people won’t be safe in here until I control that portal. Until I can lock it on our side. And then we can undermine Superiority acclivity stone production, starve their forces on the other side. Payback for what they did to me and mine.”

There was an encouraging vengefulness in her tone. I approved. The others were playing games, and Peg wanted to protect that. But she knew real danger, real killing. She still hadn’t explained how the pirate champion related to all of this, but I let it die for now. Because up ahead I saw our destination at last. A lonely fragment covered in ancient structures.

It was time.

Chapter 24

We swooped down toward the fragment, which was bigger than many of the others I’d seen so far. “It’s huge,” I noted to Chet as we skimmed along, scouting for dangers. IR scans indicated no body heat signatures, though I’d learned not to be careless about that.

“Indeed,” he said. “I now understand why some are so much bigger than others. They’ve been growing for longer.”

“This…” Dllllizzzz said over the comm. “Here… I was… Here…”

Again, it was more than she normally said, and got Shiver excited. I was focused, however, on the ruins I could make out at the fragment’s center, and I navigated toward them.

“Yeah, I remember this place,” Peg said. “We visited it when it first drifted into our region a few years back.”

“That’s right, Captain,” Maksim said. “So why are we here again, Spin?”

“Historical investigations,” I said. “Chet here is an archaeologist.”

“A right noble profession, my good man,” Chet said. “Ancient artifacts can tell us much about ourselves!”

“Uh, I guess,” Maksim said. “But—”

“Leave it be, Maksim.” Peg cut him off. “Their reasons are their own. The rest of us will search for salvage while we’re here.”

I narrowed my eyes. Peg didn’t seem the type to let our reasons be “our own.”

“Spin and I will need time to study those ruins directly at the center,” Chet said. “I’m circling them on your monitors.”

“Dllllizzzz is vibrating uncomfortably,” Shiver said over the comm. “Though she’s excited, I think she doesn’t want to land. She feels…anxious? Maybe the two of us should stay up and keep watch.”

“Fine by me,” Peg said. “Maksim and I will stick near, Spin, while you do your…archaeology.”

Our group landed in a ruined courtyard, while the two resonants stayed in the air. There wasn’t a lot left of most of the ruins—fallen walls, the outlines of buildings. A few somewhat-intact stone structures.

I popped the canopy and climbed out, meeting Peg on the ground. “This place is old,” she said. “Not a lot of wind in here, and no rain, so things don’t weather much. If something looks this bad, it’s probably seen thousands of years.”

Chet and I shared a glance, then started toward one of the mostly intact structures, helmets under our arms.

“Doesn’t look too promising, Captain,” Maksim muttered from behind. “This place must have been picked over hundreds of times.”

“Agreed,” Peg said, “but keep growing delens just in case. We’re here to keep our promise to Spin.”

I remembered the structure ahead—it had been injected into my mind by the previous step on the Path. We walked up to it, and directly inside I found my first surprise. The wall behind the small foyer had a faded old mural on it—and the figures it depicted were most certainly human.

“Amazing,” Chet breathed. He rushed up to it and leaned in close. “Our own people, Miss Nightshade. All these years, I never found any ruins that I could identify as human…”

I couldn’t make out much of the mural. Just some figures holding baskets, maybe?

“I could not guess at the culture,” Chet whispered. He reached out to the mural, then paused—perhaps not wanting to touch it and further contribute to its degradation. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much about where we came from. Our homeworld. I must have once known…”

“Earth,” I said. “Humankind left there a few centuries before you were even born. It’s lost now. Vanished.”

Together, we moved farther into the structure. The roof had long since fallen in, so we didn’t lack for light—and from the refuse on the floor, it seemed the place had been ransacked over the years, and had possibly been in a firefight.

I felt an…eerie, haunted sense. There were so many signs of life, but no people. We found the portal in the last room, built straight into the wall, the characteristic flowing lines carved into it. But this one was cracked down the middle. Broken. Would it still work?

I glanced at Chet, who lingered in the doorway. “Courage,” he said, stepping forward. “I am an explorer—it is what I decided to be. I can face these secrets…”

He joined me beside the portal. I touched it, opened up my cytonic senses, and sought answers. At first nothing happened. This portal appeared to be damaged, unusable. But I pushed a little more, using the subtle care I’d been practicing, and…yes, I could feel them inside. The memories…

Everything around me faded to flimsy transparency. I remained in the ruins physically—I could feel the broken wall beside me—but they had been overlaid by a vision of the belt as it had existed long ago.

Chet breathed out, turning around. The lightburst was tiny in the distance, little more than a star. The sky was dark, and I counted maybe two dozen fragments floating in the expanse. So this seemed to be the ancient past, like the previous vision.

Our current fragment was much smaller in the past—plus it was empty of structures save for the portal, which stood free and whole, not cracked. It was smaller too, lending further credence to the theory that the portals grew a little—with memories—whenever cytonics used them as transfer points between dimensions.

Moments after the vision began, people popped into existence directly in front of the portal. I stepped away from them in surprise. Humans? They were talking, though I couldn’t understand the language.

“Can you make out any of that?” Chet asked.

“Afraid not,” I said, circling them. They wore robes, and something was kind of familiar about the headdress one was wearing. “I once saw a drawing of Gilgamesh in a book from Old Earth, and he wore clothing and a beard like that.” I pointed to one of the men. “Maybe they’re from somewhere near his civilization?”

Chet hopped back from the portal as something else materialized in front of it. Stones? Yes, a pile of building materials. People began using them to construct something.

“This wasn’t their first visit here,” I said, feeling it was true. There were…sensations to the vision, not just sights. “They want to build a shrine, I think.”

Chet and I watched as time sped up, and walls sprang into existence. The people became blurs, erecting the very structure that Chet and I were standing in. They carved delicate art into the walls, then painted everything with vibrant colors.

Why put something so nice in this strange place? Time slowed again, and the humans—it seemed the construction had taken weeks, maybe months—gathered together out front. Chet and I joined them and saw another fragment swinging closer. This bore a group of people in vibrant red robes. They had pale violet skin, growths like horns, and pure white hair. People from ReDawn…Alanik’s homeworld.

“I know those people,” I told Chet. “They’re the UrDail. The one I met said they’d known humans in the past.”

“How far in the past?” Chet asked, rubbing his chin. “These humans wear ancient clothing.”

“Scud,” I said. “Could this be first contact? The first time humans met with aliens? I thought that didn’t happen until we were in the space age.”

Except Hesho had also told me that the kitsen people had met with humans in Japan centuries before either achieved space travel. They’d traveled using cytonics. Like these, it seemed.

In front of us, the humans greeted the UrDail—who stepped over to our fragment—and I realized this probably wasn’t first contact. The two groups looked familiar with one another, so their first encounters must have happened earlier. Now the humans had built some kind of meeting hall. It wasn’t a shrine, I realized as we followed the people in. It was a place where they sat together at tables, trying to…

Trying to figure out one another’s languages perhaps? Yes, they were writing words, gesturing, explaining to one another. Time sped up again, and I counted dozens of meetings in a matter of minutes—each time the two fragments aligned. I think I even saw some UrDail visit Earth through the portal, while some humans left on the UrDail fragment.

Then…the humans stopped coming.

An alignment happened and the UrDail arrived, but no humans were there to meet them. That occurred several more times, then eventually the UrDail stopped visiting as well.

“So…” I said. “What does this tell us about our powers?”

Chet frowned, inspecting the mural in the vision—which was colorful and vibrant then. “Alien species began meeting in the nowhere. Mixing. But then it ended. Why?”

That…had happened with the kitsen too, hadn’t it? Hesho said their cytonics had vanished for some reason. As I was considering this, a woman appeared out of the wall. She was middle-aged, with tan skin and colorful robes. I followed her as she walked out of the building, then over to the nearby edge of the fragment. There she settled down, looking out at the expanse.

Time passed. Months, maybe years. And still she sat there, as if waiting for something. Finally she rose and walked past us.

“Who are you?” I asked.

And the impression returned, I am the only one who was not killed by the beast.

Wait. Wait. Had she replied?

I followed her back into the building as she walked up to the portal. There she rested her hand—and lines in the stone began to spiral and flourish out at her touch.

I feel your questions, the impression said. It is my talent. Though I do not know any of you, I leave my answers in the portal.

“What happened?” I asked. “To the cytonics?”

A beast. Raised by an alien species who had technological marvels.

I saw something in my mind then. An assembly of thousands of cytonics—of a hundred different races—gathering to fight…something dark, something rising from a blackness, but with a set of piercing white eyes.

It…destroyed them, the cytonic said. We fought. We won. But the price was so high…

“How?” I asked. “How did you win?”

We made it become real, she said. I do not know how. I survived…and those who did know how…were consumed. She lowered her hand. She’d…inscribed her memories into the portal, which…were now reaching me somehow?

Chet walked up behind me. “Time is unnatural in the nowhere, but this is strange even by its standards,” he said. “I…have no idea what to make of this.”

I felt the vision begin to fade. It was coming to the end of its memories.

“Wait,” I said to the woman. “You kept your memories while living in the nowhere. How?”

Why would I lose my memories? the impression returned.

“That’s an attribute of this place,” I said.

Not in our time. You face a beast, like ours.

“Not one beast,” I said. “Thousands. Millions of them.”

Then you are doomed.

“No. There has to be a way!”

Find the memories…of the man who will come… Find the memories…of the man named Jason Write.

Then a different sort of impression came upon me, as had happened during the previous vision. I understood it better because I was stronger in my powers, better at listening. It felt like dozens, maybe hundreds, of minds reaching to me from within the stone.

Further…they encouraged me. Even further…

They presented for me something like a wall. I forced my mind against it and could not get through.

Stronger. But not harder.

I don’t understand! I sent.

You are not a tool to strike. Not a rock to bludgeon.

What am I? I asked.

You are a star.

And a light kindled inside me. A pure white light, the power of the nowhere. I became a flaming sword, and when I shoved, my mind pierced the barrier.

Good… Good… Continue.

A location popped into my head. Another portal? It was in what appeared to be a large building, filled with boxes? I frowned.

“Scrud,” Chet said.

“You recognize the place?” I asked, turning toward him.

“Indeed I do, Spensa,” he said, then took a deep breath. “That, I’m afraid, is the portal in the middle of Surehold, seat of Superiority power in this region of the belt.”

Chapter 25

There would be time later to think over what I’d seen. For now, I burst through the open doorway of the ruins, searching for Peg. I didn’t have to hunt for long; she was leaning against a crumbling wall just outside, arms held before her, claws out. Even when lounging, the tenasi looked predatory.

“You saw something,” she said. “You’re cytonic, aren’t you? Both of you.”

“I… Yes,” I said, glancing to Chet.

“Do you know about the Path of Elders?” he asked Peg.

“Never heard that term before,” she said, “but these old ruins…they have their own memories. Anyone can feel that. And I’ve been told about cytonics.” She pushed off the wall and stood upright. “This has to do with your mission? The one that’s so important that you two had to steal a ship from us?”

“Yes,” I told Peg. “And there’s more. Tell me about your plans to assault Surehold.”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Please, Peg,” I said. “I need to know. If the pirates are afraid to fight the Superiority—if they don’t want to risk the good things they have now—how do we persuade them?”

“We?” Peg said. “You’re joining in?”

I glanced at Chet, who nodded.

“Provisionally, yes,” I said.

Peg grinned. “Words. Well, we don’t need to persuade the pirates—not individually. We merely need to get my sons to follow me again.”

“Your sons?” Chet said. “They turned against you!”

“Yeah,” Peg said. “They lead the two largest pirate factions. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect both of my sons to grow enough muluns to rebel. After we all left Surehold the first time, I tried to get everyone to attack it. We had a small initial clash, but our people were frightened by that, and disorganized. When my coalition collapsed, my sons took away some of my strongest forces to start their factions. Makes a mother proud.”

“Proud? That they rebelled?”

“Exactly!” she said. “They were incredibly bold. Overthrowing their own mother? They were barely adults! Ah, it was great. But it’s inconvenient, so we have to win them back. My eldest—Gremm—has been champion for a year now. Leads the faction called the Jolly Rogers. An Earth term, no?”

“I believe so,” Chet said.

“Well, you’ll probably get to meet my son’s forces soon. The moment word of your skill reaches them, I suspect Gremm will send a raiding party to attack us. They’ll be growing delens to know the truth—and I’ll expect you to show them.”

“I’m eager for it,” I said.

“I doubt Gremm will join the raid. But afterward I can demand a contest between you and him—and he’ll accept. I know my son. And though he’s the best pilot among us, he’s nothing compared to you. If you defeat him, he will be forced to grow the tagao.”

“Which means?” I asked.

“A very rare fruit, meaning he feels submissive to his parents. If you defeat him, he will listen to me again.”

“You sure about that?”

“Absolutely,” Peg said. “It is our way.”

I didn’t point out that she’d been surprised by their betrayal, so I had my doubts. But I was willing to give it a try.

“What about his brother?” Chet asked.

“Semm leads a different faction,” she said. “He’ll return to me too, if my faction claims the championship. Trust me.”

Yeah, that sounded too convenient to me. There was more to this—Peg still had her secrets.

She watched me a moment longer, then started through the ruins toward our ships. “We should be returning,” she said. “I expect a raid at any time, and I don’t want to leave the others too short-staffed.”

“Well?” I asked Chet as she wandered off. “Did you know we’d have to get into Surehold itself?”

“I suspected,” he admitted. “The portal there is one of the largest and oldest in the region. I had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary…but at least we have a path forward.”

“Assuming we can trust Peg’s plan.”

“She seems to trust it,” he said. “Come, we should return to our ship. You remember what happened last time after we saw one of these?”

Yeah. Our entire fragment had been destroyed in a collision. Perhaps it had been a coincidence, but I found myself hurrying after Chet just in case. We gathered Maksim, and soon the four of us were lifting off to join the resonants and start back toward our home base.

“You two appear unusually solemn,” M-Bot said as we fell into formation. “It worked, I assume? You again saw the past?”

“Indeed, AI,” Chet said. “We kind of contacted a cytonic person in the past.”

“Uh…” M-Bot said. “Clarification please?”

“She could feel my questions somehow,” I explained, “in her time—and left answers for me. Or maybe she just heard the general curiosity of all who came after her. Either way, I think we know what happened to the kitsen cytonics—and why there was a sudden dearth of contact between Earth and aliens after some initial interactions in ancient times.”

“Really? What?”

“War,” I said. “With a delver.”

“We don’t know it was a delver,” Chet said. “But it did seem to have been some kind of…delverlike entity. The cytonics of the galaxy—those that had contacted one another—gathered to fight it. And…not many survived.”

“They fought a single entity?” M-Bot said.

“And won,” Chet said, “by somehow making it real. But there were great casualties.”

“And we now face…more than one,” M-Bot said. “Way more than one.”

“Yes,” I said, leaning forward in my seat. “There was something else. No loss of memories in the nowhere back then. It’s a more recent development.”

“It’s connected,” Chet said. “And the answers are at Surehold. Some of them at least.”

“In the memories of a man named Jason Write,” I said, frowning.

“Jason Write?” M-Bot said. “Superiority historical archives list him as the human who initiated first contact with the greater galaxy after accidentally discovering he was cytonic. He…kicked off the expansion of humankind into the galaxy, and indirectly caused the First Human War of conquest.”

I nodded absently, thinking about that ancient cytonic who had communicated with us. The feelings of exhaustion and loneliness that had permeated her. I felt that something had sparked inside me. Or…well, the spark had always been there. Now it burned brighter.

“Chet,” I said. “Do your powers feel different?”

“Indeed!” he said. “They talked to me about using my mind to ‘see’ around myself! I feel that with practice, I won’t just have an instinct for the fragments. I might be able to see into buildings, or around corners, or…well, it seems incredible!”

“I learned something else,” I said softly. “But I don’t know what it means yet.”

You are a star.

“Hey,” Maksim’s voice said over the comm, “the rest of you registering that figure down there? At my nine.”

“Odd to see someone,” Shiver said, “out so openly, not hiding. If we were recruiting, they’d be in trouble.”

I checked out the window. A solitary figure stood on a ridge on a distant fragment. It appeared to be a heklo—the distance was far enough that it made it difficult to tell. And though I couldn’t see for certain, I could feel a coldness and a pressure against my mind. I was positive the figure had white glowing eyes.

“You feel that?” Chet asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s one of them. At least they didn’t find a way to destroy the fragment this time.”

“Still worries me,” Chet said. “I had hoped that we’d lost them these last few weeks. It is difficult for the delvers to project attention this far out. But now they have located us again. Hopefully this doesn’t lead to difficulties.”

I shivered. Soon we were past it, the figure dwindling in the distance. My comm started flashing though. A direct call from Peg.

“Yes, Captain?” I said.

“What did you see,” she asked, “in those ruins?”

“Why?” I asked her.

“Something feels odd,” she said. “About that figure we just passed. About this entire excursion. I answered your questions about my plans. Now answer mine. What did you see?”

“We saw the past,” I admitted. “Memories, like you said. We’re investigating a way to fight the delvers—and we got a message from a woman who encountered something like them long ago.”

“Fight the delvers?” Peg said.

“Yeah…” I said.

“If it’s any consolation,” Chet said, “we would prefer to find some way to placate or reconcile with them. For now, however, we must continue our quest—and visit the portal at Surehold to find the memories hidden therein.”

“Well, our goals overlap,” Peg said, “so I can’t say I’m sorry about that part. But fighting the delvers…I suppose if you’re cytonic, maybe you can manage it? I knew this one dione in the security force. They left soon after arriving, because they kept…changing, to look like different people. The heads of the Superiority pulled them out the moment they heard of it.”

Changing shape? I’d never done anything like that.

“A cytonic talent,” Chet said. “Projecting illusions into the minds of others—making oneself appear different, even feel different. It works on anyone in here, though I’ve heard that in the somewhere it only works on other cytonics.”

Actually… I felt a chill. I had heard of that happening. Someone had done it to my father—making him see the wrong things. I was coming to understand more and more that different cytonics…they could do different things. I could hear the stars and teleport. Chet could extend his life span and “see” great distances with his powers.

Peg dropped off the line, and M-Bot had a chance to speak. “Why didn’t the delvers grab one of the members of your team and turn them into a glowing-eyed thing?” he asked. “Peg and Maksim were closer to you than that heklo.”

“Gathering a large number of people together repels them,” Chet said. “Particularly if those people see themselves as a group. My theory is that the delvers need someone who is as alone as possible, and someone who doesn’t view themselves as belonging.”

I dwelled on what we’d seen, and found it more difficult to make sense of it all this time. In fact, I had to admit that—as we neared home—I was glad when a more mundane danger cropped up: an emergency announcement that a group of starfighters from an enemy faction was approaching the Broadsider base at high speed.

Chapter 26

As soon as our base came into view, I hit my overburn and pulled ahead of the others. I could see the destructor fire spraying through the nowhere, beautiful and bright. My body came alive, and my mind—which had been reeling from what I’d experienced—snapped to full alert.

This was what I’d been made for.

“Hang on, Chet,” I said, and we screamed into the fight, flying to the sound of wind on wings and boosters roaring. It had taken us precious minutes to arrive, and I counted three of our fighters already locked up, drifting aimlessly. Scud. With ten total fighters, and the five of us gone, the remaining two stragglers were facing overwhelming odds.

M-Bot highlighted enemy ships, friendlies, and downed friendlies on my proximity display. By the markings on the enemy fighters, these were from the Jolly Rogers. The faction led by Peg’s son Gremm—and the one she’d expected to send a raid to test my abilities.

Excellent.

M-Bot suggested a few targets—circling starfighters that were flying slower than the others and one that had just taken a hit to its shield. As much as I wanted a challenge—and to go for the stronger enemies first—that could lead to my team getting overwhelmed.

So, steeling myself, I took one of M-Bot’s suggestions and swooped in behind a pair of fighters that were tailing Gibsey, one of our pilots from Flintlock Flight. The two enemy pilots barely responded to my arrival. One swung a little to the side so that if I fired, I’d risk my stray shots hitting my ally.

For a brief second, I was confused. That was it?

I’m used to fighting Superiority ships that recognize me as an enemy ace, I realized. They highlight me in battle, devoting extra resources to me. But this was my first time fighting rival pirates. They had come to test me, but they didn’t seem to expect too much.

Time to send them my calling card. I sniped the one who had moved to the side, each of my shots landing with precision. The pilot belatedly panicked, pulling up—and slammed square into my next shot. You always want to pull up. It’s instinct, even in space when there’s no ground below.

I buzzed around the now-frozen enemy ship, firing at the second ship tailing Gibsey—which was the ship that M-Bot had highlighted as having a weakened shield. My shots rattled the enemy pilot, who broke off and dodged to the right.

“You,” I whispered, “shall know the taste of my steel. And I shall know the taste of your blood.”

Yes, those kinds of phrases still slipped out now and then. No, I wasn’t embarrassed. They helped me focus.

I wove after the ship as they dodged around the fragment. They crossed underneath, with me tight behind them, then came up around the other side on a pivot. I could sense their increasing panic as I used my light-lance to swing around more quickly, my GravCaps easily compensating for the g-forces.

My prey cut one direction, then the other. It was an ostensibly smart move—if they jerked around randomly, I couldn’t anticipate where they’d be. Except, as with pulling up, people who think they’re acting randomly rarely are. Cobb had drilled this into my brain time and time again. Instead of “random” motions, we practiced sequences of maneuvers deliberately designed to frustrate enemies.

Training always trumped haphazardness. My prey jerked back and forth, and I’m sure it felt random to them—but I picked them off with three expert shots anyway. Chet let out a whoop, and I left the enemy ship frozen and swerved into the firefight. Here, I got in an admittedly lucky shot on a ship that M-Bot highlighted, but I wasn’t going to complain. Three “kills” in under five minutes?

Scud, it felt good to be back in the cockpit. Fighting alongside friends again. Doing what I was meant to do.

Nearby, I noticed some of the enemy ships forming up into a proper flight. “Cutlass Flight,” I said, “track my position. I’m about to give you a group of juicy targets.”

The four enemy ships spun around, orienting toward me. Working together was a good idea, but these obviously hadn’t drilled on ideal ship distance. As I’d recently taught the Broadsiders, when you flew in a formation, you wanted to be just far enough away from one another to protect against IMP blasts.

I went barreling toward them, slamming my overburn. They landed a few shots on me, which was fine. As I darted through the middle of the quartet, I hit my IMP. They reacted too slowly, and I caught three of the four—which M-Bot obligingly painted on the display for me—dropping their shields.

As I’d suggested, Peg and the members of Cutlass Flight focused on these ships. Sprays of destructor fire lit the air behind me, and I found myself grinning. The fighting here reminded me of something…

Training with the holographic projectors, I realized. That was the last time I flew without fearing for my life.

“That was quite the stunt, Spin,” Peg said over the comm. “Can’t decide if you’re growing muluns or hemels.”

“That’s nothing, Captain,” I said, spinning into evasive maneuvers as someone took shots at me. “You should see me do something like that when we’re fighting for our lives. It’s way more stupid then.”

“I can imagine,” she said. “You need a wingmate?”

“Nah. You and Maksim might want to go help Gibsey though. He’s somehow picked up two more tails.”

I still had my own tail. M-Bot helpfully pointed out this was the one ship from a moment ago that I hadn’t IMPed. Which meant they had a shield and I didn’t.

Huh. They were sticking to me pretty well. In fact—

A couple bolts of blue destructor light grazed my canopy, inches from connecting. Scud. This one was actually good.

My grin widened. I slammed on my overburn, sat back in my seat, and really got into it. There was no way I’d be able to restore my shield to duel them properly—that required precious seconds sitting still. So instead I focused on outflying my enemy.

The next few minutes were a glorious chase through the battlefield, swerving and swooping, light-lancing around fragments, buzzing the Broadsider base. That tail stayed on me, as if proving a point. They soon left off shooting though.

Waiting for the perfect shot, eh? I thought. Well, I’m not going to give you one.

I pulled up for a while, soaring into the pink-white sky. Then I turned and dove. My new ship’s GravCaps absorbed the worst of the g-forces, but I was still slammed with them as I accelerated downward. That had me grinning. Yes, g-forces suck, but at this point they were an old friend. All the blood pushing to the back of my body, threatening to claim my eyesight—then my consciousness…

I soared past my tail, then pulled up at just the right moment. A glance at the monitor showed me Chet’s head rolling on his neck. He shook himself, coming alert. Seemed I’d knocked him out in that maneuver. I’d have to be a little more careful.

Yet even despite all of that, my enemy kept with me. They were good. So I roared back into the snarl of fighting ships—and then started blasting an enemy ship that had been gunning for Shiver, knocking out its shields. I then took to the side, drawing a bead on another ship, and fired and locked it up.

My tail finally unloaded on me, firing wildly instead of waiting for the right moment.

Great, now I just—

My ship jolted. The control panel went dark and the controls locked up. I found myself hovering forward at a steady pace, nothing working, as that enemy ace buzzed my ship. Scud, I’d been hit. I checked Chet’s vitals on my monitor—he was fine, by the numbers—so I sat back in my seat, then laughed.

“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “Oh my. Is the stress causing your emotions to erupt irrationally? Oh! I’ve felt that now. Um, what do I say? Let’s see… Humm…”

“I’m great,” I said, wiping my eyes.

“No, no. I need the correct words…”

I stretched forward in my seat, trying to get a visual on that ace. Fighting was fun, but knowing there was someone in here who could match me? That was even more exciting.

“Ah!” M-Bot said. “I’ve got it. Spensa. Feel better, please.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling. “I already do.”

“Success! I’m going to remember that one.”

“Chet, how are you feeling?” I asked him.

“Enthused,” he said, his voice wan, “but nauseous and…embarrassed. I fear I lost consciousness earlier.”

“It happens to all of us,” I said. “No need to be embarrassed. You should have seen me on my first days in the centrifuge back home.”

“Well,” he said, “I know you’ve said I was a pilot, but those experiences are lost to me. My current disposition is one of profound respect for the ground, I must admit.”

“I’ll try to avoid towing you into any more of these,” I said. “M-Bot, who was that enemy pilot?”

“Peg’s son, Gremm,” M-Bot said. “She indicated he wouldn’t join the fight, but by the markings on that ship, she was wrong.”

So I’d had my first brush with the champion. I grinned. Though he’d beaten me, that hadn’t been a true duel. I’d lost my shield fighting his companions.

He would see my true potential when we faced off. “How are you, M-Bot?” I asked, turning and scanning the sky, trying to gauge the progress of the battle. “That hit didn’t fry you or anything?”

“Fortunately,” M-Bot said, “the modifications we made to insulate my core systems appear to have worked.”

“I’m glad.”

“It honestly wouldn’t take too much effort to insulate all of the systems,” he continued, “so we won’t get locked up in fights like this.”

“What would be the sport in that?” Chet asked.

“Sport?” M-Bot said. “It’s not a game.”

“It is though,” I said. “As long as everyone plays by the same rules, nobody has to die.”

“From what I understand of the interactions between sapient beings,” M-Bot said, “someone is eventually going to seek an extra advantage. I’m shocked it hasn’t happened already, regardless of what Peg indicated.”

“Maybe,” I said. “You ever study small-group battles between tribes of early humans?”

“No.”

“You should. I think you’d be surprised by what kinds of rules a society will follow, when the stakes are different.”

Smaller groups of hunter-gatherers on Old Earth had rarely engaged in lethal combat. Their numbers had been too small, their communities too tight-knit. Yes, occasionally someone had died during their conflicts, but mostly the battles had been about boasting and intimidation.

Cobb had used this lesson to indicate that human nature wasn’t to fight and kill, which was why we needed to drill and train. But now I found something liberating in the idea that flying, the thing I loved, didn’t have to only be about killing. It could be about proving myself—to myself.

Behind, the remaining four enemy ships decided to pull out. Cutlass Flight’s timely return had let us win the day. I waited, pensive, as Peg and her son negotiated terms for the return of their disabled ships. They then began reactivating those vessels, a process that would take a few minutes.

Maksim finally arrived to fetch me, hauling my sorry rear back to the base, where the ground crews waited with some of the pilots who had already landed. A set of docking light-lances pulled me down, and I hit the manual release on my canopy, then cranked it open. As Chet and I climbed out, I braced myself for a lecture. I could hear Cobb’s voice ranting about how reckless I’d been in that fight. He always drilled good behavior, even when doing simulations.

Instead I climbed out to furious cheers and applause. Led by Peg herself, who—instead of berating me—grabbed me in an enveloping hug as I dropped to the ground.

“Four kills?” she shouted. “And three assists? Kid, you practically won that fight on your own!”

“The Jolly Rogers were sent running!” Maksim said. “You have no idea how good that feels!”

“We have our chance,” Peg said. “Gremm was impressed. He’s willing to duel you officially tomorrow.”

The others cheered again.

Scud. I’d been shot down, and they were cheering me? And her son thought I was worthy?

I grinned widely. How long had it been since I’d been this…well, excited after a fight? How long since I’d heard such joy from my flightmates? Last time I could remember was when I saved the DDF base from annihilation by grabbing the bomb. But those cheers had had an edge. A tension. Those had been cheers of relief.

These people were simply happy. I let their enthusiasm infuse me. It was an incredible feeling. And it was merely the beginning—because tomorrow, I was going to become pirate champion and give Peg her chance at uniting the factions.

Interlude

Floating.

I became partially aware. Not awake, but aware. I was in the place where I had no shape, no senses other than my cytonic ones. I…remembered lying down, in my own room at the Broadsider base, after the skirmish.

It had been a full day. I’d fallen asleep. And now I searched outward, as I’d done on other nights. Seeking. Wishing.

Jorgen…I tried to find him, but felt like I was screaming into an empty void. I couldn’t feel anything. Like…like I was building a bonfire in a dark place, but with each new log the increased light only reaffirmed that the blackness extended into infinity.

I’d failed at this often enough recently that I nearly faded into unconsciousness. I had important work ahead of me; I would need to get my rest.

And yet…

Something felt off about my experiences lately in this sleeping realm. Yes. This was wrong. I hadn’t been able to see it before. But with a few more test shouts, I thought I picked out what was wrong here. My mental shouts were vanishing too quickly. As if I wasn’t screaming into a void, so much as into pillows.

Was…someone blocking me?

Scud. Was that why I hadn’t been able to find Jorgen?

I growled. Well, I made the mental equivalent of a growl. As one does. My soul sparked in the darkness.

I pressed forward through the void, feeling… Yes. A dampening. Like a cloud all around me, invisible. In the strange ways of the nowhere, it had always been there—literally on top of me—but I hadn’t been able to perceive it. Now I struggled forward, pushing. Fighting with my arms.

No, I thought. I’m not a stone. I’m not even a bonfire. I’m a star.

My essence, my soul, exploded with light—burning away the haze that surrounded me. No longer was I nothing in this place. I was a light, a glowing presence, a sphere of burning whiteness.

I used my ability to connect, to see, and sensed a presence ahead. It was easy, now that I’d escaped. Was that Jorgen? I latched onto it and pulled myself through.

I appeared in the somewhere, as I had before—illusory, ephemeral. But I hadn’t found Jorgen.

I’d found my enemies.

To my human eyes, Winzik looked virtually identical to Nuluba, though his exoskeleton was a deeper green. Varvax didn’t usually wear clothing, but he had on an official-ish sash. He sat in a large marble chair, carved intricately and inlaid with silver. I supposed that if one had an exoskeleton, cushioned seating wouldn’t be relevant.

The room was circular, lavishly paneled in wood, and had the feel of an office. A group of tenasi, with the same predatory air as Peg, was making a presentation to Winzik. They did wear clothing, and I recognized a military uniform instantly. Some things seemed pretty universal across species—and judging by the ranks of medals and badges on their jackets, these were admirals and generals.

A military briefing for the acting leader of the Superiority, I supposed. The screen, fortunately, didn’t show Detritus—but an unfamiliar planet, red and green. I couldn’t read any of the writing around it, and didn’t have my pin to translate, so I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“It’s ReDawn,” a voice said in English from behind me. “Funny you wouldn’t recognize it, considering the face you wore most of the time you were with us.”

I spun. Brade sat in a chair beside me. She wore her dark hair in a sharp buzz cut, and even through the uniform I could see she had muscles—the kind of build you rarely saw outside the more fanatical soldiers at the gym. She was spinning a pen between her fingers, watching me with an almost uninterested stare.

Winzik turned in his seat to glance back at her, barking an order in a language I didn’t know.

“Oh, stuff your complaints, Winzik,” Brade said, still spinning the pencil. “She’s here. Finally broke out of her cage. Took you long enough, Alanik—or Spensa, I guess. I expected you to make more noise inside that barrier. Do you know how much attention it required to keep it up?”

“How?” I demanded. “How did you manage that?”

“Took a little instruction from our new friends,” Brade said. She could see me, I realized. Without a reflective surface. “Unlocked a few abilities I’d been practicing.”

Winzik ordered the generals out and walked over, exoskeleton hands making circular motions as he spoke. Despite the language barrier, I could recognize his mannerisms—in fact, I could practically hear him saying “my, my” and “how aggressive” in his persnickety tone.

“The delvers think they can handle you,” Brade said. “I told them otherwise. You’re blunt, Spensa. I like that about you. No subtlety. You just go crashing through whatever stands between you and your goals.”

“I was subtle enough to fool you,” I snapped, projecting the thoughts at her. And with my growing powers, I caught a flutter of emotions she tried to hide. Shame, anger. She had trained with me and had never figured out what I really was. Until I’d handed her the truth, for her to stomp on.

Scud, I’d been so naive.

Winzik was saying something else. I wished I could figure out what it was.

“He wants me to trap your mind,” Brade said. “I’m not sure I can do it. The people I’ve been practicing on are far weaker than you. I won’t flinch this time though.”

Her mind slammed into mine, crushing against me. I immediately felt like I was in a box—that was shrinking. I lashed out, panicked, furious. I summoned my anger, as I had last time we’d clashed. And I threw it at her.

As she’d warned, Brade didn’t waver. She was expecting my counterattack.

So I started to glow. I stoked what was inside me, the powerful light. The brilliance that was my soul. I felt Brade’s surprise, though she didn’t want to project the emotion. She was shocked. She…thought I was like a delver, in ways that frightened her.

And something else heard.

I see you!

The voice was distant, but loud. A cytonic shout vibrated through me, then something slammed into Brade, making her gasp and lose her focus. It was raw, this voice, as if untrained. If I was a sword, it was a bludgeon—a big one.

I flared with light and broke through Brade’s box, and together with the new voice we shoved her back, then escaped into the nowhere.

I was chased by that extremely loud voice. It had saved me, but it seemed a monster of some sort. I spun toward it, not wanting to put my back to it as it crashed into me. And…

…hugged me?

Jorgen? I thought.

Where have you been? he thought at me. Why haven’t you contacted me? Spin, it’s been weeks!

I tried! I said, forcing my mind to visualize him. For the moment we floated together in the void, our essences touching. Like we were two swimmers in a deep, vast, endless ocean clinging to one another.

I’m sorry I didn’t contact you, I said. Brade did something.

Brade? he asked.

The one who was holding me when you arrived, I said. How did you find me?

I’ve been practicing, he explained. I can’t hyperjump, no matter how hard I try. But Alanik says that’s not uncommon. Cytonics have different specialties. She says I can learn hyperjumping—that every one of us can technically learn every talent, but for some of us there are individual talents that are very difficult. We all have weaknesses and strengths.

Wait, I said. Alanik?

It’s complicated, he said. We’re holding out, trying to gather help. But tell me about you. Spensa, you’re glowing. Like a star. I could see you even from a distance!

I’ve been practicing too, I said.

Are you a pirate queen yet?

He said it with such fondness. There were so many images wrapped up in what he’d said—this communication had much more depth than ordinary words. For example, I knew instantly that he was joking—but also a little serious.

He loved my love of stories. He imagined me in one of those stories, and was completely confident in me. More confident than I was of myself. Saints…that was so good to hear. So good to know. His picture of me was of someone courageous, resourceful, and inspiring.

That was not what I deserved for how I’d treated him in our first weeks knowing each other. Fortunately, I could also feel Jorgen responding to my own picture of him. Upright, honest, caring. A leader, the best one I’d known.

The moment was as perfect a one as I’d ever felt. The two of us sharing our idealized versions of one another—knowing we could never live up to them, yet knowing it didn’t matter. Because by simply being near one another, we resonated and became a little more—a little better—for the knowledge, support, and trust.

Then it was ruined as eyes started to appear around us. Bright white holes, the attention of the delvers. It wasn’t my glow that attracted them. It was Jorgen. Scud, he was loud.

Go, Jorgen, I said as the eyes surrounded us. I’ll contact you later, once their attention dies down.

I felt his essence brush mine. I felt his affection, his passion. But then he was gone.

I turned to face the delvers. I kept thinking that with effort I could get through to them. After all, Chet had explained they were all the same individual. Not a group mind, but somehow all identical. So if I’d been able to change the mind of one, shouldn’t I be able to do the same for the others?

I’d failed at this before, but I had to try again. After all, it had taken three attempts to get a ship. So, as the eyes surrounded me, I tried to project a sensation of smallness.

I tried to shrink us all down, to narrow our perspective. As their minds touched mine, I tried to show them. Infinity went both ways—we could be as expansive as a universe, but we could be as small as a mote.

I showed them what I saw. Maksim, with his goofy smile and ready, welcoming manner. Shiver, who did so well understanding people who were very different from her. Nuluba, who so desperately wanted to make up for the ways the Superiority had wronged the peoples of the galaxy.

See us, I told them. See that we are alive.

We know, they sent back. Oh, we know.

They just didn’t care.

In that moment I saw things as they did. Yes, they’d initially refused to accept that all the noises in the somewhere were alive. Then I’d changed one of them. When I’d done that, the rest had responded against what I’d done.

In a way, it didn’t matter which one of them I’d changed. Because as soon as I’d done it, the others had put up defenses. Like how you might get off one sniper shot at people in a group, but then the rest would duck for cover.

I would never persuade another delver, not like I’d done before. Because now they hated us even more, knowing we were alive. Because now we weren’t just random annoyances. We were intentionally trying to bring them pain. We were dangerous.

We needed to be exterminated.

The horror of that idea made me flee from before them. And I was getting good at hiding. I pretended to fade away, to sleep, but then quested out with my ever-strengthening ability to listen. I thought I’d heard something back there, and was rewarded with a voice.

My, my, Brade said to the delvers, sending Winzik’s words into the nowhere. Was that painful? You see, she is too difficult to control. They all are. You saw how another came? They are multiplying. Getting louder.

That referred to Jorgen and the noise he’d made in rescuing me. Oh, scud.

I felt the delvers mull over his words, and I remembered what Brade had said. She’d wanted me to be “loud” as I tried to break through the dampening she’d put on me. As if…as if she’d purposely meant to provoke me. So that the delvers would…

We hear and hurt, the delvers said. But we can extinguish the noises on our own.

Can you? Winzik said. My, my. It seems that when you come to our realm, you are confused. You are as unskilled with this place as we are when in yours! You attacked Detritus and Starsight, yet failed to kill even a single cytonic. Many years have passed, and you have failed each time. We multiply. The noise multiplies. I will stop it. If you help me.

They hated this idea. I could feel their hatred. But also their agreement. We accept your deal, noise, the delvers said. We will do as you instruct in exchange for you stopping the ones that torment us.

Excellent, Winzik sent. So very, very wise of you.

I felt their deal snap into place. The delvers would work for Winzik. I realized what had happened just as I slid into true unconsciousness—and as a result, nightmares haunted me the entire time I slept.