Cytonic

Chapter 27

Roughly twelve hours later, I flew on a direct course toward the arena, anxious for my duel—and holding a book in my hand.

The arena was a location in the Jolly Rogers’ territory—Peg said the anomalies near it made the fighting more interesting. They’d be waiting there for us with the other pirate factions, who would come to watch. Indeed, we’d brought the entire Broadsiders Faction: ground crews flying double or in shuttles. Chet was flying with Nuluba today, in a noncombat tug that had comfortable seats.

I still felt a sense of dread from what I’d experienced the night before. The deal had been made; the delvers would work with Winzik. I needed to find answers, and quickly.

Fortunately, I seemed to be on the best path for that. Win this duel; help Peg take Surehold. Unfortunately, the trip to the arena would take a few hours. When I’d complained in the hangar about the flying time, Maksim had tossed me the book.

A real book, made of paper and everything. I hadn’t been intending to read it, but as the flight stretched long—and I let M-Bot take over steering for a little while—I found myself poking into it as a distraction.

It was slow reading, as I had to use my translation pin with its optics on to read the sentences to me in English. At the same time, it was fascinating. Not only was physical media like this almost nonexistent on my planet, information from our old ship archives was fragmented. The biggest chunk that had survived until my time was about the plants and animals of Old Earth, so my schooling had covered that in detail.

But I’d never heard of a “trashy romance novel,” as Maksim had named this one. It was written from the perspective of the cambrian species, who had a lot of tentacles and stuff. Their courtship rituals were surprisingly similar to human ones—if way, way more sappy. Or maybe that was the genre.

I didn’t really care about the plot; I was more intrigued by this book’s nature. It was just…so fluffy. The protagonist spent her time romancing three different guys, and her most urgent question was deciding which one to bring with her on vacation.

Like, that was the entire conflict. Not the quest to win this vacation, but the stress of choosing between the guys. This was what they read, what they enjoyed, in the Superiority? It contained no fighting. I wasn’t so ignorant as to think everything had to involve battle. There were plenty of great stories about heroes like clever Coyote escaping trouble using his wits instead of his brawn. There were even stories about people building up to a war, then making peace.

Gran-Gran hadn’t ever told me a story about people taking a vacation. Part of me thought it was ridiculous. But another part understood. It whispered, “This is what people can focus their attention on if they aren’t constantly at war. You learned something living among them: your life is not normal.”

This aspect of the characters made them so much more alien than the tentacles. I wanted peace for my people, yes. But to imagine a world without flight training, without the military complex being society’s central and most demanding need…

Scud. I couldn’t understand it, but I needed to. So I read their romance novel and tried to comprehend.

We flew for some time, and I dug a good quarter of the way through the book, when M-Bot spoke. “You see that fragment?”

I glanced out of the canopy. We had to move slowly for the benefit of the tugs, so we made a leisurely pace through the belt, passing fragments with a variety of terrain. One down below was a rare ocean fragment. Not the one we’d traversed earlier, but similar.

“I feel something seeing that one,” M-Bot said. “I remembered sailing with you and Chet, and it felt…pleasant. Like I was meeting an old friend. Is it strange to feel this now? It’s not even the same fragment.”

“It’s not strange,” I said. “Humans often associate feelings with locations. The caverns beneath Detritus sometimes feel more like home to me than the neighborhood where I grew up—and each time I see a cave, I think of them.”

“This feeling is…nice,” M-Bot said.

“Not going to ask this time what the emotions are for?”

“I’m still wondering that,” he said. “But today I just…like these feelings. That’s all right. Isn’t it?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

“I used to try to imagine why you liked stories so much,” M-Bot said. “At first I thought it was a purely logical response—education through the story as a mnemonic device. Yet your strange reactions baffled me. You didn’t treat them as mere education, but as something more.

“I think I understand now. Hearing those stories, being with your grandmother, felt good. And thinking of them again… Well, you remember her voice, don’t you? That’s like me seeing that fragment and remembering the fun of sailing. It’s…warm to me. A machine shouldn’t be able to feel warm, but I do.”

I shifted in my seat, trying to remember Gran-Gran’s voice, as he said. And…I couldn’t. I remembered the stories, but her voice was lost to me.

Needing to be distracted, I turned back to my book, and we flew for more…time. I’ll admit, I kind of liked the book. I didn’t find it trashy at all. Indeed, I actually found myself engaged, almost excited to find out who got to go on the vacation. Granted, it helped to imagine the heroine was planning to feed the failed suitors to her pet shark.

It would have been easier if M-Bot hadn’t piped up with some observation or another every five minutes. “Hey, Spensa! That fragment is black and purple, with crystals growing in the ground! I think it comes from a planet like where Shiver lived. What do you think?”

“Don’t know, M-Bot,” I said, turning the page. “Why don’t you scan your databases to find out?”

“Done!” he said. “I think it does!”

“Great,” I said. “Maybe you should catalog the fragments we’ve passed, and see if you can discover what kind of planets they came from.”

“Will do!” he said.

That should take him a while. I smiled fondly, but Saints, this must be what it was like to have a toddler. I probably owed my mother a nice rat sandwich or something—because I’m pretty sure I’d had lots of questions for her. Often about how to perform a decapitation.

“Hey,” M-Bot said after a few more minutes of silence, “why am I doing this scan again? Is this busywork, Spensa?”

I smiled. “Made you look.”

“You humans,” he said. “That is not a joke! There’s no punchline!”

“Oh, hush,” I said. “This part is good.”

“I guess you don’t want to hear about Peg’s secret communication then,” he said.

I glanced up. “Secret communication?”

“She’s receiving an encrypted direct call—I assume from a pirate in the Jolly Rogers, judging by the origin of the databurst. Peg obviously doesn’t want anyone to know about the call; it came in on a band that the other Broadsider receivers aren’t attuned to pick up. Her ship apparently has some special equipment. I can only see because of, you know…”

“Espionage AI?”

“Mushroom-locating AI. With supplementary espionage additions.”

A secret call? That was odd. Peg tended to be very open about everything she did—she always let the Broadsiders listen in on the negotiations she made, for example.

“Can we eavesdrop?” I asked.

“If I had my old ship’s hardware, that would be easy,” he said. “But I can’t manage it from this ship. Best I can do is tell you the length of the conversation—and maybe pinpoint the person Peg is talking to.”

“Okay,” I said, a little frustrated. I almost wished he hadn’t said anything at all, rather than teasing me. I was distracted enough that it was hard to get through the rest of the book. I put it down, about halfway done, as long-range sensors showed that we were coming up on a large gathering of starfighters.

“She just ended the call,” M-Bot said. “But I’m certain which ship it came from: the starfighter that belongs to her son Gremm.”

“So Peg had an extended secret call with her supposedly estranged son,” I said, “leader of a rival pirate faction. Something about all this doesn’t add up, M-Bot. What kind of game is she playing?”

“I couldn’t possibly guess,” M-Bot said. “I barely understand myself these days, let alone you organics.”

The “arena” turned out to be a large open-air region of the belt, populated by building-size floating chunks of rock. Though most of the fragments were on the same plane, here in this pocket the landscape was more uneven. It seemed like a fragment might have shattered, its pieces coming to rest at different elevations.

Well, I’d trained as a pilot in debris showers. I could handle this. However, a more distinctive feature of this region was the patches of strange glowing white light amid the chunks of rock. They were like mini lightbursts, but weren’t much larger than my ship. Actually, they reminded me of the little white hole I’d seen in the vision, the one that had eventually become a fragment.

Those holes made me uncomfortable. The others had told me about them, but still… Those were patches of pure nowhere, somehow breaking through into the belt. And I was going to have to fly among them.

Chapter 28

A ragtag bunch of a hundred different starfighters were arrayed around the arena. Markings on the wings or fuselages identified their factions. No other theme unified them—except perhaps for a sense of ramshackle piecemealness.

Several had obviously had their cockpits expanded to make room for a larger species. Others were bulky shuttles or other industrial craft—but with an amusing number of weapons strapped to them, like the “super-gun” I’d made as a little girl by taping six toys together.

There were also many with dangerous designs: sleek military vessels with integrated weapons and large boosters. I picked out Gremm, the champion; his ominous starfighter was shaped like a wicked crescent moon, pointed ends facing my direction. It was larger than a DDF Poco, but made up for it with enormous boosters and a deadly armament. Now that I had time to study it carefully, I counted five destructors on the thing.

“Peg,” a voice said over the line—my ship translating. It was a low growling voice, and spoke the same language Peg did. “Took your sweet time as always.”

“I like to enjoy myself, Gremm,” Peg said back. “And the simple things give me pleasure.”

“Like being slow?”

“Like knowing I’ve made you wait,” Peg said, with a laugh. “You ready to be on with this?”

“I would be,” Gremm said. “Except I’m not champion anymore.”

“What?” Peg demanded.

“I lost the title!” Gremm explained. “Earlier today. The Cannonaders arrived early, and I thought we’d do some dueling while we waited. But…I lost.”

“Fool child,” Peg said. “You grow hemels this day.”

I followed this exchange with a frown. “Growing hemels,” I was pretty sure, was their way of saying someone was stupid.

There was something…theatrical about the exchange. Gremm and Peg had spent a half hour talking in secret; she plainly already knew about him losing the championship. But now she had to pretend she didn’t know. Why?

“Well, who is the champion?” Peg said. “We’ll fight them instead.”

“Cannonade newcomer,” Gremm said.

Peg growled softly. Curious, I opened a direct line to Maksim. “I think I know the Cannonade Faction. They’ve got a heklo leader?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Vlep. They are…malcontents.”

“We’re pirates, Maksim. We’re all malcontents.”

“Cannonaders are worse,” he explained. “The other factions can be trusted not to be too brutal. But if the Cannonade Faction has the champion…I don’t know. I’d refuse to fight, if I were you.”

Well, I wasn’t going to do that. In fact, I was happy for a chance to strike back at Vlep and his cronies for robbing me. But there was also something very suspicious about all of this.

What game are you playing, Peg? I wondered.

Another voice came on the broad channel, snappish and vaguely familiar. “We’ll fight your pilot, Peg,” Vlep said. “My champion is better than any of you. He calls himself Darkshadow.”

Darkshadow?

That was such an awesome callsign.

“Ha!” Peg said. “Darkshadow? Really, Vlep? Well, hope his skill is equal to his flair for the dramatic. Because we have someone special!”

“They’re going to lose,” Vlep said. “Just like your kid did. I don’t know what you two are playing at, but I don’t trust you, Peg. Any of you.”

“So nothing’s new, Vlep.”

“You sure that newcomer of yours doesn’t want to swap to join us?” Vlep asked. “The Cannonade Faction is the only one that doesn’t secretly bow to you and your spawn.”

“I don’t think I’ll be doing that, Vlep,” I said over the line, pitching my voice to be as ominous as possible. “All things considered.”

“Am…I supposed to know what that meant?” he asked back.

Scud. He didn’t recognize my voice. So much for my cool reveal. “I’m the human woman you tried to kidnap in the forest,” I said. “I’m actually a super great pilot, and I’m here to embarrass you for what you did to me.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he said. “Darkshadow, let’s humiliate another faction. Duel until lockup. Losing group forfeits their ship to the winner.”

That was high stakes for this lot. Ships were rare enough in here that they weren’t wagered except in extreme circumstances. If I lost, M-Bot would upload to the drone, which we’d brought along—so that shouldn’t be a problem. But there was a more important issue at stake—and it involved the delicate game Peg was playing behind the scenes.

At Peg’s urging, I inched my ship forward out of the line of Broadsiders. I kept my eyes on the most dangerous ships, wondering which would be the champion—so I almost missed it when a relatively small ship soared forward. It was probably around a third of the size of my ship, with a core fuselage so narrow that the destructors on the wings looked enormous by comparison.

I realized I’d made a silly mistake. Bigger didn’t mean more dangerous. I should know that better than most. This ship reminded me of the Krell drones, and they’d been plenty deadly. And while a majority of intelligent species seemed to be roughly human-size, there were obvious exceptions.

I eyed the ship, suspicious. A newcomer good enough to beat Gremm, the longtime champion? Who was this? A figment perhaps? That would make sense. A figment pilot would explain the small size—the ship wouldn’t need a cockpit.

“Arena boundaries are being uploaded to your proximity display, Spin,” Peg said over the comm. M-Bot helpfully outlined the area—which was in the shape of a tall column or tube. It stretched thousands of feet upward and downward, but was a fraction of that in diameter.

That would make for a narrow fighting area. Like…having a duel in a tunnel, or in a shaft stretching up toward the sky. “What happens if I go out of bounds?” I said on a private line, realizing I’d never asked. “Do I lose?”

“Nah,” Peg said. “What’s the fun in that? If you go out of bounds, everyone else can shoot at you—so I’d advise against it. Unless you’re growing too many muluns. You ready?”

I took a deep breath. “I know there’s something about this you aren’t telling me, Peg.”

She remained quiet.

“I’ll still do it,” I said, “but at least tell me one thing: do you genuinely need me to win this? Or is the championship about some kind of political posturing?”

“I need this, Spin,” Peg said, her voice growing softer. “I really need this. This is our chance at uniting the factions. There are details I haven’t told you, but that part is legitimate. I have put, one might say, all of my fruit into your cart. Please don’t drive it off a cliff.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

My screen flashed green and I hit the overburn, boosting into the arena proper.

Chapter 29

The champion didn’t fire on me immediately. He zipped in close, then veered away, clearly expecting me to tail him.

A test. He wanted to judge my skill. I decided not to bite, instead turning upward and flying along the perimeter of the arena.

“I find no matches for that starfighter design in my database,” M-Bot said. “Alas, I have only a basic list of Superiority ships, and this seems an advanced model.”

“It might not even be Superiority,” I said. “Chet thinks that occasionally other ships end up in here via hyperjump accidents.”

I swooped upward, then turned back around. I didn’t miss that several other ships kept pace with me outside the arena barrier—pirates eager for the chance to take potshots if I drifted out of bounds.

All right. I had a feel for the shaftlike shape of the arena now, but I was still at a disadvantage, as I’d never flown in here before—while the champion had done it at least once. I performed a quick weave between several of the floating chunks, then eyed one of the strange glowing white patches.

The proximity sensor blared an alert that indicated the champion was heading for me. Darkshadow had realized that I was acclimating to the terrain, and so he would need to make the first move—lest he give me time to adjust. I slammed on my overburn, dodging out of the way as the champion tried to tail me.

I soon had to cut the overburn. Going too fast while dodging wasn’t always the best idea, depending on reaction speed and turning capability. Instead I zoomed down along the curved perimeter—shooting through the shaft at its edge—hoping the champion would slip out of bounds. Unfortunately, Darkshadow proved competent at avoiding that. Indeed, that straightaway only earned me a few shots from behind, which were hard to evade without going out of bounds.

Best to stay to the center of the arena. I pulled up and went soaring in that direction, weaving between floating chunks. The champion stuck with me; he was good. And he proved to have a light-lance himself—which he used in pivots. That was strange. I had yet to meet a nonhuman from the Superiority who used a light-lance the way we did in the DDF.

Fortunately, over the next few minutes of leading him through a chase, I decided I was probably the better pilot. I just had to…

I felt something.

Something like fingers on my brain.

I was a lonely rock in the darkness. A mist reached around me, embracing me, smothering me.

A pair of burning white eyes appeared, reflected in the canopy of my starship. Eyes that fixated upon me.

We see you.

I was thrown back into the conflict as a destructor blast crackled across my shield. Scud! I twisted to the left and dropped in a weaving spin between two floating asteroids, effectively dodging further shots.

“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “What’s wrong?”

I searched the scanner. Yeah, I’d drifted close to a white patch. “The delvers are watching. Can you get me a scanner analysis of those white patches?”

“Working,” M-Bot said.

Destructor fire chased me again. I spotted a series of asteroids floating nearby, then slammed my overburn and shot toward them.

The champion followed. I speared the second asteroid I passed with my light-lance—but didn’t merely use it to turn. I spun all the way around it, employing the small asteroid as a counterweight. That hurled the chunk of rock backward, making it collide with the next asteroid in line—which the champion had just speared to use in a turn. The collision threw off his maneuver, making him break out of the turn and shoot away erratically.

After a quick release, I stabbed a third rock and used it to pivot around behind the champion. As he reoriented, he found me on his tail, firing. I scored a hit, his shield crackling. To Darkshadow’s credit, he didn’t panic, but he did go into evasives. And…scud. I knew that set of maneuvers. I searched my memory, full of people I was—alarmingly—beginning to forget.

My training was still relatively clear. And the champion was performing an exact set of maneuvers taught by the DDF. Before I could follow that thought, my mind fuzzed again.

We’ve found you, noise. You should not be here. You SHOULD NOT BE HERE. Burning eyes in my canopy, multiplying, more and more sets that—

“Spensa!” M-Bot shouted.

I veered out of the way, narrowly avoiding a collision with an asteroid. That was…that was really inconvenient.

“More delvers?” he asked.

“Yeah. They’re not happy.” Scud, the champion was on my tail again.

“Spin?” Peg said over the comm. “Remember to watch those white spots. If you get too close, you’ll risk some of the distortions that happen in No Man’s Land.”

“Trying,” I said. “Little harder than it looks.”

I performed another series of light-lance moves, mostly to keep asteroids between me and the champion. Fortunately, he strayed too close to a white spot himself, and he reacted as I had—stalling, distracted. I could use that; get an advantage maybe?

The champion pulled out of his diversion and stayed on me for the next bit. So, when I spotted two of the white spots floating near one another, I decided to do something brash. I took a sudden veer right between them.

“This one’s on purpose,” I said to M-Bot. “Keep us from crashing if something goes wrong with me.”

“Okaaaaay,” he said. “I have your analysis though. There’s matter in the center of those. But it has a strange spectroscopy to it—unlike anything in my scientific databases. I think they might be a kind of rock, like acclivity stone but charged a different way? So…be careful.”

I darted between the white patches.

Leave this place, noise!

I will leave, I said, if you promise never to enter where I am from. You will stay in the nowhere, and I will stay in the somewhere.

No. Because the noise will not stop! Can you stop the noise, noise?

I can’t promise that, I said. But we aren’t a threat to you. You can live, and we can live, and ignore one another.

No. You can stop. Or you can be made to stop. You pain us. You give us…the pain…of another self…

We came shooting out from between the two white spots, and the ship flew by itself, veering to the side, out of range and away from some asteroids.

“It’s working!” M-Bot said. “I’m actually helping!”

I grinned, taking back the controls. M-Bot wasn’t a great pilot, but he could react when close to the white spots, which had hopefully given us an edge. Indeed, I checked the proximity sensor and saw that Darkshadow had decided to follow me—but had been forced to slow first, to not risk slamming into something after losing control.

That meant I was able to execute a tight loop and come in shooting before the champion was able to get back up to speed and escape. Two more hits took his shield down. He dodged away, but I fell on his tail.

One more shot and I’d win this. I got in close as Darkshadow dodged into some rubble, then lined up for the shot—but in that instant Darkshadow blasted his IMP. The wave of close-range energy knocked out my own shield. He darted away on a massive overburn before I could land the shot.

“Not bad,” M-Bot said. “That champion is good.”

Yeah. Strangely so. When Darkshadow got away from me, he used what seemed like a DDF scatter escape—very similar to the series of maneuvers I’d taught the Broadsiders. I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but something about the way he flew was familiar. Who was this? Did he really have the same training that I’d been given? Was it…

I felt a sudden cold feeling, mixed with longing. Could it be him? I’d felt him in here, when questing outward. Or was that just wishful thinking?

Don’t be stupid, the rational part of my brain said. Your father couldn’t fit in that small cockpit. In fact, of all the races you know, it could only fit a figment or…or a…

Oh, scud! “M-Bot, can you get a comm line to that champion?”

“Of course,” he said. He flashed the light on the instrument panel that let me know the line was open.

“Hey, Darkshadow,” I said to the other ship, which was hugging the perimeter and flying upward. “Any last words before I defeat you?”

“I am a swift minnow upon the tides of time,” the response came. “They may crush ships against the shore, but I swim them easily.”

Well, Saints and stars. It was him.

“Spensa!” M-Bot said, cutting the line to the other ship. “That voice. It’s—”

“Hesho,” I said.

“He’s dead!”

“He vanished during the fight with Brade,” I said, “when the kitsen ship was blasted open and exposed to vacuum. They assumed he got sucked out. But that was in the middle of a lot of weird things happening with cytonics.”

Not the least of which had involved the summoning of a delver into the somewhere.

“I feel…” M-Bot said. “I feel happy! I never spoke to him directly, but I feel like he was my friend, Spensa.”

He was mine too. “Open that comm line again,” I said. “Hey, Hesho? It’s me. It’s…um, Alanik… Well, you know, the person who was pretending to be her…”

Right. That was all rather complicated.

“I know not that name,” the voice said. “I am the Darkshadow. He with no past. The nameless warrior cursed to wander eternity without home or ally, always seeking memories he can no longer retain. I am fleeting, but a whisper upon time itself.”

He said it all with utter solemnity. Man, I loved that little fox-gerbil.

“You don’t remember anything?” I asked him.

“I have only the instincts of a warrior to guide me,” he replied. “You will not distract me from my current purpose, adversary. Though you have fought admirably, I will defeat you, then compose poetry for your funeral.”

“This…um…isn’t to the death, Hesho.”

“I will defeat you,” he said in the same exact tone, “and compose poetry for your retirement party.”

He must have been isolated during his first days in the belt, and lost everything. Now that I knew who it was, I was even more impressed by his flying. Hesho had commanded a ship, and though my memory was admittedly fuzzy, I thought he’d mostly acted as a captain.

But he’d also been part of my extensive training sessions. I’d assumed some random crewmember had been manning—er, fox-gerbiling—the controls of their ship. It seemed, however, that the pilot had been Hesho himself.

How could I use that knowledge? He might be good at dodging and following flight patterns, but he would have let members of his bridge crew work other system controls. He’d messed up earlier on a light-lance pivot. He wouldn’t be as good at multitasking as I was.

I moved in close to some other asteroids as he tried to come back around to attack me. I kept him busy, weaving and dodging, and got farther and farther ahead of him. Finally, he broke off to pull back.

At that moment, I shut down my systems to go for a shield reignition. He, expectedly, did the same. You couldn’t run boosters and power up a shield at the same time.

The thing was, I was feinting.

As soon as he powered down, I spun my ship and slammed on my overburn, ripping across the battlefield toward him. He was too slow to respond, and he barely powered up before I reached him. Instead of shooting him, however, I hit him with my light-lance, then leaned hard on the controls, boosting with everything I had. This flipped my ship around—yanking him like a ball on a chain and sending him spinning out through the perimeter of the arena.

There, he was shot by at least ten watching pirate ships from various factions—completely locking up his ship.

“Dramatic,” M-Bot said.

“Hesho deserves the best,” I said to him. “Even if he doesn’t remember. Hang on. Before we go celebrate, I need to buzz the delvers again.”

“Is that smart?”

“Nope,” I said, slowing and crossing the arena as if to rejoin the Broadsiders—but veering close to a white spot.

We can work this out, I sent to the delvers. You don’t have to fight us. Don’t listen to Winzik, at the very least. He is evil.

Evil is a thing of noises, they sent back, confused by the impressions I’d sent them. You are all evil.

Please, I sent. I am trying to understand you.

Understand this. Leave. All of you must leave. And never return.

The impression was filled with malevolence, disgust, and…fear? Yes, fear. They hadn’t wanted me to feel that part, but I could now pick out more and more that they wanted to hide.

The impression faded, and I left the region feeling disappointed. No accommodation. One of us would have to be destroyed.

I rejoined the Broadsiders, who were gathering together with the other hundred-odd ships of the various pirate factions. Peg was already on the comm, broadcasting widely to all of the collected pirates. “Ha!” she said. “So much for your secret weapon, Vlep!”

He didn’t respond. The members of the Cannonade Faction were already gathering to withdraw. Whatever Peg’s next move, she needed to make it now.

“Look how strong we’ve grown,” she said, inching her shuttle out of the Broadsider line to face all the others. “Look at how skilled we’ve become! How many months has it been since any of us have lost a ship to the Superiority?”

“Vlep lost one a few weeks back,” Gremm said, his voice a grumble. “But my fighters are good enough to avoid it.”

Peg inched her shuttle forward a little farther. “The Superiority forces at Surehold are weak! While we have grown stronger and stronger. Now, you see the champion I’ve brought? She’s been training my fighters. She spent her life fighting the Superiority!”

“Wait,” a new voice said. “Is this true?” It was another rough voice, speaking Peg’s language. I guessed that was her other son, Semm.

“It’s true,” I said. “My people have been at war with the Superiority for decades, and I know their tactics. I’ve destroyed dozens of their ships—eighty-seven actually, at last count. If you want to take Surehold, I can make it happen.”

“Take Surehold?” another voice asked, a high-pitched one, but not Vlep’s. “Are we really talking about this again?” M-Bot wrote on my screen that this was the leader of the fifth faction, a female heklo called Gward.

“I agree with Gward,” Peg’s first son said. “This is an old irrelevant argument. We decided against this course two years ago!”

“And how much has changed in those years?” Peg demanded. “Look, you all know that things are strange in the belt these days. You’ve heard of the creatures with the glowing eyes. You’ve seen isolated people losing their memories faster and faster.

“Worse, we’re vulnerable. All it will take is for the Superiority to decide we’re too much of a liability, and to double the military presence in here. Or triple it. They could wipe us out. But not if we control Surehold. Not if we’re bold enough to strike.”

I waited, holding my breath. It was such a good argument. Couldn’t they see? This was the time to strike.

“I hate it,” Semm finally said, “but she’s correct. This…is worth discussing.”

“Are you sure we want to take that risk?” Gremm said.

“Yeah,” said the sixth faction leader—though I only knew this because of M-Bot’s notes on my screen. “I…I don’t want to aggravate them. If we lose, it could be catastrophic!”

“Doing nothing is worse, Ido,” Peg said. “It is time. Surehold has an icon, and reality ashes. We can use those to keep our memories. We can control this entire region, and we can be safe.”

“I…can’t believe I’m saying this,” Gremm said. “But I think she might be right. It is time.”

“If you strike at Surehold, Mother,” Semm said, “the Red Sails will join you.”

“So will the Jolly Rogers,” Gremm said.

“I guess…” Gward said. “Well, I guess we will too. Sure could use some reality ashes over here. We’ll split the spoils equally, right?”

“Equally,” Peg said. “I promise it.”

“Well, we’re not interested in this insanity,” Vlep of the Cannonade Faction said. Nearby, one of his repair tugs had finished getting Hesho’s vessel online, and it began moving under its own power again.

“Hey,” Peg said. “We won that ship! Leave it!”

“Gremm can keep his ship,” Vlep said. “We won that earlier—but if we keep ours, he can keep his. Deal? None of you can fly this thing anyway.”

“Deal, I suppose,” Gremm said, with a sigh. “Mother?”

“Fine, Vlep,” Peg said. “But why not join us? We—”

But before she should finish her speech, the entire Cannonade Faction overburned away. Scud. I had M-Bot open a line to Hesho, but he didn’t accept it.

“Should we go after them?” Semm asked.

“Rotting scum,” Gremm said.

“Let them go,” Peg said. “We don’t need them. What about you, Ido? You with us?”

“Let me ask the others,” the final faction leader said. He left the group comm and returned in a few minutes. “We’ll do it. But, um, you’re sure we can win? Like really sure?”

“You saw my champion fight,” Peg said. “Trust me. We’ve got this for certain.”

They made plans then, setting up a time for the assault. I sat back, listening to the details with half an ear. The extent of Peg’s plan was becoming clear to me. And honestly, I was impressed.

I didn’t get a chance to confirm my suspicions until a half hour later, when we were flying with the Broadsiders back toward our base. Peg opened a direct line to me.

“So,” she said. “You had some questions?”

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said. “You and your sons never actually had a falling-out, did you? You three realized that the pirates were too timid, too untested, to go up against the Superiority. You faked a schism.

“That let you control how your coalition fractured. You continued to pretend to be antagonistic to one another, so that when the time was right, Gremm and Semm could agree with you—and it would seem like they were authentically persuaded. Who else could continue to doubt the attack was a good idea if those two—who hated you—were willing to go along with it?”

“Smart,” Peg said. “Words. I hope it’s not so obvious to everyone else.”

“What happened with the champion?” I asked. “Why swap out to someone else at the last minute?”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Peg explained. “Gremm called me in a panic earlier today. He’d agreed to a quick duel to warm up—he assumed Vlep could never recruit someone good enough to beat him.”

“Ah…” I said. “Then he lost.”

“Fool boy. Almost ruined two years of work. We needed a victory like this to galvanize everyone. They’re far more skilled than they think. Two years of sparring will do that.”

“You set all of this up on purpose!” I said. “The factions, the raids, the honorable-ish way of fighting—it was all to train the pirates without them realizing they were being trained! You wanted a low-stakes way to prepare them for the assault on Surehold.”

“I set them to recruiting too,” she explained. “Among the people tossed in here. Grew our numbers pretty well. That, and I led some tactical raids against the Superiority to test their defenses and steal ships. Every time my faction or one of the boys’ factions got too many ships, we lost a few to the others to keep them strong and training.”

Genius. Scud, I wished we had Peg in the DDF.

“Still hoped I’d be able to get Vlep’s group,” Peg continued. “He’s been a weed in my garden for far too long. We should be able to do our assault with five factions. I hope. Either way, you did your part.”

“My part won’t be done until we stomp the Superiority,” I said. “And I get to visit the portal in Surehold. You set the assault for three days away. Why wait so long? We should move now.”

“No need to grow umalitas, kid!” Peg said. “The other factions need time to prepare—and we just won a major victory! Tonight we party.”

Chapter 30

“And then,” I said, creeping through the circle of chairs, “the evil member of Lion Clan grinned a terrible grin. ‘No, Simba,’ he said. ‘It was not mere chance that your father fell to his fate, but it was I who cast him to it! I killed him so that I might have his throne, just as I will now kill you!’ ”

The crowd of Broadsiders gasped. To enhance the experience, I did Gran-Gran’s pantomimes—clawing at the air like a lion. I prowled back and forth before the audience. Maksim had turned on his starfighter’s floodlights, but narrowed and lowered the beams so they illuminated only me. We’d closed the blinds to create a dark atmosphere.

“Well,” I said, “Simba was so horrified by this revelation that he let his uncle advance, forcing him back, back, back to the very edge of the tower of the fortress! He had forgotten his training from the knights Timbaa and Pumon! In a moment he remembered their long sparring sessions, where he had been forced off the log and made to eat bugs as punishment.

“ ‘Remember,’ Pumon’s wise voice said in his mind, ‘never put your rear toward an enemy. And never let them control your footing in a duel.’ Wise Pumon, the stout knight, now bravely fought the endless Hyena Clan hordes upon the wall below!

“Simba stood his ground, perched atop the tip of the tower known as the Rock of Pride Fortress. ‘You fool, Uncle,’ Simba growled. ‘For though you presumed to cast me to my death like you did my father, in reality you have ceded to me the high ground, granting me the upper hand in our duel.’

“Scar shouted and lashed out, but Simba’s training as an outcast among the Knights of the Lost Savannah served him well. His ghostly father appeared behind him, glowing like a halo of light. Mighty was the clash! Perched as they were, the entirety of the kingdom could see them atop the fortification! But Scar was an assassin, no trained knight, and his subtle ways could not uphold him in the full light of day and truth!

“Channeling the No Fear of Reprisal technique taught to him by the lanky Timbaa, the bold prince grabbed his uncle by the neck and threw him to the side. The elder of Lion Clan, unable to maintain his footing, slipped and fell over the edge of the Rock, barely holding on by the tips of his fingers.”

I paused for effect, like Gran-Gran always had. Giving them time to imagine the bold warrior prince atop the tower, at last victorious after his long exile. My audience leaned forward, eager for the next words.

“Simba stood tall,” I said. “The fighting of the armies below ceased as eyes turned toward the two monarchs. ‘Now,’ Simba proclaimed, ‘you will announce your betrayal of my father to all, that they may know your treachery.’

“ ‘I admit it, nephew!’ Scar shouted. ‘I betrayed your father—the Hyenas forced me to do so! I was but a pawn! Please let me live!’

“Now, down below, the frenzied queen of the Hyena Clan warriors paused in her duel with Nala, mistress-at-arms. Among barbarian culture, you must never beg for your life. Upon seeing the cowardly act from Scar, Hyena Clan turned their weapons away as one from the Lions—refusing the fight.

“Simba looked down upon his uncle, the author of so much pain and suffering. ‘I cannot forgive you, Uncle,’ he declared, ‘for the gods themselves demand justice. And so, as rightful king, I now declare your sentence to be death.’

“And then, with a mighty roar, Simba cast his uncle to his doom. Now his father’s wandering soul could finally rest. Revenge had been exacted, and balance had returned to the land. The circle was at long last complete.”

There was some romance stuff after that, which I didn’t mind so much now as I had when younger, but this had always felt like a better ending to me. It was a story about barbarians and knights, after all.

It was strange to me how well I remembered the story—all of the stories, actually. Other things about my past were fading, but the stories remained perfectly cemented in my mind. Like an anchor in my past, tied to my soul.

The conclusion brought cheers from the other pilots, and Nuluba—ever quietly going about making life easier for everyone else—opened the blinds to better light the hangar. We’d all gathered to feast our victory, and I had offered a story. I hadn’t realized how well it would be received.

They’re eager for reminders of the world outside, I thought, watching the pirates chat. Even if they come from a different culture.

Others wandered toward the tables, where we’d set out various foods that had been found on salvage runs or raids. We didn’t need food anymore, but Maksim said there was something about the act of tasting that helped restore memories.

I spotted the other human chatting with RayZed, a young female tanuzedran from one of the other flights, whose species looked kind of like red pandas. She was nibbling at the food on a little plate. I felt like I should recognize the varieties, but…that part of my memory had well and truly faded. There was a red bit of food, and…and some little yellow bits of something?

Chet wandered over to me, his arm still in its sling. “Spensa,” he said, “that story was fantastic! I feel as if I once knew it. At least, parts are familiar to me.”

“Gran-Gran loved it because it spoke of a warrior in exile,” I said. “She taught me that although my people had been exiled, we could remain strong.”

“Your performance at the duel today was inspiring,” he said. “You are truly as skilled as your earlier boasts implied. And these, they are a good family to you.” He nodded toward the gathered pirates, but I sensed a certain melancholy to his tone.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Merely an old man’s foolishness,” he said to me. “I fear I am not of much use to pilots. What need have these for an explorer who cannot fly?”

“I have need of you,” I said. “You led me to those ruins—and you knew that the next stop was in Surehold. And besides, there’s your hunt…”

Chet had been quietly going among the pirates, asking carefully about icons and reality ashes. I’d finally asked Peg about my icon, and she had been surprised—claiming that none of her people had seen it. I didn’t know that she would lie to me, but Chet and I had decided it would be good for him to investigate a little on his own.

“You’ve been great at this part,” I whispered to him. “Far better than I’d be. People genuinely like you, Chet. They talk to you.”

“If that were true,” he said, “and if I were as good at this quest as you indicate, I’d have located the…missing item by now.” He shook his head, then glanced at me and raised his good hand. “No need to bolster my ego further. It is taking on a little water, but not sinking. I merely…I fear we stay here too long. I fear being in one place.”

“We’ll move soon enough,” I said.

“And the delvers?” he asked. “Did you…feel them earlier today, in the duel?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“If they have located us, and decide to move against us…”

“We’ll be gone in a few days,” I repeated. “Don’t worry. Relax, let your arm heal. We’ll be at Surehold before you know it.”

“Yes,” he said, then nodded. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Spensa. I believe I needed to hear that.” He smiled toward Maksim as the bearded young man wandered over carrying a plate of food.

“That was a great story, Spin,” Maksim said. “I like the parts about honor. When I was young, I believed that all humankind was these rampaging monsters. I always wondered when that would manifest in me. When I’d start killing.” He looked down. “I read some of the records when I was older. We…did attack a lot of people. So it’s good to hear we had stories of honor as well. Even if they’re fanciful. I mean, lions couldn’t actually talk, could they?”

“I’ve always interpreted it,” I said, “as different clans of samurai who took the names of fearsome beasts in order to intimidate their enemies.”

“Lions and hyenas?” Maksim said. “I don’t think they had those in Japan, Spin.”

I’ll admit, my Old Earth geography was spotty. Hadn’t Gran-Gran said the story was from Denmark? Anyway, Chet was inspecting the bits of food as Maksim offered us the plate. I hesitated; the longer I spent in here, the stranger an activity eating seemed. Had I really done that every day of my life? Stuffing things in my mouth?

I picked up one of the yellow bits, holding it pinched between my fingers. “What is it?”

“Can said ‘corn,’ ” Maksim explained. “In English.”

“I do not know the word,” Chet said, selecting a piece. “It is an alien color for a plant. I believe those on Earth were normally green, were they not?”

“This one isn’t,” Maksim said. “I’ve been saving it, and a can of this red stuff. The label said ‘beets.’ Either of you remember anything about them?”

“Nope,” I said, turning the little corn chunk in my fingers. “ ‘Beats’ is a cool name though. Isn’t it strange that we used to consume piles of this stuff every day?”

“Yeah,” Maksim said. “The names and…and the…mouth smell? The way your mouth distinguishes foods? That stuff? All gone. Can’t remember for the life of me. I swear I used to like some of this stuff and hate some of it.”

“I am fortunate to have lost that part of my memory entirely,” Chet said. “I don’t recall ever eating. And I’m happy for it. Mashing such things up inside your mouth? It would stick to your teeth and tongue! Then you swallow? Force it down your throat in wet clumps held together by saliva? No, I shall pass, my friends.” He set the corn on the plate.

I understood the sentiment; thinking about it made my skin crawl. And yet, I did recall some…latent happiness associated with eating. I put the little bit of corn in my mouth, then winced. It was somehow both slimy and firm at the same time. I mashed it between my teeth a few times, and it popped, releasing the most awful texture. Like it had been filled with mud. I barely prevented myself from gagging.

“Surreal, isn’t it?” Maksim ate one of the bits, his eye twitching as he forced himself to swallow it. Swallowing food…how had I never noticed how bizarre that was? M-Bot was right. Why did we put food where air went?

I spat my corn bits into a napkin Maksim handed me. “That’s disgusting,” I said, then wiped off my tongue. “That definitely didn’t inspire me to remember anything.”

Still, I forced myself to try the other stuff. It at least appeared to be bleeding, which might have been where the cool name came from. It was even more slimy, but this time I was prepared. I was a warrior descended from warriors. I could eat a beat. It was nauseating. It…

Wait.

What was that? I…had tried this once, in the mess hall at the DDF, where they had odd heritage foods from the gardens. I remembered Nedd’s face as he laughed—I’d made the very same joke about the name. I remembered Jorgen smiling, FM explaining how much she liked the food, Kimmalyn watching and nodding, Arturo lecturing us on how it was grown…

A perfect picture in time, all of their faces suddenly clear to me. Scud, I missed them. I needed to get home, to be with them again.

More, I needed to protect them. From the delvers.

I’m trying, I thought. And I’m coming. I promise.

“That was disgusting and wonderful together at once,” I said to Maksim and Chet. “It’s so strange that it is so strange. I only left the somewhere…” How long ago had it been? I forcibly brought out the numbers M-Bot gave me each morning. “…just under a month ago.”

“This place changes you fast,” Maksim said. “And then makes you feel like you’re in limbo…” After trying the beat, he walked back to the table to get some other samples.

Chet wandered over to Shiver, who was talking about how odd she found our means of ingesting. So inefficient, in her words. Better to just grow over patches of minerals and use them as you need them. I rested back against the wall and found myself smiling again.

I belonged here. Granted, I’d belonged other places too. I could faintly remember similar evenings with my friends at the DDF headquarters. But I also remembered pain. Fear. Loss. Hurl’s death. Worry for Jorgen.

Here, I didn’t have those same fears. And scud, I had to admit these last few weeks had been invigorating—exciting. First the exploration, then infiltrating pirates? Now earning their trust, defeating their champion?

This had been thrilling. Like a story, like the things I’d always imagined myself doing. As before, while exploring with Chet, I felt a faint sense of guilt to be enjoying myself while my friends back home were in danger. But then again, the real danger was the delvers, and I was working on that as best I could. And didn’t I deserve to rest between fights?

Every warrior needed a break, didn’t they? A Valhalla? An Elysium? The stories understood. In the greatest of warrior societies, there was a reward for those who spent their days killing.

The group began calling for me to tell another story, so I walked back toward the light. I’d offer them three different options, like Gran-Gran had done for me when I was a child.

I did love my friends, and I was doing everything I could to help them. So I determined not to feel guilty for finding a place where I could live the life I’d always wanted. I had been exiled. But in that, like Satan from the stories, I had found a place I could make into heaven itself.

Right then, the base’s scanner’s alarm started going crazy.

Chapter 31

“Imminent collision of this fragment with…” Nuluba trailed off, glancing up from the scanner data toward all of us, gathered around the machine.

“With what?” Peg demanded.

“With another fragment,” Nuluba said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The fragment is coming in so quickly… Scanner says impact is in only half an hour.”

I shared a look with Chet, whose expression was grim. Last time, the incoming fragment had completely annihilated the one we were on.

“Get people to ships and ready to evacuate,” Peg announced.

“Captain!” Nuluba said. “We have five ships down for maintenance to prepare for the assault! We can get them up and flying, but in a half hour? Plus, if we abandon the base, we’ll lose equipment, spare parts, diagnostics…”

Scud. As we’d been getting ready for the party earlier, the ground crews had started their jobs—assuming they’d have three days to fine-tune the starfighters for our upcoming assault.

“Evacuate anyway,” Peg said, “just in case.”

“Also, Nuluba,” I said, “send the scanner data to my ship.”

“What? Why—”

“Do it!” I said, running for M-Bot, Chet on my heels. I hauled myself up on the wing, then helped Chet with a hand up. M-Bot popped open the cockpit, and we leaped in as he lit up the ship’s dash.

“I’m getting data direct from the scanner,” he said. “Oh my. That’s bad.”

“Math it!” I said. “Can we do anything?”

“Calculating… That one coming in is a lot smaller… The Broadsiders have access to six light-lances for maneuvering ships…” A bunch of figures popped up on my screen. “Done,” he said. “There’s time. Barely.”

“We lift the entire fragment that’s coming toward us?” Chet said, reading the instructions. “Bold!”

“And possible,” M-Bot said. “Only if you move quickly, Spensa. I mean, I know you really enjoyed the last collision, but…”

I stood up and shouted toward Peg as she rushed by. “I’ve got another option, Peg!”

Peg pulled to a stop, looking toward me.

“Me and five other ships pulling with light-lances,” I said, “can move that incoming fragment upward just enough to avoid us. But we have to be quick about it!”

She didn’t miss a beat. She shouted for everyone else to keep evacuating, but organized a small crew to execute M-Bot’s plan.

I settled in the cockpit and glanced back at Chet. “You’d never encountered this before that first time?”

“Nope,” he said, putting on a helmet.

“And now it’s happened to us twice?”

“Yup.”

“You know what I told you earlier, about not being worried that the delvers might know where we are?”

“Indeed.”

“Pretend I said something intelligent instead.”

“I shall endeavor to do my best.”

In moments, Peg had a crew for me to lead—including herself, with her powerful shuttle. Fortunately, these ships already had light-lances attached for towing ships that had been locked down by destructor fire.

“Go to these coordinates on the incoming fragment,” I said, and relayed M-Bot’s instructions and figures to their displays. “Attach your light-lances to the acclivity stone there, then be ready to lift.”

Peg prodded everyone along again. They began taking off, but not with nearly the urgency I’d have wanted.

“You’d think they’d be more frightened,” M-Bot said.

“It’s too easy to get comfortable in here,” Chet replied. “Particularly if you stay in one place for long.”

I followed the instructions from M-Bot, blasting off toward the incoming fragment. I was a faster ship, so I took up position at the rear of the fragment where he directed me. This one, like the one before, was barren—just a solid block of stone. Small, dense, and most importantly fast—like a bullet.

I matched speeds with the fragment and launched my light-lance out to connect to the stone. The other ships started following suit one by one as they arrived.

“Under fifteen minutes until contact,” Chet noted, watching the clock M-Bot had put up on the display for us, and reading the projections. “We’re cutting this very close.”

“Everyone is in place,” I said as the final ship connected its light-lance.

“You need to all pull directly up,” M-Bot explained. “Together, with an equal force. Here, I’m sending instructions to the others as if from you.”

I nodded and turned the ship upward, pointing the boosters down. My acclivity ring rotated automatically, so it was pointed downward as well.

“Careful,” M-Bot told me as I moved into position. “Give yourself as much slack as possible at first, and don’t hit the booster too hard. You’ll risk pushing down on the fragment with your thrust, negating some of the value of your pull.”

I gripped the thrust, refusing to give in to my instincts, which urged me to throw on the overburn. Instead, I slowly ramped up the booster to the thresholds M-Bot indicated. It felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all, as if nothing were changing.

All through it, M-Bot’s voice continued calmly. “Ease off a little. That’s it…”

He sent similar instructions to the other pilots’ displays. I glanced at the monitor, watching as we got closer, and closer, and closer to the Broadsider base. Until…we barely crested over the top, with enough clearance to avoid hitting the base structures. We knocked off the tops of a few trees though.

I let out a long breath while M-Bot sent another order to everyone that we could simultaneously power down and then cut our light-lances. I complied, then slowed in the air—letting that “bullet” fragment zip away. Without our influence, it lowered back down.

Then, a few minutes later, it collided with the next fragment it encountered. Both fragments were made up of more rock than the one that had collapsed before—and so they crushed together, stone crumpling and bulging like the fronts of some of the starfighters I’d seen impact. The sound was incredible.

As I hovered in place, Peg slowly drifted up beside me in her shuttle. “Never seen anything like that,” she said privately over the comm. “I’m growing gludens. Though now that we’re safe, I’m kind of glad I get to watch it. This feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

I was sure that for most people, it would be just that.

“Peg,” I said, “we need to make our assault on Surehold sooner than planned.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Sitting here like this is tempting fate. The nowhere is changing in dangerous ways. Plus, I’m…getting too complacent. I want to be moving on.”

“All right, all right. Don’t toss tidos at me. Maybe we can move the timeline up.”

The fragments that had collided shattered into multiple pieces of acclivity stone. The largest portions stayed pushed together, fused in the center, while smaller bits went bouncing free, spraying out like enormous chunks of shrapnel.

“You know,” Peg said absently, “it’s almost like the nowhere just up and decided to try to kill us.” She laughed, though there was an edge to the sound.

“Let’s assault Surehold tomorrow,” I said. “Waiting will only give the Superiority a chance to notice that we’re gathering, preparing something. We’re ready. Let’s do it.”

Peg was silent for a time, and I couldn’t judge her body language, not in separate ships as we were. I tried to inch mine forward to glance in through the window of her tug.

“Peg?” I asked.

“All right. We’ll need to rush to get all the ships back together and do last-minute preparations. If we can manage that…then, yeah. Tomorrow. I’ll let the other faction leaders know.”

Chapter 32

I got up the next morning eager, excited. I’d done a quick check-in with Jorgen to let him know what I’d overheard in regard to the delvers and Winzik. But I hadn’t stayed with him long; I’d known many of our team would be working all night on the ships. The pilots had been ordered to get a good night’s sleep, and so I had forced myself to do just that.

Indeed, the hangar was already a buzz of activity when I entered. Ground crew members were still dashing this way and that. By the large clock Peg had set up, we had two hours until departure—and there still appeared to be a lot to get done. Back home, I’d have left all these sorts of preparations to the professionals. That wasn’t how the Broadsiders worked though.

Instead I hurried to M-Bot’s ship, where Nuluba was working. She’d serviced the boosters and was just now putting the casing back on one of them. I sprang to help her lift the casing into place, and it occurred to me that this was a chance to do something I’d been meaning to for a while.

“Nuluba,” I said. “I…want to apologize to you.”

“Apologize, Spin?” she said, gesturing with one arm in a wide loop—something I thought was to express comfort. “You have made up for your theft of the ship.”

“It’s not about that,” I said. “It’s about how I might have treated you, particularly when I was first here. I…worry I was kind of abrasive to you.”

“Ah,” Nuluba said, using a drill to lock the bolts as I held the casing in place. “Yes, I did notice that. I assumed it was your natural human aggression.”

“It was more than that,” I said. “You heard about my past?”

“A freedom fighter,” she said. “From a human enclave.”

“Yes,” I said. “Most of our jailors were varvax, though we called them the Krell. And…well, I’ve never really gotten over that. Despite the fact that you’ve always been nice to me, I think I might have taken it out on you.”

“My, my,” she said, and I winced, thinking—even now—of Winzik. “That is very mature of you, Spin. Very mature and very wise. I cannot say I was so quick to reject my biases when I first met Maksim.”

“Really? You did it too?”

“Oh yes,” she said as we stepped away from the now-completed booster. “It is unfortunate, and I am embarrassed. I commend you for giving me a chance, Spin. If I had been imprisoned by humans for many years, I do not know that I would be so willing to accept one of them into my company.”

I smiled, and she waved her hands in response. How could I have ever hated this thoughtful creature? She was so calm, so relaxed. In a way, Nuluba represented something I’d never actually known: a person at peace with themself and their place in the universe. Or, well, the non-universe.

“You are ready to go,” she said, patting the booster. “Fully tuned. It was a pleasure.”

I looked at the ship, with its sleek shape and powerful boosters, and my excitement stoked further. “You’re always so serene with this work,” I said to Nuluba. “Whether it’s doing maintenance or taking inventory. Wouldn’t you like to fly one of these?”

“Please, no,” Nuluba said, gesturing with her fingers making a light rolling motion. A varvax laugh. “I like things simple.”

“Piloting can be simple.”

“No, pilots are too important,” she explained. “I like being ignored. That’s why I picked the job I did in the somewhere. I prefer to just sit in the corner and putter. It was…distressing that I caused so much of a fuss with my discoveries.” She hesitated, then grew more solemn. “Not that I’d go back. I hate the lies we’ve told.”

There was a heroism in those words, a type I’d never acknowledged. To me, being a hero had always been about fighting. But Nuluba reminded me of Cuna, the quiet diplomat who had done so much to resist Winzik.

“Before you suit up,” Nuluba said, pointing, “I believe Shiver wanted to speak to you.”

We still had a good amount of time until takeoff, so I dodged around Maksim as he jogged past with a spare power matrix, then entered the resonants’ corner of the room. Here, I always felt as if I were stepping up to a large geode. They’d leaked lines of crystal—like veins in stone—out from their ships, then over to this section. When I’d asked Shiver why, she’d explained that the crystals grew naturally, and so they needed to send them somewhere.

Each time they flew away, they broke connections to this place—but so long as they returned soon enough, they could reconnect. If they moved to Surehold, what would happen? Would this crystal network in the corner eventually crumble to dust?

Up close, I could distinguish their crystals from each other. Shiver was slightly more violet, and Dllllizzzz slightly more pink. They had grown over one another in a way I was led to understand was common among friendly resonants. The two beings chatted softly in their musical language; they did that almost constantly when near each other.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I asked Shiver, settling down beside one of her larger crystals.

“Yes, Spin,” Shiver responded. “I wished to thank you. For making this possible.”

“The assault today?”

“Indeed,” Shiver said. “Peg has been planning this for years. I…vibrate with joy, knowing the plan is finally moving forward. But I also wish to thank you on behalf of Dllllizzzz. If we are successful, we will again have access to the icon at Surehold—and the reality ashes. I maintain hope that having more of those, over the long term, will continue to help her.”

“How’s she been lately?” I asked, glancing toward the array of crystals.

“It is difficult to cleave that question, Spin,” Shiver said. “Sometimes she seems almost ready to speak. At the very edge of layered words, sentences. And then…she withdraws to unlayered words. Hints at meanings. I’ve heard true words from her only a handful of times now, including when she spoke to you.”

“I don’t think I understand. Layered words, and unlayered words?”

“I apologize,” Shiver said. “Let me reverberate. We can make different crystals vibrate with different tones, and language is always two or more of those together. Dllllizzzz makes single tones. More ideas than true words.

“It is communication, and I can investigate her feelings, comfort her, encourage her. But her responses are rarely true words, more the tones we make while learning. This is our equivalent of what you would call ‘baby talk.’ Yet Dllllizzzz is old. Older than I am. And she flies a ship just fine.”

I nodded, studying the overlapping lattices of blue crystals, with pink or violet undertones. I’d seen Shiver help with repairs—a few days back, she’d overgrown part of Peg’s shuttle looking for a short. It was incredible the level of detail Shiver could sense with her crystals—though actually doing repairs took her much more time than it took someone motile. She could technically grow as many “arms” as she needed, but moving things usually involved encasing them in crystal and then growing that crystal to reposition the object.

I found it amazing that the resonants had developed space-age industry under those limitations. But I guessed when members of your species commonly lived thousands of years, you had other advantages. And there was something hardcore about an entire civilization made up of singing crystals. Even the wildest of Gran-Gran’s stories couldn’t compete with the universe’s biodiversity.

Admittedly though, I was still miffed about the whole sand worm thing.

“Could reality ashes actually help her?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Shiver said. “But it has been—some time? Much time?—since we found her.”

“The icon,” I said. “At Surehold. What does it look like?”

“A small child’s toy. It is kept on display, to help the workers feel comfort. It’s…beautiful.” She paused. “It appeared with Peg when she was thrown in here. But she was prevented from taking it when she rebelled. I think part of her eagerness to capture the base has to do with reclaiming it. Spin…I know that you and Chet have been looking for something among the Broadsiders. Something that was taken. An…icon?”

I didn’t respond immediately. She knew?

“You were captured with an unusual amount of reality ashes,” Shiver said. “And though Chet has been subtle, I am better than most at subtle interaction. You lost an icon. You think it stolen?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I buried it outside before sneaking in here the first time. Now it has vanished.”

“Then I have, perhaps, news for you. I helped Peg recover her icon several times at Surehold. Icons are bits of the somewhere, and respond in odd ways to being in here. Spin, they sometimes seem to get disjointed from this place—as if out of phase with the movement of fragments.”

“Which means…”

“They move on their own, on occasion. As I said, it feels as if they’ve gotten out of sync with the regular fragment motions. You find them outside safes, or in rooms where you didn’t leave them. It is rare, but I’ve seen it happen. It’s possible nobody took your icon—and I think that if one were here, Peg would have sniffed it out and told everyone. She’d insist we share the ashes. It is her way.”

That was curious news. I mulled on it a moment, and found I was glad. Perhaps I didn’t have to worry about a thief here—other than myself, naturally. But what if the icon had fallen into the void? Or vanished and appeared on another fragment entirely?

In that case, I’d never find it. I’d have to rely on our remaining ashes to get us out of here. That was possible—they should last long enough—but still, I felt a sense of loss. It hadn’t really been my father’s pin—but it had been important to me nonetheless.

As I pondered that, Shiver’s mention of Peg brought another question to mind. “Does Peg really have…a tree?”

“Yes. So do her sons, whose trees were grown from fruit on hers. The tenasi symbiosis is a beautiful thing, and I often resonate with it. You should be able to see the tree soon, as it still grows at Surehold. Those there would never destroy a tenasi tree, no matter how bad the blood between us and them. Once we arrive, you can see the icon for yourself as well.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said. “But…icons, Shiver. What are they?”

“I have no idea,” Shiver said. “This place is strange in a lot of ways, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you this, looking at that icon I always felt as if it had a soul. Like it was a fragment of our world in the same way the delvers are a fragment of this one.”

What an odd way to describe it. I stood up, intending to extricate myself from the conversation with Shiver, who would continue to chat endlessly if you let her. I always felt so awkward excusing myself—but…well, she seemed to think all motile species were a little rude anyway. When you literally couldn’t walk away from your neighbors, you learned to be polite.

“Before you go,” Shiver said, “I…admit I have a request for you, Spin. Please do not think me forward, but I suspect you intend to leave this place. Not this region, but the nowhere entirely.”

“I do,” I said. “People need me in the somewhere.”

“I’ve never known anyone to leave without Superiority permission,” Shiver said. “And even those cases are rare. But my request is in regard to Dllllizzzz. Peg worries that once someone is that far gone, only getting out can help them. So if you do escape…will you see if you can find a way to open a path for Dllllizzzz and me? For her sake?”

“That helps?” I asked. “I mean…our memories…return if we leave?”

“I believe so,” Shiver said. “At least, the few people at the base who left and came back in seemed to have recovered some, if not all, of what they lost during their time here.”

“I’ll try,” I promised. “Chet is going with me, and we’ll be able to see firsthand if someone without any memories gets them back once outside.”

“Thank you. That is all I can ask. Getting out through Surehold would require negotiations with the Superiority, and I do not trust them. I do not believe it would be safe to leave that way, no matter what they promise. I don’t think the other pirates care; they prefer it in here, away from the concerns and problems of the somewhere. I am not the same. And Dllllizzzz… She needs help. She wants out. I can feel from her vibrations it is so.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said, then glanced to the side as Peg announced that there was less than an hour left. Time to suit up.

“Fight well, Spin,” Shiver said. “And I shall do the same. Thank you again for your time with us.”

I went running to clean up and get on my flight suit. I spent the next twenty minutes doing preflight checks and getting a final okay from Nuluba and Maksim to go into combat. As I finished, I spotted Chet standing down below, helmet under his arm. He’d taken off his sling last night, and his arm seemed mostly healed.

“With your permission,” he said, “I should like to fly with you today, Spensa.”

“It might get a little crazy,” I said.

“I understand crazy better than you may assume,” he replied. “And…well, I had RayZed take me out last night to run me through g-force training. I feel like I remember things better from long ago, ways to help my body withstand. Even if not, however, I prefer to join you. To be frank, I’m worried about the delvers. They failed in their attack yesterday. They will try something else.”

I nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

Chapter 33

It was a different sort of group that left the Broadsider base that day. For the duel we’d brought everyone, flying in a leisurely way—a convoy that had been part show of force, part proof of solidarity.

Today we took only the pilots. Peg joined my flight. Loaded with firepower, but slower than the fighters, her shuttle would be a target—but could deal damage almost like a much larger gunship. By her order, we kept off the comms. There was no joking, storytelling, or sitting and idly reading books during this flight.

I spent the initial part of the flight—before we met up with the other factions—trying to contain my excitement. Our destructors were still set to nonlethal, but each of our ships had been equipped with the ability to flip them to lethal mode in case this battle turned truly dangerous.

Peg didn’t want to do that. She wanted to recruit the pilots at Surehold, not kill them. But she was too pragmatic not to have the option available.

I gave Chet the controls and let him acclimatize himself to them. If I were somehow hurt during the fight, he might have to take over, as M-Bot remained unskilled. Chet performed a few simple maneuvers, showing that he did have some muscle memory for piloting, and I sat in thought, troubled by something Shiver had said. About icons.

I considered that, then closed my eyes, questing out from the cockpit with my senses. I forced myself to be extra quiet and subtle as I searched. I paused as I felt the delvers, or their attention, nearby. Waiting. And frightened.

They didn’t notice me. I could feel their minds pushing out from the lightburst in this direction, but they weren’t aware of me. I could remain invisible to them with effort, though I suspected this would only work so long as they didn’t know exactly where I was.

Feeling pleased with my improvements so far, I turned away from them and sensed outward. Looking for…familiarity. I remembered that when I’d first entered the nowhere, in that jungle, I had felt a mind close to mine. Before I’d found Chet, I had sensed something. Something I’d thought was my father.

Had that been my icon? It felt foolish to think it had actually been him. Yet as I searched, I…layered my mind with a warmth. The “star-ness” I’d learned on the Path. That was like a code, or a callsign. I’d used it to batter back Brade’s cloud upon me and escape from her prison. But it could also indicate who I was, where I was, though only to those I knew. Like a communication signal on a private comm band.

I felt something jump and contact me back. A mind. I brushed against it, and my heart leapt. My pin! Yes, I could feel it, and it responded. It… It…

It was angry at me for burying it.

That shocked me. The pin’s mind felt familiar, loving. It felt… It felt like family.

F-Father? I thought.

I was returned a warm sensation. I knew it was ridiculous, but…I mean… This place was strange.

Where are you? I asked.

I was given back a sense of…Surehold? Yes, that was where the icon was. How had it gotten there? I mean, Shiver had warned me they moved. But that far?

The mind retreated.

I’m coming to you, I sent to the pin, then came out of my cytonic trance, confused. It couldn’t truly be my father’s soul, could it? And why—how—was the pin at Surehold? The place where I was already going? That seemed extraordinarily coincidental. And that reminded me of Chet’s coincidental arrival, which I hadn’t thought about in a while.

Eventually, our flight met with the other pirate factions one by one. Peg welcomed each in turn, and I sensed relief in her voice. She’d been worried they wouldn’t show. She had us linger after the fourth faction joined, giving one final chance for the Cannonaders to appear. They didn’t.

“All right, people,” Peg said over the comm to us all. “We will absolutely win this. We’ve spent years in combat preparing, while they’ve been hiding, hoping the Superiority would send them more strength.

“They haven’t. The Superiority doesn’t care about them, or about any of us. They only care about their acclivity stone—so we’re going to hit them hard and take it away. Maybe they have other mining stations far across the empty boundaries, but I know they rely on this one more than any other. So we’ll lock the portal up tight, and they’ll have to play by our terms.”

The gathered eighty or so ships gave cheers and raucous calls in a variety of different types of vocalization. Chet and I joined in, hooting and shouting.

“My Jolly Rogers are ready to move to lethal destructors,” Gremm announced after the noise died down.

“Not unless the enemy does first,” Peg said. “Remember, these ones we’re fighting—they’re not really our enemy. They’re merely a bunch of frightened sods trapped between two forces. We’re going to come in not as raiders, but as liberators. So keep your rounds nonlethal. Call me or one of the tugs if you see a locked-up ship—even an enemy—about to collide with terrain. Stay focused on the fight, and if you face a pilot who’s too good, call for help.”

She got a round of agreement, and I was impressed. She and her sons had done an excellent job laying the groundwork for this battle.

“Okay!” M-Bot said in our cockpit. “I feel trembly, but somehow still eager to go forward.”

“Fear and eagerness?” Chet said. “That sounds like enthusiasm.”

“No, I think there would be more happy-eagerness,” M-Bot said. “This is nauseous-eagerness.”

“Perhaps exhilaration?” Chet said.

“I could go with that,” M-Bot replied. “Exhilaration. Yup, I’m exhilarated!”

“What are you two on about?” I asked.

“The AI and I have been bonding,” Chet said with a proud tone to his voice. “He’s been wanting help defining his specific emotions. I agreed to assist him.”

“Now?” I demanded.

“What better time?” Chet asked. “He is likely to be feeling a lot of strong emotions, after all.”

“We’ll do it quietly,” M-Bot promised.

Great. I didn’t believe that for a moment. Still, we continued on, entering Superiority territory. It didn’t look much different to me, though there were more fragments and they hung closer together. We flew straight toward the center, that enormous glowing white light. It felt as vast and intimidating as it ever had.

“Heads up, Broadsiders,” Peg said. “They’re incoming. Prepare for engagement.”

Her ship had a better scanner than mine; it took another two minutes for my sensors to see the oncoming ships. M-Bot counted them as they arrived, eventually settling on ninety-three ships. Slightly more than our numbers, and I didn’t see any retrofitted civilian ships among them. Hopefully Peg was right, and we had the better pilots.

Regardless, my excitement built. And the excitement was pure—no tension, no worry. A chance to fly and fight. A huge battle. I was ready.

“That’s odd,” Shiver said over the comm. “Captain, you see that?”

“Yeah,” Peg said. “Everyone, zoom your displays out.”

My proximity display expanded, revealing a larger view of the nearby fragments. Two just ahead of us were unnaturally close. They were going to bump…no, collide.

“Captain?” RayZed said. “Didn’t you…say that collisions between fragments were incredibly rare?”

“I did,” Peg replied.

“Now we’re encountering a second one, only a day after the last. Is…something wrong?”

“Can’t say,” Peg told us. “But…words. I’m pulling up IDs on some of those enemies. It appears the Cannonade Faction has come to join the party after all.”

I frowned until M-Bot’s scans indicated a group of new ships flying in to enter the fight. It was the Cannonade Faction. But they didn’t join us—instead they swooped around and fell in with the Superiority.

“Wonder how much they were paid to grow those flivis,” Semm grumbled. “Does Vlep really think the Superiority will keep whatever promises they made him?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Peg said on the wide comm. “Just a few more easy targets—and a few traitors to embarrass. Watch the debris from that collision—stay away from the fragments if you can. I don’t see the former champion on the scans, but he might be hiding in there somewhere. Do not engage if you spot him. Leave him to one of our aces.”

“He’ll come for me, Peg,” I said on a private line. “Hesho will want a rematch.”

“Bring down as many enemies as you can before it happens, Spin,” Peg said. “I think we’re better than they are—but I wouldn’t mind if you evened out our numbers.”

“Got it,” I said as we drew closer. Then the two groups finally broke, starfighters screaming toward one another—meeting right above those colliding fragments. My proximity sensor went ballistic as the landscapes impacted and chunks of rock began to break apart.

I grinned and launched into the middle of the chaos. It was so liberating to not have to worry about the safety of my companions. Cobb would have yelled at me for not bringing a wingmate, but here I could fly as I’d always secretly wanted to. Reckless. Free.

I lit up a ship in front of me, neatly blasting away its shield. That sent it into a series of panicked evasive maneuvers. Trusting my gut, I chased for a moment, then backed off and gave them space to screw up. They did just that, trying so hard to get away from me that they took a shot from Peg.

My grin widened as I dove to the side and shot down one, then two, then three enemy ships. Scud, this was awesome! I dove among the crazy mess, blue destructor blasts lighting the sky in all directions. M-Bot highlighted some enemies on the monitor: my reckless attacks had earned me two tails.

“So, let me see…” M-Bot said. “This emotion…is frustration at the crazed attack, mixed with the teensiest amount of fondness. And a desire to bonk her on the head with something that isn’t too heavy, but just heavy enough.”

“Vexation,” Chet said.

“Wow!” M-Bot said. “That’s perfect. Spensa is, like, vexation incarnate!”

“I thought you two said you’d be quiet,” I said.

“You’d rather not be able to hear us talk about you?” M-Bot asked.

Actually, no. I gritted my teeth in a half grin, half grimace and accelerated, diving to dodge the fire from our tails. At the risk of being called foolhardy, I pushed us low, weaving between parts of the landscape of one crumbling fragment.

Chet’s face on the corner of my screen looked a little pale. “How you doing back there, Chet?” I asked.

“Trying my best to enjoy the expert course in being vexed, Miss Nightshade!” he called. “I recognize this kind of fragment. It is from a twilight planet—those that grow in a dark solar system, feeding off a star that doesn’t glow brightly in the visible spectrum but still provides radiation.

“Those places tend to have plants and animals with much bioluminescence—and even a kind of mineral-luminescence. Judging from what I’ve seen, these rocks will likely explode in great showers of light if hit by destructor fire. Perhaps you can use that?”

Excellent. I spotted a hole in the breaking fragment ahead—and so I pushed for that. I wove up in a loop, then straight through the hole. My tails followed, but as I expertly wove between falling pieces of rock, their destructor shots hit on all sides of me. As Chet had suggested, the explosions lit up like flares. Indeed, the falling debris acted like flak ejection, intercepting the disruptor fire.

So long as I didn’t hit any big chunks, I’d actually be safer in here. Even as I was thinking that, I did hit one moderately sized chunk. Only one, and my shield deflected it.

“A sense of disbelief,” M-Bot said, “mixed with an absolute expectation that something like this would happen. Because of course she’d dive through a radioactive, explosive natural minefield.”

“Resignation,” Chet said with a chuckle.

“Quiet, you two,” I muttered as I pulled up and darted along underneath the ripping fragment, weaving between chunks of dropping earth. My two tails, blinded by the explosions, evidently lost track of me, as they broke off pursuit.

“That was well done, Spensa,” Chet said.

“We’re alive,” M-Bot said. “And oddly, I feel—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Complain about my recklessness again.”

“Actually,” he said. “I’m feeling something different. A tremble of excitement…building to relief, and a…a desire to do the same thing again?”

“Ha!” I said. “You thought it was fun!”

“It was,” M-Bot said. “Scud! Why did that feel fun? It was stupidly risky.”

“A little risk is what makes it enjoyable, AI!” Chet said. “That is the part that is daring! The part that is exciting! Assuming one can fight down the nausea.”

I looped around toward the main firefight, where I found Peg’s slower ship being tailed by someone fairly skilled. I drilled them with three precise shots in a row, making them break off.

“Enjoying danger sounds like an evolutionary problem,” M-Bot said. “Shouldn’t you find things fun when they’re safe?”

“Who knows?” I said. “I don’t think evolution was trying to create me. I just kind of happened.”

“Evolution doesn’t ‘try’ to do anything,” M-Bot said. “But like it or not, you are the pinnacle of its work. All evolutionary pressures throughout all the ages among your species have resulted in you.”

“Bet it feels embarrassed,” I said, finally shooting the ship that had been chasing Peg. It locked up and slowed, soaring idly through the battlefield. “Like that time all the parents got together to watch their kids march when I was in school, and my mother was forced to admit to the other moms that I was the one who’d glued her homemade suit of wooden ‘power armor’ to her uniform.”

“I wish I’d known you back then,” M-Bot said. “You sound like such a capricious child.”

“Uh, yeah. Child.”

I’d been sixteen.

“Where is Hesho?” I asked, looking over the battlefield. “Any signs of him yet on the scanners?”

“No,” M-Bot said. “But with this much debris flying around, my sight isn’t as precise as I’d like. He could be hiding in there somewhere.”

“Ship coming in from the right, Spensa,” Chet warned.

I dodged to the side—but as soon as that pilot realized who I was, they broke off the chase. I light-lanced around a chunk of acclivity stone that was floating upward from the crashing fragments, then fell in behind the fleeing ship. If the pilot was frightened of me, that would work to my advantage.

Once, I might not have found this battle enjoyable. I was of a higher skill level than these pilots—and I did love a challenge. As I matured though, I was beginning to realize that all combat was a challenge. Merely staying alive was challenging in a chaotic mess like this, where ships were darting in every direction and destructor blasts flew like embers in the forges. I felt alert, engaged.

As my prey dodged past some floating rubble, my proximity sensor beeped. A ship had been hiding in there, and it darted out as I passed, falling in behind me. One with a familiar design: small cockpit, large weapons signature.

Hesho had set a trap for me.

“Well hello, former champion,” Chet said. “About time you showed up.”

“Slight nausea,” M-Bot said. “Something I really shouldn’t be able to feel. Mixed with uncertainty.”

“That one’s apprehension,” I said, grinning. “Stomp it dead, M-Bot. This is going to be fun.”

I broke away from the chase. Hesho followed me, and the ship I’d been tailing immediately swung around and joined him. I’d beaten Hesho in our previous meeting, so while he obviously wanted a rematch, he’d brought a wingmate for support. There was no dishonor in pitting two against one in a battle like this—that was how the game was played.

The two flew as if to isolate me from the rest of the battle, herding me outward. If I tried to turn, one or the other moved to cut me off. I’d been in this situation before several times, fighting the Krell. In fact, I felt like maybe I’d taught Hesho this maneuver—a way to cull a ship from a battle and deal with it. In a big firefight, it was often preferable to have your ships fly defensively while a few “kill teams” of expert aces shrank the enemy numbers.

Well, I needed to make the fight a little less fair. Or make it unfair in my direction. I dodged right, risking a hit to my shield—and indeed I took one—to avoid being corralled. In a two-on-one fight, chaos favored me, and so I wanted to be in the thick of the shooting.

M-Bot helpfully popped up a tally of ships still fighting, proving that the pirates were holding their own, even making a little headway into the enemy lead. I—

A building appeared in the air directly in front of me.

Scud! I veered to the side, and my shield scraped the edge of the giant floating structure, shattering its windows in my wake as I skimmed one face of it.

“What the hell was that?” Chet asked.

“I don’t—”

Another building appeared at my side, tall and rectangular. Then something else flashed and materialized directly ahead of me. Was that…a swimming pool? I managed to duck around it, but it spun in the air, dumping a wave of water over us.

“A sudden spike of fear!” M-Bot said. “And general paralysis! I know this one myself! Panic! What is happening?”

A pair of scrubber tools folded from the sides of my canopy and ran across the curved surface, wiping away the water. Any other time, the news that my ship had rain wipers would have been amusing to me. I’d never fought in rain before, as we didn’t have it on Detritus.

However, it was completely overshadowed by, you know, the buildings. “Peg?” I shouted over the comm as a hovercar appeared some distance in front of me. “You seeing this?”

“Seeing it,” she said on a wide channel. “Not quite believing it. We’re in the middle of a warp of new objects entering the nowhere—never seen one of these in person. Careful, everyone. I don’t want to have to scrape any of you off the side of a building.”

Scud. I felt a…strange sensation. A stretching—or that’s the best I could explain it.

“Delver attack,” Chet guessed. “In the somewhere! That’s what is bringing all this in here—a delver has gone to your dimension, and as it strikes, it’s warping the city into this place. You don’t…recognize these structures, do you?”

“Thankfully no,” I said. “This isn’t happening on Detritus.” But yeah, I guessed he was right. The stretching sensation was the nowhere opening, being punctured as the delvers shoved things from my dimension in here.

“Deep breath, deep breath,” M-Bot said. “Okay, analysis says these structures appear to be Superiority designs.”

Why would they be attacking one of their own? Perhaps a planet that was in rebellion? The light next to Peg’s name changed, indicating she’d moved to a private line. “Damnedest thing here, Spin. Not one, but two explosive fragment collisions, and now this… Ha! Really feels like the nowhere is trying to get us, eh?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. My proximity sensor pinged, the display showing that Hesho and his wingmate had avoided the suddenly appearing buildings and were on my tail again. “Ha ha.”

“Don’t think too much of it,” Peg said. “It’s random, kid. I don’t want you getting any ideas that the Broadsiders grow enguluns or anything like that. We’re not unlucky. We found you, after all!” She cut the line.

“She’s wrong,” Chet said. “This is about us. The Path we’re walking. It has them angry.”

I veered to the side, narrowly avoiding another sudden building. It seemed that the process of shoving things into the nowhere was creating acclivity stone—as the stone blocks on one side of the building were making it hover. I’d heard you could magnetize metal by exposing it to a strong enough field; maybe this was something similar.

“You focus on flying,” Chet said. “I’m expanding my cytonic powers, and I think I can track the former champion and his wingmate. Even in this mess. I’ll give you warning if they try to ambush us again.”

“And I’ll suppress my outbursts for now,” M-Bot said. “Spensa…this is serious. Fly well, please.”

“Will do,” I said, veering carefully so I wouldn’t overwhelm the GravCaps. Chet had promised me he could take the g-forces—but I still wanted to be cautious. If I blacked out when buildings were appearing all around us…

“My scans indicate these buildings are uninhabited,” M-Bot said. “And they look old and run-down.”

As I flew, I tried to pick out what I could with my burgeoning cytonic senses. I felt the delvers, connected to one of their kind in the somewhere. And I overheard…annoyance, but not anger. They didn’t hear “noise” at the moment. They were…performing.

“It’s a test,” I said. “Winzik finally got smart and decided to try the delvers out on an unpopulated location, to see if they really were under control.”

“Perfect chance for them to throw a city at us,” Chet said.

Fortunately, the delver efforts didn’t seem precise—objects started appearing all through the battlefield, not merely in front of me. If they’d been able to control this exactly, they would have made something appear so close to me that I couldn’t dodge.

“The former champion is coming back around,” Chet said. “He’s staying close to fool scanners, but I can echolocate him there. He should soon emerge from behind that office building to the left.”

“Thanks,” I said. As I was getting the hang of flying in here, for the next bit I was able to keep my attention on Hesho. He flew well, as I’d trained him, but his wingmate wasn’t as skilled. They did manage to get vaguely on my tail, so I led the two of them around the side of an enormous building that had a large open space near the roof. Parking for ships, maybe?

As we rounded the building, I cut my speed and ducked inside. Hesho and his wingmate followed. The confines of the hangar were tight, but a huge window filling the entire far wall provided good visibility. I regretted my decision as both Hesho and his friend opened fire. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver in here, and slowing bunched us up.

Their shots took down my shields, so I hit my IMP—hoping it would reach them—and then I smashed my ship out through the back window as destructor fire chased me.

“I think you only managed to catch one of them with that,” M-Bot said. “The one who isn’t Lord Hesho.”

“Scud.” I swooped down along the building, then speared the bottom corner with my light-lance and made an assisted turn—barely in time, as destructor fire sprayed behind me. I took the next three turns fast, darting through an increasingly busy junkyard of a battlefield.

Was…was that a cow?

I kept flying through the cluttered urban debris, pushing to get ahead of Hesho. But he stuck on me. His wingmate didn’t have to; they could cut out of the chase at times and then swoop back in as we came around another direction. As long as Hesho was putting heat on me, I had to stay on the defensive.

I tried to loop around and pick off the wingmate, but Hesho unloaded a sequence of shots just ahead of where I had been planning to go—which forced me a different direction. Without a shield, I had to be extra cautious. So in seconds both of them were on me again.

Eventually one of those shots was going to land. I broke downward—flying among dropping chunks of rock and debris. Hesho wove behind me.

“Warning, Spensa,” Chet said. “I am tracking the wingmate, though it’s out of sight. I think Hesho has ordered the wingmate to fly around—they’re trying to pin us.”

Scud. He was correct. When I leveled out, I spotted the wingmate hovering there, ready to open fire while Hesho still pressed me from behind.

I dodged as best I could, and felt another stab of pride. I hadn’t taught Hesho this kind of advanced technique. But I liked to think that it was my foundation in combat teamwork that had led him to strategies like this.

I wove in and out of falling chunks of rock and hit my overburn, intending to run straight through the shots from the wingmate and hope none hit me. At that moment though, a spray of fire—seemingly out of nowhere—slammed into the wingmate, freezing the ship.

“We have arrived, Spin,” Shiver said over the comm. “I should think that you’d know better how to stay with a group. You motiles, always wandering off in random directions.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the assist.”

Other ships came in to nip at the two resonants—chasing them back away from the mess of appearing buildings. Those were largely centered on me, so while the delvers weren’t precise, they could evidently lob things in my general direction.

I was glad Shiver and the others were mostly moving to the other side of the battlefield. As much as I’d have liked help against Hesho, I didn’t want the others flying in these dangerous confines. Honestly, I was worried most about Hesho himself—as long as he stuck on me, he was risking death.

I needed to stun him quickly, if I could. I gave chase, passing a couple of drifting ships, locked up—but with their shields reignited to protect from collisions. A Superiority tug was gliding in to pull them to safety, and nobody attacked it. Kind of like how you might leave an enemy medic alone on an Old Earth battlefield. I found the civility of it encouraging.

I pulled out of the lower debris field, then veered sharply as the air began to vibrate. A second later, a small fragment appeared just above me—a chunk of city stretching for hundreds of meters, marked with sidewalks and planters.

Right. Okay. I could handle this. I steered up over the edge of it and wiped the sweat from my hands. That maneuver had let Hesho get behind me again, unfortunately. He started firing, and I barely dodged.

It was time to see if I could exploit his muscle memory. I started a routine maneuvering sequence, one I’d drilled into him and the others as I’d trained them outside the delver maze. A warm-up meant to teach good fundamentals.

Hesho fell in behind me as I moved, and his disruptor shots trailed off. Yes, I thought. You know this routine. You flew it with me dozens of times.

“Why did he stop?” Chet asked.

I didn’t respond, continuing the motion. Hesho inched forward, and I let him fall almost into my wingmate position. I’d been intending to break out of this maneuver unexpectedly and throw him off, maybe earning me a breather to reignite my shield. But this seemed to be triggering a memory in him.

Together we soared over the new fragment, no longer fighting. No longer worried about other ships—as we were getting increasingly distant from the others, who were staying away from the debris. I continued the motions. I could almost feel Hesho’s longing, his thoughts stretching toward mine…

Then my mind went cold. It was like I’d been doused by a bucket of ice water. I pulled my ship back to be even with his, then glanced toward his cockpit. It was tinted dark, which prevented me from making out any of his features.

It wasn’t dark enough, however, to obscure the two powerful white spots that were shining deep within the cockpit where Hesho’s eyes would have been. The delvers had taken him.

Chapter 34

Hesho broke out of our two-person formation, then flared his boosters and barreled away from me.

“Oh, scrud,” Chet said.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “What’s wrong?”

“Let her fly, AI,” Chet said as I fell into pace behind Hesho. “Something is very wrong.”

“What?” M-Bot asked.

“The delvers,” I said. “They…took him. His eyes are glowing white.”

Chet cursed softly. “I’d hoped we would be safe from such direct intervention in a group. We must be too spread out on this battlefield.”

I stayed on Hesho’s tail as he looped around and flew through the center of the large debris field of hanging buildings. The remaining fighters on both sides had moved to the perimeter, as it had gone from dangerous to insane to fly here, with chunks spinning and colliding like an asteroid field.

Two buildings smashed together ahead of us, spraying shards of glass like rain—and as I flew through it they snapped against my hull and canopy, reminding me that I’d never found a chance to reignite my shield.

Why did the delver want to fly through this? In the past, they’d chased me. Now this one wanted me to chase it?

Well, I was game. It wanted to see how good I was? Let it watch. I expertly trailed Hesho-delver. We darted down through the narrowing crack between a chunk of rock and a free-flying factory, then flew underneath the still-crumbling fragments. That took us through a stream of falling water that was spraying from a building above.

Was this the delver actually flying? No…these maneuvers were familiar. Somehow it was leaning on Hesho’s skills. Well, I was going to rise to its test. We soared between crashing pieces of rock, down alongside a falling roadway, through sprays of debris that clattered against my canopy.

Everything else faded, and I absently muted other comm chatter. Nothing mattered but me and the chase.

The delver tried increasingly difficult moves to get me to trip up. Soon I was sweating—my attention tight like a narrow scanner band. Just me, that ship, and the immediate terrain.

Hesho-delver miscalculated on a light-lance pivot and slammed into a big chunk of stone, side first. His shield fuzzed, briefly visible as it absorbed the brunt of the impact. I grinned as I took the turn without a problem. Another hit like that, and he’d…

He’d…be dead.

My focus shattered like glass. I was suddenly aware not merely of my immediate surroundings—the cockpit, my sweaty hands on the controls, Chet breathing heavily in the copilot seat, the beeping proximity sensor—but the battlefield as a whole. Falling rock, crumbling buildings, hanging acclivity stone chunks.

It wasn’t just a series of obstacles anymore. It was a death trap. And this wasn’t some contest to see how good I was.

My stunned recovery took a moment, during which we came dangerously close to hitting a piece of a falling building.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “The rest of the fighting has paused. Most of the ships on both sides have been locked up, but there are fifteen remaining functional fighters on the enemy side, while our side has twelve, including Gremm and Peg. But everyone has agreed to a cessation for now, as the battlefield is too dangerous. They want to make sure everyone locked up gets pulled out to safety before resuming.”

Ahead, Hesho wove between falling chunks. He’d slowed, taunting me to follow. They wanted to coax me into danger. They were willing to throw away Hesho’s life for a chance to hurt me. I needed to end this chase. Now.

I grabbed the control sphere and started firing, causing Hesho to slam on his overburn and blast away. His ship’s faster speed shouldn’t matter among all this debris. Unfortunately, that same debris blocked my shots. I ended up pelting a chunk of acclivity stone—broken off what appeared to be a storefront.

As Hesho dodged, he took another collision from a falling piece of rock. His shield went down. Scud. Shooting at him was making him more reckless. I followed, uncertain what to do, my worry deepening—but Chet and M-Bot stayed quiet and gave me time to think. And as I did, memories returned to me out of the cloud that was my past. Flying with Hesho and the kitsen—and with Brade, Vapor, and Morriumur. Days spent training—memories I hadn’t even realized I’d lost.

“M-Bot,” I said, “open a line to his ship.”

“Done,” M-Bot said.

“Flight Fifteen,” I snapped, trying to channel Cobb like I’d done when training Hesho and the others, “line up! Now!”

I backboosted, pulling my ship to a halt.

Ahead, Hesho’s vessel slowed. How much did the delvers control, and how much was him? They needed his flying skill. Hopefully that meant they couldn’t dominate him entirely.

He’d responded to my voice. His drill instructor. I searched through my clouded recollections of that day. Hadn’t…hadn’t Hesho had a different name for our flight?

“Flowers of Night’s Last Kiss,” I said. “Time to call roll! Fall in line, Hesho!”

Hesho’s ship stopped and turned. I didn’t wait—I sprayed him with destructor fire. I felt only a tad guilty. But my shots flew true, causing his ship to flash blue and lock up.

Behind me Chet released a loud, relieved breath. “Nice flying,” he said softly.

“A soothing calm,” M-Bot said. “Like I’ve just been serviced with a nice fresh can of lubricant. I’ll call it repose.”

“We’re not done yet,” I said. Using maneuvering thrusters, I inched over to his ship—close enough that we nearly bumped one another amid the falling debris.

His canopy flashed and went transparent, the tint fading. He sat in there, those eyes glowing white, facing toward me in his little seat. His teeth bared. I pressed my mind forward, ignoring the way the delver behind him screamed at me. I saw deep inside it.

And there I found fear.

“Chet, take the controls,” I said. “Don’t let us drift apart.”

“As you ask,” he said. “But…why?”

In response I popped my cockpit, hoping my guess was correct.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “This…is very odd behavior.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Chet, if I slip and fall, try to grab me or something.”

“Uh—”

I climbed out of the cockpit and stepped onto my ship’s wing. From there, I felt a strange sense of disorientation—buildings floating overhead, tumbling in the sky. Two crumpled fragments locked together from their collision, spinning slowly. A white glow to my right: the lightburst looking on us through debris-filled space.

I was standing at the crossroads of infinity, without lifeline or safety rope. Chet used maneuvering thrusters to keep the wing steady as I inched over to Hesho’s craft. Then, before I could think better of it, I jumped.

I landed square on Hesho’s smaller fighter. It was more than large enough to hold me up, even if the cockpit wasn’t much bigger than a flight helmet. I leaned down, stared at him through the now-clear canopy, and stoked the star inside me. The me-ness. I let it shine out cytonically, invisible to conventional sight.

Hesho-delver cringed away, pure white eyes open and glowing bright enough that I couldn’t make out his other features.

“Why are you so afraid of me?” I said. “What is it that I don’t know yet that makes you act this way?”

You must return to us the Us you separated, noise. It was a deliberate attempt to get me to think of something else, judging by what my “listening” was telling me. Give them back.

“Look,” I said, “can’t we please talk about this? What you’re doing to me? And my people?”

This corrupts, they sent me. I understood the implication—they meant that talking to me, interacting, risked changing them. They tried to withdraw, but I…latched on. With my growing cytonic senses, I grabbed hold of the delver. It was like Brade had done to me.

Except I was far, far weaker. I held on only barely. Either I didn’t have a talent for this, or I needed a ton more practice. Still, even that little attempt panicked the delver. This brought the full brunt of their attention, fear, and hatred upon me. In that moment others gathered, and they tried to destroy me in the only way they knew how.

By trying to make me one of them.

I was pulled into the nowhere entirely. I became formless; I had no body, merely a mind floating in not darkness—as it normally was—but an infinite whiteness. Everything around me was white because it was full, packed with the delvers. Like an ocean is filled with water.

They saw me as a corrupted version of them now. Cytonics were like delvers. In a way, I was a cousin to them. They saw me as a tempter also, luring them toward their destruction with crass things like linearity and individuality.

Their minds assaulted me, and pushed me to see as they did. To see the peace, the harmony, of shared existence. I clung to my individuality, but it was frayed, worn, like a battle standard that had been shot full of holes. In seconds, what scraps of memories I still had left of my friends and family had frayed further, and my life in the somewhere began to vanish entirely.

They wanted to erase it. Because of…pain? Yes, they knew pain, from the past, but had escaped it. I latched onto this. It was a clue, or a seed of one. Yet…it was terrifying how I responded to their offer. To the peace, the blending of self, the eternity without pain—there could be no pain without the passage of time. There could be no anger when everyone agreed absolutely on everything.

I can’t really explain why that was so entrancing. I can’t even explain what it felt like—how do you describe such a thing? I was just a pilot. Without the right words.

I didn’t want to succumb to them. But I also had difficulty fighting. In a panic I stretched out, searching for help. Perhaps from my friends? Whose names I was forgetting… Whose faces…blended…into white…

And then, something.

Support from someone distant. A…friend? That comforting mind that was somehow my pin. The one that I was increasingly certain was my father. It bolstered me and brought with it images. The delightful scent of water dripping in the caverns back home. The calming purpose of tinkering on M-Bot’s ship with Rig. My mother’s exhausted smile, after a long day of work, upon seeing me. Gran-Gran’s steady voice speaking of the heroines of the past.

Then another mind, from the other side. A mind that reminded me of things I loved. Exploring. Flying. Stories. Existing was pain, but it was also joy. With those memories bolstering me, I stoked myself.

My star came alight. I wasn’t nothing here. I was Spensa, and my soul was fire. It exploded with brightness, and I offered that sense of myself to them—I bludgeoned them with who I was, and the emotions I felt.

They pulled away at that offer of corruption. At the offer of…of dissention. They retreated, though our exchange had told us a great deal about one another. As the sensation faded, I found another offer. A…truce.

Within me, they found my longing for my friends to stop dying. They’d seen my excitement for the battles I’d found in the belt of the nowhere.

Stay…the delvers pled with me. Stay and do not pass Surehold. We will stop.

Stay? I blinked, becoming aware of the space around me. I was hanging on to Hesho’s ship, looking down into those portals of light that were his eyes.

Stay. It wasn’t a word, but an impression—of me stopping my journey on the Path of Elders. Of staying at Surehold, or moving back out into the belt, but going no farther inward than the Superiority base. Of not continuing the Path of Elders or entering the lightburst.

What about my friends? I sent them. The people in the somewhere.

In truce with you, we leave them alone. We ignore the noise. That particular use of “noise” indicated Brade and Winzik. It wasn’t as strong a promise as I’d have preferred—it felt like from the way their minds worked, if they were pulled into our realm they’d still attack. But they would start ignoring Winzik.

Stay, the delvers repeated, the white fading from Hesho’s eyes. Stay away. And we promise truce.

With that, the light vanished completely—leaving me clinging to the outside of a frozen ship containing one very confused kitsen.

Chapter 35

I slumped into the cockpit of my ship.

That had been…a lot. A lot to think about, a lot to feel. A lot to remember.

Scud, I remembered. Gran-Gran, Mother, Rig. Even Jorgen, though the faces of my other friends remained vague.

“I told you that I understood crazy,” Chet said. “I was wrong. Thank you for the master class.”

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “That was…interesting of you. Do you want a list of the emotions I’m feeling right now?”

“I get the sense they’d mostly be variations on frustration and bafflement.”

“You’d be right,” he replied.

“I’ll pass, then,” I said, as I closed the cockpit. “Come on, you two. Climbing out on my wing in the middle of a battlefield? You’ve both seen me do worse.”

“Which is why I didn’t call it strange,” M-Bot said. “Strange implies odd, or out of sequence with your normal behavior. Still, um… What the hell?”

I grinned. “Wow. You used that curse perfectly, M-Bot.”

“It’s the emotions,” he said. “I now understand the sense of frustration everyone else feels with you! It dovetails perfectly into exasperation, which makes me finally understand why it is people swear at you so much!”

“That’s great!” I said.

“I know! Also: WHAT THE HELL, SPENSA?”

“Hesho was possessed by a delver,” I said.

“Yes, Chet explained that,” he said. “So you went closer?”

“They’re afraid of me, M-Bot. I realized it…and it just felt right…”

“Right isn’t a feeling. Trust me, I’ve been practicing. Weren’t you listening?”

“Right is a feeling for me,” I said. “At least this time when I got out of the cockpit, I didn’t end up floating around in a vacuum. Chet, how much of that did you hear?”

“Not a lot,” he said. “My cytonic communication talents are not as powerful as yours.”

“Well,” I said, “immortality and the ability to cytonically echolocate are both also cool.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t,” he replied. “I did have enough skill to sense you in pain—and their attack. I tried to feed you memories of yourself. It appears to have helped. After that they left, though I couldn’t sense why.”

I should tell him, I thought. But the delvers’ parting thoughts—stay, truce—haunted me. I first wanted to think about what it all meant. “M-Bot,” I said. “Please open a comm line to Hesho.”

He sighed, but complied.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“I meditate upon the emptiness that is my past,” Hesho said softly. “And about how, despite it being blank, I know you were part of it. We were…friends?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Was I the leader of a pirate force?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Why do you ask?”

We floated together, but fortunately the flashes of buildings and other junk entering the nowhere had stopped. Much of it—the chunks with acclivity stone at least—drifted around us. Lazy, almost serene, like we were underwater in a vast ocean following some terrible storm.

“When the Cannonaders took me captive,” Hesho explained in his deep authoritative voice, “I immediately tried to seize command of their organization. I felt I should be their leader. They thought I was ‘cute’ and attempted to use me as a mascot instead. I…disabused them of this behavior.”

I grinned, trying to imagine how that had looked. What did a tiny fox man a quarter meter tall do to “disabuse” pirates?

“Eventually,” he said, “I settled into my role as an expert pilot and followed Vlep. But something about it felt wrong. There were embarrassing holes in my piloting skill. So I wondered. Perhaps I was a leader of a group of pirates who maybe hadn’t flown in a long time?”

“You were commander of a ship, Hesho,” I explained. “Your kind can crew a small capital ship that isn’t much bigger than a starfighter for the rest of us. You at least occasionally piloted it yourself, which is why you learned some skills—but you had crew working things like the shields for you.”

“Aaah…” he said. “That thought…it wears a path in my mind, champion. Light sparks, like stone and steel. My ship…the…Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun?”

“Yes!”

“I see it like a faded picture exposed to the elements,” Hesho said. “But…I can remember my home. The feeling of it warm on my face and fur. Yes. Being with you is good for me. I will remain with you, champion, and serve you as your bodyguard until you return to me who I was.”

“Uh… You’re my friend. You don’t need to—”

“I am your sworn companion,” he said firmly, “and you my feudal lord. Do not object to this arrangement. It is done.”

I sighed. I’d been about to explain to him that he was an emperor, but perhaps it wasn’t wise to give him more ammunition. Only Hesho could become someone’s servant using a forcible imperial declaration. Still, I could do worse than having a dedicated gerbil-fox samurai following me about. And it was encouraging that Hesho could remember the name of his ship now.

I stuck him with a light-lance and towed him up through the debris toward where the others were waiting. As we flew, I grappled with what the delvers had told me.

They want me to stop following the Path of Elders, I thought. Which is an obvious sign that I should continue.

Yet…if I could make them break their pact with Winzik… It was a compelling offer. Assuming I could trust them.

I found myself conflicted, and determined that I shouldn’t make a decision in the middle of a battle. I put the thoughts aside for the moment, and emerged from the biggest clot of debris to find most of the other pirates lined up in two rows of deactivated ships, maintained by the tugs that would eventually reactivate them. The remaining active ships were a little ways off, also in two groups.

As I arrived, a group of ships peeled off from the enemy faction. Vlep, commander of the Cannonade pirates, and a few of his crew were leaving. Apparently seeing me defeat their best pilot a second time meant they’d had enough.

“Give us immunity, Peg,” Vlep’s voice said over the comm. “Let me take my downed ships, and I’ll leave.”

“What!” another voice shouted, in what I thought was the heklo language. “Our deal!”

“You should know better than to make deals with pirates, Lorn,” Vlep said. “What say you, Peg?”

“Done,” Peg said immediately.

Other members of the pirates who had joined with us grumbled, but Peg was making the correct decision. Vlep and his traitors weren’t our ultimate goal. Without them, there would only be ten working ships on the Superiority’s side. We had thirteen. And it was obvious which was the more skilled force.

Vlep hovered over to try to attach a light-lance to Hesho’s ship. However, Hesho’s voice came on the comm. “I have been bested a second time,” he said. “And in the name of honor, I have chosen to join the new champion as her sworn companion.”

Vlep cursed softly. “You would so easily break with your allies, Darkshadow?”

“I have made no oaths,” Hesho said. “You are not my liege. Indeed, your treatment of me when I first arrived is among the only memories I hold. Be glad I warned you of my shift in allegiance. We are now enemies. Should we meet again, I shall reveal to you the consequences of my anger.”

Vlep retreated without responding, following the others off the battlefield. I joined the line of active pirate ships facing down the small group of Superiority forces.

“All right, Lorn,” Peg said over a wide broadcast. “You want to just surrender now?”

“You know I can’t do that,” his voice replied.

“They’re never going to let you out of here, Lorn,” Peg said. “They don’t care about you. Why are you still loyal?”

“You know they have my family.”

“So we squeeze them,” Peg said. “We withhold their acclivity stone until they agree to send through your family. They pretend they have the power in this relationship, but so long as we own this place—and make it our home—they lose every bit of bargaining power they have.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and I leaned forward, hands on my controls. We could end this easily, with the odds in our favor.

Peg waited though. No signal to attack.

That heklo voice spoke again. “You promise to do this for me?” he asked. “For anyone they’re holding? You’ll get them brought through so we can be together?”

“My word and oath,” Peg said. “But you have to turn the facility over to me. All security codes. All access.”

Silence again. Finally, the heklo continued. “There are a few people among the base security officers who I’m nearly certain are Superiority agents sent to watch me. We’ll have to move quickly and isolate them until we can make sure.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Peg said. “I’ve got a plan. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal.”

Chapter 36

A short time later, Shiver, Dllllizzzz, and I flew in low toward the Superiority base—escorting Peg, her sons, and Lorn. The rest of the unfrozen pirate vessels formed an ominous presence higher in the sky.

Surehold turned out to be bigger than I’d expected. The campus sprawled across an unusually large and thick fragment marked by hills and rocky crags. I counted four separate acclivity stone quarries, each attended by a variety of modern machines. The central section of the base comprised about a dozen buildings, and while it wasn’t large in comparison to the crowded Starsight, it was almost as big as the entire DDF headquarters.

After making certain their large antiaircraft guns were offline—control transferred to Peg—we landed and let her and Lorn disembark. Curious workers stopped on the flight deck to watch, though Lorn—the base commander—waved a winged arm to calm them. Together Lorn, Peg, and her two sons entered a nearby building, the base security structure. Inside she could be given full and permanent control over the base, with her own overrides and passwords.

After a tense few minutes—during which I stood ready to blast open the wall and try to grab Peg if something went wrong—a call to quarters went out on the Superiority channel. Martial law was declared. Peg’s sons prowled out of the building a moment later, armed and armored, with Lorn guiding them. They’d secure the few people on base he thought would be trouble.

Quick as that, it was done. I hadn’t expected there to be trouble—the real fight had been the one with starfighters. We’d left most of the Superiority pilots in their ships, which were locked up without friendly tugs to unfreeze them, guarded by trustworthy pirate flights.

Still, I remained on watch—hovering—for another half hour as Peg and her sons took full command of the base. Finally, as the word came that all was clear, some of the pirates began to land on the flight pad. Hesho settled down beside us in his own ship, but didn’t move to leave it.

I glanced back at Chet. “What do you think?” I asked.

“It’s looking good,” he said. “But if anything were to go wrong, this would be the time—when we’re flat-footed and assume we’ve won.”

“Agreed.”

So the two of us, paranoid as we were, waited another good half hour. But it seemed that the final stage of Peg’s plan had indeed gone off without a hitch. As the pirates unloaded from their ships, Peg’s voice came over our comms and the flight deck loudspeakers.

“No looting,” she ordered. “This is our home now. Regular base personnel have been confined to quarters; if you encounter a locked room, leave it alone. But you’re free to investigate the place, pick an empty room in the barracks to claim as your own, all that fun stuff. Just be warned. I get word of you harming base personnel or breaking stuff, and I’ll be…upset.”

Most of the pirates made for the barrack building. I asked Hesho to stay put and keep watch while Chet and I climbed free, then Chet pointed toward a large set of doors ahead of us. The shipping warehouse, where the portal would be.

You still here? I sent to my pin. I’d confirmed, upon coming close, that it was here.

I got back a contented, quiet impression. Hiding now. Seek me later.

Okay… Well, I had a job to do at the moment anyway. Chet used some controls to open the large bay doors of the warehouse, revealing a vast room with a tall ceiling. It felt vacuous despite the other end being piled high with raw acclivity stone waiting to be shipped to the Superiority.

On the wall closest to us was the portal. It was much larger than the others I’d seen in here—covering a square that looked about six meters on each side. Chet and I stood there staring at it for a good long while. As I started toward it, Chet put his hand on my shoulder.

“Miss Nightshade,” he said. “Might I inquire what the delvers told you? Before they left?”

“They…offered me a truce,” I admitted. “They want me to proceed no farther inward than Surehold. The next step on the Path would take us that way, wouldn’t it?”

“Almost assuredly.”

“Well, they don’t want me doing that. They made a promise. If I stay here, they’ll leave me alone.”

“And your people in the somewhere?”

“They implied they’d halt attacks, though it wasn’t clear if they understood completely what that means. They did promise to stop listening to Winzik and Brade—the two people they’d earlier made a deal with on the enemy’s side.”

Chet sighed and settled down on a box. He suddenly looked old to me, his mustache drooping and in need of a wax, his skin…wan. He gave me a smile, but something about him seemed worn out. And when he spoke, some of the facade—the persona—had faded, leaving a normal man.

“That’s a good offer,” he said. “Better than I ever thought they’d make. They’re frightened.”

“That’s what I decided as well,” I said, pacing before him in the cavernous warehouse, helmet under my arm. “Which makes me think I should refuse the offer. They’re desperate. I should keep doing what I’m doing, because it’s worrying them.”

“Except?”

“Except ostensibly, I came in here to find a way to stop them! And now I’ve found it. Shouldn’t I take it? Isn’t it my duty to at least try this?”

Chet nodded slowly.

I paced back the other direction. “How trustworthy are they, do you suppose?”

“I’m not sure I can say,” he replied. “I do get the sense that they live in the moment, but I know they also never change. So as long as they continue to be afraid of you, they should continue wanting the same thing—which means they’d persist in upholding any promise they made.”

“That’s not as strong as I’d like,” I said. “But…yeah, that makes sense. They don’t have honor—it’s not a thing they even comprehend. And they are backing out of a promise they made to Winzik. They could do the same to me.”

I paced back the other way, arms folded. This felt like a lot to put on one person still in her teens. How did I decide what could be the fate of not merely my people, but the entire galactic civilization?

“It feels like I should at least try them out,” I said. “If I can remove the delvers from the war… Scud, it would mean so much. It’s more than any pilot, no matter how skilled, could ever hope to accomplish.

“But if I take their deal, what then? Do I go back to the somewhere? How? Sneak through this portal into a Superiority base?”

“You’d need to remain a threat to the delvers,” Chet said. “Always on the cusp of doing the thing they’re afraid you’ll do—that is the best chance at keeping them honest.”

I nodded, though my stomach fell a little. That meant remaining in the nowhere, at least until the war against the Superiority was won. Could I really do that? I paced back the other direction.

“I worry that this is the wrong time to make concessions to the delvers,” I said. “Beyond that, our biggest advantage against Winzik is the fact that his coup is still relatively new. He’s securing power, Jorgen says—and doesn’t have full control yet. This seems the best time for me to press forward, continue learning about my powers. Exploit the fact that our enemies’ balance of power is unstable.”

“A difficult position,” Chet said. “Could I maybe…offer you another option? I don’t want to complicate the issue further, but I find I must speak.”

I glanced across at him, sitting on the box. He gave me a smile. Not an overly cheerful, toothy explorer’s smile. A tired, hopeful smile.

“What?” I asked.

“Come with me, Spensa,” he said, “and explore the nowhere.”

I froze in place.

“As I’ve been wandering alone,” he said, “I’ve started wishing I could pass on some of what I know. Wishing for a student, someone who shared my enthusiasm, my love of all things new and exciting. What if we didn’t continue on the Path of Elders? What if we turned away and just went off on our own?

“We could see what the farthest reaches hold! I’ve heard of distant fragments with creatures that sound strikingly similar to dragons! I’ve heard of water fragments full of caverns with air pockets, connected by transparent stone!”

Some of his old boisterousness returned, and his voice changed, more clipped—with a faint accent—as he stepped up to me. “Spensa,” he said, “we have an entire galaxy in microcosm. Worlds to explore. We could even return back here to Surehold on occasion. Scratch that flying itch! Spend time with the Broadsiders. Why, you could teach me to fly again! I show you a galaxy, and you show me who I used to be! A pilot, yes, and presumably friends to an AI. Me! Ha!

“Wouldn’t that be incredible, Spensa? Wouldn’t it be amazing? We could watch the delvers, see that they don’t attack your friends. As you guessed, they’ll be much more likely to keep their word if you’re within striking distance of continuing your quest. You wouldn’t be giving it up. No, merely a delay! A little…time off. To travel this wondrous place.”

It hit me like a punch to the stomach.

During my travels in here—the exploration and the fighting alike—something had been building in me. A sense of disconnect between the person I was becoming and the person I’d always imagined myself becoming.

In that moment, I was shocked—physically—by how badly I wanted to stay. I really loved it here. Exploring the belt? Going on grand adventures? And beyond that, fighting in the sky without the stress of losing those I loved? Being a hero, the best pilot in literally the entire universe?

“It sounds so nice,” I said to Chet. “Exploring, dueling…like…”

“Like a story?” he said softly.

I nodded. “Why do we remember the stories, Chet, but not our families? Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I did.”

Together we turned to face the portal looming on the far wall. When I’d joined the DDF as a pilot, I’d imagined glorious battles and storybook heroism. I’d imagined new worlds to conquer. Instead I’d found pain. Friends dying. People struggling at the end of their stretched-thin nerves. I’d found complications, anger, fear.

I’d discovered I wasn’t a hero. Not like in the stories. But here…I could be that. And it felt so, so very right for me to stay and claim it. This place sang to me, like beautiful music from Old Earth. It vibrated my soul.

Didn’t I deserve to stay? Hadn’t I done enough? I’d saved Detritus from the bomb, and then from the delver. Wasn’t that enough for one woman? And now I had the chance to escape into a story…all the while providing a vital service to my people. I traded my future in the somewhere for holding back the destructive force of the delvers.

It was perfect. Except.

Jorgen. My friends. Could I…

“Chet,” I said, “you’ve always been afraid of the Path of Elders. Why?”

“I worry that if I walk it,” he said, “I’ll stop being myself.”

“Why?”

“Because every path we walk changes us, Spensa,” he answered. “This one more than most. Please, just think about my offer. Let’s not rush into this. There’s no harm in taking a few hours, is there?”

“No,” I said. “No, there’s not.”

He squeezed my shoulder in thanks, then bowed—something I don’t think anyone non-kitsen had ever done to me before—and quietly withdrew. I sat down on a box, looking at the portal. It felt wrong to be here and not discover what it had inside it. Yet…I hesitated.

It felt like I should know before I continued. Scud. Was I really thinking about turning away now?

Yes. I was. I remembered the pure joy of “sailing” across that ocean fragment with M-Bot and Chet. I remembered the thrill of discovering ruins that humans had built. I had loved the fights against Hesho, at least before buildings began appearing around me.

Being here was living an adventure. While being in the somewhere was… It was about pain. And scud, deep down, I realized I was so tired.

I’d been running since I could remember. Dashing from disaster to disaster. Desperately working to get into flight school, fixing M-Bot in secret, being a double agent on Starsight, confronting the delver…

It had worn me thin. Yet in here I’d found wonder, adventure, and excitement.

I sat there for a time, until footsteps scraping stone made me spin around. A large figure lumbered my direction, wearing a plumed hat. Peg smiled at me as she stepped up, a gun slung over her thick shoulder.

“The base is ours,” she told me. “Well and truly. I almost can’t believe it.”

“You earned it, Peg,” I said. “That was an amazing plan you put together.”

“Thank you,” she said, grinning. She nodded toward the portal. “Find what you wanted?”

“Both yes and no,” I said softly. “I’m honestly not sure yet.”

“I…heard that you might be staying.”

I glanced at her, frowning. In turn, she gestured toward the top of the wall. “Cameras,” she said. “I saw you two going this way, and had to make sure you didn’t accidentally open the portal and reveal what we’d done to the Superiority. I’m sorry to not give you and Chet privacy, but this is too valuable an asset for that.”

Right. Security officer. I tried not to feel offended. I mean, I hadn’t asked her to leave us alone—and she had a point about the portal.

“What would it take,” Peg said to me, “to get you to stay with the Broadsiders?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Peg,” I said. “This is all a little overwhelming right now.”

“Fair enough,” she replied. “Grow igandels in thought—it is a good time. While you do, let me ask you something. Do you know why I was willing to come in here when no one else was? I knew the truth of what the Superiority was doing here. Not letting people out. Forced labor in another dimension. I came anyway. You curious to know why?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Out there, I was a killer,” Peg said, her voice softer. “In here was a new life. A fresh life. I didn’t know I was pregnant with my boys; that might have changed my mind. All I wanted was an escape from my old life, and coming in here offered it.

“Things out there are messy, Spin. Everybody arguing, fighting. Killing. But a lot of the things they argue over, well, they don’t matter in here. We don’t need food, and there’s plenty of space. Politics…ideology…those are things we can make up for ourselves in here. We can make this place whatever we want it to be.”

She turned, waving toward the complex. “I’ve known for years now that if I could just get this base—grab it by the throat and start building it up as a home, not a prison—we could make it wonderful. We could make a society. I want you to help me do that.”

“But Chet wants me to go exploring with him,” I said.

“I know, and I think that’s an excellent idea!” Peg said. “I’d want to put you on that kind of assignment frequently, between training seasons. Do you know what is out there? Past the empty stretches?”

“No.”

“I don’t either,” Peg said. “It’s hard to fly that far; when you hit the enormous gap between fragments it starts eating up your ashes, and you risk losing yourself. But I’ll tell you this—there are three other Superiority mining bases in the nowhere. I was given that information when I was applying for this job.”

“Only four total?” I said. “For the entire Superiority?”

“Exactly,” Peg said. “And this is the largest—which is why I’m certain they’ll meet my demands. But I’m also worried. If they use those other three bases—and somehow load them with enough reality ashes to cross the empty stretches—I could still get invaded. Plus Vlep is still out there, a real danger.

“I need fighters. More importantly, I need trainers of fighters. Then I need someone crazy enough to go explore, to discover how to cross the vast gaps.” She looked back at me. “You are the right person, Spin. The somewhere is a mess. But the nowhere can be something better. I want you to help me make it so.”

I…

Scud, I didn’t need this too. Not after what Chet had said. I knew they hadn’t coordinated it; Peg was just acting at a convenient moment. I felt double-teamed regardless. Triple-teamed, actually. Chet. Peg.

And my own heart.

“I reserved one of the officer suites for you,” Peg said. “You don’t have to make any decisions. But for now, why not go grab a shower and relax a little? Think over your options. You can at least stay there until we locate Surehold’s reality icon, and I can give you those ashes I promised.”

I considered. And scud, she was right. I needed some time. Plus, a shower sounded so nice. I called M-Bot and Hesho to let them know, then went to the room Peg indicated. It was an enormous suite—of the ridiculous type.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to the shower. I made the mistake of lying down on the bed first. And after the fighting, the chaos, the tension of my decision…I just found myself unable to stay awake.

And so I drifted off.

Interlude

As I slept, someone tried to talk to me.

I wanted to talk to him.

Something stopped me.

It was another cloud, like before. Like the prison that Brade had put around me. Though…it felt different. Like a march set to different words. Same sounds. New song.

I fought through it, but no matter which way I turned, I got lost. I tried telling myself that none of this was real, that there were no places here. Nowhere to go. I merely had to…make myself be somewhere else…

It was hard to think through this fog.

“Spensa?” Jorgen’s voice. “Spensa, I can feel you.”

I…I can’t feel you…

“You seem distant. Why? What is wrong?”

I’m lost.

“I can barely hear you. What was that?”

Lost…

“Spensa, things are tough right now. I… Everyone is looking to me for answers. I could use someone to talk to.”

He needed me. That need made the haze thinner, and I thought I saw the way. I moved toward it, but each footstep was sluggish. I was lost. Hadn’t I been…warned…about that?

But I was tired.

Just. So. Tired.

Moments later, I was asleep.