Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)

Vapor led us on a careful approach of the maze. From up closer, I could see the lines where different segments had been fabricated, then fitted together. It didn’t have all the dust around it, like the kind that shrouded a real delver maze. That left this experience feeling even more mundane. It just didn’t evoke the same sense of dread and worry that the videos had.

“Command says to watch for interceptors,” Vapor told us. “The delvers have fighters that attack those who get close?”

“Not fighters,” Brade said in her stern voice. “The delver controls hunks of rock, called embers, which try to intercept and collide with ships that get near.”

“All right,” Vapor said. “I asked, and Command assured me that this won’t be as dangerous as our initial test was. Apparently, some people in the department made the brilliant connection that if you kill all your recruits before you have time to train them, you’ll soon run out of recruits.”

I smiled. The more Vapor spoke, the more conversational her tone became—and the less creepy she seemed. “That’s a relief,” I said.

“Well, I still would be careful,” she answered. “The Superiority hasn’t done much training like this since the human wars. For now, let’s get back into formation.”

I boosted forward at the order, settling into my position at the front of our team. Unfortunately, the others didn’t have nearly as much experience with battle formations as I did. Morriumur hung back too far, and Hesho tried to keep up with me until Vapor reminded him that his ship was to remain near the center. And Brade . . .

Well, Brade flew forward, far out of our pattern. Scud. They were all competent pilots, but we weren’t a true flight. We didn’t have experience fighting together. Cobb had spent weeks pounding flight maneuvers into Skyward Flight’s thick heads. He hadn’t let us fight, or even use our guns, until we’d practiced flight drills so much that we instinctively knew how to maneuver as a team.

That had saved our lives a dozen times over when the fighting had gotten bad. Here, as soon as the enemy came at us—in the form of drones that had been outfitted with rock casings to imitate flying asteroids—the team broke apart. Brade darted in to attack them without a word from Vapor. Morriumur started shooting, but . . . well, their shots were way off, and I had to boost farther out of formation to be sure they didn’t accidentally hit me. And to be honest, I undercompensated, as this new ship wasn’t as responsive as M-Bot, and I wasn’t used to how it maneuvered.

Vapor was so busy talking to us that she forgot that her job as sniper was to start blasting the enemy ships while they were distracted. The only one of us who didn’t embarrass himself was Hesho, whose ship performed its ordered maneuvers with precision. The diminutive fox poet might have been a little dramatic, but his crew was obviously well trained. He managed to bring down four of the drones.

These drones didn’t act like the ones we fought on Detritus. Whoever was piloting them had been instructed not to dodge, but just fly around and try to collide with us. Which made sense, since they were imitating chunks of stone being moved by the delver. I was glad to see that when one got close enough to have hit Morriumur, however, it broke off before colliding and instead radioed to say Morriumur was dead. So maybe the Superiority really had learned not to use live fire during training.

We regrouped for another run, and again Brade engaged the embers immediately. Morriumur—apparently thinking that they should use Brade as a model—waded into the fight and nearly got smashed up by an approaching drone for the second time. This one didn’t pull back fast enough, but I barely managed to spear it with my light-lance and tow it away. I was rewarded by Morriumur panicking and shooting at me in a moment of confusion. Hesho, sensing that his allies were in trouble, barreled forward and started shooting in all directions.

A private line opened from Vapor to me. “Wow,” she said softly. “They seem . . . confused.”

“Confused? It’s a mess. This flight needs way more work on fundamentals.”

“If you think so, then give the orders.”

“You’re the flightleader.”

“And I’m making you my assistant flightleader,” Vapor said. “How would you fix this situation? I’m curious.”

Great. I had no leadership experience. But . . . I winced, watching the others fight. Someone needed to stop this before we ended up as rubble.

“What do you idiots think you’re doing!” I shouted into the general line. “That was the most embarrassing excuse of a hostile approach I’ve ever seen! Brade, you were ordered to clear the firing path, not fetch a fist of enemy nose hairs! Morriumur, get back here! Don’t learn bad habits by chasing someone who disobeys orders. And Hesho, you’re flying well, but you have the fire control of a child with a new toy. Everyone, disengage and fall back.”

Next, I temporarily added the Weights and Measures to the channel. “Flight Command,” I said, “Flight Fifteen is going to need to run some exercises and learn how to coordinate. Call back the drones and reset their attack vectors. Don’t send them in again until I say we’re ready for it.”

“Pardon?” a voice asked. “Um . . . you’re supposed to try flying into one of those approach tunnels in the—”

“I’m not letting my flight anywhere near your training machine until I’m sure they can fly in formation!” I shouted. “Right now, I’m convinced they’ll mistake their own backsides for the approach tunnels, and end up rammed so far up there we’ll need spelunking gear to get them out!”

Hesho chuckled softly on the line.

“Um . . . ,” Flight Command said. “I guess . . . I guess we can do that?”

The others started flying back, and the drones disengaged. Brade kept flying toward the delver maze though, so I opened a private line to her. “Brade, I’m serious. Vapor made me her XO, and I’m giving you an order. You damn well better get back in line, or I will flay you. I hear people will pay good money for a human skin to hang on their walls.”

With obvious reluctance, Brade disengaged and spun around to boost back toward us.

And . . . had that all really come out of my mouth? I sat back in my seat, my heart thundering inside me as if I’d run a race. I hadn’t specifically intended to say any of that. It had all just kind of . . . happened.

Scud. Cobb would be laughing his head off if he could hear me right now. As the others gathered back together, a private call came to me from Vapor.

“Well done,” she said. “But perhaps a tad aggressive for this group. Where did you learn to talk like that?”

“I . . . um, had an interesting flight instructor back home.”

“Tone it down,” Vapor suggested. “But I agree with you—we should do some more training before we fight. Organize them to do so.”

“You’re really going to make me do the hard part, aren’t you?” I said.

“A good commander knows when to appoint a good drill instructor. You’ve been in the military before. You obviously know this.”

I sighed, but she was right, and I’d walked right into the job. As the flight gathered together, I explained one of Cobb’s old formation exercises, one he’d adapted for space fighting once we’d started training out in the vacuum. Vapor quietly joined the line, and soon I had them flying pretty much in an organized way. As much as I hated being put in charge, I could run these exercises practically in my sleep, so I was good at watching the others and giving them tips.

They soon got the hang of it. Much faster than Skyward Flight had, actually. This group had good piloting instincts; most just didn’t have formal combat training.

Vapor is used to working on her own, I decided as we flew through a shifting exercise where we traded places in formation to confuse an oncoming enemy flight.

Morriumur was timid, but willing to learn. Hesho was accustomed to having people follow his lead, and was often surprised when the rest of us didn’t know instinctively what he wanted to do. He needed to learn better communication.

Brade was the worst. Though she was the best pilot, she kept trying to go on ahead. Far too eager.

“You need to stay with the rest of us,” I said, calling her. “Don’t keep trying to go ahead.”

“I’m a human,” Brade snapped. “We’re aggressive. Deal with it.”

“Just earlier you said you didn’t spend time around humans,” I said, “and therefore didn’t know their habits. You can’t play the ‘I’m not like them’ card, then use your nature as a human as an excuse.”

“I try to hold back,” Brade said, “but deep down I know the truth. I’m going to lose my temper. It’s hopeless to plan for anything else.”

“That’s a load of yesterday’s slop,” I said. “When I started training, I was hopeless. I lost my temper so often, you could have set your clock by my tantrums.”

“Really?” Brade asked.

“Really. I literally assaulted my flightleader in class one day. But I learned. So can you.”

She fell silent, but seemed to be trying harder as we went through another exercise. As the day progressed—and we stopped for lunch in our cockpits—I found myself most impressed by Morriumur. All things considered, their flying ability was remarkable, and they were extremely eager to learn. Yeah, they couldn’t aim worth spit, but Cobb had always said he’d rather have students who could fly well. Those could stay alive long enough to be taught to fight.

I pulled my ship up beside Morriumur’s as we finished lunch and moved back into formation. “Hey,” I said, “when we do this next batch, try to watch and stay tighter in formation. You keep veering toward the outside.”

“I’m sorry,” they said. “I’ll do better. And . . . also, I’m sorry I almost shot you earlier.”

“That? That was nothing. At least you didn’t mean to try to kill me—that’s more than I can say for most.”

They chuckled, though I thought I could hear tension in their voice. I remembered my first few training sessions under Cobb—the worry that I’d get something wrong and be kicked out, the growing lack of confidence that I belonged, the frustration at not being able to do all the things I’d imagined myself capable of accomplishing.

“Don’t worry,” I told them. “You’re doing fine, particularly considering how new to this you are.”

“As I mentioned, my leftparent was a drone pilot during their youth,” Morriumur said. “I got a piece of that experience, fortunately.”

“You really get skills from your parents?”

“Of course,” Morriumur said. “Some of the knowledge and skills of the parents pass on to the child. I guess it isn’t that way for your species?”

Was it? Scud. I didn’t actually know, at least not for Alanik’s species. Without M-Bot there to whisper explanations into my ear, I could get myself into trouble.

“Anyway, I was lucky in this,” Morriumur continued. “But also unlucky. My leftparent has had some latent aggression, and I ended up with an extra measure of it. My first few days alive, I got a reputation for snapping at others.”

“Snapping at people is aggressive among your kind?”

“Very,” Morriumur said.

“Wow. I’d have never made it to being born. They’d have killed me right out.”

“That’s a common misconception,” Morriumur said. “If my parents decide not to bear me with this personality, I won’t be killed—they’ll simply recombine me in a new way. What you see in me is just a draft, a prospect, a possibility of who I could be. Though . . . if I were to be born, I’d retain these memories, and my personality would become real.” They paused. “And I do wish for that to be the case.”

I tried to imagine a world where I remembered being forced to prove I was worth existing. No wonder this society had issues.

We finished the next batch of exercises, and I was pleased at how well the group kept formation. “This is actually working,” I said, calling Vapor. “I think we might be able to make something of them.”

“Excellent,” Vapor said. “Are they ready for combat then?”

“Scud, no!” I said. “We need to be at this for another few weeks at least. They’re good pilots, so it’s not like starting with raw recruits, but that doesn’t mean I want them shooting at anything yet.”

Vapor seemed to take that in stride, and didn’t complain—or even ask for more details. She simply said, “Interesting.” How was I to interpret that?

“Let’s give them another break,” she eventually said to me. “Then we’ll try some higher-speed formations. We have three hours until we return to Starsight for the day. Flight Command has been asking if any of us will be heading into the maze. I’ll tell them that we don’t anticipate it.”

“All right,” I said, slowing my ship and pulling out my canteen.

“Unless, of course,” she added, “you want to give it a try while the others are on break. You and I could head in there together.”

I hesitated, canteen halfway to my lips.

“It would be useful, after all, to know what it is we’re preparing for,” Vapor said. “I’ve heard of delver mazes, but I’ve never been in one.” Her ship hovered up beside me, and it was disconcerting to see the cockpit empty, as if it were piloted by a ghost.

What was Vapor’s game? In putting me in charge of running the exercises, she’d been able to go back to observing. Participating, but remaining mostly mysterious. Now she wanted me to go into the maze with her. It seemed a test of some sort. A challenge?

I looked out toward the maze. Each flight had been assigned a different face of the dodecahedron, and the pilots had been practicing approaching and then flying into it.

“I’m up for it,” I decided, putting away my canteen. “Tell Flight Command to call off those drones though. We can train on fighting them later.”

“Done,” Vapor said. “Let’s go.”