Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)

Flight Command reluctantly did as requested, and pulled back the drones this once so that Vapor and I could fly in uncontested.

I got a better sense for the size of the thing as we flew into its shadow. It was roughly as wide as one of the platforms around Detritus—but that was just its diameter. In total mass, it must have been a dozen times as large.

Not planetary scale, and therefore smaller than the full delvers I’d seen in the videos, but still dauntingly enormous. Each face of the dodecahedron had dozens of holes in it, punctures roughly twenty meters across. Vapor and I picked one at random and drew in close enough that I could see that the rest of the face was of polished metal.

I found myself growing excited. I was increasingly fascinated by the delvers, an emotion that walked hand in hand with my growing worry about them. Maybe even fear of them. I couldn’t shake that image I’d seen back on Detritus: me, standing where the delver should have been. Whatever it meant to be a cytonic—whatever I was—it had to do with these things and the place where they lived.

This isn’t a real one, I reminded myself. This is just an imitation for training. Like a practice dummy to use in sword fighting.

We paused right outside our chosen tunnel, looking as if into the throat of the beast. I kept expecting M-Bot to chime in with an analysis, and found the silence of my canopy daunting. “So . . . ,” I said, calling Vapor. “We just go into one of these tunnels?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Reports from pilots who survived entering a real maze indicate all the tunnels looked the same. If there is a reason to pick one over another, we don’t yet know what it is.”

“Follow my lead then, I guess?” I asked, inching my ship forward at one-tenth of a Mag, the starship equivalent of a crawl. The inside was pitch-black. Though I could fly by instruments alone—I often had to, out in space—I hit my floodlights. I wanted visuals on this place.

The inside of the tunnel narrowed to about fifteen meters across, cramped confines on starfighter scales. I let myself move at barely a creep as I flew forward.

Behind me, several drones broke off the wall near the entrance and started moving in our direction. “Flight Command,” I said, “I thought you were told to let us do this run without pursuit.”

“Um . . . ,” the person on the channel said. “When you actually fight a delver, they’ll chase you . . .”

“We’ll never get to the part about fighting a delver if we die during these practice runs,” I said. “Call off the drones and let Vapor and me get our feet underneath us. Trust me, I’ve done a lot more training than you.”

“Okay, okay,” the dione said. “No need to be so aggressive . . .”

These people. I rolled my eyes, but they called off the drones as requested.

Vapor’s seemingly empty ship moved up beside mine. M-Bot had said she flew not by moving the control sphere or pushing buttons, but by interrupting and overriding the electrical signals sent by the controls to the rest of the ship. So . . . did that mean she was the ship, after a manner? Like she was a spirit that could possess electronics?

“Now what?” I asked. “We’re just supposed to fly around in these tunnels? Looking for what? The center?”

“The heart,” Vapor said. “But it’s not always at the center. After surviving pilots flew through the maze for a time, a few reported discovering a chamber with atmosphere and gravity. Inside that chamber was a smaller one, sealed off by a membrane that seemed like living tissue. When they drew close, they heard voices in their minds, and claim to have known the delver was inside.”

“All right . . . ,” I said. “That sounds vague. Even assuming that they were right, how are we supposed to find this ‘heart’ of the maze? This thing is bigger than a carrier ship. We could probably fly in here for days and not explore every chamber.”

“I don’t think that is a problem,” Vapor said. “Pilots who entered the real maze, and who survived long enough, all eventually found the membrane.” She hesitated. “Most flew back, frightened and fearing for their sanity, after reaching it. Several entered, but none of those returned.”

Delightful. Well, I hoped to never have to face a real delver—but certainly, anything I experienced in here might be useful to my people. I flew farther into the tunnel, my proximity sensors mapping the ways various parts branched off. However, I found myself relying on eyesight—leaning forward, staring out of my canopy at the passing tunnel. It was like a corridor, with a uniform pattern of panels and grooves.

I’ve seen this before, I thought, feeling a chill. Haven’t I?

Yes . . . I’d gone into a structure like this chasing Nedd, who had followed his brothers inside. It had been an enormous shipyard, and I’d had to dodge through its tunnels as it fell. The shape of this tunnel, with those ridges at points where metal plates met, was exactly the same.

We entered a larger open room with more branching tunnels coming off it. Here I used maneuvering thrusters to position myself near the ceiling, where a strange set of markings had been stamped into the metal.

I’ve seen these before too, I thought, shifting my floodlights to bathe the ceiling in light. I craned my neck to peer at the markings. They looked like a strange alien language.

“Flight Command,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

Silence. Then finally a voice replied, “We can. The maze has signal boosters installed. But when you’re inside a real maze, interference sometimes prevents communication. It’s best if you pretend the same might happen here.”

“Sure,” I said. “But first, what’s this writing on the ceiling near me?”

“Those appear to be replicas made from pictures taken by pilots inside a real delver maze. They have no meaning that we’ve been able to interpret.”

“Huh,” I said. “I swear I’ve seen them somewhere before . . .”

“Do you want us to engage the maze’s other defensive features?” Flight Command asked. “Or do you just want to fly around in it?”

“What defensive features are we talking about?” I asked.

“A real delver maze causes those who enter it to hallucinate,” the operator explained. “We’ve imitated this by giving you ships with holographic canopies that can project strange sights. When entering the maze, you should always take another pilot with you.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “For backup?”

“No,” Vapor whispered. “Because they each see different things, don’t they? I’ve heard of this.”

“Yes,” the operator said. “The maze affects the minds of those who enter it in different ways—and each individual will see something different. Usually, if both pilots in a team see the same thing, it’s real and not a hallucination. If you see different things, you’ll know they’re not real. In addition, other conclusions can be drawn by comparing what you see.”

“Turn it on,” I said, tapping on my maneuvering thrusters. I moved down into the hollow center of the room, next to Vapor’s ship.

The chamber flickered, then changed, red colors blossoming out from one wall. Like blood bleeding from some underground well. It coated the wall, painting everything a deep crimson.

“Vapor,” I whispered. “What do you see?”

“A black darkness,” she replied, “covering everything and swallowing light.”

“I see blood,” I said. It didn’t seem dangerous, but it was certainly creepy. “Let’s keep moving.”

I boosted out of the large chamber, passing into another tunnel. Though it was the same size as the one I’d traveled through earlier, it felt even more claustrophobic and constricting because the walls seemed to be made of flesh. They undulated and shivered, like I was actually moving through the veins of some enormous beast.

When I emerged into the next room, the appearance shifted again. Suddenly I seemed to be inside an ancient stone cavern, moss dangling from the ceiling in wide swaths.

Though I knew it was just a hologram, these changes left me unnerved. Vapor hovered up beside me. “I see the walls as if they were glass. What do you see?”

“Stone and moss,” I said. “It’s thickest on the right over there.”

“I see glass shards floating in the air there. Perhaps the maze is obscuring something?”

“Yeah,” I said, nudging closer. Sure enough, the proximity sensors indicated there was a tunnel hiding back there, obscured by the hologram. I eased my ship down through it and emerged into the next chamber. However, as I did, the shadows behind my ship moved.

I immediately spun the vessel around on its axis, pointing my floodlights in that direction. I was facing down a large pile of alien fungus, pulsing softly as if breathing, each bulbous toadstool the size of my fighter.

“Did you see that?” I asked Vapor as she hovered her ship down beside me.

“No. What did you see?”

“Motion,” I said, narrowing my eyes. Something else darted away at the edges of my vision, and I spun my ship again.

“Proximity sensors show nothing,” Vapor said. “It must be part of the hologram.”

“Flight Command?” I asked. “What was that motion?”

The response that came back was jumbled and broken, my communications cutting out. The shadows in this room were moving. I spun again, trying to catch whatever was in here.

“Flight Command?” I asked again. “I’m not reading you.”

“Do you want an authentic experience or not?” the voice came back to me, suddenly clear. “I told you that when pilots get deeper within the maze, communication starts to get more erratic.”

“Okay, fine. But what are those shadows?”

“What shadows?”

“The ones that keep moving in this room?” I said. “Is there something inside this maze that will attack me?”

“Um . . . Not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“Um . . . Just a sec.”

Vapor and I hung there with the shadows. Until another voice came on our line, one that was more excitable and enthusiastic. Winzik, head of the Krell.

“Alanik! It’s Winzik. I hear you’re experiencing some of the maze’s more unnerving features.”

“You could say that,” I said. Winzik’s voice sounded . . . small. As if the signal from outside were a frail thread, close to snapping.

“There’s something in here with us,” Vapor said. “I think I saw it too just now.”

“Hmm, my my,” Winzik said. “Well, it’s probably just the holograms.”

“Probably?” I asked.

“Well, we’re not a hundred percent sure how this works ourselves!” Winzik said. “We aren’t adding moving shadows to your canopy holograms, but there might be other holograms in here created by the maze. We didn’t build it, remember. We recovered it, repaired it, and added our own drones, but it was built by humans. We’re not entirely certain what it can do—or what extents it can reach—to imitate a true delver maze.”

“So we’re lab animals?” I said, growing increasingly annoyed. “Testing something you don’t understand? You toss us in and see who survives?”

“Now, now,” Winzik said. “Don’t be so aggressive, Alanik. Aren’t your people trying to gain citizenship in the Superiority? Yelling at me won’t help you with that goal, I assure you! Anyway, good job in there! Keep it up!”

The channel cut off, and I barely held myself back from cussing him out. How dare he be so . . . so . . . perky. Well, that friendly attitude was obviously just an act for my benefit. Krell were terrible and destructive, as proven by how they treated my people. Did Winzik think an affable voice would hide that reality from others?

“Let’s get back out and check on the others,” Vapor said, turning to lead me out the way we’d come in. I followed, and though the next room was the same one we’d come through before, the moss was gone, and it just looked normal now. Again it reminded me of the old shipyard from Detritus. Had that been another maze, like this? Intended for the same purpose? Or was I jumping to conclusions?

“Your people,” Vapor said as we flew, “have a history with the humans. Do you not?”

“Um, yeah,” I said, sitting up in my seat. Vapor didn’t normally make small talk.

“Curious,” she said.

“That was years before I was born,” I said.

“Human domination altered the future of your planet,” Vapor said. “Your people fought beside them and inevitably adopted some of their ways. You speak a variation on one of their languages.” Vapor was silent for a time as we entered the tunnel that had looked like flesh.

“Your aggression reminds me of theirs,” she finally added.

“What about you?” I said. “Have you ever met humans? Other than Brade, I mean.”

“Many,” Vapor said in her soft, airy voice. “I fought them.”

“In the wars?” I asked, surprised. “The most recent was a hundred years ago. You were alive then?”

Vapor gave no specific confirmation, and we soon entered the large chamber with the writing on the ceiling, which had appeared to have blood on the walls before. Now it looked like a mirror gallery, reflecting back at me a thousand versions of my own ship.

I cocked my head and spun my ship, looking at the thousands of versions of my vessel. Until I pointed at one mirror that held not my ship, but just an image of me floating there—in space—alone.

Not Alanik. Me. Spensa.

The version of me looked up and met my eyes despite the distance, and I felt a growing coldness. That wasn’t a reflection. It was one of them.

I hit the call button, but the room went black, and even my floodlights went out. I was left hanging as if in a void of nothing. Like I’d entered the nowhere.

My hand froze on the call button. But before I could speak, everything went back to normal. In the blink of an eye I was in my cockpit again, hanging in that ancient room, Vapor moving her ship toward the exit.

“—coming, Alanik?” Vapor’s voice crackled onto my communication channel midsentence. “Or are you just going to sit there?”

“I’m coming,” I said, trying to shake the creepy feeling. “What do you see back there?”

“Just a room,” Vapor said. “Why?”

“I . . .” I shook my head, then guided my ship back out into open space, where I breathed a sigh of relief.