Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)

A slug. Scud. SCUD.

It made so much sense. The entry about Doomslug’s species on the datanet . . . it had said they were dangerous. That was a lie—the Superiority just wanted to make certain that if anyone saw one, they’d think it venomous and stay away.

Report any sightings to authorities immediately.

“Try a replacement?” a voice said on the recording.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said in my ear. “What is going on?”

“Loading one now. Can we do something about this? It causes so much paperwork.”

The diones removed the “hyperdrive” from a unit beside the wall. It was another slug, just like Doomslug. They slid the new one in and activated the hyperdrive. This time it worked.

I could almost hear that scream in my mind again. The high-pitched wail . . . The scream of the hyperdrive. Made by the creatures they were using to teleport.

“Drone, end video,” I whispered. I’d been expecting something horrific, like the surgically removed brains of cytonics. But . . . why should sapient beings be the only ones to have these powers? Didn’t it make sense that some other creatures might develop a means of teleporting through the nowhere?

I thought of all the times I’d found Doomslug in places where I didn’t expect her—all the times I’d noted in passing that I rarely saw her move, but that she always seemed to be able to go places quickly when I wasn’t looking.

Then, one final understanding came crashing down on me. A seemingly simple phrase from the datanet entry. Often found near species of fungi.

M-Bot. When he had awoken, one of the only things he’d had in his data banks was an open table for cataloging local types of mushrooms. He’d fixated on it, knowing it was important, but not why.

His pilot had been looking for hyperdrive slugs.

“How?” I asked Cuna, trying to cover up my shock at all this. “How did you know I had a hyperdrive slug?”

“I followed you,” Vapor said, making me jump. I still sometimes forgot she was around. “When you went out with Morriumur that day in the water garden.”

Doomslug had met me at the door that day. Scud, she’d been acting so strange and lethargic since we’d arrived. Was that because Starsight’s cytonic inhibitors interfered with her powers?

Cuna unplugged the drone, then placed it back into my pack. Then they laced their fingers, watching me with a thoughtful alien expression. “This causes problems,” they said. “Beyond anything you likely understand. I had hopes . . .” They made a dismissive gesture, then opened the door to the shuttle. “Come.”

“Where?” I said, suspicious.

“I want to show you exactly what the Superiority is, Alanik,” Cuna said, taking my backpack and climbing out.

I didn’t trust that dark expression, marked by a creepy smile. I waited behind, smelling cinnamon.

“You can trust them, Alanik,” Vapor told me.

“Of course you’d say that,” I replied. “But can I trust you?”

“I haven’t told anyone what you really are, have I?” she whispered.

I looked sharply toward the empty space where she resided. Finally, feeling overwhelmed, I climbed out.

“Cuna,” Vapor said loudly from behind me, “do you need me any longer?”

“No. You can return to your main mission.”

“Affirmative,” she said, and the shuttle door closed.

Cuna started toward the building without waiting to see if I’d follow. Why turn their back on me? What if I were dangerous? I hurried up beside them.

“I wasn’t Vapor’s main mission?” I asked, nodding back toward the shuttle as it took off.

“You were a stroke of luck,” Cuna said. “She’s actually there to watch Winzik.” Cuna reached the door, which had a window and a security guard inside. They nodded to Cuna, but then bared their teeth in a dione scowl at me.

“I bring this one with me, by my authority,” Cuna said.

“I’ll need to note it, Minister. It’s very unusual.”

Cuna waited for them to do some paperwork. I took the chance to tap a short message on my bracelet. M-Bot. Still read me?

“Yes,” he said in my ear. “But I’m very confused.”

Doomslug is hyperdrive. If I die, get to Detritus. Tell them.

“What?” M-Bot said. “Spensa, I can’t do that!”

Heroes don’t choose their trials.

“I can’t even fly myself, let alone hyperjump!”

Slug is hyperdrive.

“But . . .”

The guard finally opened the door. I stepped into the building after Cuna, and—as I’d worried from its fortresslike exterior—it had shielding to prevent spying, so M-Bot’s voice vanished.

The hallway inside was empty of people, and Cuna’s footwear clicked on the floor as we walked to a door marked OBSERVATION ROOM. Inside was a small chamber with a glass wall overlooking a larger room, two stories tall, with metal walls. I stepped up to the window, noting the markings on several of the walls.

That strange language, I thought. The same one I saw in the delver maze—and in the tunnels back on Detritus.

Cuna settled down in a chair near the glass window, placing my backpack beside the seat. I remained standing.

“You have the power to destroy us,” Cuna said softly. “Winzik worries about delvers, politicians argue about pockets of aggressive aliens, but I have always worried about a danger more nefarious. Our own shortsightedness.”

I frowned, looking at them.

“We couldn’t keep the secret of the hyperdrive forever,” Cuna said. “In truth, it shouldn’t have outlasted the human wars. We endured a dozen close calls when the secret started to leak. Our stranglehold on interstellar communication was always enough, just barely, to keep the truth contained.”

“You won’t keep this secret much longer,” I said. “It’s going to get out.”

“I know,” Cuna said. “Haven’t you been listening?” They nodded toward the window.

A set of doors down below opened, and a pair of diones entered, pulling someone by the arms. I . . . I recognized them. It was Gul’zah the burl—the gorilla alien who had been kicked out of the pilot program way back after the test, then had been protesting against the Superiority.

“I heard that the Superiority made a deal with the protesters!” I said.

“Winzik was called in to handle the issue,” Cuna replied. “His department has been gaining too much authority. He claims to have negotiated a deal where the dissidents turned over their leader. I can’t track any longer how much of what he says is true and how much is false.”

Those diones, I thought, noting the brown-striped clothing they wore. I saw some like them cleaning up after the protesters vanished.

“This burl has been in custody since then,” Cuna said, nodding to Gul’zah. “Some fear that the incident on the Weights and Measures today was caused by revolutionaries. So the exile has been moved up. And I have little doubt that Winzik will seek other ways to use your attack on us to further his goals.”

Below, one of the dione technicians typed on a console at the side of the room. The center of the room shimmered, and then something appeared—a black sphere the size of a person’s head. It seemed to suck all light into it as it floated there. It was pure darkness. An absolute blackness that I knew intimately.

The nowhere. Somehow, they had opened up a hole into the nowhere.

The kitsen had mentioned to me that the Superiority—and the human empires as well—had mined acclivity stone from the nowhere. I knew they had portals into the place. But still, seeing that dark sphere affected me on a primal level. That was a darkness that should not exist, a darkness beyond the mere lack of light. A wrongness.

They lived in there.

I suspected what would come next, but was still horrified when it happened. The guards took the struggling prisoner and forced their face to touch the dark sphere. The protester began to stretch, then was absorbed into the darkness.

The technician collapsed the sphere. As everyone left, I spun on Cuna. “Why?” I demanded. “Why show me this?”

“Because,” Cuna said, “before your stunt today, you were my best hope at stopping this abomination.”

“You seriously expect me to believe that a Superiority official cares what happens to ‘lesser species’?” I spat the words, perhaps too fervently. I should have been political, kept my emotions in check, tried to get Cuna to talk.

But I was mad. Furious. I’d just been forced to watch an exile, maybe even an execution. I was mad at myself for getting caught, frustrated to finally know the secret to hyperdrives—to be so close to bringing the secret back to my people—only to be threatened by Cuna. That was why they’d brought me here, of course. To warn me what awaited me if I didn’t obey.

Cuna stood up. I was short compared to average humans, so Cuna towered over me as they walked to the glass, then rested a blue hand against it. “You think of us as being of one mind,” they said. “Which is the exact flaw held by many in the Superiority itself. Presumption.

“You may choose not to believe it, Alanik, but my entire purpose has been to change the way my people view other species. Once the secret of hyperdrives escapes our grasp, we will need something new to keep us together. We won’t be able to rely on our monopoly on travel. We need to be able to offer something else.”

Cuna turned toward me and smiled. That same creepy, off-putting smile. This time it struck me, and I realized something.

Had I ever seen any other diones try to smile?

It wasn’t a dione expression. They pulled their lips tight into a line to express joy, and they bared their teeth to express dislike. They gestured with their hands sometimes, like the Krell. I couldn’t think of any of the others, Morriumur included, ever smiling.

“You smile,” I said.

“Isn’t this facial expression a sign of friendship among your people?” Cuna asked. “I’ve noticed you have similar expressions to humans. I’ve practiced for the day when I get to speak with them and offer a hand of peace. I thought the same expressions might work on you.”

They smiled again, and this time I saw something new in it. Not a creepiness, but an unfamiliarity. What I had interpreted as a sign of smugness had been an attempt to put me at ease. A failed attempt, but the only sign I could remember—in my entire time here—of a dione trying to use one of our expressions.

Saints and stars . . . I’d built my entire gut response to this person on the fact that they couldn’t smile right.

“Winzik and I conceived the Delver Resistance Project together, but with very different motives,” Cuna said. “He saw a way to get access to a true, actively piloted starfighter corps again. I saw something different. I saw a force of lesser species serving the Superiority—protecting it.

“Perhaps it is foolish imagining, but I saw in my mind’s eye the day when a delver might come—and a person like you, or the kitsen, or some other species saved us. I saw a change in my people, a moment when they began to realize that some aggression is useful. That the different ways species act is a strength of our union, not a flaw in it. And so, I encouraged you to join us.”

They waved at the room that had held the black portal. “The Superiority is deceptively weak. We exile that which doesn’t match our ideal of nonaggression. We encourage species to be more and more like us before they can join, and there are good ideals among our people. Peace, prosperity for all. But at the cost of individuality? That we must find a way to change.”

They rested their fingers on the window again. “We have grown complacent, timid. I fear that a little aggression, a little strife, might be exactly what we need. Or else . . . or else we will fall to the first wolf that sneaks past the gates.”

I believed them. Scud, I believed Cuna was sincere. But could I trust my own assessment? The fact that I’d so grossly misread their expressions reinforced this idea. I was among aliens. They were people, with real love and emotions, but they also—by definition—wouldn’t do things the same way humans did.

Who could I trust? Cuna, Vapor, Morriumur, Hesho? Did I know enough to trust any of them? It felt like a person could spend a lifetime studying other species and still get this sort of thing wrong. Indeed, Cuna’s attempts at smiling were proof of that exact idea.

And still, I found myself reaching over and pushing back my sleeve. I undid the little latch on my bracelet that kept me from pushing the button accidentally.

Then—taking a deep breath—I deactivated my hologram.