Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)

As I ran, I felt the shadow grow stronger inside me.

By approaching the nowhere to listen, I’d let more of it in. The thoughts of the delvers. They touched the part of me that I couldn’t explain.

This part of me hated everyone. The buzzing noises people made. The clicks and the disruption of the pure calm void that was space.

The human inside me fought back. It saw lives behind the blips on the screen. It had flown with the enemy and had found friends in them.

I didn’t understand myself. How could I be both of these things at once? How could I want to stop the fighting, but at the same time hope they’d all just destroy themselves?

I exploded from the bay of Platform Prime, flying my Superiority ship, as it was the only ship not in use at the moment. Cobb really was worried. He’d mobilized every fighter we had.

Following a provided course through the shells around Detritus, I accelerated constantly, my back pressing into the seat. Eventually I emerged into space beyond the shells—and confronted the chaos of hundreds of ships fighting at once. Destructor blasts tore streaks through the blackness, and ships exploded with flashes of light that were quickly extinguished. In the distance, the Weights and Measures watched stoically alongside the two battleships.

I thought I understood Winzik’s plan, and it had a kind of twisted brilliance to it. He needed to exterminate the humans of Detritus. By escaping, we were coming too close to proving him weak, or even a fraud. But he didn’t yet have the space force he needed to do the job himself.

At the same time, he needed a delver in our realm that he could control and use as a threat. He couldn’t be seen summoning it himself, however. So what did he do? He sent his forces to Detritus to “bravely fight” the humans. Then he secretly had Brade draw a delver into our realm and let it destroy Detritus. He could blame the summoning on us. After all, everyone knew the humans had tried to do this once before.

After consuming the humans, the delver would move on, searching for other prey. But Winzik could use his newly trained space force to control it—send it someplace safe, bounce it between unpopulated worlds.

In so doing, he’d become a hero—and the most important being in the galaxy. Because with a roving delver threatening all the civilized worlds, only his force would provide any protection. His pilots would be on call to defend planets who asked for them—but if someone opposed him, well, the delver might just find its way to their region with no defense force to send it away.

Brutal. Effective.

Terrifying.

I boosted toward the fight, where starfighters spun and dodged, blasted and fought. Where was Brade? I could hear her shouting into the nowhere, but I couldn’t sense where. Would she be on the Weights and Measures?

No. They wouldn’t want the thing to come into our realm near one of their ships. She’ll be out here somewhere.

But where? This battle was several times larger than any I’d been in before—probably larger, I realized, than anyone in this fight had ever seen. The battlefield was quickly devolving into chaos as flights tried to stick together and admirals frantically tried to keep a coherent strategy.

A familiar sense of excitement built inside me, the anticipation of the fight, the opportunity to push myself. But . . . today it was accompanied by a hesitance I might once have called cowardice. I silently thanked Cobb for beating that out of me during training.

I wasn’t here to fight. So instead of firing on the first Superiority drone that passed by, I studied my proximity monitor—and realized that it was still attuned to Superiority signals. They’d blocked me from their general communications chatter, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying to one another, but I could still highlight individual ships and designations on my monitor.

I picked out a specific starfighter flying mostly by itself, near the far right side of the battlefield. The Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun. Hesho’s ship. My old flight. They might know where Brade was.

But Hesho and I were enemies now. He knew me for what I really was, the thing that he hated.

I steered my ship that direction anyway. I zipped down through the battlefield to avoid the shots of several drones—then the shots of several DDF fighters, who obviously hadn’t believed my signal code that identified me as an ally.

The drones and the DDF fighters ended up engaging one another, which left me to swing around toward Hesho. The kitsen turned their ship toward mine, and I stopped a good distance away, slowing down until I was motionless in space. Now what?

I tried opening a private channel to the kitsen ship. “Hesho,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

No response. Indeed, the ship powered up its destructors and started toward me. I could practically hear the orders on board as Hesho commanded the kitsen to prepare for battle. My fingers twitched on my controls. They thought they could take me? Did they really want to push me to see? They were insignificant, meaningless noises upon a vast . . .

No. I took my hand off my control sphere and checked the seals on my helmet.

Then I popped my canopy open.

The air in my canopy was sucked out into the void in a rush of wind. Water in the air immediately vaporized, then froze, causing frost to condense across the inside of the glass. Crystals of it sparkled in the air, reflecting the light of the distant sun.

I undid the latches on my seat, all except the one cord that would pull tight to lock my feet into place if I ejected. That one had some slack right now, and tethered me to the cockpit.

I floated out, closing my eyes. I imagined I was soaring. Free. Me, the void, and the stars. Those sang distant songs, but there was a louder noise growing nearby. At the back of the battlefield. It was building. The delver was coming.

“What are you doing?” Hesho’s voice said in my ear. “Get back into your ship so we can engage in combat.”

“No,” I whispered.

“This is foolishness, Alanik—or whatever your real name is. I am warning you. We will not delay our fire simply because you are indisposed.”

“I promised you, Hesho,” I said. “Remember? First shot at a human is yours.”

I opened my eyes to the surreal scene of emptiness all around. I’d always known it was there—I’d flown through it—but for some reason, being out of my ship, with only the suit to keep me from the vacuum, made it all more real to me.

Once, I’d looked up at the sky and been awed by it. Now it engulfed me, consumed me. There didn’t seem to be a line between me and it. We were one.

It was pierced in the nowhere by whatever Brade was doing. A shout, projected into the nowhere. A dangerous scream . . .

Hesho’s ship hovered up in front of me, mere meters away, destructor turrets trained on me. I stared back at them.

“You speak of promises,” Hesho said. “When all you ever gave me were lies.”

“I was always the same person, Hesho,” I said. “You never knew Alanik. You only knew me.”

“A human.”

“An ally,” I said. “Back when we were pilots together, you spoke to me about a shared desire to resist the Superiority and find our own way to use hyperdrives. I have the secret, Hesho. I found it. You can take it back to your people.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Why should you believe them?” I asked. “You know I’m not the monster they say I am. You flew with me. Our people were allies once, long ago. You know the Superiority doesn’t care about your kind. Come with me. Help me.”

No response. I reached out to the ship.

“Hesho,” I whispered, “Winzik is planning something terrible. I think he’s going to use Brade to summon a delver. If that’s true, I need your help. The entire galaxy needs your help. We don’t need just a ship’s captain right now. We need a hero.”

Beyond us, the battle raged. Two forces of frightened people, each with no choice but to kill the other. It was either that or die.

“I don’t know what to do,” Hesho said.

“Maybe,” Kauri’s voice said from the background, “you could ask us?”

The comm went dead. I hung there, floating in space just above my ship. Then finally, Hesho spoke again.

“Apparently,” Hesho said, “my crew does not want to shoot you. I have been . . . overruled. What a curious experience. Very well, Alanik. We will ally for a short time—long enough for us to learn whether you are telling us the truth or not.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a sense of relief. Then I tugged with my foot, yanking myself back toward my cockpit. “Where are the others? Morriumur?” I braced myself to hear that they’d been shot down. After all, why else would the kitsen be out here by themselves?

“Morriumur did not come,” Hesho said. “They decided at the last minute that their time as a pilot was done, and so returned to their family. Vapor is out here somewhere; I lost her in the fighting. Brade . . .”

“You’re right about this, Alanik,” Kauri said from the bridge. “Brade is doing something strange. We’re supposed to distract the human fighters and keep them away from her. She’s secretly flying closer to your planet.”

“I can feel her,” I said, locking myself back into place and repressurizing my cockpit. “But I can’t locate her. This is bad. Very, very bad. We need to stop her.”

“By joining you,” Hesho said, “we will be committing treason against the Superiority.”

“Hesho,” I said, “part of the reason everyone hates my kind is because several hundred years ago, humans tried to turn the delvers into weapons. Are you really going to sit there and ignore the fact that the Superiority is about to try to do the very same thing?”

The humans of Detritus had failed in their attempt to control a delver. I’d watched them die. Winzik was confident he wouldn’t suffer the same fate, but I didn’t believe that for a moment. I’d felt the delvers. Their ideas kept trying to worm their way into my brain even now. He could not control them. If his plan succeeded, the delver would escape his control. Just like we humans were threatening to do.

I exploded across the battlefield, and the Swims Upstream followed. “Surely they wouldn’t be so foolhardy as to play with this danger,” Hesho said to me. “Surely there’s another explanation for what Brade is doing.”

“They’re terrified of humans, Hesho,” I said. “And Winzik needs a decisive victory here to prove to the Superiority how powerful he is. Think about it. Why train a force to fight delvers, when it’s been decades since anyone saw one? The ‘weapon’ Winzik developed is really just a way to point the delvers where he wants them. This isn’t about just Detritus. It’s about him finding a way to control the entire galaxy.”

“If this is true,” Hesho said, “then the Superiority will become even more dominant than they are now. You said you know the secret of their hyperdrives. Will you give it to us, as proof of your good faith?”

I debated only a moment. Yes, this secret was important—but people controlling it, and keeping it from others, was part of the problem. “Look up a species of slug called a taynix. The Superiority claims they’re dangerous, and should be reported immediately if spotted—but this is because they’re cytonic and the Superiority doesn’t want people to know. Using them somehow, the Superiority can teleport their ships without drawing the attention of delvers.”

“By the ancient songs . . . ,” Hesho whispered. “There was a small colony of them on our planet. The Superiority sent a force to helpfully exterminate them, supposedly before the outbreak could destroy us. Those rats! Here, I have the battle plans from the Weights and Measures. We should be able to use this to deduce where Brade is. They needed to get her close to your planet.”

“So the delver would attack Detritus first,” I said. “Instead of going after the Superiority ships.”

“I have it!” one of the kitsen said from the bridge. I thought it was Hana. “From the layout of the battle, I suspect Brade’s ship should be at the coordinates I’m relaying to your monitor, Alanik.”

We turned in that direction, though it required cutting through the middle of the increasingly frantic battlefield. We dodged around a set of DDF fighters with Nightstorm Flight markings, then through some ship debris that made my shield flash. We were picking up speed when a handful of Krell drones fell in behind us.

“The Weights and Measures has finally spotted us, Captain!” a kitsen called over the line. “They’re demanding to know what we’re doing.”

“Stall!” Hesho said.

I didn’t know if that would do any good. They’d noticed me, judging by the way the drones were starting to fly in after us. I hit my overburn, but this ship just wasn’t built like M-Bot. She was serviceable, but she wasn’t exceptional—and the kitsen ship was even slower.

As we fell into defensive maneuvers, I was made specifically thankful that I’d forced the kitsen and the others to do dogfighting exercises. We were likely only surviving because the battlefield was so frantic. Drone pilots had difficulty tracking us, and even more difficulty breaking away without immediately getting shot down.

Somehow we made it—and I picked out a solitary black fighter flying with expert precision. Brade. But she wasn’t quite in the place that the battle plan indicated. Instead, she was fighting against a drone for some reason. As we watched, Brade scored a series of hits on the drone, overwhelming its shield and destroying it.

Hesho and I gave chase, followed in turn by a few more drones. I could hear the sound of Brade’s mind growing louder, an increasingly demanding cytonic scream. The power of it made me tremble, and that interfered with my ability to fly—as it took me a moment to notice that one of the drones chasing us was behaving oddly. It fell out of line with the other two, then shot them down from behind.

“So,” Vapor said over a private channel to my ship. “You’re from this planet? Not ReDawn? A human from one of the preserves. Does Cuna know?”

“I told them,” I said, adding her to the line with Hesho. “Right before this mess happened. I’m sorry, Vapor, for lying—”

“I don’t really care,” Vapor said. “I should have guessed the full truth. Anyway, my mission was—and still is—to keep a watch on Winzik and his minions. Is Brade doing what I think she’s doing?”

“She’s trying to summon a delver,” I said. “She’s calling to them—well, more like screaming at them. I get the feeling she hasn’t done this before.”

I glanced at my canopy, and—alongside the growing headache I felt from Brade’s yelling—I started to see their reflections. The eyes opening up, looking at us from the nowhere.

“It’s working,” I added to the others. “The delvers are watching us right now. I can feel them . . . stirring.”

Vapor said a string of words that my pin simply translated as, “Increasingly vulgar curses involving foul stenches.”

“I didn’t think they’d go this far,” Vapor said. “This is bad—many would call this treason against the Superiority.” She was silent for a moment. “Others would call it true patriotism.”

“Surely there can’t be many of those!” Hesho said.

“It will probably depend on whether this attack works,” Vapor said. “A lot of people in the Superiority really hate humans, and policy often favors the successful. Does he have a plan for sending the thing away after he summons it?”

“I think he just plans to use his space force to keep it distracted,” I said. “Brade indicated that delvers in our realm would sometimes spend years between attacks.”

“Sometimes they would,” Vapor replied. “But sometimes they’d attack relentlessly. This is extremely shortsighted.”

She fell in on my left, Hesho on my right, as I steered my ship after Brade. She was making for the shells around Detritus, trying to get as close to the planet as she could.

Knowing where she was going gave us a slight advantage, as we could aim to head her off. I set us on that heading, but a distressing thought occurred to me: I wasn’t certain the three of us could stop Brade. She was good—even better than I was. Plus, a delver could appear at any moment.

Maybe I could do something to mitigate the disaster of that occurring. I called in on the general DDF line. “Flight Command? This is Spin. I need to talk to Cobb.”

“I’m here,” Cobb said in my ear.

“I need you to turn off all communications with ships out here. Have every DDF ship go silent, turn off all radios in Alta—maybe even power down Platform Prime and go dark.”

I braced myself for an argument. But Cobb was strikingly calm when he replied. “You realize, Spin, that would mean leaving all of the pilots to fight on their own. No coordination. No ground support. Not even the ability to call for help from wingmates.”

“I realize that, sir.”

“I would want to be absolutely certain it was necessary before taking such an extreme action.”

“Sir . . . one of them is coming. A delver.”

“I see.” Cobb didn’t curse, or shout, or even complain. His calm tone was somehow far, far more disturbing. “I’ll warn the pilots, then initiate communications silence. Stars watch over you, Lieutenant. And the rest of us sorry souls.” He cut the line.

I felt a chill, a mounting horror, as Brade—like I’d hoped—turned toward us. We were seconds from intercepting her.

“Vapor,” Hesho asked. “Can you take over her ship, like you’ve done with the drones?”

“It’s harder for a crewed ship than it is for a drone,” Vapor said. “She’ll have a manual override, developed for resisting my kind. I could probably lock her out of flight control and force the ship to go immobile, for a little time at least. I’d need to touch her ship—which will mean ejecting from this drone and trying to get to her. So far, she has known to stay away from ships I’m flying, and hasn’t let me get within range of seizing her vessel.”

“Understood,” I said. “Be ready to try.” I didn’t order radio silence among the three of us—I hoped to protect Detritus, but for now our communication was vital to our last-ditch attempt at stopping this.

By shooting down one of my friends.

I opened a line to her as our ships drew closer. “Brade. You know why we’re here.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I don’t blame you. You were born to kill.”

“No, Brade—”

“I should have seen what you were. I knew you felt it. The need to destroy, like a dragon coiled inside, stoking its flame. Waiting to strike, longing to strike. Lusting to strike.”

“Please don’t make us do this.”

“What, and give up the fight?” she said. “Admit it. You’ve been wondering all along, haven’t you? Which of us is better? Well, let’s find out.”

I gritted my teeth, then switched back to the private channel to Hesho and Vapor. “All right, team. We need to take her out.” Her screaming mind echoed in my brain, louder than her words had been. “And we can’t simply shoot to disable. She’ll keep trying to bring that delver as long as she’s alive. So if you have the chance . . . kill her.”