Starsight

I didn’t have much opportunity to worry about the drone and its mission during training that day.

I shot through space, pursued by a swarm of self-propelled imitation boulders. Brade flew close at my wing, and together we tried to dart toward the delver maze—but the embers were ready for that. Another group of them broke off the outside of the maze and streamed toward us.

“Veer pattern,” I said. “Cutting right.” I spun my starfighter, boosting. That shot me to the side, though my momentum still carried me forward as well.

My proximity sensor showed that Brade—instead of following my orders—barreled toward the new set of embers. I growled, hitting the private line. “Brade, follow orders!”

“I can take these embers,” she said.

“No doubt that you can. But can you follow orders?”

She continued toward the embers. Then, just before engaging them, she veered off and broke away, boosting toward me. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“All right,” I said. “Veer pattern, cutting right.”

I turned us around in a wide sweep, away from the embers. Brade followed, and together we wove around as I had ordered. “All right,” I said, coming in at a better angle. “Let loose.”

“Really?” she asked.

“I’ll follow your lead.”

I sensed an eagerness to her as she boosted ahead of me. The embers were predictable in how they would try to smash into us, so the way we had cut around had bunched them all up in front of us. Brade had little trouble blasting a group of them away.

I, in turn, shot the one that drew too close to her. We both took some debris on our shields, but emerged mostly unscathed as we dove between the two advancing packs of embers.

These, in their eagerness to hit us, began crashing into one another. We emerged as a good dozen of the enemy crashed together in a sequence of fiery deaths behind us.

“That,” Brade said as we boosted on toward the maze, “was extremely satisfying.”

“Once in a while, I know what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t listen to you because of that.”

“Why, then?”

“You don’t talk to me like the others,” she said. “You didn’t even ask me about that planet of wild humans. I’m sure you saw the news reports. Everyone’s scared of them right now. Everyone looks at me, even more than they used to. They tell me they know I

’m not like those dangerous ones. But still, they look at me.”

Scud. There’s an entire planet where we won’t treat you like that, Brade. I almost told her right then, but forced myself to hold back. It didn’t feel like the right time.

“To me,” I said, “you’re just a member of my flight.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I like that.”

I’d suspected she would. The two of us veered down near the maze. Today’s training was to fight through the embers, then do maze runs, like we’d need to do if fighting a real delver. We drew close to our section of the maze, the sheer metallic surface punctured by tunnel entrances. In the near distance, three other fighters came in close: Vapor, Hesho, and Morriumur.

“Let’s take that one,” I said, tapping my display, which would highlight the indicated point on Brade’s own display.

“Roger,” she said.

I made the move, then was shocked as my proximity alarm went crazy. I veered out of the way, boosting to the side as a pair of embers suddenly accelerated from the surface at explosive speeds, nearly colliding with my ship. They’d never moved that fast before. I cursed, reorienting myself as the ones chasing me picked up speed too. I had to boost to Mag-4—an insane speed for dogfighting—to stay ahead of them.

“What is this?” Brade said over the comm. “Flight Command, what are you doing?”

I narrowly avoided another pair of embers. I had to speed up again, but another group approaching turned and began smashing against one another. What in the stars?

They’re trying to get me to smash into their debris, I realized. And their high speed made me boost faster. It was nearly impossible to dogfight at such speeds; there just wasn’t enough time to react—but embers didn’t need to care about that. They were disposable, while we were not.

What followed was some of the most frantic piloting I’d done in weeks. “Wave sequence,” I said to Brade—and she fell right on my wing as we ducked and wove among the embers. Scud! There suddenly seemed to be hundreds of them, all focusing on us, ignoring other pilots.

I jerked to the side as two embers collided right near me, then braced myself as debris flashed across my shield, wearing it down. Another ember nearly hit me, and I dodged belatedly—if it had been on target, I’d have been smashed. I felt like a solitary sparrow among an entire flock of hungry hawks.

I swooped and wove, spun and dodged, trying to make sense of the chaos. “My . . . my shield is down,” Brade said with a grunt.