Starsight

I needed to do Gran-Gran’s exercise. As my acceleration increased—my back pressing into my seat—I imagined myself soaring. Among the stars. The singing stars, who serenaded me with their secrets . . .

“Spensa?” M-Bot’s voice. “Spensa, I’m back. What is happening?”

I could feel it. That glowing arrow pointing the way home. The one embedded into my brain by the strange weapon. But I didn’t know for certain if I could use my powers without M-Bot. Did I need some of the mechanical parts in his ship?

“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I’ve been trying to change my programming, but it’s hard. What are you doing? Where are you going?”

The other fighters were gaining on me. But I saw in front of me a roadway of light . . .

“Spensa?” M-Bot said softly. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my heart wrenching. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to enter the nowhere. It worked.

This time, I didn’t have the protection of Superiority technology. Delvers loomed in the darkness, their terrible eyes locking onto me. I screamed beneath the scorn I felt from them, but then that seemed to fade as a single delver drew close. It surrounded me in that place between moments. Like a shadow blocking off the attention of all others.

A single hateful entity. I felt a torrent of emotions from it, omnipresent, smothering. It detested the sounds we made, the way we invaded its realm. People were like a persistent ringing tone constantly in the back of your mind, driving you to madness.

It drew so close that as—thankfully—I left the nowhere, I felt it try to follow. It tried to slip through to the place where we lived. The place where it could find all of its annoyances and smother them.

I came out of the nowhere screaming, alone, feeling like I’d barely slammed the door closed on a monster that had been chasing me. I had to physically fight against my trembling hands as I turned my ship.

Then I saw one of the most blessed sights of my entire life. Detritus, glowing in the sunlight, a planet surrounded by radiant metal shells. I was home.

I approached the planet’s shells at a quick speed. The Superiority battleships still hung a moderate distance away, but I didn’t see any dogfighting right now.

Unfortunately, as I drew close, I realized that without M-Bot to guide me I’d need a flight course from Command to get through the defensive shells. I scrambled to input the DDF communication codes and tune the radio to the proper channel.

“Hello?” I said. “Hello, anyone? Please acknowledge. This is Skyward Ten, callsign: Spin. I’m in a stolen ship. Um, please don’t shoot me down.”

They didn’t respond immediately—though I wasn’t surprised. I imagined that the soldier monitoring communications would immediately call their duty officer, instead of engaging the mysterious voice of the teleporting teenage pilot. They must have called a member of my team to confirm it was me though, because the voice that finally responded was familiar.

“Spensa?” Kimmalyn’s lightly accented voice said. “Is that really you?”

“Hey, Quirk,” I said, closing my eyes, savoring that voice. I’d missed my friends even more than I’d realized. “You have no idea how good it is to hear someone speaking English without a translator.”

“Saints above! Your grandmother said she was confident you were alive, but . . . Spin, you’re really back?”

“Yeah,” I said, opening my eyes. My proximity sensors suddenly flashed a warning, though I had to zoom them out to see what had happened. A new ship had appeared out of the nowhere, popping into existence near where I’d come in a few minutes earlier. It had a familiar shape, long and dangerous, with numerous hangar bays for launching fighters.

The Weights and Measures.

“Don’t throw any parties yet, Quirk,” I said. “Get Cobb for me ASAP. I’m back, and my mission was a partial success . . . but I’ve brought company.”

PART FIVE

38

I landed my stolen ship in a starfighter dock on Platform Prime, then popped my canopy. I’d turned off my hologram, and it felt odd to see my hands with their natural skin tone.

And this place. Had these walls always looked so bleak? Everything on Starsight had been ornamented with color. Had this air always smelled so stale? I found myself missing the faint scent of trees and soil, or even the hint of cinnamon from Vapor’s presence.

Kimmalyn met me at the cockpit, grinning like a fool as she climbed up the ladder, then grabbed my helmeted head in an embrace. She smiled, and I found the expression strange. Aggressive.

Saints and stars. I hadn’t been away that long. But as I stood up and embraced Kimmalyn, I felt a lingering sense of disconnect. The feeling that everything in this universe was a painful noise. A remnant of the emotions the delver had forced upon me.