Starsight

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.”