Starsight

I could imagine the panic of those pilots. I had felt it during some of my first battles. Barely trained, confused by the mess of destruction around me. My instincts fighting my training.

“One plus one,” M-Bot said, “is . . . errrr . . . two.”

As promised, the drones ignored anyone who started flashing their emergency lights. But I could imagine the heartbreak of being forced to do so. You lived your whole life in this suffocating society, with no way to have a good fight. Then you were given a single beautiful chance at expression—only to lose it.

“One plus one,” M-Bot said, “is . . . thr . . . no, two. I can’t say it. Maybe I can rewrite myself to—”

“No!” I said.

Click, he replied. Clickclickclickclick.

Great. I still had one tail, didn’t I? I scanned the proximity monitor, wondering if I’d managed to lose them in the fighting. Indeed, as I entered the denser part of the asteroid field, no ships followed me.

I’d lost my tail. I wasn’t used to that. Krell would try to isolate single fighters, particularly if they proved to be very skilled. It was part of their instructions to find and destroy enemy cytonics.

Today though, it seemed like they had other orders: seek the easiest prey. As I skimmed through the upper portion of the asteroid field, no other drones came after me. In fact, I noted several turning pointedly away from me. And . . . well, that was probably a good strategy. There was no reason to waste resources further testing a pilot with obvious skill.

My heart wrenched as I saw a shuttlecraft explode after having its shield brought down. It was given a chance to surrender, but in a panic, its pilot lost control and collided with an asteroid. Poor soul.

I scanned the battlefield, then fixated on another ship that had been split off from the main body. This larger fighter had a long front fuselage that looked almost like the barrel of a gun. The craft was slow for a fighter, but was also armed with many destructors. An obvious warship.

Perhaps because of its slowness, it had attracted a large number of Krell. The drones spun around it, firing, wearing down its shield. It was basically done for, but refused to give up. I’d been there. Refusing to admit I was beaten, because being beaten ended the dream . . .

“I’m back!” M-Bot said. “What did I miss?”

“We’re going in again,” I said, swerving toward the unfortunate fighter. “Hang on.”

“I don’t have any hands,” he said. “Why are we going in? It appears that most enemy ships are ignoring us.”

“I know,” I said.

“This is a timed survival,” M-Bot said. “If we want the best chances at success, we should hang back and not draw attention. So why not do that?”

“Because sometimes, one plus one equals three,” I said, then dove into the fray toward the struggling fighter.

15

The fighter’s shield went down right as I arrived. The alien fighter should have powered down immediately, but they kept on flying, trying to dodge behind a larger asteroid. Their weapons—a full six destructor turrets—fired at the Krell.

It was strange to see that many turrets on a fighter, but who knew how alien tactics worked? Perhaps they had rudimentary targeting AIs to fire weapons while the living pilot focused only on flying. Rodge had drawn up some whimsical designs along those lines, and the DDF had found them promising.

In any case, the ship was in trouble, so I did what I did best. I drew attention.

I ripped right through the center of the Krell ships and hit my IMP, blasting away both my shield and theirs. A desperate, dangerous move—but the only way to put them on the defensive and level the odds.

I spun my ship on its axis, then shot a spray of destructor fire—more a wild attempt to scatter pursuers than to really hit anything. I had to quickly spin around, because flying backward was a great way to get yourself exploded.

I picked up some tails—but not as many as I’d hoped—and led these around in another sweep, dodging fire while shooting my own destructors. I hit one of the drones, which fortunately sent the others into defensive postures.

“Oh!” M-Bot said. “We’re being heroes.”

“Sometimes I really doubt how fast you claim to be able to think,” I said to him.

“It’s only when you do something that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I should have expected this. But . . . aren’t all of these aliens technically part of the Superiority—the people who are trying to destroy us?”

“Depends on the context,” I said. “Right now, those other pilots are on our side: the side of people trying not to die.”

I swerved back in, and fortunately the beleaguered ship took the opportunity I’d offered. Its turrets locked onto the unshielded Krell and blew two of them out of the sky.

Nice shooting, whoever you are, I thought. Hopefully they would see what I was doing as I drove a few more ships off their back. My job wasn’t to rack up kills, but to keep the enemy on the defensive.