Starsight

“Who can survive in space,” M-Bot said. “So they’re not simply gaseous beings—otherwise the vacuum would rip them apart. It seems they can travel through space with no special equipment, and can move at speed between ships. In the wars, they’d often infiltrate the mechanical portion of an enemy fighter and take control of it with the pilot still on board.”

“Scud,” I whispered. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. “What about the human?”

“There are very few like her. Most humans must remain in the preserves. If an official wants to remove one, the human must be licensed—basically, someone has to take responsibility for them if they cause harm or damage.”

“And do they?”

“Sometimes,” M-Bot said. “I see more often a pattern of scapegoating and prejudice. Only government officials are supposed to keep humans, and then only for security or research purposes. I think the Superiority uses them in part because it likes the occasional reminder that they won the war.”

I nodded to myself as we skimmed across the top of the city. I’d need to learn more about this sort of thing if I was going to recruit Brade. I wasn’t certain I would need to do that, but I had to at least try to free her, right?

I sighed and rubbed my forehead, trying to keep all of this straight. So I now separately had plans to steal a hyperdrive, rescue an enslaved human, and maybe find the secret to fighting the delvers. Maybe I should just keep my mind on the main goal.

“Are you all right?” M-Bot asked. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” I whispered. “I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed. At least the kitsen make some kind of sense.”

“That might be because of their history with humankind,” M-Bot said. “Thousands of years ago, they made first contact with humans on Earth—before either society industrialized.”

“How did that happen?”

“Cytonic teleportation doesn’t require technology,” M-Bot said. “As Cuna implied, if you can figure out how to use your powers, you’ll be able to teleport yourself alone—and not just your ship. Early cytonics from the kitsen people ended up on Earth, for reasons that now seem lost to time. There was trade and interaction between them and various regions of East Asia on Earth. Several kitsen cultures were directly influenced by Earth ones. The exchange happened until the kitsen cytonics vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“It’s a tragic story,” M-Bot said. “Though it should be noted that the kitsen were only a late steel-age society then, so records might be untrustworthy. Apparently their people did not trust the cytonics, so the cytonics left. Humans were part of this disagreement—a war is implied. The end result stranded the main population of kitsen on their homeworld for centuries until the Superiority made contact.”

“Huh,” I whispered. “Where did the kitsen cytonics go?”

“Nobody knows,” he replied. “All that remains are legends. Perhaps you should ask Hesho which one he believes. I’m more curious as to why the cytonics would leave in the first place. Just because they weren’t trusted? You didn’t trust me when we first met, and I didn’t leave.”

“You can’t leave,” I said.

“I could sulk,” he said. “I have a sulking subroutine.”

“Oh, I know.”

My shuttle flew down low, and we neared some docks that extended away from the city, out into the darkness. Just before we passed out of the air shell, however, I spotted a group of people waving signs. I couldn’t read them—the distance was too great for my pin to translate for me—so I whispered to M-Bot.

“There’s a group of people here waving signs,” I said. “Right next to the docks.” I squinted. “An alien that looks like a gorilla is leading them. I think it’s a burl, the same species as the one who got kicked out of the flight test.”

“Let me check the local news networks,” M-Bot said. “Just a moment.”

We flew past the demonstrators, and the shuttle carried me out of the air shield. I started to lift off my seat, my hair floating in zero G as we left the platform’s gravitational field. We flew along the docks, most of which were filled with large craft of a size that couldn’t land on launchpads.

The stars came awake to me again, like a distant melody. The information that Starsight was sending through the nowhere to other planets. I tried to concentrate on the different sounds, but again there were far too many of them. It was like a rushing river in the deep caverns. If I let the music sit in the back of my mind, I heard it as a simple tune, easy to ignore. But if I tried to pick out anything specific, it turned into a clatter.