Starsight

My ship was an interceptor built for speed, with moderate firepower in the form of twin destructors and—I was pleased to note—a single light-lance turret underneath. I’d worried I wouldn’t have one of those, and most of the ships didn’t. Apparently the Superiority officials had seen how effectively I’d used mine in the test.

Morriumur had an interceptor too, while Vapor had been given a sniper, with a longer-range gun but no light-lance. I looked over my shoulder, noting Brade walking to the last of the fighters—a third interceptor, also with a light-lance.

I stepped over to her as she reached her ship. She looked up, startled. “What?” she demanded.

“I just wanted to welcome you to the flight,” I said, holding out my hand. I nodded toward it. “It’s a human gesture, I’ve been told.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I don’t associate with monsters.”

She brushed past me, then hauled herself up the ladder into her ship. Scud. How brainwashed was she? If I was going to recruit her, I’d need to find a way to talk to her more without raising anyone else’s suspicions.

For now, it seemed my only option was to start training. And to be honest, I found I was eager to begin. All of this imitation and subterfuge was exhausting; it would be good to just fly again.

I climbed into my fighter, and was pleased to find that the controls were familiar. Had we humans gotten these designs from aliens long ago? Or had our attempt to conquer the galaxy spread our technology throughout it?

“M-Bot,” I said. “Preflight check.”

Silence.

Right. Being without his friendly voice made me feel suddenly exposed. I’d grown accustomed to having him there in the ship’s computer, watching out for me. With a sigh, I found a preflight checklist under the seat, used my pin to translate it, then went through the steps to double-check that everything worked the way I expected.

“This is Alanik,” I said, after testing the communications. “Everyone online?”

“This is the Kitsen Unity Ship Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun,” Hesho’s voice said. “Recently named. All systems operational. This ship even has a very nice captain’s chair.”

“We should pick callsigns,” I said. “I’ll be Spring.”

“Do we have

to?” Morriumur said. “Our names are simple enough, aren’t they?”

“It’s a military thing,” I said. “Morriumur, you can be callsign: Complains.”

“Oh,” Morriumur said, their voice sounding despondent. “I guess I deserve that.”

Scud. Assigning an insulting nickname wasn’t nearly as fun when someone just accepted it.

“Callsigns aren’t required,” Brade said. “I will use my name, which is Brade. Do not call me by something else.”

“Fine,” I said. “Vapor, you there?”

“Yes,” her quiet voice said. “But my normal mission callsign is top secret. So I will need another.”

“The Wind That Mingles with a Man’s Dying Breath,” Hesho suggested.

“That’s . . . very specific,” Morriumur said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s cool, but kind of a mouthful, Hesho.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Vapor said.

“Flight Fifteen,” a voice said from Command. “Be ready to launch. Command out.”

“Wait,” I said to the voice. “What’s our command structure? How should we organize ourselves?”

“It doesn’t matter to us,” the voice said. “Figure it out yourself. Command out.”

“That’s annoying,” I said over the private line to my flight. “I thought the Superiority knew more about military discipline than that.”

“Maybe not,” Hesho said. “They did

need to recruit us as pilots.”

“They have hundreds of other pilots, flying remote drones,” I said. “Surely they have command structures. Officers and ranks?”

Morriumur cleared their throat over the line. “My leftparent did a stint as a drone pilot, and . . . well, most of them retire after a short time. The duty is too stressful, too aggressive.”

Scud. Well, that was probably another big reason why we on Detritus had survived so long.

Flight Command ordered us to lift off, and the five of us rose on our acclivity rings, then maneuvered out of the Weights and Measures’s docks into the deepness of space.

The distant star shined light that reflected in bright waves off the metallic surface of the maze. Its awesome size reminded me of the platforms around Detritus—both must have taken extraordinary amounts of effort to create.

We flew out to our instructed coordinates to wait. I tore my attention away from the maze and hit my flight chatter button. We simply couldn’t go into training without some kind of command structure. “Hesho,” I said. “Do you want to be our flightleader? You’ve got command experience.”

“Not much,” Hesho said. “I have been a ship captain for only about three weeks, Captain Alanik. Before that, I was in politics.”

“You were absolute monarch of a small section of the kitsen home planet,” Vapor said softly.