Starsight

“Straightening up is a perfect cover for spying.” I leaned back in the seat and scratched under Doomslug’s chin.

The slug trilled piteously, and looked lethargic as she inched toward me. So I picked her up and settled her into my lap. I’d never seen her move this slowly; something about this place seemed to be making her feel sick.

“All right, M-Bot,” I said. “We have a problem. We might need to hijack that entire carrier ship.”

“Excellent,” M-Bot said. “Would you like your corpse cremated or ejected into space?”

I grinned. “Nice.”

“Humor is an essential identifier of a living being,” M-Bot said. “I’ve been working on some subroutines to help me better recognize and make jokes.”

“You can just do that, huh?” I said. “Reprogram yourself to be something new.”

“I have to be careful,” M-Bot said, “as another essential part of being alive is persistence of personality. I don’t want to change who I am too much. Beyond that, there are certain things that, if I try to rewrite, will send me into . . .” Click. Clickclickclickclick.

I sighed and settled back in the seat, petting Doomslug. She was soft and springy—even the spines on her back, which she fluted out of, weren’t that stiff.

“I’m back,” M-Bot finally said, then heaved an exaggerated sigh. “That is annoying. Anyway, you were saying something about a suicide mission trying to hijack an entire Superiority capital ship?”

“It’s not a full capital ship,” I said. “There’s probably only, say, fifty or sixty crew members on board . . .” I launched into an explanation of what had happened to me today: the conversations I’d overheard, the delver maze, the interactions with the other pilots and Vapor. Even the strange experiences inside the maze itself.

“So,” I said, summing up, “I’m not going to be given a ship with a hyperdrive, which means we’ll have to find another way.”

“Curious,” M-Bot said. “And you can hear the orders that Winzik is giving the engine room? Why?”

“I guess they’re communicating through the nowhere.”

“From one end of the ship to the other?” M-Bot asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. Simple wired communication should be enough. Are you sure that’s what you’re hearing?”

“No,” I said, honestly. “And hearing isn’t even the right word.” I sat, thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “We might not need to hijack the entire ship.”

“Good, because the slug would be the only one left after you get yourself killed, and I’m not sure I want her to be my pilot.”

“I feel like something odd is going on in that engine room,” I explained. “Plus, on our way back from the delver maze, something went wrong with the hyperdrive because of me. They swapped it out with another, so the hyperdrive units must be small enough to replace quickly.”

“We knew that already,” M-Bot said. “I used to have something in that empty box in my hull where my hyperdrive was supposed to be.”

I nodded, thinking everything through while rubbing Doomslug’s head. She fluted in contentment.

I’d teleported M-Bot twice on my own, but his systems did claim to have a “cytonic hyperdrive.” I’d assumed that his previous pilot—Commander Spears—had been the actual hyperdrive that had gotten M-Bot to Detritus. But why have the empty box? There was a huge piece of this that I was missing.

“We need to find a way to sneak in there and watch them servicing or engaging the hyperdrive. Scud, maybe if I could steal the device they use to indicate their destination, I could use it to make my own powers work, and at least get us home.”

“By your account, that is a secure location,” M-Bot said. “Inside a well-patrolled military ship. Sneaking in will not be easy.”

“Fortunately, we have access to a spy ship and an advanced AI designed for stealth operations. We need to retrieve data from a secure enemy location. What does your programming think we should do?”

“We should plant espionage devices,” M-Bot said immediately. “The best solution would be to use autonomous drones, which could infiltrate the location and make recordings. The carrier’s shielding will prevent signals from being sent out, but that would be inadvisable anyway, as it would let scanners detect them. Instead we would retrieve the devices manually, then download their information.” He paused. “Ooooh. That’s a good idea! I’m smarter than myself sometimes, aren’t I?”

“Maybe,” I said, leaning back in the seat. “Do we have any such devices?”

“No,” M-Bot said. “I have berths for housing a few small remote drones, but they are empty.”

“Can we build a new one?” I asked, holding up my arm and inspecting the bracelet that projected my hologram. “Like we built a new one of these?”

“It’s possible,” M-Bot said. “We’d need to cannibalize some of my sensor systems and order some new parts—and we’d have to do so without the orders looking suspicious. Hmm . . . A curious challenge.”

“Mull it over,” I said, yawning. “Let me know what you come up with.”