Starsight

Don’t pat yourself on the back too much, Spensa, I told myself. These are Krell ships. Even if they’re training to fight delvers now, you know they’ll inevitably end up on the other side of a fight from the humans.

That knowledge subdued my enthusiasm. “That was a nice run,” I told the rest of my flight. “Yes, even yours, Morriumur. Vapor, I think this lot is starting to actually look like pilots.”

“Perhaps,” Vapor replied. “As they are excelling at your training, maybe we could let them have a chance at the maze. We should have time for one extended run today before training is finished.”

“About time!” Hesho said. “I am a patient kitsen, but a knife can only be sharpened so far before all you are doing is wearing it away.”

I smiled, remembering my own enthusiasm when Cobb had first started letting us train with weapons. “Let’s pair off,” I said to Vapor. “And do a run. Three of us will have to go as a trio though, as we have five—”

“I don’t need a wingmate,” Brade said, then turned and boosted toward the maze.

I sat in stunned silence. She’d been getting better throughout the week; I’d thought she was beyond this now. Scud, that was the sort of stunt that would have made Cobb scream at us until he was red in the face.

“Brade!” I shouted into the comm. “So help me, if you don’t return, I’ll—”

“Let her go,” Vapor cut in.

“But we’re always supposed to take a wingmate into the maze!” I said. “Otherwise the illusions will fool you!”

“Then let her learn this lesson,” Vapor said. “She will see for herself when the rest of us perform better than she does.”

I grumbled, but held myself back—barely—from continuing to rant at Brade. Vapor was

our commander, even if I was the XO.

“I will take Morriumur,” Vapor told me. “I believe that I can help teach them a little patience. They need to learn to handle their aggression.”

“That puts me with Hesho,” I said. “We’ll meet back here in an hour and a half? Fly in for forty-five minutes, start accustoming yourself to the strange ways of the place, then fly back out.”

“Very well. Good luck.” Vapor and Morriumur moved off, while Hesho commanded his helmsman to guide the kitsen ship up beside mine.

“Does it strike you as odd,” I asked him, “that we complain about Morriumur being aggressive right after Brade flew off on her own? Morriumur is a fair bit less aggressive than I am. Even less than you are, I’d say.”

“Morriumur is not a member of a ‘lesser species,’ ” Hesho said. “Others expect more of them because of the vaunted ‘primary intelligence’ their species has.”

“I’ve never understood that,” I said as the two of us flew inward, picking a different section to attack from Vapor and Morriumur. The delver maze was so big, that wasn’t a problem. “What does ‘primary intelligence’ even mean?”

“It is just a term, not an actual measure of their relative intelligence,” Hesho said. “From what I’ve been able to gather, it means their species has created a peaceful society, where crime is reduced to near nonexistence.”

I sniffed. Peaceful society? I didn’t buy that for a moment—and if I had ever been inclined to, Alanik’s last words would have disabused me. Don’t trust their peace.

Hesho and I approached the delver maze, and I smothered the feelings of concern that rose inside me. Last time I’d gone in here, it had been a very strange experience. But I could handle that. A hero didn’t pick her trials.

“You and your crew ready?” I asked Hesho as the first of the embers neared us.

“The Swims Upstream is ready for action, Captain,” Hesho said. “This moment . . . it awaits us like the tongue awaits the wine.”

We fought our way through the embers. Then—side by side—the two of us swooped in through one of the many holes in our section of the delver maze. I hugged the kitsen’s larger, more heavily shielded ship as we entered a long steel tunnel ribbed with pillarlike folds at periodic intervals. There were no internal lights, so we turned on our floods.

“Sensor department,” Hesho said to his team, “get a close-up shot of those symbols on the wall.”

“Roger,” another kitsen said.

I drifted to the side, shining my lights on another field of strange writing etched into the wall here.

“We can’t translate them, Your Normalness,” said Kauri. “But the symbols are similar to ones found near nowhere portals on some planets and stations.”

“Nowhere portals?” I asked, frowning.

“Many people have tried to study the delvers in their own realm, Captain,” Hesho said. “Kauri, explain if you please.”

“Nowhere portals are stable openings,” Kauri said, “like wormholes leading into the nowhere. They are often marked by similar symbols. These portals are how acclivity stone is mined and transported to our realm—but I don’t know why the symbols would be here. I see no sign of a portal.”