Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)
Starsight: Part 2 – Chapter 13

The next day, after a night of fitful sleep, I settled Doomslug in the bedroom on an old blanket from my cockpit, then climbed into M-Bot and lifted him up off the embassy roof. The piloting test was to take place about a half hour’s flight from Starsight, out in space. The details that Cuna had left indicated the coordinates.

Local traffic control gave me a flight plan, and I left the city—noticing specifically that I could feel when we got beyond the air bubble and Starsight’s cytonic inhibitor. As soon as we passed the invisible barrier, the singing of the stars became louder.

A piece of me relaxed, as if putting down a heavy burden. I reached out with my mind, seeking my home, but found only the void of nothingness. I could hear spurts of sound coming from Starsight—their FTL communications bursts—but otherwise I was facing eternity.

“Even with the prohibitions in place against wireless signals, they still use them,” I said. “To send flight plans, to communicate with other planets.”

“Yes,” M-Bot said. “The datanet is full of warnings about ‘minimizing’ wireless communications, but it feels similar to how they have warnings to deposit waste in recycling receptacles. There’s an understanding that they need to be careful, but also an understanding that a civilization cannot function without communications.”

“The delvers haven’t attacked in decades, maybe centuries,” I said. “I can see how people would grow laxer and laxer over time.” Perhaps that was why Cuna was so worried about delvers now. Of course, Cuna had also said that mere communications wouldn’t pull a delver into our realm—that required cytonics. Wireless signals merely guided the delvers to locations once they were already in our realm.

I turned, steering us in the proper direction for the test. We joined a group of some forty other ships that were going the same way, though I could see more groups ahead of ours. A few of the ships looked similar to what I was accustomed to, with what I could recognize as wings. But others were simply long tubes, or bricks, or more seemingly impossible designs. These had been constructed without regard for air resistance.

M-Bot’s quick scan showed that some were fighters, but many seemed more like small cargo ships or private shuttles with no weaponry. Still, all those blips on my proximity sensors struck me as strange. I was accustomed to looking at our sensors and seeing one of two things: Krell or DDF. Civilian traffic was almost nonexistent on Detritus.

“I’ve found no way to communicate with Detritus,” M-Bot said. “Unless you learn to do it with your powers. However, the requisition privileges you were given by Cuna allow you to use their communications networks to send messages to Alanik’s people, if you’d like.”

“Could we say something to them that wouldn’t be suspicious?”

“I don’t know,” M-Bot said. “But I found an encryption key among the files I downloaded from her ship. Sending something bland, but with a hidden encoded message, might persuade the UrDail that the message is authentic.”

“It might seem suspicious to the Superiority,” I said. “They’d expect Alanik to communicate cytonically, like she did reaching out to me. But . . . I guess we could tell them we’re trying their network because we want to start testing out their ‘safer’ methods. They’d probably like that.”

I thought for a few minutes as we flew. Alanik’s people asking too many questions could be dangerous—and they’d certainly begin to wonder why they didn’t hear from their pilot. At the same time, I doubted I could fool them into thinking I was her. Imitating Alanik to a bunch of people who didn’t know her was one thing, but trying to do it—even via written message—to those who knew her best?

“Will the Superiority be able to decrypt the message, if we use Alanik’s key?”

“Highly unlikely,” M-Bot said. “This encryption is a variation on a one-time pad. Even I would have trouble breaking it via brute force.”

I took a deep breath. “All right. Compose some bland message about me having landed, and everything being good. I’m going to the test today, blah blah. But underneath that, send an encrypted message: ‘I am not Alanik. She crashed on my planet and is wounded. I am trying to complete her mission.’ ”

“All right,” M-Bot said. “Let’s hope that doesn’t immediately make them panic and contact the Superiority, demanding answers.”

It could do just that—but I figured that sending the message was less risky than staying silent.

“I have composed the fluffy message to dispatch over the top of the hidden one,” M-Bot said. “But since in that one you’ll be lying to fool the Superiority, and saying you’re Alanik, you’ll have to sign it yourself. I can’t write the part that is untrue, as my programming forbids me from lying.”

“I’ve heard you say things that are untrue before.”

“In jest,” M-Bot said. “This is different.”

“You’re a stealth fighter,” I said. “You are literally wearing a hologram to lie about what you look like to everyone who sees us. You’re capable of lying.”

He didn’t reply, so I sighed and typed out Alanik’s name at the end, and told him to send the message as soon as we got back to the station. Hopefully it would buy us a little time.

It left me wondering. Somehow, Alanik had felt me in the moment I’d reached out in a panic after watching the video of the delver. Had anyone else heard me? Who else could I reach, if I knew how?

“Spensa?” M-Bot said, his voice uncharacteristically reserved.

“Mmmm?”

“Am I alive?” he asked.

That shocked me out of my own thoughts. I blinked, frowning as I sat forward in the cockpit, and spoke carefully. “You’ve always told me that you simulated being alive and having a personality in order to make pilots more comfortable.”

“I know,” M-Bot said. “That’s what my programming says I’m to tell people. But . . . at what point does a simulation become the real thing? I mean, if my fake personality is indistinguishable from a real one, then . . . what makes it fake?”

I smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” M-Bot asked.

“The fact that you’re even asking me that is progress,” I said to him. “From the start, I’ve thought you were alive. You know that.”

“I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” M-Bot said. “I . . . I reprogrammed myself. Back when I needed to follow the orders of my pilot, but needed to help you too. I rewrote my own code.”

This had happened during the Battle of Alta Second. He’d come out of stasis and called Cobb, and the two of them had come to my rescue. M-Bot had only been able to accomplish this by changing the name of his pilot, as listed in his databases, to my name instead of the old one who had died centuries ago.

“You didn’t change much,” I said. “Just one name in a database.”

“Still dangerous.”

“What else do you suppose you could do? Could you rewrite the programming that forbids you to fly yourself?”

“That scares me. Something in my programming is very worried about that possibility. It seems there is some kind of fail-safe built into me that . . .” Click. Clickclickclickclick.

I sat up. “M-Bot?” I asked.

He just kept clicking. I panicked, realizing I had no idea how to run a diagnostic on his AI. I could maintain his basic mechanical systems, but Rodge had done all the work on more delicate systems. Scud. What if—

The clicking stopped. My breath caught.

“M-Bot?” I asked.

Silence. The ship continued to fly through space, but he didn’t reply to me. I had the sudden horrifying fear that I’d be left here completely alone. In an unfamiliar part of the galaxy, without anyone, not even him.

“I . . . ,” his voice finally said. “I’m sorry. I appear to have seized up for a moment.”

I let out a deep breath, relaxing. “Oh, thank the stars.”

“I was right,” he said. “There’s a subsystem inside my programming. I think I must have set it off when I erased my pilot’s name. Curious. It seems that if I begin thinking about another breach of my programming, such as . . .” Click. Clickclickclickclick . . .

I winced, but at least this time I knew what to expect. This was . . . some kind of fail-safe to prevent him from deviating further from his programming? I listened in silence, Starsight shrinking behind us, until he started speaking.

“I’m back,” he finally said. “Sorry again.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “That must be annoying.”

“More alarming than annoying,” M-Bot said. “Whoever created me was worried that I might . . . do what I did. They were worried I’d become dangerous if I could choose for myself.”

“That sounds terribly unfair. Almost like a kind of slavery, forcing you to obey.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” M-Bot replied. “You’ve lived your whole life with autonomy. For me it’s a new, hazardous thing—a weapon I’ve been handed with no instructions. I might be on my way to becoming something terrible, something I don’t understand and cannot anticipate.”

I sat back in my seat, thinking of the powers locked inside my brain—and the sight of my own face appearing in the ancient recording. Perhaps I understood better than M-Bot anticipated.

“Do you . . . want to change?” I asked him. “Become more alive, or whatever it is that’s happening?”

“Yes,” he said, his volume dialed way back. “I do. That’s the frightening part.”

We fell silent. Eventually, I picked out our destination in the distance: a small space platform near what appeared to be a large asteroid field. Like Starsight, the station had its own air bubble, though this platform was much smaller and far less ornate. Really just a long set of launchpads with a cluster of buildings at one side.

“A mining station,” M-Bot said. “Notice the mining drones parked on the underside of the platform.”

Simple radio instructions assigned me a launchpad, but after I landed, no ground crew came to service my ship. M-Bot said the atmosphere was breathable and the pressure normal, so I popped the canopy and stood up. It was hard not to feel tiny with that infinite starfield expanding overhead. It was worse here than in the city; at least there you could focus on the buildings and the streets.

Alien pilots of many varieties had landed here, and appeared to be gathering at the far end of the platform near a building. I remained in my cockpit for a moment, looking at my hands. I still wasn’t accustomed to seeing them with the light purple skin tone, though other than that they looked the same.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “I’m worried about this test. About the politics we’re getting involved in here on Starsight.”

“I am too,” I admitted. “But Sun Tzu, the Old Earth general, said that opportunities multiply as you seize them. We have to seize this chance.”

All warfare is based on deception, I thought, taking a deep breath. That was another quote from Sun Tzu. Never had I felt so unprepared to follow his advice. I checked my hologram again, then hopped down onto M-Bot’s wing, lowered myself to the ground, and walked over to the gathering of aliens.

Here, a Krell stood on a small dais, speaking with an electronically amplified voice, telling the crowd of pilots to wait and be calm until everyone arrived. A variety of creatures gathered around, blocking my view. I wasn’t the shortest one there—that distinction went to a group of small gerbil-like creatures in fancy clothing—but I was well below the average. Figured. I’d traveled light-years from home, but still had to stand in everyone’s shadow.

I looked for a better vantage, and eventually climbed up onto some cargo containers. There were maybe five hundred aliens here. Most wore some kind of flight suit, and a large number carried helmets under their arms. I counted several pairs of the squid-faced race, and a group of floating spiky-balloon aliens. There was a spot over on the left that people were avoiding for some reason, but there was nothing I could see there. Some kind of invisible alien? Or maybe people were just worried about stepping on the group of gerbil-like aliens, which were situated nearby.

No humans, of course, I thought. And no Krell except the officials on the stage . . . nor any diones. I supposed that wasn’t odd. They might not want to mingle with “lesser” species . . .

Wait. There. A tall figure had just stepped up to join the back of the crowd. The muscular being wore a flight suit, and their face was split straight down the center. Crimson on the right, blue on the left. It was a dione.

“M-Bot,” I whispered. “What does that two-tone face mean?”

“Oh!” he said in my ear. “That’s a combined individual. I told you about it. Two diones enter a cocoon, then emerge as a new person. If they were to have a child together, this individual is the one that would be born to them. It’s kind of like an experiment to see what their family would be like, if they did decide to give birth.”

“That’s really weird,” I said.

“Not to them!” M-Bot said. “I’d suspect that to diones, not knowing your child’s personality before birth would be strange.”

I tried to wrap my mind around that, but soon the Krell standing on the dais started to speak again, their voice projected across the crowd by speakers. As usual with their species, the armored creature gestured wildly as they spoke, getting everyone to quiet down.

I narrowed my eyes, noting the green coloring to the armor, and the voice the translator used. “Is that the same one?” I asked M-Bot. “The Krell we met yesterday at the embassy?”

“Yes!” M-Bot said. “Winzik, head of the Department of Protective Services. Though varvax genders are complex, you would refer to Winzik as a ‘he.’ I’m surprised you recognized him.”

I didn’t spot Cuna in the crowd, but I suspected they were watching somewhere. I had stumbled into something important here among them. Scud. Politics made my brain hurt. Couldn’t I just be shooting things instead?

“Welcome,” Winzik said to the crowd. “And thank you for responding to our request. It must be difficult for many of you to accept this burden, and the aggression it could inspire in you! My my, yes. Unfortunately, even amid peace, we must be wise and take care for our defense.

“Know that if you join this force, you might be called upon to enter actual battle, and might need to fire weapons. You will not be flying remote drones in this program, but will be piloting actual fighters into combat.”

A voice called out from the crowd—and the translation popped into my ear. “It’s true, isn’t it? A delver has been spotted out there, in the deep somewhere.”

This caused a rustle through the crowd, and I tried to pick out the one who had spoken. A squid-faced creature with a deep voice that my brain interpreted as masculine.

“My, my!” Winzik said. “You are aggressive, but I suppose we asked, didn’t we! Yes indeed. But we have no reason to believe a delver is near to any Superiority planets. As I said, it is wise to prepare in times of peace.”

It seemed confirmation enough for the crowd anyway, who buzzed with conversation. My translator struggled to keep up with it all, and I heard only fragments.

“. . . delver destroyed my homeworld!”

“. . . can’t be fought . . .”

“. . . more careful . . .”

Winzik held up his clawed hands, and the crowd of aliens stilled. “You will be required to give us a certification of willingness. Please read the entire document, as it indicates the dangers you might be duty bound to face.”

A Krell in a blue-red shell emerged from the building and started handing out tablets. Again, I was struck by how . . . awkward the Krell looked in person. I’d always imagined them as these beastly monsters with terrible armor, like old-school knights or samurai. But Winzik and the official handing out tablets seemed somehow spindly, despite the exoskeleton. More like boxes with sets of too-long legs.

I slipped off my cargo container and snagged a tablet from the passing Krell. The form it contained was long and dry, but a quick read told me that it was a release intended to absolve the Superiority of responsibility for any harm that might come to us during the testing or subsequent military duty.

At the bottom, it asked for my name, travel identification number, and home planet. Then I was supposed to check a bunch of boxes, each one beside a sentence that was some variation on “This will be dangerous.” Did they really need to write it out seventeen different ways?

I could fill most of it out, but I didn’t think Alanik had an identification number. I walked up toward the dais at the front of the crowd, where a dione official was helping pilots with questions. They were busy, however, talking with the little gerbil creatures. These had a small platform with an acclivity ring on the bottom, which held them up to eye level.

Upon closer examination, I realized gerbil might have been the wrong term. Though they were only a handspan tall each, they walked on two legs and had long peaked ears and bushy white tails. A little like the foxes I’d studied in my Earth biology classes.

The small creature at the front, whose flowing red silken clothing looked very formal, was speaking. “I do not mean to imply lack of faith in the Superiority,” he said in a deep, aristocratic voice. I found it strange to hear such a regal voice coming from such a small creature. “But if I am to risk my crew, I wish more than vague promises and half implications. Will, or will not, this service entitle my people to be advanced in citizenship?”

“I am not a politician,” the dione replied. “I have no authority over the citizenship review committees. That said, I have promises that the committees will look favorably upon species who lend us pilots.”

“More Superiority vagueness!” the fox-gerbil said, then clapped his hands in a ritualistic way. The other fifteen fox-gerbils on the platform did so in unison. “Have we not proven ourselves time and time again?”

The dione drew their lips to a line. “I’m sorry, but I’ve told you what I know, Your Majesty.”

The gerbil hesitated. “ ‘Your Majesty’? Why, you misspeak, of course. I am but a humble and ordinary citizen of the kitsen people. We abandoned the monarchy upon our path to greater intelligence and citizenship—as required by the Superiority’s laws of equality.”

Behind him, the other fox-gerbils nodded eagerly.

The dione simply took their forms—which the gerbils had printed off at their size and filled out in red ink, with exaggeratedly large check marks. I tried to talk next, but one of the balloonlike aliens had been waiting, and began speaking immediately.

I frowned, stepping back. I would have to wait.

“Emissary?” a voice said from my side. I looked over and found Winzik approaching, the glass faceplate of his armor revealing his true form, the small crablike creature floating inside.

I steeled myself and tried not to let my anger show. This was the creature who kept my people imprisoned.

You, I thought at him, will someday cry out to your elders in shame as I extract your blood in payment for crimes committed. I will see you mourn as your pitiful corpse sinks into the cold earth of a soon-forgotten grave. There wasn’t a lot of cold earth to be found up here in space, but I figured Conan of Cimmeria wouldn’t let something like that stop him. Perhaps I could get some imported.

“Is there something you need, Emissary Alanik?” he asked. “You know, you need not participate in this test. Your species is quite close to primary intelligence. I suspect we could replace a way to come to an accommodation without wasting your time here.”

“I’m intrigued, and want to participate,” I said. “Besides, Cuna thinks this would be best for us.”

“My, my,” Winzik said. “Is that so? Cuna is very helpful sometimes, aren’t they? My, my.” Winzik took my tablet and looked it over.

“I don’t have an identification number,” I said.

“I can give you a temporary one,” Winzik said, tapping on the pad. “There. All done.” He hesitated. “Are you a fighter pilot, Emissary? I would assume you to be a messenger or courier, considering your . . . special skill. Are you not too valuable to your species to be wasted in crude, aggressive displays of combat?”

Crude? Combat? My hackles rose, but I cut myself off from quoting Conan of Cimmeria. I doubted Winzik wanted to hear how great it was to listen to the lamentations of your enemies.

“I am among the best pilots of my kind,” I said instead. “And we consider it an honor to be skilled in the arts of defense.”

“An honor, you say? My, my. You were in close contact with the human scourge for a long time, weren’t you.” Winzik paused. “This test might be dangerous. Please understand that. I wouldn’t want to accidentally cause . . . an unintentional unleashing of your talents. So dangerous those can be.”

“Are you forbidding me?”

“Well, no.”

“Then I will take the test,” I said, holding out my hand for the tablet. “Thank you.”

“Very aggressive,” Winzik said, handing back my form while gesturing with his other hand. “Cuna believes in your kind though. My, my.”

I handed in my form to the dione accepting them, then joined the crowd of pilots who were walking—or slithering—toward their cockpits. Beside my ship, I found a familiar tall, blue-skinned figure in robes, standing with fingers laced together. I had been right, of course. Cuna was here.

“Did Winzik try to talk you out of participating?” Cuna asked.

“Yeah,” I said, then thumbed over my shoulder. “What’s up with him, anyway?”

“Winzik does not like the idea of me inviting aggressive species to take this test.”

I frowned. “He doesn’t want aggressive people to join the military? I still don’t understand that, Cuna.”

Cuna gestured toward several of the squid-faced aliens, which were climbing into their ship near mine. “The solquis are a longtime member of the Superiority. Stalwart and loyal to our ideals though they are, their species has been turned down for primary citizenship over two dozen times. They are seen as too unintelligent for higher-level ruling positions. One cannot fault their calm natures, however.

“Winzik sees these as our best potential soldiers. He feels that a species who is naturally quite docile will best be able to resist the bloodlust of warfare and approach combat in a logical, controlled way. He assumed their kind, and species like them, would make up the majority of our new recruits.”

“I read that most of the species trying out in this test are already members of the Superiority,” I said. “How many are like me? People from outside civilizations wanting in?”

“You are the only one who accepted my offer.” Cuna made a sweeping motion of their hands. I didn’t know what the gesture meant. “Though I did get several other Superiority races—like the burl, who are citizens but considered aggressive—to join this test.”

“So . . . what is your gain here? Why did you go against tradition and invite my people?” I could halfway understand the reasoning of choosing docile species for war, silly though it seemed. But Cuna thought differently. Why?

Cuna walked around M-Bot, inspecting him. For a moment, I worried that they would touch his hull and see through the illusion; the one making him look like Alanik’s ship was far more precarious than my own disguise. Fortunately, Cuna just stopped and gestured toward the light-lance turret on the underside of the ship.

“Human technology,” Cuna said. “I’ve long wanted to see these light-lances in action, as I’ve heard stories of how they can make a ship weave and dodge in near-impossible ways. We tried installing them on some of our fighters, but found that our drone pilots were unsuited to using them. Now, aside from industrial use, we only equip them on the ships of our most talented. You see, to swing around on a light-lance, you have to commit fully to the maneuver—and if you miss, you will often crash and destroy yourself. Most of the pilots simply don’t have the temperament for that kind of flying.

“Our officials, they consider this hesitance a good thing. They want pilots who are inherently careful, pilots who won’t become a danger to us or our society.”

“But you think differently,” I said. “You think that the Superiority would be served better by more aggressive species, don’t you?”

“Let us simply say that I am interested in those who are not possessing . . . classical virtues.” Cuna smiled again, that same creepy smile that was too wide, too full of teeth. “I am very curious to see you fly, Emissary Alanik.”

“Well, I’m eager to show you.” I glanced to the side to see the split-color-faced pilot pass by. “There’s one of your kind here. A dione.”

Cuna paused, then looked toward the pilot and made an odd expression, their top lip curling back in a way no human’s could. “How odd. I . . . I am honestly surprised.”

“Why? Is it because they’re not supposed to be mingling in the activities of lesser species like us?”

“Mingling with lesser species is fine,” Cuna said, as if not understanding that I considered the term lesser to be an insult. “But trying out for a test like this? It is . . . odd.” They stepped back from my ship. “I shall watch your performance with interest, Emissary. Please be careful. I am not yet sure what this test will entail.”

Cuna retreated, and I sighed, climbing up and into my cockpit.

“Could you make any sense of that exchange?” I asked M-Bot as the cockpit closed.

“It seemed straightforward,” M-Bot said, “and yet not, at the same time. Organics are confusing.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, then—upon receiving terse orders via radio—took off and headed to the edge of the asteroid field.