Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)
Starsight: Part 1 – Chapter 6

I followed Cobb through the too-clean corridors of Platform Prime. Why were we walking back to the fighter bays?

He counted off the doors until stopping next to the dock where I kept M-Bot. Increasingly confused, I followed him through the small door. I’d expected to replace the ground crew beyond, doing M-Bot’s normal post-battle services. Instead, the room was empty save for the ship and one person. Rodge.

“Rig?” I asked, using his old callsign from when he’d been in Skyward Flight. That had only lasted a few days, but he was one of us all the same.

Rodge—who had been inspecting something on M-Bot’s wing—jumped as I said his name. He spun to replace us there, and blushed immediately. For a moment he was the old Rodge: earnest, gangly, and not a little awkward. He almost dropped his datapad as he quickly saluted Cobb.

“Sir!” Rodge said. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Cobb said. “How goes the project?”

The project? Cobb had said something about a project earlier—it involved M-Bot?

“See for yourself, sir,” Rodge said, then tapped something on his datapad.

M-Bot’s shape changed, and I actually yelped in surprise. In an instant, he looked like one of the black ships that were piloted by Krell aces.

His holograms, I realized. M-Bot was a long-range stealth ship, designed—best we could tell—for spy missions. He had what he called active camouflage, a fancy way of saying he could use holograms to change what he looked like.

“It’s not perfect, sir,” Rodge said. “M-Bot can’t turn himself invisible, not with any real level of believability. Instead, he has to overlay his hull with some kind of image. Since he’s not exactly the same shape as one of those Krell ships, we had to fudge in places. You can see here that I made the hologram’s wings bigger to cover up the tips of his hull.”

“It’s incredible,” I said, walking around the ship. “M-Bot, I had no idea you could do this.”

Rodge looked at his datapad. “Um . . . he sent me a text here, Spin. He says he’s not talking to you because you muted him earlier.”

I rolled my eyes, inspecting Rodge’s work. “So . . . what’s the point of this?”

Cobb folded his arms where he stood near the door. “I asked my command staff, scientists, and engineers to tackle the hyperdrive problem. How do we replace a way off this planet? All the ideas I got back were wildly implausible, except one. It’s only mildly implausible.”

I stepped up beside Rodge, who was grinning.

“What?” I asked him.

“You know all those nights,” he said, “when you’d come wake me up and force me to go on some insane adventure?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I thought maybe I should get some revenge.” He turned and swept his hand toward M-Bot, and the new, confident Rodge was back. He grinned widely, his eyes alight. This was a man in his element. “M-Bot has extremely advanced espionage capabilities. He can create detailed holograms. He can eavesdrop on conversations hundreds of meters away. He can hack enemy signals and computer systems with ease.

“We’ve been using him as a frontline combat ship, but that’s not his true purpose. And as long as we use him just to fight, we’re not utilizing his full potential. When the admiral asked for ideas on how to get ahold of the enemy hyperdrive technology, it occurred to me that the answer was staring us in the face. And occasionally pointing out how odd our human features look.”

“You want to use him to infiltrate the Superiority,” I said, the realization hitting me. “You want to pretend to be a Krell ship, then somehow steal their hyperdrive technology!”

“They launch drones from their space station nearby,” Rodge said. “And we’ve observed new ships arriving there using hyperdrive technology. The very thing we need sits on our proverbial doorstep. M-Bot can use holograms on us too. He could make a small team of us, equipped with mobile receptors like the one you wear, look like Krell.

“If we could somehow—in the confusion of a battle—make M-Bot imitate an enemy ship, we might be able to land him on their station. A small team of spies could unload, then pretend to be Krell just long enough to steal one of their real ships and escape with it. With that in hand, we could replicate their technology and escape the planet.”

I felt my jaw dropping at the audacity of it. “Rodge, that’s insane.”

“I know!”

“I love it!”

“I know!”

The two of us stood there, grinning like we had after stealing the claymore off the wall of the historical preservation chamber. It had taken both of us to lift it, but hey, we’d gotten to hold a real sword.

Together, we looked to Cobb.

“Krell ships likely have transponders,” he said, “for authentication.”

“M-Bot should be able to spoof one,” Rodge said.

“And you think you could do this, Spin?” Cobb asked me. “Imitate one of our enemies? Believably? Sneak onto an enemy station and steal one of their ships?”

“I . . .” I swallowed, and tried to be objective. “No. Sir, I’m a pilot, not a spy. I don’t have any training along these lines. I . . . well, I’d probably make a fool of myself.”

It hurt to admit that, as the plan was fabulous. But I had to be realistic.

“Jorgen said the same thing,” Cobb said.

“He knows about this plan?” I asked.

“We briefed him and the other senior flightleaders on the idea during our last command meeting. We all agreed that nobody in the DDF has this kind of expertise. We’ve spent eighty years drilling for direct battle, not espionage. We don’t have spies. But . . . Jorgen suggested that we start up a training program. Spin, if we do that, would you be willing to participate?”

“Of course,” I said, though the idea of more school—and less flying—gave me a pang of regret.

“Good, because that ship of yours still won’t let anyone else pilot it.” Cobb shook his head. “I think this is the only viable plan we have, though I just don’t like it. I can’t imagine one of us, no matter how well trained, believably imitating a Krell. We’re too different. Plus they’re bound to replace it strange when our ship lands on their station without following their protocol. We’d have to replace some sort of excuse for why our ship is behaving oddly. Damaged systems maybe?

“In any case, Lieutenant McCaffrey, I’m giving you leave to continue developing this idea. Maybe start training all of Skyward Flight for espionage activities. Give me detailed plans. I wish we weren’t pushed so far back against the wall. We might not have time to give this plan the proper preparation it would need. But with those battleships in place now . . .”

I opened my mouth to agree, but then stopped. I sensed something in the back of my mind. A strange sound, like a humming. I cocked my head, focusing on it. The sensation was new to me.

There, I thought as the sound came to a climax, then vanished. I tried to stretch out my cytonic senses to determine what it meant. Did . . . did something just arrive?

A call came on the comm. Cobb walked to the wall, answering it. “Yes?”

“Sir,” Rikolfr’s voice said. “One of the outer scouts spotted an alien ship appearing just outside the defense platforms. It’s a small vessel, fighter size. It seems to have hyperjumped directly here.”

“One ship?” Cobb asked.

“Just one, sir. Not of any Superiority design we know. We’re scrambling a response team from planetside, but this is odd behavior. Why would they send a single ship? Surely we’re past the days when they’d try to sneak up a bomber on Alta.”

“How far away is it?” I asked, knowing the answer. It was close. I could feel it.

“Approaching the outermost shell now, at the orbital equator,” Rikolfr said. “Analysis thinks it must be a new kind of drone sent to test platform gun emplacement response time.”

“I’ll go check it out, sir,” I told Cobb. “A ship from up here will arrive before a planetside team.”

Cobb eyed me.

“Please, sir,” I said. “I won’t do anything stupid.”

“I’ll order Quirk to go with you,” he said. “Don’t try to lose her, and don’t engage this ship unless I give you orders. Understand?”

I nodded, and read the implication in those words. He was testing me. To see if I could still follow orders. I probably should have been embarrassed that such a test was necessary.

I scrambled to climb into my ship as Rodge and Cobb walked to the door. I had a lot to think about, with Rodge’s plan—not to mention the lingering sense of disquiet I still felt at having seen the delver wearing my face.

For the moment though, I was too eager to get back in the cockpit. And to replace out why the Superiority would send a single ship to test our defenses.