Starsight (The Skyward Series Book 2)
Starsight: Part 2 – Chapter 9

I was only in the nowhere for a moment, but in that place, time seemed to have no meaning. I floated alone, with no ship. Infinite blackness surrounded me, punctuated by lights that seemed so much like stars—only malevolent. They could see me hanging there, exposed. I felt like a rat suddenly dropped on a string into the middle of a cage full of starving wolves.

The eyes focused on me, and their anger built. I was trespassing in their domain. I was an insignificant worm . . . but my presence still brought them pain. My world and theirs did not belong together. Their lights surged toward me. They’d rip my very soul to shreds and leave only scraps of—

I appeared back in M-Bot’s cockpit.

“—worked!” M-Bot finished.

“Ah!” I yelled, jolting. I grabbed the sides of my cockpit seat. “Did you see any of that?”

“See what?” M-Bot said. “My chronometer indicates no time has passed. You engaged the cytonic hyperdrive . . . or, well, I think you are the cytonic hyperdrive.”

I put my hand to my chest, pressing it against the thick material of my flight suit, which seemed very strange now that it was the wrong color. My heart raced and my mind reeled. That place . . . the nowhere. It had been like swimming through a deep-cavern lake without any lights. All the while knowing things lay beneath, watching me, reaching for me . . .

That was them, I thought. The things that destroyed the people of Detritus. The things we saw in the recording. The delvers were real. They and the eyes were the same thing.

I breathed in and out deeply, calming myself with effort. At least the hyperjump had worked. I had used my powers again, with the help of the coordinates that Alanik had placed in my mind.

Right. Time to be a hero. I could do this.

“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “We’re being contacted!”

“By who?” I asked.

“By whom!” Doomslug said from beside me.

“You’ve brought us in near a Superiority space station of some size,” M-Bot said. “Look at your five. The radio chatter here is quiet, but distinct.”

I rested my hand comfortingly on Doomslug, who was fluting in annoyance, perhaps sensing my discomfort. I searched in the direction M-Bot had indicated, and saw something I’d missed in my first brief scan of the starfield. It was a distant station of some sort—lights in the darkness that were clustered around a central flat plane.

“Starsight,” I said. “That’s what the alien, Alanik, called it.” I scrambled to pull on my helmet and buckle in. “They’re contacting us? What are they saying?”

“Someone on the station is asking us for identification,” M-Bot said. “They’re speaking in Dione, a Superiority standard language.”

“Can you spoof Alanik’s transponder signal?”

“Doing so.”

“Great. Then stall them for a little bit while I think through this.”

M-Bot clearly still looked like the alien ship, and—judging by my soft violet hands—my hologram was still working as well. If this mission failed, it wouldn’t be due to the limitations of the technology—it would be because of the limitations of the spy.

“First things first,” I said. “We need to check our retreat and see if we can get home, if things go poorly. Give me just another minute or so.”

I breathed in and out, calming myself, doing the exercises Gran-Gran had taught me. Exercises she’d learned from her mother, who had been the one who’d hyperjumped our old space fleet before we’d crashed on Detritus.

I’d jumped here to perform this mission, but I wanted to know: Could I jump back if I needed to? Everything would get a whole lot easier if this expansion of my powers, as granted by Alanik touching my brain, could work again.

I imagined myself floating in space . . . stars zipping around . . . Yes, having just hyperjumped, I felt a familiarity to the action. The nowhere was close. I’d just been there. I could return.

Those things would see me again.

Don’t think about that, I told myself sternly. I concentrated on the exercise. I was flying, shooting through the stars, zipping away . . .

Where? That was the problem. For anything other than a very short jump, I’d need to know exactly where I was going. I couldn’t simply reverse the directions Alanik had given me, because they hadn’t included my starting point of Detritus, only my destination of this space station.

“M-Bot,” I said, coming out of my trance. “Can you calculate our location?”

“Currently calculating, using astronomical data. But I warn you, Spensa, my stalling is not working. They’re sending ships out to investigate.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Sending them binary code.”

“What?” I said. “That’s how you decided to stall?”

“I don’t know! I figured, ‘Organics like dumb things, and this is pretty dumb.’ In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t dumb enough? Anyway, they’ll have visual on us within the minute.”

The moment of truth. I took a deep breath. I was a warrior. Trained by my grandmother from childhood to face my heroic destiny with courage. You can do this, I told myself. It’s just a battle of a different kind. Like Hua Mulan or Epipole of Carystus, going to battle wearing another person’s identity.

I’d heard those stories a dozen times over from Gran-Gran. The thing was, the subterfuge of both women had eventually been discovered. And it hadn’t exactly gone well for either one.

I’d just have to be sure not to end up like them. I turned M-Bot as two ships approached from the distant station. Boxy and painted white, they were like the Krell shuttlecraft I’d seen at the space station near Detritus.

The two ships leveled off with mine, rotating to the same axis so we could see each other through the glassy fronts of their crafts. The pilots were a pair of aliens with crimson skin. They didn’t wear helmets, and I could see that they were hairless and had prominent eye ridges and cheekbones. They looked basically humanoid—two arms, one head—but were alien enough that I couldn’t distinguish their gender.

M-Bot patched through their communication, and alien chatter filled my cockpit. I dug out Alanik’s translating device and clicked it on, and the chatter was translated into her language, which didn’t do me a whole lot of good.

“M-Bot,” I hissed. “You said you’d fix that.”

“Whoops,” he said. “Hacking into the pin’s language interface . . . Ha! I activated the English setting.”

“Unidentified ship,” an alien said. “Do you require assistance? Please classify yourself.”

I launched right into it. No choice now. “My name is Alanik of the UrDail. I’m a pilot and messenger from the planet . . .”

“ReDawn,” M-Bot whispered.

“From the planet ReDawn. I have come to be a pilot for you guys. Um, in your space force. Like you asked?” I winced. That wasn’t terribly convincing. “Sorry about the odd communication earlier. My computer can be a real pain sometimes.”

“Ha ha,” M-Bot said to me. “That was sarcasm. I can tell because it wasn’t actually funny.”

The two patrol ships were silent for some time, probably having switched over to a private comm line. I was left to wait, hanging there in space, worrying. I examined their boxy white ships—and oddly, I couldn’t replace any weapon ports on them.

“Emissary Alanik,” one of the aliens said, coming back on, “Platform Docking Authority sends you welcome. It seems they have been expecting you, though they note that you’re later than you said you’d be.”

“Um,” I said. “Some unimportant troubles back home. But it’s possible I might have to leave in a little bit, then come back again.”

“Whatever you wish. For now, you’ve got dock clearance. Berth 1182, which is in the seventh sector. An official will meet you there. Enjoy your visit.”

With that, they turned around and flew back toward the station.

I remained tense. Surely this was a trap. Surely they’d seen through my crude attempt at subterfuge. I eased forward on the throttle, following after the two ships—and they didn’t react.

I had them right in my sights. I could have blown them both from the sky, particularly with how closely—and lackadaisically—they were flying. How in the name of the Seventy Saints could they stand having their backs to me? The smart thing would have been to have me fly on ahead at a safe distance, so they could watch me from a position of power.

I accelerated, but stayed in range to fire on the ships if they turned on me. They didn’t seem to even notice. If this was a trap, they were doing an awfully good acting job.

Doomslug fluted nervously. I agreed.

“M-Bot,” I said, “have you calculated where we are yet?”

“Indeed,” he said. “We’re not too far from Detritus—only some forty light-years. This station, which you correctly named Starsight, is an important trading waystop. It houses the Superiority regional government.”

“Give me the coordinates—the direction and distance—to Detritus.”

“Easy,” M-Bot said. “Data is on your screen.”

Several long numbers popped up on my proximity screen’s readout. I frowned, then reached out to locate them with my fledgling cytonic senses. Only, reached out to . . . where? Those numbers were so large, they barely meant anything to me. Sure, they told me where Detritus was, but I still didn’t know where it was. Couldn’t feel it, like I had when Alanik sent me her cytonic impression of Starsight’s location.

“That’s not going to work,” I said. “I won’t be able to get us out unless I figure out more about my powers.”

“Theoretically,” M-Bot said, “we’ll be leaving with a stolen Superiority hyperdrive, right?”

“That’s the plan. I’d just feel better about this if I knew we had an escape route. How long would it take to fly back to Detritus the long way?”

“By the ‘long way’ you mean at sublight speeds?” M-Bot said. “That would probably take us roughly four hundred years, depending on how close to light speed we managed to get before using half our power, then accounting for deceleration on the other end. Sure, time dilation would make it seem like less time passed for us—but only about four years’ difference at that speed, so you’d still be super-dead by the time we arrived.”

Great. That wasn’t an option. But Jorgen and I had both known that I might end up trapped here. This was the mission. It was unlike anything I’d undertaken before, but I was the only one who could do it.

I boosted, drawing closer to the station, which was larger than I’d estimated. Scale and size were difficult to judge in space. The station looked kind of like one of the platforms that surrounded Detritus. A floating city—shaped like a disc, with buildings sprouting from both sides. A bubble of something glowing and blue surrounded it.

I’d always assumed that people lived inside stations like this, but as we drew closer and closer, I saw that wasn’t the case. People lived on the surface of this station, walking about with the open blackness above them. That bubble must keep in air and heat, making it habitable. Indeed, as we drew closer, the two patrol ships passed through the bluish shield.

I stopped outside that shell. Then, one last time, I tried to use my cytonic senses. I reached out in the direction M-Bot had indicated, and felt a faint . . . fluttering at the edges of my mind. That was the right direction. I could feel someone there. Alanik, maybe?

It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t teleport myself back. So it was time to enter the enemy’s base. I braced myself, then guided my ship through the envelope of the air shield.