Starsight

Her ship powered off anyway, Vapor locking down the systems. We had her. I slowed my own ship, then pointed the nose right at Brade. My own words seemed to echo back at me.

We can’t simply shoot to disable. She’ll keep on trying to bring that delver as long as she’s alive . . .

As if in direct proof of that, she met my gaze, then projected a scream into the nowhere. The eyes—which had been fading—snapped their attention back on us, particularly one pair that seemed larger than all the rest.

I squeezed the trigger. In that moment, Brade’s scream went shriller than it ever had before. In the panic of knowing she would die, Brade finally accomplished her goal.

And something emerged from the nowhere.

41

The delver’s emergence distorted reality. In one blink of an eye, Brade’s ship went from being in front of me to being shoved aside. Something vast entering our realm pushed us back, like we were riding a wave rippling through reality itself.

The shot I’d taken at Brade missed, and was instead absorbed by the expanding blackness.

My ship rocked as I was thrust away. The blackness grew so large that it dominated my view. I thought I saw the core of the delver for a moment, that deep shadow. An absolute darkness that seemed too pure to actually exist.

And then the maze appeared, matter coalescing around the thing like . . . like condensation forming on a very cold pipe. It grew around the core, shooting out terrible spires, gathering to be the size of a small planet. Much larger than the maze we’d trained in.

That maze was soon shrouded in dust and particulate matter, a haze that obscured it. Dark spires cast shadows within, lit by flares of deep red, the color of molten stone. Storms of terrible colors and mind-bending shadows. A vast, nearly incomprehensible thing, hidden within the floating dust.

This enormous thing now loomed like a moon over Detritus—far too close. My sensors went crazy; the delver had its own gravitational pull.

Two weeks ago, I’d watched a recording of a thing like this consuming the old inhabitants of Detritus. Now I cowered before one in real life. A speck. We were all specks to this creature.

My hands fell limp from my controls. I’d failed. And I was pretty sure that the very action I’d taken to stop this—shooting at Brade—had given her the push to achieve her goal.

I felt a sudden crushing sense of hopelessness. This thing was so immense and strange.

Then another emotion pushed through the despair. Anger. We’d die here—everyone in the Defiant Caverns—while the people of Starsight ate, and laughed, and ignored what their own government was doing. It didn’t seem fair. Those insects. Those bugs that slobbered and skittered and clicked and . . . and . . .

Wait. I pushed through those overwhelming emotions. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t how I was feeling.

The battle had stilled. Detritus had gone silent, as I’d ordered. It was as if the entire planet held its breath. A mind—a vast, incomprehensible mind—brushed against mine. Something so oppressive, it threatened to crush me.

There’s nothing here, I thought in a panic. Nothing to destroy. You see? No buzzing, no annoyances here. Go somewhere else. Go . . . go that way.

I fed it a destination. Not really by intent—more like the way you’d throw something hot after touching it unexpectedly. I pointed it toward a place in the far distance. The direction where Winzik’s broadcast was going, the direction where the stars were singing.

I felt the delver’s attention turn. Yes, there were things nearby—Superiority ships—making noise, but it wanted something larger. It could hear that distant destination, the place where I’d nudged its attention.

It vanished, following that distant song.

I was sucked forward by the ripple in reality, same as I’d been pushed back by it earlier. Sweat beaded on the sides of my face as confusion fought relief. It was gone. Just like that, it was gone.

I had sent it to destroy Starsight instead.

42

“Hello?” a kitsen voice said over my comm.

I stared out into the void, numb.

“Alanik . . . I . . . I don’t actually know what your name is. It’s me, Kauri. We . . . we sustained great losses. Lord Hesho is dead. I’ve taken command, but I don’t know what to do.”

Hesho? Dead? The kitsen ship hovered up by mine. A black gouge had been blasted out of the side, but the crew had patched it with a shield.

“The Superiority forces are retreating,” Vapor said. “Ships are disengaging from the humans and flying back toward the Weights and Measures. Perhaps they are frightened, now that their terrible weapon has failed.”

“It didn’t fail,” I whispered. “It’s gone to Starsight instead. They . . . they didn’t quiet themselves enough. They’ve come to rely on their communications. It heard them.”