Starsight

“What is this?” Kauri said. “Could you repeat that, please? You said the delver has gone to Starsight.”

“Yes.” I sent it.

“No! We have family on the station! And crew members who were too sick for duty. There are . . . there are millions of people on Starsight!”

A drone hovered up beside me. Vapor had stolen herself a new ship. I barely noticed. I was watching the stars, listening to their sounds.

“Winzik . . . that monster,” Vapor said. “This is exactly what happened when humans tried to control a delver during the second war. It turned against the very ones who’d summoned it. His broadcast of these events gave the thing a pathway right back to his home!”

It had been that, yes, but more my own interference. I had done this. Saints and stars . . . I’d sent it to destroy them. Brade was right. We could control these things.

“We can’t let this . . . ,” Kauri said, sounding helpless. “Maybe we could return to the Weights and Measures? Have it fly us back to Starsight, to fight? But . . . the retreat is going to take time; the carrier needs to wait for those fighters to disengage. It could be half an hour before the ship gets back to the city.”

Far too long. Starsight was doomed. All those people. Cuna and Mrs. Chamwit. Morriumur. Because of me. I felt . . . I felt like the delver had sensed my fury. Was that possible?

“What have you done?” Brade demanded over the comm. I glanced to the side and saw her ship had stopped tumbling nearby. “What have you done?”

“What I had to,” I whispered. “To save my people.”

In so doing, I’d doomed another people. But would anyone blame me for that choice? I knew that even if Winzik’s ships did reach the delver in time, their “weapon” against it was merely a way of diverting its attention. They’d try to send it back here to destroy us instead.

It was us or them.

Brade’s ship vanished, slipping into the nowhere.

“What do we do?” Vapor asked.

“I don’t know,” Kauri said. “I . . . I . . .”

There was nothing to do. I reignited my shield, then leaned my head back and accepted what was happening.

Leave the Superiority to its own problems. They’d caused this. They deserved it. My only worry was for M-Bot and Doomslug. Surely he’d be safe. He was a ship.

Regardless, what could I do? Us or them. I turned my ship around, away from the stars, to head back home.

No.

My hands moved off the controls.

“This isn’t my fight,” I whispered.

A hero doesn’t choose her trials, Gran-Gran’s voice said.

“I don’t know how to stop it.”

A hero faces what comes next.

“They hate us! They think we’re only worthy of being destroyed!”

Prove them wrong.

“Um . . . Alanik?” Kauri asked, uncertain, moving her ship up beside mine.

I took a long deep breath, then looked back at the stars.

Scud. I couldn’t abandon those people.

I could not run from this fight.

“Bring your ships in close,” I said to the kitsen and to Vapor. “Touch your wings to mine if you can.”

“Why?” Vapor asked, obeying. Her wing tapped mine, and the kitsen’s did so on the other side. “What are we doing?”

“Stepping into the darkness,” I said.

Then I flung us into the nowhere.

INTERLUDE

Being two people was an uncomfortable experience for Morriumur. On the left, one could argue that Morriumur had never known anything different. On the right, one could point out that one’s separate halves—and the memories they had inherited—knew precisely how odd the experience was.

Two minds thinking together, but blending memories and experiences from the past. Only some from each parent, a stew of personality and memory. Occasionally their instincts fought against one another. Earlier in the day, Morriumur had reached to scratch their head—but both hands had tried to do it at once. And before that, at the sound of a loud bang—just a dish being dropped—Morriumur had tried to both dodge for cover and jump up to help at the same time.

This disjunction was growing even worse as the two halves prepared to separate and recombine again. Morriumur stepped toward the drafting pod, passing through a double row of family members—lefts on one side, rights the other, with agendered choosing either side. They held out the appropriate hand, brushing Morriumur’s own extended hands as they passed through the dark room.

Morriumur was supposed to have two and a half months left, but after leaving the space force . . . well, the decision had been made to proceed early. This draft was not right. Morriumur’s parents and family agreed. Time to try again.

Everyone said it wasn’t supposed to feel like a farewell, and that Morriumur shouldn’t see it as a rejection. Redrafting was common, and they had been assured it wouldn’t hurt. Yet how could one take it as anything but a rejection?

Too aggressive, one grand had said. This will trouble them all their life.