Starsight

I froze, then crawled to the very back of the cockpit and opened the small cleanser where I’d often washed my clothing during the months living in that cavern on Detritus.

Inside was a yellow slug. She fluted at me in a tired way as I snatched her up, cradling her.

Behind, M-Bot continued to play the news recording, and a new voice cut in. Winzik’s. I snarled softly, hearing it.

“I have been warning about this threat for months, and have been disregarded,” he said. “My, my. The humans should never have been allowed to fester. All these years, the high minister and the Department of Species Integration tied my hands, preventing me from doing what needed to be done.

“Now we see. Campaigns trying to paint them as harmless are proven lies by facts. When will you listen? First they sent a delver to destroy us. Now their supposedly ‘peaceful’ operative is murdering her way through the city. I petition for an immediate state of emergency, and request I be given authority to put down the humans.”

I felt small, holding to Doomslug in that room with the corpse of my ship. I was beaten.

“I see no route of escape,” M-Bot said. “They will find us and destroy us. They will hate me. They’re afraid of AIs. Like those who created me. They say my presence attracts delvers.”

The sirens outside were louder. I heard voices in the hallway. They’d be sending troops to deal with me. There had to be a way out. Something I could do . . .

Delvers. The nowhere.

“Follow me,” I said. Surging with a fatalistic determination, I tucked Doomslug into the crook of my left arm and took the rifle in a single-handed grip with the other hand. I leaped off the broken ship, then crossed the room to the doorway. I glanced out, then ducked into the hallway.

M-Bot followed with a soft whirring sound. He really could pilot himself, now that he was in the drone. He was free of the programming that had kept him locked away—it seemed a tragedy that he should obtain that freedom when we were so likely doomed.

Krell appeared in the hallway ahead, but I couldn’t turn back. Instead I opened fire wildly, from the hip. I couldn’t aim with Doomslug in my other arm, but I didn’t need to. The Krell shouted in surprise, backing up.

I kept advancing, and shot to the side without looking as I reached the intersection. Then I skidded to a stop at the room I’d visited with Cuna. I shot it open and ducked in just as destructor blasts started sounding down the hallway.

I did a quick survey of the room beyond. Nobody was inside; I’d entered the observation room overlooking the place where Winzik’s minions had exiled the gorilla alien. Glass separated the two halves of the room; the one nearest me contained plush chairs. The other part was austere, with a strange metal disc on the floor, mirrored by one on the ceiling.

I kept moving, shooting the window out, then leaping into the other half of the room. It was lower by a couple meters, so I grunted as I hit the floor, my boots grinding pieces of glass—or, well, probably transparent plastic—from the window.

“We need to talk,” M-Bot said, floating down beside me. “I’m . . . upset. Very upset. I know I shouldn’t be, but I can’t control this. It feels like a real emotion. Logic says you should have left me as you did, but I feel abandoned. Hated. I can’t reconcile this.”

At the moment, I couldn’t deal with my robot having an emotional crisis. I was having enough trouble with my own. I stepped up to the metal disc on the floor, which was inscribed with the same strange writing I’d seen both in the delver maze and back home on Detritus.

Winzik’s minions had summoned a portal into the nowhere here. Could I activate it? I reached out with my cytonic senses, but my senses were still smothered by Starsight’s cytoshield. I could just faintly hear . . . music.

I nudged something with my mind.

A dark sphere appeared in front of me in the center of the room, hovering between the discs.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “My thoughts . . . they’re speeding up?” Indeed, his voice stopped sounding slow and slurred, and felt more reminiscent of his old self. “Um, that does not look safe.”

“They use these nowhere portals to mine acclivity stone,” I said. “So there must be a way to return once you go through. Maybe I can get us back with my powers.”

Shouts outside.

No options.

“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I feel very uncomfortable with this!”

“I know,” I said, slinging my gun over my shoulder by its strap so I could grab his drone by the bottom of its chassis.

Then—M-Bot in one hand, Doomslug in the other—I touched the sphere. And was sucked through to the other side of eternity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Every time I gather together a list of all the people who worked on one of my books, I’m shocked anew by how lucky I am. Though it’s my name on the cover, these books really are a group effort—requiring the talents and patience of a whole lot of amazing people.