Starsight

Local traffic control gave me a flight plan, and I left the city—noticing specifically that I could feel when we got beyond the air bubble and Starsight’s cytonic inhibitor. As soon as we passed the invisible barrier, the singing of the stars became louder.

A piece of me relaxed, as if putting down a heavy burden. I reached out with my mind, seeking my home, but found only the void of nothingness. I could hear spurts of sound coming from Starsight—their FTL communications bursts—but otherwise I was facing eternity.

“Even with the prohibitions in place against wireless signals, they still use them,” I said. “To send flight plans, to communicate with other planets.”

“Yes,” M-Bot said. “The datanet is full of warnings about ‘minimizing’ wireless communications, but it feels similar to how they have warnings to deposit waste in recycling receptacles. There’s an understanding that they need to be careful, but also an understanding that a civilization cannot function without communications.”

“The delvers haven’t attacked in decades, maybe centuries,” I said. “I can see how people would grow laxer and laxer over time.” Perhaps that was why Cuna was so worried about delvers now. Of course, Cuna had also said that mere communications wouldn’t pull a delver into our realm—that required cytonics. Wireless signals merely guided the delvers to locations once they were already in our realm.

I turned, steering us in the proper direction for the test. We joined a group of some forty other ships that were going the same way, though I could see more groups ahead of ours. A few of the ships looked similar to what I was accustomed to, with what I could recognize as wings. But others were simply long tubes, or bricks, or more seemingly impossible designs. These had been constructed without regard for air resistance.

M-Bot’s quick scan showed that some were fighters, but many seemed more like small cargo ships or private shuttles with no weaponry. Still, all those blips on my proximity sensors struck me as strange. I was accustomed to looking at our sensors and seeing one of two things: Krell or DDF. Civilian traffic was almost nonexistent on Detritus.

“I’ve found no way to communicate with Detritus,” M-Bot said. “Unless you learn to do it with your powers. However, the requisition privileges you were given by Cuna allow you to use their communications networks to send messages to Alanik’s people, if you’d like.”

“Could we say something to them that wouldn’t be suspicious?”

“I don’t know,” M-Bot said. “But I found an encryption key among the files I downloaded from her ship. Sending something bland, but with a hidden encoded message, might persuade the UrDail that the message is authentic.”

“It might seem suspicious to the Superiority,” I said. “They’d expect Alanik to communicate cytonically, like she did reaching out to me. But . . . I guess we could tell them we’re trying their network because we want to start testing out their ‘safer’ methods. They’d probably like that.”

I thought for a few minutes as we flew. Alanik’s people asking too many questions could be dangerous—and they’d certainly begin to wonder why they didn’t hear from their pilot. At the same time, I doubted I could fool them into thinking I was her. Imitating Alanik to a bunch of people who didn’t know her was one thing, but trying to do it—even via written message—to those who knew her best?

“Will the Superiority be able to decrypt the message, if we use Alanik’s key?”

“Highly unlikely,” M-Bot said. “This encryption is a variation on a one-time pad. Even I would have trouble breaking it via brute force.”

I took a deep breath. “All right. Compose some bland message about me having landed, and everything being good. I’m going to the test today, blah blah. But underneath that, send an encrypted message: ‘I am not Alanik. She crashed on my planet and is wounded. I am trying to complete her mission.’ ”

“All right,” M-Bot said. “Let’s hope that doesn’t immediately make them panic and contact the Superiority, demanding answers.”

It could do just that—but I figured that sending the message was less risky than staying silent.

“I have composed the fluffy message to dispatch over the top of the hidden one,” M-Bot said. “But since in that one you’ll be lying to fool the Superiority, and saying you’re Alanik, you’ll have to sign it yourself. I can’t write the part that is untrue, as my programming forbids me from lying.”

“I’ve heard you say things that are untrue before.”

“In jest,” M-Bot said. “This is different.”

“You’re a stealth fighter,” I said. “You are literally wearing a hologram to lie about what you look like to everyone who sees us. You’re capable of lying.”

He didn’t reply, so I sighed and typed out Alanik’s name at the end, and told him to send the message as soon as we got back to the station. Hopefully it would buy us a little time.