Starsight

This put me behind them. Normally, my job would be to chase these two back toward where Kimmalyn would be waiting to pick them off. Today, I’d need to do it all myself. I started firing on the drones, but they split apart, heading different directions. I chose one and dodged after it.

“I’m tracking the other two,” M-Bot said. “They’re weaving back this way, but it’s slow-going through the asteroids.”

I nodded, focused almost entirely on the chase after this drone. It cut downward, and I was able to anticipate it, darting parallel to it. I waited for it to turn again, and at exactly the right moment I launched my light-lance and speared the enemy ship. Quickly, before it could tug me off course, I shot the other end of the light-lance into a nearby asteroid.

The result was that the enemy ship unexpectedly found itself tethered to an asteroid. When it turned, it was yanked off course by the lance, and slammed into the asteroid in a spray of sparks. Hope you were watching that, Cuna, I thought with a grin of satisfaction.

“Well done,” M-Bot said. “Nearest enemy is at your eight. Highlighting on proximity display.”

I followed his suggestion, making a set of maneuvers that took me into a denser section of the asteroid field. Enormous rocks tumbled in space there, shadows playing across them under the floodlights of my ship. M-Bot helpfully changed his proximity screen to a 3-D hologram that showed a hovering scale map of the field, which rotated as I turned.

I managed to get behind one of the other Krell, but the third one—the one that had gone around to the outside direction—fell in behind me. Destructor blasts flashed around me and smashed the stones, spraying chips through the void. Debris popped against my shield.

“Engaging synthetic auditory indicators,” M-Bot said, and the soundlessness of space was replaced by rattling and explosions, reproduced to remind me of an in-atmosphere battle. I took this in—the sight of the asteroids, the feel of the explosions, the cold readouts, and the thundering of my own heart—and I grinned.

This was what life was about.

I spun through the asteroids, giving up the chase, and let both drones get on my tail. Then I led them in a sweeping game. Dodging, light-lancing, staying just ahead of them. Explosions rained around me. It was pure combat. My skill against that of the pilots, flying the drones from the safety of wherever they were holed up.

The explosions from other parts of the battlefield showed me for certain how little the diones and the Krell regarded the lives of anyone they considered beneath them. True, it did seem that most of the time they gave ships a chance to surrender if their shield went down. Many did just this—in fact, many gave up even before losing their shields.

It was difficult to be that precise with live fire, however, and some unfortunate ships took a stray shot just after their shield failed. Those didn’t get a chance to surrender. Others kept fighting, stubbornly, when outnumbered and overwhelmed. They were not shown mercy.

A blast from one of my tails exploded an asteroid just ahead of me, throwing out debris. I grunted and pivoted around a different asteroid to get out of the way. The GravCaps flared as I took the turn, my seat rotating to divert the g-forces backward. The sudden spin still pressed my skin back from my face.

“Careful,” M-Bot said. “I’d rather not get blown up today. I’m just starting to believe I’m alive. It would be unfortunate to suddenly become un-alive.”

“Trying,” I said, grinning through gritted teeth as I launched out of the spin and reoriented myself, with the drones scrambling to follow.

“Do you think maybe I can learn to lie?” M-Bot said. “Really lie? And if I can, do you think that might prove I’m sapient?”

“M-Bot, this is really not the right time for an existential crisis. Please focus.”

“Don’t worry. I’m capable of doing both at once because of my multitasking routines.”

I cut around another asteroid, then another, pushing myself—and even M-Bot’s advanced GravCaps—to their limit. I was rewarded as one of the ships tailing me collided with an asteroid.

“You know, you humans are lucky the Superiority bans advanced AIs,” M-Bot said. “Machine reaction times are vastly faster than your fleshy ones; your inferior biological brain would never be able to stay ahead of them.” He hesitated. “Not that humans are completely inferior to a robot. Um, you do have better taste than I do in . . . um . . . glasses.”

“You don’t wear glasses,” I said. “Wait, I don’t wear glasses.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to lie, all right? It’s not as easy as you all pretend it is.”

I turned and popped up into a large clearing among the asteroids, an open spot where collisions weren’t as threatening. Here, many of the more stubborn would-be pilots still scrambled about in a chaotic mess, destructor fire lighting up the placid asteroids.

“One plus one,” M-Bot said, “is two.”