My heart leaped with excitement.

An enemy ace. Fighting drones was exciting, yes, but also lacking. It wasn’t personal enough. A duel with an ace instead felt like the stories Gran-Gran told. Brave pilots engaging in grim contests on Old Earth during the days of the Great Wars. Person against person.

“I will sing to you,” I whispered. “As your ship burns and your soul flees, I will sing. To the contest we had.”

Dramatic, yes. My friends still tended to laugh at me when I said things like that, things like were said in the old stories. I’d mostly stopped. But I was still me, and I didn’t say those things for my friends. I said them for myself.

And for the enemy I was about to kill.

The ace swooped toward me, firing destructors, trying to hit me while I was focused on the drones. I grinned, diving out of the way and spearing a chunk of space debris with my light-lance. That let me pivot quickly, while also swinging the debris behind me to block the shots. M-Bot’s GravCaps absorbed most of the g-forces, but I still felt a tug pulling me downward as I swung through the arc, destructor fire blasting into the debris, one shot coming very near me. Scud. I still hadn’t found a chance to reignite my shield.

“This might be a good time to head back and lead the enemy ships toward the others,” M-Bot said. “Like the plan said…”

Instead, I noted the enemy ace overshooting me—then I swung around and gave chase.

“Dramatic trailing-off of speech,” M-Bot added, “laden with implications of your irresponsible nature.”

I fired at the ace, but they spun on their axis, cutting their boosters. Momentum carried them forward, although they’d turned back-to-front and were now facing me. They couldn’t steer well flying in reverse, so the maneuver was usually risky, but when you had a full shield and your enemy had none…

I was forced to break off the chase, boosting to the left and dodging out of the way of the destructor fire. I couldn’t risk a head-on confrontation. Instead, I focused on the drones for a moment, blasting one out of the sky, then screamed through its debris—which scraped up M-Bot’s wing and smacked the canopy with a fierce crack.

Right. No shield. And in space, the debris didn’t fall after you shot the ship down. That felt like a rookie mistake—a reminder that despite all my training, I was new to zero-gravity combat.

The ace fell in behind me in an expert tailing maneuver. They were good, which was—on one hand—thrilling. On the other hand…

I tried to veer back toward the battle, but the drones swarmed in front of me, cutting me off. Maybe I was in a little over my head.

“Call Jorgen,” I said, “and tell him I might have let myself get cornered. I can’t lead the enemy into our ambush; see if he and the others are willing to come help me instead.”

“Finally,” M-Bot said.

I dodged some more, tracking the enemy ace on my proximity monitor. Scud. I wished I could hear them like I could the drones.

No, this is good, I thought. I need to be careful never to let my gift become a crutch.

I gritted my teeth and made a snap decision. I couldn’t get back to the main battle, so instead I dove toward Detritus. The defense shells surrounding it weren’t solid; they were made up of large platforms that had housed living quarters, shipyards, and weapons. Though we’d begun reclaiming the ones closest to the planet, these outer layers were still set to automatically fire at anything that got close.

I hit my overburn, accelerating to speeds that—in atmosphere—would have caused most starfighters to rattle or even rip apart. Up here I only felt the acceleration, not the speed.

I quickly reached the nearest space platform. Long and thin, it curved slightly, like a chunk of broken eggshell. The remaining drones and the single ace were still on my tail. At these speeds, dogfighting was much more dangerous. The time for me to react before colliding with something would be much smaller, and the smallest touch on my control sphere could veer me off course faster than I might be able to deal with.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said.

“I know what I’m doing,” I muttered back, concentrating.

“Yes, I’m sure,” M-Bot answered. “But…just in case…you do remember that we don’t have control of these outer platforms yet, right?”

I focused my full attention on sweeping down close to the surface of the metal platform without running into anything. The gun emplacements here tracked me and started firing—but they also started firing on the enemy.

I concentrated on dodging. Or really just weaving erratically—I could outfly the drones in a raw contest of skill, but they had superior numbers. Down near the platform, that translated into a liability for my enemies—because to the guns, we were all targets.

Several of the drones flared up in explosions—which vanished almost immediately, flames smothered by the vacuum of space.

“I wonder if those guns feel fulfilled, finally getting to shoot something down after all these years up here,” M-Bot said.

“Jealous?” I asked with a grunt, dodging.

“From what Rodge says, they don’t have true AIs, merely some simple targeting functions. So that would be like you being jealous of a rat.”

Another drone fell. Just a little longer. I wanted to even the odds a bit while I waited for my friends to arrive.

I sank into another trance as I flew. I couldn’t hear the controls of the gun emplacements, but in moments like these—moments of pure concentration—I felt as if I were becoming one with my ship.

I could feel the attention of the eyes back on me. My heart thundered inside my chest. With those guns trained on me…tails giving chase and still firing…

A little further…

My mind sank down, and I felt as if I could sense M-Bot’s very workings. I was in severe danger. I needed to escape.

Surely I could do it now. “Engage cytonic hyperdrive!” I said, then tried to do what I’d done once before, teleporting my ship.

“Cytonic hyperdrive is offline,” M-Bot said.

Scud. The one time it had worked, he’d been able to tell me it was online. I tried again, but…I didn’t even know what it was I’d done that once. I had been in danger, about to die. And then I…I’d done…

Something?

A blast from a nearby gun nearly blinded me, and with gritted teeth I pulled up and zipped out of the defensive guns’ range. The ace had survived, though they had taken a hit or two, so maybe their shield was weakened. Plus, only three drones remained.

I cut my thrust and spun my ship on its axis—still moving forward, but pointed backward—a maneuver that indicated I was going to try shooting behind me. Sure enough, the ace dodged away immediately. They weren’t so brave with a weakened shield. Instead of firing, I boosted after the ace—escaping the drones, which swarmed toward my former position.

I got on the ace’s tail and tried to draw in close enough for a shot—but whoever they were, they were good. They spun into a complex series of dodges, all while increasing speed. I misjudged a turn, and suddenly I swung out away from them. Quickly recovering, I matched their next turn and let out a blast of destructor fire—but now I was pretty far back and the shots went wild, vanishing into space.

M-Bot read off speeds and angles for me so I didn’t have to break concentration for even the fraction of a second it would take to look at my control panel. I leaned forward, trying to match the other starfighter turn for turn—swooping, spinning, and boosting. Seeking that critical moment when we’d align just long enough for me to take a shot.

They, in turn, could twist at any moment and fire back—so they were likely watching for the same thing that I was, hoping to catch me off guard during a moment of alignment.

This perfect focus. This boiling intensity. This bizarre moment of connection where the alien pilot mirrored my efforts, striving, struggling, sweating—drawing closer and closer in a paradoxically intimate contest. For a flash we’d be as one. And then I’d kill them.

I lived for this challenge. For fighting against someone real and knowing it was either me or them. In moments like this, I didn’t fight for the DDF or humankind. I fought to prove I could.

They swooped left just as I did. They spun and pointed toward me as we came into alignment briefly—and we both shot a burst at each other.

Their shots missed. Mine didn’t. The first of my blasts broke their weakened shield. The second hit them just left of their cockpit, ripping the disclike ship apart in a flash of light.

The vacuum consumed that eagerly, and I cut to the right, dodging the debris. I took deep breaths, struggling to slow my heart. Sweat soaked the pads on my helmet and leaked down the sides of my face.

“Spensa!” M-Bot shouted. “The drones!”

Scud.

I turned my ship and boosted to the side just as three flaring explosions lit my cockpit. I winced, but those lights weren’t the result of me getting shot—they were the lights of drones exploding one after another. Two DDF ships swooped past.

“Thanks, guys,” I said, tapping the group channel on the communications panel of my dash.

“No problem,” Kimmalyn replied over the channel. “As the Saint always said, ‘Watch out for the smart ones. They tend to be stupid.’ ” She had an accent and an unhurried way of speaking—somehow intrinsically upbeat, even when she was chastising me.

“I thought the idea was for you to distract the drones,” FM said, “then bring them back toward us.” She had a confident voice, the type that sounded like it should be coming from someone twice her age.

“I was planning to do it eventually.”

“Yeah,” FM said. “And that’s why you turned off your comm so Jorgen couldn’t yell at you?”

“It wasn’t off,” I said. “I just had M-Bot running interference.”

“Jorgen really hates talking to me!” M-Bot said enthusiastically. “I can tell by the way he says so!”

“Yeah, well, the enemy is retreating,” FM said. “And you’re lucky we were already on our way to help, even before you decided to admit you were in trouble.”

I was still something of a sweaty mess—heart racing, hands slick—as I reignited my shield, then turned my ship and flew toward the other two. The course took me past the wreckage of the ship I’d defeated, which was still moving along at roughly the same speed as when I’d hit it. That was space for you.

The ship had cracked apart rather than exploding completely, and so with a chill I was able to spot the corpse of the enemy ace. A boxy alien figure. Perhaps the armor it wore could protect it from the vacuum…

No. As I passed by, I saw that its armor had been broken apart in the blast. The actual creature inside was kind of like a small, two-legged crab—spindly and bright blue, with carapace along the abdomen and face. I had seen some of them piloting shuttles near their space station, which was farther out, monitoring Detritus from a distance. They were our jailers, and while the data we’d stolen called this crablike race the varvax, most of us still called them the Krell—even though we knew that was an acronym in some Superiority language for a phrase about keeping humans contained, not their actual race’s name.

This one was truly dead. The liquid bath that filled its armor had spilled out into the void, first boiling explosively, then freezing into solid vapor. Space was weird.

I fixed my gaze on the body, slowing M-Bot, and hummed softly one of the songs of my ancestors. A Viking song for the dead.

Well fought, I thought to the Krell’s departing soul. Nearby, some of our salvage ships came swooping in from where they’d watched the fight in relative safety nearer the planet. We always salvaged Krell ships, especially those that had been flown by living pilots. There was a chance we’d be able to capture a broken Superiority hyperdrive that way. They didn’t travel using the minds of pilots. They had some kind of actual technology that let them travel between stars.

“Spin?” Kimmalyn called to me. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” I said. I turned away and fell into line with her and FM. “M-Bot? How would you judge that pilot’s flying abilities?”

“Somewhere near your own,” M-Bot said. “And their ship was more advanced than any we’d faced before. I’ll be honest, Spensa—mostly because I’m programmed to be incapable of lying—I think that fight could have gone either way.”

I nodded, feeling much the same. I’d gone toe-to-toe with that ace. On one hand, it was a nice affirmation that my skill wasn’t tied only to my abilities to touch the nowhere. But coming fully out of my trance now—feeling the odd sense of deflated purpose that always tailed a battle—I found myself strangely worried. In all our time fighting here, we’d seen only a handful of these black ships piloted by live beings.

If the Krell really wanted to kill us, why send so few aces? And…was this really the best they had? I was good, but I’d been flying for less than a year. Our stolen information indicated that our enemies ran an enormous galactic coalition of hundreds of planets. Surely they had access to pilots who were better than I was.

Something struck me as off about all of this. The Krell used to only ever send a maximum of a hundred drones against us at once. They’d relaxed that, and now they would field upward of a hundred and twenty at once…but that still seemed a small number, considering the apparent size of their coalition.

So what was going on? Why were they still holding back?

Kimmalyn, FM, and I rejoined the rest of our fighters. The DDF was growing stronger and stronger. We’d lost only a single ship today, when in the past we’d lose half a dozen or more in each battle. And we were gaining momentum. In the last two months we’d begun deploying the first of our ships fabricated using technology learned from M-Bot. It had only been half a year since our casualties in the Battle of Alta Second, but the boost to our morale—and the fact that our pilots were surviving longer to hone their skills—was making us stronger by the day.

By intercepting the enemy out here, and not letting them get in close, we’d been able to expand our salvage operations. Because of this, we were not only reclaiming the closest of the defense platforms, but we were also able to scavenge materials for more and more ships.

All this meant shipbuilding and recruitment were both increasing dramatically. We’d soon have enough acclivity stone, and enough pilots, to field hundreds of starships.

Together, it was an ever-increasing snowball effect of progress. Still, a part of me worried. The Krell’s behavior was odd. And beyond that, we had a huge disadvantage. They could travel the galaxy, while we were trapped on one planet.

Unless I learned how to use my powers.

“Um, Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Jorgen is calling, and I think he’s annoyed.”

I sighed, then hit the line. “Skyward Ten, reporting in.”

“Are you all right?” he asked with a stern voice.

“Yeah.”

“Good. We’ll discuss this later.” He cut the line.

I winced. He wasn’t annoyed…he was furious.

Sadie—the new girl who had been assigned as my wingmate—flew up behind me in Skyward Nine. I sensed a nervousness to the posture of her ship, though perhaps I was reading too much into things. According to our plans, I’d left her behind when the Krell had sent an overwhelming force to destroy me. Fortunately, she’d had enough sense to follow orders and stay close to the others rather than tail me.

We had to wait for orders from Flight Command before flying back toward the planet, so we hovered in space for a short time. And as we did, Kimmalyn nudged her ship up beside mine. I glimpsed through her canopy into her cockpit. She always looked odd to me wearing her helmet, which covered her long dark hair.

“Hey,” she said to me on a private line. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I said. It was a lie. Every time I used my strange abilities, I felt a conflict inside me. Our ancestors had been afraid of people like me, people with cytonic powers. Before we’d crashed on Detritus, we’d worked in the ships’ engine rooms, powering and guiding our travel.

They’d just called us the people of the engines. Other crew members had shunned us—instilling in our culture traditions and prejudices that had lasted even after we’d forgotten what a cytonic was.

Could it all be just superstition, or was there more to it? I had felt the malevolence of the eyes. In the end, my father had attacked his own kind. We blamed the Krell for that, but I worried. He’d seemed so angry on the tapes.

I worried that whatever I was, my actions would bring more danger than any of us understood.

“Guys?” Sadie asked, pulling her ship up alongside mine. “What does this warning on my console mean?”

I glanced at the flashing light on the proximity monitor, then cursed under my breath and scanned out into the void. I could just barely see the Krell monitoring station out there, and as I watched, something new appeared next to it. Two objects that were even larger than it was.

Capital ships. “Two new ships just arrived in the system,” M-Bot said. “My long-range sensors confirm what Flight Command is seeing. They appear to be battleships.”

“Scud,” FM said over the line. So far, we’d faced only other fighters—but we knew from stolen intel that the enemy had access to at least a few large-scale capital ships like these.

“We have limited data on the armaments of ships like those,” M-Bot said. “The intel you and I stole contained only generalized information. But my processors say those ships are likely equipped to bombard the planet.”

Bombard. They could launch ordnance on the planet from outer space, hitting it with enough firepower to turn even those living in deep caverns to dust.

“They won’t be able to get past the defensive platforms,” I said. That was, we assumed, why the Krell had always used low-altitude bombers in the past, not orbital bombardment. The planet’s platforms had been built with countermeasures to prevent bombardment from a distance.

“And if they just destroy the platforms first?” Sadie said.

“The defenses are too strong for that,” I said.

It was bravado, in part. We didn’t know for sure if Detritus’s defenses could prevent a bombardment. Perhaps once we gained control of them all, we’d be able to determine their full capabilities. We were months away from that, unfortunately.

“Do you hear anything?” Kimmalyn said.

I reached out with my cytonic senses. “Just a faint, soft music,” I said. “Almost like static, but…prettier. I’d have to get closer to understand any specifics of what they’re saying.”

I’d always been able to hear the sounds coming from the stars. I’d first thought of it as music when I was younger. During my months of training, and talking to my grandmother, we’d determined that “music” to be the sound of FTL communications being sent through the nowhere. Likely, what I heard now was the sound of that station or those battleships communicating with the rest of the Superiority.

We waited for a long time, orders saying for us to hold position to see if those battleships advanced. They didn’t. It seemed that whatever they’d been sent to do, it wouldn’t happen in the immediate future.

“Orders are in,” Jorgen eventually said over the comm. “Those battleships are settling in, so we’re to report back at Platform Prime. Come on.”

I sighed, then turned my ship around and headed toward the planet. I’d survived the battle.

Now it was time to go get yelled at.