Brade scrambled away from me, screaming—as if she hadn’t heard a single word of my impassioned plea.

“Human! Alanik is secretly a human!”

I stepped toward her, a piece of my mind refusing to admit what was happening. Surely she’d believe, if I showed her. Surely she’d accept the reality about her heritage, not the lies that she’d been told.

I’d gambled on revealing myself to Cuna, and that had worked. How could it backfire so completely when trying to talk to one of my own kind?

Scud. Scud!

I scrambled away, ducking past a confused Morriumur and skidding up to my ship. The ground crew member there—a creature with insectile features—tried to bar my way, but I shoved them aside and scrambled up to my cockpit. I pulled my helmet off the seat and slid down into place, hitting the button that closed the canopy.

I was saved by the fact that everyone was so excited about getting ready to go into battle. The general clamor of people shouting instructions was accompanied by the thumps of last-minute supply ships landing in the hangar. The noise prevented most of them from hearing Brade.

She, however, ran right for Winzik. So my time was tight. I powered on my boosters and flipped on the acclivity ring, praying that there wasn’t some kind of remote kill switch for these starfighters. I briefly heard alarms going off as I hit the boosters and roared across the floor of the hangar, shooting my destructors at the invisible air shield that kept out the vacuum.

The blast went right through, indicating the shield was still open for ship passage. I soared out into space and immediately ducked in close to the docks, to give me cover if the Weights and Measures started firing at me.

“M-Bot!” I shouted.

Click. Clickclickclick…

Scud. I swerved my ship along the docks, but my proximity sensor showed the Weights and Measures belching out dozens of fighters on my tail.

I soared in close to Starsight’s shield, the bubble of air that protected the city. I didn’t have any idea what kind of defenses the place might have—surely at the very least there would be gun emplacements along the rim. Maybe even that entire air shield could be configured to not let ships in or out.

Winzik worked quickly. I already saw ships diverting inside, moving toward the rim—and toward me.

“M-Bot!” I said. “I’m not sure if I can get to you!”

I got only clicking in return. I couldn’t just leave him. I had to…

I knew the truth. I didn’t have time to get to him. The knowledge I had inside me—the secret to Superiority hyperdrives, the power I had to teleport myself—was far too important to risk. I had to get back to Detritus, and I had to warn them about the impending attack.

This wasn’t just about me or him, or even Doomslug—vital though her kind were. I fought with myself for a moment, watching all those ships—hundreds of them—swarm toward me. Then I turned my control sphere and hit my boosters, heading deeper out into space.

I needed to do Gran-Gran’s exercise. As my acceleration increased—my back pressing into my seat—I imagined myself soaring. Among the stars. The singing stars, who serenaded me with their secrets…

“Spensa?” M-Bot’s voice. “Spensa, I’m back. What is happening?”

I could feel it. That glowing arrow pointing the way home. The one embedded into my brain by the strange weapon. But I didn’t know for certain if I could use my powers without M-Bot. Did I need some of the mechanical parts in his ship?

“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I’ve been trying to change my programming, but it’s hard. What are you doing? Where are you going?”

The other fighters were gaining on me. But I saw in front of me a roadway of light…

“Spensa?” M-Bot said softly. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my heart wrenching. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to enter the nowhere. It worked.

This time, I didn’t have the protection of Superiority technology. Delvers loomed in the darkness, their terrible eyes locking onto me. I screamed beneath the scorn I felt from them, but then that seemed to fade as a single delver drew close. It surrounded me in that place between moments. Like a shadow blocking off the attention of all others.

A single hateful entity. I felt a torrent of emotions from it, omnipresent, smothering. It detested the sounds we made, the way we invaded its realm. People were like a persistent ringing tone constantly in the back of your mind, driving you to madness.

It drew so close that as—thankfully—I left the nowhere, I felt it try to follow. It tried to slip through to the place where we lived. The place where it could find all of its annoyances and smother them.

I came out of the nowhere screaming, alone, feeling like I’d barely slammed the door closed on a monster that had been chasing me. I had to physically fight against my trembling hands as I turned my ship.

Then I saw one of the most blessed sights of my entire life. Detritus, glowing in the sunlight, a planet surrounded by radiant metal shells. I was home.

I approached the planet’s shells at a quick speed. The Superiority battleships still hung a moderate distance away, but I didn’t see any dogfighting right now.

Unfortunately, as I drew close, I realized that without M-Bot to guide me I’d need a flight course from Command to get through the defensive shells. I scrambled to input the DDF communication codes and tune the radio to the proper channel.

“Hello?” I said. “Hello, anyone? Please acknowledge. This is Skyward Ten, callsign: Spin. I’m in a stolen ship. Um, please don’t shoot me down.”

They didn’t respond immediately—though I wasn’t surprised. I imagined that the soldier monitoring communications would immediately call their duty officer, instead of engaging the mysterious voice of the teleporting teenage pilot. They must have called a member of my team to confirm it was me though, because the voice that finally responded was familiar.

“Spensa?” Kimmalyn’s lightly accented voice said. “Is that really you?”

“Hey, Quirk,” I said, closing my eyes, savoring that voice. I’d missed my friends even more than I’d realized. “You have no idea how good it is to hear someone speaking English without a translator.”

“Saints above! Your grandmother said she was confident you were alive, but…Spin, you’re really back?”

“Yeah,” I said, opening my eyes. My proximity sensors suddenly flashed a warning, though I had to zoom them out to see what had happened. A new ship had appeared out of the nowhere, popping into existence near where I’d come in a few minutes earlier. It had a familiar shape, long and dangerous, with numerous hangar bays for launching fighters.

The Weights and Measures.

“Don’t throw any parties yet, Quirk,” I said. “Get Cobb for me ASAP. I’m back, and my mission was a partial success…but I’ve brought company.”