Брендон Сандерсон - Cytonic

The proximity sensor blared an alert that indicated the champion was heading for me. Darkshadow had realized that I was acclimating to the terrain, and so he would need to make the first move—lest he give me time to adjust. I slammed on my overburn, dodging out of the way as the champion tried to tail me.

I soon had to cut the overburn. Going too fast while dodging wasn’t always the best idea, depending on reaction speed and turning capability. Instead I zoomed down along the curved perimeter—shooting through the shaft at its edge—hoping the champion would slip out of bounds. Unfortunately, Darkshadow proved competent at avoiding that. Indeed, that straightaway only earned me a few shots from behind, which were hard to evade without going out of bounds.

Best to stay to the center of the arena. I pulled up and went soaring in that direction, weaving between floating chunks. The champion stuck with me; he was good. And he proved to have a light-lance himself—which he used in pivots. That was strange. I had yet to meet a nonhuman from the Superiority who used a light-lance the way we did in the DDF.

Fortunately, over the next few minutes of leading him through a chase, I decided I was probably the better pilot. I just had to…

I felt something.

Something like fingers on my brain.

I was a lonely rock in the darkness. A mist reached around me, embracing me, smothering me.

A pair of burning white eyes appeared, reflected in the canopy of my starship. Eyes that fixated upon me.

We see you.

I was thrown back into the conflict as a destructor blast crackled across my shield. Scud! I twisted to the left and dropped in a weaving spin between two floating asteroids, effectively dodging further shots.

“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “What’s wrong?”

I searched the scanner. Yeah, I’d drifted close to a white patch. “The delvers are watching. Can you get me a scanner analysis of those white patches?”

“Working,” M-Bot said.

Destructor fire chased me again. I spotted a series of asteroids floating nearby, then slammed my overburn and shot toward them.

The champion followed. I speared the second asteroid I passed with my light-lance—but didn’t merely use it to turn. I spun all the way around it, employing the small asteroid as a counterweight. That hurled the chunk of rock backward, making it collide with the next asteroid in line—which the champion had just speared to use in a turn. The collision threw off his maneuver, making him break out of the turn and shoot away erratically.

After a quick release, I stabbed a third rock and used it to pivot around behind the champion. As he reoriented, he found me on his tail, firing. I scored a hit, his shield crackling. To Darkshadow’s credit, he didn’t panic, but he did go into evasives. And…scud. I knew that set of maneuvers. I searched my memory, full of people I was—alarmingly—beginning to forget.

My training was still relatively clear. And the champion was performing an exact set of maneuvers taught by the DDF. Before I could follow that thought, my mind fuzzed again.

We’ve found you, noise. You should not be here. You SHOULD NOT BE HERE. Burning eyes in my canopy, multiplying, more and more sets that—

“Spensa!” M-Bot shouted.

I veered out of the way, narrowly avoiding a collision with an asteroid. That was…that was really inconvenient.

“More delvers?” he asked.

“Yeah. They’re not happy.” Scud, the champion was on my tail again.

“Spin?” Peg said over the comm. “Remember to watch those white spots. If you get too close, you’ll risk some of the distortions that happen in No Man’s Land.”

“Trying,” I said. “Little harder than it looks.”

I performed another series of light-lance moves, mostly to keep asteroids between me and the champion. Fortunately, he strayed too close to a white spot himself, and he reacted as I had—stalling, distracted. I could use that; get an advantage maybe?

The champion pulled out of his diversion and stayed on me for the next bit. So, when I spotted two of the white spots floating near one another, I decided to do something brash. I took a sudden veer right between them.

“This one’s on purpose,” I said to M-Bot. “Keep us from crashing if something goes wrong with me.”

“Okaaaaay,” he said. “I have your analysis though. There’s matter in the center of those. But it has a strange spectroscopy to it—unlike anything in my scientific databases. I think they might be a kind of rock, like acclivity stone but charged a different way? So…be careful.”

I darted between the white patches.

Leave this place, noise!

I will leave, I said, if you promise never to enter where I am from. You will stay in the nowhere, and I will stay in the somewhere.

No. Because the noise will not stop! Can you stop the noise, noise?

I can’t promise that, I said. But we aren’t a threat to you. You can live, and we can live, and ignore one another.

No. You can stop. Or you can be made to stop. You pain us. You give us…the pain…of another self…

We came shooting out from between the two white spots, and the ship flew by itself, veering to the side, out of range and away from some asteroids.

“It’s working!” M-Bot said. “I’m actually helping!”

I grinned, taking back the controls. M-Bot wasn’t a great pilot, but he could react when close to the white spots, which had hopefully given us an edge. Indeed, I checked the proximity sensor and saw that Darkshadow had decided to follow me—but had been forced to slow first, to not risk slamming into something after losing control.

That meant I was able to execute a tight loop and come in shooting before the champion was able to get back up to speed and escape. Two more hits took his shield down. He dodged away, but I fell on his tail.

One more shot and I’d win this. I got in close as Darkshadow dodged into some rubble, then lined up for the shot—but in that instant Darkshadow blasted his IMP. The wave of close-range energy knocked out my own shield. He darted away on a massive overburn before I could land the shot.

“Not bad,” M-Bot said. “That champion is good.”

Yeah. Strangely so. When Darkshadow got away from me, he used what seemed like a DDF scatter escape—very similar to the series of maneuvers I’d taught the Broadsiders. I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but something about the way he flew was familiar. Who was this? Did he really have the same training that I’d been given? Was it…

I felt a sudden cold feeling, mixed with longing. Could it be him? I’d felt him in here, when questing outward. Or was that just wishful thinking?

Don’t be stupid, the rational part of my brain said. Your father couldn’t fit in that small cockpit. In fact, of all the races you know, it could only fit a figment or…or a…

Oh, scud! “M-Bot, can you get a comm line to that champion?”

“Of course,” he said. He flashed the light on the instrument panel that let me know the line was open.

“Hey, Darkshadow,” I said to the other ship, which was hugging the perimeter and flying upward. “Any last words before I defeat you?”

“I am a swift minnow upon the tides of time,” the response came. “They may crush ships against the shore, but I swim them easily.”

Well, Saints and stars. It was him.

“Spensa!” M-Bot said, cutting the line to the other ship. “That voice. It’s—”

“Hesho,” I said.

“He’s dead!”

“He vanished during the fight with Brade,” I said, “when the kitsen ship was blasted open and exposed to vacuum. They assumed he got sucked out. But that was in the middle of a lot of weird things happening with cytonics.”