Брендон Сандерсон - Cytonic

The two flew as if to isolate me from the rest of the battle, herding me outward. If I tried to turn, one or the other moved to cut me off. I’d been in this situation before several times, fighting the Krell. In fact, I felt like maybe I’d taught Hesho this maneuver—a way to cull a ship from a battle and deal with it. In a big firefight, it was often preferable to have your ships fly defensively while a few “kill teams” of expert aces shrank the enemy numbers.

Well, I needed to make the fight a little less fair. Or make it unfair in my direction. I dodged right, risking a hit to my shield—and indeed I took one—to avoid being corralled. In a two-on-one fight, chaos favored me, and so I wanted to be in the thick of the shooting.

M-Bot helpfully popped up a tally of ships still fighting, proving that the pirates were holding their own, even making a little headway into the enemy lead. I—

A building appeared in the air directly in front of me.

Scud! I veered to the side, and my shield scraped the edge of the giant floating structure, shattering its windows in my wake as I skimmed one face of it.

“What the hell was that ?” Chet asked.

“I don’t—”

Another building appeared at my side, tall and rectangular. Then something else flashed and materialized directly ahead of me. Was that…a swimming pool? I managed to duck around it, but it spun in the air, dumping a wave of water over us.

“A sudden spike of fear!” M-Bot said. “And general paralysis! I know this one myself! Panic! What is happening?”

A pair of scrubber tools folded from the sides of my canopy and ran across the curved surface, wiping away the water. Any other time, the news that my ship had rain wipers would have been amusing to me. I’d never fought in rain before, as we didn’t have it on Detritus.

However, it was completely overshadowed by, you know, the buildings. “Peg?” I shouted over the comm as a hovercar appeared some distance in front of me. “You seeing this?”

“Seeing it,” she said on a wide channel. “Not quite believing it. We’re in the middle of a warp of new objects entering the nowhere—never seen one of these in person. Careful, everyone. I don’t want to have to scrape any of you off the side of a building.”

Scud. I felt a…strange sensation. A stretching—or that’s the best I could explain it.

“Delver attack,” Chet guessed. “In the somewhere! That’s what is bringing all this in here—a delver has gone to your dimension, and as it strikes, it’s warping the city into this place. You don’t…recognize these structures, do you?”

“Thankfully no,” I said. “This isn’t happening on Detritus.” But yeah, I guessed he was right. The stretching sensation was the nowhere opening, being punctured as the delvers shoved things from my dimension in here.

“Deep breath, deep breath,” M-Bot said. “Okay, analysis says these structures appear to be Superiority designs.”

Why would they be attacking one of their own? Perhaps a planet that was in rebellion? The light next to Peg’s name changed, indicating she’d moved to a private line. “Damnedest thing here, Spin. Not one, but two explosive fragment collisions, and now this… Ha! Really feels like the nowhere is trying to get us, eh?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. My proximity sensor pinged, the display showing that Hesho and his wingmate had avoided the suddenly appearing buildings and were on my tail again. “Ha ha.”

“Don’t think too much of it,” Peg said. “It’s random, kid. I don’t want you getting any ideas that the Broadsiders grow enguluns or anything like that. We’re not unlucky. We found you, after all!” She cut the line.

“She’s wrong,” Chet said. “This is about us. The Path we’re walking. It has them angry.”

I veered to the side, narrowly avoiding another sudden building. It seemed that the process of shoving things into the nowhere was creating acclivity stone—as the stone blocks on one side of the building were making it hover. I’d heard you could magnetize metal by exposing it to a strong enough field; maybe this was something similar.

“You focus on flying,” Chet said. “I’m expanding my cytonic powers, and I think I can track the former champion and his wingmate. Even in this mess. I’ll give you warning if they try to ambush us again.”

“And I’ll suppress my outbursts for now,” M-Bot said. “Spensa…this is serious. Fly well, please.”

“Will do,” I said, veering carefully so I wouldn’t overwhelm the GravCaps. Chet had promised me he could take the g-forces—but I still wanted to be cautious. If I blacked out when buildings were appearing all around us…

“My scans indicate these buildings are uninhabited,” M-Bot said. “And they look old and run-down.”

As I flew, I tried to pick out what I could with my burgeoning cytonic senses. I felt the delvers, connected to one of their kind in the somewhere. And I overheard…annoyance, but not anger. They didn’t hear “noise” at the moment. They were…performing.

“It’s a test,” I said. “Winzik finally got smart and decided to try the delvers out on an unpopulated location, to see if they really were under control.”

“Perfect chance for them to throw a city at us,” Chet said.

Fortunately, the delver efforts didn’t seem precise—objects started appearing all through the battlefield, not merely in front of me. If they’d been able to control this exactly, they would have made something appear so close to me that I couldn’t dodge.

“The former champion is coming back around,” Chet said. “He’s staying close to fool scanners, but I can echolocate him there. He should soon emerge from behind that office building to the left.”

“Thanks,” I said. As I was getting the hang of flying in here, for the next bit I was able to keep my attention on Hesho. He flew well, as I’d trained him, but his wingmate wasn’t as skilled. They did manage to get vaguely on my tail, so I led the two of them around the side of an enormous building that had a large open space near the roof. Parking for ships, maybe?

As we rounded the building, I cut my speed and ducked inside. Hesho and his wingmate followed. The confines of the hangar were tight, but a huge window filling the entire far wall provided good visibility. I regretted my decision as both Hesho and his friend opened fire. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver in here, and slowing bunched us up.

Their shots took down my shields, so I hit my IMP—hoping it would reach them—and then I smashed my ship out through the back window as destructor fire chased me.

“I think you only managed to catch one of them with that,” M-Bot said. “The one who isn’t Lord Hesho.”

“Scud.” I swooped down along the building, then speared the bottom corner with my light-lance and made an assisted turn—barely in time, as destructor fire sprayed behind me. I took the next three turns fast, darting through an increasingly busy junkyard of a battlefield.

Was…was that a cow?

I kept flying through the cluttered urban debris, pushing to get ahead of Hesho. But he stuck on me. His wingmate didn’t have to; they could cut out of the chase at times and then swoop back in as we came around another direction. As long as Hesho was putting heat on me, I had to stay on the defensive.

I tried to loop around and pick off the wingmate, but Hesho unloaded a sequence of shots just ahead of where I had been planning to go—which forced me a different direction. Without a shield, I had to be extra cautious. So in seconds both of them were on me again.

Eventually one of those shots was going to land. I broke downward—flying among dropping chunks of rock and debris. Hesho wove behind me.