“Look,” I said, stepping up to him, “it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter what the one person who knows anything about where I came from says?” M-Bot answered, his voice rising. “I think it matters, Spensa. I really think it matters.”
For the first time I was glad he was in a drone rather than his old ship. There was a certain sense of personality and emotion to the way he moved now, the way he drooped in the air, his grabber arms dangling beneath him, limp. “It’s like finding out,” he said in an even smaller voice, “that your father hates you…”
“I don’t believe him,” I said. “About you.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t fought an evil wizard yet.”
M-Bot twisted in the air. Then he rose up before me and tilted his drone sideways, perhaps in imitation of a cocked head. “You know,” he said, “I was beginning to think I could follow your leaps in logic.”
“No, listen,” I said, leaning in. “In the old stories, there was almost always an evil wizard. Aladdin had to face an evil wizard. And Conan? He killed like a billion evil wizards. There are tons of other examples. But how long have we been fighting? With no evil wizards? We’re bound to face one eventually.” I put my arm around his drone and pointed toward the cave. “I don’t know what’s going on, but somebody or something has to be messing with us. We come in here and immediately find your old pilot? Run the numbers, M-Bot.”
“Run what numbers?” he asked.
“You know. The statistics and stuff. Math it. What are the chances we’d run into him?”
“I have no way of calculating that,” M-Bot said. “You assume I could devise a percentage chance for something with so many variables—most of which are unknown, likely unquantifiable?”
I didn’t push. “Look, that might be Commander Spears. It makes sense that he could have fallen into the nowhere. But his memories are spotty; maybe he’s not Spears, and this is some kind of setup. But even if he is Spears, my gut says we didn’t meet him by chance. Trust me, M-Bot. In some way, in some form, we’re facing an evil wizard. Or the modern equivalent.”
“Perhaps,” M-Bot said. “But you have to accept that there is evidence for what he’s saying. About my kind being dangerous. My creators were obviously afraid of me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re my friend. I trust you.” I rubbed my forehead. “But right now, I’m exceptionally tired. Weak flesh body, remember? Let’s talk about this after I get some sleep. Okay?”
“I will process this information,” he said, “but I won’t do anything with it until I consult with you.”
“Good enough,” I said, then paused. “Watch Chet and wake me if he gets up, all right? I trust him well enough, but just…let’s be careful.”
“Agreed.”
We started back toward the cave. “Though,” I added, really starting to feel my fatigue, “if any monsters arrive to eat me, kindly ask them to do it quietly. That might let me get a few extra seconds of shut-eye.”
Inside I got a drink, then bedded down with my jacket as a pillow. I drifted off, hoping that my first “night” in the nowhere wouldn’t turn out to be too weird.
I obviously should have known better.
Interlude
I drifted.
And I searched.
Though my body was still exhausted, my mind quested outward, somehow conscious. This had never happened to me before, but it felt like a natural extension of my powers—my mind existing separate from my body, as happened when I entered the nowhere during a hyperjump.
I once again tried to hyperjump, with no luck. I wasn’t completely “here,” so to speak. So instead I expanded my mind, searching, listening. I felt more confident with this part of my powers. Not only had I been able to hear the stars since my childhood, I’d recently managed to contact Chet using that ability.
I pushed myself. I needed a destination. A location. A link.
There.
I found someone…who was searching for me?
I felt an immediate panic. Was it Brade? Some servant of the delvers? At the same time, I knew that mind. It wasn’t Brade. It was…
I was suddenly inside the cockpit of a Defiant Defense Force starfighter, Poco model. I was awkwardly crammed in the rear storage area behind the pilot’s seat. The Poco darted through outer space, destructor fire flaring nearby.
Jorgen was flying it.
I wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotions that came from seeing him—longing, passion, worry. I reached to touch him, but my hand passed through the chair. I could feel the ship shake around me, hear him curse softly as he took a sharp turn, GravCaps barely compensating.
Was I actually here? Was this real?
His face reflected in the transparent canopy of the ship, lit from the glow of his console. There were a dozen tiny cuts on his face, and I wondered what could have caused that. The last time I’d seen him had been on that first day when I’d left Detritus for Starsight. While that had been only three weeks ago, it felt like an eternity. A part of me had worried I’d never see him again.
Now here he was. Serious as ever, almost too perfect to be real. His face a mask of concentration and sudden panic as he looked up and—
“Gah!” he shouted, jerking his ship to the side. He scrambled to look behind the seat. Though he stared straight at me, he didn’t seem to find anything.
He turned around and hesitantly squinted at the canopy glass. As if trying to make out…
A reflection. When I’d seen the eyes—the delvers—in the somewhere, it had usually happened in a reflection. Could he see me the same way? To test my theory, I waved.
“Spensa?” he said. “Are you… Oh, scud. Are you dead?”
Right. That was probably what this looked like. I tried to speak, but I didn’t have lungs here. So I tried another way, reaching out to him with my cytonic senses.
“No, I’m not dead,” I said, hoping he’d hear. Or sense. Or whatever. “Though I probably should be, all things considered.”
He cocked his head.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
“I can…feel the meaning of your words. Where are you? What’s happening?”
“I’m in the nowhere,” I said. “The dimension where we go when we hyperjump. I…kind of fell in. On purpose. In my defense, I was being chased by half an army at the time.”
He grinned, and the lines around his eyes softened. I could literally feel the tension melt out of him. He’d been worried about me. I mean, I’d expected he would be, but feeling it made me choke up a little. I’d spent my life being the person most others tried to avoid.
That had changed. I had a place where I belonged. With him and the rest of my friends in Skyward Flight. How I longed to return to them. How I—
A flash of red destructor fire slammed into his ship’s shield, crackling. His low-shield alarm started throwing a fit on his dash.
“Jorgen!” I shouted. “Fly! You’re in the middle of a firefight, idiot!”
“I’m trying! It’s a little distracting to have your ship suddenly be haunted by the ghost of your not-dead girlfriend!” He steered the ship in a precise evasive pattern.
I melted a little. Girlfriend? Was that how he thought of me? I mean, we’d kissed. Once. But…I didn’t think it had been formalized or anything. I hadn’t even brought him any dead orc carcasses, which I was pretty sure was the way the stories said to show a guy you wanted to go official.