“We’re alive,” M-Bot said. “And oddly, I feel—”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Complain about my recklessness again.”
“Actually,” he said. “I’m feeling something different. A tremble of excitement…building to relief, and a…a desire to do the same thing again?”
“Ha!” I said. “You thought it was fun!”
“It was,” M-Bot said. “Scud! Why did that feel fun? It was stupidly risky.”
“A little risk is what makes it enjoyable, AI!” Chet said. “That is the part that is daring! The part that is exciting! Assuming one can fight down the nausea.”
I looped around toward the main firefight, where I found Peg’s slower ship being tailed by someone fairly skilled. I drilled them with three precise shots in a row, making them break off.
“Enjoying danger sounds like an evolutionary problem,” M-Bot said. “Shouldn’t you find things fun when they’re safe?”
“Who knows?” I said. “I don’t think evolution was trying to create me. I just kind of happened.”
“Evolution doesn’t ‘try’ to do anything,” M-Bot said. “But like it or not, you are the pinnacle of its work. All evolutionary pressures throughout all the ages among your species have resulted in you.”
“Bet it feels embarrassed,” I said, finally shooting the ship that had been chasing Peg. It locked up and slowed, soaring idly through the battlefield. “Like that time all the parents got together to watch their kids march when I was in school, and my mother was forced to admit to the other moms that I was the one who’d glued her homemade suit of wooden ‘power armor’ to her uniform.”
“I wish I’d known you back then,” M-Bot said. “You sound like such a capricious child.”
“Uh, yeah. Child.”
I’d been sixteen.
“Where is Hesho?” I asked, looking over the battlefield. “Any signs of him yet on the scanners?”
“No,” M-Bot said. “But with this much debris flying around, my sight isn’t as precise as I’d like. He could be hiding in there somewhere.”
“Ship coming in from the right, Spensa,” Chet warned.
I dodged to the side—but as soon as that pilot realized who I was, they broke off the chase. I light-lanced around a chunk of acclivity stone that was floating upward from the crashing fragments, then fell in behind the fleeing ship. If the pilot was frightened of me, that would work to my advantage.
Once, I might not have found this battle enjoyable. I was of a higher skill level than these pilots—and I did love a challenge. As I matured though, I was beginning to realize that all combat was a challenge. Merely staying alive was challenging in a chaotic mess like this, where ships were darting in every direction and destructor blasts flew like embers in the forges. I felt alert, engaged.
As my prey dodged past some floating rubble, my proximity sensor beeped. A ship had been hiding in there, and it darted out as I passed, falling in behind me. One with a familiar design: small cockpit, large weapons signature.
Hesho had set a trap for me.
“Well hello, former champion,” Chet said. “About time you showed up.”
“Slight nausea,” M-Bot said. “Something I really shouldn’t be able to feel. Mixed with uncertainty.”
“That one’s apprehension,” I said, grinning. “Stomp it dead, M-Bot. This is going to be fun.”
I broke away from the chase. Hesho followed me, and the ship I’d been tailing immediately swung around and joined him. I’d beaten Hesho in our previous meeting, so while he obviously wanted a rematch, he’d brought a wingmate for support. There was no dishonor in pitting two against one in a battle like this—that was how the game was played.
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.