Jorgen nodded.
“You’re thinking I should go,” I said to him. “Scud, you actually think I should go through with this!”
“I think we should consider all of our options before making a decision. How much time left?”
“Not much! A minute or two! It’s not like I have a clock in my brain. The sensation is just fading. Quickly.”
“M-Bot, can you successfully make her look like that alien?”
“If she has the bracelet on,” he said.
I scrambled to pull it off his dash and slap it on.
“Handily,” M-Bot said, “our medics just finished a scan of her for vitals. And . . . There.”
My hands changed color to light purple as he overlaid my face and skin with a hologram of Alanik. M-Bot even changed my flight suit to match hers, and the imitation was perfect.
I stared at my hands, then looked at Jorgen.
“Scud,” he whispered. “That’s uncanny. All right. So what is the plan?”
“There’s no time for a plan!”
“There’s time for a quick outline. You go to the recruitment station in this alien’s place, then claim to be her. You try out for the enemy’s military . . . Wait, why are they recruiting new pilots? They’re probably increasing their troop numbers to come fight us, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. That would make sense.
“That might be useful. If you did this, you could gather valuable intel on their operations. From there, you would try to steal a hyperdrive—or get some pictures of one for the engineers—then you teleport back here. Do you think you can get back on your own?”
I grimaced. “I don’t know. My powers . . . aren’t very consistent. But Alanik’s records said she was going to the Superiority because she hoped to learn about her own abilities from them.”
“So either you’ll have to figure that out, or you’ll have to steal a hyperdrive somehow, then get yourself and M-Bot back to us with the stolen technology.”
“Yeah.” It sounded impossible when he outlined it like that. Yet I looked up toward the stars, and I felt a fire burning within me. “It sounds crazy,” I told him. “But Jorgen, I think I have to go. I have to try this.”
I looked down, meeting his eyes as he stood on the wing beside my cockpit. Then, remarkably, he nodded. “I agree.”
“You do?”
“Spin, you can be reckless—even foolhardy—but I’ve flown with you nearly a year now. I trust your instincts.”
“My instincts get me into trouble.”
He reached over, putting his hand on the side of my face. “You’ve gotten us out of far more trouble than you’ve ever gotten yourself into, Spensa. Scud, I don’t know if this mission is the right thing to do. But I do know our people are in serious danger. We talk optimistically, but the command staff knows the truth. We’re dead here unless we find a way to use hyperdrives ourselves.”
I put my hand on his. The information in my brain was dimming. Only seconds remained.
“Can you do this?” he asked me. “Does your gut say you can?”
“Yes,” I whispered. Then, more firmly—with the strength of a warrior—I repeated it. “Yes. I can do this, Jorgen. I’ll get us a hyperdrive and bring it back. I promise.”
“Then go. I trust you.”
I realized that was what I needed. Not his permission, or even his approval. I needed his trust.
In a moment of impulse I sprang from the cockpit, then grabbed him by his flight suit and pulled him down so I could kiss him. We probably weren’t ready for that, and it probably wasn’t the time, but I did it anyway. Because . . . well, scud. He’d just encouraged me to trust my instincts.
It was wonderful. I felt a strength to him as he kissed me back, an almost electricity coursing through him into me—then back again stronger because of the fire that burned in my chest. I lingered in the kiss as long as I dared, then pulled away.
“I should go with you,” he said.
“Unfortunately,” M-Bot said, “we have only one mobile receptor. You’d be identified as a human immediately.”
Jorgen grunted. “I suppose someone has to explain this to Cobb anyway.”
“He’s going to be mad . . . ,” I said.
“He’ll understand. We made the best decision we could with the limited time and information we had. Saints help us, I think we have to try this. Go.”
I held his eyes for a moment, then broke the gaze and jumped back down into the cockpit.
Jorgen touched his lips with his hand, then shook himself, picked up his helmet, and leaped off M-Bot’s wing. He pulled back to where everyone else was focused on the alien’s ship, oblivious to the powerful moments that had transpired.
“I’m confused at what just happened between the two of you,” M-Bot said. “I thought you insisted to me several times that you had no romantic inclinations toward Jorgen.”
“I lied,” I said, seizing on the compelling sensation the alien had embedded in my brain. It was nearly gone, but it still felt like an arrow into the sky. Just as it threatened to disappear completely, I somehow yanked on it.
“Cytonic hyperdrive online,” M-Bot said. “It actually—”
We vanished.
PART TWO
9
I was only in the nowhere for a moment, but in that place, time seemed to have no meaning. I floated alone, with no ship. Infinite blackness surrounded me, punctuated by lights that seemed so much like stars—only malevolent. They could see me hanging there, exposed. I felt like a rat suddenly dropped on a string into the middle of a cage full of starving wolves.
The eyes focused on me, and their anger built. I was trespassing in their domain. I was an insignificant worm . . . but my presence still brought them pain. My world and theirs did not belong together. Their lights surged toward me. They’d rip my very soul to shreds and leave only scraps of—
I appeared back in M-Bot’s cockpit.
“—worked!” M-Bot finished.
“Ah!” I yelled, jolting. I grabbed the sides of my cockpit seat. “Did you see any of that?”
“See what?” M-Bot said. “My chronometer indicates no time has passed. You engaged the cytonic hyperdrive . . . or, well, I think you are the cytonic hyperdrive.”
I put my hand to my chest, pressing it against the thick material of my flight suit, which seemed very strange now that it was the wrong color. My heart raced and my mind reeled. That place . . . the nowhere. It had been like swimming through a deep-cavern lake without any lights. All the while knowing things lay beneath, watching me, reaching for me . . .
That was them, I thought. The things that destroyed the people of Detritus. The things we saw in the recording. The delvers were real. They and the eyes were the same thing.
I breathed in and out deeply, calming myself with effort. At least the hyperjump had worked. I had used my powers again, with the help of the coordinates that Alanik had placed in my mind.
Right. Time to be a hero. I could do this.
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “We’re being contacted!”
“By who?” I asked.
“By whom!” Doomslug said from beside me.
“You’ve brought us in near a Superiority space station of some size,” M-Bot said. “Look at your five. The radio chatter here is quiet, but distinct.”
I rested my hand comfortingly on Doomslug, who was fluting in annoyance, perhaps sensing my discomfort. I searched in the direction M-Bot had indicated, and saw something I’d missed in my first brief scan of the starfield. It was a distant station of some sort—lights in the darkness that were clustered around a central flat plane.