I knew the truth. I didn’t have time to get to him. The knowledge I had inside me—the secret to Superiority hyperdrives, the power I had to teleport myself—was far too important to risk. I had to get back to Detritus, and I had to warn them about the impending attack.
This wasn’t just about me or him, or even Doomslug—vital though her kind were. I fought with myself for a moment, watching all those ships—hundreds of them—swarm toward me. Then I turned my control sphere and hit my boosters, heading deeper out into space.
I needed to do Gran-Gran’s exercise. As my acceleration increased—my back pressing into my seat—I imagined myself soaring. Among the stars. The singing stars, who serenaded me with their secrets . . .
“Spensa?” M-Bot’s voice. “Spensa, I’m back. What is happening?”
I could feel it. That glowing arrow pointing the way home. The one embedded into my brain by the strange weapon. But I didn’t know for certain if I could use my powers without M-Bot. Did I need some of the mechanical parts in his ship?
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “I’ve been trying to change my programming, but it’s hard. What are you doing? Where are you going?”
The other fighters were gaining on me. But I saw in front of me a roadway of light . . .
“Spensa?” M-Bot said softly. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my heart wrenching. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to enter the nowhere. It worked.
This time, I didn’t have the protection of Superiority technology. Delvers loomed in the darkness, their terrible eyes locking onto me. I screamed beneath the scorn I felt from them, but then that seemed to fade as a single delver drew close. It surrounded me in that place between moments. Like a shadow blocking off the attention of all others.
A single hateful entity. I felt a torrent of emotions from it, omnipresent, smothering. It detested the sounds we made, the way we invaded its realm. People were like a persistent ringing tone constantly in the back of your mind, driving you to madness.
It drew so close that as—thankfully—I left the nowhere, I felt it try to follow. It tried to slip through to the place where we lived. The place where it could find all of its annoyances and smother them.
I came out of the nowhere screaming, alone, feeling like I’d barely slammed the door closed on a monster that had been chasing me. I had to physically fight against my trembling hands as I turned my ship.
Then I saw one of the most blessed sights of my entire life. Detritus, glowing in the sunlight, a planet surrounded by radiant metal shells. I was home.
I approached the planet’s shells at a quick speed. The Superiority battleships still hung a moderate distance away, but I didn’t see any dogfighting right now.
Unfortunately, as I drew close, I realized that without M-Bot to guide me I’d need a flight course from Command to get through the defensive shells. I scrambled to input the DDF communication codes and tune the radio to the proper channel.
“Hello?” I said. “Hello, anyone? Please acknowledge. This is Skyward Ten, callsign: Spin. I’m in a stolen ship. Um, please don’t shoot me down.”
They didn’t respond immediately—though I wasn’t surprised. I imagined that the soldier monitoring communications would immediately call their duty officer, instead of engaging the mysterious voice of the teleporting teenage pilot. They must have called a member of my team to confirm it was me though, because the voice that finally responded was familiar.
“Spensa?” Kimmalyn’s lightly accented voice said. “Is that really you?”
“Hey, Quirk,” I said, closing my eyes, savoring that voice. I’d missed my friends even more than I’d realized. “You have no idea how good it is to hear someone speaking English without a translator.”
“Saints above! Your grandmother said she was confident you were alive, but . . . Spin, you’re really back?”
“Yeah,” I said, opening my eyes. My proximity sensors suddenly flashed a warning, though I had to zoom them out to see what had happened. A new ship had appeared out of the nowhere, popping into existence near where I’d come in a few minutes earlier. It had a familiar shape, long and dangerous, with numerous hangar bays for launching fighters.
The Weights and Measures.
“Don’t throw any parties yet, Quirk,” I said. “Get Cobb for me ASAP. I’m back, and my mission was a partial success . . . but I’ve brought