of the room, looking distinguished in his white uniform, his silvery mustache bristling from his upper lip. They’d given him an imposing admiral’s throne that overlooked everything. He used the seat to hold several stacks of paper, and the armrest for his coffee as he inspected reports and muttered to himself.
“Nightshade?” he asked as the guards marched me up. “What the hell have you done here? Wasn’t the mission Jorgen sent you on to be a stealth mission? You look like you’ve damn near brought the entire Superiority down on us.”
For some reason, hearing Cobb swear at me was the most comforting thing that could have happened to me right then. I let out a soft sigh. My entire universe was turning upside down, but Cobb was as constant as a star. An angry, surly star that drank too much coffee.
“Sorry, Cobb,” I said. “I got involved in Superiority politics and . . . well, I don’t think I’m entirely to blame for this attack, but my actions did seem to provide some excuses for them to come here.”
“You should have come back sooner.”
“I couldn’t. My powers . . . I’m learning, but . . . I mean, you try to learn how to teleport using your brain. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“Sounds scudding hard.”
“That’s my point.”
He grunted. “And the mission? The one you two made up, without proper authorization?”
“It worked. I pretended to be that alien who crashed here—I used M-Bot’s holograms to pull it off—and lived among the Superiority long enough to figure out the secret of their hyperdrives.” I grimaced. “I . . . might have screwed things up here and there.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t make my life more difficult at every turn, Spin.” He nodded to the guards, and they withdrew. This conversation had in part been a test—and I’d passed it. Cobb was reasonably sure that I wasn’t an impostor.
Cobb took a sip of his coffee and waved me closer. “What’s really going on out there?”
“The Superiority has a bunch of factions. I didn’t learn much; it’s kind of over my head. But a military faction is reaching for power, and they’re going to try to exterminate us to bolster their credibility. Getting rid of the ‘human scourge’ as a way of proving themselves.”
On the screen at the front—which held an abstract battle map with dots of light representing ships—the Weights and Measures was deploying flights of fighters. It looked like several hundred drones of the normal style we fought. And fifty other ships, glowing brighter than the rest.
“Piloted ships,” Cobb said. “Enemy aces. Fifty of them.”
“They’re not aces,” I said. “But they are piloted ships. The Superiority has been preparing a group of real pilots to fight us. I . . . um, trained some of them.”
Cobb’s cup stopped halfway to his lips. “You really managed to join their space force and train with them?”
“Er, yes. Sir.”
“Damn. And that ship you stole? It has a hyperdrive?”
“No. But I know the secret. You know that yellow slug pet I have? The one I found in M-Bot’s cave? Those are what the Superiority uses to hyperjump. We need to send an expedition into the caverns on Detritus and see if we can catch any others.”
“I’ll put several teams on it immediately. Assuming we survive this battle. Any other bombs you want to drop on me?”
“I . . . um, revealed myself to one of the highest functionaries in the Superiority government, and we got along pretty well. I think we might be able to leverage this other faction in the government into making peace with us. Uh, assuming we survive the aforementioned battle.”
“And your ship? The one with the annoying attitude.”
I felt a spike of shame inside me. “I . . . left him behind, sir. And Doomslug. I was being chased by enemies, and they were getting close and—”
“It’s all right, soldier,” Cobb said. “You’re back, which is more than we had any right to expect.” He turned his eyes toward the screen and the growing flood of little blips of light. “I want you in a debriefing room with a recorder, telling us everything you can remember about their military capacities. I’ll stay here and do what I can to survive this invasion. Scud, that’s a lot of fighters.”
“Cobb,” I said, stepping closer. “Those aren’t bloodthirsty monsters out there; they’re just people. Normal people, with lives, and loves, and families.”
“And what did you think we’ve been fighting against