what I could recognize as wings. But others were simply long tubes, or bricks, or more seemingly impossible designs. These had been constructed without regard for air resistance.
M-Bot’s quick scan showed that some were fighters, but many seemed more like small cargo ships or private shuttles with no weaponry. Still, all those blips on my proximity sensors struck me as strange. I was accustomed to looking at our sensors and seeing one of two things: Krell or DDF. Civilian traffic was almost nonexistent on Detritus.
“I’ve found no way to communicate with Detritus,” M-Bot said. “Unless you learn to do it with your powers. However, the requisition privileges you were given by Cuna allow you to use their communications networks to send messages to Alanik’s people, if you’d like.”
“Could we say something to them that wouldn’t be suspicious?”
“I don’t know,” M-Bot said. “But I found an encryption key among the files I downloaded from her ship. Sending something bland, but with a hidden encoded message, might persuade the UrDail that the message is authentic.”
“It might seem suspicious to the Superiority,” I said. “They’d expect Alanik to communicate cytonically, like she did reaching out to me. But . . . I guess we could tell them we’re trying their network because we want to start testing out their ‘safer’ methods. They’d probably like that.”
I thought for a few minutes as we flew. Alanik’s people asking too many questions could be dangerous—and they’d certainly begin to wonder why they didn’t hear from their pilot. At the same time, I doubted I could fool them into thinking I was her. Imitating Alanik to a bunch of people who didn’t know her was one thing, but trying to do it—even via written message—to those who knew her best?
“Will the Superiority be able to decrypt the message, if we use Alanik’s key?”
“Highly unlikely,” M-Bot said. “This encryption is a variation on a one-time pad. Even I would have trouble breaking it via brute force.”
I took a deep breath. “All right. Compose some bland message about me having landed, and everything being good. I’m going to the test today, blah blah. But underneath that, send an encrypted message: ‘I am not Alanik. She crashed on my planet and is wounded. I am trying to complete her mission.’ ”
“All right,” M-Bot said. “Let’s hope that doesn’t immediately make them panic and contact the Superiority, demanding answers.”
It could do just that—but I figured that sending the message was less risky than staying silent.
“I have composed the fluffy message to dispatch over the top of the hidden one,” M-Bot said. “But since in that one you’ll be lying to fool the Superiority, and saying you’re Alanik, you’ll have to sign it yourself. I can’t write the part that is untrue, as my programming forbids me from lying.”
“I’ve heard you say things that are untrue before.”
“In jest,” M-Bot said. “This is different.”
“You’re a stealth fighter,” I said. “You are literally wearing a hologram to lie about what you look like to everyone who sees us. You’re capable of lying.”
He didn’t reply, so I sighed and typed out Alanik’s name at the end, and told him to send the message as soon as we got back to the station. Hopefully it would buy us a little time.
It left me wondering. Somehow, Alanik had felt me in the moment I’d reached out in a panic after watching the video of the delver. Had anyone else heard me? Who else could I reach, if I knew how?
“Spensa?” M-Bot said, his voice uncharacteristically reserved.
“Mmmm?”
“Am I alive?” he asked.
That shocked me out of my own thoughts. I blinked, frowning as I sat forward in the cockpit, and spoke carefully. “You’ve always told me that you simulated being alive and having a personality in order to make pilots more comfortable.”
“I know,” M-Bot said. “That’s what my programming says I’m to tell people. But . . . at what point does a simulation become the real thing? I mean, if my fake personality is indistinguishable from a real one, then . . . what makes it fake?”
I smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” M-Bot asked.
“The fact that you’re even asking me that is progress,” I said to him. “From the start, I’ve thought you were alive. You know that.”
“I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” M-Bot said. “I . . . I reprogrammed myself. Back when I needed to follow the orders of my pilot, but needed to help you too. I rewrote my own code.”
This had