light that reflected in bright waves off the metallic surface of the maze. Its awesome size reminded me of the platforms around Detritus—both must have taken extraordinary amounts of effort to create.
We flew out to our instructed coordinates to wait. I tore my attention away from the maze and hit my flight chatter button. We simply couldn’t go into training without some kind of command structure. “Hesho,” I said. “Do you want to be our flightleader? You’ve got command experience.”
“Not much,” Hesho said. “I have been a ship captain for only about three weeks, Captain Alanik. Before that, I was in politics.”
“You were absolute monarch of a small section of the kitsen home planet,” Vapor said softly.
“Details,” Hesho said. “Who cares about those dark ages, right? We’re enlightened now!” He hesitated. “But it was not small. We encompassed over a third of the planet. Regardless, I do not think it would be wise for me to command this flight. I should not divide my attention from commanding my crew while this ship is unfamiliar and my people are still learning it.”
“You can take command if you want, Alanik,” Morriumur said to me.
I grimaced. “No, please. I’m likely to charge into a black hole or something. You don’t want one of your interceptors to be in command. Vapor, you should be flightleader.”
“Me?” the quiet voice asked.
“That sounds good to me,” Morriumur said. “Alanik is right—we shouldn’t have someone who is too aggressive.”
“I accept this decision,” Hesho said. “As our sniper, Vapor can survey the battlefield and be in the best position to make decisions.”
“You all barely know me,” Vapor protested.
Which was part of the reason I’d suggested it. Maybe if Vapor was our flightleader, she’d be forced to interact with the rest of us—and maybe I’d be less likely to forget she was around. I still didn’t quite understand her purpose here.
“Brade?” I asked. “What do you think?”
“I am not allowed to vote in such matters,” she said.
Great. “All right, Vapor, the job is yours. Good luck.”
“Very well,” she said. “I suppose everyone should give me a flight status check, then.”
I smiled. That sounded very much like she had some combat experience—so I was learning about her already. It seemed that callsigns were out though, as everyone just used their names as they called in. I reluctantly did likewise, as wrong as it felt. I didn’t want to act like I had too much experience with this sort of thing.
Vapor organized us into a default flight pattern, with me and Brade flying up front, Hesho in the center, and Morriumur and herself flying in the anchor position. Then, at my suggestion, we did a few formation exercises while we waited for instructions.
As we did, I acknowledged to myself that perhaps it made sense for the Superiority to let each group make their own command structure. After all, most of the other flights contained only one species. Different cultures might have different ways of looking at military service—the fact that we had an entire crew of kitsen on one ship was evidence of that.
Still, it grated on me. It felt like the Superiority was being lazy. They wanted flights of fighters, but didn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of truly commanding them. It was a lukewarm half-in, half-out measure. After the sharply defined rules of the DDF, this felt like a sloppy mess.
Eventually, Winzik called us on the general line. “All right, everyone! Welcome and thank you for your service! We at the Department of Protective Services are very excited to be training this new bold force. You will be our first line of defense against a danger that has loomed above the Superiority for its entire existence.
“We have prepared a quick video orientation for you to watch. This should explain your goal here. Please experience the orientation and save questions until the end. Thank you again!”
“A . . . video orientation?” I said over the channel to my flight.
“The Superiority has a lot of graphic designers and animators,” Morriumur said. “It’s one of the most common professions chosen by those who wish to work beyond basic subsistence.”
I frowned. “What’s a graphic designer?”
The canopy of my fighter suddenly lit up with a holographic projection. It wasn’t as good as one of M-Bot’s—this one was somewhat insubstantial, and the depth was off—but the effect was still awe inspiring.
Because it was showing me a delver.
It looked like the one I’d seen back on the recording at Detritus. An enormous, oppressive shadow