within a cloud of light and dust. Chunks of burning asteroids spewed from it, leaving trails in the void. They churned past my canopy, and though I knew this was just a hologram, my fingers twitched on the controls of my ship.
Every instinct I had was screaming at me to get away from this terror. This impossible, incredible monstrosity. It would destroy me and everything I loved. I could feel it.
“This is a delver!” a perky, feminine voice said. A cutesy graphic surrounded the thing on the screen—a shimmering line of stars and lightning bolts.
“Even still, no one truly knows what a delver is,” the voice continued, and icons looking like confused faces lined the sides of my canopy. “These recordings are almost two hundred years old, taken when the Acumidian delver appeared and destroyed the planet Farhaven. Every living being on the planet was turned to dust and vaporized! How scary!”
My canopy view zoomed in on the delver, as if I’d suddenly flown up to it. I jumped despite myself. From this close, it looked like a thunderstorm of dust and energy—but deep within it, I saw the shadow of something smaller. A circular, shifting . . . something.
“When delvers enter our realm,” the voice said, “matter coalesces around them. We think they must bring it through from the place they come from. Freaky! This matter forms a shroud around the delver; the creature itself is much smaller! At the very center of all this dust, rock, and debris is a metallic shell sometimes called a delver maze!
“Standard shields protect pilots from whatever it is about the delver that vaporizes people, so that’s nice, isn’t it! But those shields don’t last long against a delver’s attacks, and even planetary shields usually fall within a matter of minutes. Still, shielded ships can get close, and some have even traveled inside the dust, past the debris, and into the maze itself! There, they encountered a complicated network of twisting tubes and corridors made from stone and metal.”
The image of the delver vanished, replaced by a large cartoon version. It had angry eyebrows and vaguely human features, and a pair of cartoon hands pulled back the cloud of dust, revealing a polyhedral structure with a lumpy, malformed exterior. It wasn’t as polished or angular as the one we were going to train on. On the real thing, spines jutted out at various places. It was like a cross between a large asteroid, a melted chunk of steel, and a sea urchin.
“The smaller chunks that the delver expels chase after ships,” the voice explained, and cartoon meteors shot out from the delver in pursuit of little animated ships. “They’ll try to bring down your shield so the delver can munch on you! Stay away! They move with no visible source of propulsion. Maybe they’re magic! Reports say that fighting these embers is like trying to dogfight inside an asteroid field, when all the asteroids are actively trying to kill you!
“The delver itself lurks at the center of the maze. Our special Delver Attack Devices won’t work through that interference! So, you’ll need to fly into the maze and find the delver itself. It’s in there somewhere! Your training will include test runs through our specially created imitation maze. Good luck, and hopefully you won’t die! Thank you!”
After that, a list of people who had made the orientation video scrolled across my screen, many with little cute symbols next to their names. When it was finally done, my canopy went transparent again, giving me a good view of the large training maze that—compared to the delver—seemed far too ordinary.
I settled back, feeling a mounting dread. I was increasingly certain the Superiority was filled with people who were taking this threat far too lightly.
“All right,” Vapor said with a soft, calming voice. “They’ve sent us orders. We’re to proceed to the following coordinates, then wait our turn at the maze.”
22
Vapor led us on a careful approach of the maze. From up closer, I could see the lines where different segments had been fabricated, then fitted together. It didn’t have all the dust around it, like the kind that shrouded a real delver maze. That left this experience feeling even more mundane. It just didn’t evoke the same sense of dread and worry that the videos had.
“Command says to watch for interceptors,” Vapor told us. “The delvers have fighters that attack those who get close?”
“Not fighters,” Brade said in her stern voice. “The delver controls hunks