Hopefully they hadn’t managed to absorb the skill of the pilots who had entered this place. There looked to be about a hundred of the ships—and that was better than a million. But then again, maybe not. Too many ships would cause mass chaos, which might have made it easier for me to slip through.
“Are those all individual delvers?” M-Bot asked. “Or pieces of them? In the somewhere, a delver maze sent off chunks to chase Spensa, after all.”
I pushed out with my senses. “It feels like each is an individual delver. Chet, any idea why?”
“I remember being in the somewhere,” Chet said. “I remember panic and pain. Those asteroids that tried to hit you? That was me flailing, like a person surrounded by bees, swatting in a panic.
“Here they want to be precise. They can’t afford to let us enter the lightburst, but there are also plenty of delvers. So it’s better for them each to make one easily controllable ship and try to fight you with it.”
Great. So this would be far more dangerous than entering a delver maze. Fortunately, I was far more dangerous as well.
“Okay, Hesho,” I said. “Ready with those controls?”
“Ready,” he said. He’d been holding my fruit for me, to keep it from rolling around or getting mashed. But now he set it aside and leaned forward. “If your attempt fails, I will be ready to try our next plan.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” I said, flipping the switch on my dash that turned our ship’s destructors from nonlethal to fully lethal.
The first of our brainstormed plans was to rely on my now-expanded powers. As we soared closer, I could see that the delvers didn’t move like starfighters should. They flew sideways, upside down, even backward. They felt like objects being moved around by hidden fingers.
I’d grown accustomed to how in space, ships didn’t have to orient to “up” and “down.” They could turn any direction and keep momentum. This, however, was infinitely stranger. Their ships were simply propelled at me, as if they were asteroids.
“One minute from engagement,” M-Bot said.
I reached out with my expanded senses. In response the enemy shut themselves off from me, trying to keep me from “hearing” them and their thoughts. I pushed harder, but the delvers started firing, sending sprays of bright red destructor bolts in all directions.
I dodged, and managed to avoid the shots—but I was forced to dart to the side, flying defensively instead of straight toward the lightburst. We’d gotten in fairly close, but it would take another five minutes at full acceleration to reach it. Longer, now that I was forced to shed some speed to maneuver better.
Trying to go straight right now would be suicide. Instead I focused on one enemy ship that had gotten out to the side of the others. I fired, blasting it down with my now-lethal destructors, then I dove into another defensive sequence as others fell in behind me.
“The lightburst is rippling again,” M-Bot noted. “And…yes, another ship emerged, replacing the one you destroyed.”
As we’d feared. Still, good to have confirmation. Ships surrounded me, and I dodged in a full Stewart Sequence, but scud…this was a mess. Ships would stop in place—all momentum vanishing—then leap upward a hundred feet with no boost or thrust. Then they’d start firing madly.
I wove and dodged, but the insanity of it all kept me from making progress. They kept cutting me off, driving me to the side. I also had to keep fighting my instincts to shoot when they presented themselves as targets.
“Curious,” Hesho said—ready at his controls for when the plan went into motion. “They don’t all fly exactly the same. I thought you said they would, Chet.”
“I…expected them to,” he said. “At least for them to fly in the same general patterns.”
“They are all the same,” M-Bot said, “but in here each of their ships occupies a slightly different position in space. So they each have different stimuli to respond to. This is to be expected.”
“I worry these are sacrifices,” Chet said. “A hundred sent out knowing they’ll be changed. Then they’ll either be destroyed, or… Oh, no. They’ll be changed back. Forced to become just like the others again. That’s…that’s what they want to do to me. Erase my personality again…”
Scud. I could feel his terror at that idea. I didn’t blame him—but I didn’t have time to send him much support cytonically. Sweat trickled down my temple as I took us in another dizzying spin, cutting out when the GravCaps died and we were slammed with g-forces.