I took a deep breath. “I know there’s something about this you aren’t telling me, Peg.”
She remained quiet.
“I’ll still do it,” I said, “but at least tell me one thing: do you genuinely need me to win this? Or is the championship about some kind of political posturing?”
“I need this, Spin,” Peg said, her voice growing softer. “I really need this. This is our chance at uniting the factions. There are details I haven’t told you, but that part is legitimate. I have put, one might say, all of my fruit into your cart. Please don’t drive it off a cliff.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
My screen flashed green and I hit the overburn, boosting into the arena proper.
The champion didn’t fire on me immediately. He zipped in close, then veered away, clearly expecting me to tail him.
A test. He wanted to judge my skill. I decided not to bite, instead turning upward and flying along the perimeter of the arena.
“I find no matches for that starfighter design in my database,” M-Bot said. “Alas, I have only a basic list of Superiority ships, and this seems an advanced model.”
“It might not even be Superiority,” I said. “Chet thinks that occasionally other ships end up in here via hyperjump accidents.”
I swooped upward, then turned back around. I didn’t miss that several other ships kept pace with me outside the arena barrier—pirates eager for the chance to take potshots if I drifted out of bounds.
All right. I had a feel for the shaftlike shape of the arena now, but I was still at a disadvantage, as I’d never flown in here before—while the champion had done it at least once. I performed a quick weave between several of the floating chunks, then eyed one of the strange glowing white patches.
The proximity sensor blared an alert that indicated the champion was heading for me. Darkshadow had realized that I was acclimating to the terrain, and so he would need to make the first move—lest he give me time to adjust. I slammed on my overburn, dodging out of the way as the champion tried to tail me.
I soon had to cut the overburn. Going too fast while dodging wasn’t always the best idea, depending on reaction speed and turning capability. Instead I zoomed down along the curved perimeter—shooting through the shaft at its edge—hoping the champion would slip out of bounds. Unfortunately, Darkshadow proved competent at avoiding that. Indeed, that straightaway only earned me a few shots from behind, which were hard to evade without going out of bounds.
Best to stay to the center of the arena. I pulled up and went soaring in that direction, weaving between floating chunks. The champion stuck with me; he was good. And he proved to have a light-lance himself—which he used in pivots. That was strange. I had yet to meet a nonhuman from the Superiority who used a light-lance the way we did in the DDF.
Fortunately, over the next few minutes of leading him through a chase, I decided I was probably the better pilot. I just had to…
I felt something.
Something like fingers on my brain.
I was a lonely rock in the darkness. A mist reached around me, embracing me, smothering me.
A pair of burning white eyes appeared, reflected in the canopy of my starship. Eyes that fixated upon me.
We see you.
I was thrown back into the conflict as a destructor blast crackled across my shield. Scud! I twisted to the left and dropped in a weaving spin between two floating asteroids, effectively dodging further shots.
“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “What’s wrong?”
I searched the scanner. Yeah, I’d drifted close to a white patch. “The delvers are watching. Can you get me a scanner analysis of those white patches?”
“Working,” M-Bot said.
Destructor fire chased me again. I spotted a series of asteroids floating nearby, then slammed my overburn and shot toward them.
The champion followed. I speared the second asteroid I passed with my light-lance—but didn’t merely use it to turn. I spun all the way around it, employing the small asteroid as a counterweight. That hurled the chunk of rock backward, making it collide with the next asteroid in line—which the champion had just speared to use in a turn. The collision threw off his maneuver, making him break out of the turn and shoot away erratically.
After a quick release, I stabbed a third rock and used it to pivot around behind the champion. As he reoriented, he found me on his tail, firing. I scored a hit, his shield crackling. To Darkshadow’s credit, he didn’t panic, but he did go into evasives. And…scud. I knew that set of maneuvers. I searched my memory, full of people I was—alarmingly—beginning to forget.