Starsight

The second installment in Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series picks up six months after the events of the first book. Spensa Nightshade, a young human fighter pilot, continues to defend her home planet Detritus from alien attacks while struggling to understand her cytonic powers: abilities that allow her to perceive a dimension called the nowhere and hear faster-than-light communications.

Spensa flies M-Bot, an advanced stealth ship equipped with a sentient AI she previously repaired, as part of the Fuerza de Defensa Desafiante (FDD), the human military force on Detritus. Humanity has been imprisoned on this planet by the Supremacy, a vast galactic government that uses remotely piloted drones to suppress them. The Supremacy's enforcers, a crustacean species called the varvax, control these drones using cytonic communication, but Spensa can intercept the transmissions, giving her an edge in combat.

After a fierce battle, engineers aboard the FDD's recently captured orbital station recover an ancient video log showing the previous human inhabitants of Detritus being destroyed by a zapador, a planet-sized entity that emerged from the nowhere surrounded by glowing dust and piercing white lights. Spensa alone sees a figure in the recording wearing her own face. Admiral Cobb, the FDD's commander, connects the zapadores to the "eyes" Spensa perceives when she uses her powers and to old traditions warning against cytonic activity.

Cobb shares a plan devised by Rodge, Spensa's engineer friend: use M-Bot's holographic camouflage to infiltrate a Supremacy station and steal hyperdrive technology. Before the plan can develop, a lone alien ship hyperjumps into the system and crashes. Spensa rescues the pilot, Alanik of the UrDail, a humanoid alien woman with pale purple skin whose planet was once allied with humanity. Before losing consciousness, Alanik warns Spensa not to trust the Supremacy and cytonically implants coordinates for Visión Estelar, a Supremacy station, into Spensa's mind.

Spensa realizes the fading coordinates offer a narrow window to carry out a modified plan: She can impersonate Alanik, join the Supremacy's pilot recruitment program, gather intelligence, and steal a hyperdrive. M-Bot disguises himself as Alanik's ship and, using a mobile holographic bracelet, projects a hologram over Spensa to replicate her appearance. After a hurried farewell with Jorgen Weight, her squad leader, Spensa activates her cytonic hyperjump and arrives near Visión Estelar, a sprawling city built on a disc-shaped platform enclosed in an atmospheric bubble.

Posing as Alanik, Spensa is greeted by Cuna, a dione (one of the Supremacy's ruling species) from the Department of Species Integration, who explains that strong performance in a pilot evaluation could earn the UrDail citizenship. Cuna reveals that the Supremacy fears the zapadores' return and is developing a secret weapon requiring trained pilots. Winzik, a varvax who leads the Department of Protective Services, the organization maintaining Detritus as a prison, arrives with a human bodyguard named Brade, a young woman who psychically probes Spensa and confirms she is cytonic. Spensa finds herself caught between Cuna's reformist faction and Winzik's authoritarian one.

The pilot evaluation uses live ammunition, killing 12 aspirants. Spensa forms a team with several key figures: Hesho, a kitsen (a fox-like creature roughly 15 centimeters tall) who commands a warship crewed by dozens of his people; Morriumur, a dione in a unique developmental stage whose family will decide whether to allow this personality to be born; and Vapor, a chimera, a sapient species existing as localized particle clouds in the air. These pilots, along with Brade, form Squadron Fifteen.

Training takes place aboard the Pesos y Medidas, a military transport ship, at a deep-space facility built around a zapador maze, a dodecahedral structure designed to simulate combat inside a zapador. Pilots encounter holographic illusions requiring pairs to distinguish reality from deception. Spensa experiences visions beyond the programmed holograms, briefly perceiving the universe from a zapador's perspective: vast, contemptuous, and hostile toward all sentient life.

Over two weeks, Spensa bonds with her squadmates. Brade reveals she was separated from her human parents at age seven and raised by Winzik. Morriumur takes Spensa to a water garden where children of many species play among floating spheres of water, forcing Spensa to recognize the Supremacy's citizens as ordinary people. Meanwhile, M-Bot grapples with existential questions about his own consciousness and helps Spensa build a nearly invisible spy drone, which she smuggles aboard the Pesos y Medidas to record the engine room. Back on Detritus, Jorgen discovers he has latent cytonic abilities and begins training with Spensa's grandmother.

At the maze's heart, Brade detonates the Supremacy's secret weapon. It does not destroy zapadores but redirects them by imprinting a target's coordinates into a cytonic mind. In the test, it brands the location of Detritus into Spensa's brain. Winzik plans to redirect any zapador toward the human prison planet and use the threat of such attacks as leverage to dominate the galaxy. The spy drone's footage reveals an equally shocking secret: Supremacy hyperdrives are taynix, small yellow slugs with blue spines identical to Spensa's pet Doomslug, living cytonic creatures enslaved as biological engines.

Spensa shares these discoveries with Cuna and, in a pivotal decision, deactivates her disguise and identifies herself as a human from Detritus. Cuna is stunned but shakes Spensa's hand. They agree that Spensa will return with the hyperdrive secret and pursue peace while Cuna undermines Winzik from within. Before Spensa can leave, Winzik mobilizes for an immediate assault on Detritus. Spensa reveals her identity to Brade, hoping the woman will defect, but Brade instead exposes her. Spensa escapes and hyperjumps to Detritus alone.

The Pesos y Medidas arrives and deploys its forces. Spensa briefs Cobb and orders total radio silence to minimize the signal a zapador could follow. She flies out with Hesho and Vapor to intercept Brade, but Brade kills Hesho and damages the allied ships. When Spensa fires on Brade, the woman's panic amplifies her cytonic scream, and a zapador breaks through into normal space near Detritus. Because the planet is silent, Spensa redirects the zapador toward Visión Estelar, where Winzik's broadcasts are the loudest signal in the region.

Horrified, Spensa hyperjumps her group to the station. Morriumur, who had returned home after leaving the program, witnesses the attack and flies into the zapador to help. Morriumur's unique two-brained physiology makes them immune to the entity's illusions, and they tow Spensa's disabled ship to the zapador's heart. There, Spensa confronts the zapador face-to-face. It wears her own appearance. She realizes it does not truly hate sentient life but reflects the fear and aggression directed at it. She pulls its consciousness down to the scale of individual lives: a child playing, a neighbor sharing a meal, Cuna working for peace. The zapador asks whether these beings are truly alive. When Spensa confirms they are, it recoils and vanishes entirely from normal space.

Spensa wakes three days later on Visión Estelar. Cuna reports progress toward peace, and Morriumur's family has decided to let this personality be born. But Winzik is executing a coup, framing Spensa as a terrorist using attacks committed by Brade as propaganda. Spensa gives Cuna her holographic disguise bracelet and instructs the dione to escape to Detritus with taynix. She fights her way to M-Bot's confiscated ship, only to find it destroyed. M-Bot, however, has secretly copied his consciousness into the spy drone, overcoming his programming restrictions one line of code at a time. Spensa finds Doomslug hiding in the wreckage. Cornered by Winzik's forces, she activates a portal to the nowhere and steps through, holding M-Bot's drone and Doomslug.

In an epilogue, Jorgen follows a sound only he can hear deep beneath Detritus, emerging into a bioluminescent cavern filled with mushrooms and hundreds of taynix. His discovery represents the key to humanity's escape: a massive supply of living hyperdrives.