Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

The strange visage made me gape in shock. Though her body was gorilla-shaped, and she was wearing utilitarian clothing like the others, she had no nose, just a small lump where one had been, and a thin slit for a mouth. Her cheeks sagged to the sides, and her eyes—a milky white—were open and staring forward.

There was something distinctly unnatural about that face. What had happened to her?

“Tie down the prisoner for now,” Vlep told the dione—who yanked me over to the side of the clearing. There they anxiously tied my hands—still bound behind me—to part of a tree to hold me in place. A root perhaps? Then the dione ran over to join the others gathering around the burl.

I immediately started trying to worm free. Unfortunately, their knot-tying skills were superior to their combat abilities. I was secured tightly, so I resorted to rubbing my binding against the bark in hopes of making it fray.

“What happened?” Vlep demanded of the dione guard. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing! I just wandered out into the trees to relieve myself, then came back to…” The confused dione gestured at the figure.

Scud. That melty-faced alien was getting unnerving. The others argued for a moment, then one suggested they try the “reality ashes,” which turned out to be the silvery dust from my pocket. Vlep began sprinkling it on top of the burl.

As I watched, her eyes started to glow. Beneath the skin, as if there were something inside her. A pure white light. It reminded me…

Of the eyes. Of delvers.

Oh, Saints.

I tried to yank free of the root, and it did have some give to it—but I wasn’t quite strong enough to pull it out of the ground. So I returned to rubbing my bonds on the bark.

“A little to the left,” a peppy voice said from behind. “There’s a rougher part there that might help.”

I paused, then twisted to look over my shoulder. To where a small drone hovered, hidden among the underbrush.

“M-Bot!” I said, then hushed, glancing at the pirates. They were only about seven meters away, but fortunately they didn’t seem to have heard. “You found me!”

“Well, you weren’t exactly quiet, Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering closer. “I see you found some friends. That’s…nice. Look, we need to talk. A heart-to-heart. Heart-to-processing-unit-simulating-a-biological-function-like-a-heart.”

“Now’s not a great time!”

M-Bot shook a grabber arm at me. “The emotions of biological beings often come at inconvenient times; I’ve dealt with yours on many occasions. And Spensa…I think I have feelings now.”

“That’s…not surprising. You had them before, no matter what you said.”

“Spensa,” M-Bot continued, “I’ve been thinking. And…and feeling. I really was angry that you left me behind to be ripped apart, gutted, and killed. But I understand why you did it. I shouldn’t have been so angry at you. I…overreacted.”

“Great,” I said, struggling to get loose. “I’m sorry too, and I forgive you.”

“You do?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, twisting to the side to show him my bound wrists. “Look, can you—”

“Oh, thank you, Spensa!” he said. “Thank you, thank you. I feel so warm! Maybe my power matrix is overheating. But, but, it’s marvelous! I feel like I’m going to cry, though that’s physically impossible for me.”

“Could you—”

“Maybe I could have mechanical tear ducts installed on this drone. So I could be like you, and leak? You become less efficient with your secretions when you’re emotional.”

I took a deep breath. In the stories, the heroines always had trusty steeds—who could not talk—or loyal, quiet sidekicks. I could see why. The Lone Ranger probably wouldn’t have accomplished much if his horse had been a mushroom-obsessed blabbermouth.

Still, I was really glad to see him. I glanced toward my captors. They were holding down the sick burl, who seemed to be having a spasm. My heart went out to her, but her distress was timed perfectly. The pirates would have noticed M-Bot for sure otherwise.

“Spensa?” he said. “Oh! Are you tied up?”

“You’re only now noticing?” I growled. “What did you think I was doing with these ropes?”

“I thought you were trying to scratch an itch! That’s why I pointed out the rough part of the root. You biological beings are always scratching things. Skin must be awful.” He hesitated. “To be honest, I should have figured out you were captive. It’s actually rather obvious. I was distracted by all these emotions my processors are inexplicably simulating. Hmm… Yup. Those are ropes.”

“Help get me out of them?”

“Uh…right. I will…search for knot-untying solutions in my database…”

“Or you could untie them!” I hissed.

“I’m not sure how.”

“It’s not that hard.”

“For you, maybe. I’m not exactly used to being able to do things, Spensa. I’m an information-support AI. I…don’t know how to act. In fact, I’ve needed to send my self-shutdown protocols into an infinite loop. They don’t like me being able to fly myself around.”

The people who had made his old ship had implanted deep controls on his personality. It said a lot that he had progressed enough to circumvent some of those.

An outburst from the pirates pulled my attention back to the sick burl. She was struggling and thrashing, and had thrown one of the heklo away with incredible strength.

“Quickly,” I hissed. “Do you have anything that could help me escape?”

“I have a light-line,” M-Bot said. “I found one in the shop on a worker drone and moved it to myself. I was planning to use it in my escape. Maybe I could drag you away?”

A light-line was a plus. Though his acclivity rings were small, and the drone was only about the size of a lunch tray, if quite a bit thicker. It wouldn’t have a lot of power.

“Attach the light-line to the ropes on my hands,” I said. “Maybe with your added strength we can rip this root out of the ground and I can pull myself free. Get ready. We have to do this before the pirates notice what we’re doing.”

“Yeah,” M-Bot said. “About that…”

The pirates were running for their ships, having apparently decided to abandon the one with the melting face. The male burl didn’t like this. “Give me the icon, Vlep!” the burl shouted. “We have to try! Maybe it will work!”

But Vlep wasn’t listening. As the others were running for their ships, he’d turned to look at me. He’d seen M-Bot. He immediately raised the rifle toward us, apparently deciding I was too dangerous to let live.

Get ready, a voice said in my mind.

Ready? I thought, staring down that rifle. For what?

The ground started shaking. Trees trembled. Vlep swung the gun away from me and pointed it toward the approaching sounds.

Then a scudding dinosaur came rampaging into camp—with a mustachioed human man riding on its back.