Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

The cavern was small, barely as large as one of the bunk rooms on Detritus. A soft tinkling sound accompanied some water dribbling in through the wall and gathering in a shallow pool at the rear.

Chet knelt there, washing his hands. He looked up as I skidded to a stop, kicking up sand, my fatigue momentarily forgotten. “Chet,” I said. “You said you remembered some things about the day before you entered.”

“Just bits and pieces.”

“Did you know someone named Commander Spears?” I demanded, naming the man who had been M-Bot’s pilot all those years ago, when he’d crashed on Detritus.

Chet frowned. He shook his hands off, then stood up and ran them through his silvering hair. Slowly, he reached to the chest pocket of his flight jacket and took something out. A patch, as if from a uniform.

It said SPEARS on it.

“Oh, scud,” I said.

“I…think I crashed somewhere?” he said. “A place with caverns, and…metal platforms in the sky? It’s so fuzzy, though I have a distinct impression of a wall full of strange lines. I now recognize that as a nowhere portal. I must have fallen through.”

Scud. Scud, scud, scud.

M-Bot hovered at my side, and I could sense his concern. Like, actually sense it. I could feel his emotions. He was worried. Apprehensive. Shocked.

“I found your ship,” I said. “It had an AI on it. You are M-Bot’s old pilot.”

“I…hardly think I could fit in a drone…” Chet said.

“He used to be in a ship,” I explained. “An extremely advanced one. All he could remember about his pilot was the name, and some orders. That was you, Chet.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “Why, I find it difficult to say this without giving offense, but I would never have fraternized with an AI. They draw the attention of the delvers!”

“You have the patch,” I said, pointing. “You remember Detritus, my homeworld. You are Commander Spears.”

Yet another part of me rebelled against the idea. This seems impossible, I thought. What were the chances that we’d enter the nowhere and find M-Bot’s original pilot within minutes? Something very suspicious was going on.

“We were friends, Chet,” M-Bot said, flying closer. “I mean…I don’t remember that, but I felt it. We must have been. I…I tried to follow your final orders, all those years. Kept trying until I ran out of power and shut down… Waiting…”

Chet sighed. “I don’t know much, but I’ve heard that computers have severely limited processing speeds unless you let their circuitry dip into the nowhere for calculations. It’s a trade-off. Either deal with a nearly useless computer, or…” He nodded toward M-Bot.

“They come to life?” I guessed.

“Everyone talks about it in here,” Chet said. “The pirates who used to be Superiority? They whisper about it. You can’t let a true AI continue to function. They’ll eventually draw the delvers to you. To keep an abomination like that is…well, it’s certain death. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why would AIs bring the delvers?”

“I can’t remember,” he admitted.

I didn’t know what to make of that. Or any of this. It did seem that Chet was Spears though. We’d wondered what had happened to him after crashing on Detritus and leaving M-Bot’s ship in that cave.

It stood to reason that Detritus would have had a way into the nowhere, as we’d found abundant acclivity stone on the planet. The people who had built Detritus must have had mining operations, like the Superiority now had. Maybe they’d traveled here using that spot in the caverns that had carvings like the ones on the portals.

“I’ve tried to get back,” Chet said, wistful. “Find the place where I entered, then go through? Seemed like quite an adventure! But I’ve forgotten the way to that portal—and every one I’ve found since has been locked. The people who made those portals, whoever they were, grew exceedingly frightened of what was in here.”

He turned away from me and M-Bot. “Anyway, we should bed down! Camp for the night, such as it is. Tomorrow is a big day! With a solid hike, we can make it to the first portal in the Path of Elders.”

He took off his jacket and began rolling it up, evidently to use it as a pillow.

It was too convenient. Too improbable. Perhaps…perhaps I’d been drawn to this location, when hyperjumping into the nowhere? Because of him? Could that explain the coincidence?

Unfortunately, I was starting to feel genuinely exhausted. I wasn’t in much of a state to process this information. I pulled off my own jacket to use as a pillow, then hesitated as I noticed M-Bot was gone.

I cursed myself softly. Of course he’d left, after hearing what Spears had said. I forced myself to hike back out of the cave and found him focused on a small cactus.

“M-Bot—” I said.

“You know,” he whispered, “I anticipated this. We even talked about it, remember? I knew they were afraid of me. Why else would my own programming forbid me from things like piloting my ship? So yes, ha ha! I was right. My pilot was afraid of me…” He trailed off. “It would have been okay for me to be wrong.”

“Look,” I said, stepping up to him, “it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter what the one person who knows anything about where I came from says?” M-Bot answered, his voice rising. “I think it matters, Spensa. I really think it matters.”

For the first time I was glad he was in a drone rather than his old ship. There was a certain sense of personality and emotion to the way he moved now, the way he drooped in the air, his grabber arms dangling beneath him, limp. “It’s like finding out,” he said in an even smaller voice, “that your father hates you…”

“I don’t believe him,” I said. “About you.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t fought an evil wizard yet.”

M-Bot twisted in the air. Then he rose up before me and tilted his drone sideways, perhaps in imitation of a cocked head. “You know,” he said, “I was beginning to think I could follow your leaps in logic.”

“No, listen,” I said, leaning in. “In the old stories, there was almost always an evil wizard. Aladdin had to face an evil wizard. And Conan? He killed like a billion evil wizards. There are tons of other examples. But how long have we been fighting? With no evil wizards? We’re bound to face one eventually.” I put my arm around his drone and pointed toward the cave. “I don’t know what’s going on, but somebody or something has to be messing with us. We come in here and immediately find your old pilot? Run the numbers, M-Bot.”

“Run what numbers?” he asked.

“You know. The statistics and stuff. Math it. What are the chances we’d run into him?”

“I have no way of calculating that,” M-Bot said. “You assume I could devise a percentage chance for something with so many variables—most of which are unknown, likely unquantifiable?”

I didn’t push. “Look, that might be Commander Spears. It makes sense that he could have fallen into the nowhere. But his memories are spotty; maybe he’s not Spears, and this is some kind of setup. But even if he is Spears, my gut says we didn’t meet him by chance. Trust me, M-Bot. In some way, in some form, we’re facing an evil wizard. Or the modern equivalent.”

“Perhaps,” M-Bot said. “But you have to accept that there is evidence for what he’s saying. About my kind being dangerous. My creators were obviously afraid of me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re my friend. I trust you.” I rubbed my forehead. “But right now, I’m exceptionally tired. Weak flesh body, remember? Let’s talk about this after I get some sleep. Okay?”

“I will process this information,” he said, “but I won’t do anything with it until I consult with you.”

“Good enough,” I said, then paused. “Watch Chet and wake me if he gets up, all right? I trust him well enough, but just…let’s be careful.”

“Agreed.”

We started back toward the cave. “Though,” I added, really starting to feel my fatigue, “if any monsters arrive to eat me, kindly ask them to do it quietly. That might let me get a few extra seconds of shut-eye.”

Inside I got a drink, then bedded down with my jacket as a pillow. I drifted off, hoping that my first “night” in the nowhere wouldn’t turn out to be too weird.

I obviously should have known better.