Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

Used to this by now, I joined Chet in taking cover beneath a large tree with crooked branches but a decent number of leaves. The tips drooped so low they trailed in the water, making ripples.

“Broadsider markings,” Chet whispered to me as we peeked through the canopy at the ships. “We’ve entered their territory.”

“Are the factions that different from one another?”

“Generally, no,” he said. “But the Broadsiders have a reputation for being more fair than the others. Then again, their leader is said to have once been in the Superiority security forces. I’ve kept my distance for that reason.”

There were four ships in this formation. I didn’t recognize the specific designs, but they were definitely military grade. As we watched, they clashed with another group of ships that darted up from beneath the fragment.

A quick firefight ensued, the various ships flying like hawks and prey from one of the pictures of Old Earth, twisting around one another as they soared down past the fragment.

Seeing them fight awakened something in me. I missed flying. It had been only a few days, but already I longed to feel a ship around me—its motion an extension of my body as I soared around obstacles and wove between enemies.

Being in the sky. Claiming the stars.

I missed it. Dearly.

“Soon,” I whispered as the ships vanished from sight, chasing one another beneath the fragments.

“We should probably give it a few moments,” Chet said, settling on a rock there under the tree. “In case they come back this direction.”

“That was another faction, right?” I asked. “Cannonade?”

“Your eyes are keen!” he said. “Before long you’ll know the proper markings for all six.”

“Do they often fight one another?”

“Aggressively!” Chet said. “It’s a pity. They could be out exploring and adventuring, but I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge them a little sport. We all have our own ways of passing the time in here.”

Well, if we were going to wait this out, it seemed like a good opportunity to arm myself. I’d cursed the loss of my rifle several times already, so I selected a sturdy stick from those fallen around the tree and began stripping it. Once finished, I found a good stone, properly oblong with a narrow portion in the middle.

I tried to affix it to the stick, but my first effort failed because the vines I’d picked snapped.

“If I may, Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, unlacing his left boot. He pulled out a long shoelace, revealing another one still fastening his boot. “Always double-lace your boots when exploring! You’d be surprised how often an extra bit of string comes in handy. The uses are multitudinous!”

He showed me how to lash the stone in place—and then, surprised at my lack of knowledge, took out his other extra shoelace and proceeded to give me a short lesson on different knots and hitches. I realized, with embarrassment, that I’d allowed having a light-line to make me complacent in this area.

I listened with devoted attention. It felt like such a practical thing to learn—the sort of thing that…well, that I imagined my father might have taught me. If things hadn’t gone so poorly.

Once we were done, I tucked away the shoelace—he’d told me to keep it to practice with—and picked up my club. I swung it a few times for good measure.

“A fine weapon,” Chet said, hands on hips. “What shall you name it?”

“Skullbreaker, of course,” I said.

“Excellent.”

“Though…I don’t know if sand worms have skulls,” I said. “Maybe we should sharpen a rock and make a spear, in case I get swallowed and need to kill it from the inside.”

“I doubt that will be requisite,” Chet said with a chuckle.

“Say that when you’re in a sand worm’s gullet and I’m standing triumphantly on the corpse of mine, contemplating how to make a hat out of its skin.”

“Ha!” Chet said. “I doubt I’ve ever met a young woman quite so…bloodthirsty.”

I shrugged. “It’s kind of an act. You know, bravado. But I do want to be able to defend myself against any beasts we encounter.”

“If we must do so, then we have failed,” Chet said. He held up a finger, adopting a straight-backed lecture pose. “No beast attacks a person unless that person has made a mistake. We trespass in their domain, and it is incumbent upon us to take the utmost care to avoid accidents.”

“You don’t hunt?” I asked.

“Heavens, no!” Chet said. “Not except for sustenance, which is unnecessary in here. I explore to see the wonders of the universe! Why, to leave that wilderness so desecrated… No. An explorer must not be a destroyer. He must be a preserver! But then, I’m rambling. We should continue. The pirates appear to have taken their squabbles elsewhere.”

We continued on, barely reaching the desert fragment and leaping across before the two drifted too far apart. M-Bot seemed reluctant to leave his mushroom hunt, but he followed us.

Chet’s comments about hunting and exploring left me intrigued—it was the opposite of what I’d expected from someone like him. The way he talked felt liberating. Exploring, traveling…he could do that and test his skills without needing to fight or kill. It was a new way of thinking. For me, the struggle to get better had always ultimately ended with the destruction of my enemies. Or at least the humiliation of those who had laughed at me.

I was changing though. It had begun on Starsight, as I met so many who were technically my enemies—but also just ordinary people. I wanted a way out of all of this now, more than I wanted to end the “Krell.” Was there a way we could stop this war without destroying them or them destroying us?

Chet kept us to the valleys between the dunes. I watched the sand carefully as we walked.

“Um…” M-Bot hovered out in front of me. “Spensa? I had to leave behind some of my information databases, but I kept the fauna surveys for all known worlds in the Superiority and…I don’t want to be a downer…”

“No sand worms?” I asked.

“Afraid not.”

“Scud,” I said. “What about giant scorpions? Orion totally killed one of those on Old Earth, so they’ve got to be real.”

“There are several low-gravity planets with arthropod-like creatures that would probably fit that definition. Oooh… One has a poison stinger that, if it hits you, you grow fungus on your tongue. And in your blood. Basically, it kills you. But mushroom tongues!”

“Wow,” I said. “That really exists?”

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Are you…crying?”

“No, of course not,” I said, wiping my eye. “It’s just…I’m glad something that awesome exists, you know? Like in the stories. Maybe when this is all done, we can visit that place. You think maybe I could train one up from a baby to let me ride it?”

Chet chuckled from up ahead, leading us farther into the desert—and I allowed myself to grow excited. The next fragment would be the one with our destination, my chance—finally—to see what the delver had sent me to experience.

I should have been exhausted. And to an extent I was. It had been a difficult day of travel. It felt good though; there was something healthy and satisfying about being this type of worn out. It was odd that I wasn’t hungry. And I’d been hiking all this way and was only mildly thirsty.

But…well, I was walking across a literal flying desert and had passed infinite waterfalls that were fed by no tributary. I doubted lack of hunger would be the oddest thing I experienced in here. I hurried up, joining Chet as we were forced to climb a dune—a difficult process, though he showed me how to do it at an angle, and while keeping somewhat solid footing by not walking in his footsteps.

“In snow,” he explained, “step where the person in front of you did. That will save energy. Sand dunes, however, settle. And so the person in front of you will disturb that, which actually makes it harder if you step right where they did.”

At the top, I picked out the proper fragment. “That one?” I asked. “The green one?”

“That’s it,” Chet said.

There was so much life on these. Plant life, at least. Even the desert had scrub stubbornly breaking from the sand and growing defiantly. Was this what it was like on most worlds? Plants just kind of grew, without anyone to cultivate them?

“Are you nervous?” I asked Chet. “About what we’ll find?”

He thought for a moment, smoothing his mustache. “I feel…like it’s inevitable. I knew I’d make my way to the Path eventually. To the point that when you mentioned it to me, I felt like I’d been drawn to you. Pulled onto this course.”

“That…sounds kind of unnerving, honestly.”

“My apologies; that was not my intent.” He glanced toward the distant lightburst. “Still, I worry about the delvers’ hand in this place. I never can quite trust that my will is my own…”

“Do you know anything about them?”

“They’re not a group mind,” Chet said. “People get that wrong about them. The delvers are all separate beings—but they’re also identical. They live in a place where nothing ever changes, and where time doesn’t exist. They exist in one moment, in one place, indistinguishable—and terrified of anything that isn’t exactly as they are.”

“Okay…” I said. “A lot of that doesn’t make sense to me, Chet. But I’ll try to pretend otherwise.”

“Thank you,” he replied. “All I know is that the not-making-sense part is why individuals like you can hyperjump through the nowhere! Time and space are irrelevant, and after slipping into the nowhere you can come out anywhere else. I worry, however. Every time we puncture the barrier between the nowhere and the somewhere, we corrupt the nowhere a little. Like how you can’t walk through clean fresh snow without leaving tracks.”

“Do you think…there is snow in here somewhere?” I asked. “I’d like to see it sometime.”

“It exists, but is rare,” he said. “Tell me, Miss Nightshade. Did you actually live your entire life on that barren planet? How did you survive?”

I shrugged. “We have algae vats and artificial light underground. And there is some life. Rats live in the caverns, eating fungi and algae that transfer heat into biological energy. It isn’t much, but we make it work.”

“You sound like an exceptionally courageous group,” Chet said. “It is my honor to travel with you—though I must admit I find your home a strange place to have a society!”

“Oh!” M-Bot said, flying up beside him. “It is a very strange place, with a fascinating mix of technological advancements and backward ignorance. They have spaceflight, but not automatic soap dispensers, for example. So you could say their culture has had its ups and downs.”

“It indeed sounds interesting, abomination,” Chet said. “Come, Miss Nightshade and companion. We should hurry—there is a point of interest on this fragment I would like to show you before we leave it, but we will need to rush. It wouldn’t do to miss the next fragment because we dallied!”

We continued on, Chet picking up our pace. A half hour later, we crested another dune and I got a better glimpse of our target fragment. It was covered with shimmering grass—it looked so soft, like the fur of a good blanket—and idyllic streams that dropped off the side, sparkling like drops of sunlight. It looked like paradise as described in the stories. Green, alive—there were even butterflies.

However, something felt odd to me. Chet had rushed us to get here in time, but that fragment appeared to be hours away. At the rim, Chet waved me along to the right. The dunes tapered off here, and in a few moments we found what he’d wanted to show me: a pit. The sand had blown away, exposing brown rock—and a vast chunk had been dug out of the fragment, going down at least thirty meters. The sides were tiered, like a reverse pyramid, paths running along them in a spiral.

“A quarry,” I said. “For acclivity stone?”

“Precisely,” Chet said. “This one is ancient, but I thought you might appreciate seeing an example of a quarry. The ones the Superiority runs farther inward at Surehold are much more massive affairs, but it’s the same general principle.”

“Too bad they didn’t leave any acclivity stone,” I said, searching the quarry. M-Bot zipped past me and went soaring down to look at the bottom. “Maybe we could have fashioned some kind of floating device for ourselves.”

Chet shook his head, smiling.

“What?” I said.

“They left plenty of acclivity stone, Miss Nightshade,” he said, gesturing. “What is it you think we’re standing upon?”

“Rock,” I said.

“Rock,” he said, “that floats through the sky? These fragments all have acclivity stone in them. Unfortunately, it takes refinement and energy to make it work on a scale that’s usable, so I doubt we’ll be able to make any kind of device. Still, it is all right here.”

I blushed at the realization. Of course the fragments floated on acclivity stone. It made perfect sense, now that I thought about it. I guess the blue coloring, like the light glowing underneath M-Bot’s wings, came from the refinement process.

“Now,” he said, “that other fragment.” He gazed across at it, then frowned. “It should be here any moment.”

“By my best guess,” M-Bot said, “judging by its slow movement, our fragments won’t touch for ten hours.”

“Ten hours? Chet, why did you hurry us?”

“I…” He scratched at his head. “Ten hours, you say?”

“Yes,” M-Bot said. “Though I have set my internal chronometer to the time used by Spensa’s people, which is patterned after one hour Earth time. The same as used by my old ship, and thus also—presumably—by you.”

Chet settled on a rock. “I apologize, Miss Nightshade. My sense of time is…not as reliable as it once was.”

I let the conversation die, but I was baffled. How could Chet have such a poor sense of time?

“Well,” Chet said. “Perhaps we should get some rest here, then attack the Path of Elders. Always best to hit a task fresh and awake! So that it can’t hit back, you see.”

I smiled. That reminded me of something Kimmalyn would say. But I agreed with getting some rest. It had been a wonderful day, though a long one.

As Chet took off his jacket to make a pillow, I checked on my reality icon, finding it had shed three motes of silvery dust today. I proffered one to him and watched carefully so I could study the hungry way he eyed my pouch. Everything about traveling with him had been a joy—everything except that look.

I tucked away the pouch quickly. Chet took a little longer to put away his ash—instead staring at it for a time, glowing and twinkling in his palm.

“So, the Path of Elders,” I said to break the odd mood. “Is there anything we need to do to prepare for it?”

“Not that I know of,” he said. “I visited this first stop one time, but decided not to go into the cavern. I feel embarrassed to admit that, after seeing your excitement.”

I stared out at the garden fragment. Yeah, it was moving more slowly than Nedd did at mess on an early morning shift. It would take a long time to get here. “It feels like the quests that happened in the old stories. That’s why I’m excited.”

“You put a lot of stock in those stories.”

“My grandmother told them to me when I was a child. They kind of just…stuck.”

“I find that admirable,” Chet said. “But I warn you not to raise your expectations too much. Life isn’t always like one of those stories.”

“I know,” I said, still staring over that beautiful field. “But…stories say something. About us, and about where we came from. They’re a reminder that we have a past, a history. And a future.”

When I was growing up, Gran-Gran’s stories had been my shield. Against the names I was called, against the things people said about my father. Against my own terror that all those things—particularly the ones about me—were true.

In the stories, there was a sense of justice. Everything had a purpose; every little bit meant something. I thought if those heroes and heroines from the stories could keep going forward into the darkness, so could I.

I might have clung to them a little too tightly. With how strange everything had been lately, perhaps I was seeking some kind of stability. Or some kind of guide…

“I can understand that,” Chet said. “It’s odd—this place has stolen from me who I was, but I still know things. I know what a burrito is, though I’ve never eaten one in here. I can list the names of the first human colony worlds. And I remember…stories. I partially decided on my name due to the tales of the old hero Chet Cannister.”

“Oh, those are good,” I said. “But I like the older ones best. Heroes like Odysseus.”

“Or Hercules.”

“Yeah,” I said, slamming my fist into my other hand. “Or Satan.”

Chet blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Satan?” I said. “The hero?”

“The…hero.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gran-Gran told me the story. Satan got thrown into a place of fire, but he was like, ‘Hey, everyone. It doesn’t matter, so long as we have each other. We can make this place as good as any paradise.’ Then he volunteered to infiltrate the enemy’s world and went on this big quest through the Abyss.”

“Now, my memory—as I’ve warned you—isn’t great,” Chet said. “But that sounds like the old poem Paradise Lost. I…think you might have misinterpreted it.”

“What? Who do you think was the hero of that story?”

“Adam and Eve.”

“Those losers? They didn’t do anything but sit around! Everyone else had flaming swords and dramatic battles!”

Chet grinned. “Well, that’s one way to interpret it. And what do I know? I only know my own name because of the patch I found on my uniform.”

I made a pillow out of my jacket. As I did, M-Bot hovered over beside me. “Ummm…” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“…I think he might be correct about Paradise Lost.”

“Read it again,” I said. “You really expect me to believe that—in a story with people named Beelzebub and Moloch who live in Pandæmonium—the author wanted us to root for someone named Eve?”

Some things are obvious. Unless you’re a robot, I guess.

“Do you want me to do what I did last time?” the robot asked me more softly. “Just in case?”

I nodded, then lay back, contemplating the day we’d had. I couldn’t remember another day in my recent life that had been so thoroughly enjoyable. That made me feel guilty though. Jorgen and the others were fighting for their lives, and I was investigating swamps and playing explorer?

I would have to stay focused. Tomorrow we started the Path of Elders, and hopefully I’d finally have some answers. Or at the very least I’d learn the right questions.