Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

The pirates thumped me down in a seat and one of them lashed my hands behind me. A large group of them had gathered in the hangar, which was now flooded with light.

I saw only one human among them, the fellow I’d noticed earlier. Most of the rest were diones, though there were also several of those bird people and one varvax—the alien species I’d known as the Krell, small crablike creatures that moved around in large blocky exoskeleton suits built from something like sandstone.

The group parted to make way for an alien of a completely different race, with a wide face and powerful limbs. Long teeth and clawed fingers gave this one the overall appearance of something like a bear on its hind legs, except not furry. They walked with a hunched-forward gait, giving them a predatory air, beefy arms held forward and at the ready.

I took this one for the leader of the group, considering the fine jacket and impressive hat, complete with a large plume. “Words!” the creature said. “Trying to steal a starfighter, eh? You must have grown at least six muluns for trying that!”

My pin didn’t translate the word, which was odd. I sat there, my hands bound behind me, and tried to come up with a plan. The leader alien walked up and slapped me on the back in a way that felt distinctly friendly.

“But you have rotten luck,” the leader continued. “Not a single gulun for you! Picking a ship inhabited by one of our resonants? Words, girl. Words. Anyway, welcome to the Broadsiders.”

“Wait,” I said, twisting to look at the leader. “Welcome?”

“The more people we have around, the more stable our memories remain,” one of the diones explained. “So you’re lucky. No execution for you. Instead you get to be our new cleaning slave.”

Great. Well, as awful as being a slave sounded, I felt even worse for messing up the plan. Chet had been trustworthy all along, and here I’d bungled everything.

“There were some ashes on her, Captain,” the varvax noted in their language, holding up a glowing transparent bag.

The scruffy human stepped forward carrying M-Bot’s drone. “Ma’am? This is what she used to try to break into the starship.”

I felt a spike of alarm. M-Bot? The drone seemed completely lifeless. The human fiddled with it, then found the old power button—which M-Bot had disconnected. However, when the human pushed the button, the drone’s small acclivity rings powered on, turning from dull blue-black to a vibrant glowing azure. The drone began to hover on its own power. Then as the human let go, it hovered over to use its grabber arm to pick up a rag from the floor. It then began wiping a window with it.

M-Bot, you genius, I thought. He always talked about how intelligent he was, but considering how he acted a lot of the time, it was easy to forget. Right now though, he did a spot-on imitation of a cleaning drone.

“Huh,” the captain said, then nudged me—hard enough that my chair scooted along the floor. “How’d you make it hack the canopy on Shiver’s starfighter?”

“It has some illegal programs,” I muttered, trying to play the role of the mousy little rat-catcher girl. “I managed to install them before coming in here. Thought it would be smart to hide them in a normal cleaning drone.”

That would imply the drone didn’t have a proper AI, so theoretically the Broadsiders shouldn’t be afraid of it becoming self-aware. Though admittedly I didn’t know a ton about AIs.

“Is that so?” the captain said. “Words. That might be useful. I’ll consider it an apology gift from you for waking me up in the middle of the night. Grow a tulun or two at my generosity, new slave. What’s your name?”

“Spin,” I said. “Yours?”

“Ha! Muluns indeed.” She swept off her hat and inclined her head toward me, revealing a crest of yellow feathers like a mohawk. “I’m Peg, captain of the Broadsiders!”

“Peg?” I said, glancing at the captain’s legs—both of which were whole. “As in…”

The human laughed. “Nah,” he said to me in heavily accented English. “She doesn’t get it. The name’s a coincidence.”

He walked over and shut off M-Bot, who dutifully powered down the rings and stopped moving. I twisted, trying to glance out the window to where Chet had been standing earlier, but couldn’t make anything out.

“Your friend ran off,” the human said to me, then patted the rifle over his shoulder. “Lucky for him, I was more worried about an attack than I was a scout. I only got a few shots off on him before ducking in to see what was happening.”

“Your friend abandoned you,” Peg said. “Should have given him some of your muluns.”

That about proved it: Chet hadn’t sold me out. He’d run, yes, but that was smart.

Scud, I felt like a complete idiot. Maybe after being betrayed by Brade, I was overly sensitive. Or maybe I was just a terrible judge of people.

Yeah…it was probably that. I had to face it, didn’t I? I’d spent most of my training assuming Jorgen was a legitimate jerk, while he was actually pretty un-jerky. But I’d tried hard to trust Brade despite the way she acted. I heaved a sigh and tipped my head back to stare at the ceiling.

I only wanted to fly again. I’d trained all my life to be a warrior. That was what I knew, what I understood. How did I keep ending up in situations like this instead?

“Hey,” Peg said, shoving me on the shoulder, “don’t get like that. You might not realize it, but you’re far better off scrubbing our floors than you would be out there on your own.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Keep her on a leash,” Peg said, striding away. “And don’t let her near that drone, just in case. I’m gonna go back to sleep.”