Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

A few days later, I felt I was finally getting a handle on the Broadsiders as a group.

“Yeah, there are six pirate factions,” Maksim had explained as we went through some booster maintenance on my second day as a captive. “We Broadsiders are smaller than we used to be, but we’re one of the first and most proud.”

“And the Superiority?” I’d asked. “Several of these starfighters are their models.”

“Ha! Yeah. The poor drips that run the mining operation at Surehold ask for ships to protect themselves from us. Which gives us plenty of opportunities to steal them!”

Over the next two days, I subtly picked out more information. The factions had been disorganized until a few years ago—more very small roving bands, or straggling refugees. The organization into factions had come as they solidified into the current six.

They spent most of their time trying to steal from the mining base, capturing new people who were exiled, or even raiding one another. Over the days as I watched, the Broadsiders curiously didn’t lose a single one of their nine ships in battle, though they went on a couple of raids. So maybe these were quick encounters, more about posturing than actual fighting.

Of all the Broadsiders, I found Peg the most interesting. There was something…different about the large alien. She was a tenasi, a race that I’d learned—on Starsight—was often used to pilot drones or do other fighting in the Superiority. She certainly had a dominating presence, and she watched me carefully whenever she was near.

Other than her, four people commonly worked in our hangar. Maksim was one. The hangar I’d broken into had actually been his, though he’d been spending his guard duty hanging out with another flight. His flight was named Cutlass Flight—again, borrowing Old Earth terms because the pirates found them intimidating. I had essentially been assigned to this flight myself, as I was under their supervision.

The varvax in our flight was named Nuluba, a female of their species. She still made me nervous—I couldn’t look at her without seeing Winzik, as her exoskeleton was the same color green. Together she and Maksim made up the ground crew for Cutlass Flight, which currently had only two active starfighters, plus Peg’s shuttle—which she was very proud of, but which I wouldn’t want to fight in.

There was also one ship that wasn’t combat ready yet: an old civilian vessel the team was modifying to be battleworthy. It, like the shuttle, had a light-lance for towing; though the Superiority didn’t commonly use those for battle, they had them for industrial purposes. Now the team was installing destructors. As I did reconnaissance over the next few days, I decided that was the ship I was going to have to steal. Peg’s shuttle had an unfamiliar control scheme, and the two more combat-ready ships…

Well, they were occupied by Cutlass Flight’s two starfighter pilots. Both were of a crystalline species who literally inhabited their ships. As I was asking about their battle skill, Maksim dropped a really important piece of intel.

“It is nice to have two pilots who live in their cockpits,” he said, wagging a wrench toward the ships. “As soon as the scanner tells us a raid is coming, they’re ready.”

Scanner?

The Broadsiders had a long-range scanner?

I’d assumed they’d have smaller proximity sensors like on starfighters. But a full-blown, long-range piece of surveillance equipment? That came as a surprise.

I immediately started nosing about. The scanner’s display was in our hangar, it turned out, and it was attached to some equipment up on the roof. It tracked ships and kept a detailed map of the region. Later that day, I managed to catch a look at the screen while the full map was up, showing me a more detailed version of what Chet had once drawn out for me.

The Broadsider territory was a wedge of the belt tapering inward, bordered by other pirate factions on either side. All of their territory ended at Superiority territory—a wide band that dominated the middle of the belt in this region.

Excited, I sent word to Chet that night.

There’s a scanner, I explained. A big one that watches for incoming ships. It can scan all the way to the Superiority’s region of space, though I don’t think it can spot individual people. It doesn’t have enough resolution for that.

That’s more than I thought they’d have, he said. They mostly scrounge for technology—I wonder where they acquired a high-powered scanner.

No idea, I said. But it’s a good thing I got captured, because…

Because with that scanner, they’d be able to track any ship we stole all the way to the next step in the Path, Chet said. Scrud. We’d never have managed to investigate the portal. They’d have been able to chase us all over the region. I am glad we found this out—though if offered the chance, I’d have chosen a route to this information that didn’t involve my shoulder being baked like brisket…

He’d been spending the days “convalescing,” by his terms. I still felt bad about the destructor shot.

Anyway, I said, this gives us an opportunity. I will need to sabotage that scanner before I go.

Ha! Don’t enjoy yourself too much, Spensa. You’ll make me feel left out! What is the next step in our plan, then?

I turned over in my bed—a mattress and blanket in the hangar, where I was tethered to the wall. They’d been giving me more slack lately on that, but I was still locked into place for now.

Next step, I said, is to contact M-Bot. I’ll need to upload him to steal the ship.

Excellent, Chet said. Give my best to the abom—to the AI.

I appreciate you trying to think of him that way.

If I have been misjudged, Chet said, then I too may misjudge. I don’t think it wise to keep an AI near, but that is a gut instinctual reaction. I should instead accept your word on his character. Perhaps if I’d done that sooner, I would not have given you cause to mistrust me.

I winced, like I always did when Chet felt pain during our communications. Regardless, I said, I have a plan for contacting M-Bot. I just need to find a starship part that’s in bad disrepair…

Once our conversation was done, I began to drift off to sleep—then stopped myself before fully going out. I tried to contact Jorgen, but something prevented me. A kind of odd mist hovered around me, blocking my attempts. I wasn’t certain what to make of it, yet…I’d seen this on other nights recently, hadn’t I?

The next morning, Maksim clapped his hands and ceremoniously unhooked my light-line, then turned it off. “You’ve earned a little more slack. Peg’s orders.” He leaned in. “Don’t hang yourself, if you can help it.”

I felt at my neck. My natural instinct was to bolt. I fought that down. “Thanks,” I said, standing up and stretching. Only four—no, it had been five, hadn’t it?—days with the Broadsiders, and I had already gained this much trust? This was going great.

“We’ve got some gears to grease,” Maksim said.

“No more gears, please,” I replied. “I feel the need to make myself extra useful, to prove myself to Peg. Tell me, what’s the most broken-est thing you have in here?”

“Don’t know about that,” Maksim said, but gestured toward one of the fighter ships. “But Shiver’s left destructor has been acting up. If you could somehow fix it…”

I nodded and went to check in with Nuluba, who had an office area at the rear of the hangar. She authorized all work, and soon I found myself under the wing of the starfighter, prodding at the defective destructor. Black gunk was leaking out of one of the seams, and the entire thing smelled terrible.

“Uh,” I said, “how long since you’ve serviced this thing?”

A large blue crystal, shaped like a prism, sat on a stool beside me. A crust of smaller crystals held it in place, and a line of the same crystals ran across the floor and up the wheel and side of the starfighter into the cockpit.

The larger crystal nearest me vibrated with a reverberating tone. I would never have recognized it as a language; it sounded one step away from the noise an engine made when close to locking up. But my pin knew better than I did, and translated the peals into words.

“It has been months,” the crystal admitted. “Maybe longer. Time is so hard to track in here…”

“Months or more?” I said, incredulous. “Destructors should be serviced every week.”

“We thought it unwise to open the housing, considering the damage to it,” the crystal said. “We thought it might break and not be fixable.”

“Prevention is always better than repair,” I said.

“Wise words,” the crystal replied, “but accurate only as long as you have access to preventive measures.”

The crystal was an alien creature known as a resonant. This one, whose name in English was Shiver, had told me she was female “this time.” Their entire bodies were made of crystal that could grow at will. She’d filled the inside of the starfighter cockpit much as minerals fill a geode.

The part I was talking to now—the larger gemstone—had grown rapidly as I’d come over to inspect the machine. I imagined this part was like an arm or something—a “limb” Shiver could extend for interaction. The large crystal at the end didn’t seem necessary; I had the sense she created it to give others something to address when speaking to her.

My attempt to steal a ship had been doomed from the start; I’d chosen a vehicle where the electronics and controls were grown over by Shiver’s body. Normally, a resonant would remain in one place for an entire “incarnation,” which I gathered lasted some fifty years or so. This time she had grown herself through the starship, almost coming to inhabit it as an AI might. Or actually, like a figment.

“Hey, Shiver,” I said as I unscrewed the housing on the destructor to get a look at the guts, “you ever heard of a species known as figments?”

“Indeed I have,” Shiver said. “Such strange and mysterious individuals. I’ve never met one, but I’ve always been fascinated by them.”

“I was thinking they’re kind of like your species,” I said.

“In what way?”

“Well, you both kind of inhabit a spaceship. Like…I don’t know, a soul in a body.”

“That’s a fascinating perspective.”

The way those words sounded made me think of how Kimmalyn would reply “bless your stars” to some stupid comment I’d made.

“I feel like you disagree with me,” I said.

“Though I find some holes in your logic, I’m certain I’ll understand better after considering your opinion.”

I’d nearly forgotten how conciliatory people from the Superiority could be. Here was a literal group of pirates that had caught me trying to steal from them, and they had treated me almost like a houseguest. A chained-up one, but still.

“You can tell me if I said something dumb,” I said as I worked on the housing screws. “I’m not going to be offended.”

“It’s not really our way…”

“You’re a starfighter pilot,” I said. “You fly out there weekly to fight. You can’t argue with me a little?”

“Spin, my species evolved as motionless individuals who would spend decades next to one another. It’s not in our nature to argue. Unlike motile species, we cannot simply walk away if we make one another angry.”

Huh. Yeah, that made sense.

“But,” Shiver said, “in the name of broadening both of our understandings, let me explain. You imply that I am like a figment by the way we both control a ship. I find this a superficial observation, as it makes us similar in the same way any two species who use appendages to move controls would be similar—no matter how different their cultures, bodies, and core chemical makeups might be.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said. “Honestly, I might just be missing my friends.”

“I can understand,” Shiver said. “I also miss my seven mates from my cavern. I grew to be part of them for three incarnations, and now…”

I doubted a crystalline creature could cry. But the peal that came next was reminiscent of it, and the pin didn’t interpret the sounds as words.

“Hey,” I said, finally getting the last stubborn screw out. “We’ll find a way out of here someday.”

“Of course we will,” Shiver said. “Of course we will.”

Those words also had the same feel of something Kimmalyn would say. The two would get along fantastically. At least, both seemed pretty good at handling me.

I pried off the destructor’s outer housing, then wrinkled my nose. The weapon clearly had a leak in its mechanisms—fluid had been seeping out for some time. Then firing the weapon had heated it up and charred it all, resulting in a heavily corroded mechanism full of flaky black ash.

This is perfect, I thought, careful not to show my excitement. I’d wanted something broken, but something that was broken and needed cleaning was even better.

Out loud I said, “Scud. This is a mess.”

“I resonate that,” Shiver said. “And felt it might be so.”

“This is going to take a while to clean up,” I said. “I’ll pull it off the ship for now, so you’ll be missing a destructor if you have to fly.”

“Unfortunately, the nature of our existence often requires flying in suboptimal conditions,” Shiver said. “I wish you speed and self-fulfillment as you work on your repairs, Spin.”

“Thanks,” I said. I affixed a small portable acclivity ring to the bottom of the mechanism, then began unhooking it from the wing. That took about a half hour, but once I was done, I lowered it with a remote control.

The destructor was a good meter and a half long, shaped kind of like a missile—and with the housing removed, it was all exposed wires and char. As I hovered it along, I got a glimpse out the back door—and it took extreme self-control to not immediately run out and dig up my father’s pin. I knew it would be safe out there though. Much safer than in my possession.

I hovered the unmounted destructor over to Nuluba’s desk, where she was cataloging salvage. The varvax liked to keep track of things like that, which I found suspicious. Who became a pirate to do paperwork?

“It’s not looking good for this, Nuluba,” I said, gesturing to the destructor. “I won’t even be able to tell how much is fixable until after I’ve cleaned it off—and that alone could take weeks of effort.”

“My, my,” Nuluba said, standing from her desk and inspecting the destructor. Like others of her kind, she made wide gestures with the hands of her suit as she spoke, the sound being projected out through the sides of the exoskeleton’s head. “We don’t have a replacement—I already have four other faulty destructors. Spin the captive, there’s no way you could speed up this repair?”

“You’re kidding, right?” I said, gesturing to the destructor.

Nuluba sighed.

“I suppose,” I said, pretending to think about it, “my old cleaning bot could work faster. Don’t know where you put it though.” As soon as I said it, I found the attempt awkward. The varvax were such a crafty species; surely Nuluba would immediately see through what I was doing.

“Oh!” she said. “That’s a good idea. Here, let me get it for you.”

I felt an immediate spike of alarm. That had been too easy, hadn’t it? Yet the varvax wandered off, then less than a minute later returned to the hangar, M-Bot’s drone floating alongside her. I cautiously guided the destructor over to a workbench near the corner. Nuluba left the drone with me and returned to her work as if nothing unusual were happening.

However, as I looked M-Bot over, I was pretty sure I caught Nuluba watching me. So…this was a test of some sort, maybe? That made sense. The Broadsiders had probably been expecting me to ask to use the drone. Still, it seemed odd they’d allow it after such a short time of us working together.

Maybe they’d placed a bug of some sort on him. Would trying to talk to him alert them?

They don’t think he’s an AI, I reminded myself. They think he’s just some kind of spy bot.

Regardless, I had to take the chance. I knelt and opened the side of the drone where the controls were and acted like I was engaging some programs. Then I whispered, “Hey.”

“You should know,” he whispered back, “they’ve installed some very basic monitoring software on me.”

“That’s actually a relief,” I whispered. “I worried it was too easy to get them to let me work with you. I assume you can deal with the software?”

“Obviously,” he said. “I’m trying not to be too offended by the AI scrubbing they tried to do. It’s basically the equivalent of feeding me poison. Fortunately, in this case that ‘feeding’ involved a comically large spoon and a big sign that said ‘not poison.’ I was able to circumvent it with ease, but—as one might say—it’s the thought that counts.”

“Right, then,” I said. “I need you to make it appear as though I used a code to access some of your hidden programming, then spoof it so they think I set you to monitor and record what is said nearby. That will give them something to find that isn’t too suspicious. After that, make it seem like I activated your deep cleaning and repair protocol.”

“Great,” he said. “Um, what deep cleaning and repair protocol?”

“The drone’s original… Oh. We deleted that, didn’t we?”

“What you didn’t delete, I did when uploading myself,” M-Bot whispered. “I wasn’t about to keep cleaning protocols when I barely had room for myself, my mushroom databases, my backup mushroom databases, and my backups to the backups.”

“Well, start pretending to clean alongside me and at least spoof the existence of some cleaning programs. I told them it would take weeks to fix this destructor without your help, but I honestly have no idea. I was just looking for an excuse.”

He complied, and the two of us set to work. Fortunately, he quickly identified the burned compound and suggested a specific kind of solvent for cleaning it. Even though he didn’t have his cleaning routines, his chemistry database proved extremely helpful. Which was good, since the truth was that I had no idea how to repair a broken destructor. That went far beyond the basic maintenance Rig had taught me.

I kept us to the corner and chattered away—mostly talking to myself, keeping up my act. When nobody else was close, M-Bot could respond. He did have in his databases plenty of detailed starship schematics. So as we removed more of the black gunk, he could point out the problems with the machine. The multiple serious problems.

“I feel like I should be offended by proxy for this gun,” M-Bot said. “Continuing to fire this was the machine equivalent of…um…”

“Of forcing your poor warhorse to keep galloping after it has thrown a shoe and taken an arrow in the flank?” I asked.

“Good metaphor,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. I was lying on the ground, delicately trying to get some of the gunk off without ripping out a set of coolant hoses. “It’s really good to hear your voice, M-Bot. Sorry I got us captured.”

“Well, I did find some interesting molds in the other hangar. They’re basically diet mushrooms, so that part was pleasant. What happened to Chet?”

“Got wounded,” I said, “but escaped. I can talk to him with cytonics. He’s recovering, and will be glad to hear that you and I have made contact.”

“Are you certain?” he said. “He still thinks I’m an abomination.”

“He’s getting better about that.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t be,” M-Bot said. He already kept his voice very soft when talking to me, but something seemed even more…hushed about this question. “The way the pirates checked to make sure there wasn’t an AI in me—going so far as to inject scrubbing software—indicates Chet might be right. What if I am an abomination?”

“People think humans are abominations too,” I said, getting a big chunk of the gunk free. “They consider that as verifiable as military protocol or personnel records. But it’s flat-out wrong.”

“The rumors about AIs must have started somewhere.”

“Sure,” I said. “Like the rumors about humans. I mean, we apparently tried to conquer the galaxy three times. Doesn’t mean we’re monsters. Just inefficient tyrants.”

It was growing increasingly difficult to reconcile what my ancestors had done with the stories Gran-Gran told me. It was easy to think of yourself as the hero when you were fighting back against a vengeful enemy bent on extermination. But what about when you were the ones conquering? How many people like Morriumur—ordinary diones trying to prove themselves—had died in the wars my people had started?

It made me uncomfortable. I quoted Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because when faced with annihilation, we needed that kind of courage. Yet both of those men—confirmed by M-Bot’s databases—had been mass murderers on a terrible scale.

My life had been so much simpler when I’d been fighting the nebulous “Krell” and not real people.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering in close. “Thank you. For continuing to be my friend. Despite the potential danger.”

“Thank you in return,” I said. “I mean, think about it realistically. If one of the two of us is going to end up being responsible for the other’s death, who’s it going to be? The fiddly little robot who loves mushrooms? Or the meter-and-a-half-tall terror who once tried to get her best friend to agree to be scalped so she could put her first notch on her toy hatchet?”

“Oh dear,” M-Bot said.

“In my defense,” I said, “Gran-Gran didn’t explain well, so I thought scalping someone meant cutting their hair real short, but while using a sword or an axe. It sounded pretty cool.”

M-Bot fell silent as Nuluba came walking by with a tablet, tapping away. I muttered to myself, talking as if to the black gunk while M-Bot sprayed solvent.

Eventually he spoke again, very quietly. “Spensa, something is odd about this destructor.”

“Other than the fact that it seems to have been fossilized in a tar pit?”

“Other than that, yes. Those two boxes installed on the sides of the weapon? They’re output modifiers. Normally you’d use something like that to increase the heat of a weapon for, say, cutting through metal shielding. Or maybe to modify it to lower shot intensity for training.”

“And what do these do?”

“There’s no way to tell,” M-Bot said. “They’ve been completely fried by the overuse. But haven’t you noticed how the Broadsiders have never lost a ship?”

“I’ve noticed,” I said. “But maybe the Broadsiders are just lucky. They’ve only been out on a couple of sorties since we arrived here.”

“I suppose that’s true… Huh.”

“What?” I asked.

“I just counted the number of sorties I’ve observed. I came up with ten.”

“Impossible,” I said. “Ten fights in four or five days?”

“Yeah, strange… Oh.”

“…Oh?”

“I just reconciled my internal chronometer,” he said. “We’ve been with the Broadsiders for nearly two weeks, Spensa.”

My cleaning rag dropped from my fingers. I blinked, trying to remember… How many times had I slept? It kind of blurred together…

“Scud,” I said. “How did you not notice?”

“I have no idea,” he said, his voice small. “I guess I’m more alive than I thought, and am experiencing some of the same effects you are. Indeed, a lack of time awareness would seem to fit with what we know of delvers.”

Well, that would explain why the others trusted me with M-Bot “so soon.” It wasn’t soon.

Nevertheless, my brain struggled to make sense of it. With an effort that felt almost painful, I thought back over the repairs I’d done. Stripping down the landing gear on all four ships. Doing booster maintenance. Light wing repairs…

I immediately reached out to Chet.

Have you contacted the AI? he asked.

Yes, but…Chet, how many days do you think I’ve been in here, captured?

Six? he guessed. I’ve been sleeping off my wound a lot though. So maybe seven or eight?

Fourteen, I said.

He was silent for a moment. Then I felt the emotional equivalence of a sigh.

It is dangerous to stay in one place long, he said. This happens, Spensa. I’m sorry.

“Can you set alarms?” I asked M-Bot. “Calendar alerts? We should start aggressively acknowledging each day. See if we can remain more focused.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s a good idea…”

I sensed worry in his voice though. Even if Chet expected this sort of thing, I felt it incredibly strange that it affected M-Bot. I did remember sleeping, but found I couldn’t count the times I’d done it. This place played havoc with my sense of time in such a way as to make it really difficult.

Two weeks? A lot could change in a war during that time. Were my friends all right? I needed to accelerate my plans for escaping. I had to find a way to upload M-Bot’s mind into one of the starfighters. Preferably one without a crystalline alien occupying it.