Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

“I’ll be honest,” Maksim said, lounging across the sawhorse, a wrench dangling from one finger. “I always thought something was wrong with me. I was taught about how mean and naturally angry humans were, yet I didn’t feel any of that, you know?

“Well, my owners presumed their training kept me under control. They had this whole therapy process they said ‘cured’ aggression, and so were able to get the permits for a human child. They got me when I was nine, and had me sit around and hum.”

I looked up from my diagnostic screen, where I’d been quietly preparing to advance the next step of our plan. Peg had mentioned that the base scanner needed some maintenance. I wasn’t certain when that would happen, but I wanted to be ready to go when it did.

For the time being, I was doing my best to fit in. And I had to admit I enjoyed chatting with the others. “They had you hum? Like…you know…” I made a humming noise.

“Exactly,” Maksim said. “They’d have me sit on a little mat and just hum. For hours at a time. They said it was a special ‘proprietary process.’ I guess it was the tone I was humming that made it distinctive? Still not sure, honestly, though they had me at it for twenty years.”

“Anti-aggression therapy is big business, Spin,” Nuluba said from where she sat on the floor nearby, poring over some spreadsheets. “Many parents are terrified that their child might be too aggressive. They’ll pay big money for treatment. Any treatment.”

“It is a failing,” Shiver said, her crystal letting out peals from where it had grown on a box nearby. “Though the humming treatment sounds…unusual, there are more reasonable therapies available. I think many people in the Superiority are working hard to create a better society, but…some of us question if our goals are worthy. The entire system vibrates with an unsteady tone. It cracks itself with such sounds. We are…too polite sometimes to accept this.”

Maksim nodded. The beard made him look older than the early thirties he actually was. I’d always imagined that a long rugged beard would make a man seem like a warrior. Maksim disabused me of that image. He looked a lot less like a warrior than he did like a guy who’d been lost wandering the caverns.

His relaxed manner, though, made me curious. I’d assumed all captive humans would be intense like Brade. Yet this guy was so laid back, he could have gotten into a napping contest with…with someone I used to know…

With Nedd. That was it. How had I forgotten Nedd’s name? Maksim could have gotten into a napping contest with Nedd and held his own.

“I learned to act real fearsome,” Maksim said, grinning. “I’d growl, and show my teeth, and even wave my hands and say ‘Boingar boingar.’ I told them it was my clan’s battle cry. My parents would have found that funny. We didn’t have a clan. Only a little family trying to live as normal a life as we could in a research lab.”

He glanced away then, like he often did when he mentioned his parents. He’d been denied contact with them after being sold to the pair of varvax. Now he couldn’t remember their faces. Few of the pirates had been in here long enough to forget their pasts entirely, and many had been in a group the entire time, slowing the process. But from what I’d been able to gather, the effects were showing regardless.

“The Superiority failed you, Maksim,” Nuluba said. “Shiver is right, though I will say it more strongly than she. It failed you, as it has failed so many.”

I’d been keeping an extra close eye on Nuluba. She looked imposing in her shell-like exoskeleton. Did she realize I was plotting my escape? Was she watching me like I watched her?

“What about you?” I asked her, trying to sound nonchalant. “Did the Superiority fail you as well?”

“In a way,” she said, the faceplate of her exoskeleton revealing the small crablike creature that was her true shape. “Or I failed it. I was a bureaucrat.”

“In the government, I assume?” I didn’t really know how other nations did things. “How high were you?”

“High?” She waved her arms, seeming amused. “Everyone always assumes that we varvax are ‘in charge’ and must be ‘so important.’ I assure you, we’re not! My. Some are, Spin of the humans, but not me. I was stationed in an irrelevant department of an oft-ignored utility. I lived on Tuma.”

“I hadn’t known that,” Maksim said. “Wow.”

“Tuma?” I asked.

“Prone to acidic rainstorms,” Maksim explained. “But near some nice resource farms. Mostly automated. Cheap place to live. Very cheap.”

“Well,” Nuluba said, “I did customer analysis for the methane utility farms. I had a lot of information—including population statistics for many planets, so I could judge trends in customer usage. Spent too much time with that data, maybe.” She turned away then, lowering her arms. The exoskeleton mimicked the way her smaller crab body moved inside. “I started asking questions. Too many questions. I was thrown in here almost before I knew what had happened…”

I frowned to myself, turning back to my work. What was Nuluba hiding? Varvax still baffled me. For example, I’d recently discovered that the fluid-filled inorganic exoskeletons weren’t straight technology, but were somehow grown and hooked directly into the varvax’s nervous system. How did that work?

“We in the Superiority failed so many,” Shiver said. “Often you grow so large—so comfortable—that you feel the cavern must be right, because it is what has been. You’re used to it, and it’s right, so everyone else must be right as well. You resonate with self-assurance, ignoring the shifting rocks that might someday lead the cavern to collapse, crushing every crystal who lives there.”

The others nodded. I continued my diagnostic: I was working on the fourth starship, the former civilian craft that we’d been adding weapons to. Today, my job was to make sure the starship’s onboard targeting systems—which we’d just installed—were functioning correctly.

All things considered, my plan to steal it was going well. M-Bot and I had been good at firmly counting the passage of time for the last two days, so I felt more in control, more determined. Focused.

The toughest part was feeling like I was leading on the members of Cutlass Flight. Maksim, Shiver, Nuluba. Even the quiet Dllllizzzz—the other resonant in the team. She rarely spoke, though she’d also grown a crystal near where we were working, and would occasionally make it vibrate in tune with what one of us was saying—a form of approval or agreement, I thought.

A part of me naturally wanted to see this as my new family, to make a home among the people of Cutlass Flight as I had with my other companions in arms. But I couldn’t afford to bond to this group as I had to Hesho, Morriumur, and Vapor. Fortunately I recognized this impulse, and could resist with a little tactical cynicism.

Remember that they locked you up, I told myself. Remember that they’re a bunch of pirates, not a true military.

Theoretically, once we finished with our diagnostics, this ship would be ready to go into combat. Maksim was to be its pilot, and I would be his ground crew.

“So when you fly,” I said to him, “it will be to fight other pirate factions?”

“Mostly,” Maksim said. “Until we raid the Superiority. Peg keeps talking about a large-scale offensive against them, though they’re pretty well outfitted with fighters.”

“We have an advantage though,” Shiver noted. “Something none of the other factions have. Peg and her…history.”

This was new. I tried to show the proper amount of curiosity, but not seem too eager. Peg had a secret? Maybe with a few days of work, I could persuade them to—

“Oh right!” Maksim said. “You don’t know, do you, Spin? Peg was a Superiority officer. Head of base security at the mining station.”

Or maybe they’d just tell me.

“Head of base security,” I said. “That sounds important.”

“It was!” Maksim said. “She was second in command of the entire Surehold base. So she knows tons about the installation, their fighting protocol, and all that.”

“And she threw it away to become a pirate?” I asked.

“More they forced her away,” Maksim said.

“It’s politics, Spin,” Nuluba explained. “Peg’s one of the few people in here—pirate or worker—who came completely by choice. She took the job because it would advance her career; no one else was willing. Most everyone in here is a dissident like Maksim or me—even the workers don’t come by choice. They aren’t fully exiles though, right, Shiver?”

“I was a large machinery operator,” Shiver told me, her crystal vibrating. “At the Surehold mines. I was sent in here because of an accident back home that was technically my responsibility. They tell us if we work ten years in the nowhere faithfully, we’ll be allowed to leave, but that rarely happens.”

“So they have a portal?” I asked. “To the outside?”

“Yes,” Shiver said. “Right inside the base, but movement in or out is rigidly controlled.”

So, that was a potential way out after I finished following the Path of Elders—though I didn’t fancy my chances of getting to it. Sneaking into a Superiority base and somehow slipping through their tightly controlled portal seemed a poor option.

“People are rarely let out despite their ten years being up?” I asked Shiver.

“The officials find excuses,” Nuluba said softly. “Reasons to keep back the workers, forbid them from leaving.”

“I was deemed ‘too aggressive’ on my performance reviews,” Shiver said. “Not Peg’s fault, mind you. She always turned in excellent reviews for everyone. There were others who made sure that the more talented workers remained behind.”

“And they did the same to Peg?” I asked, looking around the hangar. She’d been nearby a short time ago. Or…had that been an hour or two? Scud.

“Well,” Shiver said. “First time, she re-upped on her contract willingly. I think she wanted to stay and help the workers get out. But then after twenty years in here, she decided she wanted to go. They kept their contract with her. This would be…three years ago, I think? It was time to leave, and…”

“And what?” I asked.

“They said that she could go,” Nuluba explained, “but that her children had to stay behind.”

Wait. Peg had children?

“They weren’t part of the deal, you see,” Shiver said. “The Superiority said they had to stay ten years and work, as they were both young adults, before they could leave. Didn’t go well. Peg’s shouting still resonates with me today.”

“Scud,” I whispered. “She seems like a bad person to betray.”

“You could say that,” Shiver said. “She stole a bunch of ships, persuaded a good thirty of us to follow her, and broke off to join the pirates. Factions formed because of her influence—she had this grand plan of uniting them against the Superiority. Take the entire base and hold it…”

Now that caught my attention. “That sounds awesome! We should be attacking them!”

“Tried and failed,” Shiver said. “We weren’t good enough pilots. Superiority beat us bloody. Nowadays, no one will listen to Peg. Factions are broken, squabbling. It’s hard enough to survive.”

“I’m going to get good,” Maksim said. “Learn to fly. I’ll become the pirate champion, and the Broadsiders will have respect again.”

“Wait,” I said, my eyes widening. “There’s a pirate champion?”

“Yeah, we came up with it a couple years back,” Nuluba said as she went over her spreadsheets for like the fourth time. “There must be a best pilot among all the factions, so why not find out who it is? We hold matches now and then. One on one, in a starfighter. Keeps things interesting.”

A pirate champion. For me to fight in a duel.

Oh stars. That was beautiful.

No, no, I thought. No dueling. You are going to focus on the Path of Elders.

But…

Pirate. Champion.

“I’ll beat them,” Maksim explained, “if Shiver doesn’t do it first. You’re getting really good at flying, you know.”

“I resonate with this,” Shiver said, “and appreciate the compliment. You are skilled at those, Maksim.”

“Thanks!” he said, then leaned toward me. “Shiver and I have been hatching this for a while. Current champion is one of Peg’s sons. Both of them broke off to form their own factions back after everyone failed to beat the Superiority. They won’t listen to a word Peg says, but maybe if we take them down a notch that will change.”

It was hard to resist the idea of becoming pirate champion, but I had to focus. I abruptly unplugged the diagnostic tool from the front jack of the ship I’d been working on. “Targeting systems still need recalibration,” I said, with a sigh, and showed the screen to Nuluba.

“Bother,” the varvax said. “I thought you ran it through that already.”

“Twice,” I said. “Programming must be conflicting with some of the onboard protocols. I’ll need to do a wipe and reupload the tech.”

“Run a separate diagnostic from another machine too,” she suggested. “Might be this device that has the problem.”

“Good thought,” I said, then jogged over to where M-Bot’s drone was polishing the newly repaired destructor we’d been working on. I grabbed him.

“You ready?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “Did you find out when the sensor array is going to go down?”

“No,” I said. “But we have our chance now for the upload. I think we should take it.”

“Understood.”

I sent word to Chet. Operation “Third Time’s the Charm” is a go, Chet.

Good luck, Spensa, he replied. I shall endeavor not to distract you with communications, and instead sit here and pretend I’m not as nervous as a jockey at his first race!

I smiled, imagining him compulsively weaving shoes out of reeds—which was what he said he did when nervous, to practice his survival skills. We’d talked about ways he could help, as he was nearly healed from his wound. When the actual theft happened, he would sneak in close to be ready. But for now it was best if he stayed hidden.

Hoping nobody could see how anxious I was, I walked over and jacked M-Bot into the starfighter. It wasn’t the fastest of the three—it was a glorified forklift, not a true starfighter. But it was the only choice I had.

I’d pretend that something had gone wrong with the drone, and we’d leave M-Bot hiding in the ship’s hard drives until the perfect moment. Once the scanners were down, and maybe once I’d had a chance to sabotage the other ships in some way that wouldn’t hurt the resonants. From there, escaping to go pick up Chet should be easy.

M-Bot beeped as the connection was established, and he started to upload himself. That would take about thirty minutes. I needed to find something to do that would keep me from standing around and fidgeting. To that end, I sat next to Nuluba and began sorting through a box of scrap.

I pointedly did not look at the drone. The others didn’t seem to have noticed my nervousness, not even Nuluba.

“It is different out here,” Nuluba was saying. “When I rode with Shiver on that scavenging mission a few weeks back, I felt distant. Even with others around me in the ships, it was harder to remember my past than it ever is here in the base.”

“It’s worse the farther inward you go,” Shiver said. “The mining installation is as close to the center as I’d ever want to go.”

That got me thinking. “So, that region closest to the lightburst. Nobody lives there?”

“No Man’s Land?” Shiver said. “No one lives there that I know. It is…an odd place. Where time distorts. Something is in there, at the center, watching outward.”

“People who get very close to the center see odd visions,” Nuluba said. “Have strange experiences.”

“Yeah,” Maksim said. “I’m not going anywhere near there. The belt is strange enough. Can you imagine if we started seeing things that aren’t there?”

“It is not so bad.”

I started. That last voice had been…Dllllizzzz? I’d never known her to speak.

At the words, Shiver began buzzing excitedly. The pin translated. “What was that? Dllllizzzz, you spoke! Have the reality ashes helped?”

“I…saw…” Dllllizzzz said, her voice soft. “Saw the past…”

“Where?” I asked, leaning toward her crystal—which she’d created at the end of a line of runners leaving her ship, as Shiver had.

“Ruins,” Dllllizzzz whispered.

Shiver continued to try to prompt her to speak, but Dllllizzzz returned to her normal low, wordless vibrations.

I pondered what she’d said. She’d seen the past in some ruins—had she happened across one of the stops on the Path of Elders? Was Dllllizzzz cytonic?

Shiver asked Maksim to sprinkle some reality ashes on Dllllizzzz—they’d been doing that regularly with the ashes they’d confiscated from me. I paid attention to see if Shiver could get anything out of her, but no luck. Eventually Maksim settled down next to me and helped to sort through junk for anything useful. “You look thoughtful, Spin.”

“Merely distracted,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “You having troubles remembering?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Some faces, here and there.”

“That hurts,” he said. “I know how it feels. Good news is that you’ll probably start forgetting the faces of your captors too. That didn’t happen quickly enough for my taste.”

He still thought I had been a human captive. Scud, it suddenly felt awful to be doing what I was. Lying to these people, planning to steal one of their ships, maybe sabotage them.

“I wasn’t a captive, Maksim,” I said. I hadn’t meant to tell them the truth—it kind of slipped out. “I lived on a human enclave planet.”

His eyes widened. “Those are real?”

“One is, at least,” I said. “Not everyone in the Superiority agreed that they should exist though. There was…a lot of fighting. We’d rebel. They’d suppress it…”

It wasn’t a hundred percent the truth, but it felt good to share some of myself.

“You grew up in an actual human society?” Shiver asked. “What was it like?”

“It was hard,” I said. “My father was killed when I was young. My family had to struggle for food because resources were tight for everyone—but especially those who weren’t directly involved in fighting the Superiority.”

“So it really was like they say,” Maksim whispered. “Humans together…just leads to war.”

“Hardly,” I said. “The Superiority caused this. My people didn’t want war—we fled from it. My family—all of us humans on Detritus—were the crew on a vast starship, the Defiant. My great-grandmother was in the engine crew, and our starship wasn’t part of the human groups perpetuating the war.

“The enemy wouldn’t leave us alone. When we crashed on my home planet, they tried to exterminate us. Then they imprisoned us there. I think any society would turn warlike under such circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” Shiver said, her voice ringing out, “if I hadn’t grown so long near Maksim. Who is the least violent person I’ve met.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen me in action yet!” he said, then he made a growling sound. “Just wait until I get into the sky. I’ll be fearsome!”

“I’m sure,” Shiver said, vibrating with a sound like ringing bells—her version of laughter.

“I believe you, Spin,” Nuluba said softly, looking up from her spreadsheets. “I mentioned my job earlier. Well, one year I was analyzing population statistics on the planets of species with ‘lesser intelligence.’ My job was to suggest where to employ advertising for regions that weren’t buying our services.

“But in the data, I found unexpected truths. Many so-called lesser species weren’t suffering the casualty rates from intraspecies murder that we projected. They were known as aggressive species, so they should have been killing one another at horrific rates. Yet…that just wasn’t the case.

“I thought I’d hit on something so important. Something revolutionary. Proof that our definitions of aggression didn’t match statistical models. I spent years gathering my information, thinking I’d be heralded as some great mind.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You presented it to your supervisors, and they immediately tossed you in here.”

“There wasn’t even a trial,” Nuluba whispered. “By the way they talked, what I’d done was dangerous, subversive. Merely looking for evidence that might contradict long-held beliefs was seen as aggressive.” She put her hands to her sandstone helmet. “I don’t know what they told Vormel, my mate. I didn’t get to see him again. I just…vanished.”

Maksim reached over and took Nuluba by the shoulder to offer support. Dllllizzzz vibrated her crystal, low and sonorous, a…comforting sound. The varvax gestured in thanks.

Scud. She really was what she said, wasn’t she? An unimportant bureaucrat caught up in something bigger than she was. I felt uncomfortable, realizing how I’d viewed her. I’d done it before, with other varvax. It was hard not to see in them the people who oppressed mine for years. Even still, even knowing what I knew.

Watching them console her, I felt like an intruder.

I’d known camaraderie like this. Expressed it, cherished it. A night spent with the other women in my flight, who refused to let me return to my cavern exile. Evenings together reminiscing about those we’d lost. In a powerful moment, I saw their faces. Kimmalyn, Nedd, FM, Hurl, Arturo. Jorgen…

Scud, I missed Jorgen. I found myself reaching out with my cytonic senses. Why hadn’t I been able to locate him again in my dreams? As always, when I tried to reach him intentionally, I found only that other presence. That familiar one that had been nearby, like a spirit watching over me. It was more distant now. And angry at me for some reason? Was it the delver I’d contacted? Or…something more personal?

I know it was foolish, but I couldn’t help feeling it was connected to my pin. And my father.

I excused myself as the others continued to comfort one another. Their genuine emotion made me feel sick. As I moved over to the bins where I could store the salvage I’d separated, I spotted something I’d missed earlier. Someone large sitting in the shadows near the closed hangar doors.

Peg. Captain of the Broadsiders. How had I missed her sitting back here? The thick-bodied alien looked particularly predatory in the shadows. And she was watching me. I didn’t need to see her eyes to know that.

Right, then. I took a deep breath and strode over. I hated feeling like people were watching me, thinking about me, but saying nothing. Better to confront them.

Of course, a similar attitude is what got me into my initial fistfight with Jorgen. So maybe I could take it a little more carefully this time?

“Captain?” I said as I reached her. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? Oh, I don’t know, Spin.” Peg laced her clawed fingers in front of herself. She had an almost reptilian appearance, though her skin was a thick hide instead of scales. “Words. You fit in well with the others. Adapting better to this than any other I’ve known. I hadn’t thought you were one to grow heknans. I thought you most certainly to only have muluns…”

“I still don’t know what that means, Captain. My pin refuses to translate the words. How do your people…grow…these things?”

“Sit,” she said, gesturing toward a folding chair.

I did as I was told.

“Your pin could be set to translate these idioms,” the captain explained. “But you obviously do not know how. It is irrelevant. My tree is distant now, and since I was forced into exile, I can barely feel it or the fruit it grows.”

“I’m…sorry?” I said.

“No need for yendolors,” the captain said, settling into her larger chair across from me, plainly built for one of her stature. She gestured with a clawed hand toward the members of Cutlass Flight. “They are good people, human. Better than you expected to find, yes?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

The captain’s voice grew softer. “I have watched you, Spin. I know you are a soldier, which is curious. The Superiority doesn’t often throw actual fighters in here. The government claims to hate the aggressive, but it has use for the useful, we might say. They grow so many venmals. You’d say it differently: that they have much hypocrisy.”

“I don’t disagree with that,” I said.

“I want you to go,” Peg said. “I don’t want you to bring trouble to these. Tonight, I will arrange for you to be unwatched. You may walk away so long as you take nothing with you that belongs to us.”

The words hit me like a brick to the face. She knew. Well, she suspected. And she understood that I was dangerous. Admittedly, I felt a little thrill. This enormous beast of a person found me intimidating?

“You’re wondering,” Peg said, “if this is a trap, to try to lure you to run so I can have proof you are untrustworthy. But we both already know you have grown too many kitchas for staying here. You have killed. Those here, most of them never have.”

“You’re pirates,” I said. “I saw your kind dogfighting others.”

Peg leaned forward. “I have killed, Spin. I have grown the kitcha. The fruit of the murderer. And I can recognize my kind. You will leave.”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t what I’d been planning—but it didn’t look like I had time to wait for the sensor array to go down. M-Bot had said his transfer would take under a half hour. How long had it been?

“I will go,” I told Peg, “if you give me a ship.”

“That is not the offered deal.”

“It’s the one I’m offering,” I replied. “I have no specific quarrel with you and yours, Peg, but I have a duty to my people. I’m going to need one of your starfighters to accomplish that.”

We locked eyes. Scud, I knew in that moment what was going to happen next. I barely managed to throw myself to the side as she leaped for me.