Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

Can I point out how horribly unfair it was that I kept getting into fistfights with people who were literally three times as big as I was? Next time, I was going to pick a fight with a damn kitsen. Karma owed it to me.

My chair went skidding out behind me as I hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a crouch as Peg grabbed the air where I’d been sitting. Wishing I had Skullbreaker, I backed away toward the tool shelf. Unfortunately, Peg wasn’t about to let me search it for a weapon. She came rushing in, hands forward, claws out.

She didn’t shout, growl, or call to the others. This was, as she’d said, a contest between two killers. The other Broadsiders somehow didn’t count. I did.

Peg lunged for me, surprisingly quick, but I kept moving. I couldn’t afford to let her pull me into a grapple; if this came to wrestling, she’d quickly use her weight to immobilize me. Instead I dodged back and forth, keeping a low crouched stance. I reached back to my training and to skills I’d gained from my life as an outcast. You learned a lot when you were the smallest, weirdest kid in the neighborhood—the one with a parent who was the wrong kind of famous.

Peg effectively kept me from reaching the tool shelf—because by going for it, I’d have been forced to turn my back on her. Fortunately, she respected me enough not to turn away and go rummaging for a weapon herself. We rounded each other, and I let her think I was going to play the grappling game, while I actually searched for any other way out.

If I ran, she’d chase me down. I had to try to wound her or knock her out. I feinted, enticing her to lunge again, then I sidestepped in close and rammed my fist into her flank. That would have been a good square-on kidney punch had she been human.

Peg grunted, but didn’t seem severely hurt. I felt like I’d punched a sack of rocks—her muscles were tougher, bulkier, than those of any human I’d faced. Scud. I was not properly prepared for fighting aliens. Or anyone. I managed to dodge a grab for my hair. I’d let that grow way too long.

Well, she might not have had kidneys in the right place, but she did have knees. Joints had to be a weak spot, and I needed to end this quickly. So I allowed her to get close enough to grab hold of my coat. Then I twisted, fell to my knees, and rammed my elbow into her right knee. She flinched, so I hit her with my elbow again—which was screaming in pain already from the first blow. The hit worked though, sending Peg stumbling back. Directly into the tool shelf.

Metallic peals rang through the room as tools dropped free. I grabbed a wrench and—Peg still holding my jacket in a tight grip—I hit her again. Two-handed. Directly in the same knee.

She let out a howl and released me. I stepped away as she drooped forward and held her knee, grimacing. My own eyes were watering from the pain in my elbow, but I kept a tight hold of the wrench and glanced around the room.

Both Nuluba and Maksim had pulled guns on me. Great.

“I’ve defeated your leader!” I shouted at them, raising my wrench. “By virtue of trial by combat, I am taking over command of the Broadsiders!”

“Like hell you are,” Maksim said.

Yeah, that always had seemed too convenient when it worked in the stories. Scud. I lowered my wrench.

Then a blue light shone behind the others. An ominous shape rose into the air, lit from below—at least until the twin destructors under the wings powered up, glowing brightly, focused on both armed Broadsiders. Maksim glanced over his shoulder, then stumbled away, his eyes wide. M-Bot had finished his upload.

They shouldn’t have backed down. They could have run for me and gotten close enough to control the situation. Ship-scale weapons weren’t precise enough to hit someone close to me without risking hitting me too. But that was easy to say and difficult to think of, when you were facing a pair of guns as big as you were. Both Maksim and Nuluba dropped their weapons.

I didn’t wait for further invitation. I dashed between them—scooping up one of the sidearms as I ran—then leaped and pulled myself onto the wing of the hovering starfighter. I unplugged the drone, then the cockpit opened and I climbed in.

“Turn toward Shiver’s ship,” I said to M-Bot. “Make sure she doesn’t power on.”

He did so as I settled into the seat. Saints, it felt good to be in a cockpit again. It felt like it had been an eternity. I set aside the drone—there wasn’t nearly as much room behind the seat as I was used to—and the comm crackled.

Finally, M-Bot’s voice came out. “Wow. This comm system is old. I feel like I’m inhabiting a record player.”

“I have no idea what that is,” I said, doing up the buckles. Outside, Maksim and Nuluba ran to check on Peg. The resonants hadn’t powered on their acclivity rings. They obviously realized I could blast them the moment they tried. I considered it briefly—that would prevent pursuit—but no. They might not be friends, but I also wasn’t going to execute them in cold blood.

I felt a momentary pang for what could have been, then grabbed the controls. “Can you get the hangar doors open?”

“Give me a second…yes. This ship’s system has the transmitter locked behind three layers of security. They were really worried about attracting delvers when they built it.”

As the door opened, I kept my weapons trained on the two fighters. At last I caught blue light coming from beneath Shiver’s ship.

“Don’t make me unload on you two,” I said, hitting the comm.

I was given no reply, though the mechanism said my words had gone through. As soon as the hangar was open, I turned the ship toward the opening.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “Would it be all right if…if I flew?”

I hesitated. M-Bot’s programming had always prevented him from flying. When he’d wanted to come rescue me on Detritus, he’d needed to convince Cobb to fly him. This was the first time in his life that he had a chance to truly pilot a starship.

I’d been yearning for this moment, tasting it, dreaming of it. But he’d been waiting for centuries.

“Go for it,” I said, lifting my hands—with effort—from the controls.

“Oh, thank you!” he said. The ship continued turning of its own volition, then inched toward the exit—using maneuvering thrusters, not the main boosters, to avoid vaporizing the people behind us.

Oh, scud, I thought. M-Bot is a highly advanced AI. He can think faster than any human, respond in a split second. Why would anyone ever need a human pilot? In this moment, I saw the end of my time flying a starfighter.

Then M-Bot clipped the side of the hangar doorway as he was steering us out.

“Oops!” he said, and started turning the ship, as if to inspect what he’d done.

“No!” I said. “You’ll slam the tail into the wall. Keep going forward!”

“Right, right,” he said, wobbling the ship as it moved slowly out of the hangar. Directly toward…

“M-Bot!” I said. “Trees!”

“Ah yes. Trees. Hmm…”

We jerked to a halt, then floated upward, then jerked forward again as he moved us over them.

“You know,” he said, “this isn’t going as well as I thought it would.”

“Ya think?” I said, trying to look back at the hangar. “You might want to move faster…”

I couldn’t make out much, but I was pretty sure the blue glow was increasing in the hangar behind us. I could only imagine that Dllllizzzz and Shiver, seeing the awkward flying, had decided I might not be difficult prey.

The ship wobbled as he got us up over the trees.

“M-Bot!” I said.

“Hey,” he snapped, “I think I’m doing pretty well. Didn’t you crash into the mess hall on your first day?”

“A holographic mess hall,” I said.

“Well, I haven’t crashed into any mess halls. Look, I’m a computer program—do you know how hard it is for someone like me to do something that isn’t explicitly in my programming?”

“No.”

“It’s impossible,” M-Bot said. “That’s how hard it is. And I’m doing it anyway.”

“You flew the drone just fine.”

“I borrowed the drone’s hard-coded flight instructions from its rudimentary firmware. I don’t have that anymore!”

A starfighter darted out of the hangar, and another one followed. Two blips appeared on our proximity sensors.

“Oh,” M-Bot said. “They’re going to try to kill us, aren’t they?”

“Yup.”

“You wanna…”

I seized the control sphere and the throttle, then slammed on the overburn, kicking us into some real speed. We blasted away from the fragment with a roar that vibrated the cockpit. It took me by surprise. I’d been fighting in the vacuum of space too much recently; I hoped my atmospheric flight instincts weren’t rusty. Starships were built to minimize the difference, but in a firefight you lived or died based on tiny mistakes.

The thing was, I didn’t want to get into a firefight. Shiver and Dllllizzzz seemed like good people. I was willing to steal one of their ships, but I wasn’t about to shoot them dead. Not unless they forced my hand.

First we’d see if they could keep up.

I swooped across the neighboring fragment—which was flowing with waterfalls that ran over the sides and vanished into infinity. My tails followed and immediately opened fire. Scud. I’d hoped maybe they’d be hesitant to kill me. I fell into evasive zigzags by rote, then dove over the side of the fragment, parallel to the falling water. My stomach tried to crawl out through my esophagus, and a moment later the ship’s GravCaps were overwhelmed and I was slammed by g-forces, and nearly hit a red-out.

I pulled up, gritting my teeth. “These GravCaps are terrible.”

“No surprise there,” M-Bot replied. “Not only is it a civilian craft, it’s so old it’s practically an antique.”

“Your original ship was two hundred years old.”

“And three hundred years ahead of its time,” he said. “This thing was outdated when they made it. It was a fast production-line model made cheaply.”

“Delightful.”

“Indeed!” Shots trailed us. “Um, don’t look at the shield.”

“It’s bad?”

“It’s mostly there to help in minor collisions. It can take maybe two hits from a destructor.” Another shot almost struck us. “Uh…wow. Spensa, is this what it feels like to be freaked out? I think it is what it feels like to be freaked out. Oh, how wonderful! I hate it!”

The destructor fire was blue rather than the red I was used to, but that was probably because it was from a different technological line. I dodged back upward, but one of the shots hit, making the invisible shield around my ship crackle.

The low-shield warning started blinking on the control panel. Yeah, low shields after a single shot? I guess that was what I got for flying a consumer-grade ship. And my top speed in atmosphere appeared to be terrible—the ship was rattling like the caverns did during debris falls.

Fortunately, we’d outfitted the ship with an offensive complement: two destructors and an IMP for bringing down enemy shields. That would also negate my own shield when used, but seeing as mine was apparently about as useful as a cardboard box, I’d take my chances.

Most importantly, my ship had that light-lance for towing. I knew now that I wasn’t going to be able to outrun my tails, and I certainly wasn’t going to out-endure them. But with the right equipment, I was pretty sure I could outfly them.

I swung over the top of a dust-covered fragment, kicking up an incredible wake. The destructor fire went wild then; the resonants weren’t used to flying through debris. They should have switched to firing by instruments.

I took a steep dive over the side of the fragment, but launched my light-lance and stuck it to the edge. Like a ball on the end of a chain, I swung around in the air, pivoting in a turn that would have been impossible without an energy rope. I gave my GravCaps a second to reset as I wove along the side of the fragment, then dove and light-lanced again to spin under it, after which I had to flip over to orient my acclivity ring downward. Whatever the other strange laws of physics were in this place, gravity worked like I expected it to.

The bottom of this fragment was furrowed and marked by chunks of stone—like a cave roof with stalactites, only much larger. I wove through these, and my proximity readout told me the two starships came in to follow.

They quickly lost ground on me, despite flying faster ships. Without light-lances, they had to swing around more slowly to get under the fragment—plus they obviously weren’t as comfortable flying through obstacles at high speed as I was. The truth was, they shouldn’t have followed me. Indeed, they made a common combat mistake that Cobb had beaten out of me in my first month of training. Never get too wrapped up in the chase that you forget good tactics.

In this case, they should have flown down farther below the fragment, where being able to fly straight would have made their superior speed an advantage. That told me they didn’t think tactically; they had learned to dogfight on their own, without training, and would make rookie mistakes despite their skill.

Perfect.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, “I fear I must warn you that I’ve intercepted chatter from the other Broadsiders. They’re waking the off-duty flights and are scrambling both of them to add to the chase. You have approximately seven minutes until this fight is joined by six more ships.”

I should have been worried about that. But scud, this felt good. I was terrible at a lot of things. I was coming to acknowledge that the friendships I had were all despite my efforts, not because of them. I was insubordinate and stupid when my temper took over. My spying and diplomatic skills were laughable.

But I could fly.

Hot damn, I could finally fly again.

I spun through the air, leading my two tails in a grand chase around three separate fragments. What had felt vast to cross on foot now passed as momentary flashes of color. Gaps that had felt insurmountable now proved exciting for me to weave through, using my light-lance to make the tighter turns. The weak GravCaps meant I took more g-forces than I wanted, but I could mitigate that with careful flying.

All the while, I kept watch on the proximity sensor, reinforcing my judgment of the two resonants. They really needed some light-lances, plus proper training to use them. And they were too free with their shots. Cobb had reamed me on multiple occasions for my overeager trigger finger. You’d think that firing at all times would be smart, that it would give you the most opportunities to hit. You’d be wrong. Wild firing not only risked danger to your allies, it trained you not to aim.

“Spensa,” M-Bot said, “something is odd about this weapon fire.”

“The strange color?” I said, veering us down to the left between a pair of fragments.

“More than that,” M-Bot said. “I’ve been running diagnostics on this vessel, and our own destructors have a pair of attachments on them.”

“Like the ones on that unit we repaired?”

“Exactly. They modify the weapon fire…” He hesitated. “Spensa, I think it makes the destructors nonlethal. They’re meant to overwhelm electronic systems and make a ship lock up.”

Wait.

Wait.

Suddenly I understood why no pirates got shot down on raids. I understood how a group like this could even function. They had no access to manufactories—they had to use what they could steal or salvage. If ships were lost in firefights with any regularity, soon nobody would have anything to fly.

That explained why the resonants were so quick to fire on me. They weren’t trying to destroy me or the ship. They were trying to capture me again.

“But when you powered on in the hangar,” I said, “the pirates all seemed extremely worried about being shot by the destructors.”

“The amount of energy released is still significant,” M-Bot said. “A fragile flesh body wouldn’t want to be subjected to one of those shots.”

Well, okay then. This escape had just become more interesting.

As my two resonant tails dove after me, I checked the chronometer. Despite feeling like it was much longer, we’d been dogfighting for only a few minutes. I had a little time until the other ships launched from the hangars—assuming M-Bot’s projection of their load-in time was correct.

I hit the overburn, forcing the enemy ships to do likewise. They knew enough to rely on their superior speed on a straightaway. But as they were focused on that, I flipped off the overburn and hit my speedbrake, cutting the booster and increasing drag. I darted backward—or, well, they darted forward. Either way, the two ships passed me in a flash. I hit the IMP right as they did.

A claxon went off on my dash, warning that my lame shield was finished. I trained on Dllllizzzz’s ship and fired, hoping M-Bot’s guess about the destructors was correct. The ship flashed blue as I scored direct hits, then its boosters powered off. The ship continued on in the direction it had been going—which, as I considered, could be dangerous. Fortunately, the acclivity ring stayed active, so the ship didn’t drop, and it didn’t seem to be in danger of a collision anytime soon.

Shiver’s ship veered off wildly, as if panicked to realize I’d suddenly gone on the offensive. I tracked it easily, expecting…

Yup, a loop to try to get around to tail me again. Executed well, actually. As I twisted my ship and picked her off, I had to admire her skill. Considering that they were all self-taught, that had been a pretty good maneuver.

“I still think it’s unfair,” M-Bot said, “that you can fly better than I can.”

“I have training. You don’t.”

“I’m a computer program. The only training I should need is some lines of code.”

I shot Shiver’s vessel with my light-lance and pulled it to a stop before it slammed into the nearby fragment. Then I cut the light-lance and blasted off—straight toward the fragment with the Broadsider base.

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Do you think we could get me proper code to fly and fight?”

“I think that even with some extra lines of code, you’d be missing something.”

“What?”

“Style.”

I came up under the Broadsider fragment, then shot my light-lance onto the edge and used it to curve up and around, flipping so I flew in low along the ground. The hangars were directly ahead. Flight doors open.

I aimed and shot a ship hovering out of the doorway. I hit it square on, and it couldn’t dodge, so I quickly overwhelmed the shield and locked the ship up. I did the same at the next hangar in line.

In seconds, I’d effectively created a traffic jam. With the two ships blocking the way, the others couldn’t escape—at least not without towing their friends out of the way first. I intended to be long gone by then. I just needed my icon.

I flew us to the other side of the hangars. “Take over,” I said, unbuckling. “Warn me if any of them get out of that mess. If I don’t return in time, hover up and start firing at them. You might get lucky and hit one.”

“Oh. Uh…”

I popped the canopy as the ship drifted over to the boulder behind the Broadsider camp. I heard shouts and curses from inside the hangars. A quick glance showed me only one person had thought to duck out back to see what I was doing. Maksim, standing in the open door to his building.

I raised my sidearm. Maksim was armed too, but as he saw me, he didn’t raise his own weapon. Smart man.

I quickly located the place where I’d stuffed the icon. Keeping mostly hidden behind the boulder, I dug down to find…

Nothing.

My father’s pin wasn’t there.