Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

The champion didn’t fire on me immediately. He zipped in close, then veered away, clearly expecting me to tail him.

A test. He wanted to judge my skill. I decided not to bite, instead turning upward and flying along the perimeter of the arena.

“I find no matches for that starfighter design in my database,” M-Bot said. “Alas, I have only a basic list of Superiority ships, and this seems an advanced model.”

“It might not even be Superiority,” I said. “Chet thinks that occasionally other ships end up in here via hyperjump accidents.”

I swooped upward, then turned back around. I didn’t miss that several other ships kept pace with me outside the arena barrier—pirates eager for the chance to take potshots if I drifted out of bounds.

All right. I had a feel for the shaftlike shape of the arena now, but I was still at a disadvantage, as I’d never flown in here before—while the champion had done it at least once. I performed a quick weave between several of the floating chunks, then eyed one of the strange glowing white patches.

The proximity sensor blared an alert that indicated the champion was heading for me. Darkshadow had realized that I was acclimating to the terrain, and so he would need to make the first move—lest he give me time to adjust. I slammed on my overburn, dodging out of the way as the champion tried to tail me.

I soon had to cut the overburn. Going too fast while dodging wasn’t always the best idea, depending on reaction speed and turning capability. Instead I zoomed down along the curved perimeter—shooting through the shaft at its edge—hoping the champion would slip out of bounds. Unfortunately, Darkshadow proved competent at avoiding that. Indeed, that straightaway only earned me a few shots from behind, which were hard to evade without going out of bounds.

Best to stay to the center of the arena. I pulled up and went soaring in that direction, weaving between floating chunks. The champion stuck with me; he was good. And he proved to have a light-lance himself—which he used in pivots. That was strange. I had yet to meet a nonhuman from the Superiority who used a light-lance the way we did in the DDF.

Fortunately, over the next few minutes of leading him through a chase, I decided I was probably the better pilot. I just had to…

I felt something.

Something like fingers on my brain.

I was a lonely rock in the darkness. A mist reached around me, embracing me, smothering me.

A pair of burning white eyes appeared, reflected in the canopy of my starship. Eyes that fixated upon me.

We see you.

I was thrown back into the conflict as a destructor blast crackled across my shield. Scud! I twisted to the left and dropped in a weaving spin between two floating asteroids, effectively dodging further shots.

“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “What’s wrong?”

I searched the scanner. Yeah, I’d drifted close to a white patch. “The delvers are watching. Can you get me a scanner analysis of those white patches?”

“Working,” M-Bot said.

Destructor fire chased me again. I spotted a series of asteroids floating nearby, then slammed my overburn and shot toward them.

The champion followed. I speared the second asteroid I passed with my light-lance—but didn’t merely use it to turn. I spun all the way around it, employing the small asteroid as a counterweight. That hurled the chunk of rock backward, making it collide with the next asteroid in line—which the champion had just speared to use in a turn. The collision threw off his maneuver, making him break out of the turn and shoot away erratically.

After a quick release, I stabbed a third rock and used it to pivot around behind the champion. As he reoriented, he found me on his tail, firing. I scored a hit, his shield crackling. To Darkshadow’s credit, he didn’t panic, but he did go into evasives. And…scud. I knew that set of maneuvers. I searched my memory, full of people I was—alarmingly—beginning to forget.

My training was still relatively clear. And the champion was performing an exact set of maneuvers taught by the DDF. Before I could follow that thought, my mind fuzzed again.

We’ve found you, noise. You should not be here. You SHOULD NOT BE HERE. Burning eyes in my canopy, multiplying, more and more sets that—

“Spensa!” M-Bot shouted.

I veered out of the way, narrowly avoiding a collision with an asteroid. That was…that was really inconvenient.

“More delvers?” he asked.

“Yeah. They’re not happy.” Scud, the champion was on my tail again.

“Spin?” Peg said over the comm. “Remember to watch those white spots. If you get too close, you’ll risk some of the distortions that happen in No Man’s Land.”

“Trying,” I said. “Little harder than it looks.”

I performed another series of light-lance moves, mostly to keep asteroids between me and the champion. Fortunately, he strayed too close to a white spot himself, and he reacted as I had—stalling, distracted. I could use that; get an advantage maybe?

The champion pulled out of his diversion and stayed on me for the next bit. So, when I spotted two of the white spots floating near one another, I decided to do something brash. I took a sudden veer right between them.

“This one’s on purpose,” I said to M-Bot. “Keep us from crashing if something goes wrong with me.”

“Okaaaaay,” he said. “I have your analysis though. There’s matter in the center of those. But it has a strange spectroscopy to it—unlike anything in my scientific databases. I think they might be a kind of rock, like acclivity stone but charged a different way? So…be careful.”

I darted between the white patches.

Leave this place, noise!

I will leave, I said, if you promise never to enter where I am from. You will stay in the nowhere, and I will stay in the somewhere.

No. Because the noise will not stop! Can you stop the noise, noise?

I can’t promise that, I said. But we aren’t a threat to you. You can live, and we can live, and ignore one another.

No. You can stop. Or you can be made to stop. You pain us. You give us…the pain…of another self…

We came shooting out from between the two white spots, and the ship flew by itself, veering to the side, out of range and away from some asteroids.

“It’s working!” M-Bot said. “I’m actually helping!”

I grinned, taking back the controls. M-Bot wasn’t a great pilot, but he could react when close to the white spots, which had hopefully given us an edge. Indeed, I checked the proximity sensor and saw that Darkshadow had decided to follow me—but had been forced to slow first, to not risk slamming into something after losing control.

That meant I was able to execute a tight loop and come in shooting before the champion was able to get back up to speed and escape. Two more hits took his shield down. He dodged away, but I fell on his tail.

One more shot and I’d win this. I got in close as Darkshadow dodged into some rubble, then lined up for the shot—but in that instant Darkshadow blasted his IMP. The wave of close-range energy knocked out my own shield. He darted away on a massive overburn before I could land the shot.

“Not bad,” M-Bot said. “That champion is good.”

Yeah. Strangely so. When Darkshadow got away from me, he used what seemed like a DDF scatter escape—very similar to the series of maneuvers I’d taught the Broadsiders. I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but something about the way he flew was familiar. Who was this? Did he really have the same training that I’d been given? Was it…

I felt a sudden cold feeling, mixed with longing. Could it be him? I’d felt him in here, when questing outward. Or was that just wishful thinking?

Don’t be stupid, the rational part of my brain said. Your father couldn’t fit in that small cockpit. In fact, of all the races you know, it could only fit a figment or…or a…

Oh, scud! “M-Bot, can you get a comm line to that champion?”

“Of course,” he said. He flashed the light on the instrument panel that let me know the line was open.

“Hey, Darkshadow,” I said to the other ship, which was hugging the perimeter and flying upward. “Any last words before I defeat you?”

“I am a swift minnow upon the tides of time,” the response came. “They may crush ships against the shore, but I swim them easily.”

Well, Saints and stars. It was him.

“Spensa!” M-Bot said, cutting the line to the other ship. “That voice. It’s—”

“Hesho,” I said.

“He’s dead!”

“He vanished during the fight with Brade,” I said, “when the kitsen ship was blasted open and exposed to vacuum. They assumed he got sucked out. But that was in the middle of a lot of weird things happening with cytonics.”

Not the least of which had involved the summoning of a delver into the somewhere.

“I feel…” M-Bot said. “I feel happy! I never spoke to him directly, but I feel like he was my friend, Spensa.”

He was mine too. “Open that comm line again,” I said. “Hey, Hesho? It’s me. It’s…um, Alanik… Well, you know, the person who was pretending to be her…”

Right. That was all rather complicated.

“I know not that name,” the voice said. “I am the Darkshadow. He with no past. The nameless warrior cursed to wander eternity without home or ally, always seeking memories he can no longer retain. I am fleeting, but a whisper upon time itself.”

He said it all with utter solemnity. Man, I loved that little fox-gerbil.

“You don’t remember anything?” I asked him.

“I have only the instincts of a warrior to guide me,” he replied. “You will not distract me from my current purpose, adversary. Though you have fought admirably, I will defeat you, then compose poetry for your funeral.”

“This…um…isn’t to the death, Hesho.”

“I will defeat you,” he said in the same exact tone, “and compose poetry for your retirement party.”

He must have been isolated during his first days in the belt, and lost everything. Now that I knew who it was, I was even more impressed by his flying. Hesho had commanded a ship, and though my memory was admittedly fuzzy, I thought he’d mostly acted as a captain.

But he’d also been part of my extensive training sessions. I’d assumed some random crewmember had been manning—er, fox-gerbiling—the controls of their ship. It seemed, however, that the pilot had been Hesho himself.

How could I use that knowledge? He might be good at dodging and following flight patterns, but he would have let members of his bridge crew work other system controls. He’d messed up earlier on a light-lance pivot. He wouldn’t be as good at multitasking as I was.

I moved in close to some other asteroids as he tried to come back around to attack me. I kept him busy, weaving and dodging, and got farther and farther ahead of him. Finally, he broke off to pull back.

At that moment, I shut down my systems to go for a shield reignition. He, expectedly, did the same. You couldn’t run boosters and power up a shield at the same time.

The thing was, I was feinting.

As soon as he powered down, I spun my ship and slammed on my overburn, ripping across the battlefield toward him. He was too slow to respond, and he barely powered up before I reached him. Instead of shooting him, however, I hit him with my light-lance, then leaned hard on the controls, boosting with everything I had. This flipped my ship around—yanking him like a ball on a chain and sending him spinning out through the perimeter of the arena.

There, he was shot by at least ten watching pirate ships from various factions—completely locking up his ship.

“Dramatic,” M-Bot said.

“Hesho deserves the best,” I said to him. “Even if he doesn’t remember. Hang on. Before we go celebrate, I need to buzz the delvers again.”

“Is that smart?”

“Nope,” I said, slowing and crossing the arena as if to rejoin the Broadsiders—but veering close to a white spot.

We can work this out, I sent to the delvers. You don’t have to fight us. Don’t listen to Winzik, at the very least. He is evil.

Evil is a thing of noises, they sent back, confused by the impressions I’d sent them. You are all evil.

Please, I sent. I am trying to understand you.

Understand this. Leave. All of you must leave. And never return.

The impression was filled with malevolence, disgust, and…fear? Yes, fear. They hadn’t wanted me to feel that part, but I could now pick out more and more that they wanted to hide.

The impression faded, and I left the region feeling disappointed. No accommodation. One of us would have to be destroyed.

I rejoined the Broadsiders, who were gathering together with the other hundred-odd ships of the various pirate factions. Peg was already on the comm, broadcasting widely to all of the collected pirates. “Ha!” she said. “So much for your secret weapon, Vlep!”

He didn’t respond. The members of the Cannonade Faction were already gathering to withdraw. Whatever Peg’s next move, she needed to make it now.

“Look how strong we’ve grown,” she said, inching her shuttle out of the Broadsider line to face all the others. “Look at how skilled we’ve become! How many months has it been since any of us have lost a ship to the Superiority?”

“Vlep lost one a few weeks back,” Gremm said, his voice a grumble. “But my fighters are good enough to avoid it.”

Peg inched her shuttle forward a little farther. “The Superiority forces at Surehold are weak! While we have grown stronger and stronger. Now, you see the champion I’ve brought? She’s been training my fighters. She spent her life fighting the Superiority!”

“Wait,” a new voice said. “Is this true?” It was another rough voice, speaking Peg’s language. I guessed that was her other son, Semm.

“It’s true,” I said. “My people have been at war with the Superiority for decades, and I know their tactics. I’ve destroyed dozens of their ships—eighty-seven actually, at last count. If you want to take Surehold, I can make it happen.”

“Take Surehold?” another voice asked, a high-pitched one, but not Vlep’s. “Are we really talking about this again?” M-Bot wrote on my screen that this was the leader of the fifth faction, a female heklo called Gward.

“I agree with Gward,” Peg’s first son said. “This is an old irrelevant argument. We decided against this course two years ago!”

“And how much has changed in those years?” Peg demanded. “Look, you all know that things are strange in the belt these days. You’ve heard of the creatures with the glowing eyes. You’ve seen isolated people losing their memories faster and faster.

“Worse, we’re vulnerable. All it will take is for the Superiority to decide we’re too much of a liability, and to double the military presence in here. Or triple it. They could wipe us out. But not if we control Surehold. Not if we’re bold enough to strike.”

I waited, holding my breath. It was such a good argument. Couldn’t they see? This was the time to strike.

“I hate it,” Semm finally said, “but she’s correct. This…is worth discussing.”

“Are you sure we want to take that risk?” Gremm said.

“Yeah,” said the sixth faction leader—though I only knew this because of M-Bot’s notes on my screen. “I…I don’t want to aggravate them. If we lose, it could be catastrophic!”

“Doing nothing is worse, Ido,” Peg said. “It is time. Surehold has an icon, and reality ashes. We can use those to keep our memories. We can control this entire region, and we can be safe.”

“I…can’t believe I’m saying this,” Gremm said. “But I think she might be right. It is time.”

“If you strike at Surehold, Mother,” Semm said, “the Red Sails will join you.”

“So will the Jolly Rogers,” Gremm said.

“I guess…” Gward said. “Well, I guess we will too. Sure could use some reality ashes over here. We’ll split the spoils equally, right?”

“Equally,” Peg said. “I promise it.”

“Well, we’re not interested in this insanity,” Vlep of the Cannonade Faction said. Nearby, one of his repair tugs had finished getting Hesho’s vessel online, and it began moving under its own power again.

“Hey,” Peg said. “We won that ship! Leave it!”

“Gremm can keep his ship,” Vlep said. “We won that earlier—but if we keep ours, he can keep his. Deal? None of you can fly this thing anyway.”

“Deal, I suppose,” Gremm said, with a sigh. “Mother?”

“Fine, Vlep,” Peg said. “But why not join us? We—”

But before she should finish her speech, the entire Cannonade Faction overburned away. Scud. I had M-Bot open a line to Hesho, but he didn’t accept it.

“Should we go after them?” Semm asked.

“Rotting scum,” Gremm said.

“Let them go,” Peg said. “We don’t need them. What about you, Ido? You with us?”

“Let me ask the others,” the final faction leader said. He left the group comm and returned in a few minutes. “We’ll do it. But, um, you’re sure we can win? Like really sure?”

“You saw my champion fight,” Peg said. “Trust me. We’ve got this for certain.”

They made plans then, setting up a time for the assault. I sat back, listening to the details with half an ear. The extent of Peg’s plan was becoming clear to me. And honestly, I was impressed.

I didn’t get a chance to confirm my suspicions until a half hour later, when we were flying with the Broadsiders back toward our base. Peg opened a direct line to me.

“So,” she said. “You had some questions?”

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said. “You and your sons never actually had a falling-out, did you? You three realized that the pirates were too timid, too untested, to go up against the Superiority. You faked a schism.

“That let you control how your coalition fractured. You continued to pretend to be antagonistic to one another, so that when the time was right, Gremm and Semm could agree with you—and it would seem like they were authentically persuaded. Who else could continue to doubt the attack was a good idea if those two—who hated you—were willing to go along with it?”

“Smart,” Peg said. “Words. I hope it’s not so obvious to everyone else.”

“What happened with the champion?” I asked. “Why swap out to someone else at the last minute?”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Peg explained. “Gremm called me in a panic earlier today. He’d agreed to a quick duel to warm up—he assumed Vlep could never recruit someone good enough to beat him.”

“Ah…” I said. “Then he lost.”

“Fool boy. Almost ruined two years of work. We needed a victory like this to galvanize everyone. They’re far more skilled than they think. Two years of sparring will do that.”

“You set all of this up on purpose!” I said. “The factions, the raids, the honorable-ish way of fighting—it was all to train the pirates without them realizing they were being trained! You wanted a low-stakes way to prepare them for the assault on Surehold.”

“I set them to recruiting too,” she explained. “Among the people tossed in here. Grew our numbers pretty well. That, and I led some tactical raids against the Superiority to test their defenses and steal ships. Every time my faction or one of the boys’ factions got too many ships, we lost a few to the others to keep them strong and training.”

Genius. Scud, I wished we had Peg in the DDF.

“Still hoped I’d be able to get Vlep’s group,” Peg continued. “He’s been a weed in my garden for far too long. We should be able to do our assault with five factions. I hope. Either way, you did your part.”

“My part won’t be done until we stomp the Superiority,” I said. “And I get to visit the portal in Surehold. You set the assault for three days away. Why wait so long? We should move now.”

“No need to grow umalitas, kid!” Peg said. “The other factions need time to prepare—and we just won a major victory! Tonight we party.”