Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

It was a different sort of group that left the Broadsider base that day. For the duel we’d brought everyone, flying in a leisurely way—a convoy that had been part show of force, part proof of solidarity.

Today we took only the pilots. Peg joined my flight. Loaded with firepower, but slower than the fighters, her shuttle would be a target—but could deal damage almost like a much larger gunship. By her order, we kept off the comms. There was no joking, storytelling, or sitting and idly reading books during this flight.

I spent the initial part of the flight—before we met up with the other factions—trying to contain my excitement. Our destructors were still set to nonlethal, but each of our ships had been equipped with the ability to flip them to lethal mode in case this battle turned truly dangerous.

Peg didn’t want to do that. She wanted to recruit the pilots at Surehold, not kill them. But she was too pragmatic not to have the option available.

I gave Chet the controls and let him acclimatize himself to them. If I were somehow hurt during the fight, he might have to take over, as M-Bot remained unskilled. Chet performed a few simple maneuvers, showing that he did have some muscle memory for piloting, and I sat in thought, troubled by something Shiver had said. About icons.

I considered that, then closed my eyes, questing out from the cockpit with my senses. I forced myself to be extra quiet and subtle as I searched. I paused as I felt the delvers, or their attention, nearby. Waiting. And frightened.

They didn’t notice me. I could feel their minds pushing out from the lightburst in this direction, but they weren’t aware of me. I could remain invisible to them with effort, though I suspected this would only work so long as they didn’t know exactly where I was.

Feeling pleased with my improvements so far, I turned away from them and sensed outward. Looking for…familiarity. I remembered that when I’d first entered the nowhere, in that jungle, I had felt a mind close to mine. Before I’d found Chet, I had sensed something. Something I’d thought was my father.

Had that been my icon? It felt foolish to think it had actually been him. Yet as I searched, I…layered my mind with a warmth. The “star-ness” I’d learned on the Path. That was like a code, or a callsign. I’d used it to batter back Brade’s cloud upon me and escape from her prison. But it could also indicate who I was, where I was, though only to those I knew. Like a communication signal on a private comm band.

I felt something jump and contact me back. A mind. I brushed against it, and my heart leapt. My pin! Yes, I could feel it, and it responded. It… It…

It was angry at me for burying it.

That shocked me. The pin’s mind felt familiar, loving. It felt… It felt like family.

F-Father? I thought.

I was returned a warm sensation. I knew it was ridiculous, but…I mean… This place was strange.

Where are you? I asked.

I was given back a sense of…Surehold? Yes, that was where the icon was. How had it gotten there? I mean, Shiver had warned me they moved. But that far?

The mind retreated.

I’m coming to you, I sent to the pin, then came out of my cytonic trance, confused. It couldn’t truly be my father’s soul, could it? And why—how—was the pin at Surehold? The place where I was already going? That seemed extraordinarily coincidental. And that reminded me of Chet’s coincidental arrival, which I hadn’t thought about in a while.

Eventually, our flight met with the other pirate factions one by one. Peg welcomed each in turn, and I sensed relief in her voice. She’d been worried they wouldn’t show. She had us linger after the fourth faction joined, giving one final chance for the Cannonaders to appear. They didn’t.

“All right, people,” Peg said over the comm to us all. “We will absolutely win this. We’ve spent years in combat preparing, while they’ve been hiding, hoping the Superiority would send them more strength.

“They haven’t. The Superiority doesn’t care about them, or about any of us. They only care about their acclivity stone—so we’re going to hit them hard and take it away. Maybe they have other mining stations far across the empty boundaries, but I know they rely on this one more than any other. So we’ll lock the portal up tight, and they’ll have to play by our terms.”

The gathered eighty or so ships gave cheers and raucous calls in a variety of different types of vocalization. Chet and I joined in, hooting and shouting.

“My Jolly Rogers are ready to move to lethal destructors,” Gremm announced after the noise died down.

“Not unless the enemy does first,” Peg said. “Remember, these ones we’re fighting—they’re not really our enemy. They’re merely a bunch of frightened sods trapped between two forces. We’re going to come in not as raiders, but as liberators. So keep your rounds nonlethal. Call me or one of the tugs if you see a locked-up ship—even an enemy—about to collide with terrain. Stay focused on the fight, and if you face a pilot who’s too good, call for help.”

She got a round of agreement, and I was impressed. She and her sons had done an excellent job laying the groundwork for this battle.

“Okay!” M-Bot said in our cockpit. “I feel trembly, but somehow still eager to go forward.”

“Fear and eagerness?” Chet said. “That sounds like enthusiasm.”

“No, I think there would be more happy-eagerness,” M-Bot said. “This is nauseous-eagerness.”

“Perhaps exhilaration?” Chet said.

“I could go with that,” M-Bot replied. “Exhilaration. Yup, I’m exhilarated!”

“What are you two on about?” I asked.

“The AI and I have been bonding,” Chet said with a proud tone to his voice. “He’s been wanting help defining his specific emotions. I agreed to assist him.”

“Now?” I demanded.

“What better time?” Chet asked. “He is likely to be feeling a lot of strong emotions, after all.”

“We’ll do it quietly,” M-Bot promised.

Great. I didn’t believe that for a moment. Still, we continued on, entering Superiority territory. It didn’t look much different to me, though there were more fragments and they hung closer together. We flew straight toward the center, that enormous glowing white light. It felt as vast and intimidating as it ever had.

“Heads up, Broadsiders,” Peg said. “They’re incoming. Prepare for engagement.”

Her ship had a better scanner than mine; it took another two minutes for my sensors to see the oncoming ships. M-Bot counted them as they arrived, eventually settling on ninety-three ships. Slightly more than our numbers, and I didn’t see any retrofitted civilian ships among them. Hopefully Peg was right, and we had the better pilots.

Regardless, my excitement built. And the excitement was pure—no tension, no worry. A chance to fly and fight. A huge battle. I was ready.

“That’s odd,” Shiver said over the comm. “Captain, you see that?”

“Yeah,” Peg said. “Everyone, zoom your displays out.”

My proximity display expanded, revealing a larger view of the nearby fragments. Two just ahead of us were unnaturally close. They were going to bump…no, collide.

“Captain?” RayZed said. “Didn’t you…say that collisions between fragments were incredibly rare?”

“I did,” Peg replied.

“Now we’re encountering a second one, only a day after the last. Is…something wrong?”

“Can’t say,” Peg told us. “But…words. I’m pulling up IDs on some of those enemies. It appears the Cannonade Faction has come to join the party after all.”

I frowned until M-Bot’s scans indicated a group of new ships flying in to enter the fight. It was the Cannonade Faction. But they didn’t join us—instead they swooped around and fell in with the Superiority.

“Wonder how much they were paid to grow those flivis,” Semm grumbled. “Does Vlep really think the Superiority will keep whatever promises they made him?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Peg said on the wide comm. “Just a few more easy targets—and a few traitors to embarrass. Watch the debris from that collision—stay away from the fragments if you can. I don’t see the former champion on the scans, but he might be hiding in there somewhere. Do not engage if you spot him. Leave him to one of our aces.”

“He’ll come for me, Peg,” I said on a private line. “Hesho will want a rematch.”

“Bring down as many enemies as you can before it happens, Spin,” Peg said. “I think we’re better than they are—but I wouldn’t mind if you evened out our numbers.”

“Got it,” I said as we drew closer. Then the two groups finally broke, starfighters screaming toward one another—meeting right above those colliding fragments. My proximity sensor went ballistic as the landscapes impacted and chunks of rock began to break apart.

I grinned and launched into the middle of the chaos. It was so liberating to not have to worry about the safety of my companions. Cobb would have yelled at me for not bringing a wingmate, but here I could fly as I’d always secretly wanted to. Reckless. Free.

I lit up a ship in front of me, neatly blasting away its shield. That sent it into a series of panicked evasive maneuvers. Trusting my gut, I chased for a moment, then backed off and gave them space to screw up. They did just that, trying so hard to get away from me that they took a shot from Peg.

My grin widened as I dove to the side and shot down one, then two, then three enemy ships. Scud, this was awesome! I dove among the crazy mess, blue destructor blasts lighting the sky in all directions. M-Bot highlighted some enemies on the monitor: my reckless attacks had earned me two tails.

“So, let me see…” M-Bot said. “This emotion…is frustration at the crazed attack, mixed with the teensiest amount of fondness. And a desire to bonk her on the head with something that isn’t too heavy, but just heavy enough.”

“Vexation,” Chet said.

“Wow!” M-Bot said. “That’s perfect. Spensa is, like, vexation incarnate!”

“I thought you two said you’d be quiet,” I said.

“You’d rather not be able to hear us talk about you?” M-Bot asked.

Actually, no. I gritted my teeth in a half grin, half grimace and accelerated, diving to dodge the fire from our tails. At the risk of being called foolhardy, I pushed us low, weaving between parts of the landscape of one crumbling fragment.

Chet’s face on the corner of my screen looked a little pale. “How you doing back there, Chet?” I asked.

“Trying my best to enjoy the expert course in being vexed, Miss Nightshade!” he called. “I recognize this kind of fragment. It is from a twilight planet—those that grow in a dark solar system, feeding off a star that doesn’t glow brightly in the visible spectrum but still provides radiation.

“Those places tend to have plants and animals with much bioluminescence—and even a kind of mineral-luminescence. Judging from what I’ve seen, these rocks will likely explode in great showers of light if hit by destructor fire. Perhaps you can use that?”

Excellent. I spotted a hole in the breaking fragment ahead—and so I pushed for that. I wove up in a loop, then straight through the hole. My tails followed, but as I expertly wove between falling pieces of rock, their destructor shots hit on all sides of me. As Chet had suggested, the explosions lit up like flares. Indeed, the falling debris acted like flak ejection, intercepting the disruptor fire.

So long as I didn’t hit any big chunks, I’d actually be safer in here. Even as I was thinking that, I did hit one moderately sized chunk. Only one, and my shield deflected it.

“A sense of disbelief,” M-Bot said, “mixed with an absolute expectation that something like this would happen. Because of course she’d dive through a radioactive, explosive natural minefield.”

“Resignation,” Chet said with a chuckle.

“Quiet, you two,” I muttered as I pulled up and darted along underneath the ripping fragment, weaving between chunks of dropping earth. My two tails, blinded by the explosions, evidently lost track of me, as they broke off pursuit.

“That was well done, Spensa,” Chet said.

“We’re alive,” M-Bot said. “And oddly, I feel—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Complain about my recklessness again.”

“Actually,” he said. “I’m feeling something different. A tremble of excitement…building to relief, and a…a desire to do the same thing again?”

“Ha!” I said. “You thought it was fun!”

“It was,” M-Bot said. “Scud! Why did that feel fun? It was stupidly risky.”

“A little risk is what makes it enjoyable, AI!” Chet said. “That is the part that is daring! The part that is exciting! Assuming one can fight down the nausea.”

I looped around toward the main firefight, where I found Peg’s slower ship being tailed by someone fairly skilled. I drilled them with three precise shots in a row, making them break off.

“Enjoying danger sounds like an evolutionary problem,” M-Bot said. “Shouldn’t you find things fun when they’re safe?”

“Who knows?” I said. “I don’t think evolution was trying to create me. I just kind of happened.”

“Evolution doesn’t ‘try’ to do anything,” M-Bot said. “But like it or not, you are the pinnacle of its work. All evolutionary pressures throughout all the ages among your species have resulted in you.”

“Bet it feels embarrassed,” I said, finally shooting the ship that had been chasing Peg. It locked up and slowed, soaring idly through the battlefield. “Like that time all the parents got together to watch their kids march when I was in school, and my mother was forced to admit to the other moms that I was the one who’d glued her homemade suit of wooden ‘power armor’ to her uniform.”

“I wish I’d known you back then,” M-Bot said. “You sound like such a capricious child.”

“Uh, yeah. Child.”

I’d been sixteen.

“Where is Hesho?” I asked, looking over the battlefield. “Any signs of him yet on the scanners?”

“No,” M-Bot said. “But with this much debris flying around, my sight isn’t as precise as I’d like. He could be hiding in there somewhere.”

“Ship coming in from the right, Spensa,” Chet warned.

I dodged to the side—but as soon as that pilot realized who I was, they broke off the chase. I light-lanced around a chunk of acclivity stone that was floating upward from the crashing fragments, then fell in behind the fleeing ship. If the pilot was frightened of me, that would work to my advantage.

Once, I might not have found this battle enjoyable. I was of a higher skill level than these pilots—and I did love a challenge. As I matured though, I was beginning to realize that all combat was a challenge. Merely staying alive was challenging in a chaotic mess like this, where ships were darting in every direction and destructor blasts flew like embers in the forges. I felt alert, engaged.

As my prey dodged past some floating rubble, my proximity sensor beeped. A ship had been hiding in there, and it darted out as I passed, falling in behind me. One with a familiar design: small cockpit, large weapons signature.

Hesho had set a trap for me.

“Well hello, former champion,” Chet said. “About time you showed up.”

“Slight nausea,” M-Bot said. “Something I really shouldn’t be able to feel. Mixed with uncertainty.”

“That one’s apprehension,” I said, grinning. “Stomp it dead, M-Bot. This is going to be fun.”

I broke away from the chase. Hesho followed me, and the ship I’d been tailing immediately swung around and joined him. I’d beaten Hesho in our previous meeting, so while he obviously wanted a rematch, he’d brought a wingmate for support. There was no dishonor in pitting two against one in a battle like this—that was how the game was played.

The two flew as if to isolate me from the rest of the battle, herding me outward. If I tried to turn, one or the other moved to cut me off. I’d been in this situation before several times, fighting the Krell. In fact, I felt like maybe I’d taught Hesho this maneuver—a way to cull a ship from a battle and deal with it. In a big firefight, it was often preferable to have your ships fly defensively while a few “kill teams” of expert aces shrank the enemy numbers.

Well, I needed to make the fight a little less fair. Or make it unfair in my direction. I dodged right, risking a hit to my shield—and indeed I took one—to avoid being corralled. In a two-on-one fight, chaos favored me, and so I wanted to be in the thick of the shooting.

M-Bot helpfully popped up a tally of ships still fighting, proving that the pirates were holding their own, even making a little headway into the enemy lead. I—

A building appeared in the air directly in front of me.

Scud! I veered to the side, and my shield scraped the edge of the giant floating structure, shattering its windows in my wake as I skimmed one face of it.

“What the hell was that?” Chet asked.

“I don’t—”

Another building appeared at my side, tall and rectangular. Then something else flashed and materialized directly ahead of me. Was that…a swimming pool? I managed to duck around it, but it spun in the air, dumping a wave of water over us.

“A sudden spike of fear!” M-Bot said. “And general paralysis! I know this one myself! Panic! What is happening?”

A pair of scrubber tools folded from the sides of my canopy and ran across the curved surface, wiping away the water. Any other time, the news that my ship had rain wipers would have been amusing to me. I’d never fought in rain before, as we didn’t have it on Detritus.

However, it was completely overshadowed by, you know, the buildings. “Peg?” I shouted over the comm as a hovercar appeared some distance in front of me. “You seeing this?”

“Seeing it,” she said on a wide channel. “Not quite believing it. We’re in the middle of a warp of new objects entering the nowhere—never seen one of these in person. Careful, everyone. I don’t want to have to scrape any of you off the side of a building.”

Scud. I felt a…strange sensation. A stretching—or that’s the best I could explain it.

“Delver attack,” Chet guessed. “In the somewhere! That’s what is bringing all this in here—a delver has gone to your dimension, and as it strikes, it’s warping the city into this place. You don’t…recognize these structures, do you?”

“Thankfully no,” I said. “This isn’t happening on Detritus.” But yeah, I guessed he was right. The stretching sensation was the nowhere opening, being punctured as the delvers shoved things from my dimension in here.

“Deep breath, deep breath,” M-Bot said. “Okay, analysis says these structures appear to be Superiority designs.”

Why would they be attacking one of their own? Perhaps a planet that was in rebellion? The light next to Peg’s name changed, indicating she’d moved to a private line. “Damnedest thing here, Spin. Not one, but two explosive fragment collisions, and now this… Ha! Really feels like the nowhere is trying to get us, eh?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. My proximity sensor pinged, the display showing that Hesho and his wingmate had avoided the suddenly appearing buildings and were on my tail again. “Ha ha.”

“Don’t think too much of it,” Peg said. “It’s random, kid. I don’t want you getting any ideas that the Broadsiders grow enguluns or anything like that. We’re not unlucky. We found you, after all!” She cut the line.

“She’s wrong,” Chet said. “This is about us. The Path we’re walking. It has them angry.”

I veered to the side, narrowly avoiding another sudden building. It seemed that the process of shoving things into the nowhere was creating acclivity stone—as the stone blocks on one side of the building were making it hover. I’d heard you could magnetize metal by exposing it to a strong enough field; maybe this was something similar.

“You focus on flying,” Chet said. “I’m expanding my cytonic powers, and I think I can track the former champion and his wingmate. Even in this mess. I’ll give you warning if they try to ambush us again.”

“And I’ll suppress my outbursts for now,” M-Bot said. “Spensa…this is serious. Fly well, please.”

“Will do,” I said, veering carefully so I wouldn’t overwhelm the GravCaps. Chet had promised me he could take the g-forces—but I still wanted to be cautious. If I blacked out when buildings were appearing all around us…

“My scans indicate these buildings are uninhabited,” M-Bot said. “And they look old and run-down.”

As I flew, I tried to pick out what I could with my burgeoning cytonic senses. I felt the delvers, connected to one of their kind in the somewhere. And I overheard…annoyance, but not anger. They didn’t hear “noise” at the moment. They were…performing.

“It’s a test,” I said. “Winzik finally got smart and decided to try the delvers out on an unpopulated location, to see if they really were under control.”

“Perfect chance for them to throw a city at us,” Chet said.

Fortunately, the delver efforts didn’t seem precise—objects started appearing all through the battlefield, not merely in front of me. If they’d been able to control this exactly, they would have made something appear so close to me that I couldn’t dodge.

“The former champion is coming back around,” Chet said. “He’s staying close to fool scanners, but I can echolocate him there. He should soon emerge from behind that office building to the left.”

“Thanks,” I said. As I was getting the hang of flying in here, for the next bit I was able to keep my attention on Hesho. He flew well, as I’d trained him, but his wingmate wasn’t as skilled. They did manage to get vaguely on my tail, so I led the two of them around the side of an enormous building that had a large open space near the roof. Parking for ships, maybe?

As we rounded the building, I cut my speed and ducked inside. Hesho and his wingmate followed. The confines of the hangar were tight, but a huge window filling the entire far wall provided good visibility. I regretted my decision as both Hesho and his friend opened fire. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver in here, and slowing bunched us up.

Their shots took down my shields, so I hit my IMP—hoping it would reach them—and then I smashed my ship out through the back window as destructor fire chased me.

“I think you only managed to catch one of them with that,” M-Bot said. “The one who isn’t Lord Hesho.”

“Scud.” I swooped down along the building, then speared the bottom corner with my light-lance and made an assisted turn—barely in time, as destructor fire sprayed behind me. I took the next three turns fast, darting through an increasingly busy junkyard of a battlefield.

Was…was that a cow?

I kept flying through the cluttered urban debris, pushing to get ahead of Hesho. But he stuck on me. His wingmate didn’t have to; they could cut out of the chase at times and then swoop back in as we came around another direction. As long as Hesho was putting heat on me, I had to stay on the defensive.

I tried to loop around and pick off the wingmate, but Hesho unloaded a sequence of shots just ahead of where I had been planning to go—which forced me a different direction. Without a shield, I had to be extra cautious. So in seconds both of them were on me again.

Eventually one of those shots was going to land. I broke downward—flying among dropping chunks of rock and debris. Hesho wove behind me.

“Warning, Spensa,” Chet said. “I am tracking the wingmate, though it’s out of sight. I think Hesho has ordered the wingmate to fly around—they’re trying to pin us.”

Scud. He was correct. When I leveled out, I spotted the wingmate hovering there, ready to open fire while Hesho still pressed me from behind.

I dodged as best I could, and felt another stab of pride. I hadn’t taught Hesho this kind of advanced technique. But I liked to think that it was my foundation in combat teamwork that had led him to strategies like this.

I wove in and out of falling chunks of rock and hit my overburn, intending to run straight through the shots from the wingmate and hope none hit me. At that moment though, a spray of fire—seemingly out of nowhere—slammed into the wingmate, freezing the ship.

“We have arrived, Spin,” Shiver said over the comm. “I should think that you’d know better how to stay with a group. You motiles, always wandering off in random directions.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the assist.”

Other ships came in to nip at the two resonants—chasing them back away from the mess of appearing buildings. Those were largely centered on me, so while the delvers weren’t precise, they could evidently lob things in my general direction.

I was glad Shiver and the others were mostly moving to the other side of the battlefield. As much as I’d have liked help against Hesho, I didn’t want the others flying in these dangerous confines. Honestly, I was worried most about Hesho himself—as long as he stuck on me, he was risking death.

I needed to stun him quickly, if I could. I gave chase, passing a couple of drifting ships, locked up—but with their shields reignited to protect from collisions. A Superiority tug was gliding in to pull them to safety, and nobody attacked it. Kind of like how you might leave an enemy medic alone on an Old Earth battlefield. I found the civility of it encouraging.

I pulled out of the lower debris field, then veered sharply as the air began to vibrate. A second later, a small fragment appeared just above me—a chunk of city stretching for hundreds of meters, marked with sidewalks and planters.

Right. Okay. I could handle this. I steered up over the edge of it and wiped the sweat from my hands. That maneuver had let Hesho get behind me again, unfortunately. He started firing, and I barely dodged.

It was time to see if I could exploit his muscle memory. I started a routine maneuvering sequence, one I’d drilled into him and the others as I’d trained them outside the delver maze. A warm-up meant to teach good fundamentals.

Hesho fell in behind me as I moved, and his disruptor shots trailed off. Yes, I thought. You know this routine. You flew it with me dozens of times.

“Why did he stop?” Chet asked.

I didn’t respond, continuing the motion. Hesho inched forward, and I let him fall almost into my wingmate position. I’d been intending to break out of this maneuver unexpectedly and throw him off, maybe earning me a breather to reignite my shield. But this seemed to be triggering a memory in him.

Together we soared over the new fragment, no longer fighting. No longer worried about other ships—as we were getting increasingly distant from the others, who were staying away from the debris. I continued the motions. I could almost feel Hesho’s longing, his thoughts stretching toward mine…

Then my mind went cold. It was like I’d been doused by a bucket of ice water. I pulled my ship back to be even with his, then glanced toward his cockpit. It was tinted dark, which prevented me from making out any of his features.

It wasn’t dark enough, however, to obscure the two powerful white spots that were shining deep within the cockpit where Hesho’s eyes would have been. The delvers had taken him.