Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

I slumped into the cockpit of my ship.

That had been…a lot. A lot to think about, a lot to feel. A lot to remember.

Scud, I remembered. Gran-Gran, Mother, Rig. Even Jorgen, though the faces of my other friends remained vague.

“I told you that I understood crazy,” Chet said. “I was wrong. Thank you for the master class.”

“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “That was…interesting of you. Do you want a list of the emotions I’m feeling right now?”

“I get the sense they’d mostly be variations on frustration and bafflement.”

“You’d be right,” he replied.

“I’ll pass, then,” I said, as I closed the cockpit. “Come on, you two. Climbing out on my wing in the middle of a battlefield? You’ve both seen me do worse.”

“Which is why I didn’t call it strange,” M-Bot said. “Strange implies odd, or out of sequence with your normal behavior. Still, um… What the hell?”

I grinned. “Wow. You used that curse perfectly, M-Bot.”

“It’s the emotions,” he said. “I now understand the sense of frustration everyone else feels with you! It dovetails perfectly into exasperation, which makes me finally understand why it is people swear at you so much!”

“That’s great!” I said.

“I know! Also: WHAT THE HELL, SPENSA?”

“Hesho was possessed by a delver,” I said.

“Yes, Chet explained that,” he said. “So you went closer?”

“They’re afraid of me, M-Bot. I realized it…and it just felt right…”

“Right isn’t a feeling. Trust me, I’ve been practicing. Weren’t you listening?”

“Right is a feeling for me,” I said. “At least this time when I got out of the cockpit, I didn’t end up floating around in a vacuum. Chet, how much of that did you hear?”

“Not a lot,” he said. “My cytonic communication talents are not as powerful as yours.”

“Well,” I said, “immortality and the ability to cytonically echolocate are both also cool.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t,” he replied. “I did have enough skill to sense you in pain—and their attack. I tried to feed you memories of yourself. It appears to have helped. After that they left, though I couldn’t sense why.”

I should tell him, I thought. But the delvers’ parting thoughts—stay, truce—haunted me. I first wanted to think about what it all meant. “M-Bot,” I said. “Please open a comm line to Hesho.”

He sighed, but complied.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“I meditate upon the emptiness that is my past,” Hesho said softly. “And about how, despite it being blank, I know you were part of it. We were…friends?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Was I the leader of a pirate force?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Why do you ask?”

We floated together, but fortunately the flashes of buildings and other junk entering the nowhere had stopped. Much of it—the chunks with acclivity stone at least—drifted around us. Lazy, almost serene, like we were underwater in a vast ocean following some terrible storm.

“When the Cannonaders took me captive,” Hesho explained in his deep authoritative voice, “I immediately tried to seize command of their organization. I felt I should be their leader. They thought I was ‘cute’ and attempted to use me as a mascot instead. I…disabused them of this behavior.”

I grinned, trying to imagine how that had looked. What did a tiny fox man a quarter meter tall do to “disabuse” pirates?

“Eventually,” he said, “I settled into my role as an expert pilot and followed Vlep. But something about it felt wrong. There were embarrassing holes in my piloting skill. So I wondered. Perhaps I was a leader of a group of pirates who maybe hadn’t flown in a long time?”

“You were commander of a ship, Hesho,” I explained. “Your kind can crew a small capital ship that isn’t much bigger than a starfighter for the rest of us. You at least occasionally piloted it yourself, which is why you learned some skills—but you had crew working things like the shields for you.”

“Aaah…” he said. “That thought…it wears a path in my mind, champion. Light sparks, like stone and steel. My ship…the…Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun?”

“Yes!”

“I see it like a faded picture exposed to the elements,” Hesho said. “But…I can remember my home. The feeling of it warm on my face and fur. Yes. Being with you is good for me. I will remain with you, champion, and serve you as your bodyguard until you return to me who I was.”

“Uh… You’re my friend. You don’t need to—”

“I am your sworn companion,” he said firmly, “and you my feudal lord. Do not object to this arrangement. It is done.”

I sighed. I’d been about to explain to him that he was an emperor, but perhaps it wasn’t wise to give him more ammunition. Only Hesho could become someone’s servant using a forcible imperial declaration. Still, I could do worse than having a dedicated gerbil-fox samurai following me about. And it was encouraging that Hesho could remember the name of his ship now.

I stuck him with a light-lance and towed him up through the debris toward where the others were waiting. As we flew, I grappled with what the delvers had told me.

They want me to stop following the Path of Elders, I thought. Which is an obvious sign that I should continue.

Yet…if I could make them break their pact with Winzik… It was a compelling offer. Assuming I could trust them.

I found myself conflicted, and determined that I shouldn’t make a decision in the middle of a battle. I put the thoughts aside for the moment, and emerged from the biggest clot of debris to find most of the other pirates lined up in two rows of deactivated ships, maintained by the tugs that would eventually reactivate them. The remaining active ships were a little ways off, also in two groups.

As I arrived, a group of ships peeled off from the enemy faction. Vlep, commander of the Cannonade pirates, and a few of his crew were leaving. Apparently seeing me defeat their best pilot a second time meant they’d had enough.

“Give us immunity, Peg,” Vlep’s voice said over the comm. “Let me take my downed ships, and I’ll leave.”

“What!” another voice shouted, in what I thought was the heklo language. “Our deal!”

“You should know better than to make deals with pirates, Lorn,” Vlep said. “What say you, Peg?”

“Done,” Peg said immediately.

Other members of the pirates who had joined with us grumbled, but Peg was making the correct decision. Vlep and his traitors weren’t our ultimate goal. Without them, there would only be ten working ships on the Superiority’s side. We had thirteen. And it was obvious which was the more skilled force.

Vlep hovered over to try to attach a light-lance to Hesho’s ship. However, Hesho’s voice came on the comm. “I have been bested a second time,” he said. “And in the name of honor, I have chosen to join the new champion as her sworn companion.”

Vlep cursed softly. “You would so easily break with your allies, Darkshadow?”

“I have made no oaths,” Hesho said. “You are not my liege. Indeed, your treatment of me when I first arrived is among the only memories I hold. Be glad I warned you of my shift in allegiance. We are now enemies. Should we meet again, I shall reveal to you the consequences of my anger.”

Vlep retreated without responding, following the others off the battlefield. I joined the line of active pirate ships facing down the small group of Superiority forces.

“All right, Lorn,” Peg said over a wide broadcast. “You want to just surrender now?”

“You know I can’t do that,” his voice replied.

“They’re never going to let you out of here, Lorn,” Peg said. “They don’t care about you. Why are you still loyal?”

“You know they have my family.”

“So we squeeze them,” Peg said. “We withhold their acclivity stone until they agree to send through your family. They pretend they have the power in this relationship, but so long as we own this place—and make it our home—they lose every bit of bargaining power they have.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and I leaned forward, hands on my controls. We could end this easily, with the odds in our favor.

Peg waited though. No signal to attack.

That heklo voice spoke again. “You promise to do this for me?” he asked. “For anyone they’re holding? You’ll get them brought through so we can be together?”

“My word and oath,” Peg said. “But you have to turn the facility over to me. All security codes. All access.”

Silence again. Finally, the heklo continued. “There are a few people among the base security officers who I’m nearly certain are Superiority agents sent to watch me. We’ll have to move quickly and isolate them until we can make sure.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Peg said. “I’ve got a plan. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal.”