Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

“What?” I said. “How?”

I promised to haunt you, he said. Remember? You said it was impossible, since I was an AI. Ha! Well, how wrong you were. Here I am!

I felt a flood of emotions. Joy at hearing his voice. Confusion at how he was in my head. Relief to know that he was apparently still functioning.

Where were you? I sent. I’ve been looking!

I hid! he said. I don’t know how. I just kind of…looked inward. They were hunting for me, so I did it by instinct, Spensa. You really tried looking for me? That’s so sweet.

I held back tears. When I’d left him, his physical housing had been destroyed by the delvers in the nowhere. I’d known he was alive, but hearing his cheerful voice? It was such a scudding comfort.

I worried that you wouldn’t remember me, I told him. That you’d become like them.

I am like them! he said. Just not in the bad ways! I’ve kind of always been like them. I just didn’t know it!

It was true. Chet’s knowledge was my knowledge, to an extent, and I understood. The strange nature of the nowhere had transformed M-Bot into a new being. Though in truth, that process had started centuries before, as his processors had reached into the nowhere to compute faster. Over time, that had changed him from an AI into a living creature.

This distinction was a fight I kept having with the rest of the DDF and its allies. They kept saying things like, “So the delvers are actually rogue AIs?” Which was far too limiting, far too small-minded a way to describe them. Yes, they’d started as artificial intelligences. Just like humans had started as some kind of apelike ancestor.

The delvers had evolved into something completely different. As had M-Bot. He’d become self-aware—a person, not a thing. As distantly removed from an AI as a human was from its progenitor species.

Yet here he was. In my head. I sent him relief, images of me smiling, and the warmth of a hearth, and the joy of emerging from the darkness into light. I did this by instinct, communicating as a slug—or a delver—would.

Oh! he said. That tickles. I can be tickled now that I don’t have a body, apparently. That’s strange. Is that strange? I think that’s strange. Is that Chet inside your soul? Say hi for me.

Scud, I’d missed him. I teared up a little, awkwardly, and realized that Jorgen had lingered in the room and was looking at me. He probably thought my tears were because I had disappeared his coffee, and so he wanted to help. I wasn’t sure how much help I could stomach at the moment though. Fortunately, I’d seen Gran-Gran encouraging Hesho and FM to give me some space, or they’d probably have stayed as well.

Sorry to have not found you earlier, M-Bot said. I’m new to being a ghost. It’s not at all like I imagined. Far less painful. But just now, I felt you vibrating from the somewhere, sending ripples into this place. The delvers noticed, I’m afraid. But so did I. Yay! Oh, is that Jorgen? He seems concerned.

He’s always concerned, I said as Jorgen walked over. But this time he has a good reason. I’m…a little unstable. Maybe I should talk to him for a moment.

Sure, okay, fine, he replied. I can wait. It’s not like I’m going to get more dead. Please don’t call an exorcist, if you have any. I understand that would be bad.

You’re not actually a ghost.

I don’t know that—and you don’t either. So, boo! Say hi to Jorgen for me.

Jorgen settled down next to me, arms folded on the tabletop. He always looked so serious, so solemn, so thoughtful. I liked that about him. Ideas had their own weight with Jorgen. Words had substance. And the more I grew to know him, the more I understood why. Because words, rules, ideas—they were how he connected with and protected those around him.

It all came back to that day I’d seen him alone in our training room, running simulation after simulation to see what he’d done wrong after we’d lost Morningtide. Jorgen always wanted to do what was right—because that was how best to help the people in his life.

He sat there for a long time, deep in thought. Scud, how had I ever thought his face could be anything other than sultry?

“How worried should I be?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, flopping back in my pod-seat. “I don’t even know what I’m doing. I can’t control it, but not in an ‘Oh no, I’m too inexperienced’ sort of way. More in an ‘Oh scud, I absorbed a space monster’ sort of way. It just happens. I’ll try to keep it from being a danger to anyone.”

Could I actually promise that though?

He turned, then put his hand on my arm. “Spensa, I wasn’t talking about that. How worried should I be for you? Are you all right? You feel distant.”

“Space monster,” I muttered, meeting his eyes. “In my soul.”

“Right,” he said. He searched my eyes. I knew what he wanted; there was a subtext here. He was worried about me. And worried about us.

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to leap to my feet and kiss him and tell him to stop being silly and stop worrying. But I couldn’t.

My silence wasn’t fair to him. “I just felt M-Bot,” I told him. “He’s alive, in the nowhere.”

“What, really?” Jorgen perked up. “That’s the first good thing that’s happened in a week. How is he?”

I’m me! M-Bot said. Tell him I’m me. Very me.

“He says he’s very much himself,” I said. “And I believe him. He seems to have escaped the attention of the delvers, and is existing like they do, in the nowhere, without a body.”

“That’s incredible,” Jorgen said. “Surely that’s an advantage of some sort?”

“Surely.”

We sat together for a few more minutes, the long table somehow making the room feel huge and hollow, now that it was empty. Scud, he was worrying about me again.

“What about you?” I asked, to try to deflect. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than I thought I would,” he said. “Maybe part of me still doesn’t believe my parents are gone. But today’s ceremony…it’s what they wanted for me. Misguided though they were sometimes, I have to accept that they knew me. That these bars were going to find their way to my shoulders eventually.” He met my eyes. “I’m doing this because it needs to be done, not because they wanted it. Though it makes me think that they’ll be happy to see me, when they look down from Valhalla.”

I rested my hand on his, on the tabletop. He didn’t often talk about his religious heritage, but it was there—a part of him, like so much else. He turned his hand over and squeezed mine. But there was so much tension in his eyes.

“Jorgen?” I forced out. “When I was in there…lost…you were my anchor. You are the lighthouse that brought me home.”

He smiled then, and some of the tension seemed to melt off him. “When you were in there,” he said, “and I was trying to make sense of all that was happening, I kept asking myself, ‘What would Spensa do?’ Trying to be a little more like you helped me keep pushing forward.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“Jorgen, that’s a terrible idea!” I dropped his hand and gestured at myself. “Have you seen me try to solve problems? Things end up on fire. Or dead. Usually both!”

“Things get done when you’re around.”

“Things, yes,” I said. “Things like me running off and moonlighting as an interdimensional space pirate! ‘What would Spensa do?’ Honestly, Jorgen, I thought better of you.”

He kept smiling, though it faded as he glanced over at the statistics on the wall—the projector image having recovered from my episode. He slipped out of his seat and stepped up to the numbers. I joined him, taking in his worried expression—which was more unnerving to me than the numbers themselves.

My heart bled for him, knowing that all of this was on his shoulders. Unfairly so, but again, what was fairness to us? We had rarely tasted that particular nectar. We survived on algae and rat meat instead.

“I feel,” he said softly, “like I’m a lone man trying to hold up a collapsing building. I know it’s not true. I know I’m not the only one working for our future—but still…the walls of the house tremble. The ceiling buckles. Worse, I know an earthquake is coming that will shake the entire cavern. And I’m barely keeping things together as it is…” He turned to me. “They’re going to crush us, Spensa. While you were gone, we failed you—and we’re still failing. We’re just doing it in slow motion.”

“Failing? Jorgen, that’s nonsense,” I said. “You recruited not one, but two planets to our cause. You rescued Cuna and figured out how to work Detritus’s defenses. Scud! You found the taynix!”

While I’d been playing spy on Starsight, Jorgen had followed cytonic impressions deep into the bowels of the planet and found the slugs’ breeding ground. Because of him, we had slugs that could hyperjump ships, others that could create cytonic attacks, and even ones that could block all cytonic abilities in a region. And then there were the other varieties whose powers we hadn’t learned yet.

It was increasingly obvious that the Superiority knew how to manipulate the various kinds of taynix. The inhibitor field around Starsight that had prevented me from hyperjumping in or out? Facilitated by a slug. A different type sent the communications the Superiority used to connect their empire, link their drones, deliver commands to their officials. An empire all built on the tiny backs of enslaved cytonic creatures.

I reached out to Doomslug, who I’d left in my room before coming to the meeting. She reached back, empathetic. Unfortunately, my worry about all of this made that vibration inside me start up again.

Cuna’s notebook appeared near their seat, then flopped down onto the table. Jorgen started, then glanced at me. I wrestled my emotions back, and as my frustration subsided I felt something new. A distorting of self, a fuzzing of reality, and a link to him—mind to mind. Cytonic to cytonic.

Jorgen was worried about me. While I’d heard him say it, this time I felt it. Scud. That was wonderful, but dangerous. I didn’t want him to feel pain or worry for me. He had way too many other things to deal with.

Despite myself, I withdrew, blocking him.

“You’re not a monster, Spensa,” he whispered. “You’ve never been a monster.”

“I never said I was.”

“You feel it,” he said.

I agree, M-Bot said to me. You’re not a monster, Spensa.

Chet and I…we weren’t so certain. We’d become something dangerous. Something that was contemplating killing all of his kind. What was that if not monstrous?

But if there was one thing stories had taught me about monsters, it was that they were strong. I nodded at the statistics. “You’re frightened, Jorgen. Scud, Cobb is frightened. But maybe…maybe we shouldn’t be. We never broke before the Krell. Why would we bend before numbers on a page?”

“I’m not bending,” he said. “I’m just…feeling the weight of it. Ironsides is right—once the enemy’s production capacities come fully to bear on this war, we’ll be crushed. We’ve survived before because Winzik’s hands were bound by policy, the compassion of others, or his lack of resources. He’s lined those impediments up, Spin, and executed them one at a time with a destructor blast to the head. We’re next.”

“So,” I replied, “maybe what we need is a monster.”

“Spensa—”

“I had a chance to come home,” I said. “Right as I jumped into the nowhere over a month ago, I had an opportunity to return.”

“You told me.”

“I stayed. We both agreed I should stay. Because we both knew this was coming—a fight we couldn’t win with pilots and guns alone.” I tapped my sternum. “I chose this path. I’ve become the weapon we need. I just have to figure out how to use it before…”

As I trailed off, he cocked his head, then leaned closer. “Before what, Spensa?”

“Do you know,” I said, “what happens to the hero at the end of the stories?”

“Depends on the story.”

“They go home,” I whispered.

I felt the room vibrate around me. Jorgen’s coffee appeared on the table again, though three of the chairs vanished.

Are you…are you all right? M-Bot said in my head. The delvers are going wild right now, Spensa.

At the end of the story…at the end of the story, the hero came home, and found herself transformed…into someone who didn’t belong, and could never belong, with the people she’d left behind. It was the same in almost every story I’d read.

Heroes didn’t get to stay and live in the new world they helped create. Even if I pulled off some kind of miracle and saved my people…that would be the end of it. For me.

I gritted my teeth so tightly my jaw ached. But with balled fists and force of will, I tamped down my emotions again, stopped the vibrations. Then I gave Jorgen a smile. Because he needed one.

“You know,” I said, “I really should be jealous.”

“Of…my incredible new haircut?”

“Of the slugs,” I said, punching him in the arm. “When I left, I was the quirky girl with a slug. I mean, who has a pet slug? It was unusual. Distinctive. Now I get back and you have dozens of them?”

“Maybe hundreds…” he mumbled.

“In eight varieties.”

“We think there may be even more…”

“And everyone is cuddling them and carrying them around like babies,” I said, hands in the air. “FM probably bathes with hers.”

“I know you think you’re exaggerating,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure she does.”

“Next thing you know,” I said, “everyone will be quoting Sun Tzu and savoring the sounds of bones breaking! I won’t be the least bit special anymore.”

He stepped closer. Uncomfortably—or in this instance far too comfortably—close. He leaned down. “No,” he whispered. “Nothing could ever make you less special. To me.”

I forced myself to stay there, to pretend that nothing was wrong. Smiling—and keeping a firm lid on my emotions so Jorgen wouldn’t see through the lie. I pretended that this could all end well, admiring his eyes until Cobb stepped in.

Which gave an excuse to break the moment. I rushed over to help him as he stumbled, despite his cane. Jorgen stepped back, trying to recover some decorum.

“Ready to get back to it?” Cobb asked, holding my arm, eyeing the two of us. “Or should I stall? I have a story about Ironsides when she was in flight school that always results in an awkward silence. Good for thinking. And for making people too uncomfortable to bother me.”

“No need,” Jorgen said, standing up straight, visibly shouldering the burden of leadership.

I glanced at Cobb, who nodded and let me help him sit. “How are you?” I asked him.

“Awful,” he said. “Feel like I’m just climbing out of a ship after being in an uncontrolled spin for hours—which starts again each time I stand up.” He glanced at me. “I’m here. Your grandmother saved my life, and for that I’m grateful. But let’s say I’m glad I was able to get all of you ready in time for this.”

I frowned, considering that comment. During flight school, I’d felt a connection with Cobb as he’d encouraged me to become the woman I had to be now. I’d always assumed that had been special treatment. Now I knew that he’d spent similar time with Jorgen, maybe everyone in our flight.

Right then, I figured something out. Cobb’s actions had all been deliberate—not just with me, but with all of us. He hadn’t merely been doing his job. He’d been training the next admiral of the fleet, and I got the sneaking suspicion he’d known it all along.

As people began to file back in—or in the case of the kitsen, fly in on their platforms—Jorgen stood tall before that daunting wall of statistics. I desperately wanted to do something to help. My entire purpose in traveling the nowhere had been to give us an edge, some way of solving problems that would be impossible otherwise. Could M-Bot be the key to that somehow? Maybe he could contact the Broadsiders or…

Wait. I looked up at the statistics again and realized something. Sure, our enemies would overwhelm us once their production capacity got going. But to do that, they needed raw materials.

“Jorgen,” I said. “I have an idea. And this time it might actually be a good one. But to build on it, we’ll have to send for someone smarter than I am.”