Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

These days, entering the nowhere was an odd experience. Doomslug and I popped in briefly between moments, in the place that was commonly full of the eyes. Pinpricks of light in the blackness that normally, in the past, had glared at me with an incredible sense of malevolence.

This time, like every time in the past twelve days, they were missing. Pure blackness confronted me. No eyes. No delvers.

I’d once thought I didn’t understand this place, couldn’t understand it. I was mortal, and my mind too accustomed to the passage of time and linear relationships. But my soul was part delver now. Strange as it was, I could see what they were doing. They were here. Camouflaged by turning their attention inward. Hiding not just from me, but from one another. I got the sense they did this only when I was there, only when time entered the nowhere because I was hyperjumping through it.

The secret is here, in how I interact with them, I thought. The way to defeat them once and for all. It might have to do with the way they hid.

A pair of eyes popped up beside me. Hi! M-Bot said. Welcome to my home! It’s only the size of an infinitely small point, but so am I, so it’s enough!

A heartbeat later Doomslug and I left, appearing in a different kind of mundane darkness. The caverns underneath Detritus.

Though cytonics could “see” by use of their powers—Gran-Gran was a good example, though she hadn’t realized she was doing it—I didn’t have much talent in that area. Fortunately, my multitool had a small flashlight. I slipped it from its spot on my belt and turned on the soft green light, illuminating a large cavern—and startling a number of scuttling inhabitants.

I couldn’t help but grin. I knew this cavern. I’d hunted in it—and it seemed that in my absence the rats had been on a rampage and fed freely on the fungus here. “Fear not,” I announced to them, “though I have returned, I come not for your blood! Turns out I prefer peanut butter. Enjoy your respite, fell beasts.”

They didn’t seem inclined to take my word for it, and remained hiding in the nooks and nearby crevices. I continued through the chamber, feeling a certain nostalgia. I’d become a pilot. Spensa the rat girl was no more.

Was it strange to miss those days? They’d been terrible in many ways. The Krell had been an omnipresent danger. Plus my family had suffered from lack of food, discrimination, and long hours of work.

Yet back then, all I’d been in charge of was getting some rats to sell. Now, the fate of planets was on my shoulders.

My hyperjump had been off by a short distance. The portal wasn’t in this cavern, but in a nearby tunnel. My memory proved good after all these months, and I easily made my way up along a tunnel—finding the spot via an ancient tube that emerged from the rock, carrying water to other parts of the cavern complex. I trailed along, one hand on the stone, until I reached the portal.

It was on the wall. A large section of stone that partially blended into the surrounding rock, carved with strange symbols. Years ago I’d known there was something odd about these alien markings. The unusual surface held whispers you couldn’t hear, but could feel.

I rested my fingers on the grooves. In the nowhere, I’d traveled on a heroic journey—recovering memories of the past. That journey, it turned out, had been concocted by Chet in order to give me information that I needed, but that he hadn’t otherwise known how to deliver.

The memories had been real though. Today, I closed my eyes and reached into the past. Listening. Each time someone had used this portal, they’d left a piece of themselves behind, inscribed by these lines.

In this one, I saw humans. Humans who had come here in secret, to build a new kind of weapon. A facility for trying to control the delvers.

I saw humans quarrying stone from the nowhere and transporting it out. I saw their enormous fabrication machines building shipyards in the sky, which then built the other platforms. This location had been chosen for two reasons. The first was the large ring of asteroids around the planet, which had been entirely consumed by the fabricators.

But the second, true secret—the real reason—had been this portal. An open one, into the nowhere. A place to get acclivity stone. A place to try to control the creatures beyond dimensions and space.

I pulled my hand back. I’d already seen the end result of those experiments on a recording my friends and I had watched. We’d seen what had happened when a delver had come to Detritus and destroyed the humans living here. That had been long before M-Bot had crashed here, and even that had been a century before my own people had found their way to the planet.

Seeing all of this reminded me of what Brade had said. That our destiny, as humans, was to do what our ancestors had failed to do. Conquer the galaxy.

Turning my thoughts in that direction was a mistake. I could feel my soul beginning to vibrate, and Brade’s attention focusing on me. Perhaps because I’d just opened myself to the memories of those ancient humans, I was exposed, and she latched on. In a panic, I realized that if she saw what I was doing, it might tip her off to our plan.

Don’t see. Don’t see!

Brade appeared in front of me as a cytonic projection. She looked around, frowning. And she didn’t see. Her eyes passed over the wall as if nothing were there—for in my mind’s eye, that was how I viewed it. Just a featureless wall. To reinforce that, I started walking, as if there was nothing special about where I’d stopped.

Her ability to see my surroundings was predicated on how I saw them. Was this similar to how the Krell had convinced my father that he was seeing enemies when he flew among friends? Was this the method by which our enemy could hijack a cytonic’s senses?

They’d turned my father against the people who loved him—and I had not forgotten my anger. Brade upheld that system.

I had given up on trying to bring her to my side. But perhaps she didn’t need to know that.

“So,” she said, “are you ready to accept what I’ve been telling you? Ready to do what needs to be done, Spensa?”

“We’re doing that right now,” I replied. “Overthrowing the Superiority is what needs to be done. Join me, help me.”

She smiled, perhaps at my naivete.

How would she try to use me this time?

“Winzik is going crazy over that information storage you took,” she said. “All of his secrets in the hands of enemies. That was a clever strike. He should have realized the repercussions of you having a minister-tier government official on your side. He had Cuna locked out of our systems, but of course he can’t lock them out of their own mind.”

“Well,” I said, “soon he’ll see the consequences of his mistake.”

“Come now. Your military is so small. You’re no match for ours—you should join with us, become our enforcers. I could persuade Winzik to see you as mercenaries instead of enemies to be quashed. If you serve us.”

“Brade,” I said, leaning into my lie, “we won’t be small for long. Join me. We’ll soon have entire forces of disgruntled humans on our side. You belong here.”

She turned away from me, perhaps to hide her growing grin—though I could faintly feel satisfaction radiating from her. She had believed my lie—she assumed our purpose in stealing the data archive was to find the other human preserves like Detritus.

Perhaps we would approach those humans. Eventually. So it was a plausible, reasonable goal—just not our main one. And Brade bought it.

In turn, I was shocked by how easily I’d sold that lie. For months now, I’d worried that I wasn’t a spy or a scout, despite being required to do both repeatedly. I kept telling myself I was a pilot. Yet I’d managed to infiltrate the Superiority’s space force, then get into the nowhere and take over one of their mining installations from within.

I was a spy. It wasn’t what I’d intended to become, but it was where the job had taken me. The best way to learn to fly was to just get into a cockpit and practice; it seemed that the same was true of subterfuge.

I did plan the takeover of Surehold, I thought. And it worked. I wonder…

A thought started to come together, but I put it aside for now. I needed to deal with Brade.

“Go,” I snapped at her. “Leave me alone. Tell Winzik I’m coming for him with the thirst of a thousand battlefields, longing for blood. I will enjoy the chance to sink my blade between the layers of his carapace, prying him from the shell. Then I shall watch—with exquisite satisfaction—as he suffocates in the callous air.”

She cocked her head at me. To be honest, I felt rather satisfied with that boast. Beowulf would have been proud of me. I could move toward being less bloodthirsty, but still appreciate a good boast, right? Boasts and threats were basically ways to get your enemy to back down—so they were actually pacifist in nature.

Maybe that was what Conan the Cimmerian had always been about. Perhaps all the lines about the lamentations of women and drinking blood from skulls were meant to persuade people to go home and not try to assault the two-meter-tall fellow with cannonballs for pectorals.

Brade growled, then muttered, “You’re wasted on this pointless fighting, Spensa.” But she left, and I could feel—cytonically—that she was actually gone. I let out a long breath.

She’s unnerving, M-Bot said in my mind. I don’t trust her, Spensa. I hope you don’t either.

“I don’t,” I assured him, hurrying back to the portal. “I think I might have tricked her though. It—”

My words fell short as the corridor suddenly became very crowded. FM, Arturo, and Kimmalyn appeared, standing around Alanik in a ring, their hands on the UrDail’s shoulders, slugs fluting and cooing from their slug holsters.

Alanik eyed me. “It is customary to warn others before you use your powers to jump,” she said. “You do not know this, as you were not raised around other cytonics, but leaving so abruptly can be disorienting for those nearby.”

“Noted,” I said, more annoyed at her than embarrassed. They were my powers. I could decide what was appropriate and what wasn’t. I didn’t need an alien reprimanding me.

“So, what are we doing here?” Arturo asked, his hands on his hips. “Checking out the portal into the nowhere? We were talking about that before you slugged off, Spensa.”

Slugged off? I wasn’t sure what I thought of that particular piece of slang. Regardless, I walked back to the right spot and placed my hand on the wall. I could feel the heat of Igneous, the city where I’d grown up, pulsing from a nearby chamber. Sweat trickled down my temple.

“We need to know how easy it is to get through one of these,” I said, patting the portal. “I’ve told you all about my pirate friends in the nowhere. Perhaps we should talk to them. They might be able to help.”

“These portals are dangerous,” Alanik said, sounding stern. “Your own grandmother ended up trapped in one. And you got sucked into a dangerous realm by touching one.”

Gosh, thanks, I thought. I hadn’t remembered that, Mom.

I’d spent so many days during my time at Starsight wondering about Alanik and what she was like. I had not expected to find her so bossy.

“If they’re dangerous, we need to know,” I said. “That’s part of why I came alone.”

“Spin,” Arturo said, “you need to stop being so reckless. You’re basically our entire space force.”

“We have to take risks, Amphi,” I snapped, pressing my hand against the portal again. “We do it every time we fight. Someone has to figure out how these portals work; they offer a huge tactical advantage. And I have the most experience.”

“The delvers—” Kimmalyn started.

“Are frightened of me,” I said. “They hide when I hyperjump. I haven’t seen the eyes in almost two weeks now.”

The others grew silent. When I glanced at them, I saw a collection of baffled—even intimidated—expressions.

“The delvers are frightened of you?” FM said.

Right. I hadn’t actually explained that to them, had I?

Well, I was a weapon. I reaffirmed that belief to myself. I’d been weak earlier, but I couldn’t afford weakness. It didn’t matter if I was divided off, isolated from others. Didn’t matter if everything was different, wrong, broken.

This was what I needed to do. This was what I needed to be.

I closed my eyes, feeling at the portal, and tried to push through it. I’d done this on the other side several times, looking for a way out. On those occasions, I’d always hit some kind of wall. The explanation, which had made sense to me, was that the portal had been locked on this side. Perhaps to keep the delvers in.

This time, I encountered no lock. I found a vast, inviting pool of darkness—a tunnel leading toward infinity. The nowhere lay before me, an expanse that was at the same time as small as the point of a pin. A place where time wrapped upon itself, and where…

Wait. This was wrong.

I felt Alanik’s mind brush mine, asking if I was all right. I replied that I was, and suggested she back off for now. She did, leaving me to explore what I was feeling.

This place was wrong. I wasn’t certain what tipped me off. The sight, the cytonic resonance, the smell…none of those described it perfectly, but together they meant something. This wasn’t the nowhere. It wasn’t where I wanted to go.

I yanked back as something tried to close around me. I was out in a moment, in that corridor again. I gasped, pulling my hands away. Scud. Everyone had fetched chairs from somewhere. What…

“How long was I gone?” I asked.

“Four hours,” Arturo said. “A little less, actually.”

“Alanik said you were confident everything was all right,” Kimmalyn added. “We set up here to wait, just in case. Are you…are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “But I think I know what happened to the kitsen cytonics.”

“What?” Alanik said, stepping up beside me. “What did you feel?”

“A trap,” I whispered. “Alanik…the portals aren’t locked to keep the delvers in. It’s to keep us out. The delvers…I think they did something to these to intentionally draw in cytonics and hold them. Wait a moment.”

“But—”

“Just wait,” I snapped, pressing my hand to the lines again, trying to read the memories to find out when this particular trap had been made.

How long ago had the kitsen cytonics vanished? Before the delvers existed, I thought, though my understanding of the timeline was unclear.

I watched the memories, but they too were vague. Difficult to judge the timing. Many of them were just impressions, while others were expansive visions about the lives of the people living here. Which was great, but didn’t have anything to do with my current questions.

Finally, I was able to piece together that this particular portal had been altered to become a trap during the delver attack that had annihilated the humans who had built Detritus. I caught a faint sense of the delver’s memories as it made the swap. A kind of…troubleshooting sensation? Was that right? As it booby-trapped the portal?

This is a natural phenomenon, I realized. Sometimes these portals develop an oddity that traps minds instead of letting them pass. The delvers learned of this, and made the portals develop the flaw intentionally.

That explained what had happened to Gran-Gran. And it also might explain why the Superiority was forced to rely on so few mining stations. There just weren’t that many portals still unlocked and untrapped.

“I might be able to fix this portal eventually,” I told the others. “Or perhaps Jorgen could do it. But right now it’s booby-trapped, just like the one on Evershore. The delvers altered it to capture cytonics—and stop people from traveling into the nowhere.”

“So…” Arturo said. “No contacting your friends on the other side?”

“Not through this one,” I said. “Fortunately, this means that if we do capture or destroy those supply depots, the Superiority is going to have real trouble getting into the nowhere to bring back acclivity stone.”

Assuming we were willing to go through with it. Though I’d heard from Gran-Gran that many generals considered this important—empathizing with and understanding the enemy—I had no idea how to handle it. Maybe that was what officers were for.

Unfortunately, that made me remember Jorgen. I checked my watch and pulled up my schedule. Scud. “I have a meeting with the admiral,” I said.

“We informed him you were exploring something here,” Arturo said. “He might not be expecting you.”

I gave him a flat look. “You think Jorgen will ignore an appointment?”

Arturo chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose not. Even if you’re in another dimension, he’ll expect punctuality. You should go.”

I nodded, scooping up Doomslug and preparing to hyperjump. Then I paused, looking to my friends—and Alanik—who had watched over me for hours.

“Sorry,” I said to them, “that I’ve been so erratic lately. It’s going to be all right. I’m going to fix this.”

Kimmalyn met my eyes. “You don’t need to do it all, Spin. Can we talk?”

“Later,” I promised. “Right now I’ve got a meeting. Not sure what Jerkface wants—but it’s probably a rundown of the upcoming mission. You know how he is.”

“I know,” she said. “Just remember. I’m here.”

I nodded to her, then hyperjumped straight into Jorgen’s quarters, where the meeting was to take place. Which…probably wasn’t the best idea. I should have gone to the corridor outside and knocked. I really was getting too comfortable with hyperjumping. I wasn’t treating my powers with the solemnity that…

I frowned, cocking my head. The lights were dim in the room, and there was food on the table. Had I interrupted Jorgen at a meal? It was lunchtime, since I’d had an extended stay inside the trap. And…

Candles? Music?

Oh, scud. I turned and surprised Jorgen—who was in uniform, as always, but carrying two cups to the table.

This wasn’t a battle meeting or a debriefing.

This was a date.