Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

Kimmalyn insisted we get Arturo. “Two is a coincidence,” she explained, “but the Saint said three is a party.”

“The Saint threw parties?” I asked, skeptical.

“She was very progressive,” Kimmalyn said. “We need Arturo. Whatever you’re planning, I’ll feel better with three.”

“Fine,” I said, hyperjumping us to his door.

He was in, of course. Arturo hated being left out, and wasn’t nearly so much a stickler as Jorgen. But he insisted we get Alanik.

“She’s not human,” he explained. “She looks at things differently, and will offer a unique perspective. Plus, she won’t be worried about committing conspiritorial insubordination. She’s not part of our military structure.”

I ground my teeth, but the others nodded eagerly. “Fine.”

Alanik answered the door to find all three of us huddled out there, each with a slug in our arms. The alien took it in, then said, “Is this hazing? I’ve read about hazing in some of your human history texts. I’m not interested.”

“It’s not hazing, Alanik,” Arturo promised. “We’re going on a secret mission.”

“One without FM?” she noted. “I presume that Jerkface doesn’t know about it either, then?”

“It’s very secret,” Kimmalyn agreed. “So secret that we’re not telling command. And we’re…kind of ignoring them.”

“Again?” Alanik said. “Is this sort of thing common in your military? Going off on your own, disobeying protocol, avoiding direct command structures?”

“For us?” I said. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“You went off on your own too,” Arturo noted.

“It was important that I did.”

“Well, then you understand,” Kimmalyn said. “No one obeys better than those who obey their own conscience.”

“Very well,” she said. “Let me get dressed. I’ll meet you at the flight deck.”

“Don’t you want to know what the mission is?” I asked.

“Someone will tell me eventually,” Alanik said. “For now, I’m mostly curious to have been invited. I have heard enough of your exploits, Spin, that I will enjoy another opportunity to study them up close.”

Delightful. I wished I’d stopped at Kimmalyn, but too late now. I went to pick up Hesho—who readily agreed to the mission—then hyperjumped us back to collect the others and bring them to the flight deck. By the time we had our preflight checks done, Alanik had arrived. As we hovered up, connecting our ships via our light-lances, I did spot one of the engineers stepping into the chamber—perhaps to check on the noise. The woman took us in, then spun on her heel and closed the door with a clear “above my pay grade” sort of attitude.

I took that as my cue and jumped us to one of the targets that we were set to attack in the morning. A supply depot called Harkil, which the data dump indicated was attached to Surehold. The mining station in the nowhere that my friends now controlled.

We appeared on a planet.

An honest-to-goodness, real planet. With the first rays of this planet’s dawn painting the expanse of plants flowing out beneath our ships in brilliant gold as we zoomed five hundred feet above its surface.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so excited. I was in the middle of a dangerous and unauthorized mission. Plus, I’d technically been on planets before. Detritus was one. Evershore another.

Yet I’d come to love such sights as this. Ground overgrown with weeds and brown sagebrush. A prairie. Scud, it was beautiful.

We swung in low to keep below any radar—though the Superiority had far more modern scanners and would spot us if we got too close, low or not. I’d purposely hyperjumped us a ways out for that very reason. This wasn’t an assault. It was something far more sneaky. Not for the first time, I wished I had M-Bot’s old ship back. This Poco, though excellent—and featuring some newer additions developed using M-Bot’s technology—just couldn’t compete.

Aw, he sent to me. You’re so sweet.

We skimmed the ground, just above the rippling grasses. Yes, it was kind of a snarl—like my hair on mornings after sleeping in M-Bot’s cockpit. And it was mostly brown, as if it didn’t get enough rain here. But none of that mattered. It was real, and that made it wonderful.

I realized, as we flew, that I’d begun to see the landscapes I’d passed in the nowhere as…a little too perfect. Like dioramas. Idealized encapsulations of biomes from the somewhere, sliced off and left floating in an invisible ocean.

Yet here was something incontrovertibly real. And we flew toward the sunrise. A real sunrise.

“Hesho,” I whispered, “am I really seeing this?”

“There are some philosophers who postulate that all experience is illusory,” he replied from his seat. “That we cannot trust what we see, as perception is fed to us via external sources, and cannot be intuited.” He looked to me, then smiled. “I find such philosophies to be non-credible. It is real, Spin. What you experience is yours to cherish. Each sight a gemstone for your personal collection, light crystallized in your mind, made solid and captured to forever cherish.”

Scud. I highly recommend that if you’re going to get a copilot, you pick up a warrior poet. Hesho could make words go on overburn the same way I could push a button and make the ship fly faster.

“All right, Spin,” Arturo said over the general comm. “We’re at one of the supply depots. What is the mission?”

“I thought the goal was to hit them all at once,” Alanik added. “As to not tip off the Superiority to what we’re doing.”

“That’s why we’re doing this stealthily,” I said. “The goal is to minimize casualties on both sides. So we’re going to fly in quietly, free their inhibitor slug in secret, and take command of the installation.”

“But as soon as this depot goes silent, they’ll know something is happening,” Alanik pointed out. “Even if others can’t hyperjump in to rescue this installation, someone will figure out what has happened and reinforce the four other depots. We’ll still jeopardize the other assaults.”

“I’ve got that part in hand,” I promised.

“But—” she began.

“She’s got it in hand, Alanik,” Arturo said. “Spin, what do you need?”

“If I’m right,” I told them, “then this base will use cytonic authorizations, like the one we hit yesterday.”

Cuna had explained this. Most planets and cities were severely limited in how much hypercommunication they could do. It all had to be routed through a central hub, and could be read and analyzed by the government if they wanted.

Military bases, particularly important ones, had their own hyperslugs to instantly identify incoming ships, and to instantly send for reinforcements if needed. After our successful raid the day before, Cuna’s authorization code would never work again.

So I was going to try something else. A moment later, Hesho highlighted an incoming call—cytonic. I captured it, and tried to send back a spoofed signal, indicating we were reinforcements, just in case enemy ships struck here.

Scud, I hoped this worked.

I got back an exceedingly strange response.

Hope.

A sudden elated feeling. An impression of pain, and fear, and hope shining through. I worked to interpret it, and heard a soft, fluting coo from my left. Doomslug, in her sling. Piggybacking on my cytonic impression.

Only then did I put it together. This signal—like all faster-than-light signals in the Superiority—was being facilitated by a commslug. She would be out in this city somewhere, trapped in a tiny box. Forced into submission by punishment of pain, the enclosure preventing her from escaping.

The slugs were incredibly hardy, which worked against them. They could be locked in a box, given food and water on occasion, and would survive. In pain and sorrow.

Doomslug sent a sense of support to the other slug’s mind. I caught some of it: images of caviar and safe caverns. Mushrooms plenty, other slugs for company—but most of all impressions. Safety, warmth, no fear, peace.

We’ll rescue you, I sent to that nameless creature. We’re coming. But this has to be a secret from our enemies. Send them the following lies.

I had her say we were a support squadron of elite soldiers, sent by Winzik to protect this location. I didn’t have the authentication codes, but the slug did, and provided them on my behalf. Scud. The Superiority’s fragility wasn’t just in its restricted control and secrecy around the slugs. They were entirely dependent upon a group of terrified slaves.

We’ll come for you, I promised. Thank you.

In return, the slug sent an impression. I was wrong. She wasn’t in this city—she was in a place with thousands upon thousands of other slugs, all locked up. Imprisoned.

The Superiority’s galactic communications hub. This station didn’t have its own commslug; instead it had a direct line to one kept in the central hub, which it could access at will. The fluting that was projected into my brain was sorrowful.

You can’t save me, it said.

I’ll try, I sent back. Someday.

In response, she sent me an image of four other slugs who were trapped at the supply depot. Two inhibitor slugs, from the looks of them, and two hyperslugs. She sent these images with a plea. Save them instead. This you can do.

I’ll do it, I sent her. And I’ll find you too. Eventually. I promise.

“You’re cleared,” a voice said over the comm, coming from the installation. “Glad to see some support from command, finally. We’ve been requesting it for months. You can land on Pad Three and catch some R&R while I work out barrack assignments.”

“Negative on that R&R,” I said back. “Sorry to pull rank, friend, but we’re here for a very specific purpose. There’s a reason we didn’t warn you we were coming. Keep our arrival quiet from the rest of the installation, and be there—in person with your highest commander—to receive us. Further instructions will be forthcoming then.”

“Oh,” they said. “Um, okay. Right. Uh. Wow. This sounds important.”

I smiled as they cut off the comm. This was the other big weakness of the Superiority. They preached nonaggression religiously, particularly to their lessers and subordinates. Even their military installations were shockingly non-militaristic. And this, as a supply depot, wouldn’t even meet that low bar of discipline.

We could almost certainly win a fight against this group. But Winzik could throw enough of the poor fools at us to be dangerous—so today, we were going to find another way.

“Wait,” Kimmalyn said to our flight, “did I hear that right? They’re going to just let us land?”

“Spin did something,” Alanik said. “I felt it…via cytonics. She tricked them somehow.”

“So far as they think,” I said, “we’re a special ops force sent by Winzik. Keep your helmets on, everyone, and try to look intimidating.” I thought for a moment, then continued. “Alanik, I’m glad you’re with us. Once we land, you take off your helmet; they might know what humans look like, and you’re not one. That might give us another layer of protection. Have them take us to inspect their cytonic inhibitor.”

“Very well,” she said. “Actually…this might work. It’s certainly better than another fight inside a city.”

As she spoke we came into view of the “installation.” A full city, like before. Industrially focused, certainly, but even larger than the one we’d found on Old Earth’s moon. We followed the digital instructions to Pad 3, sweeping down past large fabrication plants and machinery. Staffed, undoubtedly, by thousands of civilians.

We passed restaurants, shopping plazas, schools. It wasn’t that different from Starsight, only it was on a planet—and had more factories than it did office buildings. That made me feel even more worried though, because the majority of the people we passed weren’t diones or another of the Superiority’s ruling species. They were people with a green carapace-like skin. They looked like some mix between reptilian and insectile. Bipedal, with a propensity for thick clothing, and large black eyes on the tops of their heads.

These weren’t the privileged of the Superiority. They were workers who, using the stone sent through their portal, built starfighters. Jorgen, bless him, was planning to blow all of this up with extreme prejudice. Thousands would be killed. I couldn’t even argue that he was wrong. His job was to win this war, and in so doing help everyone in the long run.

I didn’t have to do that though. I could think on a different scale. I slapped my visor down as we landed in the assigned location, then unlocked my assault rifle and slung it on. I slid out of the cockpit and hopped down from the ship, joining the others lining up behind Alanik.

I’d hoped the locals would find us intimidating. But scud, the three workers who waited for us seemed terrified—their insectile fingers clicking as they wiggled them back and forth in obvious agitation. The group of us gathered, all armed with wicked assault rifles, helmets on and visors down, wearing bulky flight suits. Each with a slug in a sling across our backs, something I realized they would find extra intimidating. They didn’t know that taynix provided cytonic powers; they thought the things were deadly poisonous.

I mean, we were still obviously human—except for Alanik and Hesho, who joined us on his hovering platform—if you were familiar with humans. Our visors only covered half our faces. But I suspected to the panicked locals, we just looked alien. And dangerous.

“Who’s in charge here?” Alanik asked.

One of the green-skinned aliens raised a nervous hand.

“Excellent,” she said, striding up. “I am special agent Lock. I need to inspect your cytonic inhibition device.”

“Um…yes, um…sir,” the lead alien said. “But…”

He shied back as she raised her faceplate and narrowed her eyes at him. She had a good glare, and bought into my plan, executing it perfectly. Maybe I’d been a little too hard on her previously. I mean…yeah, I’d obviously been too hard on her. But it wasn’t every day that you learned the person whose place you’d taken had ended up taking your place in turn.

“This way,” the lead alien said.

We filed in behind as he led us and the other workers to a small hovership, more a moving platform than a true vessel. It slid onto one of their streets, and other vehicles made way for it.

“I’m, um, so glad you finally are here,” the alien said. “We think the problem is insubordination on the other side. Either way, we haven’t gotten a shipment from there in two weeks. We’re out of acclivity stone entirely! I had to shut down production yesterday.”

Alanik glanced at me.

“We know about the insurrection on the other side of the portal,” I said. “A group of pirates known as the Broadsiders.”

“Yes!” he said. “They’ve been a scourge there for years. You can fix it?”

“Yes,” Alanik said to my nod. “But first the inhibitor. We are able to tweak it in such a way as to facilitate.”

The aliens flew us down a wide street. Hesho hovered in closer to me, up near my head, watching the streets pass. “I do not like,” he said softly to me while Alanik held the attention of the green aliens, “feeling so small.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him, deliberately not making a wisecrack about his size.

“So many peoples,” he said. “So much variety. We wanted to escape Evershore and join the Superiority. I acted strong in front of the others because it was my life, as I had been trained. But it is difficult to be so small in such a vast universe. Particularly when you no longer rule any of it.”

“Do you miss it?” I asked, broaching a topic I’d been curious about since we returned. “Being emperor?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I had thought I would not. I had thought that I’d be me, always—whether I ruled or not. I was naive, Spensa. I do not feel like myself without the power to command an entire people. But I should not have it. No, I should not. No one should…I see that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think there’s an elegance to a military chain of command.”

“You do?” he said. “You certainly enjoy ignoring it. It seems everyone likes a chain of command so long as it doesn’t restrict them specifically. This is what I learned of myself. I believed in the monarchy—of course I did. Now I miss it, but only because of what I have lost.”

He glanced at me. “This is one truth the Superiority was correct about. They warned us that one person having too much power would lead to a civilization without freedom. Strange, that I should learn this lesson from those who did not follow their own counsel. They few use their precious democracy to oppress the many.”

I nodded, finding his thoughts fascinating. How often did you get to speak to someone who had held so much power, then given it up?

“You’re a hero, Hesho,” I said. “For what you have done.”

“If I were a hero, then I should not so violently miss rule. What is a gift, if given so grudgingly? I doubt…if I had not been lost and thought dead…I would ever have truly given up power. I’d have continued in that half state, playing games.” He sighed, then raised a furry fist to me. “But I am a soldier now. On I will march. We are getting far from our ships. One of us should go back, to be ready for a rescue in case this goes poorly.”

I nodded, and he zipped back the way we had come. My Poco controls had been fixed by his engineers since our raid yesterday. He could easily pilot it alone now with his smaller set of controls.

The rest of us entered a large steel tunnel leading beneath the city. I moved closer to the front of the group, to hear what the leader was saying. “You’ll want both of them, I assume?”

Alanik looked confused. Before she could respond, I said, “Yes. I understand you received another inhibitor recently?”

“Just yesterday,” he said.

The enemy had learned from our assault on the data center—taking out the inhibitors had given us the cytonic advantage. They were beefing up their defenses. Hopefully in general, all around important bases. Because otherwise, if they’d targeted only the supply depots, that meant Winzik knew what we were planning.

I had a moment of worry. Worry led to my soul vibrating—with thoughts of having led my friends to their deaths. But my spiral was interrupted as the lead alien stopped at a door along the large tunnel.

“I hope we did well,” he explained. “The instructions were to put it in the most reinforced, protected place we had. This old mining tunnel seemed perfect.”

“You did well,” Alanik said as he landed the floating platform and had an assistant lead us into the locked room. They opened it, gesturing for us to enter.

I forced my emotions into check, then walked in first.

To find Brade inside.