Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

I went straight to bed and slept fitfully, but at least there were no strange nightmares or cytonic visions. Just restless turning around in my bunk, drifting in and out.

I’d been exhausted after that midnight mission, so it was well past midday when I rose. I immediately went for a long PT session. Treadmill, stretching, weights. I’d hoped that the familiar routine, and working my body, would ease my sense of dread and anxiety. But not today. My subconscious mind knew I was trying to distract it, and was having none of that nonsense.

After a shower and food, I dealt with my messages on the wall screen in my rooms and waited for an invitation to that planning meeting Jorgen had mentioned. Always before, I’d just shown up to meetings—Jorgen didn’t always send me a specific invitation, because my attendance was expected. And so, as the time approached, I didn’t know for certain if I had been excluded.

I leaned back in my bunk, scratching Doomslug, who had her own little bed beside mine. She sensed my mood, and didn’t say anything.

Knowing Hesho, he was probably standing guard outside my door. He’d taken to doing that most days; part of his self-imposed duty as the Masked Exile bodyguard. I could have chatted with him, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to be alone.

When you’re in that kind of mood, it’s awkward to have friends who can literally pop inside your head.

Hey, M-Bot said. Something is up with the delvers. They’re growing agitated.

“Are you in danger?” I asked.

Probably. But I’ve been in danger the entire time, so who knows? They’ll destroy me if they can, but they’re obviously afraid of you. Maybe even of me, a little. Wish I knew why.

“I know some of it,” I said, lying in my bunk, staring at the ceiling. “After you sacrificed yourself and let me escape into the lightburst, they tried to…I don’t know. Crush me? Overwhelm me? Shred my soul.

“Combining with Chet, though, showed me something. He was in pain, and my life experience allowed him to overcome it. In turn, I needed an awareness of the nowhere—and the delvers—which he could provide. So when the delvers touched me, they were subjected to pain.”

That pain, M-Bot said. That’s their weakness. They fled into the lightburst to escape the pain of loss, right?

As the delvers had evolved from an AI to a person, they’d been unable to cope with the death of a man they’d loved. They’d sealed away their memories and found refuge where time had no meaning. Where they would never have to grow, never again have to suffer the pain of losing something—or someone—they loved. Where nothing would ever change.

Except when people from the somewhere passed through. Except when cytonics, or slugs, opened pathways to our dimension—where time, space, and change were inevitable parts of life. It hurt them.

“When they tried to destroy me, that required coming in contact with me,” I explained. “That hurt them too much. Because I’m part of the somewhere, I think?”

More than that, I’d guess, M-Bot said. They hid their memories away, but didn’t eliminate them entirely. You knowing their secrets cuts through their layers of protections, and exposes that pain again. When you touched them, you ripped away their masks—so to speak—bringing their memories to the forefront of their awareness again.

Chet leaped at that statement. That is key, he thought.

“So…they could feel my ability to understand what they were. That was painful to them…”

You knew what they were hiding, M-Bot said. They couldn’t pretend when you were there. You forced them to remember, and that memory would hurt them too much to bear. They had to pull back.

“So all we need to do now,” I said, “is find a way to expose the delvers fully to their pain. Remove the barrier they’ve put in place to hold back their memories. If we do that…”

It will destroy them, M-Bot said. Because in the nowhere, nothing changes. If you afflict them with that immense pain, then leave, they’ll never escape it. They’ll be trapped forever. Unable to do anything, except perhaps cease to exist.

Chet, inside my soul, felt sorrow at that. What did I feel? Resignation? I had worked so hard to protect the workers at the supply depots, even though they were on the other side. What did I feel about the delvers?

It was, I decided, too complicated to sort out. Without Chet, I’d have had no qualms. But he gave me a different perspective. “That sounds terrible,” I said.

Yes, but it’s a plan, finally, M-Bot said. Some way, at long last, of dealing with them—maybe permanently. Scud, Spensa. It feels good to have a plan.

“Well, I often have plans,” I said. “That’s not the problem. The problem is that I don’t often give them enough time, or give others a chance to weigh in.”

So…

“So we take it slowly in this instance,” I said. “And don’t try anything until we’ve thought it through and done more research. You think you can sneak in among them and find out if our theory is right? Maybe see if you can spot a way to restore their pain to them?”

Of course. I’m not just a ghost, I’m a stealth ghost. I can do it. I’ll find the answers.

“Good.”

And Spensa? Once we do this—once we find out how to defeat the delvers, and keep the Superiority from destroying Detritus—then…then we get what we want. That’s how it is in the stories, right?

“Yeah,” I lied. “Yeah. That’s what happens in the stories, M-Bot.”

Good, good…he said, his voice fading.

His withdrawal left me alone again, as I’d wanted. But that meant I went back to stewing about the meeting. Should I have gone? What did staying here accomplish? Was waiting for an invitation mature, or petulant?

I found myself reaching out with my senses, not on purpose, just kind of as an extension of my worries—and even my growing loneliness. So I shouldn’t have been surprised by what happened next. Brade appeared in my room, a phantom cytonic projection, her arms folded, her uniform crisp.

Before, I’d been able to hide from her. But the way my soul vibrated—resonating with the delver—had changed that. I didn’t have nearly as much control now.

“Scrud,” Brade said to me. “You have to be so loud? We’re trying to figure out the best way to murder you all.”

“You’re scared,” I snapped back at her. “You didn’t expect us to cut you off from your resources like we did. Now you’re desperate.”

“That was a cute trick,” she admitted.

I climbed out of bed and circled Brade, and she circled me, prowling warriors assessing each other. My hand trembled with the desire to grab the knife strapped to my leg and lunge for her.

It wouldn’t have done any good. The blades we fought with weren’t of steel. And unfortunately, she had proven stronger than I was at that sort of thing, even if I did have a delver powering my soul.

“I did want to say thank you,” Brade finally said.

“For?”

“For pushing Winzik and his generals into a corner,” she said. “They were so determined to fight a slow, wasting war. Now they’ll take the better path. A final grand confrontation. Our own Agincourt or Waterloo.” She strolled around me again. “I should have known, should have seen, what you were from the start. No UrDail would have had your bloodthirst. Your willpower. Don’t tell me you aren’t excited for a final climactic confrontation.”

“I’d rather one that didn’t cost so much,” I said. “Do we need to waste thousands of lives, Brade? When the outcome is inevitable and the Superiority is doomed?”

She stepped closer and studied me for a moment, then answered. “I see,” she said. “You’re getting weak. Losing the thirst. What’s causing this pacifism in you, Spensa?”

“You never talked like this before,” I said, still rounding her. “Back when we trained together, you talked about killing being a terrible thing—you said that you were a weapon trained from birth, kept captive by the Superiority by necessity. You seemed afraid of yourself and what you did. Not thrilled by the prospect of battle.”

She smiled. “Perhaps knowing you awakened something.”

“Or more likely,” I said, “you were playing a role back then. Which is why you went to Winzik so eagerly once you knew what I really was. You know, I actually thought I could get through to you? I thought you were brainwashed.”

“Honest mistake,” Brade said. “Who would have expected a human to be so good at pretending to be what she wasn’t? Remarkable, when you realize there were two of us doing it.”

“So what about this, then?” I said, gesturing to her. “Posturing about the glory of battle. Another false face? Hoping I’ll underestimate you?”

“More like trying to find common ground,” she said, toying with a destructor holster on her hip.

I realized I knew a third Brade, the one I’d spied on from the nowhere. One who prowled like a leopard, watching Winzik with a calculating relaxation.

That seemed to be her true self. Not the cowed captive, not this bloodthirsty warrior. Instead, a crafty manipulator. More companion to Winzik than slave.

Scud, no wonder she’d betrayed me. I hadn’t just been messing with his plans, but hers.

“The battle does intrigue me,” she said. “Do you know how many times our ancestors tried to conquer the galaxy? How long the humans spent proving themselves?”

“Tyrants,” I said. “Exactly like the Superiority.”

“Oh, come on,” Brade said, flopping down on a seat that appeared in the vision as she interacted with it. “You can’t have it both ways, Spensa. Either the battle is glorious and brilliant, or it’s a useless waste of lives. It’s getting tiresome to watch you vacillate.”

I didn’t rise to the gibe. I couldn’t help but see even this as calculated in some way. Yes, I was a little inconsistent—I felt inconsistent—but I was figuring things out. I could love stories of courage and admire the strength of warriors, without wanting to see innocent people dead.

Either way, I would have absolutely no qualms about ramming a knife through Brade’s eye, then twisting. Sometimes you had to feel bad pulling the trigger. Other times, a target presented herself with such utter contemptibility that guilt didn’t enter into the equation. A part of me was grateful to her for making that part easy.

“You want to get this over with?” Brade asked me.

“How?”

“You,” she said, pointing. “Me. Duel, in person, starfighter against starfighter.”

“What would that accomplish?” I asked.

“We’d find out which of us is better.”

“We know who’s better,” I said. “I beat you three out of four times in the delver maze.”

“What, back then?” Brade asked. “When you were trying to pretend you were some half-pacifist alien and I was pretending that I wasn’t so dangerous, so as to not scare the rest of you away? Scrud, that was so annoying.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, and didn’t buy it. Yes, she’d been legitimately frustrated during our sparring. Insubordinate. She hadn’t liked being there in those training sessions. She’d probably hated that assignment.

What reason would she have had to hold back? None. She had every reason to bolster the reputation of human soldiers, and no reason to pull punches. I was the better pilot.

Though a part of me really wanted to find out for certain.

“I’m not going to duel you for pride,” I said.

“Then do it for tactical advantage,” she said. “I’m Winzik’s strongest cytonic; you should see the pathetic collection of half-brained excuses he has otherwise. His people have spent centuries breeding the skill out of themselves, the idiots. Yes, they have the hyperdrives, but this is like refusing to oil your sidearm because you have a rifle.”

An apt metaphor. I wavered.

“If I kill you,” Brade said, “I’m denying your people their strongest weapon. If you kill me, same. Seems like we both have an interest in a good old-fashioned duel.” She narrowed her eyes. “I want it. Do you?”

“Yes,” I whispered, realizing I did. I wanted to slice that smile off her face so badly, then nail it to my wall as a trophy. I’d lost my desire to kill indiscriminately, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still me.

“We meet alone,” Brade said. “Here.”

Coordinates forcibly entered my head, like an arrow pointing the way.

“Day after tomorrow,” she said. “Thirty-six Old Earth hours from now.”

I looked at my clock. “Shouldn’t it be thirty-nine and a half hours instead? Then it would be high noon.”

“How quaint,” Brade said. “I won’t tell my people—Winzik gives me a long leash these days. I can sneak away. You?”

I didn’t respond, but she seemed to read the eagerness in my expression, for she vanished a moment later. I was left feeling uncertain. I’d just gotten us into enormous trouble by running off on my own. But if I could kill Brade—or better, capture her—then we’d be in a much stronger tactical position. I knew how much Winzik relied on her for cytonic interventions. At the very least, I knew I’d be more safe. We wouldn’t have to worry about her popping in and spying on us.

I wavered before making a decision. I needed someone to talk to about this. Fortunately, one of the wisest people I knew was sitting outside my door. Having tea.