Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

I didn’t just hyperjump into Jorgen’s room, like I normally would have. I didn’t even march up to his door and bang on it, like a proper warrior would.

I made an appointment.

With his secretary.

Rikolfr was the same aide Cobb had used, inherited from Ironsides. He seemed to find my newfound rule-following nature as baffling as I did.

“An appointment…” the man said as I stood by the video-comm on the wall of my room. He looked through Jorgen’s schedule, which was written out in this big book instead of computerized. Rikolfr was old-school. “I can do tomorrow morning.”

“No, it needs to be today,” I said. “Is he still in the meeting?”

“He just got out. He has scheduled an hour to decompress and go over his notes.”

“Great, schedule me instead of that,” I said.

“But—”

“It’s fine.”

“Commodore Nightshade,” he said, “I don’t think you quite understand the purpose of appointments.”

“I called ahead,” I snapped. “The rule book says to call ahead. Book the appointment, Rikolfr, or I’ll push you out an airlock.”

He paled.

“I’d put you in a space suit first,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What do you think I am, a monster?”

“Uh…okay,” he said. “I’m sending him a note that you’ll be visiting him in five minutes—and that you wouldn’t accept my insistence that he not be interrupted—”

“Please note that I’m following protocol,” I said. “Write it down.” I growled at him until he did. Stupid man needed to see how difficult this was. I needed him to work with me.

Five minutes later, I appeared in front of Jorgen’s door and pounded on it with a warrior’s fervor. He opened it, tall and intimidating in his admiral’s uniform. And handsome. Why was he so scudding handsome?

He took me in for a moment, then sighed and stepped back, gesturing for me to enter. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Rikolfr was a pill,” I said, stalking in. “He acted like it was some great imposition for me to ask him to do his job.”

“His job,” Jorgen said, “is to make certain I’m not interrupted when I have work to do. There are exceptions for my command staff, however, if there is some emergency…”

I stopped at his table—which was scattered with notes and star charts. Strange, how much paper we had now that we could get it from the other planets. I turned back toward him and took a deep breath. “Rule 48b, subrule 18,” I said. “Officer turns herself in for discipline and demands demotion. I declare that I’m demoted back to lieutenant.”

Jorgen turned toward me, the door to his study sliding closed. He seemed…amused?

“I read the scudding rules,” I said, hands on hips. “And so I’m a lieutenant now. By the book, Jorgen!”

“You read the rules,” he said.

“Yup.”

“On military discipline.”

“Whole thing.”

“And now…”

“Now I’m going to declare myself demoted!” I said.

His smile widened. “Spensa, you can’t declare that.”

“Rule 48b, subrule 18—”

“In the Handbook of Intersectional Discipline,” he said. “Yes. It says that an officer, upon failure or disgrace, can request demotion. As a form of saving face, Spensa. It lets an officer admit they’ve made a tactical error with grave consequences—and is actually there to prevent them from committing suicide, as would occasionally happen in some militaries. At any rate, they can request demotion.”

“Which is what I’m doing.”

He gave me a flat stare.

“In my own way,” I admitted. Then I softened my tone. “Look, I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” he said, walking over to me. “I appreciate it. But you could just apologize.”

“That’s the thing,” I said, then bit my lip.

“You don’t think you did anything wrong, do you?”

“It’s…complicated,” I said. “I broke the rules, sure. But…Jorgen, I would do it again. So maybe it’s best if you just bust me back to LT as a consequence.”

He sighed, settling down in one of the seats around the table. I, after a moment’s hesitation, did likewise.

“Spensa,” he said, “what would that accomplish? No one follows you because of your rank, and I doubt you care about it. I could name you an airman in charge of floor mopping, and it wouldn’t make a difference.”

He…had a point. Plus, in the stories, it was practically a rite of passage for the heroine to repeatedly get kicked out of the military. Never really bothered them. It had only happened to me once that I could recall, so I wasn’t even keeping up.

I put my elbows on the table, looking him in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said softly, “for hurting you. I’m sorry for ignoring your authority. If I were to do it again, I’d talk to you. But…I know I’d go again, if you said no. I’m a terrible soldier, aren’t I?”

“Your passion is what makes you a great soldier, Spensa,” he said. “But is it really that difficult to trust me? To try it my way? Just to see?”

“I read the rules!”

He reached his hand across the table, palm up. I hesitantly put mine on top of it.

“That’s a step forward,” he said. “I appreciate the gesture.”

“I will…listen better. And try things your way.” I sighed. “This was a whole lot more fun when you were my rules-obsessed boyfriend and I could corrupt you. Why’d you have to go and become the guy in charge of everything?”

“I didn’t choose that so much as have it forced upon me…”

“Sure,” I said. “You can just up and decide to be admiral, but if I try to change my rank…” I smiled at him, and got a smile back. “So…” I continued, “can I please go duel Brade to the death in a contest of honor?”

He gave me a long, slow blink. “Who?”

“Brade,” I said, realizing that Jorgen hadn’t been there for most of my experiences with her. “Winzik’s pet human cytonic. I flew with her at Starsight…you saw her once, I think. You saved me when she was trying to capture my soul?”

“Right,” he said. “Short, dark hair? Sneer on her lips?”

“Yup,” I said. “She’s been popping up in my head lately, connecting to me cytonically. She invited me to come try to kill her. Can I go do it, please please please?”

“One of the Superiority’s cytonics has invited you to a duel?” he said. “Spensa, that’s obviously a trap.”

“Hesho and I figured that,” I said. “We’ll scout it out first.”

He squeezed my hand. I thought I could follow his thoughts as various pieces of him warred, each one trying to be victorious and get to explain how terrible this idea was.

“Spensa…”

“I know,” I said with a sigh, leaning back. “I’m way more valuable to our fight than she is to hers. Even if I’m likely to win, the risk isn’t worth the gain. I don’t have the resources to determine if it’s actually a trap or not, and it’s foolish to try. I want to anyway.”

“How do I talk you out of it?” he asked, his voice pained.

“Order me not to, maybe?”

“When has that worked?”

“Today it might,” I said. “I’m trying to be better.”

He squeezed my hand again, then frowned. “Wait. An enemy cytonic has been able to contact you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“We’re inside Detritus’s defenses,” he said. “There’s an inhibition field around the entire planet, fully strengthened now that we know what we’re doing. Without that shield, the enemy wouldn’t have had to spend years fighting through it with bombs to destroy us—they’d have been able to hyperjump the bombs right into our caverns.”

“Yeah, it’s strange,” I said. “Brade says we’re connected somehow. Maybe that’s the reason? I’ve always been able to hyperjump while inside Detritus’s protection. Even before I could understand any kind of passcode or key to allow me.”

“Yes,” he said. “And while Alanik couldn’t hyperjump in originally—that’s why she got shot down trying to fly past the platforms—she managed it later. We are pretty sure that anyone born here automatically has the key, though before we really understood all of this, the defenses were weakening. The enemy was able to pilot their drones via cytonic communication, and influence your father’s mind. Rig says that he’s got the field bolstered, now that we can persuade slugs to power the equipment. But we’re still not a hundred percent sure how it works.”

Huh. Regardless, it seemed I was a weak link. A hole in our defenses.

Jorgen stood up. “Every day, we discover another oddity about this planet. If an enemy cytonic can contact you despite the inhibition field…it’s possible they can figure out how to get ships in here, which would be a disaster. We—”

The door chimed and he paused, then walked over and opened it to reveal Rikolfr, who handed him an envelope.

Oh, sure, I thought. He has no problem interrupting Jorgen’s private time himself.

Jorgen walked back and absently sliced the side of the envelope off with a mindblade—an invisible something he could do with his powers. I’d missed him experimenting with this, and so far I could barely even grasp what he was doing—let alone replicate it. My talents didn’t lie in that direction.

He pulled out a card, then smiled.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s the kitsen formal agreement to our offer of alliance,” he said, “and joint war.” He turned the card over, showing the flowery writing and ink designs. “They told me they’d send it. Apparently on their planet, people like to get them framed.”

Scud. I loved those fuzzy little maniacs. I’d be proud to fight beside them. Only…

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I said, reading Jorgen’s expression.

He nodded, gesturing to the star charts and troop counts scattered on the table. “Winzik is gathering his forces at a place named Evensong. An old platform, repurposed as their communications hub.”

I’d read about this in the data dump. “That’s where they keep their slugs, Jorgen!” I said, rising from the table. “The majority of their taynix, when not being used as hyperdrives, are there. Including all of their communications slugs.”

“The most fortified position in the Superiority,” he agreed.

“Yeah,” I said. Then paused. “We should attack it.”

“What?”

“They’re going to throw everything they have at us, right?” I said. “We can’t let them choose the battleground, Jorgen. The others worried about this earlier—we have two planets to defend, Evershore and ReDawn. Yet there is only one Detritus. Wherever we set up, they’ll hit the other planet, attack the people there as punishment for our rebellion.

“We don’t have the forces to defend both. So we need to go on the offensive. He’s gathering his troops, right? And it will take days for him to organize.” I shrugged. “So we should hit him first. It’s the only thing that gives us a chance.”

“It’s also crazy,” he said.

“Crazy good though,” I said. “Bold and decisive. We have known their big weakness all along—we keep talking about it.”

“That they need to keep their tech centralized to a few locations,” he said. “To prevent their secrets from spreading.”

“A huge chunk of their slugs are at that communications hub,” I said. “If we liberated them…what would happen to the Superiority? We should do it! Now! Tonight!”

“Spensa,” he said, “jumping straight into action is why we’re in this position in the first place. We have to take time to plan.”

“But every hour we wait is another hour they have to gather more forces!” I stepped up to him. “Jorgen, we can break through and rescue those slugs. You can see how panicked the enemy is at not having acclivity stone—imagine if they couldn’t communicate. Scud, what if they couldn’t hyperjump! Or inhibit us! What if we took every slug away from them?”

“They won’t have every slug in the Superiority on that station,” he said. “Only the majority of the commslugs, per our intel, and a large number of the others not currently in service.”

“Yes, but they’re hard on their slugs,” I said. “They wear them out. If we steal their reserves, it would be a huge blow to their battle capacity. They’d have to pull slugs off the shipping routes! They’d lose a ton of mobility.

“Plus, Evensong…it’s their central communications hub. You’ve heard Cuna talk. If we take it, rescue those slugs, the enemy won’t be able to relay information. They’ll have to go into war practically blindfolded. It’s an opportunity any general in history would have salivated over! We have to hit the enemy now, before they get smart and realize their policy of keeping taynix secret—and confined to a few key locations—exposes them to attack!”

He met my eyes. Then he shook his head. “It’s too hasty to commit to right now.”

“But—”

“I’ll raise it with the others,” he promised. “I think this is a good idea, and likely the best course—but I’m not going to authorize an attack tonight. That isn’t how we work. We work as a team, as allies to our friends. That is protocol.”

“To hell with protocol!” I said. “What have those rules ever gotten us? They’re a stupid bunch of things written by people who don’t understand battle, and are too cowardly to go fight in one!”

I immediately knew I’d gone too far.

Jorgen winced as if I’d punched him. In a moment of pain, I realized he probably wished I had. He saw the rules like I saw the stories Gran-Gran told. As a way to make sense of the world, and life, and…

And scud, I was an idiot.

“Jorgen,” I said. “I—”

“We can’t all just make it up as we go, Spensa,” he said, his voice cold. “We can’t all just barrel forward, expecting someone else to pick up the pieces. Some of us need structure. Advice. Rules.”

“I know. I didn’t mean—”

“I will take your proposal to the others,” he said, his voice growing louder. Not shouting me down, more…sterning me down. “I believe it has merit, and I will explain to them why. You need to wait.”

I gritted my teeth. I needed to trust him on this, didn’t I? But what if waiting was wrong?

Should I go duel Brade? That was a decision for me, not for him, right? It would mean doing something while waiting on Jorgen and the—

“Are you thinking,” he said to me, “that because I’m delaying on this plan you literally just dreamed up, you should go back to dueling that woman?”

“…Maybe,” I admitted, resentful of how well he understood me.

“You realize that a duel with her wouldn’t be about piloting skill,” he said. “She’ll betray you.”

“Yes,” I admitted. I’d just outlined the reasons why dueling her would be stupid.

But it was hard to not be moving. Acting.

Maybe that was my problem.

“Spensa,” he said, “I can’t stop you from running off to do whatever you want. I doubt our entire military could hold you. But if you have even an ounce of respect for me—if you legitimately care for me—you will listen. This is it, Spensa. I’m asking you, and commanding you, not to duel this woman. I’m asking you to listen to me for once. Will you do that?”

I trembled, but scud him, he was right. And I did trust him and care for him. “Okay,” I said softly. “I won’t run off, Jorgen. No duel with Brade.”

“And you won’t secretly try to attack the Superiority’s central communications base?” he said. “No going around me to gather troops for an attack?”

“No rush at Evensong,” I promised. “But when you talk to the others, make it clear how many slugs are there. We need to rescue them. It’s our moral duty.”

“I will do so. Thank you.” He seemed far more relaxed, now that I’d promised not to do either of these things.

I left then, ostensibly to respect his planning time. But really because I wasn’t sure I could keep my emotions properly in check. Best to be out of sight in case they exploded.

For better or for worse, though, it was time to listen to Jorgen. Hopefully that wouldn’t cost us the world itself.