Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

My soul vibrated even further. My friends.

My friends were here.

And they were doomed.

I wasn’t certain why that feeling struck me, but it suddenly seemed overpoweringly potent. I trembled, thinking of the battle to come—and the losses it would inevitably involve.

I gasped, barely noticing as someone grabbed me by the arm.

“Where is the nearest potential command station?” Brade shouted, audible through my haze of pain.

“Meeting rooms across the hall have access!” a soldier replied, pushing open the door out of the docks. “Take your pick.”

“Whichever one is closest,” Brade said. “Get command protocols transferred there, Gavrich. Kio, inform the fleet.” She spun, shaking me by the arm. She pointed at the doctor. “You. Get her doped.”

My friends are here, Chet thought to me. I need to help them. I need my powers!

Wait.

They were my friends. Not his.

Our friends. My friends. He thought the words with force, and the air warped further. We have to help them!

“Should we throw her back into her cell?” one of the soldiers asked, slamming me painfully down on the ground as the doctor stepped up.

“No,” Brade said, backing away, watching that doctor through oddly wary eyes. “We might need the delvers, so I’ll want her handy. Just make sure she’s gagged, restrained, and drugged.”

We can’t get drugged again, I thought in an utter panic. Not again. Not again!

Do something.

Do something.

Do something!

A needle bit my skin. The injection.

I ripped free of my body.

It happened in a blinding moment of pain and confusion. The delver I’d become, the delver that was part of my soul, ejected. Not just Chet, but me too—as both of us were intertwined. We launched free exactly like a pilot from a falling ship.

I watched as the doctor dosed my body, which went limp. I was scudding outside of myself.

Hell. I was a ghost.

“What have we done?” I asked, and noticed—with a chill—that my body on the floor mouthed the words, its eyes open and staring sightlessly.

I don’t know, Chet said, vibrating from within my soul where we’d mixed. I…

I looked down. I…we…had a kind of shape. I was a glowing golden-white form, with another beside me—overlapping me. Chet, the delver, like my double.

The warping of the air, the random uses of my powers…Was this where it had been leading? Had my soul been trying to escape all this time? I managed, with effort, to control some of my panic.

Even without Chet, I had a soul like a delver’s—that was what cytonics were. People who had been mutated over time by radiation coming from the nowhere. We were people who had…whatever quality it was that let an AI exist without circuitry. I wasn’t dead. Like M-Bot and the delvers, I could merely exist outside of a physical housing.

Kind of. I could still feel my body as I lay there. I could hear, as if with my own ears. I wasn’t completely detached from my body, just partially.

Brade eyed my crumpled form on the ground, her hand on the pouch at her side, watching the doctor pull the syringe from my neck. She seemed afraid, legitimately. And why not? That syringe could remove a cytonic’s abilities; she was right to be wary of it.

“Done,” the doctor said, sounding relieved. “She’ll be without her powers for another two spans.”

“Finally,” Brade said. “Come on.”

Two guards grabbed me under the arms, and again I could feel it. When I turned my cytonic body to look at Chet at my side, my physical form twitched in that direction. I wasn’t certain I could move it more than that. I followed—hovering, rather than walking—as they relocated to a room across the hall. A holographic battle map sprang up in the center of the room, displaying the large platform of Evensong, the much smaller observation platform we were on, and that sea of mines I’d seen earlier.

I leaned forward and noticed that I could make out something about those mines. Each had a number above it, along with the readings of…vitals?

Not mines, I realized. It’s a huge web of inhibitor stations. Each with a slug, to keep this region protected from unauthorized hyperjumps.

Indeed, Detritus—marked in holographic blue and hovering even larger than Evensong—had appeared far beyond the edge of this field of inhibitors. It was too distant to blast the stations directly. We’d learned that slugs working together had a multiplicative effect on their powers—so this number of them could cast an enormous bubble, large even on a planetary scale. There would be no chance for Detritus to blow up the inhibitors from the perimeter, at least not without sending in missiles that could easily be shot down in transit.

That was basically all I could pick out of the situation—save for the blips that I guessed were those space worms. Nearby, the guards pulled my body over to the wall and handcuffed me in place to a railing.

“Good, great,” Brade said. “Watch her. Even in chains, she’ll try to escape.”

“She seems really limp,” one of the guards said. “And her eyes are unfocused. Did that drug do something worse to her than usual?”

“She’s faking,” Brade said. “Trying to get us to think she’s insensate. Keep a gun on her.”

“Should we stun her?” the guard asked.

Brade regarded me. Personally, I didn’t mind either way. I doubted it would do anything to my soul.

“Keep close watch,” Brade said. “But no stunning. I might need her able to talk; she’s a bargaining chip in more ways than one.”

As a soul, I glanced again at Chet. He quivered with concern for my friends, and for us. Scud. What…what had we just done? Was there any way to get back into my body? I tried using my powers, and while my mind expanded, I couldn’t hyperjump anything. So I couldn’t say if I was in a better or worse situation than before.

This is bad, Chet thought at me. Isn’t it? He was looking at the battlefield, and the viewscreen.

Too early to tell, I thought, though that latent fear lurked inside of me. The worry that this was the end, the final confrontation. Either we defeated Brade’s forces now, seizing her slugs here and permanently hamstringing her ability to rule…

Or we fell.

A set of holographic heads appeared at the perimeter of the central hologram. Mostly diones, but some tenasi, a couple of avian heklo, one varvax.

“Captains,” Brade said to the people arrayed before her, “I have instituted our contingency plan and have formally taken control of our military, following the disposal of our puppet. He was about to undermine our military operations, and I couldn’t allow him to continue.”

“Good riddance,” said one of the diones. “What are your orders, sir? I think we’ve been invaded.”

Ah, I thought. These are the captains of the fleet she has assembled here, beyond Evensong.

“It’s not the ideal moment,” Brade said, “as Winzik’s slow gathering of our forces this past week means we’re without immediate reinforcements. I’ve sent orders, and hope to have access to more ships soon. Still, our fleet is much, much larger than theirs. We should be able to win this. Just don’t get close to that battle station planet. They have long-range anti-ship cannons, not to mention a shield network that can withstand bombardment.”

“Understood,” one of the captains said. “So we make them come to us?”

“The victor of a battlefield,” Brade responded, “is often the one who can best use the terrain to her advantage. They’re going to have to send in fighters to try to bring down our inhibitor stations—which gives us the advantage. Follow my directions. I’ll show you what a human tactician can do, as long promised.”

The group of them gave affirmatives as some flustered aides hurried into the room, setting up to help Brade run the battlefield. I circled her, and she didn’t seem to be able to see me—so I scoped out the battlefield hologram.

Brade was right. Her side had a far superior position and a much larger fighting force. We might be able to match them for starfighters, but they had all those gunships, carriers, and battleships. A true fleet.

Chet quivered further. But, I told him forcibly, we had our own advantage. Primarily, we had Detritus, which was enormous and highly defended, with awesome firepower. Brade was right; my friends were going to have to fly in to bring down the inhibitor stations one at a time. Destroy enough of them, and it would let Detritus approach.

It was a path to victory. If Detritus could draw close enough to Evensong to bombard it, we’d be able to…well, we’d be able to destroy all the enemy slugs. My stomach churned at that thought. I wasn’t certain Jorgen would authorize so much death, but Brade didn’t know that.

If Detritus could get close, the Superiority would have essentially lost the battle.

Impossible, Chet thought. It’s too difficult.

He had a point. This was a tenuous path to victory for my side. I’d advocated for our forces to come here, but now I saw how dangerous the assault would be. My friends would have to fly inside an enemy inhibitor field. Brade’s forces would have cytonic capabilities, and we would not. No jumping away if our ships got hit. I doubted many of the enemy starfighters would have hyperslugs—those were normally reserved for larger ships. But still, we’d be at a huge disadvantage.

There is a way out, Chet thought to me.

What? I asked, eager for anything that could help our side win.

Instead, he showed me something. The nowhere. With a wave of his arm, it seemed to be there, a tunnel into oblivion. A place where no time passed. In there, he and I could infinitely delay the arrival of the battle. We would never have to watch our friends die, because death—and time, place, and self—would stop existing.

It was seductive. A part of me was horrified I would view it that way—particularly after how far I’d come, and everything I’d done. Another part was mesmerized. I’d spent so long learning about the delvers, and I’d thought I understood what they’d been through.

But in that moment, I could feel it. The desire to escape and run away with Chet. It was like what I’d felt when living with the Broadsiders, but magnified a hundredfold. Because I knew, the moment I took this step, everything would stop mattering. There would be no guilt, because guilt simply wouldn’t exist.

Step through there, and I’d never feel pain again. Just the joy of being part of something that was perfect and unchanging.

They were in there too. The other delvers. Watching. Lurking. Waiting. If I joined them, would they leave my people alone? Was that the sacrifice I needed to make?

Spensa? M-Bot’s voice said in my mind. That brought me back to awareness in a heartbeat, and Chet’s tunnel to the nowhere collapsed. Spensa, are you there?

M-Bot? I sent him. And my voice had two tones to it. Mine and Chet’s. M-Bot, yes. I’m here, at Evensong.

Thank Turing! M-Bot said. Spensa, I managed to talk to Jorgen! And he talked back! I’m learning so much, growing so much. He was already planning to attack Evensong per your plan. When I told him I’d sensed you, he moved up the attack. Everyone is here! We’ve come to save you.

It was a rescue operation. They’d brought the entire scudding planet…to get me.

Scud. Chet trembled even more.

M-Bot, I sent to him, I’m worried about the delvers. Brade is keeping them in reserve, but she thinks she can mobilize them to join this battle if needed. We have to do something about that.

I…M-Bot said. I still don’t know how to use their weakness against them, Spensa. I’ve been focused on learning to use my powers, to talk to Jorgen and you.

We don’t have much time, I said to him. We have to be ready, you and I, to stop them if they join the battle.

“The enemy has sent a communications request, sir,” one of the varvax aides said to Brade in the somewhere. “And…something’s changing about the battle station planet.”

I turned toward the hologram, where Detritus began to transform—the platforms that protected the planet pulling back to make a hole leading toward the surface. Something flew out through that hole, small by comparison to the planet, but large on the scale of ships. A long, wicked-looking ship with sleek fins. A carrier?

We had a flagship now?

The shipyards that Rig was working on, I thought. He said he’d found a partially finished project in them…

The viewscreen changed to a shot of the imposing ship emerging from within Detritus’s ring of protections. A brilliant, wonderful sight—a carrier ship with bays for fighters, aglow with flashing lights. Emblazoned along the side, in enormous white letters—written in English—was a single word.

Defiant. The name of the ship that had carried us to Detritus all those years ago.

Another visual winked into existence: a shot of the Defiant’s bridge as Brade accepted the communication. There, seated in a captain’s chair, was an old woman wearing a crisp white uniform. Milky-white eyes. A small figure, yet somehow still strong. Gran-Gran?

She stood up, holding on to the armrests of the chair. “Superiority forces,” she said in a firm voice, “I am Captain Rebecca Nightshade of the starship Defiant. Eighty years ago, you drew my people into your war. You obliterated the ship we called home, stole our heritage, and tried to annihilate us.

“As the last living member of the original Defiant’s crew, I’ve been granted my rightful commission as commander of this new vessel. I am of Clan Motorskaps, the people of the engines. You picked a fight with us that we did not want, but then you foolishly failed to exterminate us. And so, we are back. I am back. The blood of my ancestors demands that I seek vengeance upon you.

“This is your only warning. Return to us the captives you’ve taken. Turn away from your path of tyranny. Or I will see each and every ship that raises arms against us burned to slag, and your ashes will be abandoned to drift in the eternal expanse of darkness. Forever frozen, without home or memorial, lamented by your kin, never again to hear the voices or feel the touch of those you have loved. I swear it by the stars, the Saints, and the souls of a thousand warriors who have come before me. I will have your blood.”

The room fell still, the Superiority soldiers and aides all staring at her, slack-jawed.

“Oh, Gran-Gran,” I whispered. “That was beautiful.”