Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

“Oh, these creatures are so fascinating,” the kitsen science officer said in Kimmalyn’s ear as she fought for her life against the outrageously large space monster. “Once they have fertilized eggs, they will start moving faster and faster, spending years picking up speed. They’ll expend their energy reserves getting to a sun, then will feed on its energy for decades, accelerating in orbit until they forcibly launch the eggs toward other stars.”

“Fascinating indeed,” Kimmalyn said politely as the fascinating wurm nearly swallowed her ship whole. She dodged down along its body, trying to stay away from that maw.

Flying around it felt so strange—the thing was big enough that she almost felt like she was flying along a landscape. Skimming the top of a narrow space platform that undulated, curving, twisting. And trying to eat her.

How could something so enormous snap at her so quickly? Like a coiled snake floating in space. She still had her haptics off, so she couldn’t feel the crack of those whipping tendrils as they swiped mere meters from her ship, but her mind imagined the sound anyway.

“They can store a ton of energy, as you’d imagine,” the kitsen science officer continued. “Why, some of their eggs—after being launched—have been recorded moving at twenty percent of the speed of light! Remarkable. I wonder how they slow down after hatching. Regardless, they’ve evolved to feed on basically any energy source imaginable.

“Though there are holes in the zoological entry here, I can read between the lines. They can feed on cytonic power as well as anything else. That’s undoubtedly why this one has claimed a spot near the inhibitor station. It’s likely been feeding on the cytonic radiation given off by the slug. Obviously, the Superiority put some kind of protection in place to keep it from getting too close. Likely a shield. Otherwise the worm would have eaten the inhibitor!”

Kimmalyn grunted, pushing into a steep dive, overloading her GravCaps. She’d been maneuvering too much too quickly. G-forces slammed into her, pressing her back and up as she accelerated on overburn, narrowly avoiding three whips of the monster behind her. She began to see red as the blood was pushed into her head.

“Oooooooo!” Praline said. Tests indicated the taynix could withstand far greater g-forces than a human could. Maybe that came from having a body that seemed to be essentially made from dough.

Stars, stars, stars.

“Quirk?” Kauri said. “We’re in position. Should we continue the plan?”

“Yes,” Kimmalyn said, unable to summon the strength to say please. She just kept dodging, trying to stay ahead of the monster.

Until a barrage of weapons fire hit it.

The worm pulled back immediately. The Swims Upstream continued firing, laying into the beast with barrage after barrage of destructor fire. They packed a much larger complement of weapons than Kimmalyn did. And—since they’d spent the last few minutes moving away while she distracted the thing—they were distant enough to avoid immediate danger.

As she’d hoped, it fixated on this much greater feast and began sweeping toward the Swims Upstream. Which was already moving away at a good clip, and continued to boost as it fired. The weapons didn’t do anything to the worm other than feed it, but the distraction worked beautifully.

Kimmalyn was finally able to slow down. She found herself cold and clammy, sweat dripping along the sides of her face.

“Oooo…” Happy said.

“Ooooo,” Kimmalyn agreed, then scanned the proximity monitors. The wurm continued to chase the kitsen ship—but she had another problem to worry about. A group of Superiority fighters had nearly arrived. She didn’t have much time.

Still shaking, Kimmalyn spun her ship in place and boosted back toward the inhibitor station. The triangular installation had no windows, no distinguishing features save for the radio antennas on the top and bottom. As she approached, her sensors picked out a shield protecting it—as expected. Invisible to the eye unless shot at.

Kimmalyn moved in close. “Can you feel the slug in there, guys?” she asked Happy and Praline. The second slug fluted hesitantly. Kimmalyn didn’t know the taynix very well, but that seemed like a good sign.

Praline radiated a little of what was happening. Kimmalyn wasn’t cytonic herself, but she’d noticed that the slugs could project emotions and ideas into the heads of those who weren’t. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to facilitate interstellar communication as effectively as they did.

She thought that, through Praline, she could feel the slug inside the inhibitor. Who was terrified.

“Tell her we want to save her,” Kimmalyn whispered. “Tell her we’re friends.”

The captive slug had difficulty believing that. It had been isolated for so long. It was exhausted and confused. Praline and Happy worked on it, but Kimmalyn kept her attention on the approaching enemy fighters. Scud. Twelve of them. She couldn’t fight twelve on her own.

Worse, those ships had cut her off from her allies—and even cut in between her and the kitsen ship. Like a noose being tightened, they came for her. Her only escape would be backward—toward another group of forces arriving from that direction.

“Beg her to kindly drop her inhibition field,” Kimmalyn said to the slugs. “Explain that we can rescue her if she does. We can teleport her to Detritus.” She imagined caviar, and a safe warm place, dark and protected. She tried to project this to the slug, her anxiety rising as—

Something was pushed into her mind. An emotion. A faint sense of comfort…coming from the inhibitor slug? Followed by a distinct impression. Go.

“Come with us,” Kimmalyn said.

No.

“Why not?” she asked. “We can give you freedom.”

I’m needed.

“What? Why? I don’t understand.”

I’m needed.

“But—”

Go. I stay. Needed.

Scud, the poor thing was wrung out. She could feel its despair, its fatigue, the sickness it felt from being locked in a tiny box for weeks on end. Yet it wouldn’t leave, for reasons Kimmalyn couldn’t understand. The slugs didn’t think like humans, and the images it sent her as explanation were a confusing mess.

It did seem to be willing to give Kimmalyn’s ship an exception to the inhibition field though. “Happy,” she said. “Go.”

“Oooo?”

“We’ll find another way to help them,” she promised.

She checked to make sure the Swims Upstream would be all right—fortunately, the worm had turned back and the kitsen ship was only a short distance from friendly forces now. So Kimmalyn urged Happy again, and in a blip, they hyperjumped away.

The slug knew it would be punished for letting them go. In a painful, perhaps fatal way, once the battle was over. The slug had helped regardless—but it also had refused her aid. Why?

Kimmalyn’s ship appeared right inside of Detritus’s defensive shell. She immediately called Jorgen.

“We have a problem, Jerkface,” she said as soon as he came on the line.

“What?” he asked. “You jumped. Do you have the slug from that inhibitor station?”

“No,” she said. “It refused to come with me.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “It said it was needed. It understood that I wanted to rescue it, but it just wouldn’t go with me.”

Jorgen fell silent.

“What do we do?” she asked him. “I could maybe have forced it to come with me, by having Happy grab it right as we jumped, but I decided against that.”

“You chose correctly, Quirk,” he said. “If you’d violated its trust, I suspect none of the others would ever listen to us. Maybe we can get them to lower their inhibitor fields and allow Detritus to jump forward?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “This one indicated that it would be punished for letting me through. Beyond that, we had to contact it individually. How many slugs would we have to convince to make a hole big enough for Detritus?”

Dozens, maybe hundreds. More than they could manage in the middle of a battle, she was certain.

“I’ll work on a solution,” he said, sounding beleaguered. “For now, call FM and tell her about this. She’ll gather all such experiences, and keep the other flightleaders in the loop. They need to know that this battle somehow just got even harder.”