Evershore (Skyward Flight: Novella 3)

Rig and the engineers started working on where to put the slugs. We’d only need a few to move our platforms, but I wasn’t going to complain about having access to extras. Meanwhile, I reached toward Evershore to contact Alanik.

Report? I asked her.

We’re managing, Alanik said. But there were a lot of ships in that last carrier. I don’t think we can handle another without reinforcements. Will Rig be able to move the platforms?

We’ve summoned help, I said, watching the slugs writhing about in the control rooms. But it’s going to take some time. I can send over another few flights, but I’m worried that the enemy is going to keep coming. Do you think Rinakin would send some of your people to help?

I can make a case for it, Alanik said. It would be best if I went in person.

Ask Arturo if he can spare you, I said. I’ll send in reinforcements as soon as I can.

Will do, Alanik said.

Help! a voice said. It came from near Alanik, somewhere on Evershore—the voices I’d heard before. Help!

I didn’t have time to help voices I didn’t know. Enough corporeal people were in danger.

We know, the voices said. We want to help!

Who are you? I asked, but the voices faded again.

I didn’t have time to figure out where they was coming from. Gran-Gran had heard voices calling for help before she’d had what appeared to be a hyperjumping accident. I still couldn’t rule out a Superiority trap, so I needed to focus on the help I knew I could trust.

I used my radio to put in a call to Command, asking them to get another three flights in the air. They agreed immediately—apparently Stoff hadn’t rethought the length of the rope he’d given me to hang myself with. The other flights had all been put on alert, so it wouldn’t take long for them to get in their ships, but I couldn’t return to Evershore without them.

While I was still here—

“Rig,” I said. “I don’t want to scare you, but I’m going to try something.”

Rig poked his head out of the command room. “Something more scary than dumping hundreds of unknown taynix at our feet?”

“Potentially,” I said. “Or maybe nothing will happen. I don’t know.”

“So either you’re going to scare me or nothing will happen.”

“Right,” I said. “You can keep working. I just wanted to warn you.”

“About potentially nothing.”

Stars, I shouldn’t have said anything. It would have taken less time. “Exactly. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Rig gave me a very confused look and went back to examining the taynix boxes. I closed my eyes and focused on the now-overwhelming cytonic resonance all around me. The times I’d felt the strange ridges, I’d been listening to the nowhere the way Gran-Gran taught me.

“Can I assist you, shadow-walker?” Juno asked.

It was only then that I realized that Juno hadn’t remarked on the sudden arrival of a horde of gastropods, most of them bigger than he was. He didn’t seem shocked by much of anything, taking it all in quietly through that eye slit in his armor.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying that advanced thing you said wasn’t wise.”

“You’ve done a great many things I thought were unwise,” Juno said. “But it seems to be working for you so far.”

I hoped the trend continued. I focused on the vibrations. I located Boomslug and Snuggles, and they seemed to sense that I was reaching for them, because they returned to my shoulders. They each had their own type of hum that was distinct, the way every human has a slightly different voice. It was almost like FM’s music, harmonious in its own subtle way.

I stretched my mind, trying to push past the vibrations, and searched for those ridges again, the ones that were so still and quiet. I gripped the edge of the bench in frustration—I’d done it when I wasn’t meaning to. I should be able to do it on purpose.

I remembered what Alanik had told me back on ReDawn. Try, Jorgen, she’d said. Stop focusing so much on what you aren’t able to do, and try.

“Hey, Juno?” I said. “Can you read me one of those meditations again?”

“Of course,” Juno said. “Breathe in, breathe out…”

I did that all day, every day of my life, but this time I tried to really focus on it. I tried to let go of everything I wished I could do, all the ways I could solve our problems if I were only better, stronger, smarter.

Do better than we did, my mother said.

For the moment I tried to let go of whether I could. I listened to the slugs, to their vibrations, to their hums.

“See yourself walking along a beach,” Juno said. “With each breath, the waves wash in, and the waves wash out.”

I tried to hear the ocean, to really be there, be present and let go of the frustration of everything I couldn’t yet do.

In order to achieve control, Juno had said, you must first accept that you have none.

I have none, I told myself. And for the first time, instead of terror and frustration accompanying that thought, I felt relief.

“Feel the wind on your skin,” Juno said. “The heat of the sun as it burns down from above.”

“Above!” Snuggles said.

And then, all at once, the ridges appeared around me. Not nearly so many as I’d felt down beneath the surface. Only half a dozen moving about the platform. Minds, so quiet but no less real. I approached the one in the room nearest me and listened. This mind was working through a complex calculation, trying to figure out which of the wires from the taynix boxes went into which of the many holoprojectors labeled along the wall. Why couldn’t someone have labeled these effectively? they were thinking. Did the labels disintegrate maybe? Surely they had to have—

Rig? I asked.

The thought stuttered to a stop.

Jorgen? Rig said. Are you inside my mind?

Apparently, I said.

Okay, yeah, Rig said. This is deeply terrifying. He paused. Is this what it’s like for you and Alanik all the time?

I laughed and let the link drop. Rig appeared in the doorway. “Jorgen,” he said. “What the scud did you do?”

“I think I did something really advanced,” I said. “Something Juno didn’t think I should try.”

“Hmph,” Juno said. “I never said you shouldn’t do it. I only said I thought there were better exercises to try first.”

This one, though, seemed like it could be an asset at the moment.

I radioed Command. “How are those flights coming?”

“They’re in the air,” the Command staffer replied. “Working on the light-lance connections before they give the go-ahead to hyperjump.”

“Excellent.”

I closed my eyes again, trying to see if I could still find the ridges. They were faint but they were there, easier to recall now that I’d brought them up once.

Help! A faint whisper, calling to me through the nowhere. Help us, the voices said again. We want to help.

I sighed. I had no idea where those voices were coming from, much less if I should respond—

Listen, boy, another voice said.

Scud. That was—Gran-Gran?

She didn’t answer, but an image formed in my mind, clear as anything.

A picture of the portal in the library, the strange wall with the lines, the gateway into the nowhere.

Gran-Gran, I said. What happened when you appeared near the portal? Where are you?

She didn’t—or couldn’t—answer.

“Jerkface,” Steadman from Command said over my radio. “The flights are ready for hyperjump.”

“Good,” I said. Rig, how much longer do you think it will take you to figure out if we can move the platforms?

We’re going to need time, Rig said. I can’t tell you how much, but I can keep you posted.

And he could do it without a hypercomm now.

Okay, I said. I’ll check in.

I put a hand on Juno’s platform, and instructed Snuggles to take us to the beach on Evershore near the wreckage of my starfighter. We passed beneath the eyes, and then the sand of Evershore formed beneath my feet, the roaring of the ocean loud in my ears.

I reached toward Platform Prime, finding the taynix belonging to those flights. Corgi was among them, I thought, though I couldn’t remember the rest of their names. FM would know. She knew them all.

I gave the taynix a clear image of Snuggles. And a moment later three flights of ships—light-lanced together in three distinct groups—appeared over the sand, some of them extending out over the waves.

“Amphi,” I said over my radio, “I brought backup.”

“Platforms?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Three flights of ships. Can you get them up to speed?”

“Copy, Jerkface,” Arturo said.

My proximity sensors had been busted when the cytonic slashed their mindblades through my dash. I looked up at the dark sky, trying to read what was going on with the battle.

Scud, there were a lot of ships up there. Our side seemed to be holding their own, but we needed the backup badly.

Alanik, I said, status?

Rinakin is sending ships to support us. He says the kitsen alliance is worth the risk. I told him you were going to bring platforms from Detritus. Did I lie to him?

Rig is working on it, I said. Can you come support Arturo?

I’m on my way, Alanik said. I’ll come back for the flights after they’ve had a few minutes to prepare.

Good, I said. Keep me updated.

“Should we have brought you a new ship?” Juno asked.

“I’ll get one later,” I said. “Right now I need to have a look at that portal in your library.”