Evershore (Skyward Flight: Novella 3)

Two days later, we still hadn’t heard a word from Cobb. Alanik tried her best, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find Gran-Gran. They’d simply disappeared, she said.

At this point, I was the only cytonic from Detritus who hadn’t mysteriously disappeared. Spensa was stuck in the nowhere, but she’d at least managed to get in contact with me twice. It had been several days now, and I was anxious to hear from her again.

But from Cobb and Gran-Gran, there was only silence.

I sat at a conference table with Alanik, FM, and Minister Cuna, the dissenter Superiority bureaucrat. Boomslug and Snuggles snuffled around under my chair like they expected someone to have spilled some caviar down there, though the floor was swept twice a day as per Mandate 27 of the Facilities Regulations. Alanik had just returned from ReDawn with half the flight—I’d sent Arturo, Nedd, and Kimmalyn to finish solidifying the alliance.

“Rinakin is prepared to send a flight of ships to Detritus as a symbolic gesture,” Alanik said. “And more, certainly, if there’s a need for them here.”

I struggled to focus on what she was saying. I’d barely been sleeping—every time I closed my eyes, that ship exploded in the darkness. In my dreams, I watched my mother mouth those words at me through the glass: Do better than we did. The ship tore to pieces before my eyes, sometimes while I watched from the platform—sometimes with me still inside it, somehow conscious of everything as it shredded me.

In the very worst nightmares, it was Spensa on the other side of the glass.

“ReDawn is more vulnerable,” I said. “We have the planetary shield to protect us. We should be sending flights to defend you.”

“The taynix will help with that,” FM said.

We’d given Rinakin a single taynix of each type, and we already had people from the ground crews scouring the caverns of Detritus for more. We’d lost many in the trap set by the Superiority, and we were going to need all the hyperdrives we could find in the coming days.

“Do you think Stoff will let us take flights to ReDawn if the Superiority attacks again?” FM asked.

“Maybe,” I said. I’d stayed behind while the others went to ReDawn, because I’d wanted to be here to keep an eye on things until we found Cobb. “He’s been weirdly receptive to my suggestions.”

“Do you think it’s because he agrees with you?” FM asked. “Or because he sees an opportunity to escape blame if all this goes wrong?”

“It’s the second,” I said. Once Stoff got over the idea of me challenging him, he’d become almost too accommodating. If things went well, I fully expected him to take credit for all of it. If we crashed and burned, he was going to pin it all on me. “But I don’t think Cobb is going to reprimand me for trying to protect our people in his absence.”

FM looked concerned. She was still doing that a lot in my direction. She’d mostly stopped trying to corner me to get me to talk, which was good. I didn’t need to talk. I needed to stay focused, move forward. My refusal to let her talk to me also meant we still hadn’t addressed the fight we’d had on ReDawn. Her words still rang in my mind: You’re not my flightleader.

I understood why she’d said that—she’d been rightly worried about the taynix being turned over to the Superiority—but it still stung. We were all trained to follow orders, to do as we were told. How bad must I be at this if a member of my own team—and a friend, I’d thought—could disavow me so easily?

“Winzik will not take the defeat on ReDawn well,” Cuna said. “Detritus might be the more difficult target, but he will only see that as a challenge to his authority. He is probably mobilizing more ships even now. He will gather enough force to break through Detritus’s shield eventually, even with the cytonic inhibitor in place.”

That was true, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t think Stoff did either. “We need to find Cobb,” I said. “He’ll know what to do.”

FM looked doubtful about that, but she didn’t voice it.

“About Cobb and Mrs. Nightshade,” Cuna said. A pin on their collar translated their words, which were spoken in an alien language. “If Mrs. Nightshade merely took them to another room on the Superiority ship, they might still have been caught in the explosion.”

“No,” Alanik said. “I scanned the ship after they left, and there weren’t any cytonics on it except for me and Jorgen.”

“It’s possible they were in an accident returning to the planet,” Cuna said. “If they hyperjumped into a dangerous position, they might have been killed on return. That would explain your inability to find them, would it not?”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “They aren’t dead.”

Alanik and FM exchanged a look.

“We have no evidence that they are dead,” I corrected myself. “We aren’t going to assume that they are without evidence.”

“Stoff isn’t going to hold off on replacing Cobb forever,” FM said. “Even if he thinks he can use you as a scapegoat, at some point they’re going to need to name a new admiral. They’re only taking your word for it that Cobb didn’t die on that ship.”

Alanik looked personally offended. “We are witnesses, so taking our word for it makes perfect sense.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But FM is right. They aren’t going to let this go on forever.” It wouldn’t necessarily be Stoff who took Cobb’s place—there were two other vice admirals of equal rank, though they were both planetside at the moment, trying to deal with the fallout of the Superiority broadcasting the deaths of half the assembly to the citizens of Detritus.

I didn’t think Stoff wanted control of the DDF, or he would have seen Cobb’s absence as an opportunity instead of a burden he was mostly trying to shift to me. “I’m not sure what options we have though,” I said. “Our military is too small and ill-equipped to take on the Superiority once they get their forces mustered. The UrDail pilots are well trained but inexperienced, and the Superiority’s technology outpaces us all. And that’s assuming they don’t try to send another delver after us. Spensa said the Superiority was trying to make a deal with them.”

“We need to continue to reach out and form other alliances,” Cuna said. “There will be many peoples who don’t approve of Winzik’s methods.”

I wasn’t sure that Cuna entirely approved of our methods. They still seemed to find us aggressive and barbaric, even though our tactics had saved them from capture on Sunreach.

“It may be only lesser species in the beginning,” they continued. “But as time goes on, I’m sure the more advanced species will also begin to turn on Winzik.”

“Those lesser species saved your life,” Alanik muttered.

“Twice now,” FM added under her breath.

“Of course!” Cuna said, as if this didn’t contradict what they’d said previously at all. “All species have something wonderful to add to the Superiority—”

“This isn’t the Superiority,” I said. “We’re not trying to join them.” Cuna wanted us to see the Superiority as a diverse group of peoples, and I’m sure they were, given the thousands of planets that were apparently under their control. But. “The Superiority has been killing our people since long before Winzik took over, and we’re not making an alliance with any part of it. Not again.”

Cuna looked like they might argue, but I wasn’t going to hear it. Alanik had been right about the Superiority. My parents had tried to reason with them, and look where that got them.

“Boom,” Boomslug muttered from down by my feet, where he’d curled around the leg of my chair.

I reached for him and scritched him between his spines. He nuzzled his body against my hand.

“Cobb ordered us to find allies though,” I said, before Cuna could make any more defenses of the Superiority. “So if we reach out to others, we’re still following his orders.”

“Technically,” FM said, “he ordered us to make allies of the UrDail.”

“Technically they weren’t orders at all,” Alanik added. “They were not-orders.”

“That’s beside the point,” I insisted. “If we’re making alliances, then we’re doing what Cobb would do. And if our superior officers know we’re doing it, and they don’t order us not to, then we’re still operating within the current chain of command.”

“Do you know anyone we can reach out to with the hypercomm?” FM asked Cuna. “Other species we could make an alliance with?”

Cuna shook their head, laying their hands flat on the conference table. “I have tried to reach my contacts, but some have gone underground. Others might side with Winzik, so I have to be careful whom I reach out to. Your hypercomm does not have the data banks that mine did, and without the coordinates to reach the others—”

“We don’t know their radio frequencies, basically,” I said.

“Precisely,” Cuna said. “I have allies among the figments, if we can reach them.”

“We might be able to do that cytonically,” Alanik said. “Though if we try to reach out to the wrong people, we might set ourselves up to walk into another Superiority trap.”

I nodded. We couldn’t approach other cytonics indiscriminately. “You can monitor hypercommunication though, can’t you?” I asked Alanik. I hadn’t been able to figure out how to do that yet, but Alanik seemed to do it easily. “You could see if you can find any anti-Superiority communication, and we could try to pinpoint the frequencies of the people who are sending them and contact them as potential allies.”

“Most of those who oppose Winzik won’t be using hypercomms,” Cuna said. “The lesser species don’t have access to them, and those who do will be afraid of being overheard.”

Alanik looked like she might punch Cuna if they called her “lesser” one more time.

“If it’s the only idea we have,” FM said, “then it’s still worth a try.”

“I agree,” I said. “And we don’t have to ask Stoff for resources to try it, so that’s even better.” I turned to Alanik. “I’d like to help canvass for hypersignals,” I said. “You’ll have to teach me, but I’ve caught on quicker to the communication skills than hyperjumping.”

“Of course,” Alanik said. “I’d be happy to have your assistance.”

I hoped I would be of assistance, but we were getting desperate, and until we found Gran-Gran I was the only other cytonic we had.

Rig knocked on the doorframe to the conference room. His yellow hyperslug, Drape, peered over his shoulder from his perch in one of the new backpacks Engineering had devised. A boomslug—as everyone had begun calling them, even though technically it was Boomslug’s name—peered over his other shoulder.

“Are you carrying one of those around now?” I asked. That was strange. We’d mostly left the boomslugs alone, except for Boomslug. Everyone else was too worried about triggering the mindblades.

Rig shrugged, and the slugs bobbed along with the gesture. “Boomslug saved my life back on Wandering Leaf, so I thought we should try to keep more of these guys around. For purely experimental purposes, of course. I’m definitely not carrying a slug as a bodyguard.”

I couldn’t blame him if he was.

FM smiled at Rig. The two of them were scudding adorable, which lately made me want to punch things. Spensa’s influence, probably. “He named this one Squeeze.”

Of course. FM had taken glee in naming my hyperslug Snuggles before she assigned her to me. If I hadn’t already bonded with Boomslug, they no doubt would have tried to push Squeeze on me as well.

Cobb would tell me I should have more of a sense of humor about myself. He was usually right.

“Did you need something?” I asked Rig.

“Just wondering if FM was available to run drills with the slugs,” he said. “We’ve got Stardragon Flight ready to practice with the new keywords.”

The other flights had been less than thrilled when FM stole some of their taynix, but she was largely forgiven now that the assembly had lost most of the other taynix to the Superiority. We hadn’t secured enough new slugs to outfit all the flights yet, and any new ones we found in the caverns would have to start their training from scratch.

Which meant I shouldn’t keep them from it. If she was busy, FM had less time to worry in my general direction. “Yeah, we’re done here,” I said. “How is the platform exploration going?”

“The team is still working on it,” Rig said. They were looking for more platform control rooms like the one on Wandering Leaf. It was similar enough to the platforms on Detritus that it seemed likely we might have some with similar capabilities. More platforms that could hyperjump or fire hyperweapons would be a valuable asset. “There is a lot of junk in the debris belt, and a lot of platforms to search.”

“I understand,” I said. “Let me know if you find anything.”

“Will do,” Rig said as FM pushed her chair away from the table and moved to join him. Rig didn’t report to me officially, but we were all in a holding pattern until Cobb returned, so sharing information only made sense.

“Are you ready to look for signals now?” I asked Alanik.

“Yes,” she said. “But not here. These chairs are too square. It’s distracting.”

I didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant, because Alanik had already stood up from her…square chair and marched out of the conference room.

I scooped up Snuggles and Boomslug and followed Alanik, as she seemed to know where she was going. I hoped I’d be able to help. I had to do something, because if I didn’t, the tragedies we’d suffered would only be the beginning.