Evershore (Skyward Flight: Novella 3)

When the battle was over, I hyperjumped with Juno down to the cliff above Dreamspring. The tidal wave had hit the lower city while I’d been gone, and there was considerable flooding, though the upper city remained intact and the water hadn’t reached the cliffs by the library. A few of the buildings had taken damage from falling ships or destructor fire, and bits of wreckage were scattered over the fins and ridges of the city.

“I’m sorry this happened,” I said to Juno.

“So am I,” Juno said. “But my people leave today richer, despite the setbacks.”

“You have your cytonics back,” I said.

“It is more than that,” Juno said. “We are no longer isolated.”

There was still so much to figure out, so much work to do. The ever-present political squabbling would continue on.

But Juno was right. We weren’t alone anymore. We were still fighting for our lives, but at least now we could fight side by side.

I squinted up at Detritus, which hung in the sky like a second moon, a bright sphere of metal and glinting shield. Stars, I didn’t know how long we should leave it here, but I was going to let Cobb make that call. And all the calls from here on out, just as soon as I explained everything to him.

A transport ship hyperjumped into the middle of the road below the cliff face, probably carried by one of the taynix from Platform Prime. I squinted, watching as the ship’s cabin lights illuminated a man in a vice admiral’s uniform.

Stoff climbed out of the ship and moved toward the library. The medtechs were just pulling Cobb and Gran-Gran down the stairs, still on their stretchers. They left Cobb at the top and carried Gran-Gran, who protested loudly all the way down to the transport ship.

“I have to go talk to my superiors,” I said to Juno. “It’s better if you don’t come with me this time.”

“That’s all right, shadow-walker,” Juno said, lifting his book. “I have a great many things to record.”

“Snuggles,” I said, and I urged her to hyperjump us to the roadway beside the ship. When we arrived, I could hear Gran-Gran yelling at the medtechs.

“I can walk!” she said. “I may be old and blind, but I’m not infirm!”

I stepped aside as the medtechs persisted in carrying her to the transport ship. “It’s okay, Gran-Gran,” I said. “No one thinks you’re incapable.”

“They’d better not,” Gran-Gran said. “Or I’ll show them.”

I was sure she would.

Stoff had already made it to Cobb’s side. FM came up next to me—I saw her ship parked up the road now, by Sadie’s.

“Sir,” Stoff said. “We are so thrilled you’re back. We’ve made some great strides in securing alliances with the UrDail and the kitsen.”

“That’s good,” Cobb said. He looked over to me, like he was waiting for me to say something. His face was still bruised, his left eye partially swollen shut.

“It’s true, sir,” I said. “We have made progress.” I knew Stoff was going to take credit for everything now that it had panned out, and I didn’t want to start a war with him. I was too tired from the one we’d just fought. We’d saved lives and made alliances. That was what mattered, not the petty politics of who ordered what.

I glanced at FM, thinking she’d be glad I wasn’t picking this battle.

“Stoff had nothing to do with it,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Stoff said.

Cobb looked over at her.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” she asked.

“I think you’ve already started doing that,” Cobb said, his voice hoarse. “So go on.”

“Stoff had nothing to do with the alliance with the kitsen,” FM said. “He refused to make the call to send the flights to help them. He dumped all the responsibility onto Jorgen so that if it was the wrong choice, Jorgen would take the fall for it.”

Stoff’s mouth fell open.

“Is that true, son?” Cobb asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Though in Stoff’s defense, I did come in swinging.”

FM gave me a sharp look, like she didn’t understand why I was speaking in Stoff’s defense, but it was the truth.

“I told him we were already authorized by you to make alliances,” I continued, “and we weren’t going to hear anything more from the assembly about talking to the Superiority.” I was pretty sure I’d implied we weren’t going to hear anything more from the assembly ever, but that was obviously not a long-term solution.

“Before we knew of your whereabouts,” Stoff said, “we felt it was best to follow your last orders.”

“Who is we?” Cobb asked. “Last I checked, in the absence of the admiral the vice admiral’s job isn’t done by committee.”

Stoff stammered.

“If he hadn’t listened to me,” I said, “we might never have found you and Mrs. Nightshade. I don’t know how long your bodies would have lasted with your spirits in the portal, but I can’t imagine it would have been long.”

Cobb gave me a look that said I wasn’t helping myself, but it was true. Stoff was a coward, but he’d stayed out of my way when it mattered.

“The point is,” FM said, “Jorgen is the one who found Kauri’s transmission, which led us to you on Evershore. He made the call to travel here to find you, and to try to follow your last orders to us and make alliances for Detritus. And when everything went wrong, Jorgen is the one who made the call to pull in more flights, to put Rig and his team on moving the platforms, and to ultimately make the discovery together with them that we could move the planet.”

Cobb looked at me. I couldn’t deny anything she’d said. Those were the facts. “That’s true, sir. Though she did leave out the part where I manifested mindblades in a meeting full of alien politicians. So it wasn’t all good.”

“Yes, well,” Cobb said, “you seem to have overcome that misstep all right.”

“Sir,” Stoff said. “I’m sure you understand that I was only trying to do what was best for the people of Detritus. Clearly you had put your trust in Flightleader Weight, and so I—”

“That’s enough,” Cobb said. “Stoff, take a walk.”

Stoff’s jaw dropped again. “Sir?” he said.

“Take a walk,” Cobb repeated.

Stoff blinked at him, and then he turned around and left.

“It really was a good thing he listened to me,” I said. “If he hadn’t let me make the decisions, we could have lost the whole kitsen planet.”

“That may be,” Cobb said. “But a commander who shuffles off the hard choices is no commander at all.” He looked at me like he was considering something. He bent over for a moment, coughing, and FM and I looked at each other in alarm.

I had no idea what being half-stuck behind that portal had done to Cobb’s body, but he seemed to be weathering it poorly.

“Sir?” I said.

“FM, would you excuse us?” Cobb said when he could speak again.

My heart dropped. Here it was. He was going to chew me out for taking control. The decisions I’d made were far above my pay grade. I shouldn’t have done the things I did, even though they’d saved lives.

Stoff would have painted me as a renegade if things had gone poorly, but that wouldn’t have taken a very broad brush.

FM gave me one worried look, and then she nodded and turned to leave. Cobb sat up in bed, glancing with irritation at the medical devices still strapped to his arm.

“I’m sorry I acted rashly, sir,” I said. “I can brief you on everything, get you up to speed.”

“I heard quite a bit over the radio there at the end,” Cobb said, his voice still strained. He looked up at me like he was struggling to focus. “And that thing you did, speaking directly to everyone’s minds. That’s cytonic, isn’t it? You haven’t manifested some other ungodly power I need to know about?”

“No sir,” I said. “It’s cytonic. How…how long were you listening over the radio? I told them to call in as soon as you were awake—”

“And I told them to keep their mouths shut and let you work,” Cobb said. “It was clear you had things well in hand.”

That…seemed like an overstatement.

“We may not have done everything exactly by the book,” I said, “but we’ve made progress on the alliance, and we have a lot more knowledge of how our own technology functions. I think you’re going to be really pleased about what we have to work with. There were some rough patches, sir, but we pulled through them. And now that you’re back—”

“You’ve taken on an incredible amount of responsibility,” Cobb continued.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I was doing the best I could with the resources I had. And I think my judgment was a little impaired by what happened to my parents—”

“I’m sorry about what happened to them,” Cobb said. “The med team filled me in. They were lost in the explosion?”

“Yes,” I said.

Cobb shook his head. “We disagreed, but they didn’t deserve for it to end like that.”

My eyes started to burn, but I blinked it away.

“None of that changes the incredible work you’ve done here,” Cobb said. “If this is what you do when your judgment is ‘impaired,’ I’d like to see what you do when you’re thinking clearly.”

“I was simply trying to do what I thought you would do if you were here,” I said.

Cobb gave me a look, and I stuttered.

“I may not have predicted that perfectly,” I added.

“In this case, that only seems like a good thing.” He looked up at the clouds and shook his head again. “You have things so well in hand that I’m going to promote you to vice admiral.”

Stars. Vice admiral? That was skipping a lot of ranks. Though I did like the idea of getting to advise Cobb directly, what with everything we’d done and learned since he was replaced by that Superiority plant.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“As soon as that’s taken care of,” Cobb said, coughing again, “I think it’s clear that I’m in no condition to lead, especially when we’re now hopping our entire planet around the galaxy.” He eased himself back on his stretcher, staring up at the sky. “So I’m going to need to relieve myself from duty, until such a time that I’m fit for command.”

I blinked at him, trying to make those words mean something other than what I thought they meant. “Which of the vice admirals do you intend to give operational command to, sir?”

“I know subtlety isn’t your strong point,” Cobb said, “but if you can figure out how to move an entire planet, I think you can answer that question yourself.”

Saints and stars. “You can’t be serious. You have so much more experience—”

“With all of this?” He waved his arm, taking in the kitsen city, the ships above us, Detritus shining in the sky like it had always been there. He winced, holding his side, and then let his arm fall again. “No, Admiral, I would say you and your flight are the only ones with any experience dealing with all of this. Both our military and a coalition of alien races are ready to follow you into battle against a foe so powerful they probably shouldn’t have any hope of survival, much less victory. But they do. They’re chattering about it over the radio, all of us resisting together.”

“I didn’t mean to take control,” I said. “I was only trying to hold out until you returned. I never wanted—”

One corner of Cobb’s mouth turned up. “No,” he said. “The good ones never do.”

I stared at him. “You’re serious.”

“I am. I don’t intend to abandon you. There’s a whole lot of paperwork surrounding the position, and it’ll be good for you to have someone to help keep that out of your way. But clearly you’re best suited to be in strategic command. The Saint knows you’re better suited to it than I am.” Cobb raised an eyebrow at me, and his mustache twitched. “Unless you mean to turn down the promotion.”

He watched me carefully, waiting for my answer.

I looked up at the sky, at the gleaming moon of Evershore and Detritus hanging up there with it. I’d brought us this far on the hope that Cobb would relieve me of the responsibility to pull us through this—if not unscathed, then at least alive. I’d thought there was an end, a point at which I could unload everything that rested on my shoulders.

If I said yes, that might never end. But if I refused, I’d only be shuffling it off to someone else. There was no one besides Cobb that I’d trust to lead us as we faced what was coming. I’d pushed us this far so we could have the benefit of his judgment again.

And if this was what he thought was best, then so be it. “No, sir,” I said. “I’ll accept it.”

“Good.” Cobb put a hand on my arm. “I wish your parents could see what you’ve accomplished. They would be so proud of you.”

Something inside me cracked.

In my time in the Defiant Defense Force, I’d felt lost and inadequate. I’d felt undermined and humiliated in front of both my flightmates and my superiors. I’d made calls no human being should ever have to make, had been both right and wrong about them, and had to live with both. I’d stayed in control through it all, because that was what I had been raised to do.

But at that moment, the veneer of my composure shattered like a damaged canopy. In front of my superior officer—scud, was he still my superior?—I started to cry.

“You’re going to be all right, son,” Cobb said, squeezing my arm. “If you need my help, you can now contact me no matter where I am. Which is a little disturbing, by the way. If you’re going to make a habit of it, find some way to give me warning. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I’ll try, sir,” I said.

Cobb shook his head at me. “You can do what you want with Stoff,” he said. “It’s your decision.”

“I don’t think he should be in command anymore,” I said. “But I don’t want to punish him either. He really could have made things a lot more difficult and gotten a lot more people killed.”

“That seems like a good decision,” Cobb said. “Not your first.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now if you don’t mind,” Cobb said, “I’m going to close my eyes for a minute.”

“Of course, sir,” I said.

“And Jorgen?”

“Yes, sir?”

Cobb sighed. “You’re going to have to stop calling me sir.”