Sunreach (Skyward Flight: Novella 1)

When I left the command center, I headed toward the engineering bay to check on the taynix. I’d told Cobb everything I remembered from my conversation with Alanik, but Cobb had interviewed Jorgen separately, so I still didn’t know what Alanik had said in his head. Jeshua hadn’t been in on either of the meetings, which I was sure had angered her.

I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for her. I was furious that Alanik was gone—and with her our only chance to communicate with Cuna and to train Jorgen in more advanced cytonics. Spensa’s grandmother had helped some, but her knowledge was limited.

The National Assembly was so used to ordering people around and having everyone do what they said. I was glad Jorgen had taken me to talk to Alanik—but it highlighted a huge weakness in our government. We didn’t have diplomats. We weren’t used to cooperation. The Assembly wanted to treat this as a political situation, but they were scudding bad at it. We were supposed to be Defiant, but what good did that do us if all we did was defy other people to our own detriment?

I had no way to know what Alanik was going to tell her people—our former allies—about the humans of Detritus, but I guessed it wouldn’t be good.

I stopped short at the end of the corridor that led to the engineering bay. Rig’s metal slug box, based off M-Bot’s supposed hyperdrive, was resting in the middle of the floor.

No one else was in sight, and I guessed that Rig hadn’t left it there. I knelt down and opened it, and found the two yellow taynix inside, snuffling around like they were hungry.

If one of them had hyperjumped, it had brought the box and the other slug along with it. Rig must have missed its disappearance, or he would have gone looking for the box and found it as soon as he opened the door to Engineering.

I didn’t know how much it would help, but at this point any news felt like good news. I dropped one of Rig’s location trackers on the floor, picked up the box of slugs, tucked it under my arm, and opened the doors to the engineering bay.

A couple of people from Rig’s team were working on a hunk of metal and wires that looked like it might have come from one of the platforms. Rig was nowhere in sight.

“Have you seen Rodge?” I asked them.

One of them waved a hand at me. “He’s at the platform controls in Charlie Sector.”

My instinct was to feed the taynix in the box first. But if their hunger made them teleport more, I’d wait a little longer and see if we could catch them in the act.

I carried the box with me to Charlie Sector to find Rig. As I passed a series of exterior windows, I looked up at the platforms above ours. I wasn’t exactly sure how they’d been built originally, but the technology of the people who lived here before us was far more advanced than ours.

Until they’d been destroyed by the delver, each and every one of them wiped out, leaving the planet barren and alone.

I didn’t really understand why humans had chosen to live on Detritus to begin with. I’d been born in the caverns, but the stories we told of other planets spoke of green trees and vast oceans, fertile land to grow food instead of vats hidden away in caverns. The surface of Detritus was a craggy wasteland of debris both natural and mechanical. We’d managed to scrape together enough fertile soil to grow orchards near Alta Base, but I didn’t imagine Detritus had ever been a paradise to live on. It seemed strange to me that people with such superior technology chose this place to call home.

If we did manage to use the taynix to escape Detritus, I wondered where we would go. How would we find a place to go, and if we did, how would we know if we’d be safe? Detritus was inhospitable, but it was also familiar. The idea of living somewhere with an ocean like Old Earth seemed mildly terrifying. How did all that water not consume the land around it?

I looked up at the platforms above, imagining the stars beyond—white lights burning brightly against the black. Some of those would have planets around them, planets we could visit in the blink of an eye with FTL travel. But if the Superiority controlled all of them, would we really be able to escape? Would we be able to run far enough, or would we merely be looking for a better battle position?

Alanik seemed to agree with the basic philosophies of the DDF. She didn’t trust peace, and was afraid that we would accept another set of chains for a false promise of safety, and the National Assembly seemed to be leaning in that direction.

I stood by what I said though. I knew my people. We didn’t trust peace any more than Alanik did. In fact, I was afraid we’d never be willing to set down our weapons. A wasteland could feel more comfortable than a paradise, if that was what you were used to. Though I agreed with the Disputers who yearned for peace, I didn’t know that I would be able to trust it.

I reached Charlie Sector and wove between the long rectangular blocks that held a lot of the machinery keeping the platform running. Power matrixes hummed with life, and a water pump churned, supplying our indoor plumbing. Most of the rest of the devices I couldn’t identify. I found Rig standing at the side of one such block. He’d pulled the paneling off the side, revealing a set of wires and circuit boards beneath. The ground around him was littered with pieces of machinery.

Rig’s boss in the Engineering Corps, a woman with long pale hair—whose name I thought was Ziming—stood to the side, looking over the rubble.

“I’ve got Thadwick picking up your work on the platforms,” she said. “We’re close to getting those gun emplacements working. Do you have anything more on the encryption?”

Rig shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been working on the hyperdrives, so I haven’t had time.”

“We’ll keep at it,” Ziming said. “At least we’re into the shield system now. There are still too many questions to run a test yet, but we’re getting closer. Keep up the good work.”

Ziming strode past me, and I nodded to her. Rig was still looking into the tech behind the panel like it was a difficult problem.

“Rig?” I said.

Rig jumped, and then stared at me wide-eyed. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.”

That was not only a one-word utterance, but the same word twice. Not an auspicious beginning. “I found this in the hall.” I lifted the box for him to see. “So unless you left it there, I’m thinking the slugs teleported it.”

“Oh!” Rig said. “Oh, that’s good. Are they still in there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been most of a day since they’ve eaten, so they’re probably hungry, but I thought I’d leave them that way for a bit so we could see if they’d do it again.”

“That’s great!” Rig said. He rubbed his palms on the pants of his jumpsuit. “Thanks.”

He blinked at me like he wasn’t sure what I was still doing there, and I sighed. I hadn’t trekked all the way out here just to turn around and go back. “Did you hear about what happened with Alanik?”

“I heard she disappeared,” Rig said. He winced. “I guess maybe we should have been more delicate about interrogating a cytonic.”

“I tried to be delicate,” I said. “But I didn’t have the rank to insist others do the same. I got to talk to her a little bit, and I think her people are also being oppressed by the Superiority.” Though evidently the Superiority wasn’t shooting at them. That must be nice.

Rig looked away from me back to the wall he’d been tinkering with. There were a lot of wires in there, and several blocky widgets similar to the ones he’d already removed. Layers and layers of circuits and machinery, extending deep into the unit. I wondered if there was any way to get inside this one, or if it was just a massive block of technology.

I’d meant to catch him at a moment when I could ask him about his work, and this seemed like a good time.

“What was your boss saying?” I asked. “You guys are close to getting the gun platforms working?”

“Not close enough,” Rig said. “The encryption on the gun platforms is a lot heavier than on most of the other platform systems. Which makes sense. If someone is going to hijack your water system, that’s bad. If they hijack your gun emplacements, that can be much worse.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Though I’d rather have working water than working guns.”

“Depends on whether there’s something you need to shoot at in a hurry,” Rig said. “The water will keep you alive in the long term, but it won’t matter if you don’t live through the moment.”

“What did she mean about the shields?” I asked. “It’s something experimental?”

Rig sighed. “Experimental would suggest that we’ve experimented with it. Some of my colleagues managed to hack into the planetary shield system. We’re not entirely sure what a lot of it does, but some of it was clearly intended to turn parts of the debris field into a shield against orbital attacks. But we don’t have a projection of what the shield is supposed to do, let alone confirmation that it would work.”

I smiled. That was a lot of words all in a row. Coherent words, even. This was definitely progress. Maybe he’d never had an issue with me at all. Maybe he was just that socially awkward.

“What are you doing now?” I asked.

“Trying to find the communicator,” Rig said. “We received that communication, which means we must have some kind of hypercomm. If it can receive, it was probably once designed to send as well—so if we can find and examine it, we might be able to make it work.”

“Did you find it?” I asked. “How did you know where to look?”

“I followed the path of the alerts we received in the main system,” he said. He glanced at me self-consciously. “How is probably boring, but the trail led me here. I think the communicator is somewhere in this block, but I don’t know what a lot of this is.” He glanced at the mess around him. “I don’t want to break the thing in case Cuna sends us another transmission, but if we could get it working, we could respond. And that might be the only way for us to get in touch, now that…”

“Now that Alanik was scared away,” I said. “It really wasn’t my fault.”

Rig looked horrified. “I didn’t say that it was! I mean, I didn’t think it. I mean, I’m sure—” He blushed. “I’m sure you did a great job talking to her. Look, I’ll probably be working on this for a while, so you can take the box back to the lab. Or leave it here and I’ll watch it! Either way is fine.”

He turned back to the machinery, unplugging some wires and then pulling out another block and setting it to the side, inspecting what was beneath it.

I set down the box with the slugs in it. I’d thought we were making progress, but now I was being dismissed. “Is there something I can do to help?”

“No!” Rig said. “I mean, you’re supposed to be watching the slugs, right? I wouldn’t want to keep you.”

Yeah, definitely trying to get rid of me. I was getting really sick of wondering what was going on with him. “What’s your problem with me?” I asked.

Rig looked at me, wide-eyed. “I don’t have a problem with you.”

“Really? Because you obviously don’t want me to be here. You barely talk to me, even when we’re supposed to be working together. You seem to like Jorgen just fine, but you won’t even speak to me. What did I do to make you dislike me so much?”

Rig pushed a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. “I don’t dislike you, FM.”

“Then what?” I demanded. I probably should have been more reasonable, but the last person I’d tried to be reasonable with had disappeared into thin air, probably fleeing across the universe to get away. And while I knew she wasn’t fleeing from me personally, it still didn’t feel good.

At least Rig couldn’t hyperjump away.

“No,” Rig said quietly. “I…scud, Spensa didn’t tell you?” He looked at me plaintively, like he was begging me to have any idea what he was talking about. I was starting to have the creeping sensation that I was missing something enormous.

Rig sighed. “I guess she didn’t. I didn’t mean for you to think that I didn’t like you, when the truth is I—”

Oh scud.

Oh SCUD.

I was missing something, something so obvious I clearly should have seen it.

Rig wasn’t afraid of me. He—

“—kind of, um, like you,” he mumbled.

“That— Oh.” My face went hot. I was being as bad as Nedd right now. I did not see this coming. I’d known Nedd was interested in me, of course, and about Jorgen and Spensa, but none of them had acted like this. I normally thought I was pretty good at reading people, but—

“Why would Spensa have told me that?” I asked.

“I asked Spensa to ask you if you were interested,” Rig mumbled. “I thought probably she did, and you weren’t, and neither of you ever wanted to tell me, which was probably for the best. But I guess she never mentioned it at all? She must have been distracted by saving the world and everything. I get it.”

He didn’t sound like he got it. He sounded hurt. “No,” I said. “She never said anything. I had no idea. But…aren’t you interested in Spensa?”

Rig choked. “Spensa? Do I seem like I want to torture myself?”

I would have laughed if I weren’t in a state of shock. Rig and I stared at each other, the longest he’d ever made eye contact with me at one time.

Rig grimaced. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I disliked you. I was embarrassed, that’s all. We don’t ever have to talk about this again, and I’ll try to act less like I hate you and not die of embarrassment, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. My face was still flaming, and Rig was bright red, and I probably should have done us both the favor of preserving what was left of our dignity by walking away. I felt like a complete idiot for confronting him when he’d obviously been trying so hard to avoid it. Nedd had done the same thing to me, and that had become all kinds of awkward the minute it was out in the open.

Except I didn’t want to go. I’d wanted to get to know Rig, and I still did, even if it was awkward. Rig was worth wading through the awkwardness for. “Are you sure I can’t stay and help?” I asked again.

Rig looked at me like I had lost my mind, and maybe I had. “You really want to help?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I want to help you figure out how to answer that message.”

“Of course.” Rig somehow managed to look even more dejected. Obviously that wasn’t the answer he wanted. I wasn’t even sure it was the answer I’d meant to give him.

Between this and my experience with Alanik, I was clearly much worse at dealing with people than I thought I was. “And I’d like to talk to you some more,” I said quickly. “Do you think we can manage to act like human beings while we do that?”

Rig looked a little horrified, but then he smiled tentatively. “Maybe? I mean, if this conversation is any indication, I’d say it’s unlikely.”

I laughed. “Yeah, okay. Do you think we could act like freaks, but not freaks who hate each other?”

“That sounds a little more achievable.” He squinted at the next panel. “If the schematic I looked at is correct—not that I completely understood it, mind you—I think the hypercomm should be somewhere in this block. Want to help me lift this off?”

“Sure,” I said. I stepped around some of the mechanical bits he’d already removed. “I have no idea what any of this is.”

“And I have only vague ideas,” Rig said. “To be honest, it will probably take a lifetime to sort through all the things that make this platform run. Don’t get me wrong—it’s fascinating work. I just wish we were doing it under better circumstances.”

“Don’t we all,” I said. Rig unplugged a couple of cables, and then he lifted half of the panel and I hoisted the other half. Together we lowered it to the ground.

Rig brushed some grease off his hands onto his jumpsuit. “That was really unmanly of me, wasn’t it? Asking you to help me lift that thing. Nedd would have done it one-handed just to show off.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not interested in Nedd,” I said.

Rig looked at me, and there was something so sweet and vulnerable about him that it made me want to reach out and touch him.

I stood frozen to the spot. I’d tried not to think about guys since I’d joined the DDF. Something about all the fighting and dying made dating seem ridiculous, like it had about as much place in flight school as the fancy dresses people wore to parties back home.

But I was thinking about one now, and I didn’t really want to stop.

“Is there someone you are interested in?” Rig asked quietly.

He looked like he was bracing for bad news. I wanted to say yes, but I didn’t want to give him false hope. I liked him, yeah. But could it really go anywhere? What future did any of us have with things the way they were?

Not one we could bank on, that was for certain. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Yeah, okay,” Rig said. “No problem.”

He’d taken that as a rejection, but I wasn’t sure it was.

Rig cleared his throat and turned to look at the machinery behind the panel we’d just removed.

“Oh,” Rig said.

There, amid the wires and circuits and foreign devices, was a box identical to the one Rig had built based on M-Bot’s design.

“That’s how they did it,” Rig said, and I nodded.

We had an FTL communicator.

But it required a taynix to make it work.