As the battle progressed, I developed a plan that I hoped would help me escape Brade’s clutches. I just had to find a way to test a specific theory.
For now, I watched specks fly through the air in the hologram. Defiant forces in red, arrayed to face Superiority forces in blue. Starfighters that swarmed the battlefield, falling into dogfights as they tried to secure inhibitor stations. Gunships took shots at them as they flew, as did the gun emplacements on the Defiant, both trying to blast down any fighters that paused too long or focused too much on their dogfighting.
In the background, the two large battleships took up bombarding positions and began to lay into the Defiant—trying to force it to withdraw. Space distances being what they were, the Defiant was able to maneuver despite its enormous size. It still took plenty of hits, but modern capital ships bore fairly powerful shields. The Defiant could likely take a beating for a long period of time.
Unless a synchronized group of fighters activated their IMPs close enough to bring down the shield. So the ships all played a delicate game. Enemy fighters trying to get close, and ours driving them back. Battleships trying to wear down the Defiant’s shield, and the flagship—in turn—trying to anticipate shots and get out of the way.
It was hard to watch it from here, rather than being there in a cockpit myself. I could never do what Jorgen did, leading from afar. It would rip me apart. Though maybe it did the same to him, and he was just strong enough to withstand it. Watching, my insides twisting in knots with worry for my friends, I thought maybe I understood him and what he’d given up to take command.
Brade did it with aplomb. She gave the orders, even going so far as to instruct flights of starfighters. As she did, the glow of the hologram reflecting in her dark brown eyes, I saw her smile in a satisfied way.
“What did we do to you?” I asked. And my body—seated by the wall, handcuffed in place—whispered it to Brade. My eyes seemed a little dead to me, but when I spoke, my lips moved. “Why do you enjoy destroying us so much?”
“I don’t,” she said, glancing toward my body. “You merely stand between me and what I must do.”
“There is no ‘must’ here, Brade,” I said, moving my phantom arms, making my fleshy ones pull against my bonds. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I revise what I said, then. Your people stand between me and what I want to do.” She looked up as the door opened, her hand immediately going to her sidearm. She was jumpy, even with her own people.
That helped prove my theory. Back on Starsight when we’d trained together, I’d taken her standoffishness as a sign she had an attitude problem with those in authority. I saw something deeper now. A distrust of everyone and everything. A person who assumed everyone was potentially plotting against her. This attitude had probably served her well over the years.
I needed to exploit that.
“Why?” I asked Brade. “Why do you want to do this? Why not just walk away?”
“And let your people continue to build power?” she asked, sounding amused. “They’re the only legitimate threat to my rule.”
“But why do you want to rule?”
“Really?” she asked. “You have to ask why? Why did Alexander the Great conquer?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’ve always wanted to ask him.”
Brade hesitated, then looked toward my body.
“It’s true,” I said, standing next to her, Chet silently doubling me. My body spoke the words. “I’ve always wanted to know why Alexander conquered. Was it because he wanted to do what his father couldn’t? Was it to push himself and see how far he could go? Was it simply because it was expected of him, given his training and his heritage? Why?” I shook both of my heads. “Why, Brade? Why do you do this? I’ve spent all of our time together thinking I’ve got you figured out, then constantly realizing I was wrong.”
On the hologram, one of Brade’s defenses successfully drove Defiant ships away from an inhibitor station. The little ships backed off like a swarm of insects, dodging fire from the gunships.
Brade pointed at the Defiant. “Push here,” she said to her officers, noting a position on the hologram. “And here. Move the battleships forward. Force their flagship back so it can’t pressure the stations.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the tenasi officers said.
“They are going to be precious about that carrier,” Brade said softly. “I know it. They’re going to cradle it, protect it. They emblazoned it with the very name of their people, their movement. It will mean everything to them.”
Scud. She was probably right. As long as she was on the defensive, protecting the inhibitor stations, we could control the flow of the battle to an extent. Picking which station to attack, feinting and maneuvering however we wanted. But if she turned aggressor, using her superior numbers to threaten the Defiant, she could take control.
It was a sign, unfortunately, that she did know what she was doing. Brade narrowed her eyes, watching the hologram. Then, oddly, she spoke to me. “Did you grow up with a family, Spensa?” She didn’t look at me, but instead stood with a commanding posture, surveying the battle map.
“I…You’ve met my grandmother.”
“The fireball with the mouth from earlier?” Brade said. “Yes, I thought I saw a resemblance. No parents, then?”
“My mother as well,” I said. “My father was killed by the Superiority when I was a child. He was a starfighter pilot. A budding cytonic.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “I read about that one, I think. They picked him out, you know. Saw that he was skilled, that he had powers, but was untrained.”
“I do know,” I said. “They exploited him. Got him to turn against his own flight, thinking they were enemies.”
“One of Winzik’s more important victories,” Brade said. “He gloated over it several times to me. Your father’s death earned Winzik a promotion.”
I tried to summon anger at that, but I was just getting too scudding practical these days. Who knew if Brade was telling the truth? Perhaps she was simply manipulating me, connecting Winzik to my father.
Besides, Winzik was dead. This wasn’t about him or even Brade. It was about stopping something terrible that had far, far too much momentum. We were the wall standing before it. The shield wall of spearmen, facing down the thundering charge, hoping we weren’t too late to break its force.
“Did they love you?” Brade asked.
“My parents?”
Brade nodded.
“Yes,” I whispered. “They still do.”
“I think mine did, before I was taken from them,” Brade said. “It’s hard to remember. It’s hard to think of things like love and warmth when you’re treated as a monster. When every child you pass on the street cries when they see you. When even those who don’t fear you see you as a tamed beast to be taught tricks.”
“And so…you want revenge?”
“Hardly,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I want justification. If I win this war, Spensa—if I take it all—then it means they were right. About me. About us.”
“And you want them to be?”
“I need them to be,” she said, looking at me at last. “Because if they were right, then it all had a purpose: to channel me toward this singular event. I have to be the monster they named me, the brutal destroyer, otherwise it’s worthless. My whole life. Everything done to me. Everything I suffered.
“I will take this empire as my own, and in so doing fulfill the destiny of our people. And I…I’ll know that it all had a purpose. That what was done to me, it was…it was all right. It was my destiny. I am the monster. And you don’t bargain with a monster, Spensa. You appease it. You slay it. Or you get eaten.”
Her gaze lingered on my body for a moment, then she looked back to her battle, positioning more ships to pressure the Defiant. And finally, at long last, I thought I really had seen into her heart. She’d finally shown me something true about who she was, and why she lived as she did.
It was terrible.
I imagined what I’d have become if I’d been taken from my parents. If my natural inclination toward anger and violence had been bolstered by constant reinforcement, telling me I was a monster. I felt that emotion stoke something within me, a seething frustration at the world for what it had done to me. Demanding a destiny of me that seemed impossible.
I could feel as she must. You want a monster? I’ll give you a monster.
Yes, I understood her.
Now I needed to stop her.
Chet, I thought to the delver. I need you to teleport away my body’s handcuffs.
I can’t do that, he thought back to me. Not with the drugs in our system. That blocked me from even talking to you, in prison. I can’t use any abilities.
That’s not true, I thought to him. The air warped earlier.
I…he thought. I don’t know. I…
All right. Time for some tough love.
Chet, I thought to him. We need to do something, or our friends might die.
But…you said…
I was trying to make you feel better, I told him. But that was wrong of me—because avoiding the problem is what got your people into trouble.
The air began to warp as he worried, his panic growing. I felt bad for using him, but I needed to.
Some of them might die, I said. And it’s going to hurt. We’ll get through it though. Pretending that nobody will ever be in danger is the same as living in the nowhere, pretending loss doesn’t exist.
It got worse. Soon those in the room noticed—particularly as pieces of wall paneling started to vanish. Random chunks being pulled into Chet’s tantrum.
Chet, I said. Look. You’re doing it! It’s working.
What? he said, panic rising in his voice. But…
Teleport away my handcuffs, I thought to him. A piece of them at least.
It doesn’t work that way! he thought. I can’t control it.
You can, I thought to him. We can. Together.
I pressed my mind against his, and let him lean on my expertise—as I’d learned how he saw the world, I let him see how I saw the world. What I’d learned. Control. Precision.
Come on, I thought to him.
Brade cursed and barked for the doctor. She hurried over with another dose of the drug. I stepped closer to my body and felt it pulling me in, seeking to reconnect us.
Chet! I thought. If you’re worried about losing our friends, do something about it instead of hiding!
I…he thought. I can’t…
You can, I told him, hovering closer to my body, feeling my soul fully being pulled in. We can.
I came to a second later, blinking as the doctor loomed over me, syringe already in my neck. The warping continued, and she looked at the air, waving her arms in agitation.
In that moment, I felt my hands go slightly slack. I grabbed the bar behind my back—the railing that I’d been locked to—and pretended nothing had changed. And now that I was in my body, the warping of the air faded. I was cut off from Chet again.
I used my seated posture to hide my hands, and didn’t dare move, lest I reveal what had happened. Instead I looked at Brade—who was again watching the doctor carefully. I was pretty sure, from that look in her eyes, I knew what was in the pouch at her waist. How could she ever be secure under Winzik’s thumb—even if she was secretly pulling the strings—as long as he had the ability to drug her and take away her powers?
Brade was paranoid. She always positioned herself with her back to the wall. Jumped when the door opened, watched her own people with care and even a sense of distrust. She would never let them have a weapon that could be used against her, like this drug. Not unless there was an antidote.
That was what was in her pouch.
As the warping stopped, most of her team returned to their command posts. Brade, however, lingered—watching me. Until at last something demanded her attention. She reluctantly turned to deal with it, and I finally dared to shift my hands and feel at them. Each had a metal cuff around the wrist. But, unnoticed by anyone, the chain between them was missing.
I was free.
