I STARED STRAIGHT ahead, trying to make sense of it. One of the humans I hadn’t met yet scratched his head. “I’m not the smartest guy around,” he said, “but that sounded a lot like a vote in support of the Superiority.” I recognized his voice from the radio—this was Nedder, who flew with Arturo.
“They got to him somehow,” I said. They must have threatened him. Bribery would never work on Rinakin. He was too principled for that. But everyone had something they were afraid of. Everyone had something they weren’t willing to sacrifice.
I didn’t know what that thing would be for me, and I hoped I never had to find out.
“My father would never capitulate to the Superiority,” Inin said.
“That’s true,” I said, mostly for the benefit of the humans. Because it was true. Rinakin believed in debate, in discussion, in continuing to advocate and work with Unity. He believed in persuading people to see reason, but he always stayed true to his principles. There was no way he’d flipped sides in a matter of hours. And even if he had, he would never have called me out like that.
He sent me away. He told me to get help. He wouldn’t do that and then announce to the entire planet that I was a fugitive.
“That was his voice though,” I said. “They might have told him they’d captured his family, threatened to torture them.”
Gilaf squirmed, and I saw several of the other Independence pilots looking at me in alarm. The idea that Unity might torture someone seemed too violent, too aggressive, even for them.
But given that Quilan had just tried to kill me, I wasn’t feeling so charitable.
“It’s possible,” Inin said. “In that case, we need to rescue him.” She looked at Jorgen. “You saved us. Are you willing to help us with this as well?”
“Rinakin sent me to the humans to begin with,” I told Inin. “This alliance was his idea.” This last operation hadn’t gone as well as we would have liked, but we had more fighters now and there was still hope.
“We did come to help,” Jorgen said, and I could practically hear him sorting through his orders, trying to figure out what he was authorized to do. “It’s obviously terrible that your leader is being used against your movement.”
“But,” Arturo said, “we don’t know that he’s being threatened, do we? How do we know that he hasn’t changed his mind?”
Inin’s eyes narrowed, but I spoke before she could. “He hasn’t. He wouldn’t.”
Arturo and Jorgen exchanged a glance.
These humans didn’t know Rinakin at all. They didn’t know me well enough to trust my judgment on this, and they knew the rest of my people even less. In their position, I’d doubt me too.
“We need to think this through before we do anything,” Arturo continued.
“Yeah,” Nedder said, “wouldn’t want to defect on bad information or anything.”
“We didn’t defect,” Jorgen said. “We were ordered to go.”
“We were specifically not ordered to go,” FM said. “Remember?”
“Cobb phrased it that way because he had to,” Jorgen said. “They were still orders, even if they were… not-orders. That means it wasn’t defection. Right?” He looked around at the others for confirmation, and they all stared at him.
“Bless your stars,” Kimmalyn said.
Jorgen swore.
The girl with the blue hair—Sentry, I’d guessed based on the process of elimination—stepped up to me. “We haven’t met,” she said. “I’m Sadie. And that’s Nedd.”
Nedd. At least that would be easy to remember.
Sadie indicated the two men leaning against one of the ships. “And that’s T-Stall and Catnip. Their real names are Trey and Corbin, but no one calls them that. They just go by their callsigns.”
I had no idea which one was T-Stall and which one was Catnip, but I didn’t ask.
“This is my brother, Gilaf,” I said. “And Rinakin’s daughter, Inin.” I didn’t know the names of everyone else, and no one seemed to feel that this was the time to require the humans to remember them all.
I turned to Gilaf. I needed to convince the humans to mount an offensive against Unity from here, and that would be easier to do without the rest of my people standing here listening. “We’re going to need to map the facilities here,” I said. “Figure out what we’re working with. Can you take the pilots and try to find somewhere safe for Rinakin’s family and the others to rest?”
Gilaf glanced at Inin’s pregnant belly, and Inin glared at him. She plainly disliked being treated like a baby simply because she was carrying one.
“I’m fine,” Inin said. “But it does seem wise to make sure we’re safe here. Your captain is injured, and will need someplace to rest.”
That was right. I stepped up to the exposed interior of the Superiority ship. Several civilians sat inside, along with the Independence captain, who lay on the floor with a medic attending to a wound in his leg.
“Does he need further aid?” I asked. I could hyperjump him to a hospital if it came to that, but if it wasn’t necessary I didn’t want to risk it.
“We can manage here,” the medic said. “Though he’ll need time before he can return to duty.”
“All right,” Gilaf said. He turned to Jorgen. “Thank you for coming to our aid. Though that thing you did, moving us from place to place—are you all cytonics?”
Jorgen looked alarmed, like he wasn’t sure if he should give up their secrets. The humans had all left their slugs in their ships, and I didn’t want to anger them, but knowing what assets we had on our side would only inspire my people. “They have hyperdrives in their ships,” I told Gilaf.
“Shake the branches,” Gilaf said, and I heard more murmurs of shock and relief from the other pilots. “We look forward to our alliance.” He moved into the ship, helping the medic lift their captain, and together the group of pilots moved through the vestibule that led deeper into the platform. Inin and the other civilians followed them.
I hoped the area wasn’t too dangerous, and that any scavengers were long gone. But Gilaf and the others had training. They could handle themselves and protect the others.
I turned to Jorgen and the other humans. We’d come a long way, and I needed to convince them to stick with me a little longer.
“What do we do now?” Jorgen asked. “We don’t know if your friend Rinakin wants to be rescued. And these people… are they the only UrDail we can expect to be on our side?”
“Rinakin is on our side,” I said.
“Yes,” Jorgen said. “But he’s speaking publicly against you, and he’s only one person.”
Lots of people would listen to Rinakin, which made him one very important person. But given what we’d just heard, that worked against us at the moment.
“You’re a fugitive,” Jorgen said. “And now we’re fugitives for helping you.”
“We’re not going to escape court-martial if we go home,” Sadie said. “Are we?”
“Jorgen might,” Kimmalyn said. “Is your mom really going to put you in prison for defection?”
“Maybe,” Jorgen said. “But it doesn’t make me feel any better knowing they’re willing to do that to the rest of you. Scud. What do we do?”
“You could call Cobb,” FM said. “See what he wants us to do.”
Jorgen shook his head. “Cobb said he’d be in touch, but I can’t call him. He’s trying to maintain the illusion that he had nothing to do with our departure, so my parents don’t shut him out of the loop entirely.”
“Can they do that?” Kimmalyn asked.
“Maybe,” Jorgen said. “There aren’t a lot of specific codes on the books for how intergalactic diplomacy should be handled, which gives them some leeway.”
“Diplomacy is a mistake,” I said. “You’re no better off there than you are here, not as long as your government is considering capitulation.”
“If both our governments are moving in the same direction, what are we going to do about it?” Jorgen asked. “We’re pilots. We don’t have control over things like that.”
“There are plenty of people on ReDawn who will do the right thing when they can see it clearly,” I said. “But they’re being deceived. Unity talks like we can all get along, but we can’t do that with people who want to oppress us.” I looked around at the others, gauging their reactions. I was in a precarious position here. If they decided not to help me, the other pilots and I would be in it alone.
The humans all looked at each other. They seemed resigned, which in this case was a good thing. I just needed to give them a reason to believe there was hope.
“Rescuing Rinakin will make a difference,” I said. “He’s beloved by many of my people. If Unity is threatening him and we get him to safety, then he can speak the truth, tell people what Unity is really up to. They’ve taken over the military, captured our people. If people hear that news from Rinakin’s mouth, more of them will turn to our cause.”
Jorgen sighed. “Okay. We’re committed. Let’s make the best of it.” He looked up through the skylight at the giant autoturret, which had stopped firing. Through the negative realm, I could feel Quilan moving farther away. “What exactly is this platform doing here?”
“It was a battle platform,” I said. “Abandoned after the second war, centuries ago. I think it used to move through the miasma at will, but now it simply drifts.”
“We should take a look around,” Jorgen said. “The platforms on Detritus are similar, and they have all kinds of capabilities besides the autofire. Maybe it will have a shield we could get working, or something else that might help us rescue Rinakin.” Jorgen turned to me. “Is there a reason you don’t hyperjump in and pull him up here? Is it because you don’t know where he is?”
“If he keeps broadcasting, it will be easy enough to triangulate his location,” I said. “But some of the Unity cytonics have the ability to inhibit, so they won’t leave Rinakin unguarded. The Superiority also granted Unity some cytonic inhibitors. More than the one in this ship.” I gestured toward the wreckage.
“Is the inhibitor still on board?” FM asked.
It was a good question. The ship’s inhibitor had stayed active, even after the cockpit was obliterated. It wasn’t working now, but the technology should still be on board. I stepped into the empty hull, examining what was left of the ship.
Rows of passenger seats were mostly still intact, and at the end of the aisle was a panel with instrumentation—and a box set into the side of the ship. I moved up the aisle with FM right behind me.
“That’s a taynix box,” FM said, and she squeezed past me and knelt down next to it. The other humans crowded around the hole in the hull, watching.
“There isn’t a slug in it,” Jorgen said. “We’d be able to feel it if there were.”
He was right—the box felt empty to me. But when FM unlatched it and pulled it open, a pale blue taynix with bright green spines stared up at us out of the box.
“Hey, baby,” FM said, reaching in gently and pulling the slug out. She looked at Jorgen over her shoulder. “No slug in the box, huh?”
“I can’t sense it in the negative realm,” I said. I couldn’t even touch the area where it rested in FM’s arms, though the area had been too small for me to notice before. “It’s… inhibited itself.”
“It’s adorable,” Sadie said.
FM ran a hand down its spines, and it hummed quietly, as if nervous.
“I guess that answers the question about how they do it,” Jorgen said. “And now we have one. Maybe we could figure out how to use it to inhibit the platform.”
“Can’t you just ask it nicely?” I asked.
“We can try,” FM said. “But it might need a little more instruction. Working with the others took time.”
“Time,” the slug trilled softly.
“Still,” Jorgen said. “If we can harness the platform’s capabilities, we could buy ourselves some. That would also give us some time to determine Rinakin’s location.”
FM continued to hold the new slug, and she didn’t seem eager to let it go. Technically this slug should belong to my people, because it was recovered on our turf, but I didn’t know what to do with it, so for now it was probably better off in her hands. “I expect they’ll be keeping Rinakin on or near the Council tree. That’s where the Unity cytonics live.”
“More trees,” Nedd said. “Do you really live on those? Not down on the surface of the planet?”
“ReDawn is a gas giant,” I said. “There is no surface, except the core. And the atmosphere down there isn’t breathable. We only go down there for mining.”
“This is your home planet?” Sadie asked. “Like, your people lived in trees even before you had starfighters?”
“Yes,” I said. “We’ve always made the trees of ReDawn our home.”
Sadie made a little squealing noise. “That is so cool.”
“And kind of terrifying,” FM said. “What if you fall?”
“Do you often fall off your platforms?” I asked.
“No,” FM said. “But we don’t really live on those. It’s a military base. The civilians on Detritus all live underground. There are no children on Platform Prime.”
“We learn young how to be careful,” I said. “We don’t walk on the edges of the branches without safety equipment. We have walls and railings and nets. A few people fall every year, but those deaths are mostly due to equipment failures, like having a cord break when rubber-jumping.”
They all stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“All right,” Jorgen said. “Let’s do some poking around and see what we can find on this platform.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure what there would be to work with, but at least the humans weren’t talking about fleeing anymore.
“Alanik,” Jorgen said. “Why don’t you try the radio while we look around? See if you can find any more broadcasts that might give us a clue what the people who took Rinakin are planning.”
The humans probably wanted to conference without me, but I couldn’t stop them from talking to each other. Trying would make me look desperate. “Okay,” I said.
FM carried the blue slug out of the ship, and the humans moved toward the doorway that led deeper into the platform. I climbed out of the Superiority ship and moved to Jorgen’s cockpit to fiddle with the radio. There was a box bolted beneath his dash, similar to the one that had held the inhibitor slug. I popped the door open, and Boomslug peered out at me expectantly, like I might provide more algae strips.
He was about to be sorely disappointed.
The humans hadn’t been gone for more than a few minutes when someone approached the open canopy. Arturo walked toward me with his yellow and blue slug in a sling across his chest. He must have come back to retrieve it from his ship.
I moved to stand, but Arturo held up a hand. “Alanik,” he said. “Can we talk?”
“Yes,” I said.
Arturo looked over his shoulder, like he was afraid we’d be overheard. The slug in the sling regarded me quizzically. “I was thinking about what you said on Detritus, about the Superiority wanting you to turn over the humans you were working with.”
I hadn’t said that to him, so I guessed Jorgen must have told him. “We weren’t working with any humans,” I said.
“Right,” Arturo said, his face grim. “But you are now.”
Oh. I’d been so focused on getting help that I hadn’t thought of how that would look. Clearly I shouldn’t have told Jorgen about that particular demand.
“We were just fighting the people who want to turn you over to the Superiority together,” I said.
“Sure,” Arturo said. “But shooting at a few ships doesn’t mean you aren’t planning to betray us in some other way.”
That was true, and nothing I could say would prove otherwise. “So you believe I’m lying to you.”
“I don’t know,” Arturo said. “I’m not sure what your motivations are. Jorgen believes you do want to make an alliance with Detritus, that you’re going to teach him how to use his powers.”
“Use his powers!” his taynix added, as if for emphasis.
“Easy, Naga,” Arturo said, petting its spines.
“I will,” I said. “I would be happy to, because we’re working together. You all risked a lot to be here.”
“We did,” Arturo said. “So I hope you didn’t come to Detritus looking for humans you could use to appease the Superiority.”
I bristled. “I would never work with them. Their wood is rotted all the way through.”
“I want to believe you,” Arturo said. “So does Jorgen. That’s why he didn’t tell Cobb about what you said.”
He should have, obviously. Their commander had made a decision without all the information. “Jorgen suspects me of deceiving you,” I said.
“No,” Arturo said. “Jorgen is too busy worrying about whether he disobeyed orders. I’m worried you might have deceived us.” He looked me straight in the eyes. His were dark and deep, not clear and bright like most UrDail. “Can we trust you?”
“You already have. You did it when you left your planet with me.” I’d fled when I’d first met them, not willing to offer them my trust, yet they’d come to help me anyway. I wouldn’t have done the same, but I was glad that in this way they weren’t like me.
“We did,” Arturo said. “Because the potential benefits outweigh the risks. We need allies, same as you. And we may be clueless when it comes to galactic politics, but we’re not helpless. If you turn on us, we will fight back, you understand?”
Arturo presented the threat calmly and evenly, like it was nothing more than a fact.
These humans possessed hyperdrives, had found the secret where I had failed. They’d also survived for nearly a century in the face of Superiority hostility.
“It would be a very serious mistake to underestimate you,” I said.
“I’m glad we agree on that.”
“And I have no intention of betraying you or your people.”
Arturo kept watching me, his face thoughtful, evaluating me. It bothered me that I couldn’t read in his eyes what it was that he saw.
“Thank you,” Arturo said. “I hope we can keep this between us.”
And then he turned and walked confidently back in the direction Jorgen and the others had gone.
I watched until he was out of sight. I hadn’t baited the humans here with the intention of trading them to the Superiority, but I did want to use them, in a sense. Unity used the specter of human extinction to terrify my people into submission. If my people saw humans fighting on our side, they’d see that resistance was possible, even against terrifying odds. Their existence was a weapon I could use against my enemies.
Given the circumstances, I would be foolish to do otherwise.
