WE EMERGED FROM the negative realm in the hangar on Wandering Leaf, which was empty of both humans and UrDail.
“That never gets less terrifying,” Rig said.
“And disorienting,” FM said. “And we don’t even see the creepy eyes.”
“Be glad for that,” I said. I reached out again, searching for Jorgen’s mind. I found him and the taynix belonging to the other flight members. They hadn’t gone far.
“Why did Cobb come after us like that?” FM asked. “He didn’t even try to talk to us. Maybe Jeshua is watching him too closely?”
“Maybe,” Rig said. “Cobb played along with everything they said after you left. If I hadn’t been there when he gave you the order to go, I never would have thought he’d done it.”
“Done it!” one of the slugs said.
Cobb was far away now, and whatever Superiority cytonic had been tracking us either couldn’t or didn’t follow.
That felt more ominous than anything.
“At least we saved these guys,” FM said, cuddling the slugs. “Though I don’t imagine their pilots are happy with us.”
“Happy!” one of the slugs trilled. And then several of them disappeared.
We all climbed out from beneath the wing, FM and Rig hauling the case of algae and the jug of custard with them.
“This way,” I said, leading FM and Rig toward the others.
We found them several sections down from the hangar, gathered around an arched open doorway. Most of the flight sat outside with two crates open in front of them. Jorgen was inside, while Arturo leaned in the doorframe, watching the others dubiously.
“Rig!” Kimmalyn said, waving furiously. Several of the new slugs were gathered around her and Happy.
“Hey, everybody,” Rig said.
“Look!” Sadie said, waving a half-wrapped wafer bar at us. “We found their old food supplies!”
“The centuries-old food supplies?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Nedd said. “I can’t read the labels on these, but there’s no way this stuff is that old. We took some to your friends, and they said thank you. They wouldn’t have done that if we were offering them two-hundred-year-old food, would they?”
I approached, looking at the boxes. “I think you’re right. That looks like some salvager’s food stash.” The wafer bars were individually wrapped, and the outer box did bear the date of origin. “Looks like they’re only five years old.”
“Delicious,” Arturo said.
“This one is delicious!” Sadie said. “It has some kind of nuts in it.” She looked at me wide-eyed. “Those aren’t poisonous to humans or anything, are they?”
“I have no idea what humans find poisonous,” I said. “Though your people used to live among us on ReDawn and ate our food, so most of it is probably safe to eat. The nuts are called udal nuts. They grow on bushy plants that live in the crevices of the branches. They’re quite good, though I can’t vouch for these bars.” I pulled one out and unwrapped it. It was more crumbly than usual, probably owing to its age, but at least it hadn’t molded.
“Maybe we should have been more careful,” Sadie said, scowling at her nut wafer as she set it down.
“It’s all right, Sadie,” Nedd said. “I’m on my third bar. If you die, I’m going with you.”
Sadie did not look comforted.
“We brought you food,” FM said, lifting the case of algae strips. “So you don’t have to rely on scavenged nut bars.”
“Oh, custard!” Kimmalyn said, taking the jug from Rig. “Thanks!”
“You also brought more slugs,” Jorgen said, joining Arturo in the doorway. “Why?”
“It’s a long story,” FM said.
“How long could it be?” Jorgen asked. “You were gone ten minutes tops.”
“They were only gone for ten minutes,” Sadie said, “and we still managed to find the taynix boxes while they were gone.” She and Catnip—or T-Stall? I really needed to figure out which was which—slapped their palms together in what I assumed must be a human gesture of celebration.
“Seriously?” FM said. “You found them that quickly?”
“It wasn’t hard,” Kimmalyn said. “We found a station map of the platform in that engineering room written in English. The control room was labeled on it.”
“Shhhhh,” T-Stall or Catnip said. “You could have let them think we were amazing.”
“We are amazing,” Sadie said. “Amazing at reading maps.”
“I want to see this,” Rig said, and FM set down the box of algae strips at Sadie’s feet and followed Rig and me into the room with Jorgen. The new blue taynix sat on the control panel, and trilled at FM when she walked in.
One wall was dominated by panels and levers and switches, with a wide window above the panels looking over the edge of the platform into the miasma. All around the room, mounted against the walls, were metal boxes like the one in Jorgen’s ship.
“Do they all have holoprojectors?” FM asked. “Because if so we could strip those, since we don’t need them for the slugs anymore.”
Rig knelt down and looked at the wires beneath the panel. “Looks like it’s been looted already. But most of the wiring is intact. The wires themselves must not be worth much on this planet.”
“Why would they be?” I asked. “They’re wires.”
“Depends on whether you have the resources to mine the right metals,” Rig said. “Some of those are valuable on Detritus.”
That made sense. The core of ReDawn was rich with metals, which was why the Superiority bothered with us to begin with. They wanted our resources, and we traded them away for the barest recognition of our dignity, instead of remembering we were in the position of power.
“Taynix are valuable too,” Jorgen said. “Seriously, where did those come from?”
“We brought them with us,” FM said, “because the Superiority wants to take them.”
“Did you talk to Cobb?” Jorgen asked.
“No,” FM said. “Cobb and Jeshua were talking to the Superiority over the hypercomm. They’ve already met with the Superiority once, and the Superiority was asking for them to turn over our cytonics and our hyperdrives.”
“FM,” Jorgen said. “Please tell me you didn’t steal the taynix.”
“We didn’t steal them,” FM snapped. “We rescued them. Alanik called to them and they came of their own free will.”
“They’re hyperdrives!” Jorgen said. “Not people. Cobb ordered us to come here, but he didn’t ask us to take the slugs that were commissioned to other pilots—”
FM narrowed her eyes. “Sometimes you have to do the right thing, Jorgen. Even if Command says to do something else.”
“Okay,” Jorgen said in a low voice. “But you were gone a few minutes, FM. You didn’t think this through. You didn’t talk to Cobb, and for all we know he has a plan that depends on the hyperdrives! You can’t do this.” He looked from me to Rig. “Why did you help her?”
“Um,” Rig said.
I didn’t have any more of an answer. Arturo was watching me, and I wasn’t about to admit that having more hyperdrives on ReDawn seemed like a good idea to me. Arturo wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Jorgen. They were probably already putting that together.
“It needed to be done,” FM said. “Even if they weren’t living beings that have feelings—”
“The other pilots are human beings,” Jorgen said. “And you left them without a tool they could use to survive, FM. Besides, the fact that the slugs let you do this is not good. If they’ll respond to Alanik, who they don’t know, it means enemy cytonics could use the same tactic against us.”
“And clearly we need to train that out of them,” FM said. “But this time it was a good thing because—”
“This is not a good thing!” Jorgen said. “Coming here when Cobb gave us sort-of orders to do so was one thing, but this is entirely out of the chain of command, and you didn’t think it through or consult me before you did it. You could have had Alanik contact me. We could have had a conversation about it—”
FM closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “You’re right, okay? It was rash. But we’re not sending them back. Not while your mother is considering taking them to the Superiority. That doesn’t even make good tactical sense, Jorgen, and you know it.”
“But you don’t make the tactical decisions,” Jorgen said. “You don’t know what the bigger plan is.”
“The bigger plan may be to give the taynix to the Superiority!” FM said. “I’m not going to let them do that. And if you are, then you are not my flightleader.”
Rig and Arturo both stared wide-eyed at FM, like she’d said something horrific. FM looked down at the floor, her hands shaking. “I didn’t mean that,” she said quietly.
Jorgen stared at FM, his mouth set in an angry line. Rig and Arturo exchanged a concerned look, and outside the control room the rest of the flight had fallen silent.
“Fine,” Jorgen said, setting his jaw. “We’ll keep them here for now. Though I imagine there are going to be a lot of pilots who are not thrilled with us for stealing their taynix.”
“We’ll return them when the situation is safe,” FM said through gritted teeth.
Right. Of course they would. They had no intention of sharing with us.
I couldn’t let the humans leave here with all the slugs. Even one could change everything for ReDawn. But they weren’t making noise about leaving now, so this wasn’t the moment to worry about it. Not when I still had hope they might help me.
“Okay,” Rig said. “If the taynix are staying, maybe we should figure out how they interface with this platform.”
FM looked like she wanted to flee the room, and Jorgen looked like he wanted to punch someone, but they both nodded.
“Good idea,” Arturo said.
“All right then,” Rig said. He squeezed FM’s shoulder and then moved over to one of the boxes on the wall. “The boxes themselves weren’t stripped. Makes sense, if the people here don’t know the secrets to hyperdrives.”
“We found something weird on that map,” Arturo said. “There was a control room and the autoturret systems, of course. But no engines and no navigation systems. Alanik said this platform used to move, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to move it, at least not on the schematics we found.”
“Interesting,” Rig said. “Maybe it requires a hyperdrive to move? Get me something to stand on so I can get a look above the boxes and see how they’re interfaced with the platform.”
Everything useful in this room that wasn’t screwed down appeared to have been looted, but T-Stall and Catnip hauled in a chunk of metal that was tall enough for Rig to boost himself up. While they did, Kimmalyn slipped into the room with us and linked her arm through FM’s. She and Jorgen were both still silent. Jorgen leaned against the wall opposite FM with his arms crossed, and FM actively avoided looking at him. It was an improvement over the yelling. The more they fought, the more I worried they’d decide ReDawn wasn’t worth the trouble. Though if that happened, perhaps I could convince FM to stay and keep the taynix with her. Jorgen was their cytonic, so he could influence the slugs to go with him.
But as we’d discovered, he wasn’t the only one.
Rig stared at the debris as Catnip and T-Stall deposited it on the floor. “Is that a piece of a starfighter wing?”
“Yep,” one of them said.
“Is it a piece of one of our starfighter wings?” Rig asked.
“I had a little trouble with the landing,” I said, and the other one snickered.
Rig looked at me like he wondered how I was still alive. “We’ll tell you all about it later,” Jorgen said. “Right now we need to know what the taynix can do if we interface them with the platform.”
Rig boosted himself up on the wing, first knocking on the wall and then swinging open a panel to reveal a circuit board.
“This all looks like it’s intact,” Rig said. “Either it’s not valuable, or the salvagers didn’t know it was here. The holoprojectors would have been much more recognizable.” Rig climbed down again. “These boxes are labeled underneath, but not in English. Alanik?”
I had to lean over the control panel and crane my neck upward to see the labels. They were in neither English nor my own language, but Mandarin. “This box says it’s for the weapons system,” I said. “But that doesn’t make sense, does it? The weapons systems aren’t cytonic.”
Rig and Jorgen exchanged a look.
“The autoturrets aren’t,” Arturo said. “But the map had those facilities in another location. Are there… cytonic weapons systems?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve never heard of that.”
Still, while the writing on the boxes was a bit antiquated, the meaning was clear. The next few boxes were for the comms system. On the opposite wall I found one with a different label. “This one is for the navigation system.”
“So it does have a hyperdrive,” FM said.
Rig nodded. “There’s only one spot for a navigation slug, and several for the hypercomm. Probably so you could have commlinks open with many people at once. It only takes one slug to move the platform.”
I examined the boxes along the third wall. “These are for the defense systems.”
“Could be a shield like the one back home,” Rig said. “That would be useful. Though I don’t know how that would work, because on Detritus the platforms combine to become the shield, and the shield mechanism doesn’t require a taynix.” He turned to me. “Do you know how this platform was used in the past? Was it part of a larger system?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The Superiority doesn’t like us teaching the details of our military history. Rinakin taught me some things, but most of our education is limited to being told we were wrong to fight.”
“You don’t believe that though,” FM said. “Why not, if that’s what you were taught?”
“Do you believe everything you’re told?” I asked.
“No,” FM said. “But it’s hard for most people to ignore the dominant messaging sometimes, especially when no one is willing to speak against it.”
“Oh,” I said. “No, the official curriculum is tailored to make us look good for the Superiority, but there has always been turmoil on ReDawn as to whose ideas are the best. There is no shortage of differing opinions here.”
“That must be so confusing,” Rig said.
“Sometimes,” I said. “But it’s also liberating. With so many different ideas, it’s easier to choose what to believe. Unity would like us to all unite under one set of beliefs, one agreement about what is best. But that takes away our knowledge, reduces our ability to decide what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“So you need each other’s ideas to really be free,” FM said. “I like that idea.”
I didn’t feel like we needed Unity, but maybe that was true. Maybe if Independence won we’d do the same, simplifying what we taught to make us always in the right. Maybe the tension between us was what truly allowed the conversation to happen.
If we wanted to maintain that tension, I needed to make sure the Independents survived.
Jorgen still stood to the side with his arms folded. I couldn’t tell what he thought, and I didn’t think he’d appreciate being called out in front of the others after his confrontation with FM.
You disagree with this idea? I asked in his mind.
No, Jorgen said. But I agree with Rig that it sounds confusing.
“Let’s try the cytonic defense systems now,” Jorgen said to Rig. “If we can inhibit the platform or turn on the shield, we’ll buy ourselves more time.”
Rig nodded and extended his hand to the blue slug, who seemed to sniff it even though it didn’t have a visible nose. After giving the slug a moment to acclimate to him, he picked it up and set it gently into one of the defense systems boxes and closed the door.
Nothing happened.
“What are you supposed to do now?” I asked. “Ask it to do something?”
“I don’t know what to ask it to do,” Jorgen said. “I can’t give it an image of an inhibitor. It doesn’t look like anything.”
“Maybe you could try to show it an image of a cytonic approaching us, let it know what we’re afraid of.”
“We’re not going back to scaring the slugs into submission,” FM said.
“Right,” Rig said. “But there’s a difference between frightening them and communicating with them. You could, like, explain the situation?”
Jorgen looked doubtful, but FM nodded and went back to staring at the floor.
“All right,” Jorgen said. “I’ll try to… explain.” He closed his eyes, and I listened in the negative realm, trying to hear what he was communicating.
There were no words here, only ideas. Jorgen showed the slug his own fear, and then a picture of a cytonic emerging in the control room. I could feel the slug’s own fear—it didn’t like the way it had been treated by cytonics in the past.
By the branches. These things were intelligent.
Still, the slug didn’t do anything.
“Can you ask it to protect us?” I asked. They said the slugs understood abstract concepts like danger…
Jorgen sent an image, almost like a request. An impression of the platform being shut off to outside cytonics.
Arturo’s slug made a squeaking noise and then the universe around me stopped vibrating, as if the whole of it had suddenly died. It was gone—my ability to reach out, to find the others, to reach the whispering voices that told me I wasn’t alone. Maybe that was what Jorgen meant when he said Spensa could hear the stars. It wasn’t so much stars I could hear, but all the matter in the whole of space and time.
And now they were gone.
Jorgen looked as disoriented as I felt. Boomslug had his face buried beneath Jorgen’s arm, and Snuggles lay deflated in the sling across his chest. Gill huddled around FM’s shoulders.
“I can’t hear them anymore,” Jorgen said. “It worked, but—if we can’t use our own powers, we can’t keep track of the enemy, or listen in on them.” He turned to me. “How did we do that on Detritus? Some kind of impression?”
“There should be a code that lets us use cytonics while we’re within the inhibitor. I don’t know how you got it back on Detritus, but you did. Maybe because your powers manifested there, you grew up with the code in your mind?”
“That would explain how the taynix got it too,” FM said.
“There might be a key here somewhere,” Rig said. He leaned over the control panel. “There are some recordings in the database, but they seem to be blank.”
“Play them,” I said.
“Sure,” Rig said, and he fiddled with some of the buttons.
An impression pushed into my mind like a key being slipped under a door. I concentrated on it, committing it to my memory, and the world began to vibrate around me again like a chorus of insects beginning to chirp again after a windstorm.
“Stars,” Jorgen said. “That’s better.”
“Better,” Gill and Boomslug both agreed, their voices forming a strange harmony.
I reached out, finding the minds of the slugs farther away on the platform, and I offered the impression to them. I could feel each of their relief.
“That should give us some cover,” Rig said. “I can work on getting the shield up and spend some time fixing Alanik’s ship so she’s battle ready. Then we can try out the weapons systems and the hyperdrive.”
“All right,” Jorgen said. “That seems like a good plan.”
“We think we can use the slugs to move the platform,” Arturo said. “But what will we do with it if we can?”
“It’s a large and powerful tool,” I said. “But not the stealthiest, to be sure. If we start moving the platform around, Unity will take notice. We need to figure out a way to use the distraction to save Rinakin.”
“We’re assuming he wants to be saved,” FM said. She turned to Rig. “We want to rescue her friend, but we heard him over the radio saying he was defecting to the other side.”
“Wonder what that would feel like,” Rig said.
I imagined they felt very similarly, having their commander try to capture them after sending them away. I hoped there was a reasonable explanation.
FM looked nervously at Jorgen. “There’s more,” she said. “Cobb sent people after us when we went to get Alanik’s ship. They knew we were there somehow, and Cobb saw us himself. I thought maybe he’d cover for us, but he didn’t. He called the people who were with him right to us.”
“Maybe he did that because he knew we’d escape anyway,” Rig said. “He knew Alanik could get us out.”
“Still,” FM said, “he could have given us a few more seconds.”
“He might have noticed you were ‘rescuing’ taynix,” Jorgen said.
“Yeah,” Rig said. “That probably didn’t help.” He looked down at the instrumentation and sighed. “As for how we could use the platform, I want to take a look at these other systems and get a better idea of what we’re dealing with. Then we can talk about ways we might use it.”
“That will all take some time,” Jorgen said, stepping away to peer out the window into the miasma. “It’s getting late. At least, it is on Detritus. What time does night fall here?”
I wasn’t exactly sure. I looked out the window at the angle of the sun through the miasma. “In about three sleep cycles, I think.”
“Interesting,” Rig said. “You sleep multiple times in a day?”
“Yes,” I said. “One day is equal to nine sleep cycles at this time of year on the tree where I live. Sometimes it will be less or more, depending on the location of a given tree in the miasma. I’m not sure what it’ll be here, but judging by the angle of the sun that’s my estimation.”
“So a day here is about a week,” Jorgen said. “We grew up underground, so our days are manufactured as well. Even if it isn’t going to get dark we still need to sleep, and eat something that won’t kill us.” He looked grudgingly at FM. “Thanks for bringing the algae strips.”
“It was Alanik’s idea,” FM said.
“It’s a good thing Nedd gorged himself on those nut bars,” Arturo said. “Might be some algae strips left for the rest of us.”
“Though I hope he doesn’t keel over,” Kimmalyn added.
“I’ll get to work,” Rig said. “We can rest and then return to the plan.”
“Sounds good,” Jorgen said, and he stalked out, leaving the rest of us behind.
