AS JORGEN LEFT the room, FM appeared to deflate.
“You okay?” Kimmalyn asked her.
“Yeah,” FM said. “I really shouldn’t have said that to Jorgen.”
“Definitely not,” Rig said. “But I understand why you did.”
“I need to walk,” FM said. “I’ll show you that other control room. There might be systems for the shield in there.” She and Rig left, heading in the opposite direction from Jorgen. Kimmalyn followed them, telling the rest of the flight that they needed to check in with the Independence pilots and see if they’d found somewhere we could all be comfortable for the night.
They wandered off, taking most of the slugs and the food with them. Arturo remained behind.
“Are they always like this?” I asked.
“FM and Jorgen?” Arturo said. “No, not like that.”
That wasn’t much of a comfort, but as they all seemed committed to seeing this through, I supposed I should leave their internal politics alone.
Arturo watched me quietly.
I sighed. “You still think I’m going to betray you?” I asked.
“I hope you aren’t,” he said. He didn’t seem upset about it either way. Merely uncertain.
“You could also betray me,” I insisted. “You could promise the Superiority you’ll bring me in, use me and my people as a bargaining chip to get yourselves a better position the way Quilan is doing.”
“We could,” Arturo said. He seemed surprised, like he hadn’t thought of that.
I hadn’t meant to give him any ideas. They’d be heroes, enough that their commanders might forget about their court-martial. Their admiral could claim this was his plan all along. That was what our Council would do in such a situation.
“But we won’t,” Arturo said. “We’ve come all this way to secure an alliance. Those are our orders.”
They were not-orders, as I recalled. But I wasn’t going to mention that.
“Thank you,” I said. Arturo nodded, but we both watched each other uneasily.
I waited for him to leave, but he kept standing there. Did he not want to leave me alone in this room? Did he think I would sabotage it somehow? “You don’t have to watch me every minute,” I said.
“I know,” Arturo said. He seemed surprised again, like the idea hadn’t occurred to him. “I was just wondering why you’re doing this.”
I blinked at him. “Trying to rescue my friend?”
“Fighting the Superiority,” he said. “When you described it back on Detritus, it sounded like your lives are good here.”
“They are,” I said. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”
“So if your people joined the Superiority, what do you think would be worse?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. It was hard for me to imagine exactly what that would be like. Giving in to the Superiority felt like the worst thing that could possibly happen, but on the surface I could see how it would look attractive to the humans after the years of war and terror.
“I don’t think they’d try to exterminate us,” I said carefully. “If they were going to do that, they would have done it years ago, after we lost the last war.”
“Okay,” Arturo said.
“But I think they would oppress us.”
“And they’re not oppressing you now?” Arturo asked.
“No, they are,” I said quickly. “They withhold the secrets of hyperdrives from us, try to control how we use cytonics, tell us what aspects of our culture are ‘lesser’ or ‘advanced.’ ”
“Do you really want to fight a war with them just because they’re critical of you and refuse to share?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “They actively try to stop us from learning. They tell us that wireless technology is dangerous, that cytonics are dangerous—but they became a powerful civilization through the use of those same resources. By denying us access—it’s not only that they won’t help us, it’s like they walked through the door and then locked it behind them.”
Arturo nodded. “Still,” he said, “what do you need that technology for, if you want nothing to do with them? Wouldn’t that be the only reason you’d need it? To interact with them?”
“We need it to fight them,” I said. “Because we don’t want to be under their control. Because we’re not ‘lesser.’ We’re intelligent, and we have a right to direct our own lives and our own future. We’re not trying to take over from the Superiority. We only want to exist without their interference and their… judgment.”
Arturo nodded. I got the feeling he wasn’t arguing with me. He was trying to understand. “And that’s worth it to you,” he said. “To risk war, to risk them deciding to exterminate you after all. To risk your life and the lives of everyone you love, the lives of your whole people. To avoid being judged by them.”
“It’s not only that they judge us,” I said. It was so hard to define, but I felt the resistance to everything the Superiority stood for like it was a part of me. “It’s that they judge us and find us wanting. And if we cooperate with them, it’s like we’re admitting they’re right. That we are lesser. And we’re not. We are equal beings who deserve to be treated as equals. And I would rather risk everything than capitulate, because I can’t deny that to myself. It would kill me to do it.”
Arturo met my eyes, and he nodded. I thought… maybe he respected that answer. At the very least he accepted it.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
“I was ordered to be here,” he said.
“You were not-ordered,” I said.
“Right, but Jorgen is my flightleader and I followed him.”
The way I remembered it, the rest of them dragged Jorgen along until he caught up to the idea.
“So you disagree, then. You don’t think you should have come.”
Arturo hesitated. Maybe he was worried about expressing disagreement with his superior, but he seemed to have a more familiar relationship with Jorgen. I thought there was more to it.
“Do you wish you were back on Detritus?” I asked. “Helping your people to broker a peace deal?”
He was quiet for a moment, staring out the window into the miasma. “No,” he admitted. “I think we’re doing the right thing, helping you.”
I nodded. “Yes. You are.”
“Maybe not the smart thing,” he said. “I worry we’ve chosen the losing side on both your planet and mine, and I’m afraid that this is going to go terribly wrong for all of us. But I don’t like the idea of bargaining with the people who’ve been murdering us for generations. I don’t like the idea of peace talks with the beings who’ve been keeping us in a cage.”
I smiled. He understood then. “Giving in to them feels like deciding to die slowly.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “But you’re right that it feels like admitting we’re lesser. Like we’re saying we deserved the way they treated us, and we’re willing to simply forgive and forget.”
“The Superiority likes that idea,” I said, “so long as we’re always the ones doing the forgetting.”
Arturo nodded, staring out at the miasma again. I liked the way he thought about things. The fact that he did think about them, while so many people on both his planet and mine were willing to swallow the easy story without worrying about whether it was a true one.
“Did you choose to be a pilot?” I asked. “Your people are at war, but you can’t all be fighters.”
“No,” Arturo said. “They say we’re all part of the war effort no matter our job, and maybe that’s true in a way. But being a pilot gets you a lot of respect. A lot of disadvantaged people want to pass the pilot’s test for the opportunities it affords them, but for me it was expected. My parents have a lot of connections, a lot of… social power, I guess. And to maintain the empire, I had to be a pilot.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “You have to prove you are the best.”
“They didn’t want me to stay and prove it,” Arturo said. “I nearly got killed when I was a cadet. My parents pulled strings, got me my pin early so I wouldn’t have to keep flying.”
“But you are flying.”
“Yeah,” Arturo said. “My parents weren’t happy about it. Neither was my girlfriend. They all felt like I’d done my part. But I hadn’t, you know? I hated the thought of slinking back to the caverns and benefiting from the deaths of my friends, people I knew and liked. It felt like cowardice, hiding when I should be out there fighting.” He shook his head.
“Is that why your…” Jorgen didn’t like it when I used this word. “I don’t think there’s an exact translation for it in my language, but your mate—”
“My girlfriend,” Arturo said. “Yeah, that’s why she broke up with me ultimately. I think she wanted to for a while, but didn’t feel like she could. Like, it doesn’t feel good to give up on someone who’s fighting for the future of humanity, but she’d always thought I was going to come back a few months after flight school. And then I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. I think we’re both better off, honestly. She said I’d changed, that I didn’t care about the things I used to.” He shrugged. “She was probably right.”
Given how deeply he seemed to care about his people’s freedom now, I thought that could only be a good thing, but I wondered if he would agree.
“We’re on the same side,” I said. “As long as you want to fight the Superiority, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Same to you,” he said. “Jorgen gets hung up on rules, but he doesn’t want to play nice with them any more than you and I do.”
I believed him. I couldn’t be absolutely sure he was telling the truth, but he had the same problem with me.
Regardless, once we got everything in order, we were all going to find out.
I WORRIED IT would be uncomfortable to sleep on the platform, but my brother and the Independence pilots had found the bunk rooms from when the platform was inhabited. There was an entire block of them—more rooms than we could possibly need. The Independence pilots took up residence in one, and Rinakin’s family and some of the other refugees spread out over a few more. The rooms had obviously been used by salvagers in recent years, because the old cushioning had been replaced on all but the top bunks, where it was mostly disintegrated. The other bunks weren’t as soft or as clean as I would have liked, but they were better than sleeping in the cockpits.
The human men all settled into one of the sleeping rooms and the women into another, where they invited me to join them. In one of the adjoining common rooms, Kimmalyn and Sadie divided the algae strips and custard so that everyone got a portion for dinner. I passed on the algae—since we knew the nut wafers were safe for me to eat, I choked a couple down.
I could have gone to eat with my brother, but instead I stayed with the humans. I needed to make sure they didn’t have any second thoughts about what we were doing here, and besides that I was starting to enjoy their company.
“You can have a cup of custard to dip those nut bars in if you want,” Kimmalyn said, pushing the jug of liquid in my direction.
I peered at the cloudy white substance. “What is it?”
“It’s milk,” Sadie told me. “But like, old milk. I think? I’m not totally clear how they make it.”
“Human milk?” I asked.
“Ew, no,” Sadie said. “Cow’s milk, I think.”
That sounded disgusting. “I’m all right,” I said. “Though I think Happy will take my portion.”
The slug was leaning out of Kimmalyn’s sling, dangling down like it was going to dip its face right into the jug.
“Happy!” Kimmalyn said. “Yours is over here.” She pulled the slug out of the sling and deposited it with the others, who were happily chewing algae strips.
Jorgen approached. FM and Rig hadn’t joined us—last I’d seen she was sitting with Rig in the hangar while he worked on my ship, both of them speaking in low voices.
“Can I ask for your help with something?” Jorgen asked me.
“Yes,” I said, and we walked out into a hallway with a long window looking out into the miasma.
Jorgen pressed his fingers to the glass, watching the miasma swirl against it. “Since we have a minute, I was wondering if you could teach me something about cytonics.”
“Of course,” I said, and I took a seat on the floor of the hallway, my back opposite the window. The outline of Hollow was dimly visible, its dark branches reaching up toward the red sky.
“Gran-Gran taught me how to meditate,” Jorgen said, sitting down facing me. “To listen to the stars. It helped, but I didn’t end up hearing the stars. I heard the taynix instead.”
“That sounds ultimately more useful,” I said.
“It probably was. But Spensa was able to hyperjump all the way to Starsight.”
“Technically all cytonics have every power,” I said. “I’m not clear on how many there are. We’re only able to manifest some of them deliberately after a lot of training. And some we may never be able to use. Of the five cytonics on ReDawn, I’m the only one who has been able to hyperjump.”
“Which is why the other cytonics weren’t able to follow us here immediately, even before we got the inhibitor up,” Jorgen said. “And if I’m never going to be able to learn—”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said. “There are other valuable types of cytonics. Mindblades are supposed to be the most difficult. I’ve never been able to manifest those.”
“You said those are like little bits of the nowhere that cut like razorblades?”
“Yes,” I said. “Like your Boomslug.”
“Boomslug!” Boomslug said from Jorgen’s shoulder.
“I haven’t been able to do that either,” Jorgen said.
“Let’s start with what’s already working,” I said. “You know how to find my mind and the minds of the taynix. Can you do it now?”
Jorgen absently stroked Boomslug on its spines. He closed his eyes, and I could feel his mind reaching out toward mine.
“Good. Now reach out farther. Stretch yourself over the space of the planet. See if you can find the Unity cytonics. Now that you have the key to the inhibitor, you should be able to find them.”
“It’s easier when I’m closer to the source,” Jorgen said. “When I heard the taynix below the surface of Detritus, there were so many of them, so it was louder—”
“Try, Jorgen,” I said. “Stop focusing so much on what you aren’t able to do, and try.”
I felt his presence in my mind as he reached out. I hate this, Jorgen said. I can’t do enough.
“There you go,” I said. “You can reach me. Now try to find others. And be quieter while you do it. They don’t know yet who you are, and we don’t want to give them that information unless it benefits us to do so.”
“You heard that?” Jorgen said. He sounded embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to send what I was thinking—”
“You have to be careful not to broadcast when you’re making contact,” I said. “But now try the meditation you learned before. Instead of reaching for my mind, reach out into the negative realm that surrounds us, out across the planet.”
Jorgen was quiet for a long time, while Boomslug tucked itself in the crook of his elbow and snored softly. After a while I thought Jorgen might have fallen asleep sitting up.
“I can feel the other taynix,” Jorgen said finally. “I can’t find any other cytonics—and there’s a space somewhere in the distance, a space that feels… solid. Like I can’t reach into it.”
I followed him across the miasma. Yes, there it was. On the far side of the core, on the side of the planet in a night cycle.
“The Council tree,” I said. “Inhibited by the other cytonics.” I wondered if they’d done that as a precaution once our inhibitor went up. They wouldn’t be able to maintain it all the time, but they must be worried about what we had planned.
They wanted us to believe they were in control, but they were still afraid of us, which meant they weren’t. Not entirely.
“I need to learn how to make those inhibitors,” Jorgen said.
“You learned how to find a place that’s been inhibited,” I said. “You might be happy for that first.”
“It’s not enough,” Jorgen said.
I understood what he meant. It would never be enough until the fight was over and his people were safe. “Focus on what you have,” I said. “We can work on it more, but I think you should sleep first. Tiring yourself out will only make you more frustrated. And when you’re frustrated, it’s much more difficult to learn.” And dangerous, if you started manifesting things like concussion bolts and mindblades.
Jorgen didn’t argue. “That makes sense. Thanks, Alanik.”
Now I felt inadequate. Jorgen and his team had risked everything to help me, and I’d hardly shown him anything.
It’s not enough, he’d said. I felt the same.
“Get some rest,” I said.
“Good night,” Jorgen said, and he left me staring up into the red-violet glow of the sun against the miasma above.
