“I’M NOT GOING to meet with them on their terms,” I said. I could hyperjump from almost anywhere on ReDawn, but the Council tree—the capital of ReDawn—was home to the other four cytonics. Working together, they could create a cytonic inhibitor, a field from which I’d be unable to escape.
They could all come to me, of course, but it would be much easier for them to catch me if I agreed to walk right into their jaws.
“Offer to meet them in a neutral location,” Rinakin said.
“I don’t want to,” I said. “Too much risk. They’ll bring the other cytonics.”
Rinakin pressed his lips together. I was right and he knew it.
Alanik, Quilan said. Please respond.
I will not be meeting with the Council at this time, I answered. I will let you know when I am next available.
I’m sorry, Alanik, Quilan said. But your attendance is required.
“He’s not asking,” I said. “He wants us to believe we don’t have a choice.” Though of course we did. As long as we could escape from them, we would always have a choice. To believe otherwise was to hand over our own power, the way they wanted to hand ReDawn over to the Superiority.
“Soon we may not,” Rinakin said. “The Council voted to consolidate the military. Many of the Independence bases are already submitting to the Council’s control.”
I stared at him. ReDawn had maintained two air forces since the end of the last war. We competed and drilled against each other, with the understanding that if ReDawn faced a common threat we would work together to fight it. The division kept us sharp, each side trying to maintain an edge against the other.
“They’re getting ready to move against us,” I said.
“Yes,” Rinakin said. “And they’re doing it in the name of peace.”
There hadn’t been real fighting on ReDawn in almost a century, and both Unity and the Superiority promised peace and cooperation. Never mind that the Superiority had kept us contained here all this time, punishing us for rebellion. Never mind that if we accepted their peace, we also had to accept their control over every aspect of our technology, our travel, our behavior, our culture. They’d already made us paupers, withholding advanced technology from us because we rejected their rule. Now they would make us beggars as well, stripping us of our dignity and our heritage in the process.
And so many of my people accepted it. A prisoner could be convinced that they lived in a paradise, if the prison was pretty enough.
“Is there anyone left who will fight with us?”
“The base on Hollow refused to unify,” Rinakin said. “I sent my daughter and her family there. But I’m afraid they won’t be able to hold out long.”
My brother Gilaf was stationed at Hollow. He and his flightmates helped supervise the lumber work there. Unlike the rest of my family, Gilaf wasn’t going to swallow Unity lies.
“If the other Independence bases see that there are holdouts, maybe they’ll reverse course,” I said.
“That is my hope, but I expect Unity will mobilize their forces quickly to bring them in line.”
It was hard to imagine my people firing on each other, but Unity always seemed more willing to strike out at us than at the Superiority.
“How can they do that and claim it’s for peace?” I asked.
Rinakin didn’t answer that question. I already knew the answer anyway.
It was easier to believe the story they were told than to awaken to the reality of our oppression.
“What we need,” Rinakin said, “are some allies who have not forgotten that we are at war.”
I tapped my sharp nails on the dashboard of the ship. “I know,” I said. When Rinakin originally suggested that I answer the call to join the Superiority military, I’d been excited. Finally, something I could do. All anyone on ReDawn ever seemed to want to do was talk. Even though I hadn’t made it to the tryouts, discovering that our old human allies were still alive and fighting should have been a victory.
But then those former allies kept me unconscious for weeks, woke me only when they needed something, and then treated me like a prisoner.
Still, I remembered the desperation of the woman who spoke to me first. They want my people dead. We need your help. She at least seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.
And the other one—Jorgen, the male cytonic. He was clearly untrained, to the point that he didn’t know how to communicate properly. But I did get a bit of emotion from him through his cytonic resonance, enough to know he wasn’t happy with the direction things were going.
He was scared.
But at least the humans knew what it was like to fight back.
“The humans are facing the same problem we are,” I said. “Their leaders are looking for a way to end the war. If we appeal to them for help, they could side with Unity.”
“I don’t think that will happen,” Rinakin said. “The Council has received a directive from the Superiority. There’s someone new in charge apparently, and they’re demanding we turn over the humans we’re harboring.”
I stared at Rinakin. “We’re not harboring humans, are we?”
“No,” Rinakin said. “But a human took your place and infiltrated the Superiority. How are the Superiority to assume that happened?”
By the branches. “They think I was working with the humans.”
“They think we are working with the humans,” Rinakin said. “And now they’ve issued an ultimatum. Turn over the fugitives—”
“Or they will very politely destroy us,” I said. “Which isn’t aggressive at all, I’m sure.”
“They’ll justify it,” Rinakin said.
They justified everything. And more than half of my people would parrot the justification as if it made sense, simply because the Superiority said it.
“You think I should return to the humans and ask for help.” In hindsight I should have stayed longer, tried harder to discern their true intentions. But I’d been disoriented, alarmed at how long I’d been unconscious, how much I might have missed.
And I really did not like that nasty government woman.
I’d thought the myth of human aggression was propaganda spread by the Superiority. Now I wasn’t so sure. And if they were as aggressive as the Superiority said, they could be good allies to have right now.
They also could be twice as dangerous if they turned against us.
“The Superiority controls us by dividing us,” Rinakin said. “That’s why they wanted us to think the humans were eradicated. They’re afraid of what we can do together.”
That sounded like a Unity argument, but I saw his point. From what little I’d seen, we had more knowledge of cytonics and politics, while the humans had real fighting experience, something no one on ReDawn had anymore.
“I don’t know how strong the human military force is,” I said. “Or how many ships they might be willing to send our way.” If any. My last meeting with them had gone poorly—I hadn’t endeared myself to their leadership, nor them to me.
“Then perhaps they would take us in as refugees,” Rinakin said. “We could begin to build a resistance from their planet, the way they once mounted a resistance from ours.” He glanced over at me. “If the humans joined us, it might grant us the most important resource. Hope.”
I didn’t like relying on flighty emotions, but Rinakin was right. The humans might be our best option.
They might be our only option.
“Or, we could use your knowledge of the humans to buy us time,” Rinakin said. “If we seem like we’re cooperating, Unity might leave us alone a while longer.”
He didn’t sound any more excited about that prospect than I was. “If we give the Superiority what they want, we’re playing right into their hands.”
“Yes. But the Superiority might not be our most pressing concern.”
“I don’t want to tell Unity I found humans,” I said. “We should be using that information to discredit them.”
“I agree,” Rinakin said. “That’s why I think you should return and ask the humans for help, while I go to the Council and try to reason with them.”
“They won’t see reason,” I said.
“They might,” Rinakin said. “Most of Unity’s supporters are blowing their way because they don’t see any other choice. If you bring the humans to our aid, you give them another option, another path. Remind the humans of our old alliance, and our potential as current allies. If you succeed, someone is going to have to advocate for that option with the Council. Will it be you?”
I sighed. We both knew I wasn’t a diplomat. Rinakin wasn’t a Council member anymore, but he was the High Chancellor of the Independents. The members of the Council listened to him—those left on our side, at least.
Still. “You can’t cooperate with them,” I said. “That is their way.”
“Cooperation is not evil, Alanik,” Rinakin said. “It depends entirely upon who you are cooperating with.”
“It’s evil to cooperate with them,” I insisted. “They want to work with our oppressors.”
“We all want the same thing,” Rinakin said. “Peace for ReDawn.”
“But the way they’re going about it is wrong.”
“It is. And someone has to continue to tell them that, so they can’t forget there’s another way.”
Rinakin exited Industry’s airspace and turned toward Spindle, a smaller tree where we both made our homes. An alert flashed on the panel—the color indicated that we were ordered to stop at the nearest landing bay for inspection by a government vehicle. Normally this alert was used for traffic violations, though we were flying at regulation speed through open airspace.
Alanik, Quilan said in my head. We’ve come to escort you to the Council chambers. Please ground your ship.
I dug my nails into the plush armrest. “It’s Quilan,” I said. He wasn’t a teleporter, but he did have access to cytonic skills I hadn’t yet been able to access—including concussion bolts and mindblades. Last I knew, he wasn’t strong enough to use the mindblades effectively, making him as dangerous to himself as he was to others. “He wants us to land so he can escort me to the Council.”
“You can flee to Hollow,” Rinakin said. “But they’ll come for you there, and you won’t have enough people to defend yourselves. We simply don’t have enough pilots to resist them.”
Rinakin turned the ship toward the nearest landing bay, a loading dock for one of the lumber yards. We cruised over a lot filled with old bark that had been stripped away. It would be turned into remanufactured wood in a pressing facility nearby and used for buildings that couldn’t be hollowed from the branches.
The ship following us pulled up over our left wing to escort us down into the landing bay. Rinakin turned off his boosters and lowered his altitude lever, bringing us down onto the smooth, shaved wooden surface.
As he did, Quilan’s voice reached into my mind again. I’m here in peace, he said. This doesn’t have to get aggressive.
I dug my nails harder into the armrest. His words made me want to scream. There was nothing quite so frustrating as soft words being wielded like clubs. At least a straightforward attack was honest; everyone could see it for what it was.
Later, when the Council discussed this, Quilan would testify that he was perfectly docile and reasonable, and I was going to look like the problem.
My fingers pierced through the armrest. I was going to owe Rinakin for repairs, but I wasn’t sorry. It felt good.
If that made me aggressive, so be it.
“I don’t like leaving you here,” I said. “You could come with me.”
“Our branches fork here,” Rinakin said. “But we’re still connected at the root.”
Pretty words that meant there was no convincing him otherwise.
I reached across the negative realm, searching for that strange planet, the rock with the eerie, clear atmosphere surrounded by orbital platforms and a thick layer of debris.
I found it, but as I tried to form the coordinates in my mind, the surface of the planet felt slippery. Empty. Blank.
They had a cytonic inhibitor. When had that happened? That hadn’t been there when I’d left them. I didn’t think they had enough cytonics or enough knowledge to form one—this was probably more similar to the ones used by the Superiority, especially because it seemed to cover the entire planet.
I scanned over the area searching for a gap, but I found none. Instead I sensed a mind hovering in their atmosphere—Jorgen. His abilities were still active, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to find him.
Superiority cytonic inhibitors operated with a key—a set of impressions that allowed a cytonic to bypass the inhibitor. That made the inhibitors particularly nasty, neutralizing all cytonics except for those the Superiority sanctioned. I didn’t imagine the Superiority had handed the humans one—they must have somehow found one on their own.
At least I could speak to Jorgen, even if I couldn’t hyperjump to his location.
Rinakin released the ship doors and stepped out with his hands held clearly in front of him. “Quilan!” Rinakin said. “Thank you for escorting me. I was going home to prepare, but since you’ve gone to the trouble I’d be happy to come with you now. Alanik has business of her own to attend to, so I’m afraid she’s going to have to request an extension—”
A flare of cytonic energy blasted from Quilan—a concussion bolt that sent Rinakin to his knees.
