“YOU’RE NOT RINAKIN, but you look just like him,” I said. “How are you doing that?”
He smiled at me again and leaned back in his chair, like he wasn’t worried at all about what I was going to do next. That meant he probably had backup on the way, perhaps alerted by the inhibitor, or by another button on his wristband. From there they’d be able to drag me off to their ship, and then to the Superiority.
I hoped Arturo would stay silent. If they didn’t find him, at least he and Naga would be able to return to the platform if I didn’t find a way out of this. I didn’t expect them to mount a rescue, but at least—
A crash sounded from the office behind me, and I closed my eyes.
Not-Rinakin stood. “Did you bring someone with you?” he asked. He edged around me, keeping his back to the wall as he moved down the hallway so as not to turn it on me or the source of the noise.
I should try to make a run for it—
But I couldn’t leave Arturo to be taken. I followed not-Rinakin down the hall. Maybe we could surround him. Maybe we could—
Not-Rinakin turned into the doorway to the office, where little bits of a piece of one of Rinakin’s decorative vases lay in fragments on the floor. Not-Rinakin had barely taken a step into the room when he took a punch to his knee and an elbow to his gut, and went flying onto his backside on the hallway floor.
I moved toward him to kick him while he was down, but not-Rinakin lifted his hands in surrender. “Human! So aggressive! Stop, please!”
Arturo stood in the doorway, shaking his hand. “Ouch,” he said. “That scudding hurt. How did Spensa make it look so easy?”
“Easy!” Naga added.
Not-Rinakin tried to scramble to his feet, but Arturo raised his fist, and he sank to the ground again, protecting his face. I grabbed his wrist and pulled off his bracelet.
With a click of a button the inhibitor was gone, and the universe came to life around me again, like it had suddenly burst into song. With a second click the image over not-Rinakin’s body dissolved, revealing a dione with bright crimson skin.
“Oh, scud,” Arturo said.
This time I kicked the dione. Hard. They moaned and clutched their side.
“Where is Rinakin?” I asked. We didn’t have much time, but with the inhibitor down we could get out much faster.
“You won’t find him here,” the dione said. “They took him away not long ago.”
Oh no. I put a hand on Arturo’s shoulder and sent Naga the coordinates of the cockpit of my ship in the miasma. She was either getting used to me or was very aware of the danger we were in, because she went without Arturo’s permission this time.
“Ouch,” Arturo said. He was squished in the cargo space behind my seat in the cockpit, his head pressed against the roof. “This is not ideal.”
“Better than being taken by the Superiority,” I said.
“Taken!” Naga said from the side of my seat.
Chubs sat on my dash, looking at us curiously.
“Think you can return me to my ship?” Arturo asked.
I gave Naga a clear picture of Arturo’s cockpit. His ship had drifted away a bit, but I could still see it through my canopy, floating off to the side. Arturo and Naga disappeared, and a moment later the ship started flying toward mine. Chubs settled on my lap.
“Are you okay?” Arturo asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. “How’s your hand?”
“It’s all right, though I think my ego is bruised. Nedd always said we ought to have more training in hand-to-hand combat. I guess he was right.”
“It did the job,” I said. “Superiority operatives apparently really don’t like it when you punch them. I still have no idea how he managed to look like Rinakin.” I still had the bracelet in my hand, and I set it on the floor next to my seat to be examined later.
“About that,” Arturo said. “Spensa had a ship she found on Detritus. It had holographic technology that let her pretend to be you.”
I remembered FM and Jorgen saying something about that. “And the Superiority stole it?”
“I think they must have gotten their hands on her ship. They already knew she’d been using a hologram to look like you, so they would have been searching for it intentionally.”
That was a terrifying thought. Though it was also startling to learn that Spensa had technology even the Superiority didn’t know about. They always seemed like they knew everything.
“Poor M-Bot,” Arturo said. “I’m kind of surprised he didn’t self-destruct or something. Spensa is going to be pissed.”
“She’s not the only one,” I said.
“I’m checking on the others over the radio,” Arturo said. “Scud, their situation sounds hot.”
It would be. We’d sent all the cytonics Unity had to offer right at them. I hadn’t heard from Jorgen. He said it was easier for him to contact me when I was near, but I hoped he could manage it even across the distance. I reached out to him now—the Unity cytonics had reached them, but they hadn’t managed to get the field up.
Status report? I asked him.
We’re holding out, Jorgen said. We’ve kept the cytonics out of position so far, so they haven’t been able to get up their inhibitors or that concussion thing. They’re too busy not getting shot down. Did you find Rinakin?
Working on it.
Jorgen fell silent, probably fully occupied dealing with Quilan and his people.
“We have to hurry and find Rinakin,” I said. “If they just left to take him to the Superiority, he could still be in transport. Let me see if I can find their ship.”
I closed my eyes, reaching across the miasma around the tree. It was easier to find a huge field of cytonic inhibition rather than one ship across the whole of the planet.
“Angel?” Arturo said. “We have incoming.”
I opened my eyes and scanned my proximity sensors. He was right. A contingent of ships was headed right for us. Either they’d scanned and found us, or Quilan had reported our whereabouts.
I needed to focus on finding the ship holding Rinakin. “You want to take point on this one?”
“Gladly,” Arturo said. “Evasive maneuvers.”
“Copy,” I said, mirroring Arturo’s movements as he cut a path away from the incoming ships. I tried to focus on the negative realm, reaching out with my senses, canvassing the area for dead spots.
There. Above the reaching branches of the tree, kilometers up in the miasma, was a tiny spot I couldn’t feel, like a dead nerve on an otherwise healthy patch of skin.
“Found it,” I said to Arturo. “Closer to the tree and up.”
“You want to take the lead now?” Arturo asked.
“Yes.” I accelerated and shot out in front of him, veering sharply upward so fast that my gravitational capacitors engaged, taking the brunt of the g-forces. The incoming ships changed course a moment later, following and gaining on us.
“I don’t know what kind of maneuvers you’re used to,” Arturo said. “And I’m sure we call them different things. So I’ll follow you and we’ll try not to get shot, okay?”
“Yes, that,” I said, and the ships behind us came into range and started to fire. Off my left wing, Arturo rolled his ship and pulled a tight series of dodging maneuvers I’d never seen before. But I had tricks of my own. Three ships came at me, destructors all firing at once, and I cut to the side, weaving between the projectiles, and then rolled upward again, still aiming for that dead patch in the sky.
“Nice,” Arturo said. “You’re going to have to teach me that one.”
“Same to you,” I said. The varsity leagues would die to get their hands on moves none of the other teams had seen before. Maybe that was how I was going to sell this alliance to the rest of my people. If they couldn’t see the sense in saving themselves from the Superiority, they could always be counted on to want their team to win.
“On your right!” Arturo said. I dodged before I saw the destructor fire, and it narrowly missed pinging my shield.
“We’re coming up on that dead spot,” I said.
There it was. The ship Quilan had used to take Rinakin. An UrDail ship with a cytonic inhibitor inside.
“They’ll have taynix in there,” I said to Chubs. “Should we collect you some new friends?”
“Friends!” Chubs said, hugging my stomach like he was enjoying the warmth.
If the taynix couldn’t hyperjump out of those boxes, he wouldn’t be able to go in and get them anyway. We were going to have to disable the ship and then grab it with my light hook to pull it in.
The ships behind us must have alerted it though, because it was flying away at high speed. “Accelerating,” I said to Arturo.
“Right behind you,” Arturo said, and we shot off after the escaping ship, the others close on our tails. I admired the way Arturo somehow managed to pull the most elaborate maneuvers, all while staying near enough to back me up when it got too hot.
I was every bit as good at evasive flying as he was, maybe better. But Arturo was something I’d never been—a real team player.
I closed in on the ship with the cytonic inhibitor, matching its speed. “I need to be sure he’s in there,” I said. “I’m going in close.”
“I’ll cover you,” Arturo said, and he did, blasting one of the ships on my tail with his destructors.
I cut a path toward the ship, pulling even with its left wing. The miasma turned my canopy into a blur of violet, but I held my ship steady. At this close range and at such high speed, it would be easy to collide and knock us both out of the sky.
The ship was much larger than mine, with a wider canopy. There in the pilot’s seat was another dione, recognizable by the bright blue skin under their flight helmet. I pulled farther forward as destructor fire rained over us—the ships behind us were apparently more interested in taking me down than they were worried about hitting their allies. The larger ship cut to the side, trying to evade me—
But not before I caught a glimpse into the hold, where a second dione sat next to Rinakin, who was bound and gagged.
“He’s there,” I said to Arturo. I followed as the ship turned a wheel roll to try to shake me. I stayed firm on its tail.
“Orders?” Arturo asked.
“Hang on,” I said, and I fired my light hook at the spinning ship, trying to grab it.
My hook connected, but the other ship’s momentum pulled me to the side, right into a line of destructor fire. My shield took a hit, and I felt the impact in my bones.
“Angel,” Arturo said, “I’ve got three on my tail. I’m going to have to pull away to shake them.”
“Do it,” I said.
“You’ve got more on you,” he said. “Watch out—”
The destructor fire continued, and I was forced to drop my light hook and take a dive beneath the diones’ ship to avoid losing my shield. “I lost them,” I said to Arturo.
“Stay alive,” Arturo said.
I had to ground that ship, but I couldn’t do that way out here away from the trees. And certainly not with so many ships on our tail.
“I’m going to take them on,” I said. “Don’t let them get away with Rinakin.” I pulled one of my favorite maneuvers from the junior leagues, a tight turn where my ship pivoted and my gravitational capacitors groaned and the weight of the universe seemed to bear down on my body—
And then it lifted, and I opened fire right in the faces of the enemy ships. They dodged to the side, but I pegged the shield of one and then caught another in a long burst of fire. It rolled, trying to avoid me, but its boosters went up in smoke and then the ship exploded, blooming like an opening flower.
The ship started to drop, beginning an uncontrolled descent, still flying forward with the force of its momentum.
The pilot didn’t eject.
I’d killed them.
“On your right,” Arturo said, and he opened fire, driving back two ships. “Rinakin’s ship is just ahead.”
Right. Focus. I gripped the control sphere much tighter than I’d been trained to do, trying to ignore the panic rising in my throat.
I killed someone.
They were alive before, and now they were dead.
I did that.
Me.
“There it is,” Arturo said. As if he sensed my hesitation, he flew past me, chasing after the ship. “Plan?”
Bile rose in my throat. I had to get out of here. I had to get out of the sky before—
Destructor fire shot over my left wing, and I startled. I slammed forward with my boosters, picking up speed, joining Arturo.
That was enough. I had to end it now. I gained on the ship holding Rinakin and shot at it again with my light hook, which connected, wrapping around the fuselage.
With my light hook in place, I did the only thing I could think of to do.
I reached into the negative realm, called to Naga behind me, and pulled.
