BECAUSE CUNA PROFESSED to be some sort of ambassador to “lesser species,” the humans allowed them to escort me to a low-ceilinged room with strange rectangular furniture. At home we carved our furniture from wood, and even basic inexpensive pieces would have designs carved into them. The more upscale furniture would be soaked and bent, the chair arms and headboards molded into swirling shapes. I stood in front of an armchair that consisted of a fabric cushion stretched over a metal frame, every piece forming a square angle.
I sat down on it. It was more comfortable than it looked, I would grant them that.
Cuna assured me that they would speak to the humans about my offer and then left me alone in the room. They weren’t gone more than a minute before there was a soft knock on the door. I could feel a congregation of cytonic resonances on the other side.
Jorgen and his slugs. “Come in,” I called, and Jorgen opened the door. FM stood on the other side with him, holding a basket of something green and flaky. They both stepped in and shut the door behind them.
“Cobb said we could bring you food,” FM said. “But we didn’t know what your people eat. Cuna said that algae wasn’t toxic for your people, so we brought some for you to try.” She pushed the basket into my hands. I knew what algae was, but I’d never thought to eat it. It grew beneath the surface bark sometimes, and could form in our atmospheric water generators if we weren’t careful to keep them clean. “Cuna also told us that you were more likely to eat fruits and tree nuts. We don’t have any nuts, and this was the only fruit we could find.” She shoved a small object into my hand. “Detritus isn’t the best place to grow things.” The fruit was red and roughly round and had a small brown stem at the top. It was much smaller than the fruits that grew on the trees at home, more similar to one that might grow on a vine on one of the farming branches.
“Thank you,” I said. I moved over to a small table—also square, with straight-angled legs. The conference table had been the same. These humans were very fond of right angles.
“I’m sorry about my mother,” Jorgen said.
“Your mother?”
“Jeshua Weight. She’s… a lot to deal with sometimes. But she means well.”
FM looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t. At home it would be considered rude to comment on the failings of someone else’s family member unless one was specifically invited to. Possibly humans were the same.
There was another knock on the door, and Jorgen opened it. Three more humans stood there, each with a yellow taynix tucked into a sling across their chest. The humans all wore the same clothes—flight suits, with the same patch affixed to their shoulders. One was a woman with brown skin and long, curly hair that hung halfway down her back. It still surprised me that all of the humans had hair and skin in various shades of bark colors, like they’d been drawn in different tones with the same pencil.
All except the last man who walked in. His hair was a shade of red nearly as bright as the stripes on Boomslug, and it contrasted against his pale skin. I wondered if that color was natural, or if humans sometimes dyed their hair the way my people did.
“We heard Alanik was back,” said the girl with the curly hair. “We wanted to see for ourselves, and Cobb said it was okay as long as we didn’t help her escape.”
I hoped he said that in jest. “I don’t need anyone’s help escaping,” I said. “I’m here of my own free will.”
“Of course you are,” FM said. “This is Kimmalyn, Rig, and Arturo.”
The one she said was Arturo—a man with brown hair—stood by the door staring at me. The humans had done that less than I would have thought, really. The only reason I could keep from staring at them was because there were so many of them.
This didn’t feel rude though. More like he was sizing me up. I stared right back at him to let him know I was up to the challenge.
He seemed more puzzled by that than anything, so maybe I’d misread the situation.
Kimmalyn came over and sat down next to me. “Are they feeding you algae strips? They could at least have brought you some dessert.”
“Cuna said the UrDail don’t artificially sweeten their food,” FM said.
Sweeten it? Most of the spices that grew on the vines were flavorful, but not particularly sweet. Which was good, because some of the fruits we grew were too sweet for my taste, especially when they were raw. “This is fine,” I said. “Thank you.” I lifted the fruit, testing the skin, which was thin and crisp.
“You can just bite into it,” Kimmalyn said. “You don’t need to peel it or anything. Unless your species doesn’t like peel. We could bring you a knife—”
I bit into the fruit, which had a satisfying crunch to it, not unlike pitchfruit back home. It wasn’t nearly as sweet though—it had more of a brisk flavor.
“Is it awful?” Kimmalyn asked.
“No, it’s good,” I said. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to say that if you hate it,” FM said. “We don’t have a lot of fruit, but we can find you something else.”
They were being kind, but I wasn’t here to discuss culinary habits. If their politicians refused to help me, I could at least collect more information. “Why are people afraid of your taynix?” I asked Jorgen. “You called it Boomslug?”
“Yeah, he did,” FM said, and Kimmalyn and Rig both snickered.
“Are we talking about that?” Rig asked. “She definitely doesn’t have clearance.”
“She already figured out about the hyperdrives,” FM said.
“My apologies for announcing that in front of your superiors,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Jorgen said. “Thank you for making it sound like you already knew.”
“But Boomslug—” I said. Boomslug seemed to recognize its name, because it descended Jorgen’s arm and slid across the table toward me.
“It exploded once,” Jorgen said. “Right in my face.” He rubbed one of the cuts on his cheek self-consciously.
I leaned away as it approached. “It exploded?”
“Watch out for your algae strips,” Kimmalyn said, and sure enough the slug began to sniff them speculatively.
“This explosion,” I said. “It was cytonic? Energy pushing out from it and slicing your face?”
“Yes,” Jorgen said. “How did you…”
I stared at the slug in alarm. “That taynix can use mindblades?”
“What’s a mindblade?” Rig asked.
Mindblades were an advanced cytonic ability. If this creature could produce them, then it must be a powerful cytonic lifeform.
Though the idea that it could produce a mindblade when I couldn’t was frankly a little insulting.
“I’ve only seen them once,” I said. I could have kept this information to myself, but I didn’t see how they could use it against me—and giving it to them might make them feel comfortable giving more information to me. “Only one of the cytonics on ReDawn can produce them. They are… energy from the negative realm pulled into ours with fantastic force.” I watched the slug carefully as it gripped the edge of my algae strip with its mouth and slowly retracted the strip from the basket. “They are tremendously difficult to produce.”
FM smiled. “So Boomslug is an overachiever.”
“I would like to see it in action,” I said.
Jorgen scooted his chair away from me. “Not with us sitting right here.”
The slug slowly drew the algae into its mouth, watching quietly.
There was something ominous about it. Especially now that I knew what it did.
“Are there other types?” I asked. “Communication slugs? Inhibitor slugs, perhaps?”
“We have slugs that power hypercomms,” FM said. “So far we haven’t found a good use for those without a full hypercomm, so the pilots aren’t trying to bond to them. I don’t know about inhibitor slugs though.”
“Are inhibitors powered by a cytonic?” Jorgen asked.
“Power,” Boomslug said.
That was also unsettling. “Sometimes,” I said. “It takes a great deal of power, and generally cooperation between multiple cytonics to accomplish. But the Superiority has hyperdrives that work without a cytonic present. If they are using taynix to power their hyperdrives, perhaps there are inhibitor slugs as well.”
“If it takes multiple cytonics,” Rig said, “I wonder if it requires multiple taynix. We’ve only begun to learn what they can do when they work together.”
Boomslug continued to munch placidly on the algae strip. The idea of this thing collaborating was even more terrifying.
“What can you tell us about hyperjumping?” Rig asked. “Obviously you know how to do that.”
I hesitated. Jorgen and FM and their friends were sharing information with me. I wondered if this was the game—freely give up what they knew so that I would share what I knew with them.
“She’s not going to tell us anything yet,” Jorgen said. “That’s her bargaining chip. She wants help from the DDF in exchange for that information.”
“Oh,” Rig said. “Sorry.”
Apparently that wasn’t the game.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I would like to teach you what I know, if you’re willing to work with me.”
“I’d like to,” Jorgen said. “But it’s not our decision.”
“About that,” I said. “I asked you for your opinion earlier, but you never gave it to me.”
Jorgen sighed. “I don’t know who should make the decision about an alliance with your people. I think the assembly has a point when they say diplomacy is a political matter, not a military one. But the military has been making decisions for the assembly for so many years, it seems like a bit of a power grab for them to reverse course on that now.”
“It’s because of Cobb, I think,” Kimmalyn said. “Some of the people on the assembly say he’s not fit to make these decisions.”
“Are they really saying that?” Rig asked.
“They are,” Arturo said. “The assembly has been in conflict with the DDF for years, wanting more say in operations. They were too afraid to take power from Ironsides when the war was so close to the surface, but now that the fighting is farther away, people aren’t as scared—even though our situation is worse. The assembly is starting to think about how to take power away from the DDF, trying to find other ways to deal with the Superiority, now that we know more about them.”
“Are all of your assembly dealings so public?” I asked.
“No,” FM said. “He knows because his girlfriend’s mother is a National Assembly Leader.”
Arturo suddenly looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t deny it. The pin translated “girlfriend” as “potential mate.” I wondered if humans got embarrassed discussing such pairings before they were finalized. Some did on ReDawn. It depended on what tree you were from.
“I went home to see my father a couple of days ago,” he said. “But neither of my parents would listen to me. They think I’ve been spending too much time with Cobb.”
“They do have a point about the Superiority,” FM said. “Finding other methods to deal with them seems like a good idea. It’s not healthy for us to think of everything that moves as a target to shoot at.” She looked at me like she already knew I would argue.
She wasn’t wrong. It must be tempting to think that way after years of fighting, but that was the same attitude that led my people right into the Superiority’s trap. The humans’ military had experience we on ReDawn could only read about in books. But it was useless without the will to fight. If they fell for the Superiority’s lies, then I couldn’t rely on them to help pull ReDawn out.
“Some forces can’t be reasoned with,” I said. “They can only be opposed.”
“The DDF would agree with you,” Arturo said. “But the assembly is starting to think otherwise.”
“Otherwise,” his taynix said.
“Which is why I don’t know who’s right,” Jorgen said. “You say we shouldn’t talk to the Superiority, but I see the appeal. If we could strike an accord with them, lives could be saved.”
“It depends on what you mean by saved,” I said. “If you live, but give away your autonomy, your ability to make decisions for yourselves, to be treated as equals…”
“Do we have autonomy if all we can ever do is fight for our lives?” Arturo asked. “No one from the Superiority has ever treated us like equals. They treat us like insects.”
“They’re afraid of us,” FM said. “And the assembly wants to convince them that they don’t need to be, but the DDF keeps doing things that escalate the situation.”
“Like turning on the shield,” Rig said. “And developing hyperdrives. The better we get at defending ourselves, the more we convince them they’d better bring everything they have to destroy us.”
“But if you don’t do those things, they will enslave you,” I said.
“Is that what it’s like for your people?” FM asked. “You’re slaves to the Superiority?”
I hesitated. There were so many on ReDawn who didn’t see it that way. “No,” I said. “Because we have maintained our autonomy. Instead of killing us, they isolated us, denying us hyperdrives and mostly leaving us alone.”
The humans all stared at me.
“That must be nice,” Kimmalyn said finally.
I looked down at the table. These people had been on the front lines, fighting people who wanted them dead. Our squabbles on ReDawn must look so easy to them by comparison. “I’m not trying to compare our situations,” I said carefully. “But the Superiority keeps us all in cages of different kinds. They control us and call it peace, but it isn’t peace when we don’t have a choice.”
“That’s fair,” FM said, but none of the humans would quite meet my eyes. This all clearly weighed heavily on them.
I’d misjudged them, I realized. It wasn’t that the humans couldn’t think for themselves. It was that they had fought for so long with so few resources—but only for survival, not for any particular ideal.
They were desperate and confused, so they were striking around in the dark making confused, desperate decisions.
That was something I could offer them, I realized. Hope. A goal beyond mere survival.
“Our peoples were both autonomous once,” I said. “And Jeshua Weight is right. We lost that war together. But before that we worked together for centuries. Cytonics from my planet made contact with yours long before either of us were spacefaring. You inspired myths that we still treasure, and your people wrote about mine in their own mythology. One of your ancient writers even preserved bits of our language, so that when we began to travel across the universe, some of your people could speak to mine.” I’d never read the book, though now I wished I had. There were still a few copies on ReDawn. Something about a ring. “We don’t have to let the Superiority tell us we’re lesser species. We can return to our ancestors’ fight. We can pick up our old alliances. We can remind the Superiority why they were so afraid of us to begin with, and maybe this time we could win.”
“Or maybe we’d lose,” Kimmalyn said quietly.
“Maybe,” Jorgen said.
“If you’re losing now, would that outcome be so different?” I asked.
Before anyone could answer me the door opened, revealing Admiral Cobb in the hallway.
“Is this a social visit?” he asked to the room.
Jorgen startled. “No, sir. I mean, we brought Alanik some food, and we were talking, but—”
“At ease,” Cobb said, though he was the one who looked uneasy as he checked behind him in the hallway and then closed the door. He limped toward us, leaning on a cane.
“Any word from the assembly?” FM asked.
“Yes,” Cobb said. “They’ve granted permission for Alanik to remain on Detritus as a refugee.”
“I didn’t ask for that permission,” I said.
“I’m aware of that,” Cobb said. He scowled at Boomslug, who had started on a second of my algae strips. I hadn’t tried them yet, and I wondered if the humans would find that rude. I picked one up with my fingers. It was dry and crumbly, like some kind of wafer. Cobb focused on me, and I held the wafer still. “Jeshua has been conferring with NAL Algernon Weight and the rest of the assembly over the radio. Your petition for military aid has been denied—for the moment at least. The assembly is willing to continue debating the issue, and they say they’ll revisit it at a later time.”
“But I need help now,” I said. “My people are going to be given over to the Superiority—”
“So you said,” Cobb said. “They’re right that committing so many resources to your cause right now would weaken our position, especially after losing a flight’s worth of starships.”
FM and Jorgen exchanged guilty looks. I wanted to ask how they managed to lose multiple starships, but I’d lost two so far myself, so I supposed I couldn’t judge.
I should have asked that my ship be returned to me, I realized. That would have to be my next request. I stuck the end of the algae strip in my mouth, sampling it. It tasted like bittermoss, deep and earthy, with an even sharper aftertaste.
“It’s better dipped in custard,” Kimmalyn said. I didn’t know what custard was, so I would have to take her word for that.
“I think they’re also concerned that sending away starships would spoil their current negotiations,” Cobb said. “NAL Weight has been talking to one of the Superiority ministers, trying to negotiate a peace deal.”
I nearly spat out the algae strip. “They’ve made contact with the Superiority?”
“Using the hypercomm,” Cobb said. “And they want to have all of our resources available to bargain with.”
“They’re going to want your cytonics,” I said.
Jorgen’s eyes widened. “Is that true, sir?”
“I haven’t heard their exact demands,” Cobb said. “They’re trying to keep me out of the meetings, saying that this is a political discussion and not a military one.”
“But sir,” Jorgen said, “if they’re planning to bargain with military resources, doesn’t that concern the DDF?”
Cobb went on as if he hadn’t heard him. “I don’t imagine that the Superiority is going to be fond of us keeping our hyperdrives.”
FM’s hand went protectively to Gill in her sling.
“Our hyperdrives,” Gill said.
“We’re not handing the taynix over to the Superiority,” FM said.
Doing so would be incredibly foolish, but of course that was what the Superiority would demand. Perhaps the humans were closer to agreeing to help me than I’d thought. They did have resources they wanted to defend.
“I don’t think we should hand over a single hyperdrive to the Superiority,” Cobb said. “But right now my hands are tied.” He eyed me. “Tell me, would it be of any help to your people if we could send a single flight of ships?”
It would be far less help than an entire military fleet. But with one flight, I might be able to assault the ships that were holding my brother and the others from the resistance. I could rescue Rinakin. He was still respected by many, even though he’d lost the election. He might yet be able to sway others to our cause if we could show that we had human allies. “I would take any resources you could give me,” I said, “and make the best use of them that I could. My people want freedom. We’ve held out for it for so long, but my people have lost hope that they can grasp it. If we could begin to gain ground toward that goal, I believe others would join us.”
“What exactly would you do with them?” Cobb asked.
That was a very good question. “To start,” I said, “I would liberate the remaining outpost of my faction’s military. My people are being held on a Superiority ship and the base has been forcibly taken from us. If I could restore it to our control, the other Independence bases might feel empowered to fight back.”
Cobb nodded. “That’s good to know. Unfortunately, my hands are tied.”
I narrowed my eyes. Why ask if I could use a flight of ships if he had no intention of sending me one?
Cobb stood a bit straighter. “I’ve been specifically forbidden to order any starships to ReDawn to aid Alanik’s people. I can’t command Skyward Flight to go. I can’t command you to give Alanik the aid she needs in exchange for help learning how to use your cytonic abilities. I can’t order you to make an alliance with Alanik’s people, and I can’t order you to bring some of those resources home to help us here as soon as you can.”
FM and Rig exchanged a glance.
“We understand, sir,” Jorgen said, looking down at Boomslug morosely.
Cobb raised an eyebrow at him, like he didn’t understand at all.
I wasn’t an expert in human communication, but that seemed like an oddly specific list of things they were not being ordered to do. Cobb looked up at the ceiling and sighed, clearly disgruntled about something.
“You can’t order them to do it,” I repeated.
“Correct,” Cobb said. “I have been absolutely and expressly forbidden from ordering you to do what clearly and obviously needs to be done for the good of Detritus and her people.”
“That’s really unfortunate, sir,” Jorgen said. Cobb looked like he was ready to whack him with his cane.
FM smacked Jorgen in the arm with the back of her hand. “He’s saying he can’t officially order us to go,” she said.
“I heard him,” Jorgen said.
“Heard him!” Snuggles said.
“We’re all going to ReDawn,” FM said to Jorgen. “That’s what’s happening.”
Jorgen finally seemed to realize what was going on.
“Like the Saint says,” Kimmalyn said, “whenever you get there, there you are.”
Jorgen looked up at Cobb for confirmation, and Cobb rolled his eyes. He gestured toward the door.
And then all the humans climbed to their feet. Jorgen scooped Boomslug off the table, half an algae strip still hanging from its mouth.
I paused in front of Admiral Cobb. “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t going to call him sir. He wasn’t my commander. But he was the only reason I had hope for Rinakin and the rest of my people, so I owed him my respect.
“Don’t thank me,” Cobb said. “I’m just the bearer of bad news.”
I nodded to him, and then followed the others out of the room.
