Cytonic (Skyward #3)(121)

More fluting. I steered the ship around another snarl of ships before I could find the breath to respond.

“She likes you,” I said. “I think…she considers you a nice nest.”

“I suppose that’s a compliment, right? I mean, she wouldn’t use just anyone for a nest. But I’m in a different body now.”

“She sees with her cytonic senses,” I said. “So to her, you feel the same.”

“Remarkable,” M-Bot said.

It was, but I didn’t have time to think about it for the moment. I had gotten us out in front of the twenty ships that had chosen to stick on me. That gave me a chance to push straight for the lightburst.

Hesho’s face scrunched up with concentration as he watched his screen. Unfortunately, more of the delvers were breaking off from chasing his drone and turning toward our ship. They weren’t buying it. Not entirely. They—

A flash exploded in the near distance. Hesho muttered the most polite curse I’d ever heard, then his hands slipped from the controls.

“They have ended my drone,” he said. “My apologies.”

“Goodbye, little me,” M-Bot said. “That felt…more peaceful than I’d imagined. Like a power outage.”

I kept flying, but scud, the proximity sensors said I would have to go at least three more minutes on a straightaway to hit the lightburst. And I didn’t dare fly straight. A swarm of ships followed me—and even more had turned from Hesho’s drone long before it had been shot down. Those flew between me and the lightburst, forming a barrier of steel and destructor fire.

Scud.



I was forced to the side. The plan had worked better than I’d hoped, but it hadn’t been enough.

I needed to do something. I needed to get through.

I swooped down along the ground, casting up jets of dust and earth, and pushed.

Again they rebuffed me.

Soft…something in me thought. There are times for a knife. This isn’t one of them. Listen. Like Gran-Gran taught…

I let my instincts take over my flying. I was too tense, too stressed. Instead I went back to fundamentals. Yes, I’d learned a lot in here, but my grandmother had trained me for years before this. She’d taught me originally to listen, to let myself expand, to hear…

The delvers sent me hatred. Instead of rebuffing that, I welcomed it, accepted it in like I was an ocean and they were pelting me with hail. Hard, yes, but what did that matter to the ocean?

There.

Something clicked in my mind, and I suddenly knew exactly what they were each going to do. I could feel their plans, their motions, their reactions. I could track them all individually, in a way that I thought a normal human brain shouldn’t be able to.

But my brain interfaced with the pure nowhere. A place where all time was one, all place was one. In there, it didn’t matter if I faced one enemy ship or a million. So long as I could hear their minds, I could track them, understand them.

And anticipate them.

My hands moved by instinct, responding to this new information. Information I processed at the speed of the nowhere, not at the speed of a human mind. I’d done this before, in the past—when facing the Krell, who had been using communication devices that relied on the nowhere.

This time I did it to the delvers. I could feel them panic as my motions changed, and I gracefully began to dodge their each and every shot. In a fury, they tried to attack me, get inside my brain as the Krell had attacked my father. But no. I was a star as vast as an ocean, and I’d learned to not rebuff them, not be taken by them…



But to absorb everything they sent me. The untrained cytonic mind was a weakness. But I was no longer untrained.

Destructor fire was a tempest. Entire ships tried to collide with me. White bursts of soil and stone—casting too-crisp shadows that seemed to last for miles—sprayed and tumbled around me. But for the moment, none of it could touch me.

I wove between their shots like I was tracing a static maze, always a fraction ahead. I didn’t blink; I barely moved or thought. I just flew.

“She’s done it,” Chet said softly. “She’s got them.”

“You fly like a sunset, Spensa,” Hesho whispered. “Like a living glimmer of light escaping the horizon at twilight’s last moment.”

I barely registered the words. I concentrated on our goal. Because in the midst of my transcendent ability, I was able to make a good break for the lightburst. I shot through the guarding ships, dodging with supernatural alacrity.

We drew closer.

And closer.

Tailed by fifty ships and a firestorm of shots. I was in control. I could see them all. I could…

There wasn’t a way out.

A shot hit our ship, weakening the shield. I blinked, realizing that hadn’t been my fault. There simply hadn’t been a viable dodge. Even when I could anticipate all of their actions, see every shot, it didn’t mean I’d be safe forever. Because—like a game where the goal was to leave your opponent with no valid moves—the delvers could fill the air with enough shots that there was no place to dodge.

We took another hit and the low-shields warning started chirping on the dash.



“She can’t avoid them all,” Chet said. “Even with cytonics. It is time for me to do something.”