Cytonic (Skyward #3)(42)

I felt oddly reluctant to part with it. Like, it almost seemed to cling to my fingers as I put it in the hole. I couldn’t help thinking it was sad to have me abandon it. This place was messing with me in strange ways.

The mechanics in the hangar stood up and looked out toward where Chet had been hiding. Distraction begun.

“So what do we do?” M-Bot whispered.

“In case my worries are correct, we’re not going to steal the ship Chet assumes we will. Which of those other hangars has the fewest sleeping people?”

“The one directly to the right,” he said. “It only has four. But…Spensa…are you sure about this?”

“It’s not my job to be sure,” I said. “It’s my job to do my best anyway. Come on.”

We slipped out from behind cover and reached the hangar easily. Sneaking around on dirt and grass was simple. Just had to test each step for leaves or twigs.

The doors were locked, but one of the nearby windows was unlatched. M-Bot was able to slip in, and a moment later the door into the left side of the structure—the part with bunks, rather than the ship storage—clicked. I eased it open, then stepped into a dark hallway.

The place had a clinical feel to it, like the hallways of Platform Prime. Too clean, and it smelled sterile. The doorways were all taller and thinner than the ones at home, and the door handles were all a good half meter higher than I expected. It left me imagining what kind of species had built this place.



In the dim light, I located a door into what I thought should be the hangar proper. M-Bot bobbed up and down—no heat signatures beyond it. This door was unlocked, and I was relieved to find a vast cavernous room. Light shone through slits in the window shades, illuminating four large starships like slumbering leviathans. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever encountered.

I whispered for M-Bot to watch for junk I might accidentally kick while walking—didn’t want to send a discarded lubricant can clanging across the floor. As I crept along the wall, I stopped by one of the windows to peek out through the slats.

I could clearly see Chet standing outside the other hangar, surrounded by the guard and mechanics. He spoke animatedly while carefully holding up a reality ash in one hand.

“Spensa,” M-Bot whispered. “It doesn’t seem like he’s betraying us.”

It didn’t. But, well, that was why I’d continued with the plan. If I really was just being paranoid, then I could still steal a ship, break out, and turn guns on the pirates while Chet joined me. I’d tell him I’d been spooked at the last minute and had decided to sneak into a building where everyone was asleep.

I turned from the window to survey the four fighters. Two were obviously civilian ships augmented with some makeshift destructors that marred the otherwise intentional designs. Fortunately the two others were military, with built-in weapons. I picked the interceptor—a lean, dangerous-looking variety of ship that balanced speed and offensive capabilities. It also felt the most familiar, similar to DDF ships from Detritus, with a long thin arrow shape.

I hurried over and grabbed the wing, then hauled myself up to the canopy. I was acquainted at this point with several different control schemes. I’d have to hope that I knew this one’s. If not, I’d inspect the other ships. Stars, I hoped I didn’t have to end up stealing that shuttlecraft in the corner. Piloting that would be like riding a potbellied pig into battle among a group of knights.

I peered into the cockpit of the ship and it was dark and shadowed, so I couldn’t identify the control scheme from outside. I felt along the rim and found an access port for M-Bot—most ships had external ones for diagnostics. I plugged in his drone to let him interface—which would theoretically allow him to open the cockpit and override the pilot lockouts.



“Ah…” M-Bot said. “This will be easy. Hmm. Lots of hard drive space in here. It might feel nice to be in a larger ship again. First though, let’s see… Should be through in thirty seconds or so.”

I nodded, leaning down and staring into the cockpit. That was a control sphere, wasn’t it? Yeah, the layout did seem familiar. The seat was strange and lumpy though. Like instead of being a chair, it was some other seating mechanism?

Thinking about that started me worrying about the kitsen, who had their own strange way of building starships. They’d helped me at the battle against Starsight. What would Winzik do to them? They were leaderless now that Hesho was dead, sucked out into the vacuum of space when Brade attacked their ship.

The kitsen had trusted me. Had I doomed their entire planet? What happened if Winzik actually persuaded the delvers to help him? I needed to find some way to stop them, so—

“Huh,” M-Bot said.

“What?” I hissed.

“I just got locked out of a few systems,” he said. “I can reroute, but… That’s odd. The lockout was via a manual override. How would…”

Lights went on in the cockpit, illuminating a creature that had been sleeping inside. The light reflected off a body that I had trouble sorting out—crystalline limbs and a bulky shape like a pile of glistening stone…

“Oh, scud,” I whispered.

No heat signatures. But not all life was warm. I knew that. Figments like Vapor seemed not to even have bodies. I’d made a terrible miscalculation. My sole consolation was that M-Bot had done the same.