Cytonic (Skyward #3)(80)

I darted between the white patches.

Leave this place, noise!

I will leave, I said, if you promise never to enter where I am from. You will stay in the nowhere, and I will stay in the somewhere.

No. Because the noise will not stop! Can you stop the noise, noise?

I can’t promise that, I said. But we aren’t a threat to you. You can live, and we can live, and ignore one another.

No. You can stop. Or you can be made to stop. You pain us. You give us…the pain…of another self…

We came shooting out from between the two white spots, and the ship flew by itself, veering to the side, out of range and away from some asteroids.

“It’s working!” M-Bot said. “I’m actually helping!”

I grinned, taking back the controls. M-Bot wasn’t a great pilot, but he could react when close to the white spots, which had hopefully given us an edge. Indeed, I checked the proximity sensor and saw that Darkshadow had decided to follow me—but had been forced to slow first, to not risk slamming into something after losing control.

That meant I was able to execute a tight loop and come in shooting before the champion was able to get back up to speed and escape. Two more hits took his shield down. He dodged away, but I fell on his tail.



One more shot and I’d win this. I got in close as Darkshadow dodged into some rubble, then lined up for the shot—but in that instant Darkshadow blasted his IMP. The wave of close-range energy knocked out my own shield. He darted away on a massive overburn before I could land the shot.

“Not bad,” M-Bot said. “That champion is good.”

Yeah. Strangely so. When Darkshadow got away from me, he used what seemed like a DDF scatter escape—very similar to the series of maneuvers I’d taught the Broadsiders. I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but something about the way he flew was familiar. Who was this? Did he really have the same training that I’d been given? Was it…

I felt a sudden cold feeling, mixed with longing. Could it be him? I’d felt him in here, when questing outward. Or was that just wishful thinking?

Don’t be stupid, the rational part of my brain said. Your father couldn’t fit in that small cockpit. In fact, of all the races you know, it could only fit a figment or…or a…

Oh, scud! “M-Bot, can you get a comm line to that champion?”

“Of course,” he said. He flashed the light on the instrument panel that let me know the line was open.

“Hey, Darkshadow,” I said to the other ship, which was hugging the perimeter and flying upward. “Any last words before I defeat you?”

“I am a swift minnow upon the tides of time,” the response came. “They may crush ships against the shore, but I swim them easily.”

Well, Saints and stars. It was him.

“Spensa!” M-Bot said, cutting the line to the other ship. “That voice. It’s—”

“Hesho,” I said.

“He’s dead!”

“He vanished during the fight with Brade,” I said, “when the kitsen ship was blasted open and exposed to vacuum. They assumed he got sucked out. But that was in the middle of a lot of weird things happening with cytonics.”



Not the least of which had involved the summoning of a delver into the somewhere.

“I feel…” M-Bot said. “I feel happy! I never spoke to him directly, but I feel like he was my friend, Spensa.”

He was mine too. “Open that comm line again,” I said. “Hey, Hesho? It’s me. It’s…um, Alanik… Well, you know, the person who was pretending to be her…”

Right. That was all rather complicated.

“I know not that name,” the voice said. “I am the Darkshadow. He with no past. The nameless warrior cursed to wander eternity without home or ally, always seeking memories he can no longer retain. I am fleeting, but a whisper upon time itself.”

He said it all with utter solemnity. Man, I loved that little fox-gerbil.

“You don’t remember anything?” I asked him.

“I have only the instincts of a warrior to guide me,” he replied. “You will not distract me from my current purpose, adversary. Though you have fought admirably, I will defeat you, then compose poetry for your funeral.”

“This…um…isn’t to the death, Hesho.”

“I will defeat you,” he said in the same exact tone, “and compose poetry for your retirement party.”

He must have been isolated during his first days in the belt, and lost everything. Now that I knew who it was, I was even more impressed by his flying. Hesho had commanded a ship, and though my memory was admittedly fuzzy, I thought he’d mostly acted as a captain.

But he’d also been part of my extensive training sessions. I’d assumed some random crewmember had been manning—er, fox-gerbiling—the controls of their ship. It seemed, however, that the pilot had been Hesho himself.

How could I use that knowledge? He might be good at dodging and following flight patterns, but he would have let members of his bridge crew work other system controls. He’d messed up earlier on a light-lance pivot. He wouldn’t be as good at multitasking as I was.



I moved in close to some other asteroids as he tried to come back around to attack me. I kept him busy, weaving and dodging, and got farther and farther ahead of him. Finally, he broke off to pull back.