Cytonic (Skyward #3)(86)

I followed the instructions from M-Bot, blasting off toward the incoming fragment. I was a faster ship, so I took up position at the rear of the fragment where he directed me. This one, like the one before, was barren—just a solid block of stone. Small, dense, and most importantly fast—like a bullet.

I matched speeds with the fragment and launched my light-lance out to connect to the stone. The other ships started following suit one by one as they arrived.

“Under fifteen minutes until contact,” Chet noted, watching the clock M-Bot had put up on the display for us, and reading the projections. “We’re cutting this very close.”

“Everyone is in place,” I said as the final ship connected its light-lance.

“You need to all pull directly up,” M-Bot explained. “Together, with an equal force. Here, I’m sending instructions to the others as if from you.”

I nodded and turned the ship upward, pointing the boosters down. My acclivity ring rotated automatically, so it was pointed downward as well.

“Careful,” M-Bot told me as I moved into position. “Give yourself as much slack as possible at first, and don’t hit the booster too hard. You’ll risk pushing down on the fragment with your thrust, negating some of the value of your pull.”



I gripped the thrust, refusing to give in to my instincts, which urged me to throw on the overburn. Instead, I slowly ramped up the booster to the thresholds M-Bot indicated. It felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all, as if nothing were changing.

All through it, M-Bot’s voice continued calmly. “Ease off a little. That’s it…”

He sent similar instructions to the other pilots’ displays. I glanced at the monitor, watching as we got closer, and closer, and closer to the Broadsider base. Until…we barely crested over the top, with enough clearance to avoid hitting the base structures. We knocked off the tops of a few trees though.

I let out a long breath while M-Bot sent another order to everyone that we could simultaneously power down and then cut our light-lances. I complied, then slowed in the air—letting that “bullet” fragment zip away. Without our influence, it lowered back down.

Then, a few minutes later, it collided with the next fragment it encountered. Both fragments were made up of more rock than the one that had collapsed before—and so they crushed together, stone crumpling and bulging like the fronts of some of the starfighters I’d seen impact. The sound was incredible.

As I hovered in place, Peg slowly drifted up beside me in her shuttle. “Never seen anything like that,” she said privately over the comm. “I’m growing gludens. Though now that we’re safe, I’m kind of glad I get to watch it. This feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

I was sure that for most people, it would be just that.

“Peg,” I said, “we need to make our assault on Surehold sooner than planned.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Sitting here like this is tempting fate. The nowhere is changing in dangerous ways. Plus, I’m…getting too complacent. I want to be moving on.”



“All right, all right. Don’t toss tidos at me. Maybe we can move the timeline up.”

The fragments that had collided shattered into multiple pieces of acclivity stone. The largest portions stayed pushed together, fused in the center, while smaller bits went bouncing free, spraying out like enormous chunks of shrapnel.

“You know,” Peg said absently, “it’s almost like the nowhere just up and decided to try to kill us.” She laughed, though there was an edge to the sound.

“Let’s assault Surehold tomorrow,” I said. “Waiting will only give the Superiority a chance to notice that we’re gathering, preparing something. We’re ready. Let’s do it.”

Peg was silent for a time, and I couldn’t judge her body language, not in separate ships as we were. I tried to inch mine forward to glance in through the window of her tug.

“Peg?” I asked.

“All right. We’ll need to rush to get all the ships back together and do last-minute preparations. If we can manage that…then, yeah. Tomorrow. I’ll let the other faction leaders know.”





I got up the next morning eager, excited. I’d done a quick check-in with Jorgen to let him know what I’d overheard in regard to the delvers and Winzik. But I hadn’t stayed with him long; I’d known many of our team would be working all night on the ships. The pilots had been ordered to get a good night’s sleep, and so I had forced myself to do just that.

Indeed, the hangar was already a buzz of activity when I entered. Ground crew members were still dashing this way and that. By the large clock Peg had set up, we had two hours until departure—and there still appeared to be a lot to get done. Back home, I’d have left all these sorts of preparations to the professionals. That wasn’t how the Broadsiders worked though.

Instead I hurried to M-Bot’s ship, where Nuluba was working. She’d serviced the boosters and was just now putting the casing back on one of them. I sprang to help her lift the casing into place, and it occurred to me that this was a chance to do something I’d been meaning to for a while.

“Nuluba,” I said. “I…want to apologize to you.”

“Apologize, Spin?” she said, gesturing with one arm in a wide loop—something I thought was to express comfort. “You have made up for your theft of the ship.”