Cytonic (Skyward #3)(98)

“Done,” Peg said immediately.

Other members of the pirates who had joined with us grumbled, but Peg was making the correct decision. Vlep and his traitors weren’t our ultimate goal. Without them, there would only be ten working ships on the Superiority’s side. We had thirteen. And it was obvious which was the more skilled force.

Vlep hovered over to try to attach a light-lance to Hesho’s ship. However, Hesho’s voice came on the comm. “I have been bested a second time,” he said. “And in the name of honor, I have chosen to join the new champion as her sworn companion.”



Vlep cursed softly. “You would so easily break with your allies, Darkshadow?”

“I have made no oaths,” Hesho said. “You are not my liege. Indeed, your treatment of me when I first arrived is among the only memories I hold. Be glad I warned you of my shift in allegiance. We are now enemies. Should we meet again, I shall reveal to you the consequences of my anger.”

Vlep retreated without responding, following the others off the battlefield. I joined the line of active pirate ships facing down the small group of Superiority forces.

“All right, Lorn,” Peg said over a wide broadcast. “You want to just surrender now?”

“You know I can’t do that,” his voice replied.

“They’re never going to let you out of here, Lorn,” Peg said. “They don’t care about you. Why are you still loyal?”

“You know they have my family.”

“So we squeeze them,” Peg said. “We withhold their acclivity stone until they agree to send through your family. They pretend they have the power in this relationship, but so long as we own this place—and make it our home—they lose every bit of bargaining power they have.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and I leaned forward, hands on my controls. We could end this easily, with the odds in our favor.

Peg waited though. No signal to attack.

That heklo voice spoke again. “You promise to do this for me?” he asked. “For anyone they’re holding? You’ll get them brought through so we can be together?”

“My word and oath,” Peg said. “But you have to turn the facility over to me. All security codes. All access.”

Silence again. Finally, the heklo continued. “There are a few people among the base security officers who I’m nearly certain are Superiority agents sent to watch me. We’ll have to move quickly and isolate them until we can make sure.”



“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Peg said. “I’ve got a plan. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal.”





A short time later, Shiver, Dllllizzzz, and I flew in low toward the Superiority base—escorting Peg, her sons, and Lorn. The rest of the unfrozen pirate vessels formed an ominous presence higher in the sky.

Surehold turned out to be bigger than I’d expected. The campus sprawled across an unusually large and thick fragment marked by hills and rocky crags. I counted four separate acclivity stone quarries, each attended by a variety of modern machines. The central section of the base comprised about a dozen buildings, and while it wasn’t large in comparison to the crowded Starsight, it was almost as big as the entire DDF headquarters.

After making certain their large antiaircraft guns were offline—control transferred to Peg—we landed and let her and Lorn disembark. Curious workers stopped on the flight deck to watch, though Lorn—the base commander—waved a winged arm to calm them. Together Lorn, Peg, and her two sons entered a nearby building, the base security structure. Inside she could be given full and permanent control over the base, with her own overrides and passwords.

After a tense few minutes—during which I stood ready to blast open the wall and try to grab Peg if something went wrong—a call to quarters went out on the Superiority channel. Martial law was declared. Peg’s sons prowled out of the building a moment later, armed and armored, with Lorn guiding them. They’d secure the few people on base he thought would be trouble.



Quick as that, it was done. I hadn’t expected there to be trouble—the real fight had been the one with starfighters. We’d left most of the Superiority pilots in their ships, which were locked up without friendly tugs to unfreeze them, guarded by trustworthy pirate flights.

Still, I remained on watch—hovering—for another half hour as Peg and her sons took full command of the base. Finally, as the word came that all was clear, some of the pirates began to land on the flight pad. Hesho settled down beside us in his own ship, but didn’t move to leave it.

I glanced back at Chet. “What do you think?” I asked.

“It’s looking good,” he said. “But if anything were to go wrong, this would be the time—when we’re flat-footed and assume we’ve won.”

“Agreed.”

So the two of us, paranoid as we were, waited another good half hour. But it seemed that the final stage of Peg’s plan had indeed gone off without a hitch. As the pirates unloaded from their ships, Peg’s voice came over our comms and the flight deck loudspeakers.

“No looting,” she ordered. “This is our home now. Regular base personnel have been confined to quarters; if you encounter a locked room, leave it alone. But you’re free to investigate the place, pick an empty room in the barracks to claim as your own, all that fun stuff. Just be warned. I get word of you harming base personnel or breaking stuff, and I’ll be…upset.”