Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(60)

“Jerkface. What…what are we going to do?”

We needed more help, but at this point I wasn’t sure what else we could do. Against any other enemy it made sense for us to withdraw, to hope that they would have mercy on the kitsen. But I was never going to count on the Superiority’s mercy.

“Protect the city,” I said. “Send Quirk and Nedder to Detritus for more transport ships. Ask Angel if she can bring in any UrDail transport ships to evacuate other cities. We need to get as many people as we can off this planet before the Superiority musters up another one of those planetary weapons.”

“Copy,” Arturo said. He sounded as hollow as I felt. We both knew what we were about to watch. It would be the worst atrocity either of us had ever seen.

The general channel flashed. “Jerkface?” FM said. “The kitsen are boarding the transport ship. Should we send them out?”

“Is the ship full?” I asked.

“It will be soon. But…we can see the closest island, off to the dawnward side.” She’d picked up that term from Alanik, and it was helpful, I had to give the UrDail that. “The ships are firing on the island. Shouldn’t we…help them?”

There was pain in her voice, not unlike Kauri’s. FM had a gift for that—feeling what other people were feeling.

Today it might as well be a curse, but at least I’d been able to give her the job of saving the people we could.

“Take the ship out,” I said. “I’m going to check on Rig. We’ll try to save them, but…I don’t…”

“It’s okay,” FM said. “I know you’re doing your best.”

That was what I was afraid of. That this was my best.

And it was never, ever good enough.

“Juno,” I said, “I’m going to take you to safety.”

Juno looked down at his platform, at the piles of books stacked at his feet. “I should have brought more,” he said. “The books are digitized—the knowledge will not be lost, but these are the originals. It is a tragedy to lose them, but that’s even more true of my kinsmen.”

My throat closed up. All their knowledge. We needed that, and the Superiority would do their best to destroy it.

Stars.

In my mind, I reached for Detritus, searching for Rig. I felt his adrenaline before I’d even found him. He and his team were worn out trying to get the platform up and running, but they were still there doing the best they could.

Report? I asked him.

We’ve got lots of slugs in lots of boxes, Rig said. And we think these rooms are connected to several platforms. That’s the only reason we can see that you’d need so many. But Jorgen, we don’t even know what some of these systems do.

Alanik’s words to me on ReDawn echoed in my mind: Focus on what you have. If we could get even a few of those platforms here, we might be able to protect more cities while we evacuated them. There were hundreds upon hundreds of kitsen cities. The death toll would still be horrible. But…it would be something.

I’m coming, I said. Whatever you’ve got, we need to try it now.

Okay, Rig said.

I looked up at the sky. I could see what FM was talking about now—the flashes of light over the water, the Superiority firing on that island. FM should be pulling the transport ship out, but that was one tiny group of kitsen among so many.

It was going to take a miracle to get us out of this. Spensa taught me never to count a miracle out, and I hoped that held true even if she wasn’t here to work one for us this time.

“What are you going to do?” Juno asked. He stood with a book open, resting it on his forearm. In his paw, he held a small stick poised over the page.

A pen, I realized.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m making a record,” Juno said. “An original account of the actions of a shadow-walker.”

“No one’s going to want to read about anything I’ve done,” I said. I immediately realized it wasn’t true. He might be chronicling the end of civilization on Evershore. That depended not on me, but on how far the Superiority wanted to take their vengeance.

“I have waited all my life to witness the deeds of a shadow-walker,” Juno said. “And if this day is the last for my home, it will be my honor to record that it was not because your people left us to suffer alone.”

Scud. Wouldn’t we, though? We could evacuate some kitsen, but if we couldn’t turn the battle in our favor I was going to have to pull my people out. I couldn’t let them all die for nothing.

Do better than we did, my mother said.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t know if I could, but I was going to keep trying until I knew the answer. I rested my hand on Juno’s platform.

“Snuggles,” I said, “take us to Drape.”

We appeared in the room with the boxes and a lot fewer roaming slugs, most of which had been corralled into corners by the engineers.

Rig spun around from one of the control panels on the walls. “Jorgen,” he said.

“FM is fine,” I said. “She’s working on the evacuation effort. But the Superiority is fanning out over the planet, bombing civilians.” I didn’t know how they justified this to themselves. I didn’t know how they justified anything, but we had to put a stop to it. “We need to get these platforms over there. As many as we can move, as quickly as we can.”