Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(65)

Stoff’s jaw dropped again. “Sir?” he said.

“Take a walk,” Cobb repeated.

Stoff blinked at him, and then he turned around and left.

“It really was a good thing he listened to me,” I said. “If he hadn’t let me make the decisions, we could have lost the whole kitsen planet.”

“That may be,” Cobb said. “But a commander who shuffles off the hard choices is no commander at all.” He looked at me like he was considering something. He bent over for a moment, coughing, and FM and I looked at each other in alarm.

I had no idea what being half-stuck behind that portal had done to Cobb’s body, but he seemed to be weathering it poorly.

“Sir?” I said.

“FM, would you excuse us?” Cobb said when he could speak again.

My heart dropped. Here it was. He was going to chew me out for taking control. The decisions I’d made were far above my pay grade. I shouldn’t have done the things I did, even though they’d saved lives.

Stoff would have painted me as a renegade if things had gone poorly, but that wouldn’t have taken a very broad brush.

FM gave me one worried look, and then she nodded and turned to leave. Cobb sat up in bed, glancing with irritation at the medical devices still strapped to his arm.

“I’m sorry I acted rashly, sir,” I said. “I can brief you on everything, get you up to speed.”

“I heard quite a bit over the radio there at the end,” Cobb said, his voice still strained. He looked up at me like he was struggling to focus. “And that thing you did, speaking directly to everyone’s minds. That’s cytonic, isn’t it? You haven’t manifested some other ungodly power I need to know about?”

“No sir,” I said. “It’s cytonic. How…how long were you listening over the radio? I told them to call in as soon as you were awake—”

“And I told them to keep their mouths shut and let you work,” Cobb said. “It was clear you had things well in hand.”

That…seemed like an overstatement.

“We may not have done everything exactly by the book,” I said, “but we’ve made progress on the alliance, and we have a lot more knowledge of how our own technology functions. I think you’re going to be really pleased about what we have to work with. There were some rough patches, sir, but we pulled through them. And now that you’re back—”

“You’ve taken on an incredible amount of responsibility,” Cobb continued.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I was doing the best I could with the resources I had. And I think my judgment was a little impaired by what happened to my parents—”

“I’m sorry about what happened to them,” Cobb said. “The med team filled me in. They were lost in the explosion?”

“Yes,” I said.

Cobb shook his head. “We disagreed, but they didn’t deserve for it to end like that.”

My eyes started to burn, but I blinked it away.

“None of that changes the incredible work you’ve done here,” Cobb said. “If this is what you do when your judgment is ‘impaired,’ I’d like to see what you do when you’re thinking clearly.”

“I was simply trying to do what I thought you would do if you were here,” I said.

Cobb gave me a look, and I stuttered.

“I may not have predicted that perfectly,” I added.

“In this case, that only seems like a good thing.” He looked up at the clouds and shook his head again. “You have things so well in hand that I’m going to promote you to vice admiral.”

Stars. Vice admiral? That was skipping a lot of ranks. Though I did like the idea of getting to advise Cobb directly, what with everything we’d done and learned since he was replaced by that Superiority plant.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“As soon as that’s taken care of,” Cobb said, coughing again, “I think it’s clear that I’m in no condition to lead, especially when we’re now hopping our entire planet around the galaxy.” He eased himself back on his stretcher, staring up at the sky. “So I’m going to need to relieve myself from duty, until such a time that I’m fit for command.”

I blinked at him, trying to make those words mean something other than what I thought they meant. “Which of the vice admirals do you intend to give operational command to, sir?”

“I know subtlety isn’t your strong point,” Cobb said, “but if you can figure out how to move an entire planet, I think you can answer that question yourself.”

Saints and stars. “You can’t be serious. You have so much more experience—”

“With all of this?” He waved his arm, taking in the kitsen city, the ships above us, Detritus shining in the sky like it had always been there. He winced, holding his side, and then let his arm fall again. “No, Admiral, I would say you and your flight are the only ones with any experience dealing with all of this. Both our military and a coalition of alien races are ready to follow you into battle against a foe so powerful they probably shouldn’t have any hope of survival, much less victory. But they do. They’re chattering about it over the radio, all of us resisting together.”

“I didn’t mean to take control,” I said. “I was only trying to hold out until you returned. I never wanted—”