Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(66)

One corner of Cobb’s mouth turned up. “No,” he said. “The good ones never do.”

I stared at him. “You’re serious.”

“I am. I don’t intend to abandon you. There’s a whole lot of paperwork surrounding the position, and it’ll be good for you to have someone to help keep that out of your way. But clearly you’re best suited to be in strategic command. The Saint knows you’re better suited to it than I am.” Cobb raised an eyebrow at me, and his mustache twitched. “Unless you mean to turn down the promotion.”

He watched me carefully, waiting for my answer.

I looked up at the sky, at the gleaming moon of Evershore and Detritus hanging up there with it. I’d brought us this far on the hope that Cobb would relieve me of the responsibility to pull us through this—if not unscathed, then at least alive. I’d thought there was an end, a point at which I could unload everything that rested on my shoulders.

If I said yes, that might never end. But if I refused, I’d only be shuffling it off to someone else. There was no one besides Cobb that I’d trust to lead us as we faced what was coming. I’d pushed us this far so we could have the benefit of his judgment again.

And if this was what he thought was best, then so be it. “No, sir,” I said. “I’ll accept it.”

“Good.” Cobb put a hand on my arm. “I wish your parents could see what you’ve accomplished. They would be so proud of you.”

Something inside me cracked.

In my time in the Defiant Defense Force, I’d felt lost and inadequate. I’d felt undermined and humiliated in front of both my flightmates and my superiors. I’d made calls no human being should ever have to make, had been both right and wrong about them, and had to live with both. I’d stayed in control through it all, because that was what I had been raised to do.

But at that moment, the veneer of my composure shattered like a damaged canopy. In front of my superior officer—scud, was he still my superior?—I started to cry.

“You’re going to be all right, son,” Cobb said, squeezing my arm. “If you need my help, you can now contact me no matter where I am. Which is a little disturbing, by the way. If you’re going to make a habit of it, find some way to give me warning. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I’ll try, sir,” I said.

Cobb shook his head at me. “You can do what you want with Stoff,” he said. “It’s your decision.”

“I don’t think he should be in command anymore,” I said. “But I don’t want to punish him either. He really could have made things a lot more difficult and gotten a lot more people killed.”

“That seems like a good decision,” Cobb said. “Not your first.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now if you don’t mind,” Cobb said, “I’m going to close my eyes for a minute.”

“Of course, sir,” I said.

“And Jorgen?”

“Yes, sir?”

Cobb sighed. “You’re going to have to stop calling me sir.”





Epilogue


I left Cobb with the medtechs and stumbled up the road toward the city. I found Cuna standing outside the senate building. It appeared to be filled with kitsen, all packed in together. Goro hovered by Cuna’s shoulder, still in his ceremonial armor.

“How did the evacuation go?” I asked.

“Very well,” Cuna said. “We opened the buildings in the upper city so that the kitsen in the lower areas had somewhere to take shelter. I believe most of them made it out.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said.

“I’m glad I could be of service,” Cuna said. “And that we could save the people here.” They looked back into the senate chamber, packed with so many kitsen I could hardly tell one from another.

Cuna cared about these people, I realized. They spoke like they thought themself superior, but they were trying to save lives. I could work with that.

“I’m sorry about the flooding,” I said to Goro.

Goro looked out at the city somberly, and I expected him to announce that we were enemies once again, for all the destruction we’d brought in our wake. “Tell me, human,” he said. “Now that you have fought on our shores and won, do you consider us your conquest?”

“No,” I said. “But I’m hoping we can call you our allies.”

Goro narrowed his eyes at me. “Cuna says you’ve brought back our shadow-walkers, who we thought lost forever. You command the tides themselves, moving celestial bodies in the firmament. But you don’t mean to rule us?”

“If I commanded the tides,” I said, pointing toward the lower city, “I wouldn’t have told them to do that. We humans have enough trouble ruling over ourselves. We only want an alliance, I swear to you. No one is going to invade.”

Goro snorted. “Fair enough, human. It’s not my decision, but I will speak for you if you need my support.”

“Thank you,” I said. Though at this moment, what I needed most was to get away. I excused myself and strode down the road, past the crowds of kitsen who were leaving the buildings of the upper city to survey the damage.

I found FM at the end of the road, where the water now flooded the lower levels of the city. Ships hovered over it, pilots lifting their canopies, looking up at the platforms surrounding the planet. Some of the platforms disappeared and reappeared again in different positions—Rig was obviously still working out their optimal spacing for generating the shield.