Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(7)

“This isn’t the Superiority,” I said. “We’re not trying to join them.” Cuna wanted us to see the Superiority as a diverse group of peoples, and I’m sure they were, given the thousands of planets that were apparently under their control. But. “The Superiority has been killing our people since long before Winzik took over, and we’re not making an alliance with any part of it. Not again.”

Cuna looked like they might argue, but I wasn’t going to hear it. Alanik had been right about the Superiority. My parents had tried to reason with them, and look where that got them.

“Boom,” Boomslug muttered from down by my feet, where he’d curled around the leg of my chair.

I reached for him and scritched him between his spines. He nuzzled his body against my hand.

“Cobb ordered us to find allies though,” I said, before Cuna could make any more defenses of the Superiority. “So if we reach out to others, we’re still following his orders.”

“Technically,” FM said, “he ordered us to make allies of the UrDail.”

“Technically they weren’t orders at all,” Alanik added. “They were not-orders.”

“That’s beside the point,” I insisted. “If we’re making alliances, then we’re doing what Cobb would do. And if our superior officers know we’re doing it, and they don’t order us not to, then we’re still operating within the current chain of command.”

“Do you know anyone we can reach out to with the hypercomm?” FM asked Cuna. “Other species we could make an alliance with?”

Cuna shook their head, laying their hands flat on the conference table. “I have tried to reach my contacts, but some have gone underground. Others might side with Winzik, so I have to be careful whom I reach out to. Your hypercomm does not have the data banks that mine did, and without the coordinates to reach the others—”

“We don’t know their radio frequencies, basically,” I said.

“Precisely,” Cuna said. “I have allies among the figments, if we can reach them.”

“We might be able to do that cytonically,” Alanik said. “Though if we try to reach out to the wrong people, we might set ourselves up to walk into another Superiority trap.”

I nodded. We couldn’t approach other cytonics indiscriminately. “You can monitor hypercommunication though, can’t you?” I asked Alanik. I hadn’t been able to figure out how to do that yet, but Alanik seemed to do it easily. “You could see if you can find any anti-Superiority communication, and we could try to pinpoint the frequencies of the people who are sending them and contact them as potential allies.”

“Most of those who oppose Winzik won’t be using hypercomms,” Cuna said. “The lesser species don’t have access to them, and those who do will be afraid of being overheard.”

Alanik looked like she might punch Cuna if they called her “lesser” one more time.

“If it’s the only idea we have,” FM said, “then it’s still worth a try.”

“I agree,” I said. “And we don’t have to ask Stoff for resources to try it, so that’s even better.” I turned to Alanik. “I’d like to help canvass for hypersignals,” I said. “You’ll have to teach me, but I’ve caught on quicker to the communication skills than hyperjumping.”

“Of course,” Alanik said. “I’d be happy to have your assistance.”

I hoped I would be of assistance, but we were getting desperate, and until we found Gran-Gran I was the only other cytonic we had.

Rig knocked on the doorframe to the conference room. His yellow hyperslug, Drape, peered over his shoulder from his perch in one of the new backpacks Engineering had devised. A boomslug—as everyone had begun calling them, even though technically it was Boomslug’s name—peered over his other shoulder.

“Are you carrying one of those around now?” I asked. That was strange. We’d mostly left the boomslugs alone, except for Boomslug. Everyone else was too worried about triggering the mindblades.

Rig shrugged, and the slugs bobbed along with the gesture. “Boomslug saved my life back on Wandering Leaf, so I thought we should try to keep more of these guys around. For purely experimental purposes, of course. I’m definitely not carrying a slug as a bodyguard.”

I couldn’t blame him if he was.

FM smiled at Rig. The two of them were scudding adorable, which lately made me want to punch things. Spensa’s influence, probably. “He named this one Squeeze.”

Of course. FM had taken glee in naming my hyperslug Snuggles before she assigned her to me. If I hadn’t already bonded with Boomslug, they no doubt would have tried to push Squeeze on me as well.

Cobb would tell me I should have more of a sense of humor about myself. He was usually right.

“Did you need something?” I asked Rig.

“Just wondering if FM was available to run drills with the slugs,” he said. “We’ve got Stardragon Flight ready to practice with the new keywords.”

The other flights had been less than thrilled when FM stole some of their taynix, but she was largely forgiven now that the assembly had lost most of the other taynix to the Superiority. We hadn’t secured enough new slugs to outfit all the flights yet, and any new ones we found in the caverns would have to start their training from scratch.