ReDawn (Skyward #2.2)(55)

    “You went to get fighters, and you brought them to rescue our allies at Hollow,” he said. “I heard all about it. You’ve done very well.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where’d I get the allies, Rinakin?”

“Alanik,” Rinakin said. “Time is of the essence—”

“I know,” I said. “So tell me where you told me to go when we last spoke.”

Rinakin sighed, and then he moved one of his hands to a device on his wrist. I took a step back, afraid it might be a weapon.

But he simply depressed a button.

My cytonic senses abruptly stopped, like I’d gone instantly blind. I was lost, alone, isolated, unable to reach out for the company of the endlessness of everything. Rinakin had a taynix box here somewhere. He’d activated a cytonic inhibitor.

“You’re not Rinakin,” I said, mostly for the benefit of Arturo.

The person who was not Rinakin smiled.





Twenty


“You’re not Rinakin, but you look just like him,” I said. “How are you doing that?”

He smiled at me again and leaned back in his chair, like he wasn’t worried at all about what I was going to do next. That meant he probably had backup on the way, perhaps alerted by the inhibitor, or by another button on his wristband. From there they’d be able to drag me off to their ship, and then to the Superiority.

I hoped Arturo would stay silent. If they didn’t find him, at least he and Naga would be able to return to the platform if I didn’t find a way out of this. I didn’t expect them to mount a rescue, but at least—

A crash sounded from the office behind me, and I closed my eyes.

Not-Rinakin stood. “Did you bring someone with you?” he asked. He edged around me, keeping his back to the wall as he moved down the hallway so as not to turn it on me or the source of the noise.

I should try to make a run for it—

But I couldn’t leave Arturo to be taken. I followed not-Rinakin down the hall. Maybe we could surround him. Maybe we could—

Not-Rinakin turned into the doorway to the office, where little bits of a piece of one of Rinakin’s decorative vases lay in fragments on the floor. Not-Rinakin had barely taken a step into the room when he took a punch to his knee and an elbow to his gut, and went flying onto his backside on the hallway floor.

I moved toward him to kick him while he was down, but not-Rinakin lifted his hands in surrender. “Human! So aggressive! Stop, please!”

    Arturo stood in the doorway, shaking his hand. “Ouch,” he said. “That scudding hurt. How did Spensa make it look so easy?”

“Easy!” Naga added.

Not-Rinakin tried to scramble to his feet, but Arturo raised his fist, and he sank to the ground again, protecting his face. I grabbed his wrist and pulled off his bracelet.

With a click of a button the inhibitor was gone, and the universe came to life around me again, like it had suddenly burst into song. With a second click the image over not-Rinakin’s body dissolved, revealing a dione with bright crimson skin.

“Oh, scud,” Arturo said.

This time I kicked the dione. Hard. They moaned and clutched their side.

“Where is Rinakin?” I asked. We didn’t have much time, but with the inhibitor down we could get out much faster.

“You won’t find him here,” the dione said. “They took him away not long ago.”

Oh no. I put a hand on Arturo’s shoulder and sent Naga the coordinates of the cockpit of my ship in the miasma. She was either getting used to me or was very aware of the danger we were in, because she went without Arturo’s permission this time.

“Ouch,” Arturo said. He was squished in the cargo space behind my seat in the cockpit, his head pressed against the roof. “This is not ideal.”

“Better than being taken by the Superiority,” I said.

“Taken!” Naga said from the side of my seat.

Chubs sat on my dash, looking at us curiously.

    “Think you can return me to my ship?” Arturo asked.

I gave Naga a clear picture of Arturo’s cockpit. His ship had drifted away a bit, but I could still see it through my canopy, floating off to the side. Arturo and Naga disappeared, and a moment later the ship started flying toward mine. Chubs settled on my lap.

“Are you okay?” Arturo asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “How’s your hand?”

“It’s all right, though I think my ego is bruised. Nedd always said we ought to have more training in hand-to-hand combat. I guess he was right.”

“It did the job,” I said. “Superiority operatives apparently really don’t like it when you punch them. I still have no idea how he managed to look like Rinakin.” I still had the bracelet in my hand, and I set it on the floor next to my seat to be examined later.

“About that,” Arturo said. “Spensa had a ship she found on Detritus. It had holographic technology that let her pretend to be you.”

I remembered FM and Jorgen saying something about that. “And the Superiority stole it?”

“I think they must have gotten their hands on her ship. They already knew she’d been using a hologram to look like you, so they would have been searching for it intentionally.”