ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)(11)

“You’ve met Admiral Cobb, but he didn’t get to say much,” FM said. “He’s…much more reasonable than Jeshua Weight, the woman you ran from. But yes, she will probably be there, especially if you want to meet with Minister Cuna.”

    I doubted Jeshua Weight was going to want to work with me. I knew her type—always reaching for power, never wanting to extend any in return. “And if your leaders refuse an alliance?” I asked.

Jorgen and FM exchanged another look. “There’s nothing we can do for you without their permission. That’s not the way it works here.”

“Here!” chimed the red slug on Jorgen’s shoulder.

“Not now, Boomslug,” Jorgen said.

“Boomslug!” sang both yellow slugs, and they hyperjumped onto Jorgen’s shoulders with the red slug. All three slid off and rolled onto the ground at his feet.

The pin translated “Boomslug” to mean a mollusk that explodes.

That was ominous.

Jorgen shook his head. “We really need to get them to only do that when they’re given the code word.”

“Rig and I are working on it,” FM said. “But I think they like each other more than they like caviar, so it’s slow going.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I didn’t think these two were going to help me unless I spoke to their leaders. At least this time I was in a better position. They knew I wasn’t their prisoner, and an alliance would be advantageous to us all.

I’d come this far. I wasn’t going to go home without trying everything.

“All right,” I said. “I will speak with your admiral.”

“Good,” Jorgen said. “I really think we can all benefit from working together. I could use some coaching in cytonics, if you haven’t noticed.”

    “I noticed,” I said. All cytonics had slightly different capabilities, but I could show him the basics at least. At some point, we all had to figure out the nuances of our powers on our own.

“So that’s settled, then,” FM said. “I can wait here with you while Jorgen sets up a meeting, if you want.”

“Please,” I said, and Jorgen returned Gill to FM before leaving to talk to his leaders.

I hoped my meeting with them went better this time, because otherwise I had come a very long way for nothing.





Five


It didn’t take long for Jorgen’s admiral to agree to a meeting. FM and her strange slug kept me company in the infirmary while we waited for Jorgen to send word that they were ready for us.

“What are you doing with the taynix anyway?” I asked her.

“Bonding,” FM said. “I shouldn’t say too much, but it’s a new program the pilots are trying out.”

The pilots were bonding with creatures that could hyperjump. After one of their own had infiltrated the Superiority in my place, trying to find the secret to hyperdrives.

The humans, as it turned out, had found it.

“You can use them to hyperjump,” I guessed. “Even if you aren’t cytonic?”

FM winced. “I really don’t have the clearance to tell you that.”

“You didn’t tell me,” I said. “Your slugs revealed it.”

“Yeah, we really do need to figure out how to get them to only do that on command. It gets really confusing when they want to buddy up every time we mention their names.”

I stared at the taynix, which was tucked back in FM’s sling, nuzzling the crook of her elbow. If those things were the key to Superiority hyperdrives, I would need to take at least one with me if I had to flee.

A radio attached to FM’s belt made a beeping noise, and then Jorgen’s voice spoke. “We’re ready,” he said. “FM, can you bring Alanik to the command room?”

“We’re on our way,” FM said, and she smiled at me in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring.

    FM led me through the stark metal hallways. My body felt lighter, my steps bouncier than expected—the gravitational pull of Detritus had to be slightly less than ReDawn.

Everything on this platform was so flat, the ceilings so low, not like the buildings at home—which would wind up the branches of the trees, filled with ramps and stairs on the inside and the outside. On some of the wide lower branches, where flat horizontal ground was easier to come by, a building might have a wide first story, but then it would soar upward, making use of the space above it, or spiral around the branches with lower floors built on the bottom side of the branches.

Who wanted to live in a building that was so…squashed? I felt like the ceiling was pressing down on me, closing me in.

Before we reached their command room, we passed beneath a large skylight through which I could see the other platforms that traveled above. They looked a lot like Wandering Leaf, though there were so many more of them.

“Was this an outpost during the last human war?” I asked. “Is that how you became trapped here?”

“No,” FM said. “The technology here is a lot older. Our people were travelers with a small fleet of ships. We crashed here and were imprisoned by the Superiority after the war ended.”

I wondered if there were more humans hiding in pockets across the universe. The people here had been resourceful enough to survive.