ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)(42)

Rig knelt down and looked at the wires beneath the panel. “Looks like it’s been looted already. But most of the wiring is intact. The wires themselves must not be worth much on this planet.”

“Why would they be?” I asked. “They’re wires.”

“Depends on whether you have the resources to mine the right metals,” Rig said. “Some of those are valuable on Detritus.”

That made sense. The core of ReDawn was rich with metals, which was why the Superiority bothered with us to begin with. They wanted our resources, and we traded them away for the barest recognition of our dignity, instead of remembering we were in the position of power.

“Taynix are valuable too,” Jorgen said. “Seriously, where did those come from?”

“We brought them with us,” FM said, “because the Superiority wants to take them.”

    “Did you talk to Cobb?” Jorgen asked.

“No,” FM said. “Cobb and Jeshua were talking to the Superiority over the hypercomm. They’ve already met with the Superiority once, and the Superiority was asking for them to turn over our cytonics and our hyperdrives.”

“FM,” Jorgen said. “Please tell me you didn’t steal the taynix.”

“We didn’t steal them,” FM snapped. “We rescued them. Alanik called to them and they came of their own free will.”

“They’re hyperdrives!” Jorgen said. “Not people. Cobb ordered us to come here, but he didn’t ask us to take the slugs that were commissioned to other pilots—”

FM narrowed her eyes. “Sometimes you have to do the right thing, Jorgen. Even if Command says to do something else.”

“Okay,” Jorgen said in a low voice. “But you were gone a few minutes, FM. You didn’t think this through. You didn’t talk to Cobb, and for all we know he has a plan that depends on the hyperdrives! You can’t do this.” He looked from me to Rig. “Why did you help her?”

“Um,” Rig said.

I didn’t have any more of an answer. Arturo was watching me, and I wasn’t about to admit that having more hyperdrives on ReDawn seemed like a good idea to me. Arturo wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Jorgen. They were probably already putting that together.

“It needed to be done,” FM said. “Even if they weren’t living beings that have feelings—”

“The other pilots are human beings,” Jorgen said. “And you left them without a tool they could use to survive, FM. Besides, the fact that the slugs let you do this is not good. If they’ll respond to Alanik, who they don’t know, it means enemy cytonics could use the same tactic against us.”

    “And clearly we need to train that out of them,” FM said. “But this time it was a good thing because—”

“This is not a good thing!” Jorgen said. “Coming here when Cobb gave us sort-of orders to do so was one thing, but this is entirely out of the chain of command, and you didn’t think it through or consult me before you did it. You could have had Alanik contact me. We could have had a conversation about it—”

FM closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “You’re right, okay? It was rash. But we’re not sending them back. Not while your mother is considering taking them to the Superiority. That doesn’t even make good tactical sense, Jorgen, and you know it.”

“But you don’t make the tactical decisions,” Jorgen said. “You don’t know what the bigger plan is.”

“The bigger plan may be to give the taynix to the Superiority!” FM said. “I’m not going to let them do that. And if you are, then you are not my flightleader.”

Rig and Arturo both stared wide-eyed at FM, like she’d said something horrific. FM looked down at the floor, her hands shaking. “I didn’t mean that,” she said quietly.

Jorgen stared at FM, his mouth set in an angry line. Rig and Arturo exchanged a concerned look, and outside the control room the rest of the flight had fallen silent.

“Fine,” Jorgen said, setting his jaw. “We’ll keep them here for now. Though I imagine there are going to be a lot of pilots who are not thrilled with us for stealing their taynix.”

    “We’ll return them when the situation is safe,” FM said through gritted teeth.

Right. Of course they would. They had no intention of sharing with us.

I couldn’t let the humans leave here with all the slugs. Even one could change everything for ReDawn. But they weren’t making noise about leaving now, so this wasn’t the moment to worry about it. Not when I still had hope they might help me.

“Okay,” Rig said. “If the taynix are staying, maybe we should figure out how they interface with this platform.”

FM looked like she wanted to flee the room, and Jorgen looked like he wanted to punch someone, but they both nodded.

“Good idea,” Arturo said.

“All right then,” Rig said. He squeezed FM’s shoulder and then moved over to one of the boxes on the wall. “The boxes themselves weren’t stripped. Makes sense, if the people here don’t know the secrets to hyperdrives.”

“We found something weird on that map,” Arturo said. “There was a control room and the autoturret systems, of course. But no engines and no navigation systems. Alanik said this platform used to move, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to move it, at least not on the schematics we found.”