ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)(47)

“Is that why your…” Jorgen didn’t like it when I used this word. “I don’t think there’s an exact translation for it in my language, but your mate—”

“My girlfriend,” Arturo said. “Yeah, that’s why she broke up with me ultimately. I think she wanted to for a while, but didn’t feel like she could. Like, it doesn’t feel good to give up on someone who’s fighting for the future of humanity, but she’d always thought I was going to come back a few months after flight school. And then I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. I think we’re both better off, honestly. She said I’d changed, that I didn’t care about the things I used to.” He shrugged. “She was probably right.”

    Given how deeply he seemed to care about his people’s freedom now, I thought that could only be a good thing, but I wondered if he would agree.

“We’re on the same side,” I said. “As long as you want to fight the Superiority, you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Same to you,” he said. “Jorgen gets hung up on rules, but he doesn’t want to play nice with them any more than you and I do.”

I believed him. I couldn’t be absolutely sure he was telling the truth, but he had the same problem with me.

Regardless, once we got everything in order, we were all going to find out.



* * *



—

I worried it would be uncomfortable to sleep on the platform, but my brother and the Independence pilots had found the bunk rooms from when the platform was inhabited. There was an entire block of them—more rooms than we could possibly need. The Independence pilots took up residence in one, and Rinakin’s family and some of the other refugees spread out over a few more. The rooms had obviously been used by salvagers in recent years, because the old cushioning had been replaced on all but the top bunks, where it was mostly disintegrated. The other bunks weren’t as soft or as clean as I would have liked, but they were better than sleeping in the cockpits.

The human men all settled into one of the sleeping rooms and the women into another, where they invited me to join them. In one of the adjoining common rooms, Kimmalyn and Sadie divided the algae strips and custard so that everyone got a portion for dinner. I passed on the algae—since we knew the nut wafers were safe for me to eat, I choked a couple down.

    I could have gone to eat with my brother, but instead I stayed with the humans. I needed to make sure they didn’t have any second thoughts about what we were doing here, and besides that I was starting to enjoy their company.

“You can have a cup of custard to dip those nut bars in if you want,” Kimmalyn said, pushing the jug of liquid in my direction.

I peered at the cloudy white substance. “What is it?”

“It’s milk,” Sadie told me. “But like, old milk. I think? I’m not totally clear how they make it.”

“Human milk?” I asked.

“Ew, no,” Sadie said. “Cow’s milk, I think.”

That sounded disgusting. “I’m all right,” I said. “Though I think Happy will take my portion.”

The slug was leaning out of Kimmalyn’s sling, dangling down like it was going to dip its face right into the jug.

“Happy!” Kimmalyn said. “Yours is over here.” She pulled the slug out of the sling and deposited it with the others, who were happily chewing algae strips.

Jorgen approached. FM and Rig hadn’t joined us—last I’d seen she was sitting with Rig in the hangar while he worked on my ship, both of them speaking in low voices.

“Can I ask for your help with something?” Jorgen asked me.

“Yes,” I said, and we walked out into a hallway with a long window looking out into the miasma.

    Jorgen pressed his fingers to the glass, watching the miasma swirl against it. “Since we have a minute, I was wondering if you could teach me something about cytonics.”

“Of course,” I said, and I took a seat on the floor of the hallway, my back opposite the window. The outline of Hollow was dimly visible, its dark branches reaching up toward the red sky.

“Gran-Gran taught me how to meditate,” Jorgen said, sitting down facing me. “To listen to the stars. It helped, but I didn’t end up hearing the stars. I heard the taynix instead.”

“That sounds ultimately more useful,” I said.

“It probably was. But Spensa was able to hyperjump all the way to Starsight.”

“Technically all cytonics have every power,” I said. “I’m not clear on how many there are. We’re only able to manifest some of them deliberately after a lot of training. And some we may never be able to use. Of the five cytonics on ReDawn, I’m the only one who has been able to hyperjump.”

“Which is why the other cytonics weren’t able to follow us here immediately, even before we got the inhibitor up,” Jorgen said. “And if I’m never going to be able to learn—”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said. “There are other valuable types of cytonics. Mindblades are supposed to be the most difficult. I’ve never been able to manifest those.”

“You said those are like little bits of the nowhere that cut like razorblades?”