ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)(52)

“Okay, buddy,” Nedd said. “You’re going for an adventure with the nice alien lady.”

“Nedd,” Arturo said, like he thought he might offend me. But when Nedd handed over his taynix—a hyperdrive, a creature so valuable most people in the universe would kill for it—I couldn’t feel anything but awe.

They were really going to let me take one. And yes, I knew it was only because they thought it would help them follow me if I tried to escape them—and it probably would.

    But still. I’d risked everything to find out the secret to these creatures. And now I was holding one in my hands.

It looked up at me, its face quizzical. “Alien lady!” it trilled.

“Get to your ship,” Jorgen said to Nedd. “Let’s go.”

The rest of the flight was already maneuvering their ships out the hangar doors and onto the surface of the platform. I set Chubs down in the space behind my seat, but moments later he was nuzzling my ankles down by the pedals. I didn’t relish the idea of his obstruction getting me shot down by the autofire, so I scooped him into my lap.

“How do they stand flying with you?” I asked him.

“Flying with you!” Chubs said. The taynix sounded like simple mimics, but they must understand at least some of what they said if they could learn each other’s names and then find one another through the negative realm.

Rig waited outside my ship while I checked the controls.

“We removed that thing that was intercepting signals as they came in,” Rig said. “We thought it might help Jorgen not be susceptible to cytonic interference.”

“No, my ship doesn’t block cytonic interference,” I said. “I think what you removed was an encryption device, but I won’t need that today anyway.”

“Oh,” Rig said. He looked embarrassed, but he didn’t need to be. He’d done a good job getting my ship back in flying condition, from what I could tell.

“Thank you for fixing this for me,” I said.

“Of course,” Rig said. “I’m confident about the damage repairs. Those were all completed ages ago. All I did last night was finish the reassembly. You should be fine in the air.”

    He backed off, and I engaged my acclivity ring, lifting off the landing bay floor and flying out to meet the others in formation around Jorgen.

I let one of the humans hit me with their light-lance and hyperjump me beyond the autofire with the Independence pilots. I didn’t know how much hyperjumping I was going to have to do, and I wanted to keep the number of jumps to a minimum when I could. Jorgen jumped us way out, giving the autofire a wider berth than we probably needed.

I checked the frequency Rinakin had been broadcasting from. His program had begun, and I could hear him opining about how the rift between our factions was the real problem for ReDawn. According to my ship’s frequency locator, the signal was coming from the Council tree, exactly as expected.

That was good. I reached out with my cytonic senses, searching for Quilan, and found him closing on our location. I scrambled with my radio, trying to find the flight’s general channel to let Jorgen know, but by the time I found it he was already giving the flights the bearing of the incoming enemy. “We’re going to slow to point-five Mag,” he said, “and fly toward Tower, away from the enemy.”

The ships immediately followed his order. By putting our people on the opposite side of the platform from Quilan, Jorgen ensured that Quilan would have to pass around the platform to get to them. Jorgen would be able to fire the hyperweapon at him without worrying about clipping his own people in the blast.

    The Independence flight joined us as we flew away from the platform toward the tree, slow enough that Quilan would easily catch us. He had to know we were up to something, but he wouldn’t know what.

“Rig?” Jorgen said. “Do you have a visual on the enemy flight?”

“I do,” Rig said. “They’re closing on the platform.”

Flying in the opposite direction, I couldn’t see the incoming ships—which Quilan must have called in from the reinforcements at the Council tree—except on my sensor screen. But I felt the disturbance rippling through the negative realm as Jorgen contacted Boomslug in the platform control room and directed him to fire on the flight as they skirted the other side of the platform. I scanned radio channels, catching bits of their transmissions as pilots screamed and swore and called their intentions to eject.

I didn’t know if they all made it, but as Jorgen directed us to pivot around and fly below the platform again, I did see several pilots descending through the miasma with parachutes. Two of the ships collided with the far side of the platform.

A few more ships cut toward us, having avoided the mindblades. Unfortunately, Quilan was among them. Alanik, he said in my mind. What are you doing?

If this distraction was going to work, Quilan had to believe I meant business. I’m doing what has to be done. Look what that did to your flight. What do you think it will do to your people on Tower?

You’ve lost your mind, Quilan sent back.

That was good. I needed him to believe that I had.

“FM, Sentry, take point. Engage the enemy ships. T-Stall, Catnip, Nedder, back them up.”

    Five ships shot out in front of us, meeting with the enemy ships as they skirted around the platform outside the autofire zone. A number of Independence ships joined them.