ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)(68)

It must have been some kind of reinforced plastic, because it didn’t break.

“Humans of Detritus!” a voice said. It was coming from a loudspeaker inside the room, but was loud enough that we could hear it even from here. “For your years of resistance, you have been judged too aggressive to live. You will meet your end for the good of all. In our graciousness, we will end your lives swiftly. Your pain will be brief. Your deaths will be broadcast to your planet, so that they may mourn you. You may have a moment to say your goodbyes.”

    “How benevolent of them,” I said.

Jorgen beat his fists against the window. Inside the room, I could see the politicians starting to panic.

As they should. We couldn’t get them out of there. The Superiority might be satisfied with merely enslaving my people, but the humans?

Them they were going to destroy.

“We have to find that inhibitor,” I said, and Jorgen nodded, moving toward the doorway.

I tore down the hallway in the opposite direction. But there weren’t many crevices in this part of the ship—and all the other inhibitors had been inside the zone they inhibited, not outside of it. While there was a door on every side, they were all locked, and reinforced far better than the closet.

I ran the circle around the meeting room until I met up with Jorgen, and then we double-checked the areas we’d each checked before.

None of the doors would give, no matter how hard we beat on them.

When we reached the viewing room again, Jeshua still stood at the glass. She turned around, glaring at Jorgen.

“Look for a box,” he shouted through the glass at her. “A box with a taynix in it!”

Go, she mouthed at him.

Jorgen shook his head, beating on the glass with his fists again.

“Go!” Jeshua yelled through the glass at Jorgen. Her voice was faint, but I could make out what she said next. “Do better than we did.”

    We weren’t going to be able to save them. There was nothing more we could do here.

I put a hand on Jorgen’s shoulder. He still had Snuggles in his sling. He didn’t need me to pull him out.

“She’s right,” I said. “We have to go.”

“No!” Jorgen shouted. There were tears running down his cheeks now.

He wasn’t going to leave, but I couldn’t let him die here.

I didn’t take chances with the slug. I reached through the negative realm to the hangar on Wandering Leaf, and I pulled.

Through the negative realm, I heard a scream.





Epilogue


The wrath of the eyes bore down on me as I floated beneath their ever-present glares. But I could barely feel it, consumed as I was by the full force of Jorgen’s pain, his anger, even his resentment of me for tearing him away from there. I choked on it, feeling every ounce of it down to my bones.

We fell out of the negative realm and the feeling faded, but the echoes of it lingered, as if I’d just watched my own parents die.

The members of Skyward Flight were climbing out of their ships, moving toward the windows near the entrance of the hangar to watch the Superiority ship as it tore itself to shreds, its hull ripped apart, its engine systems exploding in silent clouds of dust and smoke. Cuna stood off to the side, staring out at the remains of the Superiority ship as they scattered across the backdrop of stars.

Jorgen made a strangled sound and most of the flight turned around and saw us there, shock and relief reflecting across their faces. Arturo closed his eyes, like he’d been sure we were both gone and had to steady himself for a moment. Rig hurried down the tunnel from the control room behind us. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do with it, I—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. And that was true.

This was the Superiority’s fault. Every bit of it.

Jorgen stared out at the pieces of the ship as they spiraled outward, shrapnel spreading in every direction. His face was like a statue, though I’d felt the grief he was holding in.

    “Did Gran-Gran—” Rig asked.

“She got out,” I said. “So did Cobb. I saw them.” I scanned over the planet, searching in the negative realm for another cytonic mind, but I couldn’t feel one. I reached out farther, searching for Gran-Gran—or even for Cobb, who Gran-Gran said she could feel in the negative realm though I’d been sure he wasn’t cytonic.

I couldn’t find them. They weren’t here. And there were no dead spaces left that would hide them.

“They made it out,” I said. “But…I don’t know where they are.”

“At least they weren’t here,” FM said. She put a hand on Jorgen’s shoulder, but he shook her off.

“We’re going down to Platform Prime,” Jorgen said.

“Okay,” FM said, “but I think you need to stop for a minute—”

“Now,” Jorgen said. “I’m sorry, Alanik. We’ll be a little late returning to ReDawn.” He turned and looked at the floating pieces of ship, the place where both his parents had died. “There are some things we need to take care of first.”





Acknowledgments



Thank you as always to my team at Dragonsteel Entertainment—Peter Ahlstrom, Kara Stewart, Adam Horne, and COO Emily Sanderson—for all their hard work on ReDawn, our second Skyward Flight novella.