I landed my ship against the cliff where it would be partially sheltered from view. FM’s came down beside me.
I looked over my shoulder at Juno. “Do you want to stay here?” I asked. “I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe in the ship.”
“I’d like to come with you,” Juno said. “Clearly my presence has been helpful.”
“It has,” I said. “I’m not going to use mindblades on Detritus though.”
“A shadow-walker travels the path at all times,” Juno said. “Not only when violence is required.”
I didn’t really know what that meant, but I also didn’t want to have to explain Juno’s presence to Stoff. “Actually,” I said, “the most helpful thing you could do is stay here and teach that meditation to Alanik.” She might not have a lot of time to learn, but she didn’t know how to use mindblades, and if she could pick up any skill at all…
“I can see the wisdom in that,” Juno said. “I never dreamed I’d work with a single cytonic, let alone have the privilege of directing two.”
“It’s your lucky day then.” I flipped on my radio. “Angel, if you want to come pick up Juno, he can run you through some exercises while I’m gone.”
“If his exercises taught you to do that,” Alanik said, “then I’ll be right there.”
“She’ll probably complain less than I did,” I said to Juno. I showed him how to work the radio in case he ran into trouble before Alanik arrived, and then I lifted the canopy of my ship.
My taynix needed to remain on Evershore so Gill would have a target he recognized to bring us right to our ship. “Stay here,” I said to Snuggles and Boomslug. Not that Boomslug could go far, but he tended to go wherever Snuggles went.
“Here!” Snuggles said.
I didn’t know if she understood, but it had to be good enough. I climbed out of my ship and met FM and Gill out on the sand.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s make it fast.”
“All right,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Gill, take us home.”
Thirteen
It was even later on Detritus than it was on Evershore, but when we emerged in the taynix room on Platform Prime, we found Rig still at his desk in Engineering. Rig smiled when he saw FM, but then his smile immediately dropped.
“If you came without the rest of the flight, I’m guessing this isn’t good,” he said.
“It’s not,” I said. “We need to talk to Stoff.”
“I’m sure he’s gone to bed,” Rig said. “Almost everyone has.”
“Except for you,” FM said.
“Yeah,” Rig said. “I’ve been looking at some of the reports on the other platforms from the exploration crews. They found one a few hundred klicks from here with some similarities to Wandering Leaf. We think it might have a control room, and I’m charting us a good way to get in and take a look without getting hit by the autofire.”
That could be useful. I wondered if Stoff would let me take a few of the platforms to defend Evershore. Our planetary shield filled in the gaps between the platforms that had been wrecked, so I was pretty sure we could take a few without leaving ourselves entirely open, but Stoff wasn’t much of a risk-taker.
I could probably bring Wandering Leaf, because it technically belonged to the UrDail and not to the DDF, and I hoped he’d send a few extra flights. It might help if I reminded him that the Superiority hadn’t attacked our planet since we’d put up the shield, and that we could hyperjump back in a hurry the moment anything changed. Though I’d have to spin it in a way that allowed him to cover his ass later if I had any hope of convincing him extra firepower was necessary.
“How are things with the kitsen?” Rig said.
“Precarious,” FM said. “Come on. I’ll explain on the way to wake Stoff.”
Dragging the man out of bed probably wasn’t going to endear us to him, but we didn’t have a choice. I doubted those Superiority ships were going to wait until morning, and even if they did we’d better have reinforcements in place long before that.
While FM filled Rig in, I reached out to Alanik. Status?
Still waiting, she replied. I don’t like it.
Neither did I. The Superiority had both cytonics and hyperdrives—they could bring vast resources to bear in an instant. If they were hesitating, it was because they were calling up their people wherever they were stationed—and it could be nearly anywhere in the galaxy. We’d taken out their planetary cannon on ReDawn, but I doubted it was their only one.
And Juno? I asked.
He keeps telling me I am relaxed. I am not.
Yeah, I said. I wasn’t either. It worked anyway though.
That is encouraging, Alanik said. Thank you.
Keep me informed, I said, and I felt her agreement although she didn’t respond in words.
When I tuned back in, FM was in the middle of telling Rig about me taking out the Superiority ships with the mindblades.
“That sounds dangerous,” Rig said.
“It was amazing,” FM said, and she sounded like she meant it.
“Sure. Amazing, but dangerous.”
“It was kind of surreal,” I said. “But it worked well in that fight. It won’t be enough in the long term though. Now that the Superiority knows we’re working with the kitsen, they’ll gather more ships to bring against us. We need help.”
We reached the corridor with Stoff’s quarters. At the end of the hall a guard stood watch by his door—Kelin, who’d been assigned to watch Cobb since he became admiral.
That seemed like a bad sign.
She saluted as we approached. “I need you to wake Vice Admiral Stoff,” I said. “We have urgent information.”
Kelin nodded—I had higher clearance than she did, so she didn’t ask me for the information. She stepped inside, and then came out a few minutes later with Stoff, who wore a dressing gown.
“Oh good,” Stoff said. “You’re back. How are Cobb and Mrs. Nightshade? Are they in the infirmary? What is their condition?”
Oh, scud. Of course we had to start there. “The medical team was unable to move them without destabilizing them,” I said. Hopefully Cuna was able to move them into the library—I’d left before I’d found out the outcome. No need to get into the strange details of that. Stoff would only want answers I didn’t have. “The team wants to keep them there until we understand more about their condition.”