“Amphi,” I said, “you’re in command. Protect the city. I’m going to go check on Rig, see if we can bring more platforms.”
“Copy, Jerkface,” Arturo said.
I picked up my slugs again, letting Boomslug ride on my shoulder, and placed a hand on Juno’s platform.
“You want to come with me?” I asked Juno.
“Where you will go, I will go,” Juno replied.
I would give the kitsen this—they were some of the bravest beings I’d ever met. “Take me to Drape,” I said to Snuggles.
“Drape,” Snuggles said.
Evershore and all of the ships above it disappeared. We passed beneath the eyes, and then suddenly I stood in a small room much like the one on Wandering Leaf. The window looked out at the stars, over half a broken platform drifting next to the one where we’d landed, a large defunct autoturret jutting up beyond it. The walls were lined with boxes.
Scud, there were so many of them. Taynix boxes from floor to ceiling, enough to house maybe a hundred taynix.
“Jorgen,” Rig said. “How are—”
“We lost Wandering Leaf,” I said. “Planetary weapon destroyed it.”
Rig’s eyes widened. “Is—”
“FM is fine,” I said. I probably should have led with that. If it had been Spensa, that was the first thing I’d want to hear. “But Winzik sent more reinforcements, and they may not be the last. We need to get more platforms over there.”
“Yeah, about that,” Rig said. “We have a small problem.” He gestured around him. “We don’t know what any of these boxes do, much less where we would get enough slugs to power them. I sent the transport ship back to collect the taynix on the base, but most of those belong to the remaining pilots. I’m not sure they’re going to part with them, not without a direct order from Stoff.”
Stoff might give such an order, but the more I involved him the more he’d feel he had to question me, which we did not have time for. The flights on Evershore could be dead by the time he made a decision. We’d also need the taynix with those pilots if we had to bring in more reinforcements.
I looked around at the boxes again. We’d sent expeditions down to the caverns to look for more slugs, but it was taking them time and I understood why. The slugs tended to hide in the less inhabited areas, and I’d been too busy to go down myself.
Scud. “Do you need to use all the boxes?” I asked Rig. “Can we figure out which one is the hyperdrive, then take the platform over and use the autocannons?”
“Maybe,” Rig said. “Even figuring out which is the hyperdrive is going to take time though. The boxes aren’t well labeled.”
Rig looked around, wringing his hands. I was putting a lot of pressure on him and demanding instant results. Just because we’d been able to pull ourselves out of some tight spots in the past didn’t mean he could produce miracles on demand.
“I know you’re doing your best,” I said. “I know you don’t have enough time or resources. You’re doing amazing work for us, and you’ve saved all our lives several times now. If you can’t figure this out it isn’t your fault, but I need you to try.”
“Of course,” Rig said. “We’re just not prepared for this.”
“What can I do?”
“Finding me more slugs would be nice.”
“Okay, let me see what I can do.” I moved out into the corridor. In the rooms along the hall, other engineers were calling to each other about the contents of each one. I peered through the nearest doorway.
Scud. More taynix boxes.
We were going to need a lot of help. Rig’s team had done so much for us. Now it was time for me to come through for them.
I found a bench in the corridor and sat down, Juno hovering over my shoulder next to Boomslug.
“Do you have a meditation for searching?” I asked Juno.
“Not in this book,” Juno said, “though most of them begin the same: ‘Breathe in, breathe out. You are now completely relaxed.’ ”
I wasn’t, but I tried anyway. I reached out over the planet, searching for that vibration, the one I’d heard in my dreams. The one that had called Spensa’s great-grandmother to Detritus to begin with—the reason we’d arrived here.
It was still there, that resonance. We’d found some taynix, pulled them up from their mushroom-infested caves and brought them to live with us. But there were more down there, maybe a lot more.
Help, I called to them. We need help. It was hard to pinpoint the individual minds of the slugs—it always was, before I became familiar with them, and when there were so many together. I could feel them listening to me though. They were interested, but unmoved.
“Hey!” Rig said. “Get back here!”
I looked through the doorway to see Fine, our original comms slug, wriggling out of his grasp.
“Hey!” Fine shrieked at him. “Get back here!”
Snuggles disappeared from the crook of my arm and reappeared on the floor by Fine, and then picked him up and brought him to me.
“I’m trying to concentrate,” I said.
“Sorry,” Rig said. “I think I figured out which box is the hypercomm, but when I tried to test it he went crazy.”
“Crazy!” Fine shouted.
Rig looked at him. Fine wasn’t usually this agitated…
“Leave him,” I said. “Try again in a minute when he calms down.”
“Okay,” Rig said. “Sure.”
I reached down and petted Fine on his spines. This slug—in conjunction with Gill—had saved us on Sunreach. The least I could do was give him a little breathing room.
I reached toward the planet again, down toward the vibrations that were actually taynix. Many of them, beneath the surface, in caves we hadn’t yet discovered. As I did I felt that texture again, the strange bumps in the nowhere—little ridges, all packed together in clumps below the surface of the planet. They weren’t taynix—they didn’t vibrate with energy. Instead they felt hollow, like little vessels waiting to be filled. The way they grouped together, thousands upon thousands of them, was familiar somehow. The shape of the gatherings. The pattern.
Scud. Those were the Defiant caverns. They were filled with thousands of somethings. They couldn’t be delvers, could they? No, they were something else. Maybe—
Stars, were they people?
I focused on one little raised vessel, drawing close to it, examining it. It was…thinking. Its mother had set it here, and told it not to move until it was ready to apologize for hitting its brother. But it would never be ready to apologize, because its brother had really, really deserved it.