“Come with me and find out,” Jorgen said. “You can help me explain what happened to my face. Since you’re the slug welfare specialist and all.”
I still needed to hunt down Gill plus any others that had liberated themselves in the meantime. But I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to find out what Cobb’s plans were. I followed Jorgen down to Cobb’s command center, which was a large room with a wide table and a holoprojector at the front.
Cobb was seated at the table with two of his aides on either side of him. Across the table from him was a woman with dark skin and black hair that matched Jorgen’s, though she wore hers in twists along her scalp.
Jeshua Weight, Jorgen’s mother, was one of the most decorated pilots ever to retire from the DDF. Her political power had only increased when her husband joined the National Assembly. She had two other people with her—I guessed from their expensive clothing they were either minor politicians or other liaisons sent to speak on the National Assembly’s behalf.
Rig stood with one of the other engineers at the head of the table, fidgeting nervously. “We think we’re close to getting the planetary defense systems working,” Rig said. “The encryption is tough to crack, but we’ve broken some of the code, and we’re trying to make sense of what we’re looking at. It’s much more complicated than any of the programming we use in the caverns, and we’re not exactly sure what a lot of it does.”
Rig was apparently also capable of speaking in Cobb’s presence, though I could tell he was nervous. People tended to assume that anyone who passed the pilot’s test would be comfortable with public attention—or at least accustomed to it—but I didn’t think that was true in Rig’s case. At least he wasn’t trying to pretend they didn’t exist, even if he looked like he wished he didn’t.
“Presumably the code is what causes the gun platforms to shoot ships from the sky, yes?” Jeshua said in an even voice. “So if you can crack it, we would be able to use those guns in our favor. It would help us a lot to be able to use those turrets the way we use the antiaircraft guns around Alta.”
“That’s the hope,” Rig said. “We’re also working on reviving an old shielding system that might help us to protect the planet from future attacks. A lot of it is still a mystery to us, so we can’t promise anything.”
Jeshua didn’t look pleased about that, though Rig and the other engineers were clearly doing all they could.
“Thank you for your report,” Cobb said. He looked over at Jorgen and me standing by the door. “Son, what in the North Star’s Light happened to you?”
Jorgen winced. “We had a little incident with one of the taynix. Apparently they need to be handled carefully.”
Jeshua looked alarmed. “You didn’t tell me these creatures were dangerous,” she said to Cobb.
“They’re hyperdrives,” Cobb said. “I’d imagine they’re very dangerous.”
This did not seem to make Jeshua feel any better. “Perhaps someone more qualified should be conducting these experiments.” She eyed Jorgen with a look of disapproval. Jorgen somehow managed to stand at attention and appear like he was shrinking into himself at the same time. Which made sense—his mother had basically announced that he wasn’t capable of doing his job.
It wasn’t exactly my place to speak in this meeting, but Jorgen had asked me to help explain. “The slug reacted poorly when Jorgen tried to communicate with it cytonically,” I said. “But we’re working on some theories to keep it from happening again.”
Jeshua narrowed her eyes at me. “Who are you?”
“She’s one of the pilots in Jorgen’s flight,” Cobb said. “She’s helping Jorgen and Rig with the slug experiments.”
“FM has some experience working with the taynix,” Jorgen said. “She’s helping us figure out how best to handle them.”
Jeshua looked over Jorgen’s patched-up face and made a tsking sound. “She’s obviously not doing a very good job.”
I bristled, but kept my mouth shut.
“It’s not her fault,” Rig cut in. “It’s the nature of the scientific process. We have to try things out, or we won’t get results.”
Huh. Apparently Rig didn’t hate me, if he was willing to defend me to the brass. He was clearly more comfortable talking about things he understood, and none of us understood the taynix and the hyperdrives very well. Maybe if I found a minute to ask him about his other work, he’d stop treating me like a pariah.
“We don’t have a report for you yet,” Jorgen added. “We’re still working on it.”
“That’s fine,” Cobb said. “That isn’t why I called for you. There’s something I need you to hear.”
Cobb nodded to one of his aides, who pushed some buttons on the holographic projector. Instead of a hologram though, an audio recording began.
“Admiral Cobb,” a voice said. It was strangely accented and oddly even, like it might not be entirely real. “This is Minister Cuna. I’m sorry our earlier communication was interrupted. I was betrayed by the same people who sent the delver to your planet and am no longer able to hyperjump. I have information from your agent, Spensa. She asked me to come to your planet to offer aid, but I have been attacked by our mutual enemies and am unable to reach you as planned. Instead, I must ask for your help. My people and I are marooned on the abandoned outpost at Sunreach, and the radicals in control of the Superiority government are hunting for me. I fear we have very little time. If you can reach us, I offer you all the help I can give in return. We are located at—”
The voice read a few coordinates, but then the recording cut off.
“Is that it?” Jorgen asked.
Cobb nodded. “Even if we had the full location, I don’t know how to reach them without a functional hyperdrive. We were wondering if you felt anything from it. Any of those vibrations you keep talking about?”
Jeshua’s face darkened when Cobb asked Jorgen about his cytonic abilities, but she didn’t interrupt him.
“No,” Jorgen said. “Should I?”
“My previous communications from Minister Cuna came via radio,” Cobb said, “but this one came through the platform’s old communications systems. They’re probably using some kind of faster-than-light communication device. If it uses cytonic technology, we thought there might be some component only a cytonic could hear.”
Jorgen shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t feel anything.”
“How did we receive it?” I asked. “Do we have an FTL communicator?”
I probably didn’t have the authority to ask that question, but Rig answered it anyway. “Not that we know of,” Rig said. “But there are a lot of things the platform systems are capable of that we haven’t been able to figure out yet. The message was routed through one of the receptors in the communications system.”
“So we received it,” Cobb said, “but we don’t exactly know how. Engineering is trying to figure out if we have the ability to respond.”
Interesting. If we’d been able to get up here and investigate the platforms surrounding the planet years ago, we might have been better able to figure out how to defend ourselves.
Which was probably one of the reasons the Superiority had been so intent on keeping us in the caverns below the planet’s surface.
“What are we going to do if we can answer?” Jorgen asked.
“We don’t know for certain what this person’s intentions are,” Cobb said. “It might be a trap. Alternatively, it might be our only lead on an ally, and stars know we could use a few of those right now.”
“If this person is indeed a minister,” Jeshua said, “perhaps we could use their connections to reach people higher up in the Superiority government, to find a way to reach an agreement.”
An agreement?
Jorgen’s shock echoed my own. “You’re going to try to talk to the Superiority?”
Jeshu
a nodded. “We’ve been fighting this war for too long. Continuing the way we are will only result in our extinction. Now that we know more about the forces we’re facing, the National Assembly believes we should start considering the political implications of the situation, along with the military ones.”
In principle I agreed, but I hadn’t seen any evidence that the Superiority wanted to negotiate with us. Especially if they’d been the reason for the delver’s appearance.
Cobb cleared his throat. He had to hate this, but he was too good at his job to betray that on his face. “We’ll try to respond, but getting those coordinates does us no good if we can’t get there, and we can’t do that without a hyperdrive.” Cobb focused on Jorgen. “Spensa felt coordinates in her mind, and then she was able to travel to them. I was hoping that recording might do something similar for you, but if not, we’re going to have to go through with our other plan.”
“Other plan, sir?” Jorgen said.
Jeshua nodded. They’d obviously already discussed this. “Yes,” she said. “The alien who crashed here is the only one among us who might be able to produce coordinates that would allow us to reach this person. We’re going to need to wake her up.”
Six
The next morning, I was paged to the medical bay almost immediately upon waking. I found Jorgen standing outside, looking into Alanik’s room through the glass. The bandages on his face were new and clean, but still numerous. “They say her wounds have mostly healed,” he said. “They’ve been keeping her sedated, but now they’re bringing her around. Cobb suggested that I talk to her since we’re both cytonics. I could use your help. You’re…better with people than I am.”
“Of course,” I said. That was quite the admission for Jorgen, who never liked to appear less than perfect. But this was a delicate situation—Alanik had been unconscious for weeks now, and we didn’t know much about her. “Will we be able to speak to her?”
Jorgen held up a pin. “Rig says this is a translator. Spensa took the one Alanik was wearing when she crashed, but the engineers found more in her ship. It should make it so we can understand each other.”
That would make things a lot easier. “Any particular tactic you think we should use to talk to her?”
“No idea. Do you have a suggestion?”
“I think maybe we should try to convey that we’re friends first. Help her feel like we’re all on the same side.” I didn’t know much about what had gone on between Alanik and Spensa. “We are, right?”
“I hope so,” Jorgen said. “That sounds like a good tactic. Thanks.”
One of the doctors stepped out of the medical bay and nodded to Jorgen. “She’s waking. She may be disoriented at first, so don’t be surprised if she has a hard time talking.”
Jorgen gave the doctor a crisp nod and then we walked into Alanik’s room, stopping at her bedside.
The yellow overhead lights cast eerie shadows over Alanik’s strange features. With her cheeks oddly pronounced, her skin that strange shade of violet with white growths protruding from her skin like crystals, she was beautiful in an unnerving sort of way. She stirred, murmuring something softly, and then opened her eyes.
They looked human, except for their violet color. I’d never seen a human with eyes quite that pale and arresting. She looked up at us in confusion.
Jorgen glanced at me. He wanted me to take point on this.
“Alanik,” I said. “My name is FM. I’m glad you’re awake.”
Jorgen held the pin awkwardly between us, and it translated the words into a lilting language I’d never heard. Maybe I should have used my real name, but I had become accustomed to everyone using my callsign. Besides, to an alien, “FM” probably wouldn’t seem any more strange than “Freyja.”
Alanik squinted at me, still confused. If she was alarmed by the many bandages on Jorgen’s face, she didn’t show it. Probably a lot of things here looked strange to her, so what was one more? “Human,” she said. “Where is…the other one.”
“Spensa,” I said. “She left. You gave her coordinates, and she went to take your place.”
Alanik closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she looked more focused. More alert. “Where am I?”
“In a medical facility,” I told her. “On a platform above a planet called Detritus. You were shot down by autonomous platforms. That wasn’t my people. We can’t control them. The guns shoot at us too.”
Alanik nodded. “Humans,” she said again. “How have you survived?”
“With difficulty,” I said. “We’ve been defending this planet against the Superiority for years.”
“We were allies once,” Alanik said. “My people were punished for working with you. The Superiority…they say they want peace, but in truth they oppress us. Their peace is only control.”
“Yes,” I said. “And they want my people dead. We need your help.”
Alanik’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I need to contact my people,” she said. “The other one…Spensa…may have already arrived at Starsight. They are expecting me to check in, and I will need to tell them what’s happened.”
Jorgen and I exchanged a glance. Alanik thought it was still the same day as she’d arrived. “About that,” I said. “You were injured in the crash, and our doctors have been trying to help you, but they didn’t know much about your physiology. They’ve been keeping you in a coma, giving you a chance to heal.”
Alanik looked at me in horror. “How long?”
How long? I looked to Jorgen. “About nineteen days,” he said.
“That long?” Alanik struggled to sit, though the tubes and wires attaching her to the medical monitor got in her way. She grabbed at them with her slender hands, and I noticed her nails were made of the same white substance that protruded from her cheeks. They were sharp and pointed, almost like talons.
“We need your help,” Jorgen said again. “We’re all trapped here.”
Alanik stared at him. “You aren’t trapped,” she said. “You are cytonic, same as Spensa. Can you—”
Jorgen shook his head. “I can’t do anything,” he said. “I’ve only just learned about my powers, and I don’t know how to use them. I need you to teach me, so we can get my people off this planet. I need your help.”
He looked at me, but I didn’t know what to say beyond that. He’d made a pretty good case. “Please,” I added. “You said we were allies, right? Well, we need allies now, and it sounds like your people do too. We have a message from someone in the Superiority, a faction that wants to help us. But we don’t know how to reach them—”
“Don’t trust them!” Alanik said. She pulled at the tubes on her chest, tugging them free. Thankfully they seemed to only be sensors, though she had a needle in her arm hooked up to an IV. As she shifted it, a spot of dark blood formed on the bandage that held it in place. “You can’t trust them. They say they want to help, but they don’t. They only want control. You can’t—”
She broke off as a shadow darkened the window to the hallway. I turned and saw Cobb standing there with Jorgen’s mother. They were speaking quietly enough that we couldn’t hear them through the glass, but Jeshua Weight did not look happy.
“Okay,” I said, trying to hold Alanik’s attention. I reached down and took her hand, hoping this wasn’t some sort of cultural taboo to her people, but she didn’t pull away. “We can’t trust them. This is why we need your help. You know more than we do, so we need you to guide us. We don’t know how to use the powers, but we do have ships, and resources. We can help you in return.”
“FM,” Jorgen said. He gave me a warning look, and I knew I’d gone too far. We couldn’t promise her resources. That would be up to Command and the National Assembly. I might have just lied to her. It could be a tactically sound decision to make promises to Alanik’s people, but I didn’t have the authority to do that.
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Jeshua knocked on the glass and gestured to the door, which I’d closed behind me. Jorgen sighed, set the pin down on the edge of Alanik’s bed sheet, and walked to the door, stepping out into the hall to talk to his mother.
Alanik was still holding my hand. Her lavender skin looked so strange against mine, but the anatomy of her hand was human. She was a person, same as me. Alien, but familiar. She was far from home, alone and frightened. I could imagine what that would feel like.
“What were you going to do when you reached Starsight?” I asked her.
Alanik hesitated. “I am a spy for my people,” she said. “We need their hyperdrive technology. Without it, they isolate us on our planet. They deny us passage on their ships. They control our imports, our economy, our ability to progress. We need to know their secrets.”
“So the hyperdrives,” I said. “You don’t know how they work.”
“No,” Alanik said. “That was what I was going to learn. But if it has been weeks, the opportunity may have passed.”
It had—Spensa had taken her place, pretended to be Alanik. Sharing the information Spensa had discovered—the very secrets Alanik had intended to steal—might go a long way toward building goodwill between us.
But I definitely didn’t have clearance to do that. I glanced out the window and found Jorgen talking to Cobb and his mother. From the look of it, Jeshua was doing most of the talking.
“Are you also a prisoner here?” Alanik asked.
I looked down at her. “You’re not a prisoner,” I said. “We were trying to help you.”
Alanik shook her head. “All of you. You are prisoners on this planet, dependent on the Superiority.”
Oh, that. “More than your people, I think,” I said. “They don’t trade with us. They’ve attacked us for years, making us fight them to survive. We live underground, using only the resources of this planet and the means we had with us when our ships crashed here—that was generations ago.”
“So you are desperate,” Alanik said. “You will do anything to escape.”
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