Not my most graceful move, but given that Jorgen was alive and not currently suffocating in the vacuum, I could accept it.
“FM,” he said, “what are you—”
Sadie’s voice cut him off, crackling over the radio. “—her ship was empty, Amphi. I got a good look before it crashed. She wasn’t there.”
“Where in the stars did she go then?” Arturo answered. “She can’t have just disappeared.”
“She’s here,” Jorgen said, pushing a button on the radio. “She’s attached herself to my arm in a very awkward fashion, but FM is here and very much alive.”
I let go, taking a step back.
“How did you get here?” Jorgen asked me.
“Gill,” I said. I left him in the corridor, I realized, and he was just now catching up, lying on the floor by the doorway. I ran over and scooped him up, giving him a hug for good measure. He’d teleported me out of my ship in the middle of a fight, and it had apparently crashed into the rock, but he’d clearly been trying to help.
“Glad to hear it,” Arturo said over the radio. “Sentry, help Quirk. She’s got three tails. Scud, they’re firing on you again—”
The radio cut off as another explosion rocked the bunker where we stood.
The blue alien closed their eyes, then turned to Jorgen. They were wearing one of those translator pins, like the one we used with Alanik. “Our defenses won’t last much longer,” they said. I recognized their voice from the transmission. This must be Cuna. “They are targeting our life support generators. When those fail, so will the artificial gravity, the air field, and the heat producers. If we don’t go now, we may be out of time.”
Jorgen glanced over at me.
And all at once, I realized what Cuna meant.
“You’re not thinking of leaving them here,” I said. “Our flight. Our friends. We can’t go without them.”
“Cuna has the coordinates from their communicator,” Jorgen said quietly. “We have the ability to get home with Cuna and their staff. Those were our orders, FM.”
He didn’t sound happy about it. Of course he wasn’t happy about it. Jorgen didn’t want to leave our flight here any more than I did. “Can we get out of here?” I asked. “Do we have a slug that hasn’t been scared?”
“We have Gill and Chubs,” Jorgen said, gesturing, and I found Chubs sitting in the corner in a strange disk-shaped chair. “I don’t think I used either of them when I hyperjumped. I definitely didn’t use both. We should be able to use them to jump to the Detritus coordinates. It’ll take us to the location of our communicator on Platform Prime.”
I knew the right answer. The needs of the group outweighed the needs of the individuals. We were pilots. We signed up to protect the lives of the citizens on Detritus. We were willing to make this sacrifice, every one of us.
I would have been willing to die to save the lives of my friends, no question. But could we really just leave, sacrificing their lives for ours?
Rescuing Cuna was the mission. That was exactly what we were expected to do.
“Nedder, help Sentry,” Arturo said. “She’s overwhelmed. Quirk, do you have a line on that ship on my tail?”
Cuna slipped their thin fingers up onto the dash and pushed a button. The radio went quiet.
They were turning off the voices, trying to make this decision easier. It could have been a kindness, but it felt like a slap in the face.
Another explosion rocked the base, and the lights flickered out.
“We can’t leave them here,” I said. Stars, this was why I never wanted to be in command. I didn’t have the stomach for it.
“We’ll come back,” Jorgen said. “I’ll jump Cuna and their people out and I’ll come back—”
“You think they’re going to let you?” I asked. “You think they’re going to let their only useful cytonic come jumping back to probably die here? Will you really do that?”
Jorgen looked at me, and I could see the weight of the decision in his eyes. This wasn’t his fault. None of it was. We were all of us in a terrible position.
But it was our team that was going to pay the price.
“Fine,” I said. “I know you’re only doing what has to be done.”
“Fine!” Gill said in my arms.
“Not now,” I said to him. He’d saved my life bringing me here. I should have been grateful. But what I wanted was to be out there in my ship, fighting alongside my friends.
Gill must have sensed my despair, because he disappeared.
Jorgen closed his eyes, and I could see the grief on his face.
“All right,” he said to Cuna. “Prepare your people to go.”
Cuna put out a call for the rest of their team to converge on the control room, then Jorgen took control of the radio. “Flight,” he said. “Abandon the mission.”
“Say again, Jerkface?” Arturo said. “Abandon—”
“We are taking Cuna to safety,” Jorgen said. “All units pull back in a full retreat, delta formation. Go on full burn on a heading Arturo chooses, and we’ll try to come back for you once the minister is safe.”
He glanced at me. “I’ll come back for them,” he said. “I’ll bring a ship. I’ll get the coordinates again, fly back here, and bring them home—”
He was pleading with me to tell him I believed this was possible. Maybe it was. Maybe he was right.
But I worried that the politicians would overrule Cobb, if he was inclined to allow it. No way were six pilots worth risking our only cytonic. I didn’t even blame them, really. I understood the math.
But I hated it all.
“Fine!” Gill’s voice said. I turned around to find Gill in the doorway with Fine, the communications slug that had been in the communicator at Detritus.
Right there on the floor.
“What in the stars—” Jorgen said.
“Fine!” Gill said, sliding toward me and trilling louder, like maybe I hadn’t heard him. “Fine!”
He’d gone to retrieve Fine, all the way from Detritus. He’d done it because he thought that’s what I wanted. No one had to scare him into it. He’d done it for the same reason he’d taken me out of my ship. Because I was upset, and Gill was trying to help.
Help.
I grabbed Jorgen by the arm. “Send him an image of Sadie,” I said.
“What?” Jorgen asked.
“With your mind,” I said. “Send Gill an image of Sadie, like you do with the eyes, and with the locations you want them to travel.”
“Why would I—”
“Now!” I said, squeezing his arm tight enough that he winced. Bullying the flightleader wasn’t my finest moment, but we didn’t have the time for me to explain.
“Fine,” Jorgen said.
“Fine!” Gill replied.
“No, Sadie,” I said. “Go get Sadie.”
Jorgen closed his eyes.
Gill disappeared.
“FM,” Jorgen said. “We can’t send the slugs off. We need them to—”
Another blow rocked the base, and I felt the atmospheric production system go offline. My ears popped as the room began to depressurize. Two more of the strange aliens appeared in the doorway, stepping over Fine and moving into the room.
“We’re all here,” Cuna said. “It’s time.”
I shook my head. “Wait. Give Gill a moment.”
“FM—” Jorgen started.
And then Sadie appeared. She materialized a few feet off the floor and landed with a thump, her knees bending, arms stretched out to keep from falling over. Belatedly, she screamed.
And I gave my second awkward hug, throwing my arms around her and nearly bowling her over. “Jorgen!” I said. “Tell Gill to get the others. Send the images to Chubs too. We can pull them out. They want to help.” I scooped Gill up off the floor
. “I’m going to give you a whole case of caviar when we get back,” I said. “Go get our friends.”
Jorgen blinked at me, but he must have done as I said, because both slugs disappeared.
“Commander,” Cuna said. “With all due respect, we need to go—”
Another blast made the floor shake, and Sadie and I clung to each other to stay upright.
“What’s happening?” she asked me.
“I’ll explain later,” I said.
This most recent blast must have hit the system that created the false gravity, because suddenly my feet were no longer stuck to the floor. Arturo appeared beside me, and then Kimmalyn. Chubs and Gill came with them, and then Twist appeared with T-Stall, and Drape with Catnip. Happy blinked in a moment later and Nedd appeared up by the ceiling, floating. The rest of our flight looked at each other in confusion.
“That’s everyone,” Jorgen said. “Huddle together!”
Another blast from the ships cracked the window, which fractured in a spiral pattern. T-Stall reached up and grabbed Nedd by the wrist, pulling him down with the rest of us, and we held on to each other. Cuna and their staff crowded in as well, linking hands. I let Sadie hold onto my waist and grabbed Gill in one hand and Chubs in the other and tossed them to Kimmalyn, who caught them while I gathered the rest of the slugs in my arms.
“Don’t scare them,” I said to Jorgen.
“FM,” he said, clearly exasperated. “What in the—”
“Home!” I shouted. “Home! Take us home.”
“Home!” Chubs and Gill trilled together.
Glass rained down over us as the ships above opened fire.
And then the entire world disappeared.
Epilogue
We appeared in the room where the slugs were housed on Platform Prime, all bunched together in a group and about four feet off the ground. We landed in a tangle of limbs both alien and human, with a chorus of groans and ouches and Nedd yelling, “Get the scud off my neck!” My knees were bruised and my neck tweaked, adrenaline still pumping so hard you’d think I’d faced a firing squad.
But I laughed. I laughed because we were somehow, all of us, alive.
As my flightmates on the edges extracted themselves and began helping the aliens to their feet, I sat in the center of the floor laughing my head off, until Gill came and tucked himself up under my arm. “Home?” he said uncertainly.
“Home,” I said. “Home, home, home.” And I hugged the slug tight to my chest.
“Um, FM?” Jorgen said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to squeeze them like that.”
“Shut up, Jorgen,” I said. And then, right in the middle of laughing, I also burst into tears.
That was what I looked like when the door to the room flew open and Rig stood there, gaping at all of us, Cobb right behind him looking like he’d seen a ghost.
Rig watched me sitting there, laughing and crying, and came over to kneel next to me. He looked up at Jorgen. “You broke FM?” he asked.
“Apparently,” Jorgen said.
Cobb shook his head. “I thought Spensa was the only one who pulled scudding stupid stunts like that. You realize you left your scudding starfighters behind, don’t you? I can’t turn my back on any of you for a moment.”
I wiped away my tears and stood. The ships were a loss, no question, but I could tell from the way he looked at us that this wasn’t Cobb’s primary concern. He’d been as worried for our team as I was. “Apparently not, sir,” I said.
Cobb looked up at the aliens then, cleared his throat, and held out his hand.
“Minister Cuna, I presume?” he said. “I’m Admiral Cobb. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Cuna stood to their full height, which was taller than Cobb, and bared their teeth at him. Cobb looked worried for a moment.
“It is a pleasure,” Cuna said. “Thank you for sending your team to our aid. We look forward to repaying your trouble.”
Out in the hallway, Jorgen’s mother cleared her throat. Cobb’s face darkened briefly, and then he stepped to the side. “Minister Cuna,” he said. “May I introduce Jeshua Weight, our emissary from the National Assembly. She’s eager to speak with you.”
I exchanged a look with Jorgen. His mother had barged in and scared away our last diplomatic opportunity. I didn’t know where Alanik had gone, but I doubted very much that she was ever coming back.
“Of course,” Cuna said, gliding elegantly out of the room, their teeth still bared, their retinue following after them.
Scud, was that supposed to be a smile?
“The rest of you,” Cobb said, “come up to the command center for debriefing.”
“Sir,” I said. “I’d like to get the slugs settled, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine,” Cobb said.
“Fine!” several of the slugs replied.
“Stars, those things are annoying,” Cobb said, and he led the rest of the team up the hallway.
Only Rig stayed behind.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said back. “Were you listening over the hypercomm to all of that?”
“Some,” Rig said. “It sounded pretty dire.”
“It was,” I said. “I thought Jorgen had been eaten by a giant space monster, but the slugs jumped him out.”
Rig gaped at me, and I felt a bit of hysterical laughter welling up again. “A space monster?”
“Mammoth starpod, specifically. You should have seen it. It was bigger than Platform Prime. And then Gill took me to find Jorgen, and for a while we thought we were going to have to leave the rest of the team there to die.”
“Gill took you,” Rig said. “Of his own accord.”
“Kind of,” I said. “He thought I wanted him to. These things are a lot smarter than we assumed.” I found Gill wrapped around the leg of the table and scooped him up, running my fingers through the fringe on his back. “We need to figure out how to communicate with them. Once they know us and care about us, they want to help us out. We don’t have to scare them. We can…ask them.”
“Like a partnership,” Rig said.
“Like a partnership.” I set Gill down on the table and looked up at him.
Rig stood awkwardly with his arms crossed like he didn’t know what to do with them.
Scud, that boy was cute. “I’m sorry to have worried you,” I said.
“Yeah, well,” he said, scuffing his toe on the floor. “I should have known you wouldn’t break your perfect record.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said.
I didn’t know if I’d always be able to help it, not really. There was always the chance that I’d go out on a mission and never return, like Lizard, like Hurl and Bim before her. Like so many others we’d lost. We weren’t done. The hyperdrives gave us hope for the future, but things were only going to get more dangerous from here, not less.
Maybe it would have been safer to protect myself. Maybe it would have been kinder to Rig not to let either of us get attached.
But I reached out a hand, and Rig took it. His fingers laced through mine.
It wasn’t enough to survive for survival’s sake. I wanted to live. I leaned in and kissed him, slowly and tenderly, like we had all the time in the world. And by the stars, I hoped we did.
“Help it!” Gill said, and I turned around to see all of the slugs we’d returned with gathered around a stack of goods that must have been brought in from requisitions in our absence. Several boxes of algae strips, some vacuum-packed mushrooms.
And an entire tower of jars of caviar.
“All right,” I said. “You guys have earned it.”
I cracked several jars open and let them eat their fill.
Acknowledgments
As always, I’d like to thank my team at Dragonsteel Entertainment for their work and t
alent.
Peter Ahlstrom, Kara Stewart, Adam Horne, and our COO and queen, Emily Sanderson. I appreciate all you do.
Special thank-yous to Isaac Stewart, our art director, and Charlie Bowater, the Sunreach cover artist, for their beautiful work. Special thanks are also due to Karen Ahlstrom for her continuity edit and Kristina Kugler for her work on the line and copy edits.
Additionally, special thanks to Max and the team at Mainframe, as always, for the great job they did in putting the audiobook together.
For this Delacorte edition, my thanks go to Krista Marino, Beverly Horowitz, Lydia Gregovic, and the ebook production folks, Tom Marquet, Jeff Griggs, and Andrew Wheatley. My agents at JABberwocky, Eddie Schneider and Joshua Bilmes, deserve great applause for making this happen.
Finally, thank you to all of you, the fans of this series. I hope you’ve enjoyed Sunreach.
Brandon
I am so grateful to the fantastic teams at Dragonsteel and Mainframe for helping make this book a reality, and to the team at JABberwocky for being such consistent supporters of me and my work.
Thanks also to Cortana Olds (callsign: Halo) for stealing my copies of Skyward and Starsight because she heard her mom was eager to talk to her about a book. Cori was my outline sounding board and my first reader on my first draft, so she saw the book in a worse state than anyone else and loved it anyway. (And she wasn’t afraid to point out my terrible metaphors.)
Thanks to Megan Walker, who listened to a lot of whining about the state of various drafts and still brought me motivation cookies, and also read an early draft. Thanks to James Goldberg for his early notes, and to the Dragonsteel beta team: Darci Cole (callsign: Blue), Liliana Klein (callsign: Slip), Alice Arneson (callsign: Wetlander), Paige Phillips (callsign: Artisan), Jayden King (callsign: Tripod), and Linnea Lindstrom (callsign: Pixie). Special thanks to Jayden for his flying expertise and to Darci for helping me refine FM’s romantic arc.
Thank you to my husband, Drew, for his infinite patience with me and my work, and for always believing I can do it, even when I lose faith.
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