I sat a little taller at those words, and the experience made me want to fall back into the role I’d taken with the team on Starsight: that of the drillmaster. That was dangerous. I wasn’t going to be with the Broadsiders long enough to train them extensively.
I gave them a short break, with a compliment on their skills, and Peg pulled up on my wing. Her shuttle looked slapped-together, but that was deceptive. It held an exceptionally strong shield and powerful guns. In a proper fire team, with faster ships to keep the enemy from swarming her, she’d be a force to reckon with.
Though she was the leader, she’d done as I directed during instruction without complaining or pulling rank. That said a lot about her, all of it good. She was humble enough to take direction in order to achieve her goals.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Memories are good?”
“They are,” I said. “I can remember my name, my friends. Most of it.”
“There’s something about being part of a team that helps us all,” she replied. “Even when we aren’t immediately close to one another. It’s like how a forest is stronger than a tree, eh? The roots interlock, and the fruit grows for all in more abundance.”
“It’s like a crystal lattice, Peg,” Shiver said over the comm. “The structure of a crystal is strong because of how the individual atoms align together.”
“Well,” Maksim said, “I guess I’m supposed to say it’s like a herd of cattle. Or maybe a line of fence posts. Or some other cowboy crap.”
“Cowboy?” I asked.
He paused a moment when I spoke. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but I felt he had to struggle not to snap at me. Because of how I’d betrayed his trust.
He continued speaking though. As if he were trying to give me a second chance. “Haven’t I told you, Spin? In the Superiority, everyone thinks of humans as these ravening monsters—and so they love our old lore. Pirates, Gurkhas, the Tuskegee Airmen, and—unfortunately—cowboys. So they’d always expect me to talk like one. Even though my heritage from Old Earth is Ukrainian.”
“I…don’t know where that was,” I admitted.
“It didn’t have cowboys,” Maksim said. “You have no idea how annoying those hats are. My owners always claimed that they were using me for scientific study—but you wouldn’t have known it from the way they showed me off at parties.”
“Parties,” Shiver said. “Such an interesting concept. How you motiles insist you need time apart—yet when you want to enjoy yourselves, you always simply come back together. Why leave in the first place?”
“I have a friend,” I said, thinking of Rig, “who’d disagree that being together is when we enjoy ourselves. I think he has the most fun when everyone leaves him alone.”
“Curious, curious,” Shiver said. And Dllllizzzz added a hum in the background.
I’d tried to picture their cavernous homeworld—like Detritus, only with each and every tunnel full of different crystalline tendrils, networks of individuals who explored by growing themselves outward.
“All right,” I said over the comm, “we have some travel time left. Do a few more team sprints and prove you can execute them without making fools of yourselves.”
Maksim groaned. “We just spent an hour on sprints!”
“You still need to work on fundamentals, Maksim,” I said. “Learn what you can from me while I’m here. You people fly like a bunch of pig farmers.”
“I take it pig farmers do not often fly well in your culture, Spin?” Shiver said.
“Ask Maksim,” Peg said. “He’s the cowboy.”
I smiled, their banter reminding me of flying with my friends. Though this felt different. In Skyward Flight, our banter—although genuine—had always had an edge. We’d been a few bold fighters facing overwhelming odds. We’d gone into each fight knowing it might be the one where we lost someone we loved.
The Broadsiders didn’t have the same sense to them. They were relaxed as they ran through more sprints. When one got something wrong, they all laughed it off. Skyward Flight hadn’t done that—because there, if one of us kept screwing up, it would get everyone killed.
Was this what it felt like to relax? Scud. Listening to them, I realized I really didn’t know what it felt like to just…live. Without worrying about a bomb annihilating my entire civilization one night while I slept. Without fearing that my friends wouldn’t be coming home tomorrow. Or, more recently, without wondering if I’d be discovered as an impostor.
As they practiced, I glanced over the landscape. Once you got past the fact that this place could literally consume your memories and identity, it was beautiful. An endless open sky, cast faintly pink-violet, interrupted by floating islands. Each fragment was a different biome, inviting a new adventure. And beyond that, the lightburst.
Though it was still distant, today I felt something…drawing me toward it. Chet thought we’d need to go right up close to it to finish the Path of Elders, and looking into that full light now, I knew it was true. I’d walk the Path. But at the end I’d face them.
Whatever else happened here, that was my destination.
I shook myself out of that trancelike state and patched through on the comm to Peg, looking for a distraction. “Hey,” I said as she finished her sprints. “Could I get more details on your plan? How exactly is me fighting the pirate champion going to help you win the Superiority base?”
She was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider. Finally she answered, pulling her shuttle up beside my ship. “You know about my past? The others told you?”
“You were chief security officer at Surehold,” I said. “The Superiority treated you dirty, not allowing your kids to leave with you when your time was up.”
“Correct,” Peg said. “So I grew a few hanchals about that, I’ll tell you. And I wasn’t the only one. The base had been losing people for years. The factions hadn’t grown yet, but there were plenty of smaller bands, with a ship or two, roving around out here.”
“It was a big deal when you left,” Chet said. “Everyone heard about it. A high officer defecting? Gathering all the dissidents, raiders, and wanderers to raise up a giant pirate armada?”
“Yeah, well,” Peg said, “it wasn’t enough. I failed back then, and my supposed ‘giant armada’ shattered into the factions. Still, I’ve been thinking about it these last three years, considering what I did wrong. Planning…”
I nodded, thoughtful. “Wasn’t Shiver with you, back at the base?”
“Yeah, about a third of it defected when I did,” Peg said. “They form the bulk of the pirates. Shiver’s not the only Broadsider who left with me. There are a bunch of us, like RayZed and Guntua. And I almost had more—almost got the entire base to up and revolt.”
“Their failure to do so smacks of cowardice,” Chet said.
“No,” Peg said. “No, that’s not it. I understand them, Chet. They’re not cowards. Just ordinary people trying to live in a difficult place. Back when I was security officer, I was the one who installed the nonlethal weapons on our ships—my argument being that we couldn’t afford to throw away the ships the malcontents had stolen. Truth is, though, I grew urichas. I knew those dissidents were just like us. I didn’t want to be in the business of shooting them down.”
“So wait,” I said. “You’re saying that the Superiority forces in here, they use nonlethal weapons too?”
“Yup,” Peg said. “Pretty much everyone does. We have this understanding—none of us want to be killing each other.”
“So civilized!” Chet said. “I approve.”