“Well,” Peg said, “the high-ups in the somewhere, they’d rather it be deadly in here. Fortunately they’re far away. Regardless, Spin, this is important to understand. Those people at Surehold? They almost joined me when I left. They want to escape—but they’re scared of the Superiority, and of the officers that are still loyal. If we give them a nudge, prove that my force is stronger, they’ll join us. I’m certain of it.”
That explained a lot. The pirates didn’t want to lose equipment to damage, because repairs were difficult for them—and the Superiority forces weren’t zealots or loyalists. They didn’t want to die to defend a stupid mining base—but they had to make a good showing for their superiors.
So nonlethal weapons were used all around. I found it interesting how humane things became once the people far up the command chain—the ones who didn’t have to bleed for the decisions they made—couldn’t force everyone into line.
“I don’t understand why the pirates have these little squabbles and do meaningless raids against each other though,” I said. “If I were in charge of one of these pirate factions, I wouldn’t waste time with champions or duels. I’d raid a group smaller than mine, freeze their ships, then steal the lot of them. In a few weeks I’d be queen of all the pirates.”
“You really are terrifying sometimes, kid,” Peg replied.
A question occurred to me. “Do you guys have, like, golden tankards or anything? I mean, I know we don’t drink here, but I’ve always wanted a golden tankard…or maybe one made out of bone. The stories mention ones made from the skulls of one’s enemies, but it seems like the drink would leak out the eyeholes. Unless your enemies have no eyes, I guess. Hmm…”
Peg had fallen silent. Oh. Maybe that last part had been a little much. I was trying to get better at this sort of thing. I should probably leave skulls out of conversations.
“I’m glad to finally meet a human who lives up to the stories,” Peg said. “But no, we’re not going to be giving you any tankards made of skulls.”
“Still,” I said. “Chet’s right—it’s remarkably civilized in here. I…have trouble accepting that nobody has ruined it.”
“That’s because you spent your life fighting to the death,” Peg said. “We have a different problem.”
“You feel your self dribbling away each day,” Chet agreed. “Having something to do is important. The sparring, the duels… These invigorating activities give the pirates purpose, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Peg said. “And no one wants to ruin what they have. That’s part of the problem. Every time I pitch the idea of seizing Surehold, the pirates get frightened. Unnerved. They like the way things are. With six different pirate factions, there’s always a raid to plan, a ship to repair, a mission to execute, or territory to defend. It’s…it’s what they want.”
“But you want something more,” I said.
“Yes,” Peg admitted. “Maybe I’m a little too much like you. A little too much like the people outside. I can’t feel safe as long as the Superiority is there—at any moment, they could send an enormous force through the portal and crush us with lethal weapons and swarms of drones.
“My people won’t be safe in here until I control that portal. Until I can lock it on our side. And then we can undermine Superiority acclivity stone production, starve their forces on the other side. Payback for what they did to me and mine.”
There was an encouraging vengefulness in her tone. I approved. The others were playing games, and Peg wanted to protect that. But she knew real danger, real killing. She still hadn’t explained how the pirate champion related to all of this, but I let it die for now. Because up ahead I saw our destination at last. A lonely fragment covered in ancient structures.
It was time.
Chapter 24
We swooped down toward the fragment, which was bigger than many of the others I’d seen so far. “It’s huge,” I noted to Chet as we skimmed along, scouting for dangers. IR scans indicated no body heat signatures, though I’d learned not to be careless about that.
“Indeed,” he said. “I now understand why some are so much bigger than others. They’ve been growing for longer.”
“This…” Dllllizzzz said over the comm. “Here… I was… Here…”
Again, it was more than she normally said, and got Shiver excited. I was focused, however, on the ruins I could make out at the fragment’s center, and I navigated toward them.
“Yeah, I remember this place,” Peg said. “We visited it when it first drifted into our region a few years back.”
“That’s right, Captain,” Maksim said. “So why are we here again, Spin?”
“Historical investigations,” I said. “Chet here is an archaeologist.”
“A right noble profession, my good man,” Chet said. “Ancient artifacts can tell us much about ourselves!”
“Uh, I guess,” Maksim said. “But—”
“Leave it be, Maksim.” Peg cut him off. “Their reasons are their own. The rest of us will search for salvage while we’re here.”
I narrowed my eyes. Peg didn’t seem the type to let our reasons be “our own.”
“Spin and I will need time to study those ruins directly at the center,” Chet said. “I’m circling them on your monitors.”
“Dllllizzzz is vibrating uncomfortably,” Shiver said over the comm. “Though she’s excited, I think she doesn’t want to land. She feels…anxious? Maybe the two of us should stay up and keep watch.”
“Fine by me,” Peg said. “Maksim and I will stick near, Spin, while you do your…archaeology.”
Our group landed in a ruined courtyard, while the two resonants stayed in the air. There wasn’t a lot left of most of the ruins—fallen walls, the outlines of buildings. A few somewhat-intact stone structures.
I popped the canopy and climbed out, meeting Peg on the ground. “This place is old,” she said. “Not a lot of wind in here, and no rain, so things don’t weather much. If something looks this bad, it’s probably seen thousands of years.”
Chet and I shared a glance, then started toward one of the mostly intact structures, helmets under our arms.
“Doesn’t look too promising, Captain,” Maksim muttered from behind. “This place must have been picked over hundreds of times.”
“Agreed,” Peg said, “but keep growing delens just in case. We’re here to keep our promise to Spin.”
I remembered the structure ahead—it had been injected into my mind by the previous step on the Path. We walked up to it, and directly inside I found my first surprise. The wall behind the small foyer had a faded old mural on it—and the figures it depicted were most certainly human.
“Amazing,” Chet breathed. He rushed up to it and leaned in close. “Our own people, Miss Nightshade. All these years, I never found any ruins that I could identify as human…”
I couldn’t make out much of the mural. Just some figures holding baskets, maybe?
“I could not guess at the culture,” Chet whispered. He reached out to the mural, then paused—perhaps not wanting to touch it and further contribute to its degradation. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much about where we came from. Our homeworld. I must have once known…”
“Earth,” I said. “Humankind left there a few centuries before you were even born. It’s lost now. Vanished.”
Together, we moved farther into the structure. The roof had long since fallen in, so we didn’t lack for light—and from the refuse on the floor, it seemed the place had been ransacked over the years, and had possibly been in a firefight.