Page 15 of Defiant

“The mustache doesn’t deserve subtlety, Nedd,” she said. “It deserves a mercy killing.”

“Oh. Uh, well then.” He looked to me, as if for support.

“I’ve got a knife,” I said, reaching for the one I wore strapped to my leg. “Hold still and—”

He went scrambling down the ladder. Smart man. Kimmalyn gave me another smile. “I’m here,” she said, then followed him down.

“Here,” Doomslug said. Mimicking the word, yes, but also the meaning. I gave her a scratch in thanks, then finished my checklist. When I looked up from inspecting my emergency crash pack, there was a ninja on my dashboard. A furry, fifteen-centimeter ninja ina red-and-white mask. He stepped off his hover platform, then looked around. “Hmmm. No kitsen seat in this one. Where would you like me?”

“Hesho?” I said. “I thought you’d go back to your people.”

“The Masked Exile has no people,” he said.

“But—”

He reached up and undid the mask, removing it and wiping his snout. He took a long breath. “I cannot go back, Spensa,” he said. “Their emperor, you see, is dead.”

“But you’re alive!” I said. “You…” I trailed off, noting his somber expression. “They don’t want you back?”

“My survival creates many political…irregularities. My people, at long last, have adopted a provisional democracy. If the emperor—who died dramatically in defense of his planet—were to suddenly show up again…well, I adopted the mask for a reason. It conveyed the intended message:Imight have lived. But Hesho, their emperor, didnot.”

He looked up at me, hands holding his mask, proud—but also supplicating.

“You’re welcome in this cockpit, Hesho,” I said. “Honestly, I’ve been worried. I flew with you or M-Bot as my copilot for so long that I’ve come to rely upon it. I fly better with you. We’ll just have to figure out how to get you a seat…”

“No need,” Hesho said, replacing his mask, then waving for some kitsen to fly in. They set a kind of seat on the dash, near the comm controls. It was round, like an elevated cup holder, and a kitsen could strap inside. With minimal work, they got it magnetically attached.

“We’ve been experimenting,” a kitsen engineer said, seeing my curious expression. “One of our kind flew with your leader, Jorgen Weight, for some time—training him in his powers. We’ve been trying methods of making that easier.”

I nodded, thoughtful. We flew with one person in most of our ships, because keeping the weight down was paramount—and wenever had any pilots to spare. But knowing how much having M-Bot as a copilot had helped me…

“Don’t suppose,” I said to them, “you could wire in to the dash to give him access to some of the controls?” Scud, how much better would we all fly if we had a kitsen copilot?

Though between him and Doomslug, the cockpit was getting a little crowded. Not to mention the entity stuffed into my soul, and the other spying on me as a “ghost.” But if there was one thing I’d learned over my time as a fighter, a little help went a long way.

The kitsen were able to get something rigged very quickly. It wouldn’t give Hesho all the controls I’d have liked him to have—it would be scudding awesome if someone could take command of the whole ship if I got shot or passed out from g-forces—but it would do for now. And as he settled into his little seat, I realized something.

Kimmalyn was right. Transitions were hard. Navigating this would be tough. But at least I had a home to come back to, and friends who still wanted me. This was what I’d been fighting for all along. And maybe…maybe there was a place for me here. Or at least room to cut out a place where I could fit.

Arturo was flightleader now, and FM had moved into administration with Jorgen. She flew on occasion, but wouldn’t be joining us today. So I waited until Arturo ordered us out of the hangar to do roll call. I followed orders, happy to have someone else in charge. Minutes later, Jorgen fed the coordinates into my brain—given to him by Cuna.

The flight locked on to me, using light-lances to connect us together so we could hyperjump as one entity. I reached into the nowhere and sent us halfway across the galaxy to the Superiority’s information nexus, hidden in a location that, as far as the rest of the Superiority knew, didn’t exist. A place kept off the maps. A place not talked about.

Around a star known as Sol.

In the system where humankind had originated.

6

We came in low around a planetoid that my mission briefing had called Luna. Old Earth’s moon.

I couldn’t make out much by starlight, but the place reminded me of Detritus. A vast dark planetoid, surface broken by craters. Forlorn. Abandoned by time, and with no defensive shell to hide and protect it. Old Earth had vanished centuries ago, leaving this moon in a lonely orbit around Sol.

Our enemy had built their base here. Cuna said it was because this region was already quarantined, kept off maps, with no travel in or out except for military reasons. So, we humans came home—in a way—for this mission. Only at the same time we didn’t. Because Old Earth wasn’t here, and nobody knew where it had gone.

That was a mystery for another day, however. Today I had a secret facility to raid. Our plan was straightforward. In roughly ten minutes, we would come into range of the base’s sensors. Soon after, we’d reach the base itself.

The place would have an inhibitor—a slug with powers preventing us from using cytonics. Fortunately, Cuna had visited this installation several times, and knew where the inhibitor was. Whenever a high official visited a Superiority base, one of their jobs was to checkthat protocol was being followed for protecting sensitive equipment—namely cytonic equipment. Very,veryfew people in the Superiority even knew that taynix slugs were the source of these powers.

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