Page 26 of Defiant

As others set down trays, I looked past Arturo to Alanik, who settled in a few places farther along the table. She ate with Skyward Flight, even if her chosen food was different. She seemed to reallylikethe algae.

The violet-skinned alien studied me quietly, with a certain reserved sensibility. She said she’d been told, by her leaders, to continue “socializing” with the humans. Her species and mine shared suspiciously similar physiology—there might be a common ancestor in our pasts. Certainly the UrDail had slipped into Earth’s mythology and lore, much as the kitsen had.

Regardless, it was odd to see the person whose face I’d stolen joining us for breakfast. And it was odd to not have FM there, as she was helping Rig get a new fabrication project up and running.

T-Stall sat next to me, but he gave me space. Too much space. We’d never been that close, and he and Catnip seemed to have started integrating better with the rest of the flight while I was gone. On my other side, Sadie settled down—and looked to me with an almostdivineadmiration.

This was ostensibly where I belonged. But I felt more at home with a bunch of aliens these days than I did with my old flight. Fortunately, my newfound mental bulwark was effective. I reminded myself that it was all right—that I didn’tneedto belong, since I was just a weapon to be fired. That calmed me, and I settled into my place.

Nothing started rattling. Nobody’s sandwiches vanished.

Doomslug fluted to me sorrowfully, but I scooped her off my shoulders and set her in the line of other slugs, which ran down the center of the wide metal table. They were happily munching on their caviar, offered in special little bowls. The taynix were now members of the flight. They saved the lives of my friends regularly, by hyperjumping them to safety.

They like it here,I thought, feeling their contented minds.They like being appreciated. I think they even enjoy the human companionship.

They were afraid of the delvers though. I’d been able to pick out some of this from Doomslug. The Superiority had manipulated this fear—rather than working with and encouraging the taynix, the Superiority had frightened them into compliance. The ease with which FM and the others had instead coaxed and befriended the slugs was the ultimate recrimination of the Superiority’s so-called primary intelligence. Our enemy claimed to avoid aggression and support peace, but in truth they only did so when convenient.

But Doomslug is not afraid of me,Chet thought from within me.Not any longer.

Doomslug sent an image to us in response: Chet and me with yellow skin and blue tinges. She’d realized we weren’t frightening. Not even delvers were. We were just very strange slugs.

“So,” Kimmalyn said, leaning across the table and drawing my attention back to the conversation. “Your plan worked, Spin. I hear there’s atonof useful stuff in that data archive.Twelveother human preserves, like Detritus. Detailed schematics for all Superiority ships. And, of course, the location of the supply depots that process the acclivity stone mined in the nowhere.”

“Other human preserves, you say?” T-Stall said. “I wonder if they’re like us. Constantly fighting. On the brink of breaking out.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I get the feeling that Detritus was unique, with our cavern complex and fabricators. The enemy didn’tintendour planet to become a preserve; we were just too persistent to exterminate.”

“Either way,” Kimmalyn said, “could be worth approaching them…”

It wasn’t a terrible idea. From what we’d been able to determine, the Superiority was being forced to pull fighters away from many garrisons to fight us. Some of those preserves might be poorly defended.

“I’ve got some of the data dump here,” Arturo said, opening up his datapad. He started to show us the locations of the human preserves, but I hijacked the pad and instead scrolled to the locations of the five mining stations.

As Jorgen had indicated, our goal wasn’t to hit the mining stations themselves. My friends there, like Peg and the Broadsiders, would be safe. We’d attack the supply depots on this side instead, the ones controlled by the Superiority.

Out of curiosity, though, I looked to see if the data indicated where the mining bases were in the nowhere. And the data was there. Surehold, which I’d attacked with the Broadsiders, was the biggest—but the four others were sprinkled throughout the same region. I had assumed they’d be farther out in the belt, but it appeared they just kept them very well hidden.

“Still can’t believe it,” Sadie said, leaning down low, speaking softly. “The Superiority is sovulnerable.”

“I was there last night when they broke down the data,” Arturo said. “Cuna is right. The Superiority is so paranoid about keeping the slugs a secret that they’ve created a bigger problem for themselves. For example, almost all communications in the Superiority are underpinned by asinglenetwork, one location that holds a large batch of commslugs to facilitate comms traffic.”

You didn’t need a slug on each end to make cytonic communications work. With enough practice, and the right technology on the receiving end, a single slug could manage multiple different conversations. A little like an operator on an old-school communications rig.

Yup!M-Bot said in my head.Fun fact. The first recorded Earth cytonic, Jason Write, dedicated only a tiny portion of his brain to the task—but was able to run dozens of communications almost like a background process. With training, the early Earth cytonics were able to facilitate thousands upon thousands of calls, all by themselves.

I jumped despite myself.How long have you been back?

I never left. I just hid. I’ve been watching for a while now. Some…time? Hard to say in here…well, you know how it is.

I did, and I also had a better understanding of why time was so strange in the nowhere. The delvers had an omnipresent effect on the place. They wanted to forget the past, so everyone there started to do the same. The delvers ignored time, and so it was hard for everyone to track.

They did it because they were still searching for a way, even now, to deaden the pain of loss.

Jason Write,M-Bot said.Yes. The delvers, who were only a single individual back then, loved him. When he died, they didn’t know how to respond to their grief so…all of this. The result of one former AI’s emotional constipation.

Ew.

FM finally arrived, carrying three slugs at once. She’d really gotten into the entire slug thing, which I found odd. She was so prim, and slugs didn’t really match her normal fashionable accessorizing.

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