Page 29 of Defiant

The memories had been real though. Today, I closed my eyes and reached into the past. Listening. Each time someone had used this portal, they’d left a piece of themselves behind, inscribed by these lines.

In this one, I saw humans. Humans who had come here in secret, to build a new kind of weapon. A facility for trying to control the delvers.

I saw humans quarrying stone from the nowhere and transporting it out. I saw their enormous fabrication machines building shipyards in the sky, which then built the other platforms. This location had been chosen for two reasons. The first was the large ring of asteroids around the planet, which had been entirely consumed by the fabricators.

But the second, true secret—the real reason—had been this portal. An open one, into the nowhere. A place to get acclivity stone. A place to try to control the creatures beyond dimensions and space.

I pulled my hand back. I’d already seen the end result of those experiments on a recording my friends and I had watched. We’d seen what had happened when a delver had come to Detritus and destroyed the humans living here. That had been long before M-Bot had crashed here, and eventhathad been a century before my own people had found their way to the planet.

Seeing all of this reminded me of what Brade had said. That ourdestiny,as humans, was to do what our ancestors had failed to do.Conquer the galaxy.

Turning my thoughts in that direction was a mistake. I could feel my soul beginning to vibrate, and Brade’s attention focusing on me.Perhaps because I’d just opened myself to the memories of those ancient humans, I was exposed, and she latched on. In a panic, I realized that if she saw what I was doing, it might tip her off to our plan.

Don’t see. Don’t see!

Brade appeared in front of me as a cytonic projection. She looked around, frowning. And shedidn’tsee. Her eyes passed over the wall as if nothing were there—for in my mind’s eye, that was how I viewed it. Just a featureless wall. To reinforce that, I started walking, as if there was nothing special about where I’d stopped.

Her ability to see my surroundings was predicated on howIsaw them. Was this similar to how the Krell had convinced my father that he was seeing enemies when he flew among friends? Was this the method by which our enemy could hijack a cytonic’s senses?

They’d turned my father against the people who loved him—and I hadnotforgotten my anger. Brade upheld that system.

I had given up on trying to bring her to my side. But perhaps she didn’t need to know that.

“So,” she said, “are you ready to accept what I’ve been telling you? Ready to do what needs to be done, Spensa?”

“We’re doing that right now,” I replied. “Overthrowing the Superiorityiswhat needs to be done. Join me, help me.”

She smiled, perhaps at my naivete.

How would she try to use me this time?

“Winzik is goingcrazyover that information storage you took,” she said. “All of his secrets in the hands of enemies. That was a clever strike. He should have realized the repercussions of you having a minister-tier government official on your side. He had Cuna locked out of our systems, but of course he can’t lock them out of their own mind.”

“Well,” I said, “soon he’ll see the consequences of his mistake.”

“Come now. Your military is so small. You’re no match for ours—you should join with us, become our enforcers. I could persuade Winzik to see you as mercenaries instead of enemies to be quashed. If you serve us.”

“Brade,” I said, leaning into my lie, “we won’t be small for long. Joinme.We’ll soon have entire forces of disgruntled humans on our side. You belong here.”

She turned away from me, perhaps to hide her growing grin—though I could faintly feel satisfaction radiating from her. She had believed my lie—she assumed our purpose in stealing the data archive was to find the other human preserves like Detritus.

Perhaps wewouldapproach those humans. Eventually. So it was a plausible, reasonable goal—just not our main one. And Brade bought it.

In turn, I was shocked by how easily I’d sold that lie. For months now, I’d worried that I wasn’t a spy or a scout, despite being required to do both repeatedly. I kept telling myself I was a pilot. Yet I’d managed to infiltrate the Superiority’s space force, then get into the nowhere and take over one of their mining installations from within.

Iwasa spy. It wasn’t what I’d intended to become, but it was where the job had taken me. The best way to learn to fly was to just get into a cockpit and practice; it seemed that the same was true of subterfuge.

I did plan the takeover of Surehold,I thought.And it worked. I wonder…

A thought started to come together, but I put it aside for now. I needed to deal with Brade.

“Go,” I snapped at her. “Leave me alone. Tell Winzik I’m coming for him with the thirst of a thousand battlefields, longing for blood. I will enjoy the chance to sink my blade between the layers of his carapace, prying him from the shell. Then I shall watch—with exquisite satisfaction—as he suffocates in the callous air.”

She cocked her head at me. To be honest, I felt rather satisfied with that boast. Beowulf would have been proud of me. I could move toward being less bloodthirsty, but still appreciate a good boast, right? Boasts and threats were basically ways to get your enemy to back down—so they were actually pacifist in nature.

Maybe that was what Conan the Cimmerian had always beenabout. Perhaps all the lines about the lamentations of women and drinking blood from skulls were meant to persuade people to go home andnottry to assault the two-meter-tall fellow with cannonballs for pectorals.

Brade growled, then muttered, “You’re wasted on this pointless fighting, Spensa.” But she left, and I could feel—cytonically—that she was actually gone. I let out a long breath.

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