Page 28 of Defiant

“It’s more difficult for the rest of us,” Arturo agreed. “We’re not so hardened. Fighting while knowing there were civilians panicking down below…that was horrible. I don’t look forward to doing it again.”

“These supply depots…” Sadie said. “They’re going to be fullof civilians. Workers. Even if we don’t hit the mining stations in the nowhere—even if we just hit the portals on this side…well, who do you think is cleaning those stations? Moving the rock around? Refining it into pure acclivity stone. It’s not Winzik’s warriors.”

We all sat there for a while. I reminded myself I was a weapon. That I didn’t care—that I couldn’taffordto care. But then Kimmalyn astonishingly put down her fork and pushed her dessert away, half-finished.

“We need to figure this out,” FM said. “Jorgen’s plan is to hit the stations tomorrow and destroy all of them.”

“Do we need todestroythe installations?” I asked. “Maybe we could just secure and hold them.”

“Holding ground is tough,” Arturo said, “particularly against a superior force. Better to disable the installations.”

“If we do that, won’t we be trapping everyone who’s in the nowhere?” Sadie said. “With no means to return to the somewhere?”

“Not necessarily,” Alanik said, her translated words coming from my pin. “There might be other portals. Places where there aren’t mining stations.”

“There are,” I said. “But most of them are locked somehow. Something odd happened to them years ago.”

“Could we unlock one?” Alanik pressed. “That seems like what Jorgen did, in freeing the kitsen cytonics.”

She was right, but I was reluctant to experiment there. After Gran-Gran and Cobb had gotten stuck in one of those portals…well, it seemed dangerous to toy with them.

At the same time, this felt like an important thing to know. If we destroyed these installations, could the Superiority just send ships in through other locations, then fly a little longer through the belt of the nowhere and recover their supplies anyway?

If I knew the answer, it might change our plans. Might persuade Jorgen not to go through with this attack.

Suddenly, I couldn’t maintain my stoic sense that I was a weapon. I needed another solution. Though it was a betrayal of my warriorforebearers, I wanted nothing more than to justnothave to go back into battle tomorrow.

So, without a word to the others, I scooped up Doomslug and hyperjumped away—intent on visiting Detritus. And learning for myself what could be done with the inactive portal hiding in the caverns beneath its surface.

10

These days, entering the nowhere was an odd experience. Doomslug and I popped in briefly between moments, in the place that was commonly full of the eyes. Pinpricks of light in the blackness that normally, in the past, had glared at me with an incredible sense of malevolence.

This time, like every time in the past twelve days, they were missing. Pure blackness confronted me. No eyes. No delvers.

I’d once thought I didn’t understand this place,couldn’tunderstand it. I was mortal, and my mind too accustomed to the passage of time and linear relationships. But my soul was part delver now. Strange as it was, I could see what they were doing. Theywerehere. Camouflaged by turning their attention inward. Hiding not just from me, but from one another. I got the sense they did this only when I was there, only when time entered the nowhere because I was hyperjumping through it.

The secret is here, in how I interact with them,I thought.The way to defeat them once and for all.It might have to do with the way they hid.

A pair of eyes popped up beside me.Hi!M-Bot said.Welcome tomy home! It’s only the size of an infinitely small point, but so am I, so it’s enough!

A heartbeat later Doomslug and I left, appearing in a different kind of mundane darkness. The caverns underneath Detritus.

Though cytonics could “see” by use of their powers—Gran-Gran was a good example, though she hadn’t realized she was doing it—I didn’t have much talent in that area. Fortunately, my multitool had a small flashlight. I slipped it from its spot on my belt and turned on the soft green light, illuminating a large cavern—and startling a number of scuttling inhabitants.

I couldn’t help but grin. I knew this cavern. I’d hunted in it—and it seemed that in my absence the rats had been on a rampage and fed freely on the fungus here. “Fear not,” I announced to them, “though I have returned, I come not for your blood! Turns out I prefer peanut butter. Enjoy your respite, fell beasts.”

They didn’t seem inclined to take my word for it, and remained hiding in the nooks and nearby crevices. I continued through the chamber, feeling a certain nostalgia. I’d become a pilot. Spensa the rat girl was no more.

Was it strange to miss those days? They’d been terrible in many ways. The Krell had been an omnipresent danger. Plus my family had suffered from lack of food, discrimination, and long hours of work.

Yet back then, all I’d been in charge of was getting some rats to sell. Now, the fate of planets was on my shoulders.

My hyperjump had been off by a short distance. The portal wasn’t in this cavern, but in a nearby tunnel. My memory proved good after all these months, and I easily made my way up along a tunnel—finding the spot via an ancient tube that emerged from the rock, carrying water to other parts of the cavern complex. I trailed along, one hand on the stone, until I reached the portal.

It was on the wall. A large section of stone that partially blended into the surrounding rock, carved with strange symbols. Years agoI’d known there was something odd about these alien markings. The unusual surface held whispers you couldn’t hear, but could feel.

I rested my fingers on the grooves. In the nowhere, I’d traveled on a heroic journey—recovering memories of the past. That journey, it turned out, had been concocted by Chet in order to give me information that I needed, but that he hadn’t otherwise known how to deliver.

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