ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)

“Jeshua Weight. She’s…a lot to deal with sometimes. But she means well.”

FM looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t. At home it would be considered rude to comment on the failings of someone else’s family member unless one was specifically invited to. Possibly humans were the same.

There was another knock on the door, and Jorgen opened it. Three more humans stood there, each with a yellow taynix tucked into a sling across their chest. The humans all wore the same clothes—flight suits, with the same patch affixed to their shoulders. One was a woman with brown skin and long, curly hair that hung halfway down her back. It still surprised me that all of the humans had hair and skin in various shades of bark colors, like they’d been drawn in different tones with the same pencil.

    All except the last man who walked in. His hair was a shade of red nearly as bright as the stripes on Boomslug, and it contrasted against his pale skin. I wondered if that color was natural, or if humans sometimes dyed their hair the way my people did.

“We heard Alanik was back,” said the girl with the curly hair. “We wanted to see for ourselves, and Cobb said it was okay as long as we didn’t help her escape.”

I hoped he said that in jest. “I don’t need anyone’s help escaping,” I said. “I’m here of my own free will.”

“Of course you are,” FM said. “This is Kimmalyn, Rig, and Arturo.”

The one she said was Arturo—a man with brown hair—stood by the door staring at me. The humans had done that less than I would have thought, really. The only reason I could keep from staring at them was because there were so many of them.

This didn’t feel rude though. More like he was sizing me up. I stared right back at him to let him know I was up to the challenge.

He seemed more puzzled by that than anything, so maybe I’d misread the situation.

Kimmalyn came over and sat down next to me. “Are they feeding you algae strips? They could at least have brought you some dessert.”

“Cuna said the UrDail don’t artificially sweeten their food,” FM said.

Sweeten it? Most of the spices that grew on the vines were flavorful, but not particularly sweet. Which was good, because some of the fruits we grew were too sweet for my taste, especially when they were raw. “This is fine,” I said. “Thank you.” I lifted the fruit, testing the skin, which was thin and crisp.

    “You can just bite into it,” Kimmalyn said. “You don’t need to peel it or anything. Unless your species doesn’t like peel. We could bring you a knife—”

I bit into the fruit, which had a satisfying crunch to it, not unlike pitchfruit back home. It wasn’t nearly as sweet though—it had more of a brisk flavor.

“Is it awful?” Kimmalyn asked.

“No, it’s good,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to say that if you hate it,” FM said. “We don’t have a lot of fruit, but we can find you something else.”

They were being kind, but I wasn’t here to discuss culinary habits. If their politicians refused to help me, I could at least collect more information. “Why are people afraid of your taynix?” I asked Jorgen. “You called it Boomslug?”

“Yeah, he did,” FM said, and Kimmalyn and Rig both snickered.

“Are we talking about that?” Rig asked. “She definitely doesn’t have clearance.”

“She already figured out about the hyperdrives,” FM said.

“My apologies for announcing that in front of your superiors,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Jorgen said. “Thank you for making it sound like you already knew.”

“But Boomslug—” I said. Boomslug seemed to recognize its name, because it descended Jorgen’s arm and slid across the table toward me.

“It exploded once,” Jorgen said. “Right in my face.” He rubbed one of the cuts on his cheek self-consciously.

I leaned away as it approached. “It exploded?”

    “Watch out for your algae strips,” Kimmalyn said, and sure enough the slug began to sniff them speculatively.

“This explosion,” I said. “It was cytonic? Energy pushing out from it and slicing your face?”

“Yes,” Jorgen said. “How did you…”

I stared at the slug in alarm. “That taynix can use mindblades?”

“What’s a mindblade?” Rig asked.

Mindblades were an advanced cytonic ability. If this creature could produce them, then it must be a powerful cytonic lifeform.

Though the idea that it could produce a mindblade when I couldn’t was frankly a little insulting.

“I’ve only seen them once,” I said. I could have kept this information to myself, but I didn’t see how they could use it against me—and giving it to them might make them feel comfortable giving more information to me. “Only one of the cytonics on ReDawn can produce them. They are…energy from the negative realm pulled into ours with fantastic force.” I watched the slug carefully as it gripped the edge of my algae strip with its mouth and slowly retracted the strip from the basket. “They are tremendously difficult to produce.”

FM smiled. “So Boomslug is an overachiever.”

“I would like to see it in action,” I said.

Jorgen scooted his chair away from me. “Not with us sitting right here.”

The slug slowly drew the algae into its mouth, watching quietly.

There was something ominous about it. Especially now that I knew what it did.

    “Are there other types?” I asked. “Communication slugs? Inhibitor slugs, perhaps?”

“We have slugs that power hypercomms,” FM said. “So far we haven’t found a good use for those without a full hypercomm, so the pilots aren’t trying to bond to them. I don’t know about inhibitor slugs though.”

“Are inhibitors powered by a cytonic?” Jorgen asked.

“Power,” Boomslug said.