ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)

“The centuries-old food supplies?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Nedd said. “I can’t read the labels on these, but there’s no way this stuff is that old. We took some to your friends, and they said thank you. They wouldn’t have done that if we were offering them two-hundred-year-old food, would they?”

I approached, looking at the boxes. “I think you’re right. That looks like some salvager’s food stash.” The wafer bars were individually wrapped, and the outer box did bear the date of origin. “Looks like they’re only five years old.”

“Delicious,” Arturo said.

“This one is delicious!” Sadie said. “It has some kind of nuts in it.” She looked at me wide-eyed. “Those aren’t poisonous to humans or anything, are they?”

“I have no idea what humans find poisonous,” I said. “Though your people used to live among us on ReDawn and ate our food, so most of it is probably safe to eat. The nuts are called udal nuts. They grow on bushy plants that live in the crevices of the branches. They’re quite good, though I can’t vouch for these bars.” I pulled one out and unwrapped it. It was more crumbly than usual, probably owing to its age, but at least it hadn’t molded.

    “Maybe we should have been more careful,” Sadie said, scowling at her nut wafer as she set it down.

“It’s all right, Sadie,” Nedd said. “I’m on my third bar. If you die, I’m going with you.”

Sadie did not look comforted.

“We brought you food,” FM said, lifting the case of algae strips. “So you don’t have to rely on scavenged nut bars.”

“Oh, custard!” Kimmalyn said, taking the jug from Rig. “Thanks!”

“You also brought more slugs,” Jorgen said, joining Arturo in the doorway. “Why?”

“It’s a long story,” FM said.

“How long could it be?” Jorgen asked. “You were gone ten minutes tops.”

“They were only gone for ten minutes,” Sadie said, “and we still managed to find the taynix boxes while they were gone.” She and Catnip—or T-Stall? I really needed to figure out which was which—slapped their palms together in what I assumed must be a human gesture of celebration.

“Seriously?” FM said. “You found them that quickly?”

“It wasn’t hard,” Kimmalyn said. “We found a station map of the platform in that engineering room written in English. The control room was labeled on it.”

“Shhhhh,” T-Stall or Catnip said. “You could have let them think we were amazing.”

    “We are amazing,” Sadie said. “Amazing at reading maps.”

“I want to see this,” Rig said, and FM set down the box of algae strips at Sadie’s feet and followed Rig and me into the room with Jorgen. The new blue taynix sat on the control panel, and trilled at FM when she walked in.

One wall was dominated by panels and levers and switches, with a wide window above the panels looking over the edge of the platform into the miasma. All around the room, mounted against the walls, were metal boxes like the one in Jorgen’s ship.

“Do they all have holoprojectors?” FM asked. “Because if so we could strip those, since we don’t need them for the slugs anymore.”

Rig knelt down and looked at the wires beneath the panel. “Looks like it’s been looted already. But most of the wiring is intact. The wires themselves must not be worth much on this planet.”

“Why would they be?” I asked. “They’re wires.”

“Depends on whether you have the resources to mine the right metals,” Rig said. “Some of those are valuable on Detritus.”

That made sense. The core of ReDawn was rich with metals, which was why the Superiority bothered with us to begin with. They wanted our resources, and we traded them away for the barest recognition of our dignity, instead of remembering we were in the position of power.

“Taynix are valuable too,” Jorgen said. “Seriously, where did those come from?”

“We brought them with us,” FM said, “because the Superiority wants to take them.”

    “Did you talk to Cobb?” Jorgen asked.

“No,” FM said. “Cobb and Jeshua were talking to the Superiority over the hypercomm. They’ve already met with the Superiority once, and the Superiority was asking for them to turn over our cytonics and our hyperdrives.”

“FM,” Jorgen said. “Please tell me you didn’t steal the taynix.”

“We didn’t steal them,” FM snapped. “We rescued them. Alanik called to them and they came of their own free will.”

“They’re hyperdrives!” Jorgen said. “Not people. Cobb ordered us to come here, but he didn’t ask us to take the slugs that were commissioned to other pilots—”

FM narrowed her eyes. “Sometimes you have to do the right thing, Jorgen. Even if Command says to do something else.”

“Okay,” Jorgen said in a low voice. “But you were gone a few minutes, FM. You didn’t think this through. You didn’t talk to Cobb, and for all we know he has a plan that depends on the hyperdrives! You can’t do this.” He looked from me to Rig. “Why did you help her?”

“Um,” Rig said.

I didn’t have any more of an answer. Arturo was watching me, and I wasn’t about to admit that having more hyperdrives on ReDawn seemed like a good idea to me. Arturo wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Jorgen. They were probably already putting that together.

“It needed to be done,” FM said. “Even if they weren’t living beings that have feelings—”

“The other pilots are human beings,” Jorgen said. “And you left them without a tool they could use to survive, FM. Besides, the fact that the slugs let you do this is not good. If they’ll respond to Alanik, who they don’t know, it means enemy cytonics could use the same tactic against us.”

    “And clearly we need to train that out of them,” FM said. “But this time it was a good thing because—”