ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)

“Okay,” Jorgen said. “Here goes.”

I focused on the mind of the slug, trying not to make enough contact that I would distract it from Jorgen’s message, but just enough that I could feel the change.

I didn’t need to though. The whole platform quivered with the reverberation, like a weapon had fired with incredible force. Out the window, the miasma in front of us shifted, swirling in eddies around invisible projectiles.

“Scud!” Nedd shouted from outside. “What was that?”

“Mindblades,” I said. “Did they aim where you wanted them to go?”

“They did,” Jorgen said. “We still have no idea how powerful that weapon is. It moved the gas clouds around, but that doesn’t mean—”

“A well-placed mindblade can cut right through a ship’s hull,” I said.

“That seems like something we can use to defend ourselves,” Rig said. “Though I worry we’ll have already drawn attention by using it.”

A plan began to form in my mind. “Drawing attention might be a good thing though,” I said. “If we were to move the platform and activate the weapons, Unity would want to stop us.”

“That’s true,” Jorgen said. “They’d send forces after us.”

“But they wouldn’t be able to get past the autoturrets quickly,” I said. “That kind of operation requires a lot of drones and a lot of patience, and that’s if they could get through the shield. They’d want to send Unity’s cytonics to stop you.”

    “What good are cytonics if we have an inhibitor up?” FM asked.

“They’d still be able to affect us,” I said. “The inhibitor prevents cytonics without the key from using their powers from within the field. The other cytonics could still surround us and put up an inhibitor field of their own, preventing us from using the cytonic weapons or hyperjumping out, essentially trapping us.”

“We’d still have the autoturrets and the shield to defend us,” Jorgen said.

“Yes,” I said. “But they can also magnify each other’s abilities. Quilan can use his cytonic powers to knock people out with a concussion bolt. It’s what he did to me before I crashed your ship. The other cytonics can help him amplify it, creating a concussion field, similar to the way they join their minds together in an inhibitor. They’ve done it before during political protests.” They said they were quelling riots, trying to keep things peaceful. But knocking people out en masse always seemed violent to me.

“Why haven’t they done that to us already?” FM asked.

“I imagine they’re planning to,” I said. “But it wouldn’t let them get inside the shield, and it’s not easy to do. They’d have to surround the platform and maintain more or less the same positions while they do it. It’s not very applicable in an actual battle, where the enemy ships can chase you out of formation.”

“So we’d need ships in the air,” Jorgen said, “making sure they can’t get into formation to inhibit us or use the concussion field. We could tempt the other cytonics away from Rinakin, which would make it easier for you to rescue him.”

    “Right,” I said. Even if they had Rinakin inside a taynix-powered inhibitor, I’d still have a better chance of rescuing him without the other cytonics to contend with.

“What exactly are we going to do to get their attention though?” FM asked. “It’ll take more than just firing the hyperweapon into the miasma.”

“Is there some Unity base we could fire on?” Jorgen said. “We don’t want to hit civilian targets, but if we could hit a military one—”

The idea of actually firing a mindblade weapon, even at a Unity target, was horrifying to me. “I don’t want to kill anyone unless we have to,” I said.

“Sure,” Jorgen said. “We could wait for them to fire first.”

“But there will be a lot of Unity people on their base who aren’t firing at us,” I said. “And I don’t want to shoot at them.”

The humans stared at me for a moment, like they could accept this but didn’t quite understand it.

They’d been at war their whole lives and were willing to make sacrifices I wasn’t ready for. I acted like I was hardened to the consequences, but I’d never killed anyone. I’d mostly shot people with tagging lasers—most of my time in starships had been spent playing games.

“What if we moved the platform into the miasma outside the Unity headquarters on Tower?” I asked. “It’s a tree with a huge population, so I don’t want to fire on it. But just being there would feel like a threat to Unity, more than any other tree but the Council tree. We can’t threaten that one, because we need to draw the cytonics farther away so I can go and get Rinakin if they leave him behind. But you don’t have to shoot at the tree. Just hyperjump there, maybe fire a warning shot with the hyperweapon into the miasma.”

    “That’s a better idea,” Jorgen said. “You’re right. We don’t want to hurt anyone we don’t have to.”

“Good,” I said. “Meanwhile I could go in and get Rinakin, since he’d be relatively unguarded.”

“Unless they bring him with them,” FM said.

“They might,” I said. “But if they bring him to us, we can pivot the plan and I can come back to rescue him from their ships.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Jorgen said. “There are too many things that could go wrong with that plan, and you’d need backup.”

“I’ll be stealthier alone,” I said.

“But we work as a team,” Jorgen insisted, sparing a glance at FM. “You need someone there if things go wrong. At the very least that person could engage their taynix to come back here and tell us what’s happened to you, so we can organize a rescue effort.”

It was a good sign that they would consider rescuing me if something went wrong.

“I’ll have to stay here to communicate with the slugs in the platform,” Jorgen continued, “and Rig will need to stay too, but—”