“I told you that I understood crazy,” Chet said. “I was wrong. Thank you for the master class.”
“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “That was…interesting of you. Do you want a list of the emotions I’m feeling right now?”
“I get the sense they’d mostly be variations on frustration and bafflement.”
“You’d be right,” he replied.
“I’ll pass, then,” I said, as I closed the cockpit. “Come on, you two. Climbing out on my wing in the middle of a battlefield? You’ve both seen me do worse.”
“Which is why I didn’t call it strange,” M-Bot said. “Strange implies odd, or out of sequence with your normal behavior. Still, um… What the hell?”
I grinned. “Wow. You used that curse perfectly, M-Bot.”
“It’s the emotions,” he said. “I now understand the sense of frustration everyone else feels with you! It dovetails perfectly into exasperation, which makes me finally understand why it is people swear at you so much!”
“That’s great!” I said.
“I know! Also: WHAT THE HELL, SPENSA?”
“Hesho was possessed by a delver,” I said.
“Yes, Chet explained that,” he said. “So you went closer?”
“They’re afraid of me, M-Bot. I realized it…and it just felt right…”
“Right isn’t a feeling. Trust me, I’ve been practicing. Weren’t you listening?”
“Right is a feeling for me,” I said. “At least this time when I got out of the cockpit, I didn’t end up floating around in a vacuum. Chet, how much of that did you hear?”
“Not a lot,” he said. “My cytonic communication talents are not as powerful as yours.”
“Well,” I said, “immortality and the ability to cytonically echolocate are both also cool.”
“I didn’t say they weren’t,” he replied. “I did have enough skill to sense you in pain—and their attack. I tried to feed you memories of yourself. It appears to have helped. After that they left, though I couldn’t sense why.”
I should tell him, I thought. But the delvers’ parting thoughts—stay, truce—haunted me. I first wanted to think about what it all meant. “M-Bot,” I said. “Please open a comm line to Hesho.”
He sighed, but complied.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“I meditate upon the emptiness that is my past,” Hesho said softly. “And about how, despite it being blank, I know you were part of it. We were…friends?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Was I the leader of a pirate force?” he asked.
“Not exactly. Why do you ask?”
We floated together, but fortunately the flashes of buildings and other junk entering the nowhere had stopped. Much of it—the chunks with acclivity stone at least—drifted around us. Lazy, almost serene, like we were underwater in a vast ocean following some terrible storm.
“When the Cannonaders took me captive,” Hesho explained in his deep authoritative voice, “I immediately tried to seize command of their organization. I felt I should be their leader. They thought I was ‘cute’ and attempted to use me as a mascot instead. I…disabused them of this behavior.”
I grinned, trying to imagine how that had looked. What did a tiny fox man a quarter meter tall do to “disabuse” pirates?
“Eventually,” he said, “I settled into my role as an expert pilot and followed Vlep. But something about it felt wrong. There were embarrassing holes in my piloting skill. So I wondered. Perhaps I was a leader of a group of pirates who maybe hadn’t flown in a long time?”
“You were commander of a ship, Hesho,” I explained. “Your kind can crew a small capital ship that isn’t much bigger than a starfighter for the rest of us. You at least occasionally piloted it yourself, which is why you learned some skills—but you had crew working things like the shields for you.”
“Aaah…” he said. “That thought…it wears a path in my mind, champion. Light sparks, like stone and steel. My ship…the…Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun?”
“Yes!”
“I see it like a faded picture exposed to the elements,” Hesho said. “But…I can remember my home. The feeling of it warm on my face and fur. Yes. Being with you is good for me. I will remain with you, champion, and serve you as your bodyguard until you return to me who I was.”