“I…don’t know where that was,” I admitted.
“It didn’t have cowboys,” Maksim said. “You have no idea how annoying those hats are. My owners always claimed that they were using me for scientific study—but you wouldn’t have known it from the way they showed me off at parties.”
“Parties,” Shiver said. “Such an interesting concept. How you motiles insist you need time apart—yet when you want to enjoy yourselves, you always simply come back together. Why leave in the first place?”
“I have a friend,” I said, thinking of Rig, “who’d disagree that being together is when we enjoy ourselves. I think he has the most fun when everyone leaves him alone.”
“Curious, curious,” Shiver said. And Dllllizzzz added a hum in the background.
I’d tried to picture their cavernous homeworld—like Detritus, only with each and every tunnel full of different crystalline tendrils, networks of individuals who explored by growing themselves outward.
“All right,” I said over the comm, “we have some travel time left. Do a few more team sprints and prove you can execute them without making fools of yourselves.”
Maksim groaned. “We just spent an hour on sprints!”
“You still need to work on fundamentals, Maksim,” I said. “Learn what you can from me while I’m here. You people fly like a bunch of pig farmers.”
“I take it pig farmers do not often fly well in your culture, Spin?” Shiver said.
“Ask Maksim,” Peg said. “He’s the cowboy.”
I smiled, their banter reminding me of flying with my friends. Though this felt different. In Skyward Flight, our banter—although genuine—had always had an edge. We’d been a few bold fighters facing overwhelming odds. We’d gone into each fight knowing it might be the one where we lost someone we loved.
The Broadsiders didn’t have the same sense to them. They were relaxed as they ran through more sprints. When one got something wrong, they all laughed it off. Skyward Flight hadn’t done that—because there, if one of us kept screwing up, it would get everyone killed.
Was this what it felt like to relax? Scud. Listening to them, I realized I really didn’t know what it felt like to just…live. Without worrying about a bomb annihilating my entire civilization one night while I slept. Without fearing that my friends wouldn’t be coming home tomorrow. Or, more recently, without wondering if I’d be discovered as an impostor.
As they practiced, I glanced over the landscape. Once you got past the fact that this place could literally consume your memories and identity, it was beautiful. An endless open sky, cast faintly pink-violet, interrupted by floating islands. Each fragment was a different biome, inviting a new adventure. And beyond that, the lightburst.
Though it was still distant, today I felt something…drawing me toward it. Chet thought we’d need to go right up close to it to finish the Path of Elders, and looking into that full light now, I knew it was true. I’d walk the Path. But at the end I’d face them.
Whatever else happened here, that was my destination.
I shook myself out of that trancelike state and patched through on the comm to Peg, looking for a distraction. “Hey,” I said as she finished her sprints. “Could I get more details on your plan? How exactly is me fighting the pirate champion going to help you win the Superiority base?”
She was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider. Finally she answered, pulling her shuttle up beside my ship. “You know about my past? The others told you?”
“You were chief security officer at Surehold,” I said. “The Superiority treated you dirty, not allowing your kids to leave with you when your time was up.”
“Correct,” Peg said. “So I grew a few hanchals about that, I’ll tell you. And I wasn’t the only one. The base had been losing people for years. The factions hadn’t grown yet, but there were plenty of smaller bands, with a ship or two, roving around out here.”
“It was a big deal when you left,” Chet said. “Everyone heard about it. A high officer defecting? Gathering all the dissidents, raiders, and wanderers to raise up a giant pirate armada?”
“Yeah, well,” Peg said, “it wasn’t enough. I failed back then, and my supposed ‘giant armada’ shattered into the factions. Still, I’ve been thinking about it these last three years, considering what I did wrong. Planning…”
I nodded, thoughtful. “Wasn’t Shiver with you, back at the base?”