“All right,” Stoff said. “But you’ll want to hurry. If Cobb and Mrs. Nightshade need medical attention, we’ll want to get it to them sooner rather than later.”
“Agreed.” I unmuted the microphone. “We will try to make arrangements to retrieve our people,” I told Kauri. “We thank you for your patience.”
“We look forward to making your acquaintance, human,” Kauri said. “May the stars guide you.”
“And you,” I said.
I hoped Cuna was right that the kitsen would make excellent allies.
But at the moment, I would settle for having Cobb back, healthy and well.
Five
When my flight hyperjumped near the coordinates we’d gotten from the hypercomm, we appeared in space around a large, bluish-white planet. A blinding star illuminated most of this side of it—far away, but still much larger and closer than I’d ever seen a star before. The planet was huge, even from this far out, and the whitish parts of it were moving across the surface, bubbling and roiling.
Clouds, I realized. Collections of moisture that would rain down periodically. I’d read about them, but I’d never imagined them looking so…fluffy. They looked almost soft, like cotton. Not like water at all.
“Oooh, that’s pretty,” Sadie said.
“Gorgeous,” Kimmalyn said. “And I’m reasonably certain at first glance it isn’t going to eat us.”
The rest of the flight detached and separated into wingmate pairs, with the medical transport ship sticking close to me. The flight adopted a wedge formation around us, with Arturo and Nedd taking point, FM and Sadie on one side, T-Stall and Catnip on the other, and the rest following.
“Can we fly through all of that?” I asked. Our starfighters were airtight of course, but I still wouldn’t expect all the systems to function perfectly underwater.
This water wasn’t solid though. It was more like steam rising from a boiling pot. Did that mean it would be scalding to touch? “Our ships can handle extremes in temperatures,” I said. “So even if they’re hot—”
“The clouds are not hot,” Cuna said, sounding amused. They were riding with FM in the Dulo. We’d brought them along to help with diplomacy. “The atmospheric pressure allows the water to remain in its gaseous state at a low temperature.”
Huh. Okay.
“I think it should be fine,” Alanik said. “Your ships handled the miasma, didn’t they? It’s just a different type of gas.”
Right. That made sense. “Still,” I said, “I think we should try to fly through the gaps between them.” Visibility would be limited in the clouds, and who knew what might be lurking within them. They shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid. Large swaths of the atmosphere were clear, showing through to a brilliant blue-green surface.
More water. An ocean. Stars, I’d read about those too, but I’d never been able to quite picture so much water. It sounded terrifying to live on a planet covered in that much water. How could you be sure it wasn’t going to wash over everything and swallow it?
I zoomed my proximity monitors way out, searching for other spacecraft or aircraft, but I couldn’t find any around the planet. If there were ships, they must be much closer to the planet’s surface. So far this didn’t seem like a Superiority trap, given the lack of cytonic inhibitors and enormous battleships, but we couldn’t rule out that they might have changed their tactics.
A signal came through the comms—a local radio transmission trying to reach me. I switched over. “This is Skyward One, callsign: Jerkface,” I said.
“Human!” a tiny voice said. It sounded like Kauri, though I wasn’t confident I’d be able to tell kitsen voices apart. “Welcome to the Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time. We will send you a heading to meet us on the Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful!”
“Um,” I said.
“Um,” Boomslug repeated.
“Thank you,” I said. “We look forward to…making your acquaintance.” Scud, I’d listened to enough political pleasantries in my life. Why could I never remember them when I needed them?
Kauri gave us the coordinates, and I instructed the flight to head toward them in formation. We flew down into the atmosphere of the planet and through a large gap in the clouds.
As we neared the enormous blue-green expanse, I began to be able to pick out landmasses—large islands of broken land that looked almost like crumbled pie crusts at this distance. The coordinates led us to one particularly large island, and we flew over some rock formations weathered into bulbous pillars, the stone worn into the same geometric shapes over and over like a castle made out of sand.