Jorgen finally seemed to realize what was going on.
“Like the Saint says,” Kimmalyn said, “whenever you get there, there you are.”
Jorgen looked up at Cobb for confirmation, and Cobb rolled his eyes. He gestured toward the door.
And then all the humans climbed to their feet. Jorgen scooped Boomslug off the table, half an algae strip still hanging from its mouth.
I paused in front of Admiral Cobb. “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t going to call him sir. He wasn’t my commander. But he was the only reason I had hope for Rinakin and the rest of my people, so I owed him my respect.
“Don’t thank me,” Cobb said. “I’m just the bearer of bad news.”
I nodded to him, and then followed the others out of the room.
Seven
We hurried down the corridor in the direction of their landing bay. “Is my ship in your hangar with the others?” I asked.
Rig fell back to walk briskly beside me, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we kind of…took it apart.”
“You what?”
“We were figuring out the differences between your engineering and ours,” he said. “I can put it back together, but it will take me time.”
“We don’t have time,” I snapped at him. I was sure my people would have done the same with a human ship, but that didn’t change the fact that I needed to get in the air now.
“We’ll set you up with one of our ships,” Rig said. “Some of the controls are different, but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances, unless you want one of the others to take a Dulo and you could ride copilot.”
“No,” I said. The idea of being at the mercy of one of the humans as we returned to ReDawn was stifling. I could steal a ship there of course, but I’d rather come in with my own set of wings. “Give me one of your ships. I’ll…figure it out.”
“You should take a comms slug with you,” Rig said to Jorgen. “In case you need one to contact us.”
“Good idea,” Jorgen said. “Snuggles, take me to Fine.”
“Fine!” Snuggles said, and Jorgen disappeared, and then reappeared a moment later next to FM with a purple and orange slug tucked under his arm.
“Fine!” Snuggles said again.
“Good job, Snuggles,” FM said, and she withdrew a tin from her pocket and offered it a pinch of some sticky substance.
Interesting.
“Are you coming with us?” FM asked Rig over her shoulder. “Because if not, you should get back to Engineering. You don’t want to be associated with what we’re about to do.”
Rig hesitated. “I think I should stay here, but…”
He didn’t seem happy about it, possibly because his friends were all running off into danger and he didn’t know when they would be back.
“It’s okay,” FM said. “If we need you, we know where to find you.”
“Yeah,” Rig said. “I won’t be able to say the same for you.”
FM looked like she was about to say more, but she glanced at the others and stayed silent. Rig gave her a sad wave and then turned to go. She watched after him over her shoulder, though I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
There was clearly a subtext I was missing there. I’d have to ask her about it later, when we weren’t about to steal a flight of starships.
I followed Jorgen out a side door and along a narrow path between buildings to the landing bay. Jorgen breezed past two humans who were working on one of the control panels of a partially disassembled ship.
“We’re on orders to take our ships up immediately,” he said. “Sorry for the late notice.”
One of the ground crew followed on his heels, staring at me in alarm. “Didn’t you hear?” she said. “There’s a mandatory muster—you’re all expected to be in your quarters for a surprise inspection.”
Jorgen looked relieved. Cobb had obviously done that to cover our tracks, and possibly so he could claim later that we’d used the muster as cover without his knowledge.
“These orders supersede those,” Jorgen said.
“We weren’t notified,” she said. “We can start working through the preflight checks—”
“No time,” Jorgen said. “We’ll do it ourselves. You can radio to Admiral Cobb directly. He’ll authorize it.”
Or fail to answer his radio, more likely, to maintain deniability.
“Alanik is going to take one of the spare Skyward ships,” FM said.