That made sense. Most of the slugs back on Detritus hadn’t come when I called them either. And those that had only did so because I’d promised them food and friends.
“That’s a good thing,” Rig said. “It means not all the slugs can be used against us in combat.”
“You’re going to have to give him the command,” Jorgen said to Rig.
Rig bent down, speaking through the metal door of the box. “Go.”
There was the slightest hesitation.
And then that horrible loss of control again as I slipped into the negative realm without pulling myself through. I came back to where I was standing before, in the center of the control room.
The window facing the miasma suddenly went dark.
“Um, guys?” Kimmalyn called from the direction of the hangar. “You need to come see this.”
We all crowded out the door to the hangar. Pilots sat in their ships with their canopies open, looking out the enormous windows through the swirling miasma at the reaching branches of Tower, so named because it was the tallest of all the trees—long and lean, with branches that soared nearly straight upward into the sky. Here there were almost no horizontal buildings, only spirals built into the sides of the branches, all illuminated with hundreds of thousands of city lights. The intricacies of the architecture were too tiny to see from this distance, but the overall effect was still impressive. I felt a little bit of pride at the way the humans gaped at it.
“That’s incredible,” Rig said.
“I thought that other tree was impressive,” Arturo added.
“Hollow is a ruin,” I said. “This is UrDail civilization.”
All around, I could see the Independence pilots sitting taller.
I was glad to see that I’d managed to place the platform far enough from the tree that the turrets weren’t shooting at it. But we were close enough to be visible from the branches, so people had to be taking notice.
Jorgen moved to his ship and fiddled with the radio. He picked up a channel talking about the weather patterns in the miasma, and then an air traffic control channel.
“—obstacle in the airspace on the duskward side. All flights avoid—”
“Yeah,” Nedd said. “They definitely noticed us.”
“What about the other cytonics?” FM asked.
Jorgen closed his eyes, and I waited while he reached out across the negative realm around ReDawn. “I can feel one of them,” he said. “Your friend Quilan?”
I followed his reach. He was right. Quilan was moving toward us. He’d moved so fast, he must have already been in a ship before we hyperjumped.
“We’ve got their attention,” Jorgen said. “All ships, time to get in the air. We’ll fly out of the hangar together. When we’re all ready, we’ll hyperjump everyone beyond the range of the autoturrets.”
Canopies lowered and ships lifted off the landing pad. Nedd hung back, pulling his taynix, Chubs, out of its box. We’d agreed that I should take a hyperdrive with me, in case Arturo and I were separated, and Naga would be able to find Chubs instantly. It would leave Nedd without a hyperdrive in the battle, so he’d have to rely on his flightmates to pull him in and out with light-lances, just like the Independence pilots.
“Okay, buddy,” Nedd said. “You’re going for an adventure with the nice alien lady.”
“Nedd,” Arturo said, like he thought he might offend me. But when Nedd handed over his taynix—a hyperdrive, a creature so valuable most people in the universe would kill for it—I couldn’t feel anything but awe.
They were really going to let me take one. And yes, I knew it was only because they thought it would help them follow me if I tried to escape them—and it probably would.
But still. I’d risked everything to find out the secret to these creatures. And now I was holding one in my hands.
It looked up at me, its face quizzical. “Alien lady!” it trilled.
“Get to your ship,” Jorgen said to Nedd. “Let’s go.”
The rest of the flight was already maneuvering their ships out the hangar doors and onto the surface of the platform. I set Chubs down in the space behind my seat, but moments later he was nuzzling my ankles down by the pedals. I didn’t relish the idea of his obstruction getting me shot down by the autofire, so I scooped him into my lap.
“How do they stand flying with you?” I asked him.
“Flying with you!” Chubs said. The taynix sounded like simple mimics, but they must understand at least some of what they said if they could learn each other’s names and then find one another through the negative realm.