Page 126 of Blightfall

I shifted my hips, wiggling the radio at my belt and extending my fingers until my bound hand could reach the response button on my radio.

If we couldn’t disable the cryogenic unit in time, at least we’d be ready when Arturo tried to contact us again.

Forty-Four

Arturo

The ships had stopped searching for me and were beginning to descend, probably to protect the warehouse again. I wasn’t going to get a better chance to ambush them. “Here we go,” I said to the others.

Whipping around the rock we were hiding behind, I opened fire on the nearest ship, catching it unawares from behind. Its shields were weak, and I took it out, then slipped between two more chunks of debris, approaching the next nearest ship. All the hunks of rock—stars, hunks of Earth—would keep the others from drawing a bead on me to take me out from a distance.

“Alanik,” I said, showering the nearest ship with destructor fire, “are we still affected by the inhibitor around Blightfall?”

Alanik shook her head. “Inhibitors don’t work in here,” she said. “Just like hyperjumps.”

“Jorgen has been able to communicate with people in the nowhere before,” I said. He’d done it when our teammate Spensa had gotten lost on this side. “Can you try to reach him?” He clearly couldn’t pierce the inhibitor around Blightfall, but maybe we could reach him here.

“I’ll try,” Alanik said.

I threw the ship around a particularly large chunk of rock, coming face-to-face with a third ship on the other side. I opened fire, taking a hit to my shield before eliminating the enemy fighter altogether. The pilot didn’t eject. Stars, I hated hurting these people, but we were too outnumbered not to take what shots I could.

“Watch out!” Suki shouted as destructor fire showered us from both sides. I threw my ship into a barrel roll, dodging through one burst of fire, and then reversed, rolling the other way through another. I took another hit to my shield, but it was a miracle I hadn’t taken more.

Alanik gripped the sides of her seat, like she wished she could hyperjump anywhere but here, and stars, I wished she would take me with her. The many taynix still crowded in my ship were rattling around, fluting annoyed little noises, and I didn’t blame them. “How much is it bothering you not to have control of the ship?” I asked her.

“There are words in your language,” Alanik said, “that mean I dislike it a lot. But I can’t think of them right now.”

I slowed, and the two ships crossed in front of me, ready to swing back around and fire again. I grabbed one of the ships with my light-lance, throwing it into a piece of debris, and opened fire on the other as it tried to turn itself around and come back in my direction.

Five ships down. My monitors showed that some of the others were still moving toward the warehouse, but others were working their way toward us. If they wanted to split their numbers for me, all the better. I flew around a flat piece of rock and intercepted another ship, which opened fire immediately. I executed another complicated set of dodging maneuvers and pulled a light-lance turn to swing around another rock and fire on the ship.

“Hate?” I suggested.

“Yes, that one,” Alanik said. “There are others?”

Two more ships raced into the fray, and I flew a twin-scissor right between them, then focused my fire on the first ship, taking it down.

“Loathe,” I said. “Abhor. Detest. Abominate.”

“ ‘Abominate’ has a nasty ring to it,” Suki said.

“I like it,” Alanik said. “It’s perfect.”

“I’d switch seats with you,” I said, concentrating my fire on the closest ship. “But I don’t think this is our moment.”

“Above!” Suki yelled, and sure enough, more destructor fire rained down. I dove, putting debris between me and them. There were too many ships on me now. I needed to move away, hide, and separate them again to regain the upper hand.

“Amphi!” Alanik said. “I found him!”

Arturo? Jorgen’s voice said in my mind, and it felt so good to hear him I could have cried. Most cytonics could only speak to other cytonics mind-to-mind, but Jorgen’s unusual communication powers made him an exception to that rule. What the scud is going on over there?

Stars, where to begin. Earth was clearly the biggest discovery, but explaining that would take some backtracking.

Wait, Jorgen said, you’re on Earth?

Oh, right. He could read my mind.

We were attacked on arrival and got stuck on Blightfall, I thought, trying to fill him in as quickly as I could. Varvax are training human warriors, then sending them through a nowhere portal for reasons currently unclear. We flew through the portal and found it leads to Earth, stuck in the nowhere. I think that’s the cause of the weird debris and the inhibitor around the planet.