but we can’t know for certain. I’m not sure we have the luxury of worrying about delvers, or the eyes, or any of that. We have a more immediate problem. The Krell—or whatever they’re really called—won’t listen to our pleas to stop their attacks. They’ve stopped caring whether they preserve any humans. They’re determined to exterminate us.”
“They’re afraid of us,” I said. When M-Bot and I had stolen information off their station six months ago, that was the biggest and most surprising revelation I’d discovered about the Krell. They kept us contained not out of spite, but because they were genuinely terrified of humankind.
“Afraid of us or not,” Cobb said, “they want us dead. And unless we can find a way to travel the stars like they do, we’re doomed. No fortress—no matter how powerful—can stand forever, particularly not against an enemy as strong as the Superiority.”
I nodded. It was a core tenet of battlefield tactics: you needed to have a plan of retreat. As long as we were trapped on Detritus, we were in danger. If we could get offworld, all kinds of options opened to us. Fleeing and hiding somewhere else. Searching for other human enclaves—if they existed—and recruiting help. Striking back against the enemy, putting them on the defensive.
None of this was possible until I learned to use my powers. Or, barring that, until we found a way to steal the enemy’s hyperdrive technology. Cobb was right. The eyes, the delvers, they might be important to me—but in the grand scheme of my people’s survival, that was all a secondary problem.
We needed to find a way off this planet.
Cobb looked at me carefully. He had always felt old. I knew that he was only a few years older than my parents, yet right now he looked like a rock that had been left out too long and survived too many meteor falls.
“Ironsides used to complain about how hard this job was,” he grumbled. “You know the worst part about being in charge, Spin?”
“No, sir.”
“Perspective. When you’re young, you can assume that everyone older than you has life figured out. Once you get command yourself, you realize we’re all just the same kids wearing older bodies.”
I swallowed, but didn’t say anything. Standing next to Cobb, I stared out the window at the desolate planet and the thousands of platforms surrounding it. An incredible network of defenses that—in the end—had been powerless to stop whatever this delver was.
“Spensa,” Cobb said, “I need you to be more careful out there. Half my staff think you’re the biggest liability we’ve ever put into a ship. The other half think you’re some kind of Saint incarnate. I’d like you to stop supplying both sides with good arguments.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I . . . to be honest, I was trying to push myself, put myself in danger. I thought if I did that, it might make my brain work and my powers engage.”
“While I appreciate the sentiment, that’s a stupid way to try to solve our problems, Lieutenant.”
“But we do have to figure out how to travel the stars. You yourself said it.”
“I’d rather find a way that isn’t so reckless,” Cobb said. “We know the Superiority ships travel the stars. They have hyperdrive technology, and the eyes—the delvers—haven’t destroyed them. So it’s possible.”
Cobb adopted a contemplative look, staring back out the window at the planet below. He was quiet for such a long time, I found myself growing nervous.
“Sir?” I asked.
“Come with me,” he said. “I might have a way for us to get off this planet that doesn’t rely upon your powers.”
6
I followed Cobb through the too-clean corridors of Platform Prime. Why were we walking back to the fighter bays?
He counted off the doors until stopping next to the dock where I kept M-Bot. Increasingly confused, I followed him through the small door. I’d expected to find the ground crew beyond, doing M-Bot’s normal post-battle services. Instead, the room was empty save for the ship and one person. Rodge.
“Rig?” I asked, using his old callsign from when he’d been in Skyward Flight. That had only lasted a few days, but he was one of us all the same.
Rodge—who had been inspecting something on M-Bot’s wing—jumped as I said his name. He spun to find us there, and blushed immediately. For a moment he was the old Rodge: earnest, gangly, and not a little awkward. He almost dropped his datapad as he quickly saluted Cobb.
“Sir!” Rodge said. “I didn’t expect you