Брендон Сандерсон - Cytonic

Vlep retreated without responding, following the others off the battlefield. I joined the line of active pirate ships facing down the small group of Superiority forces.

“All right, Lorn,” Peg said over a wide broadcast. “You want to just surrender now?”

“You know I can’t do that,” his voice replied.

“They’re never going to let you out of here, Lorn,” Peg said. “They don’t care about you. Why are you still loyal?”

“You know they have my family.”

“So we squeeze them,” Peg said. “We withhold their acclivity stone until they agree to send through your family. They pretend they have the power in this relationship, but so long as we own this place—and make it our home—they lose every bit of bargaining power they have.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, and I leaned forward, hands on my controls. We could end this easily, with the odds in our favor.

Peg waited though. No signal to attack.

That heklo voice spoke again. “You promise to do this for me?” he asked. “For anyone they’re holding? You’ll get them brought through so we can be together?”

“My word and oath,” Peg said. “But you have to turn the facility over to me. All security codes. All access.”

Silence again. Finally, the heklo continued. “There are a few people among the base security officers who I’m nearly certain are Superiority agents sent to watch me. We’ll have to move quickly and isolate them until we can make sure.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Peg said. “I’ve got a plan. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal.”

A short time later, Shiver, Dllllizzzz, and I flew in low toward the Superiority base—escorting Peg, her sons, and Lorn. The rest of the unfrozen pirate vessels formed an ominous presence higher in the sky.

Surehold turned out to be bigger than I’d expected. The campus sprawled across an unusually large and thick fragment marked by hills and rocky crags. I counted four separate acclivity stone quarries, each attended by a variety of modern machines. The central section of the base comprised about a dozen buildings, and while it wasn’t large in comparison to the crowded Starsight, it was almost as big as the entire DDF headquarters.

After making certain their large antiaircraft guns were offline—control transferred to Peg—we landed and let her and Lorn disembark. Curious workers stopped on the flight deck to watch, though Lorn—the base commander—waved a winged arm to calm them. Together Lorn, Peg, and her two sons entered a nearby building, the base security structure. Inside she could be given full and permanent control over the base, with her own overrides and passwords.

After a tense few minutes—during which I stood ready to blast open the wall and try to grab Peg if something went wrong—a call to quarters went out on the Superiority channel. Martial law was declared. Peg’s sons prowled out of the building a moment later, armed and armored, with Lorn guiding them. They’d secure the few people on base he thought would be trouble.

Quick as that, it was done. I hadn’t expected there to be trouble—the real fight had been the one with starfighters. We’d left most of the Superiority pilots in their ships, which were locked up without friendly tugs to unfreeze them, guarded by trustworthy pirate flights.

Still, I remained on watch—hovering—for another half hour as Peg and her sons took full command of the base. Finally, as the word came that all was clear, some of the pirates began to land on the flight pad. Hesho settled down beside us in his own ship, but didn’t move to leave it.

I glanced back at Chet. “What do you think?” I asked.

“It’s looking good,” he said. “But if anything were to go wrong, this would be the time—when we’re flat-footed and assume we’ve won.”

“Agreed.”

So the two of us, paranoid as we were, waited another good half hour. But it seemed that the final stage of Peg’s plan had indeed gone off without a hitch. As the pirates unloaded from their ships, Peg’s voice came over our comms and the flight deck loudspeakers.

“No looting,” she ordered. “This is our home now. Regular base personnel have been confined to quarters; if you encounter a locked room, leave it alone. But you’re free to investigate the place, pick an empty room in the barracks to claim as your own, all that fun stuff. Just be warned. I get word of you harming base personnel or breaking stuff, and I’ll be…upset.”

Most of the pirates made for the barrack building. I asked Hesho to stay put and keep watch while Chet and I climbed free, then Chet pointed toward a large set of doors ahead of us. The shipping warehouse, where the portal would be.

You still here? I sent to my pin. I’d confirmed, upon coming close, that it was here.

I got back a contented, quiet impression. Hiding now. Seek me later.

Okay… Well, I had a job to do at the moment anyway. Chet used some controls to open the large bay doors of the warehouse, revealing a vast room with a tall ceiling. It felt vacuous despite the other end being piled high with raw acclivity stone waiting to be shipped to the Superiority.

On the wall closest to us was the portal. It was much larger than the others I’d seen in here—covering a square that looked about six meters on each side. Chet and I stood there staring at it for a good long while. As I started toward it, Chet put his hand on my shoulder.

“Miss Nightshade,” he said. “Might I inquire what the delvers told you? Before they left?”

“They…offered me a truce,” I admitted. “They want me to proceed no farther inward than Surehold. The next step on the Path would take us that way, wouldn’t it?”

“Almost assuredly.”

“Well, they don’t want me doing that. They made a promise. If I stay here, they’ll leave me alone.”

“And your people in the somewhere?”

“They implied they’d halt attacks, though it wasn’t clear if they understood completely what that means. They did promise to stop listening to Winzik and Brade—the two people they’d earlier made a deal with on the enemy’s side.”

Chet sighed and settled down on a box. He suddenly looked old to me, his mustache drooping and in need of a wax, his skin…wan. He gave me a smile, but something about him seemed worn out. And when he spoke, some of the facade—the persona—had faded, leaving a normal man.

“That’s a good offer,” he said. “Better than I ever thought they’d make. They’re frightened.”

“That’s what I decided as well,” I said, pacing before him in the cavernous warehouse, helmet under my arm. “Which makes me think I should refuse the offer. They’re desperate. I should keep doing what I’m doing, because it’s worrying them.”

“Except?”

“Except ostensibly, I came in here to find a way to stop them! And now I’ve found it. Shouldn’t I take it? Isn’t it my duty to at least try this?”

Chet nodded slowly.

I paced back the other direction. “How trustworthy are they, do you suppose?”

“I’m not sure I can say,” he replied. “I do get the sense that they live in the moment, but I know they also never change. So as long as they continue to be afraid of you, they should continue wanting the same thing—which means they’d persist in upholding any promise they made.”

“That’s not as strong as I’d like,” I said. “But…yeah, that makes sense. They don’t have honor—it’s not a thing they even comprehend. And they are backing out of a promise they made to Winzik. They could do the same to me.”

I paced back the other way, arms folded. This felt like a lot to put on one person still in her teens. How did I decide what could be the fate of not merely my people, but the entire galactic civilization?