Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)
: Part 3 – Chapter 38

“Curious,” one of the tenasi generals said as he stood with Brade, facing away from me, watching the battle. “That is the fourth opportunity they have had to destroy an inhibitor station—and again the humans did not take it. Do they grow korochas? Perhaps our assumptions about their aggressive natures were incorrect.”

“If they were incorrect, General,” Brade said, “would they have attacked us here? With a smaller force, in our center of power?”

“No, I suppose not.” The general narrowed his reptilian eyes. “Still, it is curious.”

My hands were free, but I hadn’t moved yet. I needed to pick the right moment. How did I get to that pouch at Brade’s waist? If I was wrong about it containing an antidote, it would be a disaster. Yet I was increasingly certain I was right. The way she kept space between her and everyone else, even her generals and bodyguards. The way she rested her hand there on the pouch, for reassurance.

I worked through a dozen different plans, and discarded each. If I rushed her, not only would I likely get shot, she’d just hyperjump away. I needed her distracted first.

Excruciating though it was, I waited. I watched. Like a tiger in the tall grass. Or…well, no. I’d never seen a tiger outside the images at school and the stories from my grandmother. If I was anything, I was a rat in a dark corner. But damn it, rats are persistent. What happened to the tigers? Dead, vanished with Old Earth. But the rats? They claimed the stars with us—infesting every planet. Even Detritus, where they have to survive on fungus and bugs.

I was the rat girl. I’d grown up among them, hunting them. Considering how many I’d eaten over my life, I was at least half rat by body mass. I could be patient. I could be careful.

It was difficult though. I felt isolated, no longer able to contact Chet, no longer able to speak to M-Bot. Alone, I watched the battle play out. The Defiant forces refused to blow up the inhibitor stations. That was to their credit; Jorgen had said he’d come to liberate them.

On the other side, Brade’s reckless, all-out assault on the Defiant continued. She threw away ships callously, while we weren’t even willing to harm enemy slugs. She pushed her forces in with a spearlike motion, piercing our defenses, reaching to claim the Defiant itself.

I felt sick watching it. I wasn’t the only one.

“Sir,” one of her generals said, “many of our starfighters are piloted ships today, not drones. You’re…acting as if there are no people on board.”

“They’re soldiers,” Brade replied, not looking away from the screen. “This is why you need me, General. I can do what needs to be done, while you were raised on fluffy Superiority nonsense. I’ve studied the great warriors of the past, from both my culture and yours. I hold no sentimentality.” She leaned forward, hands gripping the railing in front of the holographic map. “I was born to do this.”

My heart broke even further. For the girl who had been raised to internalize the singular idea that she was a weapon. For the woman who believed that if she didn’t end up dominating and winning, all of her pain and sacrifice would have been meaningless. For the person who would now crush the galaxy’s single best hope for freedom and peace, all to prove that it could be done.

I could have been her. I really should have been, considering all my bloodthirsty talk and jokes about killing. My experiences had changed me. Had changed everyone on Detritus, judging by how we passed over our last chances to destroy the inhibitor stations, our fighters in disarray as they were forced to pull back. The Defiant itself was retreating toward safety.

Too slowly. It wouldn’t escape the enemy inhibitor field and reach Detritus without losing dozens, maybe hundreds of lives. I knew right then, watching, that if I didn’t do something, the battle—the war itself—would be lost.