HYPERTHIEF

1. One

2. Two

3. Three

4. Four

5. Five

6. More in the Skyward Series

7. Copyright Notice

ONE

FM COULD THINK of better ways to spend her birthday. She stared at the response she was drafting, explaining to the research and development department—again—why the design of their experiment wasn’t an appropriate way to treat a sapient species.

The taynix are our allies, she wrote. Any experiment that would be unethical to perform on humans is also unethical to perform on them.

She deleted that last sentence. The DDF wasn’t exactly known for its humane treatment of humans either.

The large monitor above her desk flicked on—an incoming video call from the engineering department. FM answered and her boyfriend Rig’s face appeared, his red hair disheveled and a smear of engine grease on his cheek. “Hey!” he said. “Um, happy birthday?”

“Happy birthday?” two slugs fluted, popping down from their preferred perch above her desk to land in front of the screen. The slugs were about the length of FM’s forearm, with an array of colorful spines waving out of their backs. Clink, the diplomacy department’s purple and orange commslug, eyed Rig with interest. Gill, a yellow and blue hyperslug, nuzzled FM’s hand, as if he thought she might be hiding a treat.

FM smiled at Rig. “Are you asking me if it’s my birthday or if it’s happy?”

“More apologizing that I haven’t found a way to make it a better one.” He and his team were out in the field today, doing maintenance on one of the platforms that housed the power generators for many of the platform systems. Since the DDF had moved its military headquarters to the belts of space junk that orbited Detritus, they’d been trying to find out as much as they could about the ancient technology here. FM understood very few of the specifics—though Rig sure was cute when he tried to explain them. “I don’t think we’ll be back until late tonight, and then tomorrow will be even worse.” He shook his head.. “I’m sorry I can’t give you a real party.”

“That’s fine,” she said. And it should be. Rig’s job was instrumental to the survival of humankind—figuring out how to master the use of the platform defenses was the only way to defeat the Superiority when they inevitably returned. A birthday was the least of their concerns right now.

“Want to at least have lunch with me?” FM asked, reaching for the boxes her assistant had delivered for lunch and opening the top one, which was full of mushrooms for the slugs.

“Got mine right here,” Rig said, lifting a to-go box of his own.

It seemed like a long time ago that she used to take meals with her flightmates in the cadet cafeteria, talking and joking and pretending to be above the algae fry stacking competitions. Now, it seemed they were always too busy for such things.

FM cleared away her papers so they wouldn’t get covered in mushroom juice and offered the box to Clink and Gill.

“Happy birthday!” Clink said.

FM scritched Clink beneath the spines on his forehead. The slugs didn’t seem to totally understand the concept of a birthday. Their species didn’t use calendars.

FM’s own lunch was a surprise. Her team was in the middle of facilitating a culinary exchange initiative. Expanding the Detritus food supply wasn’t high on the list of DDF needs—not with the Superiority still amassing forces to attack again, and the DDF’s best weapon—and one of FM’s friends—still lost in the nowhere. But their new allies, the tiny, fox-like kitsen, considered feeding others to be the most diplomatic of all activities, and FM’s team wanted to show them respect.

Today’s boxes were filled with leafy greens topped with slices of bright orange fruit and drizzled with a creamy sauce. FM speared one of the fruit slices, which was much sweeter than she’d expected. “This tastes amazing,” she said.

“Better than birthday cake?” Rig asked.

“Much better. Cake tastes like algae bread, but with frosting.”

“It is algae bread,” Rig said, “but with frosting!”

FM laughed. “Okay. So you need algae cake on your birthday. Noted.” She wondered if things would calm down by then. She was afraid to wish for it. Sometimes it seemed things would only calm down when they were dead.

“How did your family used to celebrate?” Rig asked.

FM hesitated. Her family was more well-off than Rig’s, and she didn’t like reminding him of it.

“Let me guess,” Rig said. “Caviar and fresh fish?”

“Only sometimes,” she mumbled.

Rig grinned. “Tell me. I don’t care if your family had more money than mine.”

He never gave her cause to feel embarrassed about it, even though she did. “Presents, of course. New boots or new clothes. My dad would set up twinkle lights and play music, and my sisters and I would have a dance party. And then we’d have scones with flavored algae butter, and my mom would light a candle and we’d blow it out and make a wish.” She shrugged. “What about you?”

“Also presents,” Rig said. “A science book, usually.”

FM smiled.

“What?” Rig said. “So I’m predictable.”

“Don’t forget adorable,” she said. “So you’d get a shiny new science book—”

“They weren’t always new,” Rig said. “New to me. And we’d have algae cake, and Spensa would roast a rat in my honor and name it Attila or Alexander or Genghis Khan and then regale me with the tale of how she vanquished it in my name.”

“Seriously? You had a weird childhood.”

“Weird!” Gill agreed. The slugs had finished their mushrooms, and they both fluted happily and then abruptly disappeared. They liked to use Gill’s hyperjumping power to maintain an active social schedule among the slugs and humans on the platform, but they were never hard to find when FM needed them.

“I certainly did,” Rig said. Sadness passed over his face. He was worried about Spensa. They all were.

“Well,” FM said, “I would kill you a rat for your birthday, but I’m opposed to animal slaughter.”

“Probably just as well. I’d be happy never to eat another rat again.” He paused. “Do you miss the parties?”

“I don’t know,” FM said. “We’re adults now. Those were kid things.”

Rig’s radio beeped. “Hang on,” he said. “Scud, my team needs me. There’s a problem in sector seven that needs my attention.”

“I hope it’s nothing serious,” FM said.

“Us?” Rig asked. “Deal with serious problems?”

FM said goodbye, and the screen went blank. She cleaned up the remains of the taynixes’ lunch and returned to her missive about taynix rights, feeling bad for…well, for feeling bad. This was what she wanted to do when she joined the DDF, after all. Protect the defenseless. Be a voice for change, steering the DDF into a kinder, more ethical era. This was her dream, and she was getting a chance to live it.

But sometimes she wished she could do normal things, like dance with her boyfriend on her birthday.

TWO

“HOW DID WE lose an entire generator?” Rig asked.

He stood with two members of his team in one of the hallways in sector seven on Powerhouse platform, which contained many of the generator units that produced energy for the nearby platform systems. The generators set into bunkers across Powerhouse were not small—about two meters tall by one meter wide, roughly the size of the closet in Rig’s bunk.

“I don’t know,” Annel said, running a hand through her blue hair which she wore cropped above her ears. She was in charge of the communications team, which translated all the information the engineers were gathering about the platforms into language Command could understand. “They were here earlier. Cosley and I had just finished tracking down which generators go to which systems. We stopped for lunch, and when we came back, they were gone.”

“Systems!” chirped Nuts, the engineering team’s hyperslug. Nuts had helped them jump platforms earlier this morning and would do so again when they went back to Platform Prime tonight.

“It’s not just one generator,” Cosley said. A big, beefy guy about Rig’s height but with shoulders twice as broad, Cosley looked like hired muscle, but he was part of the electrical engineering team. “Three generators and all the equipment that was stored with them—vanished.”

“Three?” Not only were the generators large, but they were heavy too. Rig doubted six people could lift one together. “This has to be a mistake. Are you sure it was this bunker you cataloged? Maybe there’s another one like it in the next sector over?”

“Nope,” Cosley said. “It was this one. I left my drink, see? I was coming back for it when I found the bunker empty.” He pointed to a DDF standard-issue canteen on an otherwise empty shelf bolted to the wall.

“Okay,” Rig said. “Someone must have moved them. They can’t have disappeared. You checked with the rest of the team?”

Cosley and Annel nodded, but neither offered any theories.

Rig sighed. This was not what he wanted to deal with on FM’s birthday. He wanted to have a nice, boring day, and then hyperjump to one of the outer platforms and stargaze with her.

FM understood, of course. She hadn’t been upset that their lunch got cut short, but it was a sad commentary on their lives just how accustomed they were to being interrupted by Very Important Things. At least this time it wasn’t a Superiority attack.

Was it?

“What were these generators powering?” Rig asked.

“The security hub,” Cosley said. “The security feeds we’ve discovered on the various platforms all route their information here.”

Scud. “So our surveillance system is down?”

“We weren’t using those cameras for much anyway,” Annel said.

That was true. The network of cameras was part of the original installation of the platform—the engineering team had been slowly working through the systems and figuring out how to activate and operate them. The work was going faster now that Detritus orbited a sun. Some of the platform systems were solar powered and had gone dormant while Detritus was abandoned in space.

“We could use the cameras now,” Rig said, “to find out who moved these generators. If the systems didn’t turn off until the generators were removed, there should be footage, right?”

“There are no cameras pointed at this bunker,” Cosley said. “Not for most of the bunkers, actually.”

That wasn’t unexpected. Because the tech was so old, some of the cameras were non-functional, and restoring them hadn’t been a big priority. They hadn’t expected to need to guard against generator theft. There was no one on this platform besides the engineering team.

Was there?

The hair on the back of Rig’s neck stood up. They hadn’t seen anyone else on the platform, but it was a big place with lots of bunkers and narrow passages.

He needed to focus on work, not what might be lurking around every corner. “Are there other generators we could use to power the security system?”

“Sure,” Annel said. “Unless they are missing too.”

“Do an inventory,” Rig said. “We don’t need to check every nut and bolt, but have the teams do a quick search to see if anything else obvious is missing. Let’s get those cameras working again so that if these disappearances continue, we’ll have more to go on. And…let’s stick together until we figure out what happened, okay? I don’t think anyone should wander off alone.”

“Alone!” Nuts said.

Rig didn’t want anyone to panic. Least of all himself. He hoped there was a simple explanation, and not a sinister one.

But given the way things had been going for the DDF, he wasn’t going to bet on it.

THREE

ALANIK WAS A CYTONIC and a pilot, not a diplomat. She was the last person who should be called in to navigate “cultural differences.” But that was the peril of being the one member of her species who’d interacted extensively with humans. Both sides wanted her present during disagreements to mediate.

So it was that she found herself called to the cargo bay on Platform Prime to discuss the latest shipment of supplies from String, one of the largest agricultural hubs on her home planet, ReDawn. The UrDail were complying with the kitsen request that they all exchange food—the humans produced nearly all of their food products underground, but some of them were surprisingly tasty all the same, particularly the algae fries.

Upon arrival at the cargo bay, Alanik found an UrDail pilot arguing with a human in a DDF uniform—Jesna, the supply clerk. The short, dark-haired human stood straight and tall in front of the purple-skinned UrDail, who wore her white hair braided back beneath the points of her ears. Alanik had never met this pilot, though that wasn’t terribly surprising. “I was asked to help,” she said to the UrDail woman. “What is wrong?”

“Alanik,” the UrDail said. It also wasn’t surprising that the pilot recognized her. Alanik had been all over the broadcasts since the battle with the Superiority. “I’m glad you’re here. I am Winnelin, cargo pilot for Applesong. I brought this shipment over on schedule, but when I opened the cargo doors upon arrival, the ship’s hold was empty.”

Applesong was one of the biggest orchard conglomerates, farming several entire branches of String. Alanik glanced through the open cargo doors to the UrDail transport ship, which held no cargo. “You hyperjumped in an empty ship?”

“It wasn’t empty when I left!” Winnelin insisted. “The contents were stolen!”

“Are we sure the cargo was there when you left ReDawn?” Jesna asked. “Could it have been removed before the ship hyperjumped?”

Winnelin looked offended. Her pin translated her words, but not her frosty tone. “Are you calling my people thieves?”

By the branches. “She’s not suggesting we are all thieves,” Alanik told Winnelin. “She is merely suggesting that potentially one thief among us emptied the cargo. Are you saying it’s not possible for a single one of our people to steal?”

That was a ridiculous assertion, and Winnelin knew it. The UrDail were no more likely to steal than the humans were, but also no less. “Of course not,” Winnelin said. “But I checked the cargo personally before we departed. I sealed the cargo doors myself. The cargo was there when we left.”

“Okay,” Jesna said. She watched Winnelin with a wary expression, like she was afraid she would offend her further. Alanik was growing weary of this expression—humans, UrDail, and kitsen alike seemed much more worried about whether they were offering offense than whether they were speaking clearly and efficiently. The new alliance had wasted so much time treading softly around each other in diplomatic meetings. It made Alanik want to scream.

“If it happened after arrival,” Alanik said, “that means it should be easy to narrow down where the cargo went. Are there not security recordings of the landing bay?”

“There usually are,” Jesna said. “But the cameras went out about an hour ago. Some technical issue.”

Alanik blinked at her. “Was it a technical issue? Or were they sabotaged?”

“We don’t know,” Jesna said. “The engineers are looking into it.”

“If your security is failing,” Winnelin said, “then it’s even more offensive that you would suggest my people would—”

“Stop,” Alanik said. Winnelin looked even more offended, but Alanik cared far less than Jesna did. “Jesna was obviously trying to eliminate the possibility that the cargo could have been lost before it arrived. It was a reasonable question, which you have answered. Thank you.”

“I suppose,” Winnelin said. She still didn’t seem pleased. Some of the UrDail had decided Alanik was too sympathetic to the humans to be trusted with diplomatic decisions. But if everyone approached the new alliance with suspicion and prejudice, nothing would ever get done.

“I still don’t see how the cargo could have disappeared,” Jesna said. “You sealed the doors before you hyperjumped. Then you unsealed the doors when you arrived. Could it have been…lost in hyperspace?”

Winnelin looked like she was about to pop a seedpod. The implication, of course, was that her company didn’t know how to properly transport its own cargo, which was an offensive suggestion.

“Of course not,” Alanik said quickly. The cargo hyperjumped with the ship, unless a cytonic interfered. Alanik had no idea what a cytonic would want with a fruit delivery, and besides, enemy cytonics couldn’t teleport into the cargo bay because of the inhibitors. “Have you received any other shipments today?”

“Two this morning from the Detritus caverns,” Jesna said. “No problem with those.”

“Keep an eye on it,” Alanik said. “I will also.” She turned to Winnelin. “You won’t be held accountable for this unless evidence surfaces that you had something to do with it. I’ll speak to the diplomatic department personally.”

“Good,” Winnelin said. She seemed mostly concerned about making sure her own branches were pruned, when the real threat was to the alliance. If the UrDail were accused of not honoring their end of the diplomatic exchange, that would be a far bigger blow than a missing shipment of food. Perhaps a cytonic had interfered, removing the shipment from the hold after Winnelin sealed it but before she entered the protection of Detritus’s inhibitors. Perhaps there were factions on ReDawn still working against the alliance.

The thought was sobering.

Alanik would not let an enemy among her people interfere with the galactic alliance. She set out speak to FM about the potential diplomatic threat.

The alliance was too important to fail.

FOUR

NEDD HATED GETTING called up in the middle of lunch. Especially when lunch was some of those perch from the kitsen planet. The perch weren’t large, but they were tastier than any fish that grew in the underground vats on Detritus. Probably because they’d grown up seeing a sun and eating food that had done likewise.

When the alarm on his radio rang, indicating that his flight had been called for a mission, Nedd sighed, looking down at his half-eaten fish. He imagined the fish had grown to this size frolicking under the waves on Evershore before being hauled up in a net by a kitsen no bigger than it was. The fish had sacrificed its life, and now Nedd wasn’t even going to be able to give it the honor of being enjoyed to its fullest potential.

Still. Duty called. And when duty called in the middle of lunch hour, it was usually important. Nedd left his poor perch behind and sprinted to the hangar, where his flightmates were already boarding their ships.

Nedd jumped in, put on his headset, and radioed Arturo. “What’s going on? Are we under attack?”

“Maybe,” Arturo said. He was the new flightleader, though they hadn’t done much in the way of flying since he’d been appointed. “There’s been a series of thefts inside the Detritus inhibitors.”

Nedd hesitated. “We’re being deployed to deal with a thief?”

“The diplomatic department suspects that the thief may be a Superiority operative trying to undermine our alliances. There’s some evidence they might be cytonic, and if they are, they’re able to act inside the inhibitors.”

Oh. Okay. That was bad. Double bad. Leave-perfectly-good-food-on-your-plate bad. There were codes to those inhibitors, and no cytonic should have been able to use their powers inside the radius without them. If an enemy cytonic had those codes, they must have had inside help.

“Do we know where the operative is?” Nedd asked.

“No Superiority sightings yet, but one of the slugs reported strange cytonic activity a couple platforms over. We’re to surround the platform and then hyperjump in to investigate.” Arturo switched his radio to a line with the rest of the flight. “Skyward Flight, sound off.”

“Skyward Two, ready,” Nedd said, though he wasn’t, by the strictest definition, ready. He hustled through the most important items on the preflight checklist while the rest of the flight called in. He skipped two-thirds of it, which would have horrified Jorgen. But Nedd did the important stuff. He always did the important stuff. Except finishing lunch, apparently.

“Lift off,” Arturo said when they finished. “Form up at four hundred feet, and Naga will hyperjump us to the rally point.”

Nedd’s own hyperslug copilot jumped into his cockpit just as Nedd lifted off the landing pad, his acclivity ring taking him straight up into the air.

“Hey, Chubs,” he said, reaching over to stroke Chubs down his long spines. “Think we’re going to die today?”

“We’re going to die today!” Chubs trilled.

“Yeah, okay,” Nedd said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

They reached four hundred feet, and Nedd maneuvered his ship close. The platform disappeared beneath them, and he found himself instantly teleported to another location in the platform belt. Chunks of metal passed above and below, and he had to steer his ship carefully to stay out of the path of the orbiting junk.

“Target is directly ahead,” Arturo said. “I’m going to call in for orders. Stand by.”

“Copy,” Nedd said. He located the facility Arturo indicated—a large, boxy platform many times smaller than Platform Prime.

Was there really an enemy cytonic in there? Had one figured out how to get through the inhibitors that protected the planet? If a cytonic could bypass the inhibitor, they could cut their ships to pieces or teleport in an armada. Even pop back to the mess hall and finish Nedd’s perch.

Skyward Flight stood by and waited for orders.

And Nedd hoped no one had to die today but his fish.

FIVE

FM DID NOT KNOW what the Superiority wanted with platform technology or shipments of supplies from their allies, but it couldn’t be anything good.

“Have we seen any Superiority ships?” she asked Rig as they headed to the urgent meeting in Jorgen’s office. Rig had hyperjumped back for the meeting immediately after they discovered the food theft. FM was happy to see him on her birthday after all, but she would have preferred it to be under other circumstances.

“Not yet,” Rig said.

“If they can hyperjump inside the Detritus defenses, why haven’t they brought in battleships yet?”

“Maybe they’re still readying them,” Rig said.

Oh, stars. Were they about to be attacked by an enemy fleet? FM didn’t expect anyone on Detritus would give the Superiority the inhibitor codes. Not with the Superiority bent on annihilating them. But some of their allies now had that information. Could someone among the UrDail or kitsen be working with the enemy?

If so, that would represent a huge failure for FM’s department. She was supposed to handle diplomacy. She’d advocated for trust and cooperation. She was…well, she was in so far over her head that it would hardly surprise her to discover she was failing, but it would crush her all the same.

They reached Jorgen’s office and found him surrounded by Command staff, a radio in his hand.

“Did we learn anything?” FM asked.

“The taynix reported suspicious cytonic activity in one of the platforms thirty kilometers from here,” Jorgen said. “I have Skyward Flight in the air to check it out.”

FM closed her eyes. She’d left the flight recently to take the diplomatic position. She knew it was the right call, but she wasn’t used to her friends going into danger without her yet.

She…she was going to have to adjust to this.

“Jerkface,” Arturo said over the radio. “We have visual on the location.”

“Copy, Amphi,” Jorgen said. “Any ships in the area?”

“None we can see,” Arturo said, “though they could be hiding among the debris.”

“You and Alanik hyperjump inside,” Jorgen said. “Leave the others to cover you in case ships emerge. If you run into trouble, hyperjump out immediately. Copy?”

“Copy, Jerkface,” Arturo said. “Jumping in.”

FM held her breath. Rig took her hand. A moment later, the radio sputtered. “Jerkface?” Arturo said. “Is FM with you?”

Jorgen looked at FM in confusion. “Yeah, she’s here.”

“Alanik’s going to come get her. You should come too. You guys need to see this in person.”

Jorgen stared at FM as if she might explain, but she had no better idea what was going on than he did. A moment later, Alanik hyperjumped to the corner of Jorgen’s office.

“What’s going on?” FM asked.

Alanik didn’t respond. She touched Jorgen’s and FM’s shoulders. FM held on to Rig’s hand so that he wouldn’t be left behind, and then they all hyperjumped—

—to a large, dimly lit room with walls lined with sturdy metal shelves. It looked like it might have once been some sort of warehouse. Arturo stood in the middle, weapon lowered.

Suddenly the room lit up, the missing generators humming to life, the light so bright it was nearly blinding. The ceiling, the walls, and even the shelves all sparkled with hundreds of twinkle lights. On the shelves appeared several dozen taynix of multiple colors, their spines vibrating as they sang in unison:

“SURPRISE!”

FM blinked. On one of the rows of shelves were boxes of caviar and mushrooms, as well as a variety of fruits. Was that the missing food shipment from ReDawn? Supplies from the cafeteria too—scones and flavored algae butter—were spread across the shelves like a buffet. One of the slugs nuzzled FM’s transmitter, and a song started playing—one of her favorites.

Gill appeared on her shoulder. “Dance!”

“Is this…” FM had a hard time forming the words. “A birthday party?”

“Happy birthday!” Gill fluted in her ear.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” chorused the other slugs.

Arturo looked at FM like he wasn’t sure what their lives had come to. Rig laughed, and Jorgen just scratched his head and lifted his radio. “Skyward Flight,” he said. “You should all come in here. It’s safe and clear.”

FM was still speechless. She felt tears forming, which was probably not the correct response to a surprise party. A party for her. The slugs had heard her talk about her memories, and they wanted to reenact them. Because they cared.

“Thank you,” she said finally, looking at the slugs. She scritched Gill along the place where his spines met his body. “Thank you so much.”

“Thank you!” the slugs chorused back. “Thank you!”

Their English wasn’t perfect, but FM was pretty sure they were saying “You’re welcome.”

The rest of the flight hyperjumped in, standing with Arturo and scratching their heads.

“What by the North Star’s light are those?” Kimmalyn asked. She pointed to one of the tables, which held a crate containing three large rats.

FM laughed. “It’s Attila,” she said. “And Alexander. And Genghis Khan.”

Rig groaned. “Promise we won’t roast them.”

“No way,” FM said, approaching the crate. Three whiskered noses twitched at her. “They’re kind of cute!”

“Okay,” Jorgen said. “Um, happy birthday to FM, I guess.”

“Come on,” FM said, pulling on Rig’s hand. “It’s my birthday. Let’s dance.”

THE END

MORE IN THE SKYWARD SERIES

BY BRANDON SANDERSON

1. Skyward

2. Starsight

3. Cytonic

4. Defiant

BY BRANDON SANDERSON & JANCI PATTERSON

1. Skyward Flight

2. Including Sunreach, ReDawn, & Evershore

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Hyperthief

Copyright © 2023 Dragonsteel, LLC

Cover art by Anna Earley

All rights reserved.

Published by Dragonsteel, LLC

American Fork, UT

BrandonSanderson.com

Brandon Sanderson®, The Stormlight Archive®, Mistborn®, Cosmere®, Reckoners®, Dragonsteel Entertainment®, and the Dragonsteel logo are registered trademarks of Dragonsteel, LLC.

First Edition: November 2023

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

More in the Skyward Series

Copyright Notice