by Hugh Howey
The only thing on Molly’s mind—beyond having rescued Anlyn from slavery and reuniting her with her people—was getting a friend some medical assistance. For Cole, trust had become a relative term, a commodity with fluctuating prices. Running from their own Navy for a month had him not just reconsidering allegiances, but forgetting where they once lay.
Still, there was no rational justification for what they’d just done: jumped into a hostile system with the sole local among their crew unconscious and unable to communicate. Of course, Drenard’s Orbital Defense Patrol saw their unexpected arrival much more clearly. It was a dire threat. A suicidal attack. A GN ship come to rain bombs on their home planet.
Such was their fear as the DODP jumped out to the unidentified contact on their SADAR units, weapons arming…
••••
“Whoa. Lots of contacts.” Cole zoomed his SADAR unit out. “Hostile formation,” he added.
Molly saw it. And the representation of Parsona on the SADAR unit surrounded by a Drenard fleet shook her to her senses. She saw at once how this must look to them: a human ship popping out of hyperspace between their tightly orbiting twin stars. It’d be exactly where Molly would try to sneak into the system, even if she were dumb enough to try such a stunt on a race this technologically advanced.
Gods, I am that dumb, she realized. She looked over at Cole; neither of them had their helmets on. Anlyn was in her bunk, suffering from SLAS, and not even in her flightsuit. They’d be dead before the hyperdrive wound down and could be cycled back up.
“We’re so stupid.” She said.
None of the Drenard ships had fired yet, but they were closing in with a staggered formation—making it impossible to jump out even if the hyperdrive was ready. What did she expect? Without Anlyn to translate, was she really thinking she’d just fly in and land on the enemy’s home planet?
Molly flipped the radio on and grabbed her helmet. It was probably useless—Drenards weren’t known to communicate with Navy ships before destroying them—but she had to try.
“This is the starship Parsona to the Drenard fleet. Do not shoot. We come in peace. We have a sick Drenard youth onboard.” To Cole, she said: “Start flashing Parsona’s exterior lights in the GN distress patt—”
Parsona.
For the second time that day, Molly remembered she had someone else onboard that spoke Drenard. She reached to the keyboard and hurriedly typed to her mom:
QUICK, I NEED TO KNOW HOW TO SAY “WE COME IN PEACE” IN DRENARD_
A bizarre pair of symbols appeared on the screen in front of her—composed of straight lines, they looked like someone had dropped two bundles of sticks into separate piles.
PHONETICALLY_ she hurriedly typed, then glanced up at the SADAR screen. The rough encirclement was complete; a staggered line of Drenard fighters probed forward. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she’d spelled “phonetically” right.
SHEESTI LOOO. LONG E. AND THE LOOO SHOULD BE DRAWN OUT FOR AT LEAST TWO COUNTS_
Molly shook her head as she read the instructions. Her mom spoke Drenard, but no one else in the Navy did? It was too much—almost as crazy as having an actual Drenard as a friend. A shiver ran up her spine as she considered what the Navy would have done with Anlyn if they’d been captured. She activated the mic in her helmet.
“Sheesti Loooo. Sheesti Loooo. Sheesti Loooo,” she intoned, using the triplets common to Naval comms. She figured the repetition couldn’t hurt, even if Drenards did it differently. She looked over at Cole and nearly burst into laughter at the expression on his face. He was looking at her like she was crazy, both of his brows down low, casting a shadow over his narrowed eyes.
“Mom’s giving me Drenard lessons,” she explained, pointing to her nav screen.
The formation around them tightened, but no weapons were fired. Cole turned back to his displays. “I guess I don’t have room to talk, considering how fast I drew fire from the Navy.”
The radio squawked to life. Over the static created by the nearby stars, a strange yet pleasant cooing could be heard. Molly felt her eyelids growing heavy with the calm sounds.
“Any way for your mom to translate that?”
She turned to Cole. “Could you sound out what they just said?”
He shook his head.
“Well, we just about killed ourselves running from our own Navy,” Molly said. “What say we open the outer airlock and invite our enemy aboard?”
Cole flashed her the same look from a moment ago, his eyes retreating warily into dark caves. He reached for the airlock controls, but kept his gaze on her. “I do this under protest, Captain.”
“Duly noted,” Molly said. She unclipped her harness and watched through the carboglass as the flashing distress lights scattered across the nose of her ship.
She hoped the Drenards saw it as the white flag of assistance—not surrender.
••••
Back when Molly and Cole first saw Anlyn in the Darrin System, they’d been shocked by how small and frail she seemed. The few front-line training videos they’d been shown at the Academy featured large and muscular aliens with dark blue flesh not nearly as translucent as hers.
After spending a few weeks with the young female Drenard, their reintroduction to the males brought another shock.
The first one came through the inner airlock stooped over. Even in the cargo bay, he couldn’t stand fully erect, which put him a bit under three meters tall.
He had a gold-colored helmet over his head and a thick neck, bunched with muscles, that led down into a decorative tunic. Powerful arms came out of a standard torso and clutched a metal lance of menacing proportions.
The weapon was kept down, pointed at the deck of the ship. Molly took it as a sign of respect, but the size and shape of the thing, combined with the fierce appearance of the large creature holding it, made her wonder if their ship itself was being threatened.
Two more Drenards squeezed through the airlock. The second was identical to the first; the third a bit smaller and weaponless. Rather than a single tunic, the last of the trio wore dozens of layers of them, each richly decorated. The innermost tunic was so long, he had to clutch the extra fabric near his stomach, which he did ceremoniously. He turned in place, surveying the crew and the ship, then launched into a soft and pleasant speech.
None of which made any sense to Molly, Cole or Walter.
“Sheesti Loooo,” Molly repeated, showing her palms.
The unarmed Drenard, already bent over slightly, bowed even further as he pulled the longest tunic up to his chin. The xenothropologist in Molly stirred at the gesture, but she didn’t have time to marvel at the cultural exchanges and the rarity of the encounter. Sworn enemy or not, all she wanted was to have them tend to Anlyn’s health without anyone else getting hurt in the process. She held up both hands to her chin, bowed as the Drenard had, and then slowly stepped toward the three fearsome figures. Somehow, she needed to squeeze past them to Edison’s room without increasing the tension in the ship.
The warriors didn’t seem to take her approach as hostile—or perhaps they couldn’t see Molly as a threat. They simply rotated their bodies to follow her movement, stepping aside slightly to allow her to pass. The ranking officer cocked his head in what Molly anthropomorphized as curiosity, but it could have been disapproval for all she knew.
She had to turn sideways to move through them, their bulk towering to either side like slabs of curtained blue steel. They loomed so close, she could smell them, a scent like warm stone.
Molly glanced down at one of the soldier’s massive hands, curled around his lance. She passed mere centimeters from him, her head not much higher than his waist. She imagined trying to fight one of these monsters, and flashed back to the fight in that Glemot bunker.
“Sheesti Looooo,” she repeated in a breathless whisper, more to herself than anyone else.
Getting past the barrier of raw muscle and into the after hallway gave her shivers of relief. If
there’d been enough room, she probably would’ve taken off in a run, brushing at her arms to get rid of the willies from being so close to actual Drenard warriors. She held it together, though, and turned to the aliens as she backed away, waving with her hands for them to follow.
The officer complied. One of the warriors turned to size up Cole, his relaxed attitude suggesting no threat to be found. Molly watched this exchange as she backed into Edison’s room where her Glemot friend sat on his bunk, his long legs stretched out, Anlyn’s head on his lap.
The Drenard officer ducked through the door. When he raised his head, the two large aliens locked eyes, and Molly could feel the tension sparking across the room. The Drenard said something over his shoulder to his two companions. One of the warriors appeared at the door, his lance at a higher angle than before.
“This situation is non-optimal,” Edison said. “And the spatial requirements of our combined forms are not adequately met by the dimensional constraints of my room.”
Molly waved him silent. His English might be hard to understand, but the deep growling tenor of his voice might be something that cut across alien divides.
Using slow motions with her arms, Molly directed their guests’ attention toward the prone figure in Edison’s lap. Anlyn looked to be stable, but the front of her body remained heavily bruised from her bout of SLAS. She hadn’t moved, nor shown any signs of awareness, since they escaped from the human Navy. For all Molly knew, they were returning to the Drenard system with a brain-dead husk.
As soon as the officer saw the female Drenard, something changed. The muscles in both arms flinched, and he nearly dropped his tunics. He threw the lengths of fabric over his shoulder to get them out of the way and crossed the crowded room with one large step. He leaned over Anlyn, reached into her armpit gingerly, his other hand resting on Edison’s chest. Not so gingerly.
“Don’t move,” Molly told the cub.
Edison’s face twitched with the effort, the fur on his face and shoulders bristling. Molly pleaded with wide eyes for inaction. Her friend begged her in return with narrow slits—for something else.
The Drenard touched Anlyn in a few places, then felt her cheeks with both palms, his massive hands engulfing her small head. He turned to the warrior and said something short and soft.
Molly looked back and forth between them, trying in vain to read their body language, to get some sense of whether or not her friend would be okay.
When the officer scooped up Anlyn with one arm, Edison raised his hands in protest. Molly started to say something to calm him down, expecting the massive Drenard to shove at him with the large hand on his chest, but the officer pulled away instead.
Wrapping Anlyn in both arms, the officer leaned away from Edison, distancing himself.
Finally, a gesture Molly recognized. And not a good one.
“Wait—” she squeaked.
Edison rose as the crackle of electricity filled the room. A dazzling light whizzed past Molly’s head and struck him in the chest, sending him into a few brief spasms of vibrating limbs before his head crashed back against the bulkhead.
Molly spun to protest—to say the only two words of Drenard she knew—and saw the lance. Horizontal. Level with the deck. Her brain processed the meaning of this as the crackle of ionized atmosphere reached her ears.
The blast hit her square in the chest, launching her into the air and sending her flying toward the bunk.
She dearly wanted to arrest her fall before she passed out, but every muscle betrayed her—all of them contracting at once—vibrating with their refusal to cooperate.
Part VII – The Thin Line
“Symmetry, by surrounding us, makes itself invisible.”
~The Bern Seer~
6
Cole woke up sore. Full-body sore. It felt like he’d just played two games of galaxy ball with no pads on.
He tried to sit up, but the muscles in his stomach spasmed—cramping up and sending him crashing back down on the bed.
The very soft bed.
Sitting up hadn’t worked, so he rolled onto one side and surveyed his surroundings from there. He recognized the place. Or a place like it.
Lisbon.
He and some friends had broken into a five-star hotel, posing as busboys. The lobby, the hallways, everything had looked just like this. He must be in one of those rooms, or in a place just like it.
He rolled onto his back, soaking up the luxuriousness of the sheets and the perfect mattress; he closed his eyes and felt some of his stiffness slide away. When he opened them and looked down at his toes, he noticed the chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling. Thousands of crystals were arranged around hundreds of tiny lights, all twinkling like stars through carboglass.
Cole followed the light to the walls, which appeared to be made of a mottled-yellow marble. A darker material, some species of wood, cut up the expansive slabs with window sills and support beams. Above the sills, large panes of glass allowed natural light to pour in, bathing the room in a warm glow.
Slowly, Cole pulled his legs out from the thick covers and worked them to the edge of the bed. It took some effort and a few grunts to get his body to comply. What it really wanted to do was stay there for a week, recuperating.
He swung his feet over the edge—they dangled a meter from the ground. The soreness in his calves and quads warned him not to do it, that they couldn’t promise to catch him if he jumped from such a height. Heeding the warning, Cole rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself backward, sliding toward the ground. The silk sheets slid together like layers of grease.
Yelping, Cole clutched at the heavier blankets, falling to the ground and pulling them after. They barely slowed his crash before smothering him. He swam through the fabric, emerging in a heap of finery that spilled across a landscape of lush carpet, the material piled so high it looked like it need to be mowed.
Cole fought another round of temptation, his body urging him to lie flat on the soft surface, tangled up in silk. Grudgingly, though, he pushed himself up on sore muscles and stood, swaying slightly. Now that he was out of bed and upright, his nakedness felt awkward. He reached down, slowly, as an old man might, and fumbled for one of the sheets.
He attempted to knot the fabric around his waist the way the Glemots had taught him, but the fabric was so slick, it was impossible to tie. It wouldn’t even stay draped over his shoulders, slipping off like beads of water on fur. After some experimentation, he finally settled on a few wraps around his waist, holding the material together with one hand.
Eager to know where he was, Cole approached the window to peer outside. Even from a meter away, however, he couldn’t see through the harsh light lancing into the room. It was just a plane of bright whiteness, nothing beyond. He leaned close and reveled in the heat radiating through; it reminded him instantly of the hot Mediterranean days of his childhood. He closed his eyes and let the heat loosen his muscles. It felt like two suns pouring their energy into him.
Two suns. Drenard. That’s where he was. The L1 between the twin stars. What had happened?
Cole leaned forward and covered his face with one hand, straining for the images. A fleet closed in on SADAR; there was a thud as two hulls locked together; Molly saying something funny. Soldiers.
The last images he had were like scenes from an action holovid: the Drenard guarding him and Walter had raised his menacing lance. The other soldier in the hallway fired off an energy beam into Edison’s room. Then another. Cole couldn’t see the effects of those blasts, but he clearly saw the one that caught him in the chest.
He remembered going down. His body vibrating. The sound of his skull cracking on the decking. He slid one hand around the back of his head and felt the lump; just the slight brush against it sent another thunderbolt through his head.
Where was everyone else?
Cole turned from the window—he couldn’t make out anything through it anyway—and looked to the doors arranged around the enormous room. He
went to the nearest one first and found a closet. There were hooks and arms up high and cubbies with baskets in them below. Cole pulled a few out, but they were all empty. He took a moment to snug the silk sheet tighter around his waist and went to the next door.
That one opened into a bathroom twice the size of his quarters on Parsona. He stepped inside. The floor looked like wood, but felt like stone. There were knots and wavy lines in the material, yet it felt cool under his feet. Cole spun back around and looked at the door. It looked like a loose-grain wood, but touching it gave him the same crisp jolt that only marble invokes. He pressed on the door with one finger, and it moved silently and effortlessly.
Cole left this curiosity for later and turned to the high counter with the mirror above it, hoping to find some water to drink. The surface was made of the same strange material and came almost to his chest. He gave himself a comical appraisal in the mirror, hitched his sheet tight with one hand, and leaned over to survey the deep bowl cut out of the stone.
The only feature beyond the basin were three cylinders vertically slotted in a neat row. Cole twisted the one on the left, and it spun freely, but did nothing. He pressed down on it, then tried pulling it up. The plug slid out of the hole easily and water began flowing through the channel and splashing into the basin. Steam rose from the fluid; he didn’t need to touch it to verify the danger.
He replaced the cylinder and pulled the one on the far right. There was a gurgle, then he was rewarded with bone-chillingly cold water. He forced his sore calves to lift him to the stream, wiggling his stomach up on the edge of the counter so he could reach a sample. It tasted excellent; he drank it in large sideways gulps as it dripped from his cheek and ran back toward his ear.
Raising his head, Cole wiped the moisture from his chin, then cupped one hand and gathered enough to splash on his face and push through his hair. There weren’t any towels nearby, so he made do, wiping himself dry with the edge of his sheet.
