Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  And suffering the even worse terror that she may have been right.

  Part XI – Worlds Apart

  “It isn’t the distance that tears—it’s what’s stretched between.”

  ~The Bern Seer~

  1

  “My name is Mortimor Fyde, son. Welcome to hyperspace.”

  “Hello,” Cole asked out loud, “is anyone there?”

  He shook his head. His thoughts were still rattled from the crash landing, his vision partially blinded from the harsh light outside. He knelt on the buried canopy of the stolen and upturned Firehawk and groped for the strange voices he thought he’d heard during the crash.

  It was nearly impossible to concentrate, however, with someone else trying to yell at him. Riggs, his former Academy mate and friend, hung overhead, strapped to the nav chair, completely restrained. Cole could see the whites of his eyes glaring down at him, his cheeks puffing out around the tape, his nostrils flaring with rapid, shallow breaths. In the dull, green glow of the emergency lightstick, Riggs’s angered visage seemed outright menacing, like a monster eager to attack. He grunted more unpleasantries through the tape and shook his head side to side, his eyes squinting with rage.

  “Okay, hold on,” Cole said. He stood and reached for a corner of the tape. “Stop struggling.”

  Riggs held still, but his eyes tunneled straight through Cole. The tape came off with a loud ripping sound, followed by a bout of cursing.

  “You flanker!” Riggs yelled. “What in hyperspace have you done?” He shook his shoulders, struggling against the restraints and the flight harness.

  The sight of Riggs’s bound arms made Cole wince with guilt. Tying him up had been necessary during his and Molly’s escape from the Navy, but after the brutal crash they’d just endured, the bindings seemed cruel and pointless.

  “Cool your jets,” said Cole. “I’m just as confused as you are.” He touched the red band on his forehead, thinking as loud as he could, but the voices had gone silent. He took the Drenard invention off and held the lightstick close to check that the seam was in the back—

  “Why’re we upside down?” Riggs yelled. “What’ve you done? Get me out of here, Cole, I mean it.”

  “Okay, okay, just save the air. There’s atmosphere here, but I don’t know what’s in it.” Cole stuffed the band in his breast pocket and reached up to undo the restraints around his old friend’s elbows and hands. “Don’t get crazy, okay? I’m gonna untie you.”

  As soon as one of Riggs’s hands came free, he slapped Cole’s away and worked on the other strap himself. “Where in hyperspace did you take us?”

  “Funny you should ask like that.” Cole watched Riggs fumble with his harness; he jumped aside just in time. Riggs landed on the inverted canopy with a thud and a crunch.

  Cole went to help him up. “If my sources are… well, unless I’m hearing things, we might be in—”

  Before he could finish, Riggs was on top of him, swinging wild blows with his fisted flight gloves.

  “Stop it!” Cole yelled. He grabbed one of Riggs’s arms after a blow grazed the side of his head. Pulling down on the arm, he twisted his body and tossed Riggs over his hip. Riggs spun and landed with his back against the glass canopy; Cole fell on top of him, spreading his weight out to hold his old friend in place.

  “Stop,” he said again as he groped for the lightstick. It had rolled beneath them, reducing the glow to almost nothing.

  Riggs panted hard in the darkness; he twisted his shoulders and hips in an attempt to buck Cole off.

  “Listen to me—”

  “Flank you.”

  “Seriously, Riggs, listen. Hold still—”

  “Get the flank off me!”

  “Okay, I’m getting off, but no blows. Just relax for a second.”

  He got off Riggs and backed to one side of the upturned cockpit. Riggs scrambled away, grabbing the lightstick as he went and holding it out between them.

  Cole showed his palms and tried to imagine how his old friend must see him: some mad vigilante—a dangerous criminal. There was the theft of Parsona, the death of Admiral Lucin, and what had happened on Palan during the floods. He knew none of it looked good, especially the recent act of kidnapping Riggs and escaping from the Navy, which he couldn’t even begin to deny.

  “Hey,” Cole said. “I’m not gonna try and convince you I’m innocent—”

  “Good,” spat Riggs.

  “I’m not even gonna ask you to put aside your hatred of me—”

  “Trust me, I won’t.”

  “Fine. But unless I’m hearing voices, we need to get out of here, which means working together if you wanna stay alive long enough to kill me yourself.”

  Riggs seemed to consider the logic behind that. “Yeah. Fine,” he said. He waved the lightstick around the cockpit, taking in the scene of the crash. “As long as you understand, I’m gonna do that as soon as possible.”

  “But not right now?”

  “Probably not,” Riggs said, glaring at him. “So, where are we?”

  Cole wondered how to break the news, or if he was just being delusional. He felt for the red band in his breast pocket as the illumination from the lightstick faded, leaving them in complete darkness.

  “Damn,” Riggs said. “My eyesight’s screwed.”

  “Mine too,” said Cole. The large spot in his vision had broken up, replaced with a dozen smaller dots that danced around like flying, glowing creatures. He hoped the change was a good sign—the searing light they’d encountered upon arrival seemed powerful enough to do permanent damage.

  “These things suck,” Riggs said, banging the lightstick against the canopy. Cole could hear him cracking it back and forth to get a bit more glow out of it.

  “It was in my suit, the one from Parsona. It’s an old design. The Naval emergency kits are under out seats, we need—”

  “I know where the kits are, you Drenard. This is my ship and I stowed them there.”

  “Jeez, okay, then help me get them down. We need the—”

  “The biosticks, yeah. Tell you what, Cole, let’s agree I outrank you so you can stop pretending you’re in charge here.”

  Cole watched a dark silhouette fumble near one of the hanging seats.

  “I’m a captain,” Riggs continued, “and you’re not even a navigator anymore.”

  “Drop the Navy crap,” Cole said. “It means nothing right now.”

  One of the emergency kits fell to the glass. Riggs pushed past Cole and started unstrapping the other one. “To you, maybe, but just because the Navy dropped you doesn’t mean I need to drop the Navy crap.”

  Cole reached into the soft case and felt for the cylindrical biosticks; they would last a lot longer than the older lightsticks from whatever era Molly’s parents had salvaged them from. He gave one of them a half-twist, lining up the two inner chambers with each other. The cockpit filled with a soft, blue glow as bioluminescent creatures came out of hibernation and began to feed.

  Cole held up the stick—and the first thing he saw in the new glow was Riggs turning to punch him in the nose.

  New flashes of light sparked in his vision to join the dull, persistent ones. Cole threw his hands up to fend off the next attack, but it didn’t come.

  “That’s for tying my ass up,” Riggs said. “When I kill you later, it’ll be for what you did to Lucin.”

  Cole didn’t dare defend himself and get that argument raging again. Besides, he had shot their old Academy instructor in the back. No point in trying to explain why. He reached up and felt his nose. It was sore, but not broken. Pulling his hand away, he saw he wasn’t bleeding, either, just stunned.

  The ambient blue light doubled in intensity as Riggs pulled a second biostick from the other kit and activated it. Cole nearly chastised him for not rationing the supplies, but the lines in Riggs’s brow suggested it might be a bad idea. Instead, Cole peered down at the canopy, their only exit. The entire bubble of glass was buried in the ground, blocking of
f the crazy light outside, but also their chance of escape. Cole couldn’t believe the carboglass had held. If that was solid ground they’d hit, the entire nose should’ve crumpled up around them. He lowered the biostick toward the glass, but he couldn’t see anything through the cockpit—just a dark mass pressing against the clear shield.

  “Is there any point in trying to slide the canopy back?” Cole asked.

  “Only if it kills you before it kills me.”

  Cole swung his biostick around to illuminate the space between them. He studied Riggs’s face intently. “Listen, man, I’m serious. We need to put this aside and think. Be rational.”

  “Fine.” Riggs looked around the cockpit, and Cole did the same. The two flight seats hung overhead, and the canopy rose up to the inverted dash, where every control was blank and dark. At the rear of the cockpit stood the flat wall separating the crew from the flight systems: the life-support, engines, and hyperdrive.

  “The landing gear,” Riggs suggested.

  “Yeah? What about them?”

  “Did you lower them?”

  “No. Why? What are you thinking?”

  Riggs pointed with his biostick toward the metal panel bolted aft of the seats. “We go out through the landing gear shafts. There’s a maintenance tunnel that runs the length of the ship big enough for the grease monkeys to crawl through. We just need to unscrew that panel—” Riggs fumbled in his kit. “Should be a multi-tool in here.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Thanks,” Riggs said. “It isn’t something you can learn from a simulator. Hell, if you hadn’t tied me up, I betcha I could’ve landed this thing with my left hand.”

  Cole bit down on what he wanted to say; there was no room in the tight confines of their predicament for making Riggs angrier. He’d rather take more blows right on his nose and keep smiling, wearing out Riggs’s rage with a bit of patience.

  “Lower the gear with the manual crank while I work on the panel,” Riggs instructed.

  “Okay,” Cole said, as pleasantly as he could muster his voice. If they were going to survive this together, he was going to have to build up some trust.

  He would start by carefully and meticulously restraining himself for a change.

  2

  Following her controversial speech before the Circle, Anlyn travels to the Great Rift, accompanied by Edison and an escort of volunteers.

  They hope to be present for the invasion foretold by prophecy.

  They don’t yet know they are at the wrong rift.

  “What are you doing?” Rend asked. He yanked Dor’s hand away from the weapons rack.

  “I was just going to touch it!” Dor insisted.

  “Are you crazy?” Rend eyed the lance warily. The large weapon stood upright in a padded harness parallel to a dozen others. It rested there as if it were no different than its neighbors, but he knew better. “That’s Lord Campton’s lance,” he said in a hushed whisper, never taking his eyes off it. “The Lance of a Thousand Suns.”

  “A thousand suns? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Well, I heard it was forged from the magma of Hori I and Hori II and pounded into shape on the coldest corner of Drenard’s dark side.”

  Dor narrowed his eyes. “Those are fairy tales, like flying Wadi. How old are you?”

  “Same age as you, hot-head, but my dad was there when the lance was wielded for the first time. He said it went off with the power of a thousand suns, and that it made a noise like the universe coming alive.”

  “Your dad’s been in the Wadi juice, sounds like.”

  “No he hasn’t, my dad—”

  Anlyn cleared her throat behind the bickering boys before the argument could get personal. The volunteer peacemakers spun around, and she took as much pleasure in their shocked expressions as she had amusement in their whispered delusions.

  “Am I interrupting?” she asked.

  “Princess Hooo,” Rend said—

  “Lady Hooo,” Dor whispered, elbowing his friend. He shrugged for Anlyn, as if he couldn’t be held responsible for his crewmate’s imprecise knowledge of royal etiquette.

  “I’m sorry, Lady Hooo,” Rend said, “I forget you’re engaged. We were just talking about Lord Campton and his lance. My father was there for the speech. He saw—well…” The poor kid glanced at the lance, seemingly miserable with nerves. His hands squeezed fistfuls of his outer tunic as he fidgeted in place.

  Anlyn gave each of the boys a serious look as she walked around them and approached the weapons rack. She rested a hand reverently on Edison’s lance. “It belonged to one of my uncles,” she said. She turned to Rend and Dor. “A guard once used it to cut a friend of mine in two. Lord Campton later turned it into a symbol of peace, not war.”

  “Told you,” Dor said to Rend.

  Rend ignored him. “I heard it was you who used it in the Pinnacle, that the great speech came about because of…” Rend gazed at the lance.

  Anlyn could sense he wanted to touch it. She pressed the pad of her finger to the security harness and the clamps clacked open. Pulling it from the rack, she turned around and held it out to the two lads.

  Dor reached for it eagerly. Rend grasped the other half as if the lance were as fragile as Thooo eggs.

  “Don’t touch the trigger,” she warned them.

  Neither boy looked up; they just nodded and turned the large device over and over, inspecting the royal markings and the electrical modifications Edison had made. Rend ran his hand down to the Wadi hook on the one end while Dor tested the point on the other side with a cautious finger.

  “I would let you inspect it further,” Anlyn said, “but I actually came to retrieve it before our meeting with the Rift Commander.”

  “It was an honor, Lady Hooo,” Rend said. He pulled the lance away from Dor and extended it to her. “I would love to speak with you sometime, perhaps hear more of your interpretations of the prophecy.”

  “I would enjoy that as well, peacemaker. And it would please me to hear your interpretation. Now, return to your duties. There will be time enough to gossip while we wait for the prophecy’s fulfillment. For all we know, we may have years together for swapping tales.”

  Both boys smiled and bowed low, pulling their outer cloaks up to their chins. Anlyn returned the gesture with one hand, touching the deck with the tip of the lance as she did so. She then moved off in the direction of the embassy ship’s cockpit, smiling to herself.

  Behind her, she could hear one of the boys whispering excitedly. Something about “a thousand suns” and “Wadi queens.”

  ••••

  Anlyn kept the end of the Wadi lance just off the deck as she made her way to the cockpit. Several crewmembers and peacemakers greeted her as she passed, bowing low and grasping the edges of their tunics. Anlyn returned the stiff formalities, but all the time-consuming ceremony just heightening her eagerness to join Edison near the bow of the ship. She felt herself hurrying, needing to be near him. She passed through the narrow communications room and crossed the staff corridor, pausing to wave to the off-duty crew dining in the officer’s mess. She then turned toward the nose of the large starship and hurried down the wide central passageway. As she went through the last sliding door, she found Edison waiting for her just outside the cockpit, mindful as always of her fear of going inside.

  “Pleasant awakenings,” Edison said, greeting her in his thick, growling English.

  Anlyn stepped into his embrace. Her head rested against his belly, her Glemot lover a full meter taller than she.

  “Pleasant awakenings to you,” she cooed. She wrapped one arm as far around him as she could and remained there, taking deep breaths. Of all the things she missed about her time aboard Parsona—excepting Molly’s and Cole’s company, of course—she most regretted no longer being able to sleep on Edison’s chest, warm and safe. Now that they were back among her people and Counselors of the Circle, certain decorum had to be observed.

  They had planned on marrying, on ma
king their union official, but had promised Molly and Cole they wouldn’t do so until they were all back together. That impulsive and sincere vow had now created the distinct possibility that the marriage would never occur, but they had decided to respect the wishes of their friends. And—as Edison had once put it in his awkward English—they would respect “her culture’s non-optimal stance on betrothal co-habitation.”

  Anlyn pulled away from him and gazed up at the silky coat of fur sticking out of his tunics and at the intelligent, bright eyes below his strong brow. She patted his arm and glanced into the cockpit. “Are we there yet?” she asked, unable to see anything over the flight crew, as everything in the ship was built for the height of a Drenard male.

  “Approximately,” Edison said. “I have a visual.” He looked down at his lance, which Anlyn held with one hand. “Will that be required?”

  “No, but it does carry a certain mystique, which may help.”

  Edison frowned.

  “I know how you feel about the prophecy stuff, but we’ve gotten quite far on superstition, so wield it as if you believe.” She handed him the lance. “Are you ready?”

  Edison grunted. “Approximately.”

  Anlyn smiled. She thanked the flight crew without stepping inside, then the two of them turned and set off for the airlock. Once again, the walk was punctuated with bows and raised tunics. Anlyn fought the urge to politely wave them along; she participated in each ritual as she attempted to build solidarity amongst her crew. With Dani’s help, she had hand-picked each crewmember from a legion of volunteers. They had initially thought it would be impossible to find a full ambassadorial complement to accompany her to the Great Rift, but the opposite problem had occurred: so many believers of the Bern Prophecy had shown up that most had to be turned away. And—instead of looking for the few faithful—they had found themselves weeding out the truly fanatic, searching among them for the rare moderate and temperate heads.