by Hugh Howey
Cole held up both hands. “No, that—it wasn’t like that. He was about to shoot Molly, I swear. He’s the guy who set us up, who had us go get your ship.”
Mortimor squinted at Cole. Two aliens ran into the room dressed in Navy black, reaching for weapons at their sides. Mortimor held up his hand, keeping them at bay.
“How did you end up here?”
“I don’t know. Molly and I split up on our way to Lok. I made a jump. I was in a Firehawk with a friend—”
Cole stopped, whatever words he had queued up next shattered in a spasm of anguish. He thought of Riggs, dead by his own hands.
It had been real. That part had been very, very real.
He leaned forward, rested his face into both palms, and began to cry. There was no escaping into his skull this time—no shrinking down and getting away from it. There was nobody to hurt, to take it out on. There was just the shame and the depression, the guilt and the torment, wrapping their tentacles around him, squeezing the air out of his chest.
“Leave us,” he heard Mortimor say.
Cole tried to remember where he was, to get a grip on himself, but the scramble for sanity just made him fall even faster. He sobbed into his hands, the tears dripping through his fingers.
“My friend—” he croaked, his voice high and embarrassing.
Mortimor came to him, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Take your time,” he said.
“My friend’s legs,” Cole sobbed.
“Shhhh. I know. It’s okay, son.”
Cole shook his head and swallowed. He licked the salt from his lips. “It’s not okay,” he mumbled. “Nothing’s okay. Molly—” He pushed his hands up through his hair, clenching fistfuls until the roots tingled with pain.
“Where is she?” Mortimor whispered.
The question hung in the air between them, between two strangers. They knew almost nothing of each other, but they both orbited that same drifting unknown, that haunting absence in both their lives. For Cole, the question opened some internal hatch holding back all his atmosphere, and the vacuum sucked at it. His body quaked with grief as a moan unlike any he’d ever uttered welled up and out.
Mortimor wrapped his arms around Cole and pulled his head to his shoulder. Cole latched on and cried even harder, a thousand horrible things dragging their claws across his insides as they were yanked through that newly opened hatch. He cried and fought it, trying to keep them in. Shame and guilt, they tore through him, far more powerful than the embarrassment of breaking down in front of a stranger.
••••
Mortimor waited. Despite his sense of urgency, he let the lad have it out. He could very well imagine the things the boy had been through. While the young man’s frame shuddered with agony, he looked around the room protectively. He looked to the others in their cots, to their heads lifting from pillows, their faces full of empathy and regret. Mortimor clenched his jaw and didn’t say a word—he just let the boy have his cry.
It was all he could do to not join in.
30
“Did they smell like raw death?” Molly repeated. “They smelled worse than that!”
She hurried alongside Cat, wondering what the Callite knew about the people on her ship. And worried about what they might know about the mysterious hyperdrive within it.
The two of them left the dark alley and crossed the main road leading out of town. They angled toward the stables, cutting between two more buildings and running past Walter, who had become distracted in front of an electronics boutique. Finally, they darted into another alley to get out of the glow of the streetlights, the blood on them both conspicuous. They jogged along the side road parallel to the bustling strip Molly had walked down earlier that day.
“Are they—will they steal my ship?” she asked Cat, panting between the words.
“Depends.”
“They said they knew my father, does that narrow things down?” Molly glanced back and urged Walter along. Then something occurred to her—and she felt like she was going to throw up. Reaching up to her neck, she felt the empty air there, and had a sensation like she was missing some part of herself.
“The Wadi!” She stopped and yelled back to Walter, who jogged up to join them, panting. “Where is she?”
Walter’s eyes widened. He reached down and unzipped something on his flightsuit, and her Wadi burst out amid a cloud of colorful confetti like a cannonball followed by fake, pixelated smoke. It leapt to the ground and ran to Molly, scampering up to her neck and sticking its head down the back of her shirt. Molly’s heart nearly burst with relief. She kept one hand on its back and rubbed the stubble of Walter’s head.
“You’re the best,” she said, stooping over to kiss his forehead.
Behind her, Cat clapped her hands. “The ship?” she said.
Molly turned and nodded, and the three of them set off at a jog, the Wadi’s claws digging into her skin as it held on.
“The Callites are huge,” Molly warned Cat. “Bigger than the guy beating you up at that blood-letting place.”
“Won’t be a problem,” Cat said.
“Lots bigger,” she added, trying not to sound winded.
“Trust me,” Cat said, her voice even and smooth. “It won’t be a problem.”
They ran along in silence for a while, the buildings thinning as they reached the outskirts of town. Ahead, Molly could see the beginnings of the stables. Most of the ships had their anchor lights on, red over white up the back of their tails or on extended rods for the ships that eschewed tails altogether. Molly berated herself for having not turned hers on; but then, she hadn’t expected to be out all day.
“Where’re you parked?” Cat asked.
“Other side of the johns.” Molly pointed in the general direction, but didn’t need to. They were downwind from them and could’ve nosed their way in the dark. “What’s the plan?” she asked. “Should we get Pete for backup?”
Cat laughed. “He’d get in the way. The plan is for you to wait outside and for me to go in and handle it. I’ll try not to get blood all inside your ship.”
Molly wasn’t sure what to make of that. They ran past a few ships, ducking under wings here and there to cut down the distance. She yelled back at Walter to watch a power cord snaking from one of the pedestals toward a ship, then heard him trip over it and bite the dust, anyway.
“The loading ramp was down when I left, but I don’t— there!” Molly reached for Cat, trying to slow her up. “That’s her right there.”
Cat held up her hand. “I see her,” she said. “Wait outside.”
Molly nodded; she followed behind as Cat ran to the ship. She stopped just outside—close enough to hear what was going on. Walter caught up, dusting himself off as Cat disappeared up the boarding ramp. The two crewmembers crouched in the shadows, panting and looking at each other with wide eyes. The Wadi leaned over from Molly’s shoulder and hissed at Walter, the first time she’d ever seen it do that.
“No,” she whispered to the animal. She turned the other direction and peeked around the corner and into the cargo bay. She hated the idea of waiting and letting someone else take the risk alone; she felt on the verge of going in to investigate, when Cat came back down the ramp, her posture relaxed.
“Are they gone?” Molly asked.
Cat shook her head. “No, they’re sleeping—”
“Good! Then we can take them by surprise. I can rig up a taser from the twenty-four volt panel, hit them with wires—”
Cat waved her off. “No doing,” she said. “I know these guys.”
“You know them?”
“Yeah,” Cat said, nodding. “Old friends of mine. And they’re exhausted, so why don’t I introduce you in the morning?”
“Introduce me? I want them off my ship!”
Cat leaned her head to one side. “I doubt that,” she said. “These are the people you’ve been wanting to meet.”
••••
Molly woke up in the pilot’s chair side
ways, her feet over the control console. She had an awful crick in her neck and a Wadi on it—the creature was curled up under her chin and snoring contentedly. Dawn had come and gone, the sun fully up and heating the cockpit, giving her the headache she always suffered from rising late.
She moved the Wadi to the back of her seat before sitting up and rubbing her eyes. The first thing she noticed was that she was starving. Secondly, that the nav chair was empty. She leaned forward and turned on the cargo cam, then grabbed the helmet behind her. When the vid screen came up, she saw Walter pulling the galley apart to cook breakfast.
“Morning,” she said into her helmet, greeting her mom.
“Morning, sweetheart. Are you feeling better?”
Molly adjusted the volume and pulled the visor shut to muffle her own voice.
“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t talk more last night. I was on empty.”
“Literally, from the sound of it. Sweetheart, before we do anything else, we need to look into this election place, find out who else has disappeared. This could—it could go back to one of the cases your father and I were working on.”
“Really? What would the elections have to do with fusion fuel?”
“Nothing, but when your father and I were stationed here, our main investigation kept getting sidetracked by a never-ending string of missing persons cases.”
“I remember you telling me that. Well, the other you. On Dakura.” Molly paused, trying to remember some things and forget others. “Do you think I just avoided becoming one of those missing people?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t an election year when we arrived, and yet some of the cases went back several years and were pretty steady. Maybe this is something different.”
“Maybe they preserve the blood,” Molly said. “They could steal it over time and then flood the polls with votes.”
“That’s what I don’t understand about what they did to you. The tally machines don’t work that way, otherwise donor banks would run dry every six years. The machines do skin conductance readings to make sure the voter is present, and they look for chemicals in the blood that have a very short shelf life, hormones and what-not.”
“Well, the boxes in that place were marked ‘Votes,’ and Walter said the building was some kind of election joint.”
“Which is how I would hide blood if I were stealing it,” Parsona said.
“Stealing it for what?” Molly asked, exasperated. “Why do you have to make everything more complicated?”
Her mom didn’t reply, and Molly regretted the outburst. She looked down at the Wadi, who had crawled into her lap and was looking up at her, a pink tongue spiraling in the air between them.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Molly said.
“It’s okay. I probably deserve worse.”
“No. You don’t.” Molly held the sides of her helmet and groaned. “This is just too much for me to handle, I think I… I need Cole, or somebody. Can we just go to hyperspace, find him and dad, just deal with all this other stuff later?”
“I think that’s a good idea, actually. We’ll talk about it after breakfast.” The cargo cam panned up toward the crew quarters, drawing Molly’s attention. “Walter’s cooking is waking the ship.”
Molly watched as two of the squatters emerged from their bunks. Her bunks, she corrected herself.
Molly flipped up her visor. “I’m gonna send Cat up here and have her put on Walter’s helmet. I haven’t told her about you, so break it however you like. Hopefully the two of you can figure out what to do next—I don’t think I can handle being in charge of this.”
“I need to talk to her anyway, find out how soon we can fill up with fusion fuel. Now, go drink plenty of juice, okay? I don’t want you doing anything for the next few days besides resting up and recharging.”
Molly mumbled a promise before popping off her helmet. She left it in the nav chair with the visor open and shooed the Wadi into what had become its favorite home. She crawled over the controls and exited the cockpit, entering a fog of tasty aromas.
“Good morning, guys.” She nodded warily to the two men, then squeezed Walter on the shoulder as he tended a skillet layered with popping meat.
Scottie tipped a non-existent hat at her. “You must’ve come in late. Sure left in a flash.” He crossed the cargo space toward the galley, and Molly saw he was wearing one of Cole’s favorite t-shirts, his bulk stretching it near to bursting. The sight of it on him undid everything the smell of breakfast was attempting with her tastebuds. It also made it easy to forget that these were the people she needed to associate with.
“I’m Scottie,” he said, holding out his hand toward Walter.
Walter shrugged and held up two cooking utensils, as if putting them down to shake would entail some exhausting ordeal. “Walter,” he mumbled back, the sizzle of frying meat almost hiding the annoyed hiss that came after.
“This is Urg,” Scottie said, patting the large Callite on the back. Molly recognized him as the near-mute from the day before. Nods were exchanged. She marveled at how close the Callite came to filling one of Edison’s flightsuits. Seeing these strangers in her crew’s clothing sent ripples up and down her flesh. A full day of loathing these men had built up some sort of venom within her. Being told that these were the people she’d been looking for wasn’t much of an antidote. She felt slightly nauseas from their presence—so much so, it took a while to notice their stench had disappeared.
“You guys figured the showers out?” she asked, rounding up mugs for everyone.
“Yeah,” Scottie said. “I really appreciate you letting us shack up here and get cleaned up. We’ve had… some real troubles the past week or so.”
“Well, you’re more than welcome to stay for one more night, but we need to work out a different bunk arrangement. You guys can double-up or someone can sleep out here. Oh, and once we top up with fuel, we’ll be moving on, so it’s best you start looking for something more permanent.”
Scottie glanced at Urg. They both accepted cups of instant coffee from Molly.
“Additives are in the fridge,” she told them. “I’m gonna get Cat up, but your other friend can sleep as long as he likes.” She headed across the cargo bay.
“Oh, Ryn’s not in there. He left early this morning to… take care of some things. Should be back by noon.”
Molly waved over her shoulder to let him know she’d heard, but continued to Walter’s room. She keyed the door open and turned the lights on dim. Cat was sitting up in the bunk with her legs crossed, staring at the door.
“Morning,” Molly said, wondering how long she’d been sitting like that.
“Morning. Everyone else up?”
“Yeah. Coffee’s the instant kind. Breakfast’ll be ready soon.”
Cat popped up and stepped toward her. Her hair was wet, as if she’d recently showered. She had on the clothes Molly had set out for her. In the dim light, her face looked flawless, or unscathed at least, a very far cry from how Molly had first seen her. She also looked small in a plain shirt and shorts. Her wiry muscles seemed lean with their definition hidden. Molly wouldn’t have given her a second glance in a crowd, even with the bright hair knotted back on her head.
“Hey,” Molly said, “before you do anything else, I need you to go to the cockpit and talk to someone.”
Cat lowered her brow to something between curious and wary. “Who?”
“There’s a helmet on the starboard rack. Just put it on, the mic is still live. And don’t be alarmed if the door shuts behind you, okay?”
Cat narrowed her eyes but nodded. She headed toward the cockpit while Molly checked in on the other rooms to make sure everything was intact. The engine room, especially.
When she got back to the cargo bay, a plate piled high with meat and eggs was waiting on her. She grabbed a few pieces of bread and took one of the empty crewseats, pulling out the table in the handrest. Everyone else had already dove in, filling the room with contented, smacking so
unds. Molly watched them eat, wondering why she felt so alone with so many people on the ship. She also marveled at how she could possibly feel anything other than ravenous.
She ate slowly, forcing everything down. She had to remember her promise to her mom and her pragmatic need for sustenance—her appetite simply wasn’t there anymore. Walter set a glass of local juice on her tray. She took a sip, then touched her arm around the bandaid, wincing at the bruised and sore feeling that had spread from the needle. She couldn’t tell if it had gotten worse overnight, or if it was getting better.
“You okay?” Scottie asked.
Molly glanced up. “Cat didn’t say anything about last night?”
“Only that attendance was light and she didn’t find many takers at the pub.”
Molly watched him take another large bite and chew voraciously. Beside him, Urg continued to cut his food into tiny pieces and eat them with careful, steady precision, chewing subtly before swallowing. Molly wondered why Cat hadn’t said anything about her ordeal—if it was a trust issue, or just a result of the late hour.
“What’s she doing in the cockpit?” Scottie asked.
Molly shrugged. “I hope she’s lining up a tank of fuel.” She stabbed blindly at a bite of food and watched Scottie and Urg glance at one another. “You wouldn’t know where I could find some, would you?”
Scottie took a bite of his toast and made a show of chewing, but he was obviously considering how best to answer.
“I might know someone,” he said around a mouthful of masticated bread. He swallowed. “I have to warn you, though, the price has gone up considerably.”
Molly looked over at Walter, who was following the conversation closely. “I can pay,” she said.
“I’d be surprised. It’s gone up a lot.” Scottie smiled and jabbed his fork in her direction. “I think we could work something out, though. Barter with something besides cash.”
Molly felt her throat constrict with disgust, even though she had no idea what he was talking about.
