by Hugh Howey
“I agree with the tactical assessment, but I don’t see how my staying is much help. I don’t see how any of us can stop this.”
“You might be right, but I feel compelled to try something. And perhaps I’m wrong to see you and your ship as two of our greatest assets.” Saunders looked past her at the scattered campfires. “All I need to do now is figure out how to destroy a fleet that made mincemeat out of mine and do it with a hundred staff members that are closer to retirement than their last active combat duty.”
Molly laughed. “Now you’re talking crazy.”
“Hell, isn’t this the kind of crap you lived for in the simulators?”
“I guess so,” Molly said. “But none of that was real.”
“Yeah?” Saunders’s face drooped, sadness and fatigue pulling down on it as his false humor rested for a moment. “Well, nothing about this situation feels real, either.”
••••
Molly walked Saunders back to his group, then wandered toward Parsona, stopping along the way to help a group string a tarp between some trees. She recognized the faded blue plastic—it had been folded up in a corner of the engine room as long ago as Palan. The string was also hers, and the small group of survivors were quick to thank her for everything she’d done. She nodded politely in response to their effusive gratitude and made her way toward the ship.
The brief interaction put her in a somber mood as she thought about leaving those people to rush off to hyperspace. In the back of her mind, she toyed with crazy schemes for taking down the Bern. It was her favorite Academy pastime, dreaming an end to war. Suddenly, however, it seemed more real: the fighting and being in a position to do something about it. But what?
She expected her friends would be aboard the ship, getting some well-deserved rest. Instead, she found them around a small fire they’d built under Parsona’s starboard wing.
“Why aren’t you guys inside?” she asked. She crouched down by the fire and extended her hands toward it.
“Walter said we should stay out here tonight, just so everything feels fair.”
Molly shot him a look. His face was aglow, his metallic-looking skin reflecting the firelight.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, shrugging.
His look didn’t inspire much confidence in Molly. “You had better not be up to anything,” she told him.
“I’m not! I sswear.”
Molly held his gaze a moment longer, her eyes narrowed for effect.
“Is the Admiral okay?” Cat asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I think he just had a dizzy spell earlier.” Molly rubbed her hands together. “Now he’s putting a lot of pressure on me to stick around and help them fight the Bern.”
“It’s a lost cause,” Scottie said.
“How d’ya know it’s lost?” Cat asked.
“Besides the fact they knocked a StarCarrier out of orbit? How about the rumors the Drenards are invading the rest of the Milky Way?”
“Hogwash.” Cat said.
“He’s right about the Drenards,” Molly said. “Saunders confirmed it.” She looked at Walter. “That means Anlyn’s probably in trouble, or at the very least that her political efforts didn’t go very well.”
Walter shrugged. He poked at the fire with a stick, sending up a spiral of twirling sparks.
Molly turned to Scottie. “What about that fuel we discussed? I’m still willing to pay double.”
Scottie frowned. “I can get my hands on some, but I’d prefer to work out the use of your ship, just for a day or two—”
“We already discussed this.”
Scottie stared into the fire. “I’ll see what I can do. How much do you need?”
“A full tank.”
Scottie laughed. He stopped and looked around at the others, seemingly amazed that nobody had joined him. “You serious?”
Molly nodded.
“But you already have a quarter tank in her. And yeah, I looked. It’s what I do.”
“It’s Navy issue,” Cat told him.
“Oh.” He glanced over at Molly. “Oh! You’re not looking to move something hot, you’re thinking hyperspace!”
“Keep your voice down,” Cat told him.
“You thinking that’s the safest place to be right now, or something? How’s that more important than getting my friends to safety?”
Molly shook her head. “I’ve got people there that need me.”
“You’ve got people here that need what you’ve got even more. Do you—” he turned to Cat. “Does she even know what that drive’ll do?”
Cat shrugged.
Scottie jabbed a thumb back at Parsona’s hull. “Do you know what you’ve got in there?”
“I’m starting to wonder,” Molly said.
Cat leaned back from the fire and rested on her elbows. She scanned the clearing for any Navy folk, then looked over to Scottie. “I can vouch for her,” she said. “Consider her a part of the Underground if you have to.”
Scottie stood up and walked around the fire and sat down beside Molly. He leaned his head over and reached his hands out toward the fire, animating with them while he talked. “Friend of mine built it,” he said. “Ronnie Ryke. We called him Doctor Ryke, even though he never even finished grade school. Still, smartest damn feller you ever knew. Built the thing in his garage, tinkering with the very laws of physics.”
“It was the fuel,” Cat inserted.
He held out a palm to quiet her, but nodded. “Right, see I was—well, skimming some fuel from my boss, trying to make some ends meet, and I owed Ronnie for some work. He had me pay him in fuze, doing test tube stuff with it. I thought he was growing his own critters, but he weren’t interested in the biology—”
“Critters?” Molly asked.
“Creatures. Little organisms.” Scottie scrunched up his face. “Didn’t your dad tell you what fuze is made of?”
“I was six years old, Scottie. Just tell me already!”
Cat laughed and Walter looked up from his storm of sparks, seemingly paying attention.
Scottie leaned uncomfortably close. “It’s like a colony of little cells, okay? And you know how a nadiwok sees in infrared? And how a cloud viper sees with ultrasound?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, fuze can see hyperspace. Or through hyperspace, anyway.” He looked over at Cat, who was leaning back, smiling. “Am I explaining it right?”
“You’re doing fine.”
“You’re telling me that fusion fuel is alive?” Molly asked.
“Well, yeah. And Ronnie got to messing with his own hyperdrives. He figured the fuze market was too competitive, but nobody was building and selling hyperdrives on the down-low, see? And he was smart about it. Figured out why nobody else could duplicate what the Navy built. He even had some ideas about who had actually built the first drives. The key had something to do with how the Navy treated their fuze. Their method shocks it into action, killing some in the process, which is why the needle goes down. But Ryke figured out how to build one that got around that. His drive coaxed the critters where he wanted them to go, rather than jolt them to death.”
“Yeah, but my drive runs empty just like any other.”
Scottie shook his head. “Faster than any other. That’s the thing, it’s inefficient to do it Ronnie’s way. Setting the damn things free costs you more than killing ’em, which is probably why the Navy never looked into alternatives.”
“So he couldn’t sell the drives because it cost too much to fuel them?”
“Hell, no! The people that’d be buying these drives wouldn’t have cared about ten percent losses. They woulda snatched ’em up quicker’n he coulda built ’em! We had a mighty row over that. Nearly came to blows, Ronnie and me. Egghead redneck was sitting on a goldmine, but all he’d do was shake his head!”
“Volume,” Cat said, waving him down.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “See, Ronnie had what he called himself an
ethical DIE-lemma. He did some tests with his first drive—”
“Only drive,” Cat said.
“Same damn thing!” He tapped Molly on the knee. “Sorry about that—”
“Let’s get to the point,” she said, as nicely as she could.
“I’m at it,” he said. “Ronnie did his first tests and found something weird. He could move objects across the room! Didn’t matter that there was a planet beneath his feet or one at arrival, he could thread objects to any place at all, gravity be damned. He could jump you from here to a barstool in Bekkie if you like! No more Lagrange points, no more worrying about how far away you’re going.”
Molly looked to the fire and rubbed a hand through her hair. Walter was gazing at her over the flames, his face practically alight.
“Darrin,” Molly whispered to herself.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No, I do,” Molly met his gaze. “The ship—my ship—did something funny once. I never could figure it out. We jumped into the middle of an asteroid field with no deflection. I thought maybe the matter around us had canceled each other out, but I did some calculations later and it was impossible.”
“Yeah, she’s a special ship, what with Ronnie’s drive in there. I figured you knew. I was wondering why you didn’t jump us out of the Carrier this morning. Thought maybe you were scared to show your hand, or something, what with the blackcoats on board.”
Molly shook her head. “No, I would have, had I known. I would have—” She rested her face in her palms as the long-gone potential to avert so many catastrophes swirled together in her mind. “I would have done a lot of things different!” she said, her voice muffled by her hands, her body on the verge of crying.
Scottie put his arm around her; she felt Cat scoot to her other side.
“Don’t do that,” Cat said. “Don’t relive the past.”
“This was Ryke’s ethical thingy,” Scottie told her. “Boy broke down with all he could do. Good and bad. Bombs and what-not.”
Molly looked up into the fire, the full implications of such a drive sinking in. The possibilities seemed endless. She thought about the ability to move bombs wherever you wanted them, a fantasy of so many radical groups. She thought about being able to move people—assassins and thieves—with complete reliability. It finally dawned on her what Scottie and the Callites wanted to use the drive for: interplanetary border crossings, getting a people to safety. She could imagine how many groups would kill for such a device, or trade a planet for one.
The dread of having such a thing in her ship made her stomach sink. More of her selfish horrors hit her again. They could’ve jumped straight out of Glemot, no need for the ruse that ended an entire people. They could’ve jumped straight back to Earth at any time during their journey home! They could’ve jumped anywhere. Maybe Lucin had known about the hyperdrive. Was that possible? Could her mom have not been the thing he was looking for?
“You okay?” Cat asked.
“How did he do it?” Molly asked. “How did this Ryke guy live with such knowledge?”
“Not well, let me tell you.” Scottie shook his head. “He had a breakdown. Then, when he pulled himself together, he started drawing up these schemes to end the war. Galactic peace stuff. Without asking my advice, he started sending stuff to Drenard. Notes and messages. Straight-ticket. Plopped ’em down on the planet, like letters asking them to stop shooting.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hell, no. Wish I were. He invited all sorts of trouble out here. Now this was a dozen years ago or so, back when the planet was quiet.”
Cat laughed. “It’s still pretty quiet, Scottie.”
He shot her a look. “You know what I mean.”
“What happened next?” Molly asked. Bringing the Drenards into the story had her eager to hear more. She leaned close to the fire, wrapping her arms around her knees. She noticed Walter doing the same on the other side of the fire; the stick he was using to scatter embers had fallen still, and he seemed to have become very interested in the discussion.
“First thing the Drenards did was start tracing the jump signatures back here, and they realized they had a problem. Military dudes must’ve gone ballistic. Can you imagine? I bet they were expecting nukes at any minute. Messages were popping out of hyperspace that said, ‘Stop shooting.’ Hell, I would’ve read the ‘or else,’ too!”
Scottie blew in his hands and rubbed them together. “That’s when they sent their envoy. All the way to cosmopolitan Lok. And that’s how the Drenard Underground formed.”
“Just like that?”
“You want the long version?”
She did, but other things seemed more important. She leaned back and looked at the underside of Parsona’s wing. There was a black smudge of soot above her where the smoke was bouncing off and trailing around the sides. She pictured the fleet in orbit beyond the wing, like a constellation of stars, twinkling.
“I’m impressed your friend could make the decisions he made,” Molly said.
Scottie grunted. “Flankin’ goldmine,” he said.
A hush fell over the campfire. Walter threw his stick into the fire and excused himself; he padded up the ramp and into Parsona to use the bathroom.
After a moment of silence, Scottie began explaining more. He went over the general idea of rifts, how Ryke had wrangled with Drenardian politicians for permission to permanently close all connections with the rest of the universe. He even hinted at the battle that had stranded much of the Underground in hyperspace, which pretty much caught Molly up to the present.
But she was only half listening. Her thoughts kept flickering like an open flame, jumping and popping and sparking with possibilities. She thought about all the schemes she might bounce off Cole if he were there with her. And most of all, she thought about how close she was to going off in search of him, how that void in her chest might soon be filled. She gazed into the fire—that lambent dance of orange and white plasma—and dreamed of his arms around her one more time.
It would be worth anything for that, she decided. She knew it was selfish, but the longing was too great to overcome. And as insane as it sounded, even to herself, she knew it would be worth it to hold him and be held by him, even if it was just one final time. Even if it was the very last thing she would ever do.
To feel whole again, for a brief moment, was all she wanted.
Even if the galaxy was crumbling to pieces around her.
43
The man in the hyperskimmer brought his arms down in a wide arc, slashing toward Cole with his invisible blade. Inside the cockpit, Cole flinched away from the blow, but as soon as the figure completed the motion, he realized it hadn’t been meant for him. His skimmer lurched to the side as the other craft pulled away, both docking arms neatly parted in one perfect swipe.
Cole cursed and grabbed the control stick. He gave the accelerator a shove and looked to the side. The man with the buckblade grinned through the rain as he slumped back in his seat, the canopy closing around him.
Without thinking it through too clearly, Cole thumbed his own canopy open. He ground his teeth together, consumed with the primal rage any pilot feels after their craft has been dealt a blow. The glass came back, and the horizontal rain pelted him as it invaded the interior of his craft. Cole didn’t care. Pulling his feet up under himself, he steered with the control stick and raced over toward the other skimmer as it tried to peel away.
Cole grimaced through the stinging rain. He watched the bemused smugness fade from the passenger’s face as he approached at ramming speed. The look was transformed into one of shock as the two skimmers collided, sending Cole through the air and onto the deck just forward of their canopy.
Were it not for the nonskid on the deck, Cole probably would’ve bounced and slid right across the craft and off the other side. Instead, he managed to spread himself out and hold on. He waited for the skimmer to begin swerving in an attempt to buck him off, but it never happened. I
nstead, the canopy started peeling back once more, and the passenger leaned forward, that dangerous cylinder reappearing in his hands.
Cole scrambled toward the front of the skimmer, away from the cockpit. The two saboteurs yelled back and forth inside the craft. The driver jabbed a finger toward Cole, then pointed to himself. The passenger waved him off and crawled out of the cockpit and onto the flat deck. They seemed to be arguing over who got the privilege of killing him.
The wounded skimmer got back up to speed just as Cole began to run out of room at the pointed end of the triangular craft. As they accelerated, solid walls of spray rose up to either side of him from the forward foil. Cole scooted back until he could glance down at the watery land racing by under the nose of the ship. He returned his focus to the man with the buckblade, who was inching ever closer, one hand on the deck to steady himself, the other one probing the air ahead with the invisible sword.
Cole crept back even further to stay away from the deadly blade. As he ran out of decking, he reached out and grasped one of the stabilizing arms bracing the hydrofoil, his grip on the tubular metal slick with spitting water.
His quarry moved closer, waving his monofilament weapon back and forth as if trying to gauge the distance, hoping to kill or chase off Cole without putting himself at risk. Cole thought about jumping, about throwing himself through the wall of water to the side and bracing for a rough landing. Someone from HQ would find him as surely as they had through several feet of snow. But then, the skimmer would make it to the Luddite camp with detailed knowledge of the upcoming raid. His raid. And Cole couldn’t allow that.
The sword swished through the air closer and closer with each swipe, near enough now to hear it over the pounding rain. It made a wisping noise, almost as if slicing the airborne drops of water in two. Cole looked past the waving arm and saw the mad, determined sneer below the man’s goggles. He gripped the hydrofoil even tighter and leaned back, out over the nose of the ship, his head just inches from the wall of shooting spray. And suddenly—he felt the metal in his hand giving way like a squeezed sponge.
