by Hugh Howey
Anlyn cringed from the mixture of metaphors. She couldn’t understand what her father had seen in this man.
“And what have the Humans done? Despite numerous envoys who have assured them complete freedom in the rest of the galaxy, they demand to know what lies in our corner. They attack, and their reason for attacking again is that we have defended ourselves. Upheld one of our Virtues.
“I respect our forgiving nature. I do not call for us to live in the full sunlight of war, but neither do I think we should move to the dark and allow ourselves to freeze due to the coldness of our compassion.
“We are a race born on the edge, squeezed on either side by two different dangers, and that is where we find ourselves today. Perhaps that is why we have grown too comfortable with the fire of Humans on the one side and the black hole in space that we defend on the other.
“The vote has always been one of holding this line with the Humans or of pushing out to extinguish them. I find this decision to be untenable. There is an alternative that has been discussed much in the past but soundly rejected—even by myself.”
He paused and scanned the crowd, lifting his arms and splaying his stolen tunics for effect. “We should tell the Humans about the Bern threat,” he said. “We should let them look amongst themselves for signs of infiltration. The vote I submit to the Circle today is this: either we tell the Humans about the Great Rift, and the nature of the Bern Empire, or we whittle their numbers down until the Bern can no longer hide among them.”
“Second,” cried Yur.
The Drenard beside him nodded. “Third,” he said.
Anlyn froze, disbelieving. Five more Counselors cast their votes, putting the decision—if such a biased dichotomy could even be considered a “decision”—before the Circle.
Bodi had just succeeded in changing the nature of the vote. No longer would it be between war and peace; rather, it would be between a massacre they controlled or a rebellion they fomented.
Anlyn reached over and groped for Edison’s hand, her plan unraveling before her eyes. The decision would now come before the end of the day.
And either way, it would spell the end of the Humans.
••••
“They’re killing us to protect us? That’s crap, Mom. What are they really hiding?”
“Sweetheart, the universe is bigger than you know—”
“No more riddles, Mom. And you have seven minutes before I go look for Cole.”
“No riddles, just facts.”
It was eerie for Molly to hear an artificial voice fighting to remain calm, but that’s what her mother seemed to be doing.
“Humans have had a hard time accepting changes in scope,” Parsona said. “First, realizing the Earth was round, then that the stars are more suns, finally that the nebulae were entire galaxies. In many ways, being the dominant technological race in our galaxy has been a detriment to our growth, not the boon that we are—”
“Six minutes, Mom, and you still haven’t told me anything.”
“Our entire galaxy is at risk, Mollie. And other galaxies. All at risk of being invaded and completely taken over by a force of evil you can’t comprehend. They are known to many other races, the Drenards included, as the Bern. They control most of the universe, perhaps all except the Local Group. For many years, they’ve been trying to invade and add us to their territory. The Drenards guard the hole in the Milky Way through which the Bern have been trying to enter—”
“Then why not just tell us this? Why keep it a secret?”
“Because the truth is, and this is something I shouldn’t tell you: the Bern look a lot like humans. Or vice versa. We’re almost identical to them. Now, can you imagine the witch hunt if this were common knowledge? It would tear us apart quicker than the Drenards could. Besides, there’s a good chance the Navy is riddled with them, that the Navy is being run by people without our best interests—”
“Byrne,” Molly muttered to herself, the pieces falling in place.
“Mollie. Where have you heard that name? Tell me this instant.”
“He was on Dakura. He was in your—in the other Parsona’s head. He came for me, Mom. Had me tied up in his ship…”
The Wadi flicked out her tongue, jumped from the dresser to the bunk, and ran up to Molly’s chest.
“That’s why we were fleeing Dakura, why we had that other ship airlocked to you. I’m sorry, but there wasn’t any time to tell you—”
“Where is he now?” Parsona asked.
“Was he a Bern?” Molly thought about him standing in the hangar, smiling in the vacuum of space.
“Yes, one of the very worst kind. Do you know where he is? Did he talk to—did he get a chance to talk to the other Parsona?”
“Yeah. Oh, Mom, they had me strapped to a dentist chair, there was nothing I could—”
“It’s okay. It’s fine. We need to get to Lok, sweetheart.”
“Yeah. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m reading too much into those bands. Cole’s probably gonna get there before me and start to worry.”
Molly stopped petting the Wadi and glanced at the clock by her bed.
“Drenards,” she said. “We shoulda jumped out of here two minutes ago.”
She threw the pillow aside and ran toward the cockpit.
••••
Anlyn sank in her seat as Lord Vahi cast his vote for war. She and Edison hadn’t voted yet, and it wouldn’t even matter. Not that there had been a viable option, but her choice to abstain would have meant something different before the subject was already decided. Any formal complaint would now be registered as indecision.
The cooing in the crowd grew, nearly drowning out Lord Yesher’s vote. Several Counselors slapped the table for order. The Counterclockwise door flung open, and several spectators from the balcony spilled out to relay the news. Others took this as a sign that the proceedings were over and began pushing their way to the aisles.
They were hoping to get out before a throng formed.
But they just became the throng.
Two more Counselors cast a vote for Bodi, becoming part of another mob, one protecting its political legacy by moving with the crowd. The member beside Edison voted the same and had the audacity to stand, preparing to race out after votes from the least senior members. The entire Pinnacle thrummed in anticipation. Males felt an urge to return home to families and prepare for the next step, the step the Circle had voted for:
War.
Edison growled “Abstain,” but nobody heard. Only the Keeper of Time seemed to notice, moving the Light of Turn to Anlyn.
She stared at the circle of sunlight on the marble before her. Her peripheral vision vibrated with movement. The balcony doors opened and shut like organ valves, pumping hysteria into the streets and throughout the city. The noise had become a persistent roar, a growling fervor.
“Minority Position,” Anlyn said to herself.
Louder: “Minority Position.”
The Keeper of Time mistook her moving lips and ushered the Light of Turn onward, ending her chance to speak.
Anlyn watched the spot move away, a shock of resignation coursing through her. She rebelled against it. Wouldn’t stand for it. She stood up in her chair, jumped to the top of the table, and grabbed Edison’s lance. Fumbling with the switches, she wished she’d paid more attention to his demonstration. Several Counselors scrambled for her, ready to pull her down. Edison pushed them back as several Drenards in blue scrambled down the aisles, wading through the frantic crowd.
“I invoke Minority Position!” Anlyn yelled, as loud as she could. She rested the butt of the large lance on the table, ducked her head, and pulled the trigger.
The tip of the lance erupted in a shower of light. Dozens of hues pulsed out in a spray of pyrotechnics, the charged plasma deflected by prismatic filters into harmless sparks of fire. The blossom radiated upward, arcing to the ceiling, bouncing off and exploding into even smaller slivers of flame.
Anlyn covered her
head to protect it from the shower and squeezed the trigger all the way. The lance hummed, casting out Edison’s favorite note at 349.229 hertz. It was “F” below middle C. The precise sound wave that creates supernovas, vibrating out from the core of collapsing stars and throwing entire solar systems apart.
It was the note of nebulas. The sound of destruction and creation.
Those that remained in the Pinnacle froze, including the Counselors and the guards. They shielded their eyes, but couldn’t turn away. Thousands of tiny bones, deep in hearing canals, resonated with the pure note, that lone chord of the cosmos.
Anlyn released the trigger and stood upright in the remnants of the plasma falling to the floor.
“I invoke Minority Position,” she said, loud and confident. “I vote for telling the humans about the Bern threat, and I demand to give voice to the dissenters.”
She looked down at Edison, needing another dissenter, an abstainer to change his vote.
“I second,” he said.
The few that had not voted for war early on threw in their assent. The Keeper of Time, gathering his wits from the control booth, returned the Light of Turn to Anlyn.
The Light of Speak, meanwhile, stood empty in the center of the Circle. Throughout the beam, a shower of fine ash could be seen descending from the ceiling. The spectators that had not yet fled into the Apex stopped. They watched Anlyn.
And waited.
35
It was nighttime on the frontier side of Lok. Molly brought her ship down through the atmosphere, descending toward the darkness of her abandoned, childhood village. She leaned forward to get a better visual through the carboglass, disturbing the Wadi in her lap. It flicked its tail, claws skittering on the polished plate that moments ago had held Molly’s leftover lasagna.
SEE?_ Her mother typed.
Molly checked the SADAR; a ship the size of a Firehawk sat right outside the commons. Cole had beaten her there. She didn’t take her hands off the flight controls to respond to her mother, but she thought about the red band in her chest pocket, considered popping off her helmet to try it out, to see if she could contact him. Instead, she focused on a soft arrival, pointing her thrusters away from the other ship and using the old commons as a landing pad.
Parsona settled to the dew-covered grass. Her belly opened, the cargo hatch lowering to the soft soil.
Molly popped her helmet off and set it on the rack. “Don’t touch anything,” she told Walter. “I’ll be right back.” She stroked the Wadi on the head and moved the creature from her lap to the back of the chair. Peering into her water bowl, she made sure it was topped up, then headed through the bowels of her ship and out into the crisp night.
Byrne had his hands on her immediately.
Molly tried to scream, but cold, bony fingers covered her mouth. She struggled against his arms, but they were unnaturally strong; they pinned her against his body in a vise-like grip, her feet dangling in the air. The flashlight fell from her hands and banged against the cargo ramp; it rolled into the grass, its beam snuffed out by the unkempt length of the dry blades.
Thin lips came down to her ear, brushing against them.
“You’ve been expected,” Byrne whispered, his words close, yet no hint of breath puffed against her cheek. Molly reached back to claw at his face, but he just tucked her under one arm as he keyed the cargo door closed. When the ramp sealed, he struck the control panel with his bare fist, demolishing it completely and denting the hull around it.
Molly kicked her captor physically and herself mentally. She berated herself for not keeping her helmet on so she could warn her mom.
She struggled to take in a breath of air—the way she was being carried forced her to exert energy just to stabilize her body. Her legs hung awkwardly, her spine bent and jolted with pain from each of Byrne’s steps. Even the red band added to her torment, the small lump jabbing into her ribs through her flightsuit pocket. She twisted around and grabbed Byrne’s arm to support her weight—it was like clutching a solid-steel rod.
Just when she thought she’d pass out from the exertion and inability to breathe, Byrne threw her down in a patch of dirt. The area around her glowed in the soft light of a nearby work lamp, and something hummed softly in the distance.
Molly tried to launch herself up, but Byrne grabbed her again and pushed her back to the ground. His fingers dug between the muscles in her neck, squeezing nerves that shot numbness into her arms. The underlying pain made her mouth feel like it was full of metal as her lungs continued to scream for air.
“You seem to have a problem keeping still, don’t you, Mollie Fyde?”
Byrne’s other hand went to her thigh, up near her hip. Fingers as hard and thin as screwdrivers dug deep at her hip socket, grinding against the bone. Molly had never felt such pain before. It wasn’t something she could scream about—that would have required some degree of motor control. Instead, her jaw fell open in shock, her eyes wide with fear. Even the leg he wasn’t gripping vibrated with pain, both flight boots thumping the packed soil. It was an agony on the verge of nothingness, a numbness that could be felt.
Her stomach lurched, then bunched up in knots.
Molly turned her head to the side and threw up her lasagna. She spat, her eyes rolling up in the back of her head as she tried to will herself unconscious. She dreamed of the comforting blackness that usually overtook her in moments of raw shock.
But Byrne’s iron grip held her just over the precipice of consciousness. Her legs continued to tremble uncontrollably from the pain.
When he finally let go, there was nothing Molly could do but relish the feeling of not being tortured. She tried to wipe her chin, but her arm flopped, limp and useless. Byrne remained crouched beside her, looking at her like a specimen of some sort.
“The next time you try and stand up, I’m going to do something very bad to you. Nod if you understand.”
Molly nodded. Once. It was all she could muster. Just moving her eyeballs around to take in her surroundings felt like an accomplishment. She and Byrne were in a small plot of land; tall weeds grew up next to a low brick wall. There was a fireplace at the far edge of the pool of light, a chimney rising from it and up into the black Lokian night. It was the ruined foundation of an old building, all the wood long since ground to dust, carried off by the wind.
Byrne grinned. “Recognize the place?” he asked.
Molly tried to shake her head, but only her eyes moved, rolling back and forth.
“No? You should. We had tea in this very room back on Dakura. This is the little hell your mother chose for her eternity.” He laughed. “Eternity! She didn’t last another twenty years, thanks to you.”
“Din’t kill ’er,” Molly slurred.
“Even worse. You had one of your cronies do it, didn’t you? Just like Lucin. Tell me, where are you getting your information? I know it isn’t from your father. And there’s not an inch of that ship I haven’t inspected. So I’m curious—how did you know to go to Dakura, and just what do you know about this place?”
A weak smile was all she could pull off. Byrne’s hand came to her knee and started sliding up her thigh. Molly could feel the pain, like a memory, even though his fingers hadn’t returned to the right spot yet. Her leg went numb in anticipation and she tried to slide her pelvis out of the way—but it didn’t budge.
••••
“WALTER?”
His name boomed through Parsona, scaring the hell out of him. He froze, then quickly slid Cole’s things from the top of the human’s dresser and back into the drawer. He pushed it closed as quietly as he could and peeked out the door—up, then down the hallway.
“Hello?”
It may have been his imagination, but he thought the camera in the corner of the cargo bay moved slightly. “Hello?” he asked again. “Where are you?”
The voice boomed down the length of the ship:
“COME TO THE COCKPIT.”
Walter had the sudden urge to do the ver
y opposite. He looked the other way, to the laz, then back up the shaft of the ship. The Wadi’s head peeked around the corner from the back of Molly’s seat.
Its tongue flicked out.
“What if I don’t wanna?!” he yelled to the Wadi.
The creature’s head pulled back.
Walter crept up through the cargo bay; he glanced at the portholes, which showed nothing but pitch black outside. He wondered if he was about to get in trouble for looting Cole’s room. He cautiously entered the cockpit, which hadn’t changed since he left it. The Wadi flicked her tongue out at Walter, tasting the air.
“You have a very loud voicse,” he told the Wadi.
The voice boomed in response, filling the cockpit: “HIT THE BUTTON MARKED ‘MIC’ ON THE RADIO. IT’S THE PANEL BESIDE THE LOUD HAILER, AND RIGHT NEXT TO—”
Walter flicked it before the voice could complete the sentence. “I know where the radio iss,” he hissed.
“There you are,” the lady said, in a more sensible volume. “I need your help.”
“Sssure you do. But who are you?”
“Can you adjust the squelch?” the voice asked. “I’m getting quite a hiss from the cockpit mic.”
Walter leaned across the controls between the two seats, his face just a foot from the radio. “That’ss jussst how I sspeak,” he said, showering the dash with saliva.
“Oh, my apologies. Listen, I’m seeing a hyperdrive signature ahead of us—I mean ahead of you—that I don’t like. I need you to run some tests for—”
“Who are you?” Walter interrupted. He shooed the Wadi from Molly’s seat and plopped down in the captain’s chair.
“I’m, uh… a friend of Mollie’s. I—well, I was supposed to meet you guys here, but the door’s stuck. The cargo ramp. Can you check it for me?”
“Are you outside?” Walter spun in his chair and peeked through the porthole. The planet was darker than space, but a pale glow could be seen directly ahead of the ship.
“I was. I’m radioing from my ship. Can you check the door for me? I think something’s wrong with it.”