Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  28

  Edison grunted and stood up from another of the Bern computers. “Complete data destruction,” he said. “I hypothesize demagnetization.”

  Anlyn frowned and stepped close to the control station’s carboglass window. Looking out, she could see their borrowed Bern ship locked to the end of the long coupling corridor. After the first few computers were found perfectly clean, she had assumed they all would be. Edison, bless him, thought the sampling size was “statistically insignificant,” and had insisted they check several more.

  “Are you satisfied?” she asked, smiling at his reflection in the glass.

  “They scuttled their endeavor completely,” he said.

  Anlyn nodded. “Which still leaves us wondering if they gave up or just changed tactics.”

  “I disagree.”

  Anlyn turned to give him her full attention. Edison spoke while removing the battery and power inverter he’d been using to temporarily juice up the computers. “The Bern abstained from fleeing this structure in haste, nor did they sulk off in defeat. They methodically scrubbed everything.” Edison aimed a claw at a patch of the rubberized decking. “Impressions there and there indicate removed equipment containing much mass. Equipment repurposed elsewhere.”

  “Yeah, but where? And why leave this place unguarded?”

  Edison gestured beyond Anlyn. “Visualize. These structures are devoid of defenses. No impediments to movement, no blockades, all open vectors of sight, all engineered for offense, a launching pad for unbridled attack.”

  Anlyn frowned. “With no worry of reprisal?” she asked.

  Edison shook his head. “Without Drenardian fear,” he said. “More parallel to a Glemot’s clinical precision. You must cogitate as a Bern.”

  Anlyn gazed back out the window, imagining the way she would set things up if she were expecting an attack. Edison was right. Her side of the rift was purely defensive, and she couldn’t help but think that way. For generations, her people had held the lines, learning how to build trenches that never budged. This side was all seek-and-destroy.

  “It still doesn’t make sense to leave in such a hurry,” she said. “You think they just jumped into a star because it gave them a way around our barrier? Then why didn’t we hear about them from Bishar? Surely if an invasion had begun he’d have been notified by the Circle.”

  “You’ve stated the exact quandary I’ve been pondering.”

  Edison came over and rested a hand on Anlyn’s shoulder. “What becomes of interstellar craft that hyperjump into preexisting mass?”

  Anlyn shrugged and lifted her empty hands, palm up. “They disappear?”

  “Precisely, but to what location?”

  “Nobody knows—they never come back.”

  “Include this variable: assume the Bern determined a reliable method for returning.”

  “Returning from where?”

  “Hyperspace.”

  Anlyn frowned. “Hyperspace isn’t a place, though, is it? It’s just a made-up name. An idea.”

  “That is one possibility, statistically likely, perhaps. However, something interconnects point A to all possible point C’s. Travel requires existence. Movement must be analog, not digital. Objects occupy all states between.”

  Anlyn scrunched up her face, trying to follow along. “The point B’s, you mean?”

  “Correct. It’s not theoretically impossible that myriad such points constitute a physical place hyperjumpers travel through. If that supposition is correct, one logical conclusion could also explain—”

  “What happens to bad navigators,” Anlyn finished for him. “So, if you accidentally jump into another object, you get inside hyperspace and you can’t come out. Like something is blocking your way.”

  “Theoretically,” Edison said.

  “Okay, so you’re stuck somewhere. Won’t your oxygen run out?”

  “Probably. Perhaps hyperspace consists of a junkyard of failed navigational attempts, derelict ships drifting throughout a large void similar to the vacuum of space but without the stars. Survivors could temporarily resort to looting, taking by force oxygen and spares from recent arrivals—”

  Anlyn laughed. “Is this a real theory, or an idea for a holovid? Sounds to me like wishful thinking on your part.”

  “Incorrect. I’m being scientifically rational—”

  “I can totally see you as a hyperspace pirate,” Anlyn said, squeezing his arm. “You’d be ferocious, and have the best ship with all these spare parts cobbled together. And a peg-leg!”

  Edison flashed his teeth. “Humorous visual, but I am being unbiased and logical. Dwell on the theory and compare it to our observations. The Bern deduced something new about hyperspace, found a primal door that opens all others. Is that not what hyperspace is?”

  “Nobody knows what hyperspace is,” Anlyn said.

  “We know some. We know one can travel extreme distances through-out our galaxy. If it connects all that space, it logically follows it could connect even more. Perhaps we heard nothing of an invasion because the Bern are preparing their attack from within hyperspace. Perhaps they’re building structures similar to this one. Perhaps, when they attack, it’ll be from every possible vector at once—”

  Edison’s eyes flashed, his fur bristling with all the signs Anlyn had come to recognize as him having an idea.

  “That explains the most confounding variable! They do not calculate it necessary to be here because they can return at any time of their choosing. Instantaneously. Setting up in hyperspace is synonymous with setting up everywhere. They are here, by all practical military measures. More crucially, their raid could target Bishar and the Great Rift from hyperspace with less effort than from these obsolete stations. Perhaps—”

  “These are a lot of ‘perhaps,’ coming from you.”

  “Perhaps,” Edison said, smiling. “And perhaps we should forget the prophecy and our previously stated mission of peace. Transmitting word back to the Circle becomes direr, or ascertaining the Bern fleet’s location and effecting an ambush before they diverge along too many vectors to defend.”

  “I don’t know,” Anlyn said. She looked out the glass, mulling it over. In the distance, the armored wall of the Great Rift could be seen, the gold glimmering like a nearby star. It felt strange to see an object residing in her own galaxy while her home was so impossibly distant and inaccessible.

  She looked at the foreign design of the ship they had become stranded in. Massive and black, with menacing barrels and rocket pods, its fearsome demeanor hid its toothless condition. She looked down the hull at the strange squiggles adorning it.

  “What’s its name?” she asked Edison.

  “Increase specificity.”

  “The ship,” she said, pointing. “What’s it called?”

  Edison gazed out with her. “The Exponent,” he said.

  “The Exponent,” she repeated. “How coincidental is that?”

  “I believe ‘ironical’ is the correct term. Exponent is a mathematical notation for enormous numbers, and we are but two. It also pertains to rapid growth, and barring advances in xenobiology, such is statistically unlikely for us.”

  Anlyn smiled and shook her head. “That’s what I love about English. So many words have multiple meanings, the reader ends up injecting some of their own. Like the Bern Prophecy, for instance.”

  Edison grunted. “That’s what I loathe about the language. English can be imprecise when wielded improperly. It leads to conversational derailments such as this.”

  “I don’t see a derailment—I see a detour. And where you see a mathematical notation, I see a deeper meaning, a coincidence that’s hard to ignore.” Anlyn turned and faced her love. “Exponent can also mean a person who brings forth a new or great idea. Like maybe the one you just had about hyperspace.”

  Edison frowned down at her. She leaned close and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his tunic. “I think we need to test your theory, and that scares m
e,” she said.

  Edison lightly stroked her back with his massive paws. They both looked to the side, out through the glass to the quiet cosmos beyond.

  “I’m unable to deduce a reason for your frightened state,” Edison said. He smiled at Anlyn’s reflection. “Calculate the statistical likelihood of my incorrectness.”

  29

  “Hello? Son, can you hear me?”

  Cole cracked his eyes. There were no goggles, no bright, searing light from everywhere, just the soft warmth of artificial bulbs. Two men leaned over him. One of them he recognized but couldn’t place. He had short hair and a generic-looking face. Very generic, like Cole had seen a hundred people who looked just like him.

  The other man seemed slightly familiar as well. Cole blinked and attempted to bring them into focus. The second figure had wavy brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard, both laced with gray. Cole felt he should know their names.

  “Can you hear me?” the man with the beard asked.

  Cole nodded.

  He looked around and saw the same room from his last dream: beds and curtains and white walls.

  “Can you move your arm?”

  Cole watched the lips move, forming the words. It all seemed to be happening at a normal pace. Very un-dream-like. He smiled up at the men.

  “Your arm, son, can you move it?”

  Cole raised his left arm. He tried to make a fist, but it felt weak and tingly, like he’d been asleep a long time.

  The generic-looking man smiled. “The other one,” he said.

  Cole continued to admire his own hand while the other arm came up. He lifted his head and stared at it in disbelief. It wasn’t his. Flaps of skin hung open like fleshy shutters. Inside, small pistons, bundles of wiring, metal plates—they moved at his command. He traced the mechanics down past a hinged elbow until it met his own flesh, the two slightly different colors of dark skin adjoining in a neat line.

  “Very good,” someone said.

  But it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. Cole tried to sit up, but several hands forced him down. He tried to complain, but a mask was placed over his face. He took a deep breath to protect himself from whatever was about to happen. He looked up at the man holding the mask and tried to remember where he knew the guy.

  Dakura! The guy was a Stanley! Cole gasped in disbelief—then he found himself hoping and praying that all his nightmares had been dreams, some simulated hell—

  All he got for the sudden intake of air, however, was a heaping lungful of the stuff from the mask…

  ••••

  He came to again, but in a different room. Sitting up, the various visions mixed together, confusing and piecemeal: his own face reflected in a visor, a boy he had murdered so many years ago, a girl with fiery red hair—

  Cole looked down at the black bedsheets draped over him and the cot beneath. Glancing up, he saw an IV dripping fluids into his arm. Beyond, rows of elevated cots stretched down the narrow room, most of them full of still figures with their own IVs and breathing machines. Two doctors stood by one of the cots, obviously working on someone. Tools clattered on a tray; their heads remained bowed in concentration. One of them whispered commands to the other, calm but insistent.

  Cole looked at the needle taped to his left arm. He turned and studied his right one. It appeared perfectly normal. He couldn’t keep all the nightmares straight, couldn’t sort out the real from the unreal. He hoped Riggs was part of the latter. It certainly hadn’t felt real at the time. But then, some things he knew to be dreams had felt incredibly, indelibly real…

  Hoping to sort the true from the fake, Cole tapped along his right arm with the pads of his fingers. He came across tendons, but they felt strange and unyielding. He felt the same part of his other arm, just to make sure. Completely different. Except that he could sense stuff through this other hand, could feel with the pads of the fingers as if they were real. He was pretty sure that sort of thing was still science fiction.

  Cole pulled the sheets back and discovered he wore the barest of coverings: a surgical gown made of some thin material. He started to swing his legs off the cot to see if he could stand, when an alien groan emanated from the body next to him. Cole watched the bulky form stir slightly beneath its black sheets, then fall still.

  When he looked back to the doctors, he saw one of them looking his way. It was a Stanley, there wasn’t any doubt. He held up a gloved hand—blue latex dappled with blood—and said something to the other person, the doctor whose back was to Cole.

  When she spun around, Cole recognized the hair immediately. It was mostly tucked away under the hood of the surgical gown, but bright, red trails of it hung down over the white, making the splattered blood on her gown seem pale and lifeless by comparison. The girl’s eyes met his for a brief instant—then she dashed out of the room, leaving the Stanley to continue his work alone.

  Cole grabbed his pillow and sat upright. He then became distracted by his arm, as it had done what he’d asked without him having to think about it. He held it up again and flexed his fingers one at a time. The girl and another man strode into the room, both of them visible between his new digits.

  It was the man with the beard. Cole tried to place his face as he crossed the room; the girl went right back to helping the Stanley.

  “Where am I?” Cole asked, as the figure approached his bed.

  The man ignored the question. He grabbed a stool from beside another cot and rolled it next to Cole’s before sitting down.

  Cole realized who he was, the sudden recognition hitting him like a bullet. He remembered seeing the man’s face—a younger face—in pictures aboard Parsona.

  “Mortimor?”

  The man nodded. “It’s Cole, right? You’re the kid I spoke to over the D-band?” Mortimor glanced at Cole’s new hand. “I’d offer to shake your hand, but let’s wait until you get used to using it.”

  Cole pushed himself back on the cot, sitting up even more as he tried to clear his head. “You’re Molly’s—you’re her father,” he said.

  Mortimor frowned. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but we’ve got some problems, and I need answers. Let’s start with who you are and how you got here. Then I’d like to hear how you know Molly and where she is. Also, I need to know where that Drenardian band is you were thinking through the other day. I know it’s a lot to dump on you, but we don’t have a lot of time, if we have any.”

  Cole swiped his hair off his forehead and tried to swallow, but his mouth felt dry, his tongue swollen. “Can I get some water?” he asked.

  “Penny!” Mortimor snapped his fingers. “Some water,” he said, after she turned.

  She rushed off, and Mortimor turned back to Cole. “Is Molly okay? How do you know her? And why were you wearing one of my flightsuits?”

  “We found the ship,” Cole said.

  “Parsona?”

  Cole nodded.

  “How—?” Mortimor stared at the wall beyond Cole. “What about the man aboard the ship?”

  Cole shook his head. “No one was aboard. But we did… we found what was in the ship. The hidden thing.”

  Mortimor narrowed his eyes, and Cole suddenly felt trapped in one of those situations where two people both know a secret, but don’t know how to tell the other person they know without giving the secret away in case they don’t.

  “Where did you find it?” Mortimor asked, obviously feeling caught in the same snare.

  Cole chose his words carefully: “In the chart data.”

  Mortimor nodded, but something else seemed to flash behind his eyes. Relief?

  “Did you serve with Molly? You seem a bit young.”

  “We were cadets together. At the Academy.” Cole looked up as the girl reentered the room. More of her hair had come loose as she hurried to the cot. She held a glass of water in her bare hands, her gloves pulled off. Cole felt a wave of guilty excitement from seeing her. He noted her freckles and the way her cheeks were flushed from the rapid walk. He
barely managing to nod his thanks as he reached for the glass—

  “Ah… left hand,” Mortimor said, pointing.

  Cole obeyed. He smiled at the girl, who turned away quickly, hurrying back to Stanley. Cole took a long swig from the glass, dribbling some down his chin. He went to wipe it off his mouth with his right hand, but Mortimor grabbed his wrist.

  “Careful,” he said. “People tend to hurt themselves at first, even with the temporary limiters.” He reached down and used part of Cole’s sheet to dabble at the moisture on his chin. The way he did it—like a doctor tending to a patient—suddenly made Cole feel like a useless invalid.

  “You’ll need some therapy,” Mortimor said. “Some training. First, though, back to Molly…”

  “Yeah.” Cole took another sip of water and swallowed. “We were flight partners in the Academy. I was sent with her to get the ship. Everything went to hell from the beginning—”

  “Byrne?” Mortimor asked.

  “What? No, that came after. Hell, I just found out about him. You do know he’s here, right?”

  Mortimor nodded.

  “Okay, no, our problems started on Palan, some pirates there—”

  “Palan? What in the galaxy were you doing on Palan?”

  “That’s—that’s where the ship was. I don’t know what—”

  “No, that’s fine.” Mortimor shook his head. He looked back to the Stanley, who was peering over his patient at their conversation. “So, I imagine Parsona told you what needed doing. Where did things go wrong? On Dakura? Lok? Is Molly okay?”

  “Go wrong?”

  Cole looked for some place to set the glass, then gave up. “Things went wrong everywhere.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “We barely got out of Palan alive, we committed genocide on our way back to Earth, the Navy framed me and we had to kill Lucin—”

  “What?” Mortimor pushed away from Cole’s cot, a wary eye on his right arm. “Two guards!” he shouted to Stanley. Several of the nearby forms stirred from the outburst.