Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  The voice on the radio returned and carried on for half a minute.

  “What did he say?”

  “He expressed grievances with our flight commander followed by orientation procedurals for us. We are presently queued up for the rift, number four hundred eighteen. Maintain velocity and minimize chatter. Resume three hour shifts.”

  Anlyn laughed, her voice shaking with all things but humor. “Three hour shifts? Great. Who’s gonna take over for us so we can get some sleep?”

  Edison shrugged. “Such logistics normally fall upon the commander, Commander.”

  Anlyn turned to frown at Edison and saw his furry cheeks peeled back—his teeth flashing.

  Anlyn laughed at him. Once more, without humor.

  34

  As Parsona crept toward the horizon, the full bulk of the Star-Carrier came into view. It seemed to rise out of the ground like a geological formation—an obelisk defying time and gravity. While the majority of the ship appeared intact, the forward twenty percent had been crushed, or perhaps driven into the ground. Smoke streaked off the massive wreck in dozens of places, emanating from glowing-orange fires. Other than that, the hulking tower stood as a quiet memorial to a battle lost.

  “Dang,” Urg muttered.

  Molly looked over her shoulder to see that the large Callite had squeezed in beside Scottie. The two of them were leaning forward, peering out through the carboglass at the gigantic ship ahead. Behind them, she could hear Walter continuing to put things away in the cargo bay. She turned back around and concentrated on keeping low to Lok’s grasslands, rising now and then only to clear strips of straggly trees. She couldn’t help but notice the way Cat strained forward in her seat, taking in the view. The Wadi did the same beside her, its neck stretched out, tongue flicking.

  “Crazy to see something so invincible look… dead,” Scottie said.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Cat said. She tore her gaze away and glanced around at the dash. “You got any ’scopes in this thing?”

  “Like binoculars?” Molly shook her head. “No.”

  “I think they set down in the lake,” Scottie said. “That’s a shame.”

  As they got closer to the wreck, Molly saw he was right. Lok had no oceans, just a few puddles the locals exaggerated by calling them “lakes.” The StarCarrier had landed right in the middle of one; the nose of the great ship was buried in a muddy crater and surrounded by pools of water covered in oil and fuel—some of them on fire. A wall of mud and dirt had been thrown up by the force of entry, forming a berm on the perimeter. The resulting barrier and moat looked purposefully built, like a warning to interlopers saying: “Stay out.”

  Molly flew over the glistening brown wall and felt sad for the flashes of light twinkling on dry ground—the flapping of displaced swimming things. As she banked around to perform a full circuit of the ship, keeping Parsona low enough to feel safe from the fleet in orbit, she couldn’t help but see the once-powerful craft in the same light as the fish: an animal out of its element with no way of putting it back. A thing dying, if not already dead.

  As they rounded the port side, the stenceling on the side of the ship came into view, and Molly lost what little breath she’d been holding.

  ZEBRA-9200 “Gloria”

  This wasn’t just any StarCarrier, it was the very one she and Cole had escaped from two weeks ago. The realization made her feel like thrusting away from it, as if it still posed some threat to her. She read the hull designation several times, the surge of adrenaline passing as she forced herself to remain calm.

  “So big,” someone whispered.

  Molly nodded. Up close, the ship seemed even more massive than it had in space, perhaps because the enormity of an entire cosmos wasn’t swallowing it up, providing some sense of scale. It took almost fifteen minutes to do a slow lap around the mountain of metal. There were no signs of life, no lights or movement from survivors. Everywhere along the ground, the ship’s hull was a twisted mess of shrapnel and torn plasteel, entire decks of the carrier crushed and impassible.

  “There’s no way in,” Cat said.

  “And no safe place to land and walk in from. I don’t know what we were thinking to come out here.”

  “Curiosity,” Scottie said. He leaned over the control console to peer up at the metal cliff looming ahead of them. “And didn’t that kill the cat?” he asked.

  “What about the hangar bay?” Cat asked, ignoring Scottie.

  “We can look,” Molly said, “but I’d think they’d have shut it before reentry.”

  She took Parsona up and spiraled around toward the ship’s belly, remembering the last time she had flown along that very section of the massive carrier. Four Firehawks had been escorting her—their missiles armed and locked. The size and shape of the hull hanging in space had filled her with fear. She’d been convinced the Navy was about to airlock her and her friends for a string of tragic events.

  Now, despite the unease she felt from recognizing the craft, it leaned sadly in the dry atmosphere of her backwoods home planet. Unmoving. Harmless. It didn’t seem right that such a large creation could meet its end in such a short period of time, or end up somewhere as inconsequential as Lok.

  “Damn thing’s open,” Scottie said, pointing to one of the carrier’s airlock bays. “Can we fly in?”

  Molly pulled up opposite the airlock. The StarCarrier was leaning to one side, the open hangar pointing up to the sky, which meant she had to angle Parsona’s nose down so they could see inside. She reached for the spotlight controls before noticing the lights inside the bay were still functional.

  “Something’s not right here,” she said.

  “Nobody’s home,” said Cat.

  That’s exactly what didn’t seem right. Molly could see the full length of the tilting hangar, all the way to the far wall, which hung way below them. There should’ve been a pile of Firehawks and Scouts down there, trillions of dollars of destroyed Navy hardware lying in a pile.

  “Must’ve been in the fight,” Cat said.

  “Or the crew used everything they had to escape.”

  “I didn’t see nothing fly out on its way down,” Scottie said.

  “Me neither, but there were Firehawks raining down earlier, before we left Bekkie.”

  “Not enough,” Molly said. “There would’ve been hundreds of them aboard.” She turned to the others. “Should we peek inside? Look for survivors?”

  Cat turned to her and shook her head. “Ain’t no one survive this. Not a crash like this.”

  “Yeah, but there’s still power. Maybe someone—I dunno, I just always think there’s a chance.”

  “If you wanna stick your nose in and take a sniff, be my guest. But get ready to hightail it when this puppy goes down.”

  Molly turned the radio down to its lowest broadcast setting, just in case anyone in the fleet above was listening in. She brought the mic to her lips.

  “Zebra wing—” She hesitated, trying to think up a lie, then figuring it didn’t matter. “—Parsona here. Any survivors, please come back on twenty-two eighteen.”

  They waited. She adjusted the squelch until a faint hissing and popping assured her the speakers were operational. Nobody responded.

  “Just a peek,” she told the others. She gripped the flight controls and replaced the mic, then nosed Parsona forward, back into the same bay from which she’d fled with Cole just a few weeks prior.

  An easy in-and-out, she promised herself.

  35

  “You want me to meet someone called the Bern Seer?”

  Cole shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve had enough of the Bern.”

  Mortimor laughed. “She’s no more a Bern than you or I, Cole. She’s the one who’s been watching them come. She’s on our side, if there is such a thing.”

  “Where is she? Here?”

  “No—”

  “Further ahead,” Arthur interjected, shouting above the rain. “As far ahead as you can go, i
n fact.”

  “Why does she want to meet me?”

  “Won’t say, but she’s calling in a favor, a big one, and… well, I can’t force you to go, but I’d owe you one of my own if you did.”

  Cole looked down at his hands beneath the folds of his clear plastic poncho. Water coursed across it, giving his flesh an artificial sheen.

  “I’ll go,” he said quietly.

  “Good,” Mortimor said. He slapped Cole on the back. “Now, let’s get out of the rain. I’ll introduce you to doctor Ryke, who’ll take you out.”

  Cole followed the two men forward, the pelting at his back driving him along and the rain to either side making him feel as if he could fall clean off the roof and go drifting after the droplets forever.

  “Wait,” he yelled up to the others. “Who’s Ryke? Aren’t you guys coming with me?”

  “Sorry,” Mortimor said, waiting up for him to catch up. “We’ve got plenty enough to do without a trip forward.” He worked his hand out of the poncho and put it on Cole’s back, urging him toward the stairwell. “Besides,” he said, “she specifically asked to see you alone. Ryke’s just driving you.”

  “Driving me? In what?”

  ••••

  Half an hour later, Cole found himself cowering in the passenger seat of the answer. They called it a hyperskimmer, and it raced across the water on three foils, skipping like a cast stone and feeling completely out of control. As the craft sped directly into the driving rain, Cole fought the urge to scream; he ground his teeth and gripped the dash in pure terror, wondering how the hell Doctor Ryke could see where they were going. As the craft’s forward skiff tore through the watery surface of hyperspace, it kicked up twin roostertails to either side—large sheets of foaming whiteness that created an artificial canyon the small vehicle seemed to glide through. Every now and then, Cole glanced over to Ryke to make sure they were going to be okay. Each time, he found the strange man fiddling with a dial on the dash or looking at Cole while he talked.

  “Don’t you need to concentrate?” Cole asked the doctor.

  Ryke looked at him for a long while. He took one hand off the steering column and scratched his thick, brown beard. He rubbed his bald head and adjusted his black goggles. Cole couldn’t take it anymore. He turned and peered down the narrow chute of visibility created by the roostertails, certain that they were travelling far too fast for anything meant to come in contact with water.

  Earlier, the vehicle had seemed pretty damn nebular, back when it was in the garage and sitting still. It was basically a flat triangle of steel sitting on three runners and topped with a sleek bubble cockpit. Ahead of the cockpit was a flat deck with a crane-like apparatus stowed flat. The whole thing was painted stark white and appeared fast even when idling. Cole had been excited to crawl inside, but now that they were racing along, hydroplaning across the wet surface of hyperspace half-blind, he just hoped to survive long enough to get back out.

  “Concentrate on what, exactly?” Ryke finally asked.

  Cole shook his head and pointed forward. “On where we’re going!”

  “Oh, I know exactly where we’re going. Alls you gotta do is head right for the rain.”

  “Well, we seem to be doing that awful fast,” Cole said.

  Ryke laughed. “If we didn’t, we’d never get there!” He leaned over toward Cole, as if about to confide in some secret. “She’s shaped like a cone, you know.”

  Cole peeled his eyes away from the smeared carboglass. “What? The Seer?”

  That really got Ryke going. He laughed and slapped his thigh. “Don’t be silly! It’s hyperspace that’s shaped like a cone.”

  “Can we talk when we get back?” Cole asked. “I’m feeling a little sick.”

  “No problem. You just listen, then, and I’ll do the talking.”

  Cole groaned.

  “It all comes in at a point, hyperspace does. Like I said, it’s pretty much a cone, but laying on its side. And it’s always moving, not just the stuff in the air, but the surface, too. It’s always sliding back into the past with new stuff and happenings coming in at the tip.”

  He paused, scratched his beard, and fiddled with a dial. “Not sure where it all goes, though. Maybe back around? Still working on that…”

  Leaving the dial alone, he pointed forward, through the center of the two roostertails. “Anyways, the Seer lives out there. Impossible to miss her as long as we head into the rain. All the way forward, hyperspace ain’t so far around. Like I said, it’s the tip of a cone, so we don’t need a map. Now, getting back is different, but quicker. That’s what the radio’s for, so they know where to meet us.”

  “Mortimor and them.”

  “Right. Now, you keep quiet, not enough room in here to get sick.”

  Ryke scratched his beard.

  “Darnation, I was about to ask you a question. You gonna chunk if I ask you to nod?”

  Cole shook his head. What he should’ve said was the listening was making him queasy. He altered his grip on the dash and saw his right hand had dented it, leaving impressions under each finger.

  “I heard you was on Mortimor’s ship, the Parsona.”

  Cole nodded.

  “I built her, you know. The hyperdrive, anyway, not the ship. You notice anything peculiar about it? The hyperdrive, I mean.”

  Cole shook his head.

  “Hooo-eeee!” Ryke hollered. “That’s right!” He slapped the steering column with a flat palm. “Done her up good!”

  Cole felt like sticking his head between his knees.

  “Broke my heart to see her go, especially seeing as how.”

  That piqued Cole’s interest. He turned to the doctor, who was looking right at him, one hand idly twisting a dial on the dash.

  “What do you mean, seeing how?”

  “Stolen,” Ryke said, growing solemn. He glanced forward for a picosecond, then stared back at Cole. “Dontcha know?”

  Cole shook his head.

  “Been about a year, now. Outside time, anyway. One of the sentinels—the guys that ride out in a perimeter around the HQ—they saw a patch of stars in the rain. Looked like a rift. We was prepping Parsona to make a break, get as many of us out as we could, when Byrne took off with her by himself. Broke Mortimor’s heart.”

  “How did Byrne get his hands on the ship?” Cole asked.

  “What? It was on the roof. We never even kept the thing locked.”

  “Yeah, but where did Byrne come from? Why didn’t you guys stop him?”

  Ryke stared at him. He rubbed his beard. “Darnation, son, how ill-informed are you? Mortimor and Byrne were best of buds. Joined at the hip. That skinny freak took us all in.”

  “He lived here? Byrne?”

  “Of course. We all came together. You do know he delivered his daughter, right? He was there when she was born. Saved his wife’s life. That’ll bond you to a feller.”

  “He—he delivered Molly?” Cole’s nausea began to take a different form.

  “Yup, but he didn’t work his way into the group then. Not completely. Naw, it was really when Parsona took ill. That Bern bastard had loads of money. The sort of group we were, it never occurred to us to question anything for fear of those questions being redirected our way. When he offered to set her up at Dakura with the high and mighty, that pretty much made him an honorary member.” Ryke shook his head. “A Bern in the Drenard Underground,” he said.

  Ryke turned away from Cole and peered through his side of the cockpit, even though there was nothing to see there but a wall of foamy spray. “I reckon we were all blinded by the glimmer of that jerk,” he said softly.

  “Any idea why he might’ve abandoned the ship when he got to Palan? You think he was worried the Navy might still be looking for it?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe. I’m more curious about why that rift even went to Palan. How in hyperspace did it form? Makes no sense, really. When we heard one was open, we figured it’d be one of ours on Lok actin’ up.”

&
nbsp; “One of yours?”

  “Yeah. Dontcha know? I’m the stupid genius that got us into this hubbaloo. Tried to help the resistance stage an invasion, but they got their butts whooped. Now that same passage is being used the other way around.” Ryke lowered his bushy brows. “You looking a might bit pale, son, you’re not gonna get sick, are ya?”

  Cole shook his head. “No. Just confused.”

  “Good! That means you’re paying attention. And yeah, I’d love to hear the story of what went down on Palan. Bet that’s a good one.”

  “So why did Mortimor hide his wi—I mean, do you know about . . ?”

  “Parsona? Yeah, he told Arthur about her after the ship vamooshed. That was a row. Like admitting to a good friend that you stole from him. Why hide her, you ask? I’ve got my own theories, but we ain’t talked about his wife much. I reckon—just from my dealings with her, helping set that rig up—that she was gonna go crazy in that thing. Crazy as artificial intelligence can get. One’s and zero’s all scrambled, if you know what I mean. I think he was just freezing her in time to lock her away like that. Putting her down without erasing her, you know? Like he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Same reason people put their loved ones in cryo, even though there ain’t no chance of getting them back.”

  Cole rolled that around while Ryke glanced forward for just a second.

  “Other idea is he was hiding her from Arthur once he showed up. Or maybe he didn’t trust Byrne deep down, I don’t know. I think he was a lot ashamed of stealing her away—the selfishness of it all. Poor boy loved her too much, if such a thing’s possible.”

  “It is,” Cole said.

  “Yeah? I wouldn’t know.”

  Cole sat and watched Ryke power the hyperskimmer along, looking forward for the longest time he’d seen him do that, his goggles hiding whatever he was thinking.

  “You’re an okay guy, Doctor Ryke,” Cole finally said.

  “That’s what they tell me!” the man hollered, laughing. “Ooops, there she is.” He pulled back on the throttle and the roostertails receded, giving Cole a wider expanse of blurry nothingness to squint into.