Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  His hand!

  Glancing back at his furious grip on the foil’s support strut, Cole saw he’d dented and warped the metal where he’d been grasping it. His hand looked so real, it was easy to forget what it could do. The magnetic blade once again swiped through the air close enough to hear. Death’s nearness steeled Cole’s resolve. He tightened his grip on the strut and released his arm’s full fury.

  There was a groan, and then a harsh, ringing crack as solid steel bent and parted. The starboard strut snapped off, and the forward foil lurched sideways, folding back on the remaining strut and digging into the watery surface. As soon as it did, the flat, smooth ride turned into an airborne disaster. The nose of the skimmer dove into the water, caught on something below the surface, and the entire craft kicked up, bucking like an injured beast. In a mere instant, Cole and his attacker were launched into the air, tumbling high over the glimmering, wet land. The skimmer summersaulted below them, the pilot trapped as it smacked and crumbled and skipped across the endless brown lake below.

  Cole had but a few glimpses of the destruction, and just a single, stretched-out moment of soaring through the sky. He flew the same direction as the sideways rain, so all of it hung in space around him, seemingly motionless. The bizarre illusion of suspended droplets extended that solitary second into an eternity of gliding and falling. But the never-ending plummet was an illusion, one that was about to be shattered by the placid wall of solid water rushing up to greet him.

  Just before he hit, Cole thought to secure his goggles. He clamped his real hand over his eyes and threw up his new one to absorb the impact. He hit at such a high speed, it felt more like solid land than forgiving fluid. Cole bounced across the surface, his other arm and both legs flying out in a tangle of cartwheeling, plowing limbs. The rolling and spinning seemed to go on even longer than the flight through the air, and as Cole’s head was repeatedly dunked, he worried as much about running out of breath as sustaining any injury.

  Finally, though, he slowed to a halt—his body sore but intact. His legs sank below the surface. He started treading water with his arms, when his boots and knees felt solid ground beneath him. Solid, but trembling, almost as if moving. Cole swam with his hands to regain his balance and stood up, finding the water to be a little more than a meter deep. He peered around for the wreckage of the skimmer and the man with the sword.

  Both were less than a dozen meters away, and both were in pieces. Cole waded toward the ruined hyperskimmer as several chunks of human remains floated his direction amid a slick of red. A severed leg drifted past, powered along by an arterial jet. Cole thought about what must’ve happened: the active buckblade tangling up in the man’s body as he careened across the water’s surface. An arm approached, detached at the collarbone. The hand remained clenched in a fist, the water sizzling around an invisible thread of humming power. Cole stepped to the side, careful of the sharp nothingness, and grabbed the arm by the wrist, as wary as if seizing a cobra. He twisted the fist to the side, keeping the buckblade pointed away from himself, and slowly worked the stiff fingers off the handle. It wasn’t until he powered the blade down that he felt able to breathe easily around the device. Penny and Arthur had warned him how dangerous they were, but being in the presence of one felt like standing on a ticking bomb. Cole held the cylinder away from himself and dropped the arm in disgust. He turned to survey the twisted wreckage of the hyperskimmer.

  It was hard to believe how lucky he’d been. One twist of the skimmer’s hydrofoil, and he’d chunked the swordsman and crushed the driver. All for a tweaked knee and a sore back. He made his way toward the heap of metal, figuring it was the only dry place to await rescue while he slightly embellished his story.

  Then—his story started embellishing itself. Out of the canopy burst a fist, the metal around it peeling back as if from an unnatural blow. Cole stopped in his tracks. Beneath his boots, he could feel the surface of hyperspace trembling with movement, rippling now and then as something slid below the surface like a thing alive.

  The hand ripped a large section of plasteel off as if it were made of paper, and out of the gnarled mass of machinery, the thin driver emerged, his face contorted into a mask of fury. Cole took a step back and fumbled with the buckblade, trying to remember which way was up with the thing. He held it away from his body with his new hand—just in case—and powered it on. When he looked up, he saw the man peeling more metal out of his way, his thighs kicking through the twisted decking as if it were no more viscous than water.

  Cole looked at his hand, then back to the unnatural figure thrashing his way toward him.

  He realized at once that he had his foe outmanned.

  And that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  Part XVI – Decisions

  “Temptation, a magnet, nears the moral compass.”

  ~The Bern Seer~

  44

  For the second time in two days, Parsona made an early morning approach to Bekkie, flying low and under the barest cover of dawn. As the morning sun peeked over the horizon, it cast long shadows over the dry land, dramatically illuminating the sad and severe differences between that previous flight and the current one. Gone were the long, horizontal dust plumes of busy traffic, like ephemeral, fuzzy snakes slithering up into the sky. They had been replaced with vertical clouds of a darker hue—rising columns of smoke that marked the death and destruction that had rained down from the sky the day before.

  The distant plumes weren’t the only residue from the one-sided battle: the tragic remains of the Navy fleet could be seen long before they reached town. Molly banked around the odd wreckages dotting the landscape, the twisted remnants of military hardware still smoldering from its impact. Around each wreck, the dry Lokian grass formed black circles of expanding char ringed with thin, orange halos of fire. Each growing circle of blackened grass reminded Molly of Glemot, of the way that singular bomb had circumnavigated the planet, swallowing it up and adding it to the void of space.

  Beyond the dotted plains, Bekkie bore its own unique signs of rained-down hellfire. Red lights pulsed throughout the sleepless city, illuminating the dusk-shadowed faces of buildings with the color of emergency and worry. Some of the structures formed unnatural, jagged shapes, like teeth and broken bone shoved up from the ground, all visible scars of a town penalized for its importance. No other part of Lok had been hit so hard; the shattered hulls were densest around the town. It had been logical for the fleet to arrive above the planet’s capital. What was unusual was the manner in which they were brought straight down out of orbit, ignoring the normal parabola of reentry. It was as if the town’s importance, its gravity, had been temporarily suspended.

  Molly kept Parsona low, just above the waving grasses. As she flew past the corpse of another ship hundreds of times more powerful than her own, the terror of sudden reprisal from the fleet above crept up in her throat and remained lodged there.

  “I’m starting to feel like this was a bad idea,” she said aloud.

  With only her mom and the Wadi in the cockpit with her, it fell on the former to answer, though the Wadi seemed to respond by curling up tighter against her neck.

  “I don’t think good ideas any longer have place in this universe,” Parsona said. “I’m beginning to think you were right about hyperspace.”

  Molly checked the cargo cam to make sure Walter didn’t sneak in on them talking. “In what way?” she asked.

  “That we’d be just as well off to jump there with no way of coming back.”

  Molly laughed, more out of nervousness and empathy than mirth. “I’m glad I never rigged you up to control the hyperdrive, then.”

  “Me too.”

  Another wrecked ship smoked off to port, visible mostly by the eerie glow of things burning within. Ahead, on the outskirts of town, Molly saw flashlights darting about with anxious twitches, like morning bugs caught in a jar. Whatever it was they were looking for, they were desperate to find it.

  “If Sco
ttie comes through with the fusion fuel, it’s gonna be hard to wait until we get back to the clearing to jump away,” Molly said.

  “I’ve already thought the same thing. But the survivors from that carrier need the supplies. It’s the least we can do for them. Right, Cat?”

  Molly turned and saw the Callite had joined them in the cockpit. The Wadi flicked its tongue in her direction, winning a pat on her head for the effort. Molly smiled up at her and got a hair-tousling in return.

  “Bekkie looks worse for the wear,” Cat said, peering out at the approaching town. “And you’re being light on the throttle, aren’t ya?”

  “I was just telling mom that I feel like coming here might be a mistake. Maybe I’m just putting it off.”

  Cat crawled into the nav seat. “Can’t cower in a wooded clearing the rest of your days. ’Sides, all you gotta do is run by the Navy offices and let them know where their people are, maybe secure a place for them to stay. Walter and I will handle rounding up supplies for your friends in black.”

  “And Scottie will round up the fuel?” Molly asked.

  “He says he will, and I believe in him. So stop fretting. We’ll be in and out in no ti—”

  “Don’t say it,” Molly said, waving her off. “I hate hearing how easy stuff is gonna be. It never is.” She pulled up, gaining a little altitude as they reached the outskirts of the city. She soon spotted her old slip in Pete’s now half-empty stables. The sight of her open space made her rub the tender pads of her fingers together as she remembered she had not yet paid.

  “Can’t we go ssomewhere closser?” a voice hissed by her side.

  Molly turned and saw Walter standing behind the flight seats. The Wadi’s tongue vibrated in his direction like a bit of red yarn in a stiff breeze.

  “Turbulent waters aren’t for testing,” Cat said.

  “What’ss that mean?” Walter asked.

  “It means you don’t try something new in the middle of a storm,” Molly explained. “It’s an old Navy saying.”

  “Goes back to when they used to sail ships on the ocean,” Cat said.

  Molly and Cat exchanged a look. Once again, she realized how little she knew about the Callite. Walter turned from one to the other, his face scrunched up in a confused sneer.

  “Listen, this is just one of those times when you have to trust m—”

  The radio crackled, cutting her off: “Parsona, Pete’s Hideaway, come in.”

  Molly turned away from Walter and flicked on the radio. “Pete? This is Parsona, I was just about to call you. Is it okay if we—”

  “Cap, I need to speak to Scottie. It’s urgent.”

  Molly turned in her seat to call for him, but Walter was already scampering back to the cargo bay. The Palan returned, literally dragging the large man—two of his silvery hands clutching one of Scottie’s.

  “It’s Pete,” Molly said. She pointed to the dash and gradually banked around toward the stables.

  Scottie leaned over the controls. “Pete? You there?”

  “Scottie? Oh, thank the gods. I need your help.”

  Scottie glanced at Cat and then Molly. “We saw what happened. Sorry we hightailed it the way we did. You suffer much damage?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s—they’re rounding them up. The Callites.”

  “What? With all this going on they’re gonna send up another shuttle?”

  “It ain’t just the illegals this time. They’re rounding up everyone.”

  “Do what?”

  “They’ve got Ryn,” Pete said.

  ••••

  Parsona descended to the dry lot, her thruster wash kicking up a cloud of dust, which seemed to billow out and cushion her landing. Walter lowered the ramp immediately, allowing the plumes of powdered dirt to swirl and drift through the cargo bay. Molly swam through the haze ahead of the others and was halfway down the ramp when Pete stomped through the fog to meet them.

  “What’s this about Ryn?” Scottie asked, as he joined Molly on the boarding ramp.

  Pete spit to the side. A long stream of purple juice gathered dust as it fell, splotching Parsona’s ramp with a streak of gummy saliva. “They got him and some others,” he said. “Took ’em to immigrations. I swear the most of ’em were legal. Shopkeeper at Wayside and half the kitchen staff at Oasis.”

  “Where’re they taking them?” Molly asked.

  “More shuttles.” Pete spat again. “They flew two more over from New Hoboken last night. If they stick to their schedule, them shuttles’ll go up at any time.”

  “And they’ll get shot down,” Cat said. Molly turned and saw a grimace of pained fury on her dark, scaly face.

  “What about the ssuppliess?” Walter hissed.

  Molly turned to face him; the Wadi hissed in her ear as if startled by the sudden movement. “We’ll worry about the supplies later. Right now we should—”

  “What kinda supplies?” Pete asked.

  “Food and water,” Scottie said.

  “And camping gear, just in case,” Cat said. “Blankets, at the very least. And clothes.”

  Pete surveyed the foursome as the dust continued to settle around them. He seemed to arrive at some conclusion, then spat a sticky string to the side, a long trail of it clinging to his lip and sagging with incredible viscosity.

  “Town’s making a run on items like that, but I got sources of my own.” He nodded toward Molly and Walter. “Why don’t you youngins stay here. I’ll have the stuff delivered.” His eyes darted to Cat for a moment. “You two should come with me. See about stopping them shuttles.”

  Molly stepped forward to complain. She didn’t like being coddled, or told what to do, but Cat placed a firm hand on her shoulder and held her back.

  “He’s right,” Cat said, never taking her eyes off Pete. “You two stay here. We’ll see about Ryn and the others.”

  “Just need a credit chip,” Pete said. “I’ll call in for the stuff and have it delivered.” He looked to Scottie and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You ready to go?”

  “The sooner the better.” Scottie turned to Molly. “We won’t be long. I’ll get your fuze as soon as we get back.”

  Molly nodded. “Just be safe.” She turned to Walter and waved him forward. “The chip,” she told him. Walter squeezed between her and Cat to hand over the Navy credit chip, which he had insisted on being in charge of. Scottie tugged it from his reluctant grip, then moved to put it in his pocket.

  “Hey,” Walter said. “Jusst sscan it and give it back.”

  “Scanner’s in the office,” Pete said. “I’ll keep it safe. I promise.”

  Walter hissed as the chip disappeared. Molly put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back by her side.

  “Alright, let’s get out of here,” Pete said. He gave Molly one last look. “I’ll have my dockhands round up everything you need. Might take a few hours, so just stay put.”

  Molly nodded. The two men turned and stomped down the ramp; Cat paused to squeeze Molly’s arm. They exchanged a look, and then she turned as well, her bright, blond ponytail whipping around as she hurried off after the others.

  “Well this sucks,” Molly grumbled as she watched them go.

  “Are you kidding?” Walter tugged on Molly’s sleeve. “We’re getting room sservicse! All the ssuppliess and none of the lifting!” He dragged her back into the cargo bay with one hand and pulled out his videogame with the other. “Thiss iss ssweet!”

  ••••

  After closing the cargo ramp, Walter lounged sideways across his crew seat, his feet in Anlyn’s old chair as he lost himself in his videogame. Molly roamed around the cargo space jacked up with nervous energy; she tried her best to straighten up the clutter from having so many people moving through the ship of late. She snapped an attachment on the air hose and blew dust from one surface to the other before deciding the exercise was pointless. Rather than get anything cleaner, it just won her annoyed glances from Walter, who seemed to cringe at the air h
ose’s hissing sounds.

  Molly sighed and put the hose back. “I’m gonna take a nap in the cockpit,” she told Walter. “Come get me when those supplies show up.”

  He nodded, then wiggled across the two seats to get more comfortable. Molly strode into the cockpit and keyed the door shut. Grabbing her helmet off its rack, she settled into Cole’s seat and pulled the dome down over her head.

  “Mom?”

  For once, Parsona didn’t respond immediately. Molly checked the switch on the side of her helmet to confirm the mic was on. It was. She reached forward to the dash controls—

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, hey. Everything okay?”

  A pause. “Yes. I overheard the conversation with Pete. Those poor Callites…”

  “This whole planet is flanked—” Molly stopped herself. She felt a sudden wave of heat in her flightsuit for having cursed in front of her mom. Her time on Lok was wearing on her nerves and surrounding her with bad influences. And without Academy professors around to chastise her poor behavior, or Cole around to always try and impress, she could feel herself growing up too fast in some ways. Thankfully, her mother now had some semblance of a presence in her life, which helped. Presently, however, Parsona forced Molly to bear the shame of her word choice in silence, rather than lecture her.

  “When your father and I were here,” Parsona said after a long moment, “there was talk about scrapping the colonization efforts on Lok completely. The Navy wanted to move everyone off and abandon the entire planet. They even wanted to mark it off-limits to future expansion.”

  “You’re kidding. Why?”

  “They couldn’t stop the flow of fusion. That was the official version and the crux of your father and I being here. Your dad was the great Navy hope, you know. He and Lucin came back heroes from the war. They could’ve taken any post they wanted. Lucin chose the Academy, said he could do the most good there.”