Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  “Yeah, for which side?” Molly asked, unable to conceal the disgust in her voice.

  “If you and Saunders are correct, it makes a lot of sense. That’s the front line, really, in keeping up their efforts to break through to the rift. SADAR has nothing on hindsight, but I bet your father would’ve put all this together if he hadn’t been blinded by his love for the man.”

  “I wish he were here right now,” Molly said softly. And Cole, she added to herself.

  “Me too. And I wish I could be there for you in more than voice.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry to wish him here and not you. After Dakura… well, I don’t think I’d be any more comfortable if you were here in person. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “It’s just that this is how I’ve only ever known you. I like thinking I could have you in my life forever.”

  Parsona didn’t answer at first.

  “Forever’s a long time,” she finally said.

  “Not for you—”

  “Sweetheart, your father didn’t lock me away solely as a backup. He—I could go just as mad in here as I could on Dakura. Cheating death isn’t natural. Our brains just can’t cope after a while—”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “Just that I need you to be prepared, as any child must be. You might not have me around forever. If something happens to the ship, I’ll be gone. There might even come a day when I’d ask you to—”

  “No. Don’t say it and I wouldn’t do it.” Molly looked out her porthole as another ship pulled out of the stables, slow and low.

  “Maybe they should’ve abandoned this place long ago,” Molly said. “Maybe none of this Bern stuff would’ve happened.”

  “Or it would’ve happened sooner,” Parsona said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The official reason we were here was the fusion fuel, but we kept getting bogged down with missing persons reports.”

  “The election fraud.”

  “If it’s that,” Parsona said. “What doesn’t fit is that the number of Callites disappearing seemed to match the rate of Humans. Only, nobody was much put off by their disappearance to look into it.”

  “But why would the government want their blood? To cast votes for the Freedom party? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Exactly. They wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe the Callites were just going underground to avoid immigration officials.”

  “Which is precisely why we were told to not look into it. It was considered out of our jurisdiction. Still, the viability of Lok depended on a rising population. Instead, it was dwindling, even with the land giveaways and tax incentives. The disappearances outpaced the inflow of colonists. Your father used to say Lok was doomed with or without the fusion trade.”

  “Do you think the Bern could’ve been up to something? Could they have been trying to secure the other rift by running everyone off?”

  “I don’t know. Seems convoluted and roundabout for them. Maybe—” Another pause. “Oh, no.”

  “What?”

  Parsona highlighted a target on SADAR. “Look,” she said.

  Molly tracked the moving object. It was a passenger class shuttle rising up from the outskirts of Bekkie and heading straight for space. She pulled up the town overlay map and looked for the side street café where she and Walter had been sitting. She followed the departure trajectory and saw that it matched up with the general direction of the other shuttle they’d watched lift off.

  Molly wanted to ask “Why?” but sat and stared in silence, instead. She looked up from the blinking blip on the screen to the carboglass and scanned the buildings beyond for a rising plume of jet exhaust. She saw nothing through the haze of dawn and was forced to watch via SADAR, forced to watch as the shuttle nearly reached the ionosphere before the altitude indicator stopped climbing. It paused at apogee, and then the altimeter began to count down with a sickening sense of looming finality.

  “How can they do that? How is that legal?”

  “They’re letting the Bern do their dirty work for them. Probably calculated what a shuttle costs versus having to move the same illegals back to their planet over and over.”

  “But they’re sending them to their deaths. Doesn’t anyone care?”

  “Very few. The Underground was full of supporters. They practically formed around their lack of xenophobia. Unfortunately, they had a larger war to wage.”

  “You’re talking about people like Scottie and Pete.”

  “And your father.”

  Molly looked down at her lap. She stopped stroking the Wadi and rubbed the rough pads of her fingers. All but one pinky were beginning to heal somewhat from a day of not needing anything. She could feel that one digit throbbing and dreaded ever having to vote again. She wondered if Pete would make her vote for the supplies and dockage, or if he’d let her slide or maybe just pay extra in cash.

  “Hey,” she said aloud, a hazy memory coming back to her.

  “What?”

  “Pete’s voting machine.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, maybe nothing, but I could’ve sworn when I was in there the other day that the ‘F’ button was new and shiny.” Molly paused, her thoughts interrupted by the disturbing simplicity of the shuttle target disappearing from SADAR. She watched that empty spot of blackness on the screen as the green phosphor symbols faded away to nothing—all the vector numbers flicking to zero. There was no tally for what was just lost.

  “Pete’s machine,” Molly muttered to herself. “I’m pretty sure the Liberty button was just about worn off.”

  45

  “You’re dead!” the skimmer pilot yelled. He kicked through the remains of his ruined craft and strode toward Cole, shucking off a tangle of wire and hydraulic cables as he went. Cole waded backward with short steps and a wide stance as the ground beneath him continued to tremble and occasionally lurch. He held the buckblade away from his body, comforted somewhat by the slight hum he could hear from the handle.

  That comfort didn’t last long. The small man fully emerged from the wreckage and did the unthinkable: he yanked off his goggles and tossed them aside.

  “I’ll have you in pieces!” the man roared. He stomped through the water with both hands out, his fingers curled as if to reach out and clutch Cole to death. Cole stopped shuffling and readied his blade. Whatever the man was made of, however much of him Arthur had replaced, he figured he had the upper hand to be armed. In a manner of speaking.

  The wiry man stopped and looked at Cole’s hand, almost as if weighing the same odds. He snarled and reached into his coveralls, which were tattered and hanging in strips from the knife-like curls of wrecked steel. Out came a metal cylinder much like the one Cole wielded—and the playing field was once again uneven.

  The furious man thumbed his blade on and lunged into range, swiping with an angle five. It was an unorthodox, but powerful move. Cole watched the man’s elbows and wrists line up in slow motion, performing a slashing attack Penny had told him to never use. And she had shown him why. Cole’s muscles responded automatically—out of fear and from a deep memory. He lined up his blade to deflect the blow, to send it back into the man’s neck, but when the magnetic fields of the two blades met each other, the raw power behind the strike overcame the attacker’s poor angle. The impact tossed Cole backward and likely would’ve thrown his blade through his collarbone, had not his new elbow been locked.

  He landed with a splash, his heels kicking and scrambling for the ground beneath him. He swam backward, keeping his distance as the man swiped through the water, his teeth bared in rage.

  “One piece at a time!” the figure roared.

  Cole scrambled to his feet and threw out a feeble swipe to keep the man at bay. As Cole’s blade passed harmlessly in front of his foe, his attacker lashed out with his own sword. The strike wasn’t aimed at Cole, but rather, at the back of his blade. The magnetic repulsion made Cole’s weapon pick up speed, spi
nning him around like a top. He lost his balance again and fell backward into the mud-colored water. The man behind him laughed as Cole splashed his way upright. He turned and resumed his stance. He realized he was being toyed with—chewed on and released as by some wiry dog.

  “Amazing how the universe works, isn’t it?” The man lifted both hands up to the sky. He opened his mouth and turned his head, gathering up some of the drifting rain before spitting it out. “Everything comes right back around, wouldn’t you say?”

  Cole stepped forward, remembering what Penny said about buck-blade fights being no time for talk. He slashed an angle one at the man’s knee, keeping low to remain as defensive as possible. The man’s arm became a blur: one moment lifted up into the rain, the next moment down by his hips, repulsing Cole’s attack. Cole’s arm flew back, his body contorting with the sudden change in direction. He allowed his feet to come out from beneath him, preferring to spin down into the water than get wrapped up in his own rebound.

  Once again, he struggled to his feet, blade out. The small man became a blur once more, and Cole felt a sting on his left shoulder. He flinched, but his reaction came long after the blow. He looked down to see a red stain spreading through his soaked shirt, a neat slice of the fabric folded open.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Cole looked up from his wound. The man across from him jutted out his chin; he brought up his free hand and placed his palm against the side of his own face, pulling his flesh sideways. “Perhaps if I were smeared across a taxi’s windshield, it would jar your pathetic, fleshy, memory.” He let go of his face and sneered at Cole, rain dripping from his nose.

  Cole ignored him—ignored the man’s mad delusions. He shuffled forward and aimed a reverse angle two at the man’s off-weapon hip. He drove everything into the blow, unleashing the full fury of his mechanical elbow in a desperate attempt to drive through the man’s defenses, striking him down as he made the mistake of talking.

  His hand whistled through the wet air. As did the other man’s. The invisible blades met with a sizzling, explosive crack, the force of the blow throwing Cole off his feet. He landed in the water one final time, his shoulder screaming out in pain from withstanding the force of impact. He rolled to his back, half expecting to be missing a limb from the rebound, but his sword hand was empty. The blow had been sufficient to rip it from his artificial grasp, possibly saving his life in the process. Or—as Penny had warned of ever letting his weapon go—at least delaying the inevitable.

  Cole turned to face the small man and saw that his eyes were following something through the air. He smiled, and Cole heard a plop in the distance, like the sound of a stone being swallowed by water. Cole looked around, but all that was left of his sword was a spread of brown ripples.

  The man took two strides forward and was upon Cole, pulling him up by his neck. The power of the grip reminded him of being choked by the Stanley—but this time he was alone, with no Walter to take control and save him. The empty and endless horizon on all sides of him hammered that fact home.

  “Tell me you recognize me,” the man said. He shook Cole violently before pulling his face close. Cole glanced at the sword, which was being held out to the side, poised as if to split him in half across his waist. “How can you not recognize me in this rain?”

  Cole looked up and studied the man’s face. Part of him sagged with the pathetic futility of his struggles. Other parts—the non-mechanical parts—tensed with the will to live. He glared at the man from behind his goggles. He focused on his face for the first time as rivulets of water wiggled across his shielded vision.

  It was the mad sneer that did it. The mad sneer and the fact that the man wasn’t winded at all. Didn’t even seem to be breathing.

  “No,” Cole said, shaking his head.

  “Isn’t it delicious?” the man asked. He licked some of the rain off his lips and smiled.

  It was the scout, the small man from the Naval office, one of the men they had fought during the floods on—

  “Palan,” Cole said.

  “That’s right.” The man released Cole and stepped backward. He twirled his sword through the air and looked up and down Cole’s body, as if determining where to end him. “I was demoted because of you,” he said. “High command gave me a few fleshy assignments before sending me to this contaminated outpost.” His arm flashed and Cole felt a sting on his right hand. His body shivered with another delayed flinch. He looked to his hand as he heard something plop into the water.

  His index finger was gone. A drop of rain hit the open wound and sparked something electrical within—a jolt he could feel across his artificial flesh. Before he could react, or even scream, another swipe sent his middle finger up in the air, tumbling through the rain with a few drops of crimson, spiraling down to the muddy wet below.

  “My career was taken from me, one little piece at a time, for the failures you caused.”

  Cole stumbled back, out of the reach of the blade, but the man moved even faster, matching every step with one of his own.

  “Now you’ll give it back as I take you apart, one little piece at a time.”

  A blur and his ring finger was snicked off with robotic precision.

  “Stop it!” Cole yelled. He fought the urge to cover the metal parts of himself with flesh and bone, but he knew that would be even worse. He held his reduced hand in front of himself and kept backing away, his mind racing with some scheme to go out heroically.

  “I nearly fried a circuit when you showed up here. I begged to end you. I felt punished to have to merely watch and gather intel. But it seems fate is stronger than the chain of command, eh?”

  A flick of the wrist, and Cole’s pinky popped into the air. His entire artificial hand was on fire from the myriad wounds. He splashed backward as the ground beneath him shook, sending small ripples radiating out across the surface of the rain-streaked water.

  The small man maintained his range and smiled. Cole wanted to throw something through those teeth, wanted to unleash the full power of his new elbow and hurl something at the man, just as he’d thrown the wrench through the skimmer. But all he had was his goggles, and throwing them would mean he couldn’t even see his own demise coming. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could even hurl the goggles properly with only a thumb to grasp them—

  “You can’t even put up a fight with your better parts, can you? Just imagine what I’m going to do to your flesh!”

  The unseen blade whistled through the air, slicing the rain in half. Cole’s thumb came off with another bite of pain. It flew up like the others, flashes of inner metal spotted with dollops of subcutaneous blood. Cole watched the digit spin, end over end. As it began its descent, he found his hand turning over beneath it, palm flat, his body reflexively moving to catch a piece of himself.

  It landed in silence, all of hyperspace standing still as Cole gazed at the eerie realism of the thumb, its nail still pink and edged with a line of deadened white. He looked up, saw the smile on the man’s face turn into a sneer, lips trembling with raw hate.

  Cole leaned forward. He cupped the thumb in his palm, cradling it with what remained of his hand. He dropped his shoulder, brought his hand back as he twisted at the waist, then let fly with everything he had. Every ounce of fear and rage, every vibrating cell in him that wanted to kill in order to live, was unleashed. His hand seemed to boom through the very air, breaking the speed of sound, as it whizzed past. There was a crack as his elbow flew straight, then the sickening feel of his shoulder leaving its joint, his arm yanking forward where it didn’t belong.

  Cole cried out in pain and fell forward, sinking down to his knees. He gripped his dislocated and ruined shoulder with one hand and ground his teeth together, fighting to not pass out. Ahead of him, he heard the sizzle of a passing blade, saw the water bubble as something fell through the rippled surface of hyperspace. Cole looked up as the small man sank to his own knees directly before him. His head came level to Cole’s, but the s
neer was gone. Half the man’s head was gone. It had been opened up by the bullet-like thumb, a metallic sphere blossoming wide like a silver flower. Tufts of hair stuck to portions of it, and half a flapping face hung to one side.

  The mysterious rain peppered the ruined head from behind, shooting up sparks of electricity as the mysterious figure sagged backward, disappearing into his dirt-colored, watery grave.

  46

  “How long have we been here?” Anlyn asked.

  “Five hundred eighty two thousand four hundred and fifty two seconds,” Edison said. “Approximately.”

  Anlyn sighed. “How long in a format I understand?”

  “Three hundred seventy six thousand and forty two Hori berts.”

  “In days, love.”

  “Oh. A fraction less than six Earth days.”

  Anlyn groaned. The three hour shifts had gradually whittled down to hour shifts, as both of them reached the limits of their endurance. They took turns passing out where they sat, the sleep seeming to zip by in an eyeblink while the waking hour stretched out forever. Anlyn had spent more time talking to herself the last week than they had spent talking to each other, and she felt half insane because of it. It wouldn’t have been so miserable if the fleet wasn’t constantly shuffling around the incoming ships and moving the queue toward the rift. If they could just engage the autopilot and get a half day of rest, she would be fine for another few days of flying.

  The radio squawked with instructions, and she watched as Edison responded his receipt of the transmission. As bad as she had it, Edison’s task as translator made it much worse for him. Often, he woke up halfway through a transmission, and Anlyn had to phonetically repeat what he’d missed. They both operated in a dreamlike haze of sleep deprivation, made worse by the annoying snowstorm outside that never so much as wavered.

  Anlyn shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. She couldn’t remember how many shifts ago she’d last showered, or even ate. The only break in her routine had been to sip water and use the bathroom. It was a Wadi’s diet, no different than her years with Albert, and she felt as chained to a cockpit now as she ever had back then.