Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  “I won’t,” Molly promised.

  Molly jumped out of her seat and hurried back to the cargo bay where an eerily familiar scene greeted her: a weary and traumatized group jostled its way into the clearing, the sounds of their shuffles and cries reverberating through Parsona’s hulls.

  The difference this time was that they weren’t alone. Outside, Molly could see Scottie conferring with several of the carrier’s crewmembers; Gloria’s survivors had already begun tending to the drained and exhausted Callites. The food and water meant for one group of survivors went around to all, and the profusion of blankets and seated groups multiplied, combined, grew, and became diverse.

  Molly reached down and grabbed a crate of vegetables from Walter, who was helping hoist items up from the deep cargo pods. The boy had worked wonders haggling for supplies throughout Bekkie, while Molly, Cat, and Scottie had tended to the Callites, debating about where to take them.

  “Keep one week’s worth of supplies for four people,” Molly instructed him. “The rest will remain here.”

  Walter frowned and his face lost some of its luster, but he eventually nodded his assent.

  “We’ll lift off as soon as everything is unloaded,” she said. “Make sure we’re clear, okay? No stowaways.”

  Walter nodded. “Okay.”

  Molly lifted the crate of food and joined the chain of people making their way outside. At the bottom of the ramp, she met Saunders, who took the crate from her and walked toward a blanket already pinned down by staged supplies.

  “I’m guessing there’s quite some story to go with all these people,” Saunders said.

  “You won’t believe me.”

  “C’mon. It can’t be worse than the last thing you let me in on.”

  Molly gave Saunders a look that made his eyes widen.

  “Really?” He set the vegetables down and stepped out of the way as more food and material arrived. Molly pulled him aside.

  “You remember what my parents were sent here for?”

  “Illicit fusion fuel.”

  “Right. Do you remember anything else from that folder? Another case they were working on?”

  Saunders stared down at his feet and rubbed his chin. “I do remember something else.”

  “Missing people.”

  He snapped his fingers and pointed at Molly. “That’s right.”

  Molly turned to watch the columns of Humans and Callites work to unload her ship. “Might as well have been the same case,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Molly let out her breath in a long, exhausted stream, then shook her head. “The organisms, the stuff fusion fuel is made of, it’s in the water here on Lok. Cat and Scottie think this might be the very planet the stuff first originated from.”

  “Fusion fuel?”

  She faced Saunders, and in his scowl, Molly saw that he was as clueless as most of the galaxy on where the stuff came from. Even admirals, it seemed, weren’t privy to its manufacture.

  “It’s a microorganism, a unique creature that can see and move through hyperspace. It’s attracted to water, and to light, but mostly to life. It’s why so many of the species of our galaxy are similar—they’ve been sharing information, interbreeding, feeding off the same stuff for billions of years.”

  “And you’re sure about this?”

  “Yeah. My friends have been unwitting participants in this mess. Only, they never knew where the ingredients they were mixing came from.” Molly shook her head. “Another thing I’m sure of is that these creatures are in the water. That’s probably how it gets in our blood. Cat thinks it changes something, that it makes the fuel interact within our bodies in some way.” Molly reached up and stroked the Wadi under her chin. “I believe her. I’ve seen what it can do.”

  “Can do? You mean besides moving ships through space?”

  Molly looked up at him. “I think it can be like a drug, or some kind of medicine. I don’t know. But these Callites, they were bleeding them to make it. And there were hyperdrives in this place—” Molly shook her head. “It looked like they were sending one variety of this stuff off to hyperspace—”

  “Do what?” Saunders ran his hands up the sides of his face. “Why?”

  Molly shrugged. “I think Cat knows, but she won’t say. My guess is it’s something traumatic. Scotties says he’s never seen her so shaken up. But we’re pretty sure they were sending it to hyperspace. We found the jump drives and the coordinates of the last delivery.” Molly didn’t feel like explaining how the center of Lok was a sensible place to “send” things.

  Saunders turned and watched the Callites and his crewmen intermingle and help arrange supplies. “So, what now?”

  “Now? Now you get some rest. A Callite will be coming out tomorrow by buggy. His name is Ryn, and he’s trying to arrange a safe place for everyone. The Navy no longer has a presence in Bekkie, and anyway, these people can be better trusted.”

  “So that’s that, then.” Saunders clasped his hands behind his back.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re off to rescue your father.”

  Molly nodded. “I’ve been off to rescue my father for two months, Admiral. The flight out here from Bekkie was almost unbearable.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Molly started to tell him that he couldn’t, but she saw the way he looked out over what remained of his crew. She knew he hadn’t been with Zebra long, but it still must’ve felt like he’d lost a huge chunk of a very large family. She imagined he had known most of the younger crewmembers from their Academy days.

  “So I guess you know what I’m going through.”

  Saunders nodded. He pulled her even further away from the blanket and the crowds forming around the supplies.

  “I know why you need to go,” he said. “I imagine if I were in your shoes, I’d be doing the exact same thing, and it would be a greater sin for me to do it. It would be my duty to stay here and help these people. It would be my duty to fight, even if it was futile. Hell, I absolved you of any of that responsibility the day I kicked you out of the Academy, didn’t I?”

  Saunders smiled, but it was laden with sadness.

  “I was wrong about that,” he said. “You might be the best damn pilot that ever set foot in that Academy.”

  “It’s okay,” Molly said.

  Saunders shook his head. “It wasn’t okay. It was part my fear of you, part my over-protectiveness, but mostly my love for those boys and how you made them feel about themselves.”

  “It’s okay,” Molly said. “I forgive you.”

  Saunders looked away and wiped at his eyes. “I better see to my people. You be good, okay?”

  Molly stepped close and wrapped her arms around his waist. Saunders froze for a moment, then draped his own arms across her back. He squeezed her gently, and she could hear him sniffle. She pressed her cheek into his chest before pulling away. Without making eye contact again—for fear of becoming a mess as well—she spun around and hurried toward Parsona.

  “Hey,” someone said to her side.

  Molly turned to find Cat emerging from the supply line. She handed a large jug of water to another Callite and stepped out of the queue. “You weren’t leaving without saying goodbye, were you?”

  Molly shook her head and fought back the tears welling up in the bottoms of her eyes. “Never,” she croaked.

  “C’mere.”

  Cat pulled her close and wrapped her arms around Molly’s shoulders. Molly kept one arm in front of herself so she could wipe the tears from her eyes.

  “You’re a good kid. You be sure and tell your pops I said that when you see him.”

  Molly nodded. “Watch over Urg’s family for me, okay?”

  “Hey. Stop that. You saved a lot of people, girl. Don’t you go beating yourself up over the things you couldn’t control. Take that from an expert.”

  Molly nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “Alright. You go on, now.” Cat let go and
pushed her away. Molly practically ran back to the ship, past the long line of Navy crewmembers and Callites working together to prepare for whatever befell them next.

  ••••

  Cat stood in place and watched her go. She marveled at how young the girl seemed as Molly stomped up the loading ramp and disappeared into that great starship. She thought about what she had just told her, and all the myriad more things she wished she had said.

  “Among those you saved was me,” Cat whispered to nobody.

  ••••

  “You ready?” Parsona asked.

  Molly checked the indicators. Everything was green. She had her welding goggles on her forehead, ready to slip down. The hyperdrive was cycled and the tank showed full. She looked over at Walter, who already had his goggles pulled into place. He was waving his hands in front of himself, hissing at the complete blackness.

  “I guess,” Molly said. She banked over the woods and did a low fly-by. It was getting dark, but she knew the survivors below could see her silhouette against the stars—the stars and the glimmer of the menacing fleet that had brought the two groups together. She looked out her side porthole as Parsona leaned over, and she could see the strobe of so many small fires flashing through the leaves below. She pictured Saunders, Scottie, and Cat sitting around one of those fires, catching each other up as much as they dared. She hoped all the survivors could dig deep and find something to smile about, perhaps even dare laugh about. Most of all, she hoped they wouldn’t try anything crazy while she was gone—or blame her too much for leaving them.

  “Anytime you’re ready, then,” her mom said.

  Molly lifted the cover that shields the hyperdrive switch. She rested her finger under the toggle and glanced at the destination coordinates. Any mass would do, but they weren’t taking any chances and had chosen the center of Lok. It felt strange to ignore the various warning lights and alarms, but the sickness Molly felt inside about leaving the groups below made it tolerable. Deep down, she felt completely resigned to the worst that could possibly happen.

  Before lowering her goggles, she took one last look up through the canopy. The scourge responsible for all her recent miseries hung overhead, the density of the constellation growing with each passing hour. Molly longed to strike at them, to morph her love for Cole into a rage, to transform her longing to see her father into an ability to lash out. She thought about what she would do with a cargo bay full of bombs and the special powers of her hyperdrive. She imagined how great it would be if all the survivors around those campfires below could harness their own enmity and somehow direct it toward their mutual foe—inflicting damage.

  Molly ground her teeth together and lowered her goggles. She wished so many things were possible all at once.

  “Is everything okay?” her mother asked.

  Molly sat in the blackness provided by the goggles and held the ship level by her internal compass, by instinct. She felt the cool metal of the switch against the soreness in her scabbed fingertip. She thought about the hyperdrive it was linked to and how many people had risked their lives in trying to keep it secure. She thought about how many more would gladly do the same if they knew about its existence. She thought about Lucin and how desperate he had seemed to seize control of Parsona. Desperate enough to threaten her life. He had thought her father’s ship, or something within it, could end a pan-galactic war.

  Thinking of the war diverted her thoughts to the people below and to what she could really do with a full tank of the fusion fuel. Fusion fuel so many countless Humans and Callites had bled for. And what was she about to spend it on? Rushing off, sad and desperate, to be with the only men in her life that ever made her feel safe?

  “Sweetheart, what are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Activate the hyperdrive,” Parsona said. “Sweetheart, hit the switch.”

  Molly put some pressure against the metal toggle and braced to jump to the middle of the planet, to purposefully whisk herself off to hyperspace. She felt the switch begin to give way—then she let it go. She rubbed the pads of her fingers together, the sensation deadened by her wounds.

  “Molly, what in the galaxy are you doing?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I’m sorry, I just don’t know…”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  She pulled her hand away from the switch and lifted her goggles, dispelling the blackness. All around her was the flashing of indicators and alarms, the twinkling of stars overhead, the lambent flames from those huddled in the forest below. She felt in the middle of it all—surrounded by points of light each with their own messages: warning, pleading, threatening, begging, flanking her with indecision.

  But there was no decision.

  Despite her agonizing longing to be with Cole, the impossible thrill of reuniting with her father, she was bound by something stronger than military duty. Something Saunders could never absolve her from by expelling her, something the universe could not cull from her spirit.

  It was her nature.

  Molly grabbed the control stick and banked to starboard, back around to the clearing in the woods. Walter threw off his own goggles and hissed some question, but Molly didn’t hear. She was too busy formulating a plan. Too busy dreaming of saving the universe…

  Epilogue – The Blood of Billions

  “Do we make our decisions? Or do they make us?”

  ~The Bern Seer~

  0

  “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

  “Really?”

  Cole wiggled out from underneath the cabinet and turned to the Seer. “Yeah, the flow of water’s stopped, but it took all you had left of this caulk—”

  “That’s fine,” she said, “I won’t need any more.”

  “You can know things like that? That there won’t be any more leaks?”

  The Seer smiled. “Or that the next time, they’ll be too much water to bother.”

  Cole crossed the swaying shack and placed the empty tube of caulk in the small trashcan. “Should I empty the pot of water under the leak? It’s almost full.”

  “Sure.” The Seer turned, her gaze following and approximating Cole’s location. “Just dump it in the sink if you don’t mind.”

  Cole pulled the pot out and sloshed it carefully into the small sink. Ahead of him, the wall of tin rattled with the sound of a billion drops of water thundering to their doom. Other than the direction from which the storm came, the entire scene reminded Cole of home. His original home, not the orphanage or the Academy, just that little shanty crowded by thousands of others in one of the poorest barrios of Portugal.

  Standing in front of the sink with the empty pot in his hand, he sank into that recollection. There was nothing he had ever wanted more than to get out of that place. To see the world. To see the galaxy and all its finer things.

  And now he had. He’d been to places few ever would. Seen things most people could only dream of. And somehow, standing in a shack that reminded him of his childhood, he felt more at ease, more comfortable, more himself than he had in years. The suddenness of the sensation hit him hard, making him gasp with awareness. No sooner had he felt that sense of peace, some bastard portion of his brain stabbed him with a reminder of where he was, how very far from home, how far from the one he cared so deeply for, and how impossible it may be to ever return.

  He put the pot away, hanging it between a skillet and a wide pan. The three jangled together softly, almost as if greeting their returned friend.

  “I guess that’s that,” Cole said, trying to force the shakiness out of his voice.

  “Thank you,” the Seer said. She folded her thin legs beneath herself and gestured to the edge of the bed once more. Cole checked his hands, wiped a small bit of caulk on the front of his pants, then looked around at the rattling cabin.

  “There anything else I can do for you?”

  The Seer smiled. “Could I ask you a question?�
�

  “Sure.”

  Cole took the few steps required to cross the room and plopped back onto the bed.

  “Could you have not fixed the leak?” the Seer asked.

  Cole glanced over his shoulder, back at the closed cabinet door. “Uh, I guess, but it didn’t seem to be leaking. Should I put the pot back, just in case?”

  The Seer smiled and shook her head. “No, what I mean is: do you think you could have refused to fix it? Could you have declined?”

  “I—” Cole looked at his fingernails. He scratched at a fine line of dark caulk running along the edge of one. “Could I have refused,” he said to himself.

  The Seer sat quietly while he thought about it.

  “I think so,” Cole finally said. “If you had asked differently, or if I didn’t feel so at home here, or maybe if I was in a bad mood—”

  The Seer waved him off. “Forget what wasn’t. I’m asking you, in the state you were in at that very moment, could you have said ‘No?’ Could you have refused?”

  Something about the question irked Cole. It made him want to lie, to be argumentative. He wanted to say: “Yes, I could’ve chosen not to,” but he couldn’t. He couldn’t because he knew, given a billion chances, if every event leading up to that choice was the same, he would’ve always done the favor for the old lady with the familiar eyes. And something about that knowledge made him bristle with anger. It put him in a state in which he probably would refuse if asked again.

  “Can you not say?” the Seer asked.

  He wondered which way she meant the question. Did she mean that he couldn’t say because he didn’t know? Or that he couldn’t say because he chose not to? It irked him further. And he realized why: this was the same conversation he’d had with Molly a long time ago, back in the cockpit of their simulator. Only then, he had been the provocateur and she the annoyed. But now that Cole knew what the Seer was really talking about, the foam of anger fizzled away to be replaced with curiosity.

  “You’re asking about my free will, aren’t you?”

  The Seer smiled, but only a little. It was a smile filled with sadness, if such a thing could be. “I’m talking about our free will,” she said. “Everyone’s.”