by Hugh Howey
This time, though, things would be different.
He leaned forward to shield the shiny device with his wide back. One glint through the woods would give them away. He glanced up at the great leader, but the old Glemot still looked to the sky, waiting on just the right moment. Mekhar could now make out the footsteps of individual Camptons and grew nervous. They could have sprung this trap from anywhere. Why here? he wondered.
The ground vibrated as the main column of Camptons drew near. Mekhar imagined it was the old planet shivering in anticipation. He took it as a mystical sign to begin his assignment, but fought the urge. The great leader would tell him when. His paw moved closer to the first of two buttons.
At first, the roar of thrusters burning in the atmosphere sounded like another column of warriors. When the marching stopped, however, the sound of last night’s hard work became clear. With a great roar, the machine he’d helped reconstruct lifted into space. Mekhar wished he could see the look on those Campton faces as they realized they’d become mere variables in a Leef calculation. He rested his finger on the first red button; the great leader turned to him and held a paw up. Mekhar felt the first chill of hesitation as the enormity of this moment vibrated through him. He met the gaze of this great Leef, who had chosen to live as a Campton, and tried to borrow some of his strength.
The paw closed, leaving a single digit out. Mekhar looked down at his own hand. The claw on his first finger twitched; he forced it into a dull shape. The button went down with a loud click and the device whined up like a turbine, humming with great power. Mekhar thought about what this mechanism was alleged to do and had a moment of doubt. Deep inside, down where calculation gave way to intuition, something told him that the device would not go off as planned. Surely this moment was too big for the likes of him. He looked up, certain he should voice his concerns, when a second digit flicked out of his leader’s paw.
All eyes were on him, and he hesitated. His first bout of weakness had come at the worst time. He scanned the faces around him and felt their surety, found power in their conviction. He moved his finger to the second button and closed his eyes, summoning the courage to do something great. Something terrible.
He pressed down. The button clicked, but no ear would ever hear it. Rushing ahead of that sound was a wave of heat and light, consuming all.
The Camptons, retreating back to their camp in worry, confused by the sight of Parsona rising, never saw it coming.
••••
A dozen alarm lights went from green to red, bypassing amber entirely. Molly’s first thought was another hijack. She turned to Cole, who seemed to understand that pounding the dash was not going to fix this. Then she noticed one of the blips was a munitions warning. There was nothing out the windshield ahead of them.
The chase cam, still selected on the vid screen, held the answer.
“Cole. Oh my gods!” She pointed at the screen. Cole tore himself away from the confusing indicators and leaned over to look.
“What in the galaxy—?”
A bloom of white expanding out from the forest. A circle of smoke ringed a cap of puffy cotton pushing its way up into the cloudless atmosphere. It grew and grew to an incredible size. Part of Molly’s brain knew what she was seeing, but it was unable to communicate with the rest of her.
“That’s not an EMP,” Cole said.
Molly could sense her chest sinking in. It felt hollow. Her vision swam and she reached for her wrist with her left hand, trying to cover and protect the broken parts of herself.
“What have we done, Cole? What have we done?”
The explosion explained the warning lights, but nothing could explain the explosion. How had the Camptons turned an EMP device into a fusion bomb? One had nothing to do with the other. If you could do that, you may as well build your own from scratch.
“It was always a nuke,” Molly said out loud. She could not piece together what had happened over the last day, but she knew this: it was always a nuke.
Below, the ring of smoke was replaced by a hoop of fire. Eerily concentric, it spread out at a furious rate. Beyond the billows of peaceful cotton, orange tendrils of fire and plasma danced and grew. Paradise was ablaze.
“Uhh, I think we have another problem,” Cole said.
How could this get worse? Molly thought. She could feel herself sinking into a depression, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the carnage below.
“I don’t think I’m in control of the ship,” Cole said.
That got her attention. She reached across her body with her left hand and confirmed it for herself; the thrusters were no longer responding. And suddenly, she didn’t care. She cinched her harness down and made sure her flight suit was plugged in. “Don’t fight it, Cole.” Her wet eyes went back to the vid screen, watching the orange and red circle expand faster than the planet could shrink in their wake.
“We’re vectoring toward the Orbital Station. Six Gs and steady. You sure we shouldn’t be fighting this?”
Molly looked at him, her cheek pressed back into her helmet, her helmet resting on the headrest. She didn’t have a response—she just wanted to look at him—at something that made sense. She could feel her entire body relaxing its grip on the world, sinking back into her suit in the steady single gravity it fought to maintain.
••••
An hour later, Cole was still wrestling to resume control of the ship. He’d given up on communicating with Molly, who seemed nearly catatonic. All he felt was pure vehemence. She might want to lay there and allow some beast to shred her, but he’d die first, just to delay it.
Parsona lined up to dock with the Orbital Station. Cole unbuckled his harness and fumed in his seat, building up his rage for whatever came next.
A metallic thud rang through the hull as their tiny craft mated with the vast station. Cole sprang out of his chair, closed the lower half of his helmet, and rushed toward the airlock, ready to die or kill.
But something was already inside the ship, squeezing itself out of the escape hatch in the floor beyond the airlock. Cole skidded on the metal decking and fell down in fright and confusion. Behind him, Walter hissed in alarm.
The large beast rose to its full height, its head nearly brushing the ceiling. It lumbered in Cole’s direction.
“Minimal alarm, Cole.” Edison had his hands up, his claws as blunt as possible. “Minimal alarm,” he repeated.
Pushing with his feet, Cole scampered back and yelled for Molly. His world felt upside down. Edison should not be on the ship with them. And yet, there he stood. Right beside the airlock. He watched his friend thumb the inner hatch open.
“Follow,” he told Cole before stepping through. The outer door made a sound as it rushed open—the air pressure inside Parsona remained constant. He stumbled back to the cockpit, working his helmet loose.
“Molly, you aren’t going to believe this—”
She pointed to the vid screen, the cargo cam active. “I saw,” she told him.
Cole reached over to see if control of the ship had returned. It hadn’t. “Stay here,” he said. “I’m going to find out what’s going on. If you get control of the ship back—get the hell out of here and keep the chase cam off. I mean it.”
She thumbed the latches on her helmet and popped it off. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not,” he said firmly. He startled as Walter squeezed in beside him.
“I’m sssorry, Molly. I forgot about the esscape podss. Ssso ssorry, Molly. Ssso ssorry.” Walter’s head was against the small cockpit hallway, metal on metal. He looked absolutely dejected.
“It’s fine,” Molly said quietly. “It’s a very minor thing. Don’t worry about it.” The words leaked out of her, but to Cole it sounded like someone else.
“I’m coming with you,” she told him again.
“Me, too,” added Walter.
Cole moved closer to her, reaching a hand to her shoulder. “Molly, you’re exhausted and confused. I want you to
stay here and get to safety. If you can—”
“I DON’T WANT SAFETY!” she screamed from the captain’s chair. Both of her hands clenched up into fists, her broken wrist popping out of her sling. Her feet lifted from the cockpit floor and her knees pulled into a fetal position. Molly’s head bent forward, completing the impulse.
“I WANT ANSWERS!” she yelled into her lap. Her left hand slammed into the arm of the chair, legs springing out in anger and protest. She shot up, nearly ripping her suit cord out of its socket.
Cole had never seen her like this. He and Walter flattened against the wall as she stormed by. After the initial shock drained away; he chased after her, yelling, “Molly! Wait!”
••••
She ducked through the airlock and into the Orbital Station. The dock led directly into a long hallway. Cole and Walter caught up with her as she started down it. None of them spoke, the sight at the end of the passage drowned out even their thoughts. Edison stood by a massive expanse of glass, an observation window. It faced his old world beyond, which glowed in the wrath of fire. Beside him stood another Glemot, tall and as black as the space that framed him.
Neither alien turned as Molly and her crew approach. They stood, transfixed by the sight of utter destruction below. The ring of burning trees was halfway to the horizon already and night had fallen over a portion of the devastated land. Before long, the fire would be wider than a Glemot day.
There was no rain to stop it. No oceans or cleared fields for buffer. The lakes were skirted as easily as a child hopping a puddle. The most beautiful thing Molly had ever beheld slowly turned to fire and ash. And she was the cause of it.
Her rage melted at the sight of the horror. She could feel the urge to sleep overcoming her again. Her stomach, her entire body, felt hollow. She was overwhelmed by a lack of appetite—for food, air, even life.
“Why?” The pathetic question trailed out of her in a feeble voice. Directed at no one in particular, she wasn’t sure if it ranged beyond her own ears.
Edison turned away from the view and met Molly’s wet eyes with his own. “Inevitable,” he said quietly.
She looked beyond the pup to the large black Glemot, who had turned to face them. Water streaked down the fur on his cheeks and his dark lips were pressed tight, his small ears folded flat to his head. He addressed them all in perfect and jargon-free English. “Go get some rest. I will answer your ‘why’ soon enough.”
••••
Cole had to physically drag Molly away from the depressing vista. Rooms were offered on the Station, but Cole ignored the black beast, his anger defused by the obvious sadness resonating between the Glemots. Nothing made sense, but they weren’t going to kill them. Yet. Rest and then some answers sounded good. In that order.
Back in Molly’s quarters, he helped his friend out of her flightsuit, but left her jumper on. He held the sheets back as she curled into the bed, a thing with no will. To Cole, the sight of her suffering was even sadder than the horror below, the blackness growing in her more blinding than the firestorm on Glemot. It was the destruction of something even more beautiful in his eyes. He wiped moisture off his cheeks and turned to his own quarters.
Walter passed by, heading out the cargo door with his computer in hand and a bounce in his step. His joyful energy twisted Cole’s last nerve into a knot.
“Officser Walter out to sscout,” he announced to nobody and everyone.
Cole moved to throttle the kid, unadulterated wrath coursing through every fiber in his body. He wanted to harm the boy, to hurt something. He moved behind Walter, but stopped himself just in time. He leaned against the bulkhead and watched the kid bound through the airlock.
Walter had no clue about the nightmare below. The amount of destruction unfolding, the number of creatures dying, he probably didn’t understand the danger his own life had been in, or what Molly and Cole had gone through to get them all off the planet. To Walter, his time on Glemot had been just another dandy adventure, and now he was off to loot a Naval complex.
Cole’s anger faded into irritation, and then envy. He could imagine how nice it would be to not understand. To see one’s microcosm as the macrocosm. To focus a meter beyond one’s own nose. Who was Walter harming by remaining ignorant? Cole wondered. Who was Molly harming by regressing? Curling up in a ball and having something else keep you warm—it was an ugly, yet seductive, coping strategy. Cole went to his room and stripped down to his bare skin before sliding between sheets that smelled of forest floor, of moss and bark.
He shut his eyes and dreamed of not knowing or caring. The hideous and alluring thoughts danced in front of him, beckoning and repelling at once.
Part IV – Betrayals
“The mind rejects the very things worth knowing.”
~The Bern Seer~
23
Molly had no idea how long she’d slept. The urge was to stay there forever. To waste away between the sheets, carried off by invisible critters one dead cell at a time. But her brain hummed with questions, urging her up and out. Part of her needed to see the damage she had wrought, to see if the ring of destruction had fizzled out or finished its task.
She rolled over and extended her numb legs out of the covers. Her jumpsuit was on; she couldn’t remember getting into bed. Lowering her bare feet to the cool steel decking, she wiggled her toes. Her mind still felt hazy—disconnected from the rest of her body.
Her sling lay folded on the dresser. She donned her flightsuit first, then secured her arm with the woven Glemot grasses. Perhaps this was all that remained of their planet. Molly fingered the reeds, brown and dry—she couldn’t help but think how readily they would burn.
Soft sounds from far away trickled into her ship, warning her that a door was open—an outer world attached. She followed the sounds of distant pumps and circulating fans through the airlock. Down the long corridor and out the carboglass observation window she could see Glemot, like a beacon of cruelty. There was no one by the window—or so she thought. As she got closer, she recognized the black silhouette. Against the pitch-black of space, his ebony fur made him almost invisible. Molly could only distinguish the fringe of the massive beast, so dark it verged on purple, as it sheened in the light of distant stars.
“Good morning, Molly,” he said without turning.
Molly met his reflected gaze high in the glass. “Is it morning?”
“Up here, it’s morning when you get up. It’s evening when you become tired.” He turned to look at her. “Maybe, for me, it will be evening forever.”
“Who are you? And do you know what happened down there?”
“My real name would sound funny to you,” he interrupted, his voice a sonorous bass. “Call me by my Earth-language name.”
“Which is?”
“Campton.”
So many of Molly’s recent memories were still bubbling to the surface, it took her a moment. “Like the tribe?” she asked.
“Just like the tribe. And yes, I know what happened down there. I caused it, not you.”
Molly stared at him, her teeth clenched. She envisioned climbing up his back, her fists full of fur and fighting to the death, but his imposing bulk, his calm stillness, the sadness in his eyes—they confused and paralyzed her.
“I know you have many questions, I see the obvious ones on your face, but first I would like to give you some answers you don’t even know to ask for. Will you listen?”
Molly turned away and squinted at the fiery orb. She touched the glass hesitantly, as if the planet could burn her, but the thick pane was cold from the vacuum of space. Outside, a fiery new star existed where a green planet had once been.
“I’ll listen,” she said, “but I can’t promise you I’ll understand, or my anger will lessen. I’m pretty kinetic right now, but you probably don’t know what that—”
“I know what it means. You’re upset. Angry. I understand that. If I don’t sound like my brethren, it’s because I’ve lived up here with Earth’s
archives for so many of your years. And I’m old. My wisdom has grown far beyond the juvenile stage that most Glemots… Well, imagine a human that learned so much about language, it could babble back and forth with a child. That should help you grasp—”
“So now I’m a baby to you? I said my anger wouldn’t lessen, I never promised it would remain where it was.” She turned around and sank to the decking, her back against the glass. Not wanting to look out the window, or at Campton, anymore, she stared down the hall into the small mouth of her ship.
“No, Molly. You are not a baby to me. I have come to respect you greatly. Edison is quite taken with you and your friends. I just… don’t think my kind can empathize enough to talk for another’s ears. They talk for their own.” His voice trailed off. Molly wrapped her arms around her knees.
“I use the present tense, but if the fire has met itself on the far side, Edison and I may be the only two Glemots left in this universe.”
Molly had been thinking it. Spoken, the horror became real. “Why?” she whispered.
“Other answers come first. You need to know something about our kind. I do not think you’ll be able to carry this with you otherwise.”
Campton paused, as if considering where to begin. “Glemots do not die from natural causes. Barring accidents, properly nourished, we live forever. It’s a poor design, even though most other species yearn for it.” He paused for a moment.
“I don’t understand the point.”
“Sorry. The problem is that we continue having children. Our population grows. Our solution is warfare and murder. Almost all Glemots die at the hands of another. If we did not, there would never be room for new Glemots. This is why our species thirsts for a balance.”