by Hugh Howey
The answers finally came, and the Wadi knew she was home.
The poison in the rock soaked deep, slowing her descent into nothing.
They soaked deep, antidotes to the egg-dream poisons within her.
••••
It felt like many sleeps later that the hunters came, the ones of the occasional eons. They were not blue, like the tales of so many. Not blue like the story her mate-pair had told her. They were pungent with different smells: odors of confusion and fear.
She sniffed one hunter’s progress as he went deep down the winds, his mind leaking thoughts of large Wadi dead, but leaking them with a thirst the old Wadi found sweet on her tongue. There were thoughts of a mate-pair in this hunter’s mind. She sniffed him go deep into the canyons until his scent was gone. She did not welcome this intrusion of questions into her realm of answers.
More of the alien hunters came not long after. One smelled foul, his desires leaking like black smoke full of pilfered eggs. His trail came feeble but stark as it worked its way over from a neighboring canyon. The Wadi marveled at the lack of response from her brethren. Could they not smell this?
By the time they did, it was too late. Many canyons away, an egg was stolen. The black thoughts swirled with joy and ire.
The Wadi stirred, this intrusion shattering the sameness and ageless sleeps. She moved to rouse those in her adjoining warrens, when one of the not-blue hunters entered the eggless canyon. Columns of multi-hued thoughts snaked down the winds ahead of her, ahead of this frightened and weary hunter. The old Wadi scented them deep, confused not by the alien nature of the mind leaking them, but by the familiarity.
She left her watering hole and followed the smells of this hunter, tracing them through the porous rock. There was something in them that matched her long-ago life. Her first life. Something of hope and happy not-knowing. Something of excited fear, rather than the fear of dread. Something of passion, even if the molecules didn’t quite fit her tongue’s receptors. And then she knew what it was: It was the hunter’s thoughts of a mate-pair that had the Wadi scampering from disused warren to disused warren. There was something in this alien’s emanations that reminded the Wadi of herself. A long-ago self the males hadn’t killed, had barely even clawed. A younger Wadi with an aching, hopeful heart.
She paused to drink from another hole, and that’s when the odors changed. There was a fight. Wadi and alien fear mixed in the air as the two clashed. One of her mad egg-less neighbors had been attracted to the same scent, that odor of hope and pure new bonding like an antidote to their poison. The hunter with the mate-pair thoughts became injured. Injured and running, the fear no longer excitement, but dread. The old Wadi ran through the tunnels as well, chasing that previous scent, that good scent, and trying to win it back.
She ran through warren after warren, her claws clacking the rock, her arms and legs growing weary. Thirst consumed her, but still she ran. She followed the mad dash of the hunter with the pure smells, now tinged with fright. She tried telling the creature to stop, to give up more of the memories, more of the long-ago.
And the hunter did stop, seeming to hear her pleas.
The hunter stopped and rested against the rock. There were pure thoughts again—the hunter was dripping with them. The Wadi crept closer, sniffing the thick emotions. She rounded a bend to find light filtering into the mouth of a tunnel. The canyon beyond was bright with the glow of the low twins and groaning with the wind passing through. The Wadi moved closer, and then something moved into the mouth of the tunnel. A white something, still and lifeless. The Wadi sniffed the air. She could smell the moisture in the thing, this ball of crumpled white, but more than that: she could smell the hunter’s delicious thoughts. The white thing was laden with them. Dripping with them. Tempting and tasty and dangerously full of hope.
The Wadi laid out on the cool rock, her belly warm and quivering from the long run. She lay there and watched the white temptation, wondering what it would do.
Wondering what she would do.
Part XVII – Escape
“What good is the running, with nothing to run to?”
~The Bern Seer~
1 · Lok
Three sets of landing struts settled to the packed soil of the Lokian forest, one of them squeaking slightly, in need of oil. Molly looked out through the carboglass where large shadows danced at the edge of a wooded clearing, the black puppets thrown high and wavering from the light of so many campfires. Her mother’s voice continued to drone in her helmet’s speakers, complaining and asking questions about Molly’s refusal to jump to hyperspace. Molly pulled her helmet off and closed its visor, trapping her mom’s voice inside the dented shell.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, apologizing for disappointing her mom and for not being able to explain herself. She placed her helmet on its rack and patted her Wadi as the colorful lizard settled across her shoulders.
Walter turned and faced her general direction from the nav chair. He still had his modified welding goggles on for the jump to hyperspace, which meant he was practically blind.
“But we’re gonna go ssoon, right?” He waved his hands out at Molly, the black goggles contrasting with his silvery skin and making him look comical.
“As soon as we can,” Molly said. “I promise.” She laughed. “Until then, you can take those off.”
Walter hissed his annoyance but reluctantly removed the goggles. Molly wasn’t sure why he had been so eager to dash off to hyperspace to rescue Cole and her father, but he seemed nearly as miffed as her mom about the sudden change in plans.
Even with the visor closed and the volume down, Molly could still hear her mother’s muffled questions raining down from the rack behind her. She felt horrible for not explaining herself better. She felt even worse for not fully understanding the decision herself. As much as she longed to rush off to Cole, as hard as she’d struggled the past weeks to secure the fusion fuel necessary, when the moment had arrived with her finger on the button… she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave the Callites behind who had lost so many family members to Bekkie’s blood-draining operation. She couldn’t abandon Saunders and his crewmen, who had survived a shipwreck that had spared so few. Molly tried not to think she was throwing her life away in a futile gesture of heroism, some primal urge to strike out at the Bern ships that had tormented her home planet from orbit, but given the odds that her return could do any good, there were few other interpretations.
Her Wadi licked the air contentedly as Molly powered the ship down and shut off the flight systems. The colorful lizard from Drenard seemed to be the only crew member left that wasn’t upset at Molly’s decision. She patted the animal on the head and moved to step over the control console, leaving Walter to fumble with his harness. As she hurried back through the cargo bay, Molly began working on an explanation for Saunders and the others as to why she had chosen to stay.
The cargo ramp creaked out into the Lokian night, and then lowered toward the dew-soaked grass beyond. Molly watched as a clearing full of curious faces were revealed by the descending plate of steel. Cat was the first person to come inside. She jumped to the descending ramp before its lip even reached the ground.
“You forget something?” the Callite asked, a wide smile across her dark, scaly face.
Molly ran down the ramp to meet her, and the two women squeezed each other’s arms. “I just couldn’t leave,” she said, the simple truth slicing through a hundred half-forged excuses. Molly looked over Cat’s shoulder to see Scottie and Saunders stomping up the ramp behind her, their faces scrunched up in confused smiles.
“Besides,” Molly said, “I think I have an idea.”
“What kind of idea?” Saunders asked, stepping up to join them.
Molly looked from the Navy Admiral—her former superior at the Academy—to Scottie, the old illicit fuser and new friend. The two men represented opposite ends on as wide a chasm as law could allow. Molly wondered how best to speak in front of both o
f them, how to explain her plan without divulging any secrets about Parsona’s illegal hyperdrive—a drive that could move things across the galaxy without a care for what got in the way. Saunders wouldn’t enjoy hearing those details, and Scottie would probably be miffed to hear how much her plan relied on Navy skills and tactics. Molly looked from one of them to the other, not knowing where to start.
“Does this mean you’re not rushing off to hyperspace?” Scottie asked.
Molly shook her head. “I’m staying. For now.”
Saunders pointed up. “Does this plan involve attacking those bastards up there?”
Molly nodded.
“This is gonna be like one of your crazy simulator stunts, isn’t it?” Saunders smiled and crossed his arms. “Well c’mon, let’s hear it.”
Molly held out her hands, trying to slow both of them down. The risk of revealing her hyperdrive to Saunders had won out in her mind—she couldn’t do it, so she needed a cover story of some sort.
“I have a few details I need to hammer out with these guys first,” she said, nodding to Cat and Scottie. She looked over her shoulder as Walter padded out into the cargo bay, his goggles down around his neck. “Besides, it’s already late, and it looks like you still need help distributing the food and water. Let’s tend to the Callites. I’ll talk to my friends later tonight, and we’ll meet with you in the morning.”
Saunders frowned. “I don’t like being left out of the discussion,” he said.
Molly stepped closer, wary of the crowd gathering around the ship, eyes and ears wide. “I know,” she said softly. She felt sorry for the Admiral, imagining how helpless he must feel with nothing to do for the paltry few survivors of his once-powerful fleet. He couldn’t even speak freely among his staff now that she’d told him of the Bern threat and the stark physical similarities between them and Humans.
“Look,” she told him, “I really need you to trust me on this.”
Saunders seemed about to argue, but his frown cracked into a wan smile, his fat jowls lifting just a little. He squeezed Molly’s shoulder and looked out over the two groups of haggard survivors in the clearing.
“I suppose I owe you a little trust,” Saunders said, referring perhaps to having doubted her before and having thrown her in jail. The old man turned back to face her, his eyes wet and reflecting Parsona’s interior lights. “And I’m glad you decided to stick around,” he said, forcing a smile.
Molly nodded and smiled back. She suddenly sensed just how much he meant it, this man who had once expelled her. And for the first time, her decision to stay resonated within her as having been the right choice.
••••
There was no sleep that night as Molly and her friends stayed up and discussed her germ of a plan for dealing with the Bern fleet. They huddled together around a campfire built under Parsona’s starboard wing and nurtured the idea, watching it sprout and grow as they each offered suggestions and pointed out various flaws. They spoke in hushed whispers, and even by the standards of Bekkie’s short days, dawn seemed to arrive in a rush.
Morning was heralded by the popping of rekindled fires within the woods as early risers awoke to stoke dying embers. Gradually, the first smattering of Humans and Callites emerged from their scattered camps; they crossed the clearing on weary legs, looking to Parsona for some odd supply item or just for the use of its bathrooms. Molly greeted them and made them feel welcome, even as Walter cast suspicious glances their way.
When one of the Navy crewmen exited Parsona with a load of fresh laundry, Molly asked if he would send for Saunders, and the crewman agreed.
“Are we sure we’ve got our story straight?” Molly asked. She rubbed her weary eyes and looked to her friends around the fire, each of them nodding with as much enthusiasm as they could muster despite their lack of sleep. Leaning forward, she grabbed a pot of coffee from a flat stone near the fire and topped up her mug. She hoped the jolt of caffeine would help her regain some energy before the day’s plan was spelled out and acted upon.
After a few minutes, Saunders arrived alone, his sagging jowls and dark-rimmed eyes signifying a similarly restless night. He lowered his considerable bulk to one of the blankets and eagerly accepted a cup of coffee, wrapping both meaty hands around the steaming mug. Cat said hello while Scottie greeted the old Navy veteran with the sheepishness of an outlaw waving to a passing sheriff. Walter didn’t even acknowledge Saunders’s arrival; the Palan boy sat across the fire from Molly, continually poking the logs with a stick to send out showers of rising embers.
“You ready to tell me about this plan of yours?” Saunders asked. He blew across the surface of his coffee, sending a wisp of heat toward the fire.
“Yeah.” Molly took a sip of her own coffee and thought about where best to start.
“And what is this plan for, exactly?” Saunders asked. “Will it help stop the Drenard attack? Or is it just for the bastards who shot down my fleet?”
Molly raised her eyebrows. “It’s for all of it. Hopefully.”
Saunders smiled. He took another loud sip from his coffee and waved one hand in a small circle, pleading for her to get on with it.
“My friends here,” she indicated Scottie and Cat. “They know something about these rifts, these tears in space like the one the Bern fleet is coming out of.”
Molly took another sip of coffee, steeling herself for the half-truths that were to follow. “These rifts are everywhere,” she lied. “There’s even one very close to us, right here in these woods, and my friends know how to control it.” Molly chose her words carefully, using the language she and the others had decided upon in order to not reveal the special properties of Parsona’s hyperdrive.
Saunders glanced across the fire at Cat and Scottie. He raised his eyebrows. “Control it?”
Molly nodded. “We can send people through this rift to wherever we like.”
“Wherever? You mean like through hyperspace?”
“Yeah. It’s similar, but without the limitations.” Molly felt a wave of nausea as the lies piled up. Creating a fairytale to keep her hyperdrive secret was going to become burdensome, and fast.
“The thing is, travelling through this rift is a one-way trip,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. She forced herself to meet Saunders’s gaze “We’ve got a plan for how we can make life miserable for the Bern.” She waved her arm toward the edge of the woods where the surviving members of Gloria’s crew were mingling and working to improve the encampment. “We have enough pilots,” she said. “We just need a fleet, right?”
Saunders shook his head, his jowls jiggling back and forth. “Are you crazy? Did you see what happened yesterday? This is not the Tchung we’re dealing with. An entire Naval fleet is scattered across this planet in utter ruin—” Saunders held his mouth open as if to say more, but Molly could see his cheeks twitching, the tears welling up at the bottoms of his eyes.
“I know, sir, just hear me out. The fleet I’m thinking of will give anything a run for its money. It’s the most battle-tested fleet of ships in the entire galaxy.”
Saunders frowned. “More powerful than Zebra, the most advanced fleet in the Navy’s arsenal?” He waved his mug in the air, sending a dark wave of coffee over the edge. “Such a fleet doesn’t exist!”
“It does at Darrin,” Molly said, keeping her cool. “It’s the one place in GN controlled space that even the Navy can’t go.”
Saunders laughed. He set his coffee in the dirt and wiped his palm on his too-small flightsuit. “Darrin? And what fleet do you suppose we’ll use to get that one? They would make even quicker work of us than the Bern did!”
Molly shook her head. “No, we don’t use a fleet. We use the rift. Don’t you see? We send people straight to the ships. We can place teams inside Darrin garages and nab a fleet right out from underneath them!”
Saunders chewed his lip. “Too many problems. For one, even my StarCarrier doesn’t have chart data for Darrin that accurate, so you’d be lucky to end up
anywhere near one of their hideouts. I mean, nobody legit has been there since their civil war, and besides—”
“My nav computer has the entire system scanned from just a month ago,” Molly interrupted. She jabbed a thumb back toward Parsona.
Saunders shot her a look that suggested this wasn’t something to brag about.
“Then there’s the pilot codes to consider,” he said. “Nobody leaves their ships unlocked—”
“These guys do. They trust their forcefields way too much. I—well, I kinda flew one of their ships back to Earth the day that… you know, with Lucin—”
“Are you kidding?”
Molly raised her hands. “I swear on my father, I did these things with the best of intentions.”
Scottie leaned over to Cat and whispered loudly: “She sounds like one of us, now.”
The two of them snickered. Molly was so tired, she nearly joined them.
“We would need weapons,” Saunders said, ignoring the others. “The ban on Lok is going to make that difficult—”
“Covered, and it’ll actually be the most unpleasant part of our plan.”
Saunders reached again for his coffee. “Which is?”
“We raid the StarCarrier, sir. We send in a team with climbing gear to rappel down to the armory. You’ve got the access codes, and we need to grab enough flightsuits for the pilots, anyway. I’ll take a small group in my ship to do this while you brief and prepare the others. Some of them might not feel like they’re ready for this kind of raid, but we’re gonna need everyone. You’ll have to make them believe this’ll work.”
“But will it work?” Saunders looked into his mug, staring down at it like an oracle searching a muddy well. “Lok and Darrin are on opposite sides of the galaxy,” he whispered. “If this rift of yours can get them there like you say, it’s still, what, five days flight time to get them back?”