by Hugh Howey
Albert’s eyes, meanwhile, grew wide as the terror of recognition coursed through him. His wife rolled over, one hand patting him, wanting to know why the light was on.
Albert remained speechless, but Gladys didn’t. She squinted at the intruders, gasped, then yelped and covered her mouth in surprise.
“You—” Albert muttered.
Anlyn’s hand quivered. It was the same hand that had pulled so many other triggers, reducing man and machine to dust. It was once a hand infamous for its ability to kill, all at Albert’s whim.
But she couldn’t. Even as she focused on the years of starvation, of subsisting on a Wadi diet of nothing but water, she couldn’t. Anlyn tried to feel the shackle around her withering ankle, tried to see Albert for all he had done to her, but all she saw was an old man in bed with his wife and two burglars standing over them.
Her hand slid down. The gun pointed away from Albert’s chest.
Albert’s arm moved beneath the blanket, a small mound creeping toward his waist.
The first to utter something was Edison, just a grunt of alarm. His hand moved swiftly as Anlyn screamed for Albert to hold still. Gladys yelled “Wait!” her white and wrinkled hand extended out over her husband, fingers splayed, body begging.
Edison roared.
He swung his arm down, whizzing past Anlyn. There was a loud pop, a surge of electricity in the air that Anlyn could feel through her flightsuit. Edison flew back, grunting, the scent of charred fur coming from somewhere.
Gladys got hit by the surge as well. She flew from the bed with a yelp, taking the blanket with her.
That left Albert at the epicenter of the discharge, unmoving at first, his body exposed. He wore a set of pajamas Anlyn knew well, and she recognized the shimmer of his personal forcefield all along them, the glisten of hardened air and energy just like the barrier that gated his hangar bay.
Albert’s hand rested on his belt, on the device that controlled the fields. His other hand moved up and down, patting his stomach, almost as if looking for something he’d misplaced. He tried to sit up—and a strange groan leaked out of his lungs.
He collapsed back into his pillow.
Something in the air caught Anlyn’s attention. She saw it as Gladys began whimpering and sobbing. It was the handle of Edison’s sword, hovering in mid-air, the end of it pointing directly at Albert. Following the tip, Anlyn focused on Albert again and saw where he was patting himself. She watched blood ooze from a crack in his form and gather behind the shimmer along his body, pooling up inside the forcefield that was doing more to hold Albert together than it was to protect him.
Edison reached over the bed and pushed Albert’s trembling hands away. He deactivated the device on Albert’s waist. When the forcefield released his buckblade, the handle fell to the ground. Edison and Anlyn both jumped back from it, lest the invisible sword do something effortless and awful. On the other side of the bed, Gladys’s soft whimpers grew to wails as the thin line seeping blood around her husband’s waist opened like a purse.
Her wails blossomed to shrieks, then to mad screams. Gladys reached for her husband, ignoring Edison as he removed the device from Albert’s waist. She grabbed one of Albert’s hands and pulled it to her cheek, but the movement just made things worse.
Albert’s body yawned wide, spilling things. The mad screams turned to gagging noises and pants for air, to nausea and hyperventilation, to the sounds of primal fear and disgust.
Anlyn had hardly moved through it all. She watched in detached confusion, the gun in her hand still pointing somewhere between Albert and the floor.
“Vacate with haste,” Edison said, reaching down to scoop up his blade and turn it off.
“I—”
“We have to go,” he said in Drenard, pulling her toward the door.
Anlyn felt herself dragged back, away from the terrible scene, away from Albert’s wide and motionless eyes staring up at the ceiling. Terrifying shrieks and accusations lanced at her as she stumbled back, shuffling and transfixed and trying to come to her senses.
It only got worse in the hallway, where they ran into the kids. Luke and Jenni stumbled out of their rooms with sleepy eyes and frightened mouths to see what was wrong with their mother.
Edison shouldered them aside. Anlyn followed in his wake, the look on both of the kids’ faces seared into her memory as sudden recognition seized them, their young brains putting together the horrific sounds from the bedroom with the unexpected presence of their father’s former slave, running free.
Anlyn hurried after Edison. A dozen words of regret and apology choked up inside her, all crammed in her throat as they tried to swim past the labored gasps of air heading the other direction.
Out in the hangar bay, Edison found the ship unlocked, just as they’d expected. Not needing to cut their way inside meant they could finally remove their helmets. Anlyn popped hers off as she made her way to the cockpit. She finally managed to swallow down a gulp of air, her first in what felt like forever.
Edison brought up the ramp and got ready to lower the forcefield while Anlyn settled into the pilot’s seat, her body still quivering, her mind continuing to race over what had just happened.
Then she thought on what lay ahead of them, the mission to return to Lok and face the Bern, and she settled on an awful truth:
This had been the easy part.
30 · Lok
“Molly? Walter?”
Cat swept the portable spotlight across the edge of the clearing, looking for any sign of them. She’d found the jump platform where one of them had dropped it halfway back to the ship, but she could find no trace of where they’d gone to afterward. She played the light across the trees one more time, throwing shadows deep into the woods, then powered it down to save the battery. Returning to the platform, she disconnected the four wires and carried it back to the ship to share her lack of results with the others.
“Nothing?” Scottie asked.
Cat shook her head.
“Were they—?” Ryn made a rude gesture with his hands, which Cat broke up with a slap from hers.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“How’dya know?” Scottie asked.
“Because we’ve had girl talks,” Cat said.
That was too much for the boys. They roared with laughter.
“You—” Scottie snorted. “Girl talks?”
More guffaws from both of them.
“You guys are assholes. I’m worried about our friends, and all you—”
“Hey, Cripple!”
Cat turned to see Ryke standing in the entrance of the cockpit. He waved her over with one hand, his other one tugging on his white beard. He was the only person who could, in some magical manner, call her “Cripple” in a way that sounded nice.
“Where’d you go?” she asked Ryke. “I thought you were gonna help me look for them.”
“I was. I mean, I am. Or I did.” He stepped to the side and ushered Cat into the pilot’s seat.
“There has to be some kind of mistake,” Parsona said through the radio.
Ryke waved Parsona off as if she could see him. He pointed to the SADAR screen in front of Cat.
“What is this?” Cat asked. “Signature traces?” She dialed out the range and got rid of two of the overlays. The controls were similar to ships she had run, but with way too many options and readouts for her to see past.
“Two jumps,” Ryke said, pointing. “Here and here. Both less than forty kilos. Both to roughly the same spot.”
“Is that a moon?”
“It’s that big ship up there.”
“Do what? Why would Molly jump there? I don’t understand.”
“She wouldn’t,” Parsona said.
Cat turned to Ryke. “Did you know about this? How did you think to look here?”
He gestured to the screen. “Because this is where I always look for people.” He said it with a hurt tone. “And plus, there was something about that boy—”
&
nbsp; “You don’t trust him either?”
“I don’t know about that, only… he said we had twenty percent of our fuel in captivity.” Ryke held up his small reader. “I show nineteen point nine two eight.”
“So he rounded up?”
Ryke looked at her as if she’d gone mad, or had struck him with a physical blow. “You think he’s the sort to do that?” The whiskers above his lip flapped with a disgusted puff of breath.
Cat rolled her eyes. “Oh, gimme a break.”
“Molly hinted to me many times that Walter couldn’t be fully trusted,” Parsona told them.
“When was this?” Cat asked.
“Let me check our prior conversations… Forty seven times over the past four and a half weeks. Most recently, yesterday at eight thirty two. Another time earlier that morning at—”
“Okay, I get it,” Cat said. She looked to Ryke. “So, how do you read this?”
He leaned forward. “Two objects, less than forty kilos each—”
“No, not that. I mean, do you think the Palan is working for the Bern? Did he make a mistake? Is he looking for adventure, what?”
“Oh. Hmm. Hadn’t thought about that. I was just excited to have found them.”
“That’s not finding them.” Cat jabbed a finger at the SADAR. “That’s locating where they used to be!”
“What in the world is going on in here?” Scottie asked, squeezing into the back of the cockpit.
“More girl talk?” Ryn hollered from the galley, followed by snorts of laughter.
“Shut it,” Scottie told him. He turned to Cat, all the levity drained from his face at the sight of her. “What’s going on, Cat?”
“Molly’s gone.”
Ryke tapped the SADAR. “Jumped into orbit,” he said.
“Do what?”
Ryn squeezed in behind Scottie. “Who’s gone where?”
“Why would she do that?” Scottie asked.
“She wouldn’t,” Parsona said again. “She’s been abducted.”
“So what do we do?” Cat asked the others.
“We need to tell the Underground,” Ryke said.
“And what? Have them put out a missing persons report?”
“No, but they have all our translators. They can at least keep an ear out. Besides, they need to know she’s in that big ship.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Ryn said.
“I’ll be damned,” said Cat. “Don’t you start on—”
“No, he’s right,” Scottie said. “How many hours before the pilots jump back? At dawn, right? If that monster is still in the sky, and if the Navy geeks are right that it’s what sent them crashing down, then we need to get to the StarCarrier’s missiles—”
“Flank that,” Cat said.
“Cat, be reasonable for just a second. We need to—”
“You wanna send bombs in after her? You wanna blow up the thing she just jumped into? Flank you, Scottie.”
Everyone fell quiet. Old friends looked down at each other’s boots.
“I’m sorry,” Cat whispered. “It’s just—”
“No, I’m sorry, too,” Scottie said. “But we started a war tonight, Cat. We’ve all been here before. Hell, you especially. And look, we’re friends and all, but we knew the chances going into this, right? We know what happens to friends in war—”
“Yeah,” said Cat, finishing his thought for him. “Friends die.”
31 · Near Darrin
The hijacked ships jumped into the rendezvous point near Darrin, one after another. Each successful arrival was celebrated, and they held out hope for the others. But after three hours, the gathering fleet realized two of the crews wouldn’t be joining them. There weren’t any reliable reports to explain what went wrong, but one of the squads saw an asteroid base explode as they were leaving the system, which accounted for one group. Anlyn gave the other missing group as much time as she could while the rest of the ships locked up, swapped engineers, made modifications to the drives, tended to small wounds, and distributed the fuel and supplies evenly.
The newly trained mechanics moved from one engine room to another, following Ryke’s wiring schematics and uploading the new firmware he’d provided. They were short one Callite engineer, who had been in a group gone missing, which meant extra work for Edison. Anlyn ferried him from one ship to another while his dexterous claws made quick work of the modifications. She looked for any sign of trauma in him, any hint that he had been affected by Albert’s death the way she had, but it was either missing or very well hidden.
The third ship they locked up to in their queue of modifications was Lady Liberty, which had been retrieved from its hidden orbit deep within Darrin II’s asteroid belt. As Anlyn and Edison switched ships with the crew, she noted a hint of guilty relief from the others at having gotten the safer assignment. Little was said between the two groups as they filed past each other in the cramped airlocks.
Anlyn hadn’t expected it, but walking through Lady’s cargo bay and entering the cockpit felt nearly as bad as her first flight in that Bern craft, back at the Great Rift so many seeming sleeps ago. Gone were the slave chain and the eyebolt that had held her for so many years, removed by Edison prior to Molly’s and Cole’s trip to Earth. But everything else was intimately familiar: the controls and readouts, the screens and portholes, all the walls of her old prison that somehow seemed to contain an entire other life she’d known. It was like walking back into some prior existence that had been stolen, that she could never get back, even after the death of the man who had taken it from her.
As she settled into the worn seat, Anlyn was thankful for the task of locking with more ships while Edison performed modifications on the remaining hyperdrives. She needed to do something rote with her body while her mind scrambled for purchase. Looking down at her hands, how they trembled so, Anlyn couldn’t imagine going into battle in such a state, much less attempting to lead so many others. The sudden lack of confidence was unsettling. For countless years, she had flown into combat knowing she would win, and she had been able to do so almost on autopilot. She had formed a habit of warfare in order to avoid punishment and pain. She had fought without caring, and so fought without fear—without fear of failure.
As she went over the weapons systems, each powerful device a trophy from her days as the best customer-wrangler in either Darrin, she confronted the awful taste of preparing herself for a different kind of fight: A fight she cared deeply about. A fight she would be crushed to lose.
The difference was light years apart.
“Gloria leader, wing two.”
Anlyn snapped out of her cold thoughts and keyed the radio on her helmet. “Wing two—” Her words came out as whispers; she swallowed and tried to find her voice. “Wing two, go ahead.”
“Requesting permission to assume command of one of wing three’s ships,” the pilot said. “The two missing flight crews were both in our wing, leaving us with eight.”
Anlyn hesitated. She didn’t know any of the pilots and only knew what a few of their ships were armed with. As skilled as she had been in a cockpit, she had always flown into battle solo, never with even so much as a wingman. Her stomach sank; she could feel the back of her neck thrum as her heart raced and pounded.
Molly was meant to do this, she realized. My thirst for revenge has cursed everything. This has all been a mistake.
Lady Liberty seemed to do a barrel roll as her mind reeled. She even wondered if she’d upset the prophecy somehow. She was no Human, just a Drenard. Did that mean anything?
“Gloria leader?”
Anlyn keyed her mic. “Uh, negative wing two. I’m transferring two of my squadron to you. Wings two through four will go in with a full complement of ten. All wing leaders copy?”
“Four copy.”
“Three copy. And we have just one drive left to modify over here.”
“Wing two, here.”
“Two, go ahead.”
“Gloria leader, that leaves
you with just eight ships.”
“Copy that,” Anlyn said.
She silently wished she could give up even more.
•• LOK ••
“We could just as easily argue about this on our way to the Carrier,” Scottie told the others. “We need to get a move-on before the fleet from Darrin gets back and finds that big ship still up there.”
Ryn grunted. “Hell, they can argue about it all they want. We’ll be climbing down to the armory.”
Ryke stared up at the ceiling and scratched the thick, white tangle of beard below his chin.
“What’s on your mind, doc?”
“Nothing. Just… theoreticals.”
“Well let’s hear ’em,” said Cat.
“It doesn’t apply, sorry. It’s just a problem Arthur and I were working on. This would’ve been one of its uses if we’d ever gotten it to work.”
Cat took a step closer. “Do I have to throttle it out of you?”
Ryke shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand half of it. Besides, it ain’t workable.”
A look from Cat, and he held up his hands, preparing to explain.
Scottie and Ryn must’ve seen the look as well—they stopped their impatient shuffling and crossed their arms, hugging themselves still.
“We were working on a way to bring people back from raids instead of using the skimmers.” Ryke turned to Cat, who had been on her fair share of raids in hyperspace. “We had just lost another lad due to a frozen locator, so we started thinking outside the box in a big way. The idea we came up with was to create a small rift, like the kind I made back in my house, the very kind the Bern are using now—”
“What, and you would just step through that rift and grab someone from the other side?”
“Theoretically. Problem is, we never figured out how to make a rift that isn’t grounded to hyperspace on one side, but not the other. When one object is scurryin’ about—like the surface of Lok for instance—you can compute the blasted equations and link up between here and hyperspace. But between two moving objects, like Lok and that ship up there, it just can’t be done. It’s like in physics, going from a two body solution to a three body—” Ryke frowned and narrowed his eyes. He rubbed his whiskers. “See? I’m losing ya, right?”