Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“I’ll go,” Cole said.

Marx nodded as another member of the Underground fell out of the air and landed in a neat crouch. “I’m gonna insist Arthur come with the next group,” Marx said, reaching for his radio. “Protocol and seniority be damned, we need him here.”

“Agreed.” Cole slapped Marx on the shoulder and ran to the cockpit.

“What’s going on?” he asked the flight crew.

Larken spun around. The mic was trembling in his hand. “First group’s going down,” he sputtered. “Someone from the ship broadcasted a mechanical failure in Bern. I’m pretty sure it was Mortimor.”

The pilot took one hand off the steering column and grabbed Larken’s wrist; he pulled the mic away from the translator’s mouth. “You’re not gonna transmit anything to them, are you?”

“No, man! I’m just waiting for the Bern to get suspicious!”

“Calm down, both of you,” Cole said. He stepped up behind the translator and checked the strange-looking SADAR, which was a beehive of blips and odd figures. “Where does it show their altitude?” He glanced over the shapes on the screen, not recognizing any of them as numbers.

“Right there.” The pilot tapped the screen. “And that’s group one’s ship.” He indicated one of the blobs. “They’re going down soft by the looks of it. Not far from the Luddite camp.”

“Is that their camp there?” Cole reached over and tapped the screen.

“Only thing low enough,” the pilot growled.

“Well then, they aren’t going down near them,” Cole said. “I think they’re trying to land on them.”

The radio squawked with more rapid Bern. Larken turned to the pilot, his knuckles white around the mic.

“I think he’s right, sir.”

The trio of white-clad warriors shuffled down the corridor toward Edison and Anlyn, their courage seeming to have rallied as they raised the strange cylinders in their hands.

“Desist!” Edison roared once more. He berated himself for leaving his lance in the cockpit as Anlyn scooted safely around him. “Stay where you are!” he tried in Bern.

One of the Bern stiffened and pulled back on the alien ahead of him. “We’re taking over control of your ship,” he returned in Bern. “On your knees!”

Edison took a step back and growled at Anlyn to return to the cockpit. As she ran off, the three attackers surged forward, the one in the front bringing his empty hands up high as if wielding an invisible club.

Edison threw his feet forward and fell flat on his back, sending a shiver through the deck. He brought his knees up to his chest as some unseen thing whizzed through the air above him. Kicking out with his legs, he caught the figure in the chest and sent him sprawling back into the other two.

Something clattered to the ground nearby. Reaching forward to grab it—a metal cylinder of some sort—Edison paused. The bulkhead to the side of the device was sparking. A thin line of destruction streaked across the solid steel as the cylinder rolled across the deck toward him. Edison’s scientific thought processes kicked into high gear. He picked the thing up, keeping the laser end pointed away. He leveled the device at the three men.

Nothing happened.

Insufficient range , he figured.

He took a step forward, and the other two figures in white dropped their cylinders and raised their hands.

“We give up!” one of them said in English.

“Excellent maneuver.” Edison aimed the strange cylinder at the one who had spoken in Bern and switched to that language himself:

“Now, who in hyperspace are you people?”

Cole watched the blip on the SADAR, the one showing Mortimor’s ship descending toward the frozen wastelands of hyperspace. The pilot and translator were yelling back and forth, arguing about what to do for them, but it was mere background noise. All Cole could think about was what might have gone wrong with Mortimor’s group and how he should’ve been there with them.

He snapped himself out of the unproductive thoughts and looked around at the bickering crew. The raid was going to fall apart over this, he realized. Mortimor’s mythical status as leader of the Underground was now going to be a distraction rather than a motivating force.

Cole ran out of the cockpit and returned to the cargo bay. He tore open one metal cabinet and locker after another, looking through the ship’s supplies for anything resembling a gravchute, or even an old-fashioned glider. Every five seconds or so, he heard a soft pop as more people and gear arrived from HQ. The finality and awfulness of the raid, of using up what remained of the fusion fuel, of abandoning the Underground’s headquarters, it all dawned on him as a colossal mistake.

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. Cole turned to find Arthur Dakura frowning at him.

“What’s the emergency?” Arthur asked. He looked annoyed to have been brought aboard out of order.

“One group is going down,” Cole said. He slammed a locker shut and flung open another. “And I’m going down after them.”

Arthur grabbed Cole’s shoulders. He pulled him away from the cabinet just as Cole started rummaging around inside it. “That’s a negative,” Arthur said. “Drawing any more attention will just threaten the other squads. Now, which group did you say is going down?”

Cole clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I told you,” he said. “Group one.”

Arthur’s eyes darted back and forth, searching Cole’s.

“Mortimor’s group,” Cole whispered.

Anlyn reached the cockpit and made sure the Bern ship was still holding position and that the fleet hadn’t adjusted itself around them. She grabbed Edison’s lance and ran back aft as the sounds of a struggle and a bout of yelling sent shivers of fear up her spine. She half expected to find dozens of Bern in the cargo bay by the time she returned, the illusion of another ship locked to theirs still lingering.

She entered the bay with the lance level, fully prepared to send its pyrotechnic fireworks into her enemy. What she found instead was Edison standing bold before the three figures, something in his hand aimed at them. Two of the figures held their arms in the air. The other clutched his stomach, in obvious pain, but still attempting to speak. His efforts were interrupted by the arrival of two more white-suited aliens running up from the rear, neither of them Bern. Anlyn recognized one of them as a Pheral, the other a Callite. Her head swelled with confusion; the Bern were not known to ally themselves with other races.

The original three held the new arrivals back, telling them in English to be careful. Edison roared at the two in the back to drop their weapons, which they refused to do.

Anlyn stepped beside Edison with the lance level, hoping it looked suitably fierce. “Which of you speaks English?” she asked.

“We all do,” the Pheral said. He pulled the white hood off his head, revealing his yellowish, mottled skin. “What’s a Drenard doing working for the Bern?”

“We’re not with the Bern,” Anlyn said, beginning to sense that this group wasn’t either. “This is Lord Campton, and I am Anlyn Hooo. We are members of the Drenard Circle and come as ambassad—”

Anlyn fell silent as the group of aliens sank to their knees, their eyes wide and mouths open. Weapons that had been held at the ready immediately moved into tucked positions of submission.

“Hooo of the royal line,” one of the figures whispered.

The one clutching his stomach seemed to forget his pain, his grimace morphing into a wide smile as he looked up at her and Edison. “We are members of the Drenard Underground,” the man said. “We are protectors of the rift, and we are honored to serve.”