Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

She ducked the next blow rather than block it and went for the knees with an angle two, taking away the fur-clad man’s mobility.

“Cockpit!” she yelled to Mortimor. She dispatched the wounded attacker who had taken her arm and ran forward as more of the hoard rained in around them. Penny turned to see if Mortimor was still with her. She ground her teeth when she saw blood streaming down one of his hands and running off in a tight rivulet. It splattered the deck as he performed unorthodox, desperate swings with his other hand.

There were at least a dozen Luds in the cargo bay. One of them silenced Jym as the group pressed forward, forcing her and Mortimor toward the cockpit. More banging rang out above, letting Penny know there was no safe exit. They were surrounded and critically outnumbered.

One began barking orders to the others, planning the last surge, when Penny realized the encirclement was complete. With a loud bang, a large portion of the cockpit canopy fell in just as she and Mortimor were squeezing through the passageway. She barely had room to defend herself as two Luds crashed through the opening, their swords held on opposite sides and poised for a deadly pincer attack.

Penny picked one of them to counter, the other side of her body bracing for a killing blow. Tensing up, she swung her blade into position, when both men froze. Their arms went slack, the pincer attack falling into limp impotence. Both their torsos opened with an avalanche of intestines, bright joints of spine sticking up through the mess as the tops of the men fell away.

As the lifeless, gory heaps crashed to the deck, they revealed behind them the hazy outline of someone in white—someone framed fuzzily against the torrent of snow. Penny couldn’t make out much of their savior, but she did note the barest hint of a classical fencer’s stance—a stance normally guaranteed to get buckbladers killed.

Cole put his blade away. He held on to the edge of the canopy with one hand and fumbled inside a combat pouch with the other. He pulled out one of two blast grenades and clipped the pin to a snap on the front of his suit. Ahead of him, Penny and Mortimor were backing into the tight cockpit, slipping on the mess he’d created on the floor. Without adequate room for defensive posturing, their repelling blades threatened themselves and each other as much as they promised to protect them. Beyond his two wounded friends, Cole saw a file of attackers lining up for their chance at a killing blow.

“Grab on!” Cole yelled into the cockpit. His boots tenuously gripped the ship’s icy hull as he held out a hand toward Penny.

Penny screamed over her shoulder at Mortimor, who relented, turned, and put away his blade. He stepped onto the pilot’s seat and reached for Cole.

With a loud cry, Penny lunged and swung at the first Luddite to enter the cockpit. Their blades flew away from each other and did damage to the ship. Mortimor scampered up onto the dash and out into the snow-streaked air, yelling for Penny to follow. Her attacker pressed forward, threatening them all with any rebound from Penny’s blade.

Instead of blocking, however, Cole watched as she dove forward, below the attack, swinging upward at her foe’s elbow as she flew inside his range.

Both of them crashed to the ground, slipping in the guts on the decking. Penny pushed herself up as the next guy came storming in. She turned, sliding, and scampered toward the others as an invisible blade whisked back and forth behind her, eager to cut her in two.

Cole let go of the jagged canopy and ripped the grenade from his suit. He tossed it over Penny’s head and yelled: “Jump!”

One of Cole’s arms held Mortimor with an iron grip—the other reached out for her.

Penny came through the hole in the canopy, crashing into both men. They all clutched at one another, falling backwards onto the icy nose of the great Bern ship. Cole fumbled along the side of the grav chute, struggling to find the damned power button and trying not to lose his grip on the others as they slid across the slick steel.

He was still fumbling for the switch when they reached the edge of the gracefully curved nose, and then all three went tumbling over and out into the great quiet and snow-filled air.

Just as the three of them slid off the nose of the Bern craft, Cole heard a satisfying thump from the grenade he’d left behind. The trio tumbled into the air, the snow below and all around them brightening for a moment as the flash of the explosion reflected off a million flecks of floating ice.

Cole didn’t have time to enjoy the effects of the blast. They plummeted through nothingness, spiraling down toward the metal decking far below, while someone screamed in his ear—

It was the gravchute , Cole realized.

He held Mortimor—his new arm clinched tight around the man’s waist—and Penny latched onto him with an iron grip of her own. The chute trilled with a dying might, pushing up with every ounce of engineering left in it. Still, they hit the deck like they’d fallen from a story up, all three of them flying away from each other with grunts and sickening thuds.

The gravchute felt fit to explode, the heat of the thing scorching Cole’s back through his combat suit. He sat up and cut it loose, watching as it shot up from the deck before falling silent and crashing back down a stone’s throw away.

Mortimor seemed slow to get up, one of his arms pressed tight to his stomach. Cole stood to help him, then felt a jolt of electricity in his ankle, tendons crying out for him to go prone and remain there. He ignored them and limped to Mortimor, hoping it was just a sprain.

Helping the older man up, Cole noticed the deep gash in his outfit, right across his abdomen; Mortimor’s white suit was splattered with streams of red, his arm cut as well.

Mortimor must’ve seen the look on Cole’s face.

“It’s not that bad,” he said, grunting as he got to his feet. “What’s bad is you jumping down here to die with us.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Cole said, grimacing. Penny limped over, her buckblade already out as she looked to the sky for pursuers. Cole saw for the first time that one of her hands was missing, almost up to the elbow. He nearly gagged at the sight of fluid leaking out of the stump, until he realized it wasn’t blood.

“You okay?” Mortimor asked her.

She held up her arm. Her eyes narrowed as she peered at it through the snow. “The problem might be my leg,” she said, indicating a deep gash in her thigh. “Actuator cable got severed.”

Cole wanted to ask just how much of her was Human, but the look on her face reminded him that they were out of the pan, and now they needed to escape the fire. He unzipped another pocket and fumbled for his radio, looking around the wreckage as he did so to get his bearings.

“We’ve got to get away from the ship,” he said, nodding forward and toward the village’s mast. “Can everyone move?”

Mortimor and Penny both nodded and scampered uneasily toward the camp’s bow. Cole took one step and collapsed to his knees, the pain in his ankle overpowering his adrenaline.

Penny saw him go down and limped back to him. She put her blade away and wrapped her arm around his back.

“Guess you just answered your own question,” she said.

Cole grunted, adjusted his goggles, and let her carry the weight from his bad foot. The three of them labored forward into the snow, leaving a trail of blood and hydraulic fluid behind.

“What’s this about a plan?” Penny asked. “Is it better than your last one?”

Cole grimaced and nodded. He pointed with the radio’s antenna, gesturing to an alley through the line of buildings ahead, the same ones he’d used to leapfrog up to the cockpit.