Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“Wait a second you two.” Molly leaned forward and turned up the ship’s radio.

“Affirmative, group designation four. Maintaining coordinates relative to—”

“It’s nothing,” Cat said.

“Yeah, it’s just that voice. I swear it reminds me of someone—”

“—approximate vectors. Edison out.”

“Flank me,” Molly whispered.

“No,” Parsona said. “It can’t be.”

“You two wanna fill me in?”

“Can we can transmit?” Molly asked.

“Yeah,” her mom said. “We’re riding the same frequency in order to listen in. I’m patching it together right now. But you don’t really think—?”

“I don’t know.” Molly shook her head and reached for the mic. She thought for a moment, then squeezed the transmit button. “Hello? Does anybody read me?”

The radio popped, and then a voice announced: “Carrier frequency compromised. All groups switch to secondary.”

A round of “copies,” followed, and then the radio fell silent.

“Well that sucks vacuum,” Cat said.

“Give me a second,” Parsona told them.

They waited.

“Try again. I think I have it, but there isn’t any chatter right now.”

Molly bit her lip and thought about what to say. “My transmission is scrambled too, right?” she asked her mom.

“Yes, but if the entire fleet is using this carrier wave, they’ll all hear you. Keep that in mind.”

Molly keyed the mic. “Mechanical bear, this is the Wadi queen, over.”

The same voice from before responded immediately: “Frequency compromised. Switch to tertiary.”

“Copy.”

“Negative,” a gruffer voice said. A familiar voice. “Break, break. Fifth group is maintaining secondary carrier frequency.”

Silence. Then a different voice. Higher. Softer. Still familiar.

“Molly? Is that you?”

Molly swallowed and blinked back tears.

“Anlyn?”

The trepid male voice returned: “This is group command, switch to tertiary frequency immediately.”

“Command, this is group five,” Anlyn said. “That’s your commander’s daughter. Please hold.”

“Anlyn,” Molly said into the mic. “Are you in that fleet up there? Can we talk? What are the Drenards doing with the Bern? How did you—What’s going on?”

“These aren’t Drenards, Molly. We—it’s complicated. We’re with some people from hyperspace. We control three ships up here—hold on a sec.”

Molly stared at the dash, waiting. She could hear her own heartbeat.

“Sorry, Edison had to say something on the other radio. We have command of three of the ships up here. There’s a few hundred people scattered between them.”

“What? Like refugees?”

“No. Warriors. They have a plan to close the rift but weren’t expecting the fleet to just be hanging out here. None of the Bern ships seem to be moving on, and we can’t act until they do.”

“They’ve been like that for weeks, just holding formation and shooting down anything that moves.” Molly let go of the transmit button, then squeezed it again. “About this Underground… are they from Lok? Do you have—? Is—?”

“I’m sorry,” Anlyn responded quickly. “We just learned what’s been going on ourselves. Another ship is still queued up to come through the rift. Your dad and Cole—” Anlyn paused. “It seems one of the ships went down on the other side.”

Molly gasped. Her heart pounded through her flightsuit. But still, she was just as much thrilled to hear someone relate their recent condition as she was dreading whatever had gone wrong. After keeping her thoughts and fears pushed into deep recesses for so long, she could feel them suddenly popping free, stirring and agitated and impatient.

“Reduce chatter, you two.” It was the other voice from the fleet.

“He’s right,” Parsona told Molly. “A constant stream is easier to stumble onto and hack.”

Molly looked at the mic in her hand, trying to sort out what was most important to say, what information she needed to best assist their combined efforts to defeat the Bern.

“How did the Underground infiltrate those ships in the first place?” Parsona asked, throwing one of her own queries onto Molly’s heap.

“My hunch is that the Bern are staging up here to protect their supply chain,” Cat told her. “You should probably tell them that.”

“Gimme a sec,” Molly told them. “I can’t think.”

She knew what she needed to say. She needed to speak to this other voice, to tell whoever was in charge up there that they were all in this together and that they needed to work that way. She tried a few phrasings in her head, then squeezed the transmit button.

“Command, we are with the Underground as well.” She looked over to Cat, who nodded, approving. “We are currently working on a plan to take out the large ship up there and possibly the rest of the fleet. It’s imperative that we talk.”

“Negative,” the voice said. “Any movement up here, and we’re sitting ducks. Maintain radio silence until the fleet moves out of this system. Nobody acts until then. Over and out.”

Molly cursed. Having friends so close and not being able to speak with them was going to drive her insane. She looked to Cat. “Any ideas?”

Cat shook her head.

“Molly, Anlyn here. We’re coming to you. I need coordinates for your cargo bay, and then I need you to clear out. Wait. Hold on—”

Molly heard voices conferring on the other side of Anlyn’s connection.

“Molly, make sure those coordinates are for a space one meter off the deck. And make them exact.”

Molly pulled up her nav screen to get her current position.

“How exact?” she asked.

“Edison exact.”

Molly heard the air in Parsona’s cargo bay pop, and then a figure materialized a meter off the deck—it just blinked into existence. The person hit the ground in a ball and rolled out of the way. Molly couldn’t believe her eyes. She started to get up from the crew seat, but Anlyn ran her way, telling her to stay put.

A louder pop, and a bundle of fur wrapped in tunics crashed to the ground, sending a vibration through the hull. Edison stood up and lumbered her way as Anlyn threw herself into Molly’s arms.

Molly held her friend—tears coating her vision—as yet another man appeared in her cargo bay.

“How many are coming?” she asked Anlyn, pulling out of the embrace and wiping at her eyes.

“Just us,” Anlyn said, smiling at her. Edison came over and wrapped them both up and lifted them off the ground. Past his shoulder, Molly saw Cat run to the third person who had arrived, screaming his name and nearly tackling him.

“Edison, you’re smothering me!”

He dropped them back to the ground. “Sincerest apologies,” he said. “Irrationally, my exuberance overcame my ability to forgo immediate gratification, I—”

“I love you, too,” Molly said, leaning into his tunics and wrapping her arms partways around him.

“What are you guys doing here?” she asked Anlyn. “I thought you were on Drenard.”

“Well, what in the galaxy is Cole doing in hyperspace?”

Walter popped out of his room. He hissed in alarm at the sight of Edison.

“Walter!” Edison said, stomping over to greet him.

Cat approached Molly from the opposite direction, pulling along a short, bald, bearded man. Molly felt dizzy from the amount of activity and the number of things she needed to ask Anlyn about. First, though, there was an outstretched hand waiting to be shaken.