Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

And now it’s a new power for me , she realized. Molly watched the staff members nod to one another; they seemed to think her explanation was the only rational one. Robinson continued to smile, obviously buying it as well.

“Well, I think we’re due a little luck,” Saunders said grimly.

The rest agreed with him while Anlyn pulled Molly to the side.

“Everything okay?” Molly asked.

Anlyn nodded. “Fine. People are actually going out of their way to be nice to me. I think they’re overcompensating a little.” A grave expression washed over Anlyn’s face, one that filled Molly with dread.

“What is it, Anlyn?”

“Edison and I switched assignments with group thirteen,” Anlyn said.

“But I thought you two were going to retrieve Lady Liberty .”

“I know. But then Edison and I got to thinking that it just made more sense this way. We’re both familiar with the layout of his base, and I know what kind of ship he would have replaced her with—”

Molly shook her head. “This is about revenge, isn’t it?”

Anlyn didn’t say anything. Her eyes didn’t waver from Molly’s.

“You’re even more familiar with Lady Liberty ,” Molly pointed out. “I mean, you’ve flown her into combat a thousand times. And besides, there won’t be any fighting involved in picking her up. She’s right where we left her, and we can’t afford to lose either of you—”

“I’ll still command Lady for the flight here,” Anlyn told her. “We’ll transfer over when Edison goes to modify the hyperdrive.”

Molly ran her fingers through her hair. She looked up through the clearing at the stars overhead.

“And you’re right,” Anlyn whispered. “It is about revenge.”

Molly stared at her, agape. “You admit it?”

Anlyn nodded.

Molly turned away from her friend, disappointed by the decision. She watched the dozens of small squads as they formed up in a jagged line stretching from the console and back around her ship. In the glow of Parsona’s worklights, she could see flat hands zooming through imaginary space, dogfighting one another in mock battle as old lessons were dusted off and honed to something approximating sharpness.

Anlyn moved by her side; her tiny hand settled in the small of Molly’s back.

Molly started to voice her objection, but Anlyn interrupted.

“Look at them,” she said quietly.

Molly swallowed her thoughts. She watched as hands soared in mock battle and eyes were cast upward toward the fleet that had taken away the friends and family of those gathered.

“This whole mission is about revenge,” Molly said. “Isn’t it?”

Anlyn’s small hand moved from Molly’s back and went around to her side, squeezing her. Their bodies rested on one another as the two friends pulled themselves close.

“It is,” Anlyn said softly. “So let me have mine.”

Anlyn and Edison stood side by side, the only squad comprised of just two members. The argument had been that Edison counted twice, if not three times. And not just for his ferocious power, but for his navigation and engineering skills. With Anlyn’s abilities at the flight controls, the duo almost seemed like overkill.

Standing close to her fiancé, Anlyn could feel the warmth radiating off him. Edison kept scratching the back of one paw through his flight gloves, a habit she hadn’t seen of him before. It made her wonder if he might be more nervous than he was letting on.

Anlyn certainly was. She had briefed the groups earlier, after their weapons training, to let them know about the slight chance they might jump into empty hangar bays, and not to be alarmed. Darrin, she knew quite well, didn’t always operate on a steady schedule. It was more like an orbit of competing firehouses that were on watch at all hours of the day. The difference being: they were poised and ready to go out and start fires.

Anlyn had instructed them to proceed as planned if their asteroid was empty, to just move in and set up ambushes. In many ways, it might make for a smoother mission.

The line moved forward as another squad filed into the fake rift. The members of each group went in two seconds apart, just like when she, Edison, and Ryke had jumped down from the Bern ship to Parsona . As they shuffled forward, the nervous chatter in each group fell silent. Ryke, Walter, and Molly stood by the glowing control console to one side, overseeing the coordinates being fed into the platform.

There was another surge forward, and Anlyn could clearly see the groups ahead disappearing into a dark cleft between two glowing trees, a convincing illusion. Yet another surge, and then there was only one group left ahead of them. Ryke waved his arm, directing each member forward while Walter peered into his little computer, a sneer lit up from its dim glow. The coordinates were changed, and the group ahead moved into the rift one at a time.

Six seconds later, she and Edison were up. Ryke waved. Anlyn caught a darting glance from Walter and saw a worried smile on Molly’s face. Each image was a flash from her surroundings giving her a strobe-like consciousness of all that whirled around her. She gripped her pistol tightly with one hand and pulled her visor down with the other, just in case the garage was open when they arrived. Edison lumbered ahead and into the rift. A perfect shadow took him.

Anlyn counted:

One .

She whispered a call to the Horis for luck.

Two .

And she followed.

Admiral Saunders and his two highest ranking officers comprised the last group of three to step through the rift. Saunders remained skeptical about the mysterious object, even as the long queue ahead of him was swallowed up. He half expected to step between the trees and find his crewmen on the other side, stumbling around in the darkness.

But then it became his turn, and the one they called Doctor Ryke waved him forward. Saunders strode through the glowing gap—

Half a galaxy away, Saunders fell to Earth. He had just enough time in the air to feel a twinge of guilt for the nature of his arrival. He materialized a meter off the ground and landed with a squishy and awkward thud on top of Senator Kennedy’s grave. Along with his burning conscience for such a rude, albeit necessary, landing came a dozen internal stings from the rain his body absorbed out of the Washington sky. Becoming one with the droplets caused flaming sensations like heartburn, only in every part of his body: his arms, legs, and one in his head that felt like an ice-cream headache.

Saunders grimaced in pain as the air beside him popped, followed by a wet splash. He peered through the rain at Commander Sharee as she fell to her knees on top of Robert Kennedy’s grave, her face contorting in agony as she suffered the same internal burns. Lieutenant Robinson came in next, right on John Kennedy’s plot. Saunders’s second-in-command landed gracefully, a puddle splashing up around his Navy blacks, his face as stoic as ever.

Molly’s rift had worked. Defying everything he knew about interspace travel, the three Navy veterans had been magically whisked clear across the galaxy, back to the epicenter of their Naval Empire and the Galactic Union. Saunders’s tactical brain couldn’t help but think what a military boon such knowledge would bring. He had to force himself to remember the importance of his current mission, his brain whirling with potential uses for these rifts.

The three crewmembers checked in with one another, grim smiles on all their faces. They then trudged through the soggy grass toward one of the many twisting concrete paths, their boots and pants mud-splattered and their hair soaked. In a heavy silence, they marched up a wet walkway through Arlington National Cemetery, white tongues sticking up through the green hills all around them as if catching the rain.