Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

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.

“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—”

“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.”

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.