Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“Look,” she told him, “I really need you to trust me on this.”

Saunders seemed about to argue, but his frown cracked into a wan smile, his fat jowls lifting just a little. He squeezed Molly’s shoulder and looked out over the two groups of haggard survivors in the clearing.

“I suppose I owe you a little trust,” Saunders said, referring perhaps to having doubted her before and having thrown her in jail. The old man turned back to face her, his eyes wet and reflecting Parsona’s interior lights. “And I’m glad you decided to stick around,” he said, forcing a smile.

Molly nodded and smiled back. She suddenly sensed just how much he meant it, this man who had once expelled her. And for the first time, her decision to stay resonated within her as having been the right choice.

There was no sleep that night as Molly and her friends stayed up and discussed her germ of a plan for dealing with the Bern fleet. They huddled together around a campfire built under Parsona’s starboard wing and nurtured the idea, watching it sprout and grow as they each offered suggestions and pointed out various flaws. They spoke in hushed whispers, and even by the standards of Bekkie’s short days, dawn seemed to arrive in a rush.

Morning was heralded by the popping of rekindled fires within the woods as early risers awoke to stoke dying embers. Gradually, the first smattering of Humans and Callites emerged from their scattered camps; they crossed the clearing on weary legs, looking to Parsona for some odd supply item or just for the use of its bathrooms. Molly greeted them and made them feel welcome, even as Walter cast suspicious glances their way.

When one of the Navy crewmen exited Parsona with a load of fresh laundry, Molly asked if he would send for Saunders, and the crewman agreed.

“Are we sure we’ve got our story straight?” Molly asked. She rubbed her weary eyes and looked to her friends around the fire, each of them nodding with as much enthusiasm as they could muster despite their lack of sleep. Leaning forward, she grabbed a pot of coffee from a flat stone near the fire and topped up her mug. She hoped the jolt of caffeine would help her regain some energy before the day’s plan was spelled out and acted upon.

After a few minutes, Saunders arrived alone, his sagging jowls and dark-rimmed eyes signifying a similarly restless night. He lowered his considerable bulk to one of the blankets and eagerly accepted a cup of coffee, wrapping both meaty hands around the steaming mug. Cat said hello while Scottie greeted the old Navy veteran with the sheepishness of an outlaw waving to a passing sheriff. Walter didn’t even acknowledge Saunders’s arrival; the Palan boy sat across the fire from Molly, continually poking the logs with a stick to send out showers of rising embers.

“You ready to tell me about this plan of yours?” Saunders asked. He blew across the surface of his coffee, sending a wisp of heat toward the fire.

“Yeah.” Molly took a sip of her own coffee and thought about where best to start.

“And what is this plan for, exactly?” Saunders asked. “Will it help stop the Drenard attack? Or is it just for the bastards who shot down my fleet?”

Molly raised her eyebrows. “It’s for all of it. Hopefully.”

Saunders smiled. He took another loud sip from his coffee and waved one hand in a small circle, pleading for her to get on with it.

“My friends here,” she indicated Scottie and Cat. “They know something about these rifts, these tears in space like the one the Bern fleet is coming out of.”

Molly took another sip of coffee, steeling herself for the half-truths that were to follow. “These rifts are everywhere,” she lied. “There’s even one very close to us, right here in these woods, and my friends know how to control it.” Molly chose her words carefully, using the language she and the others had decided upon in order to not reveal the special properties of Parsona’s hyperdrive.

Saunders glanced across the fire at Cat and Scottie. He raised his eyebrows. “ Control it?”

Molly nodded. “We can send people through this rift to wherever we like.”

“Wherever? You mean like through hyperspace?”

“Yeah. It’s similar, but without the limitations.” Molly felt a wave of nausea as the lies piled up. Creating a fairytale to keep her hyperdrive secret was going to become burdensome, and fast.

“The thing is, travelling through this rift is a one-way trip,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. She forced herself to meet Saunders’s gaze “We’ve got a plan for how we can make life miserable for the Bern.” She waved her arm toward the edge of the woods where the surviving members of Gloria’s crew were mingling and working to improve the encampment. “We have enough pilots,” she said. “We just need a fleet, right?”

Saunders shook his head, his jowls jiggling back and forth. “Are you crazy? Did you see what happened yesterday? This is not the Tchung we’re dealing with. An entire Naval fleet is scattered across this planet in utter ruin—” Saunders held his mouth open as if to say more, but Molly could see his cheeks twitching, the tears welling up at the bottoms of his eyes.

“I know, sir, just hear me out. The fleet I’m thinking of will give anything a run for its money. It’s the most battle-tested fleet of ships in the entire galaxy.”

Saunders frowned. “More powerful than Zebra, the most advanced fleet in the Navy’s arsenal?” He waved his mug in the air, sending a dark wave of coffee over the edge. “Such a fleet doesn’t exist!”

“It does at Darrin,” Molly said, keeping her cool. “It’s the one place in GN controlled space that even the Navy can’t go.”

Saunders laughed. He set his coffee in the dirt and wiped his palm on his too-small flightsuit. “ Darrin? And what fleet do you suppose we’ll use to get that one? They would make even quicker work of us than the Bern did!”

Molly shook her head. “No, we don’t use a fleet. We use the rift . Don’t you see? We send people straight to the ships. We can place teams inside Darrin garages and nab a fleet right out from underneath them!”

Saunders chewed his lip. “Too many problems. For one, even my StarCarrier doesn’t have chart data for Darrin that accurate, so you’d be lucky to end up anywhere near one of their hideouts. I mean, nobody legit has been there since their civil war, and besides—”

“My nav computer has the entire system scanned from just a month ago,” Molly interrupted. She jabbed a thumb back toward Parsona .

Saunders shot her a look that suggested this wasn’t something to brag about.

“Then there’s the pilot codes to consider,” he said. “Nobody leaves their ships unlocked—”

“These guys do. They trust their forcefields way too much. I—well, I kinda flew one of their ships back to Earth the day that… you know, with Lucin—”

“Are you kidding? ”

Molly raised her hands. “I swear on my father, I did these things with the best of intentions.”

Scottie leaned over to Cat and whispered loudly: “She sounds like one of us, now.”

The two of them snickered. Molly was so tired, she nearly joined them.

“We would need weapons,” Saunders said, ignoring the others. “The ban on Lok is going to make that difficult—”

“Covered, and it’ll actually be the most unpleasant part of our plan.”

Saunders reached again for his coffee. “Which is?”

“We raid the StarCarrier, sir. We send in a team with climbing gear to rappel down to the armory. You’ve got the access codes, and we need to grab enough flightsuits for the pilots, anyway. I’ll take a small group in my ship to do this while you brief and prepare the others. Some of them might not feel like they’re ready for this kind of raid, but we’re gonna need everyone. You’ll have to make them believe this’ll work.”