Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

Another device as big as a refrigerator was split in half. It was an important looking one, and Cat’s lightheadedness intensified.

Then she realized the machine must’ve had something to do with the grav panels, as she saw several dead workers drift up from the deck, their body parts propelled like stuttering rockets with a red, arterial plume of exhaust.

Cat’s ballet of dismemberment seemed to move underwater as the gravity in the ship lessened, then disappeared altogether. She kicked off a tall server cabinet, propelling herself through the zero-G toward a Bern firing wildly with a plasma gun. She sliced through him and the large machine behind him, and the lights and sirens stopped their blaring and throbbing. She hit another piece of equipment—the one that must’ve controlled the air moving through the vast ship—and another—one for the overhead lights—and the whirring vents fell quiet and the room descended into near darkness.

Cat’s eyes adjusted as she cut through more of the Bern and their machines. She looked around for anyone left to murder, but her raucous audience had become wide-eyed and politely still in the darkened room. She swiped another machine, giddy with the pain coursing through her brain. A blaster wound in her thigh hurt so badly, her leg almost felt numb with agony. It was a sort of numbness she hadn’t known in almost forever. She didn’t have much time left, she knew. Her head was so light it could hardly corral a clear thought. She had pushed herself far past her body’s ability to heal. She had, as always, gone much too far.

Cat slashed through a few more machines and the remaining indicators and twinkling lights on their panels went dark, signifying the end of her show, her final performance. What small amount of blood remaining within her thumped with a rapid, shallow pulse that she could hear in her temples. It beat with the patter of tiny, galloping feet. It was—sadly—the only sound approximating applause that Cat the Cripple would ever know.

But then, Cat had never performed for the simple pleasure of her audience. As her eyelids grew heavy, and a final curtain of darkness descended before her, Cat knew that this last hurrah of hers had been, as with all her prior shows, mainly for herself .

Lady Liberty grew warm as the ship hit the outskirts of Lok’s atmosphere. Anlyn and Edison had stopped fiddling with the controls and struggling with the flightstick long ago. Nothing they did so much as altered their ship’s fall through the field of artificial gravity that surrounded them.

Instead, they chose to hold hands.

Around them, other crews were likewise finding ways to cope with their inevitable demise. The entire Darrin fleet had arrived in Lok’s orbit intact, and all were meeting the same fate Zebra fleet had: They were plunging toward a fiery reentry and crushing impact below.

It wasn’t long before a pale glow filled the cockpit with the first sign of atmospheric reentry. A nasty, tumbling, disintegrating death loomed. Anlyn reminded Edison, once more, of how much she loved him. Her ears popped, the sign of a hull breach somewhere. Another pop, followed by a beep—

And Anlyn realized those weren’t pops at all! They were power relays kicking back to life. And the glow she thought had come from the heat of reentry was actually emanating from the dash! When the grav panels came back online, Anlyn felt her body sag in her seat, even as her spirits soared in the opposite direction.

Edison roared with excitement. His hands danced across the dash, giddy and alive. The radio crackled with whooping wing leaders cheering and barking instructions. Anlyn took the controls and Lady Liberty pulled up, her thrusters warming as she rose, a battalion of tear-streaked faces and wide smiles forming up around her.

She aimed for the Bern fleet, and the first thing she saw was that the largest ship had gone perfectly black. All the lit portholes, the observation windows, the red flashing lights atop their spindly towers, all of them were dead and dark. There were no signs of explosions from the missiles, but she assumed they were embroiling within the belly of that beast.

Whatever the reason, she and her wingmen from Darrin were a fleet once more—a grinning fleet full of the sharpest of teeth. The other craft took up their positions around Anlyn, forming up on their wing leaders, and they accelerated toward a formation of Bern ships now in chaos.

The fleet from Darrin moved to wage war.

Cole peered out the maw of the Bern craft’s broken windshield, past the jagged carboglass teeth lined up top and bottom, and watched the diving ships head their way. One of the enemy craft had fired on another one, sending it into a smoky spiral. Those two seemed to have been heading toward the ruined village just ahead. The third ship—the one that had been heading straight for them moments ago—began to bank around, racing back to help its wounded comrade.

“That’s one of ours,” Cole said to himself.

“ That one?” Larkin asked, pointing toward the closest ship, which was swooping away.

“No, the one firing. It must be one of the Underground groups that came through before us. Has to be.” Cole looked down at the dash, which was sprinkled with small broken triangles of nearly-indestructible carboglass. Indicator lights winked with power, but only some of them. The screen in front of the dead pilot was still on, the SADAR showing in blinking dots what Cole and Larken could just as clearly see with their naked eyes.

“Help me move him,” Cole said, tugging on the pilot. Together, they were able to slide the man’s body, once a member of their raid squad, out of the seat and into the hallway. Cole ran back and plopped down in the vacated seat. He closed his eyes and bent forward, then blew a puff of air over the controls to get rid of the sharp dust.

“What does this say?”

Larken leaned over Cole and followed his fingers. “It’s a systems menu. That says life support, and that one’s for the grav panels, but it looks like they’re not selectable.”

“What is?” Cole asked.

“Choose that one,” Larken said. “It’s defenses.”

Cole scrolled down to it and pressed the control dial in with a click. Everything seemed to work just as he’d expect, even if he couldn’t read any of the gibberish on the screen.

“Anything?” he asked Larken.

“The chaff looks like it works.”

Cole laughed. Chaff was useless on the ground. He jogged the control dial to the left, and the previous menu came up. Again, he marveled at the familiar design aesthetics.

“What about weapons?” he asked.

“Scroll down,” Larken said.

Cole did.

“There!”

One of the menus was lit up. Cole had already begun moving to select it when Larken pointed excitedly.

“What is it?” Cole asked as he drilled down into the menu.

“Oh shit,” Larken said. He slapped Cole on the back.

“What the hell am I selecting?” Cole asked.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Larken said.

“Get those flankers!” Scottie yelled. He and Ryn pumped their fists in the air as the lead ship spiraled out of control, a plume of dark smoke trailing from its rear. Their allies in the Bern craft, one of the squads Ryke had formed up with in hyperspace, had nailed it with a series of laser blasts. As the wounded ship went down, it spat out desperate bursts from its own canons, but the shots flew wide over the old village. Where the bolts of plasma struck the earth, they sent up geysers of dust and soil in fantastic kinetic explosions.

“Aw, shit!” Ryn said. He grabbed Ryke by the shoulder and pointed behind them. The third ship, the one from the rift, had doubled back and taken a perfect bead on their comrades in the ship above. Plasma cannons erupted, furious bolts of pure energy lashed through the sky, and one of the shots clipped the wing of the allied Bern craft.