Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

“You had the weapons systems removed?” Anlyn asked Bishar.

“Of course, but not just now. We do that for every ship we capture and impound.” He glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Are you really planning on waging war with those who rule the rest of the universe?”

“I’m hoping I don’t need to defend myself from friends and family before I get there,” Anlyn replied.

A sudden sadness washed over Bishar’s face, erasing the tension and anger. “I’m sorry we met like this,” he said.

“As am I.” Anlyn handed Edison his lance and bowed to her cousin, keeping her eyes on him all the while. He gave her a nod and a frown as she backed through the collar adapter and into the starship.

Edison followed. She left him behind to close the ship’s door and secure the hatch while she rushed off alone toward the bow. As her bare feet padded along the steel decking, she tried to prepare herself for what must come next. She was about attempt something she had promised herself she’d never do again. Something she’d hoped to avoid for the rest of her days:

Fly.

Anlyn had learned to pilot in the Royal Academy—just the rudimentary basics needed to qualify licensure and uphold ancient traditions for Drenardian royalty. She likened it to the Pheno people’s habit of teaching their important females to ride Theryls, even if there was no chance of them ever taking one into battle.

Her real mastery of the art of space warfare came at Darrin, during the tumultuous civil war between the two planets and her time spent as an arm-dealer’s slave afterward. She had spent more than a Hori cycle there chained to a cockpit, learning to kill and speak English while daily tortured by a vile human named Albert.

Since her flight into freedom just over a month ago, Anlyn had pledged to stay away from cockpits for the rest of time. She could imagine herself sinking back into a depression if she had to work in one—could see herself losing her sanity again. Now, she didn’t know she had a choice. She couldn’t ask Edison to take over for her while she cowered in a bunk; that was just a different sort of slavery, one self-imposed.

Anlyn jogged along the empty corridor, past a few crew quarters and a mess hall full of hastily stacked boxes. She went through a large cargo bay and then finally came upon the dreaded place. She paused at the imaginary boundary between passageway and cockpit, that invisible line in the decking rising like some Darrin forcefield. She stood there for a moment, listening to the pounding of her own pulse. When she heard Edison stomping through the cargo bay, his gait drowning out the sound of her heart, she knew she could no longer delay. Summoning her courage, she stepped inside and approached the forward seating.

Her skin crawled as she pushed through the invisible barrier, the sight of the empty chairs filling her with a sense of dread. They were human-sized, just like Lady Liberty’s , and nothing at all like the Drenard Ambassadorial ship. She rested a hand on the back of the nav chair and lifted one foot, using it to scratch her other ankle. It took her a moment to realize she was doing it. It took a moment longer to remember that the metal hoop of steel was no longer welded around her leg, the chain no longer coiled by her feet.

“Are you okay?” Edison asked. He spoke in Drenard, a sign he was communicating for feelings , rather than information.

“I’m fine,” Anlyn lied. “Just worried about where you’re going to sit.”

“The removal of the armrest mechanisms will be elementary. I’ll have the task performed prior to our intersection with the rift in spacetime.” He bounded aft to search for tools, his switch back to English telling.

Anlyn felt a stab of annoyance, but she had herself to blame for lying to him. She wasn’t worried about how poorly he’d fit in his seat, but how well she would in hers .

Walking around the outside of the pilot’s seat, she noticed the Bern arrangement conformed to human standards: leader on the left. All the controls seemed familiar in layout, though covered in the Bern alphabet. It was one of those languages she recognized, even if she couldn’t make out much of what it said. The stylistic swoops and curls were often printed in political cartoons back home; the Drenard translations below would say something funny or satirical about their sworn enemy.

Anlyn sat down and adjusted the harness straps. She figured out how to raise the seat while she waited on Edison to get back and translate; the pilot had left the thrusters running, but she couldn’t tell which control released the clamps.

When she heard Edison set down a toolbox behind her, she turned and asked him which switch decouples the ship from the airlock.

“That one,” he said, after scanning the dash a moment.

Anlyn thanked him, amazed at how quickly he’d picked up yet another language. His intellect occasionally threw up emotional barriers in their relationship, but it often opened other sorts of doors. Like getting him on the Circle as the Cultural Counselor, for example. And now it served them well as he had become, through unspeakable tragedy, their mission’s sole Bern translator.

Anlyn wrapped her pale blue hand around the control stick; she checked the needles on the gauges, making sure they were all between the black high and red low marks. She flipped the switch Edison had indicated and pushed away from the Keep.

Before she knew it—before her emotions could stage a revolt—she was flying again. Slow at first. Hesitant. But getting to the center of the Keep required a lot of twists and turns as she dodged around the trusses and steel beams built specifically to impede progress from Bern interlopers heading in the opposite direction.

As she weaved between the glass corridors, passing close to several, she could see her people lined up inside, blue hands spread out on the glass. Pairs of eyes tracked her passing, either wide with astonishment or narrow with accusations. Anlyn felt like a criminal, or a specimen arousing curiosity. Meanwhile, off to either side of her, sleek Drenardian starfighters kept pace, bobbing in and out of the mazelike structure while keeping their guns trained her way.

Just in case the specimen turns hostile , she told herself. She wondered if the rumored power of Edison’s lance was all that kept them at bay.

As they progressed into the interior of the keep, the habitable corridors disappeared, and the density of the obstructing beams increased. Also, more and more of the gold canisters became visible—larger slivers and triangles of shimmering honey flashing out between the beams.

After a few tight, final squeezes, the three ships rounded into an open workspace where Anlyn could see several tugs pulling the blockade apart, creating a hole for her to fly through. A collection of replacement canisters stood nearby, another tug busying itself around them like a herder tending his flock.

Anlyn had to wait while they finished. She held the ship perfectly still as the two starfighters hovered to either side, their bows pointing straight at her. As if we pose more of a threat than the rift ahead , Anlyn thought. She tried to ignore them, as well as the hollow pit forming in her gut from having their weapons aimed directly at her. Instead, she lost herself in watching the tugs work. They pulled out several more layers of armored canisters—the innermost eaten away in places—until the rift was eventually exposed.

When the tear in space became visible, Edison grumbled something in English too obtuse for her to follow. In the recess of gold opened by the tugs, she could see empty space and stars beyond. A few structures glimmered in the distance beyond that, like bright stars. It was an odd sight, for the tugs had only removed half the layers in one spot. The hole in space stood in front of the rear half of the rest of the golden cube. She and Edison were looking through them, rather than at them. And not through them so much as through a rip in the very fabric of the galaxy, a doorway to another galaxy that was not theirs .