Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

“Noobs?” Riggs asked.

Joshua turned to him. His eyes were bright, despite the dimness of the light filtering through the dark ceiling above. “Newbies,” he said. “People that don’t know how to calculate proper jump coordinates.” He walked over to stand close to Riggs; Cole followed with his eyes. “I don’t know where you kids thought you were jumping to, but something got in your way.” He spread his arms. “Welcome to hyperspace. Now let’s stop annoying me with questions and start soothing me with answers.”

“Hyperspace?” Riggs leaned forward against his restraints. “What are you talking about?”

Joshua started to say something, but he turned instead to Cole. His mouth remained hinged open, hovering around a half-formed word. Slowly, his frozen expression transformed into a smile. He snapped his fingers at the two men by the door.

“Why aren’t you just as surprised?” he asked Cole as the other men crossed the room.

Cole pulled against the knots around his wrists, dragging himself up the incline as much as he could. He took a deep breath once his diaphragm had the weight off and then slid back down. He felt winded just from being tied up in the position; it wasn’t conducive to long conversations.

“I’m shocked speechless, is all,” he finally said.

The two men walked toward Riggs, disappearing from view behind Cole’s arm. There was a loud screeching noise as they pushed Riggs’s rack around, lining up the base with the drain on the floor. One of the goons approached Joshua and held out his hand.

Reaching in a fold of his furs, Joshua brought out a bag of purple fluid and handed it to the guy, who set it on the ground near the drain.

“What’s your story?” Joshua asked.

“I’m just a noob,” Cole said, repeating the strange word but without the ancient accent. “A flunky, just like he said.”

Riggs shook his head. “Don’t tell them anything!” With his rack adjusted, Cole could now see him without straining his neck.

Joshua signaled to one of the goons; the man dug a thumb in Riggs’s armpit, causing him to gurgle with pain.

“What can it hurt?” Cole asked his old friend, pleading with him to go along so whatever happened, they’d do it quick.

“Precisely,” said Joshua, turning to Riggs and waving the goon off. “The only way it hurts is if you refuse to talk.” He turned back to Cole and lowered his voice. “Who did you contact with the D-band?”

“The what? ” Cole scanned the three men. “Wait, what year do you think it is?” He wondered if Riggs’s time-travel joke had any merit—

Joshua shook his head. “We know what year it is, now stop asking questions and start answering them. Who did you contact with the band?”

“Nobody,” Cole said, wondering how they even knew what the thing was for. “I heard some voices, that’s all.” He glanced over at Riggs. “Please don’t hurt him.”

“What did the voices say?”

“That you were coming. And welcome to hyperspace.”

“You knew? ” Riggs hissed. Cole turned to his friend, saw his eyes wide with astonishment. Riggs grunted in agony as the goon dug his furry mitt into his ribs again.

Cole grimaced with empathic pain and looked away. He turned to Joshua. “Please stop,” he begged.

“Are you coming from Lok?” Joshua asked.

Cole swallowed and shook his head.

“Speak up.”

“Never been there.”

Joshua pointed a finger at him. “But you know something, don’t you? You recognized the name of the planet.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“But not as part of an invasion? Maybe an alien force with a different name?”

“No.”

Joshua’s finger shook. “Tell me what you know about Lok or I’ll have your friend’s limbs removed.”

One of the goons laughed. Joshua snapped his fingers in the man’s direction and the goon fell silent. Cole stole a glance at Riggs, whose lips were pursed thin and tight.

“I know someone who was born there. That’s all.”

“ Do you, now?”

There was a knocking at the other side of the metal door. The three men put on their goggles; Riggs leaned away as the man beside him let go of his neck. One of the goons walked over to the door and opened it, letting in a flash of light.

“What is it?” Cole heard Joshua say, his own face averted and his eyes closed.

“Our esteemed guest is on deck, sir,” he heard a voice say.

“Excellent. Tell him we’ll be there in a minute.”

“He wants you right away, sir.”

“And I want you to stall. Take him to the mast if he’s impatient, that way we’ll be there before he knows it.”

“Yes, sir.” The door banged shut; Cole opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to the relative darkness. Joshua stood in front of him, his goggles now down around his neck, his hand reaching into his fur coat. “What’s your name?” he asked Cole.

“Mortimor,” Cole said, looking down at the patch on his suit.

“No, it’s not.” Joshua pulled something out of the folds of fur—two cylinders of wood, bright and polished. “I recognize the getup. I know you’re not him.”

“You’ve got me confused for someone else,” Cole said. “Where I come from, it’s a common na—”

“Do you know what this is?” Joshua asked. He held the two cylinders up for Cole to see, gripping them in a single fist, side-by-side.

Cole shook his head.

“Ever heard of the Luddites?”

“I know what a luddite is,” Cole said. He snuck a quick glance at Riggs, who seemed livid and confused by the discussion—his forehead was full of wrinkles, but his jaw kept clenching and unclenching.

“ The Luddites,” Joshua said. He held one of the glossy cylinders away from his body. The other one dropped toward the ground and then stopped, hovering in mid-air less than a meter below its twin.

“The terrorists?”

All three of the men laughed. “No, not terrorists, my friend. Freedom fighters . We were once devoted to liberating mankind from the technology that blinded them to a good life.”

“You preferred to die toothless and young, is that it?”

Cole regretted saying it as soon as it came out. He tensed for a blow, but none came. Eying Joshua warily, he saw a thin smile creep across the man’s face.

“There were some… flaws in our worldview, sure, but we have a much higher purpose now. We now know and understand mankind’s failings, and we’re working to fix them. However,” he twisted his outstretched hand slightly and the levitating stick swung in the air, “we still loathe technology. Deep down—the original members who are still with us—we prefer the simple things in life.”

Carefully, Joshua reached below the hovering wooden handle and grasped it with his other hand. He then brought both of the cylinders parallel to the ground while keeping them apart.

“Simple is always better, don’t you think?”

Cole raised his eyebrows.

“The wire between these two pieces of wood is constructed almost entirely out of carbon. Lovely, beautiful carbon. The matrix of life .”

He moved the handles closer, but Cole still couldn’t see a thing.

“The strand is just a few atoms wide, and yet, it is nearly unbreakable, held together by the natural forces of electromagnetism. Gorgeously simple, really.” Joshua’s eyes changed focus, away from the nothingness and fixed on Cole. “Do you know what that makes this lovely wire?”

“Easy to lose?” Cole joked.

Joshua tilted his head to the side and smiled. “It makes this the sharpest thing in the universe.” He turned to the goons beside Riggs and nodded. The man with his wrappings down off his mouth smiled, his shaded eyes darting toward Cole before he knelt down and yanked Riggs’s pantleg out of his boot. He unzipped the expander on the side of the flightsuit’s leggings, then slid the black fabric up past Riggs’s knee. He pulled hard, bunching the material in a band so tight around his thigh, that Riggs grimaced in pain.