Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

Walter pried her fist off his cuff and grabbed her hand. As they crossed the street, he practically skipped along beside her, trying in vain to interlock his fingers with hers.

A few minutes later, Walter sat across a small café table from Molly, sulking. He took his finger out of his mouth and asked, “Why can’t we go back to the sship?” He pouted and resumed sucking on his digit.

Molly took a sip of her water, which she had made Walter vote for, then leaned back in her seat. “I already told you, some bad people are setting up camp in there, and the sheriff won’t have anything to do with them. Besides, I don’t wanna miss our chance at finally tracking this Cat character down.”

“So let’ss go get ssome gunss,” Walter said. Molly glanced away from him and over his shoulder. Two Callites were walking down the alley, both wearing coveralls splattered with the same purple paint Scottie and his friends had sported. She watched them curiously over the lip of her glass.

“I ssaid, let’ss get ssome gunss,” Walter hissed.

“Get them where? Guns are illegal here.” Molly reached into her glass and pulled out a cube of ice. She squeezed it between the pads of her fingers to numb the persistent soreness there. “That’s why you don’t see people on Lok shooting at each other.”

Walter looked down at his computer for a moment, then back up at Molly. “How do you protect yoursself from whoever’ss in charge?”

“Look around you, pal—this isn’t Palan. A bunch of pirates aren’t gonna take over and let the last people out of prison before putting some different ones in. It doesn’t work like that here.” She raised her voice as she talked, speaking over a protest marching down Main street. Someone on a bullhorn was promising to handle the Drenard invasion differently, and also to get rid of the ships overhead, if only the electorate would throw the current bums out and install him in their place.

“But if the ssheriff won’t help, and he’ss the one with the gunss, how do we get the sship back?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll be gone by the time we return. I think they were looking for someone else, anyway. Maybe they’ll give up. Anyway, we’re just gonna hang out here until the show. We need to find out about the fusion fuel. That’s the most important thing right now.”

“I thought we had plenty of fuel. You don’t tell me anything.”

“Yes I do. I’ve told you a dozen times, you just don’t listen. We need a different kind of fuel or we can’t get back from where we’re going. Besides, this lady might be an ally, which we’re in desperate need of. Our crew has dwindled down to—”

“ I’m your ally!” Walter said, beaming.

“Yeah?” Molly took a long pull from her water, and then fished for another cube of ice. “Where in hyperspace were you this morning when I needed you?”

Walter frowned and looked back down at his computer; he’d hardly touched his food. Molly wondered if she should give the plate to the Wadi. She looked down at the creature, which was curled up in her lap, chewing on the tablecloth.

“Are you still not in yet?” Molly asked Walter.

He shook his head, which seemed to glow with an inner light. It was a sign she’d begun to recognize as either shame or excitement. Not knowing which made for some interesting interpretations of his moods.

“Seriously? You can crack a StarCarrier mainframe and remotely hack a Navy-issue missile, but you can’t get a wireless signal in a cafe? Look, just let me pay for it.” She glanced at her poor pinky, rationalizing the sacrifice.

Suddenly, the roar of thrusters in the atmosphere caused everyone in the café to glance up. It sounded at first like another Bern ship heading off to orbit, but they were too far from the rift for it to be that. She and Walter joined the rest of the patrons in searching the sky for the source.

She finally spotted the vertical plume from the lift-off. The tiny ship at its head didn’t match up with the sonic boom it created, as the sight of it reached them well ahead of the lagging noise. It was a strange optical illusion: a silent ship being chased by the grumble of an invisible one. It was especially unnerving as Molly still had not gotten used to hearing spacecraft move.

She looked away from the ship and watched the other patrons follow the scene. They soon began arguing politics amongst themselves, often saying something about Callites and immigration laws.

Walter peered down at his computer, frowning. “Coffee sshopss are much tougher than Naval encryption,” he said, still smarting over her jab at his technical prowess. “They update their sstuff weekly—the Navy takes decadess. Thiss sshop csycle’ss its passsword every half-hour and they usse ten twenty-four bit encryption.” He took a sip of his gelatte and wiped the foam off his lips with the back of his hand. “If the Navy took half thesse precautsionss, you’d probably be dead.”

He smiled up at her. “Twicse,” he added with a grin.

Molly glared at him over the lip of her glass. “You can’t die twice—”

A gasp from the upward-gazing crowd cut her off. Molly shielded her eyes and looked up as well. A second later, the distant roar of the spacebound ship went silent. As she followed the plume of exhaust upward to locate the ship, she saw the craft tumbling down past the pillar of smoke it had created, bow spinning over thrusters, over and over.

Everything in the café froze as the patrons watched solemnly, waitresses frozen in place with pitchers of water dripping condensation. When the plummeting hull disappeared behind the building’s awning, there was a distant rumble, the sound coming from many kilometers away. Everyone gradually looked back to their food. Forks tinked against plates. Whispers began to grow back into conversations.

Molly took it all in, desperate to know what had just happened. Were they testing some kind of new craft? Something to use against the fleet? Everyone else seemed to know something, or at least they weren’t terribly shocked by the display. She leaned over to ask a nearby table, when Walter hissed excitedly.

“I’m in,” he said, his face glowing. He bent over the computer, typing furiously and sneering.

Molly reached across the table. “Let me see it.”

Walter continued to peck away.

“Walter, it’s important. Give it here.”

He frowned and handed over the computer. “Won’t be long before you’re kicked off,” he said.

Molly nodded and moved to swipe the top screen away, then noticed it was Palan’s planetary homepage. The weather forecast was being displayed, showing the projected hour for the next rains. She glanced up at Walter, who was looking back over his shoulder at a political dispute in the alley. She felt a sudden pang of sadness for him as she realized he must be feeling homesick.

Swiping the page to the side, Molly dragged up a new one from the bottom. The few times they’d been connected to the Net in the past two weeks, the datastream had been too thin to do even the most rudimentary of tasks. The remote Lokian villages had suffered from poor connectivity and bandwidth, even when they were lucky enough to find an available signal. A seemingly countless number of items had built up over the past weeks that she really wanted to check on, but first there were a few she had to.

Using the virtual keyboard, she typed: “Molly; Fyde; Navy,” and hit enter. Hundreds of hits registered, but she could see most of them were junk. Lots of false positives and a ton of spelling suggestions for “mollified.” She sorted the results by date, looking for something recent, but there wasn’t anything within the last two months.