Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

“I would enjoy that as well, peacemaker. And it would please me to hear your interpretation. Now, return to your duties. There will be time enough to gossip while we wait for the prophecy’s fulfillment. For all we know, we may have years together for swapping tales.”

Both boys smiled and bowed low, pulling their outer cloaks up to their chins. Anlyn returned the gesture with one hand, touching the deck with the tip of the lance as she did so. She then moved off in the direction of the embassy ship’s cockpit, smiling to herself.

Behind her, she could hear one of the boys whispering excitedly. Something about “a thousand suns” and “Wadi queens.”

Anlyn kept the end of the Wadi lance just off the deck as she made her way to the cockpit. Several crewmembers and peacemakers greeted her as she passed, bowing low and grasping the edges of their tunics. Anlyn returned the stiff formalities, but all the time-consuming ceremony just heightening her eagerness to join Edison near the bow of the ship. She felt herself hurrying, needing to be near him. She passed through the narrow communications room and crossed the staff corridor, pausing to wave to the off-duty crew dining in the officer’s mess. She then turned toward the nose of the large starship and hurried down the wide central passageway. As she went through the last sliding door, she found Edison waiting for her just outside the cockpit, mindful as always of her fear of going inside.

“Pleasant awakenings,” Edison said, greeting her in his thick, growling English.

Anlyn stepped into his embrace. Her head rested against his belly, her Glemot lover a full meter taller than she.

“Pleasant awakenings to you,” she cooed. She wrapped one arm as far around him as she could and remained there, taking deep breaths. Of all the things she missed about her time aboard Parsona —excepting Molly’s and Cole’s company, of course—she most regretted no longer being able to sleep on Edison’s chest, warm and safe. Now that they were back among her people and Counselors of the Circle, certain decorum had to be observed.

They had planned on marrying, on making their union official, but had promised Molly and Cole they wouldn’t do so until they were all back together. That impulsive and sincere vow had now created the distinct possibility that the marriage would never occur, but they had decided to respect the wishes of their friends. And—as Edison had once put it in his awkward English—they would respect “her culture’s non-optimal stance on betrothal co-habitation.”

Anlyn pulled away from him and gazed up at the silky coat of fur sticking out of his tunics and at the intelligent, bright eyes below his strong brow. She patted his arm and glanced into the cockpit. “Are we there yet?” she asked, unable to see anything over the flight crew, as everything in the ship was built for the height of a Drenard male.

“Approximately,” Edison said. “I have a visual.” He looked down at his lance, which Anlyn held with one hand. “Will that be required?”

“No, but it does carry a certain mystique, which may help.”

Edison frowned.

“I know how you feel about the prophecy stuff, but we’ve gotten quite far on superstition, so wield it as if you believe .” She handed him the lance. “Are you ready?”

Edison grunted. “Approximately.”

Anlyn smiled. She thanked the flight crew without stepping inside, then the two of them turned and set off for the airlock. Once again, the walk was punctuated with bows and raised tunics. Anlyn fought the urge to politely wave them along; she participated in each ritual as she attempted to build solidarity amongst her crew. With Dani’s help, she had hand-picked each crewmember from a legion of volunteers. They had initially thought it would be impossible to find a full ambassadorial complement to accompany her to the Great Rift, but the opposite problem had occurred: so many believers of the Bern Prophecy had shown up that most had to be turned away. And—instead of looking for the few faithful—they had found themselves weeding out the truly fanatic, searching among them for the rare moderate and temperate heads.

A second and larger worry had arisen during their selection process: sniffing for the moles her ex-fiancée Bodi had attempted to plant within the mission. It wasn’t a question of whether some had made it through, but how many.

And what they had planned.

For security reasons, the embassy ship was not allowed to couple with the Rift Keep. A shuttle met them several hundred kilometers out and ferried them to the command corner of the great structure: a small outpost kept separate from the living and business sectors, accessible only by ship.

Anlyn and Edison admired the Keep from their padded seats as the shuttle pilot transferred them over. Like other defensive keeps from the histories of so many races, its position had been determined by tactical necessity. Of course, where most keeps of old were placed on high overlooks, along critical waterways, or by the mouths of important Wadi canyons, the Great Keep stood in the middle of nowhere, out in the vast expanse of empty space. Because that’s precisely where the Bern Rift had been discovered so many eons ago.

“Approximate its diameter,” Edison said, peering through the glass.

Anlyn looked out her porthole at the Keep, even though she knew the answer by heart. The scaffolding of the structure formed a mesh of metal, like a giant cage hanging in the vacuum of space. Ribbons of steel crisscrossed from one side to the other, creating a tangle of obstructing debris around the tear. It looked like something in mid-construction, but it had been completed many Hori cycles ago.

“It’s just over a thousand kilometers across,” she told Edison.

He grunted, obviously impressed.

Anlyn turned to him and smiled; it wasn’t often she saw him in awe of Drenard-built things. The sensation filled her with pride for her race, even as the reason for having constructed the Great Keep gave her a shiver of fear.

“And central to the structure?” Edison put a claw against the glass, pointing toward the occasional flash of golden light emanating from within the keep.

“The stuff in the middle? That’s the armored cube right across the tear. If you think of the cosmos as having a wound, that’s the bandage.”

“Increase specificity,” Edison said, reminding Anlyn just who she was dumbing things down for. She rooted around in her childhood studies, then recited in a sing-song manner:

“It’s saturated fluoroalkane in gold alloy armored canisters. The fluorine and carbon are bonded together, making them extremely inert, therefore hard to demolish from the other side.” She took a deep breath. “Still, the Bern do find ways to destroy it now and then. It’s a constant battle to keep enough in place that nothing gets through.”

Edison turned and looked toward the cockpit of the shuttle. His brows were down, his eyes unfocused.

Anlyn smiled at him. “Oh, my. Did I just get too technical for you?”

“Hmm?” He turned to her. “No, I lapsed into ruminations. What prevents the Bern from employing a Birch reduction using electride salts? The ejected anion would destabilize the bond, resulting in one-four cyclohexadienes. Reacting through the rift on such a solution would be elementary, especially considering the electrical conductance of the golden vessels.”

Anlyn shook her head. “Do what? ”

“A Birch reduction. Using electride—”

“No, no.” Anlyn waved her arms. “Forget it. Look, talk to some of the physicists about—”