Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

Cole looked away, then he realized what they were working on: another wiring harness.

“Hey—” Cole said, standing up.

The duo reacted as if shots had been fired. They took off, running toward the double doors leading out of the workshop. Cole crawled out of the cage and gave chase. One of the workers shoved open the doors as the other man turned, his arm a blur. Something glinted in the fluorescent lights, twinkling as it spun through the air. Cole felt the impact on his chin before any of it fully registered. A loud crack reverberated through his skull. He fell to the ground, dazed, as an adjustable power wrench clanged to the floor beside him.

Cole tasted blood in his mouth, could feel the laceration along the inside of his lip like a swollen ridge of tenderness. He shook his head clear, grabbed the wrench, and scampered to his feet. Stumbling forward a few steps—his legs still resistant to keeping the rest of him upright—he shouldered open the workshop doors, one of which slammed into someone on the other side.

“What in the hell?”

Doctor Ryke came into view as the door snapped shut. His annoyed expression moved from the men running down the hallway to settle on Cole.

“You boys need to—”

“Stop them!” Cole yelled to the handful of aliens milling through the hallway. He brushed past Ryke and gave chase as the two Humans disappeared around a corner. Cole ran as fast as his wobbly legs could take him. He skidded around the corner, caroming off a spinning Mortimor, who looked even more annoyed than Ryke.

“Watch where you’re—”

“Sabotage!” Cole yelled, pointing. He tried to think of the word for the people committing the act, but his head was even less clear than his legs were sturdy. He pushed away from Mortimor and continued to run awkwardly, his arms windmilling, his grasp furious on the power wrench. Two aliens came out of a doorway, and Cole nearly plowed them over; he brushed against the hallway wall and took the next corner too fast, bouncing off an open door. He pounded his feet as fast as he could as the men ahead slowed to round another corner.

“Stop them!” he yelled once more, but the motley group ahead just turned from one curiosity to the other, everyone frozen by the spectacle of the footrace. Cole weaved through them, pushing aliens twice his size out of his way as he turned the next corner.

There was no sign of the men in the next hallway, but a smattering of gawkers turned from a closing door to look at him. Cole traced their bemused glares back to the door. He ran to it, pushed through, and found himself in a stairwell, could hear the rapid slap of descending feet below. He hurried down after, swallowing more blood as he slipped and slid down the steps.

He was a flight down when he heard a door slam shut, leaving the stairwell ringing with just his footfalls. The next landing was the last. Cole jumped past the last few steps and shoved his way through the door, suddenly remembering having come that way the day before. When he staggered into the skimmer garage, he wasn’t surprised. His trip to the Seer had begun and ended there. Nor was he surprised to see the hatch pulling shut on one of the vehicles, its engine whining as it slid down the ramp and toward the door, which led to the open, wet world beyond.

Cole hurled his wrench as hard as he could, a seemingly futile expression of his anger. It flew like a missile, his very hand making a whirring sound as it parted the air before him in a blur of augmented elbow. The momentum of his own limb threw him off balance, causing him to stagger forward as the wrench exploded through the rear of the hyperskimmer. The impact made a deafening crack, and the skimmer swerved to the side, crunching against the wall of the ramp as it continued to trundle along.

Cole stumbled ahead, regaining his balance as he ran past the other parked skimmers. He prepared himself to race down the ramp after the fleeing saboteurs— that’s what they were called —to chase them down and jump on the canopy if he had to. He was nearly to the top of the ramp when an alarm rang out and red lights began to flash, almost as if warning him of how bad an idea he’d just had. With a panicked stutter, Cole remembered what the alarms signified and cursed himself.

He looked around quickly for a locker or a storage bin as the alarm continued to blare, signaling the garage door was about to open. He squeezed between two of the parked skimmers, then caught a glimpse of a pair of goggles resting on the dash of the nearest skimmer, inside the closed canopy.

With a loud groan, the garage door at the bottom of the ramp began to open. Its chain ratcheted up with a staccato noise, letting in a harsh stream of unrelenting, blinding, photons.

Cole grimaced in pain at the brief exposure. He shut his eyes and folded the crook of his arm over his face. He’d only caught a glimpse of the light, but it was enough to spot the darkness behind his lids. Reaching to the side, he groped for the fender of the nearby skimmer and found it, then patted along the hull until he reached the canopy. Cole fumbled for the release. He felt it and pulled the lever as the departing skimmer whined high and roared out into hyperspace.

Picturing the location of the goggles behind his shut eyelids, Cole leaned far over the edge of the open canopy and brushed his hand across the dash, feeling for them. He hit them with the side of his hand and knocked them off and onto the floorboard. Cursing again, Cole stretched out and fumbled for them across the skimmer’s floor. Suddenly, his feet slipped off the deck and he went head-first into the passenger seat, landing awkwardly.

Cole kept his eyes squeezed tight as he untangled himself. He reached down by his feet and patted for the goggles. Finally, he found them. He brought the cups to his eyes as he righted himself in the skimmer’s seat. Working the rubber strap into place, Cole peered ahead for his quarry, but the other skimmer was gone. He looked to the door, wondering why someone wasn’t coming along to help, to give chase. Then he saw the pale glow of a red light flashing above the door. A door that would remain locked for safety reasons until the garage was shut tight against the photons.

“Damnit!” Cole looked to the skimmer dash, trying to recall which switch opened and closed the garage door. He traced his finger over the canopy release, remembered which one had operated the docking claws at the Seer’s cabin, saw the wiper knob, then came to the ignition switch.

Cole’s brain spun with more bad ideas, his poor judgment clicking along in defiance of the alarms and flashing lights. He thought about the time it would take to close and open the garage door, how long to explain what was going on, how much longer to organize pursuit. The idiotic plan hadn’t even made a full circuit through his boyish glands before his finger depressed the ignition switch, powering the grav cells in the rear of the skimmer. Cole keyed the canopy shut and adjusted himself in the seat, familiarizing himself with the control stick and taking the time to finally locate the garage door controls.

As soon as the canopy clicked into place, Cole pushed forward on the stick, jolting the sleek vehicle toward the ramp. The sudden burst of speed nearly made the back end of the skimmer whip around. Rather than let up and correct, he gave it even more juice and rocketed forward, the craft briefly leaving the deck as it raced over the edge of the ramp and down. Cole yelped. He dug one hand into the dash as he piloted with the other. He only barely remembered to hit the garage door controls as he raced out into the wet world and driving rain.

Sliding across the film of water outside, Cole’s skimmer kicked up low walls of spray as he scanned the horizon for his prey. Behind him, the metal door to the lumbering headquarters slammed shut, sealing out the light. Inside, alarms would be falling silent, the light above the door ceasing its steady flashes. Cole could imagine the stairwell door bursting open, an annoyed and confused group of freedom fighters stumbling through and wondering what in hyperspace was going on.