Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

“Hey,” Walter said. “Jusst sscan it and give it back.”

“Scanner’s in the office,” Pete said. “I’ll keep it safe. I promise.”

Walter hissed as the chip disappeared. Molly put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back by her side.

“Alright, let’s get out of here,” Pete said. He gave Molly one last look. “I’ll have my dockhands round up everything you need. Might take a few hours, so just stay put.”

Molly nodded. The two men turned and stomped down the ramp; Cat paused to squeeze Molly’s arm. They exchanged a look, and then she turned as well, her bright, blond ponytail whipping around as she hurried off after the others.

“Well this sucks,” Molly grumbled as she watched them go.

“Are you kidding?” Walter tugged on Molly’s sleeve. “We’re getting room sservicse! All the ssuppliess and none of the lifting!” He dragged her back into the cargo bay with one hand and pulled out his videogame with the other. “Thiss iss ssweet!”

After closing the cargo ramp, Walter lounged sideways across his crew seat, his feet in Anlyn’s old chair as he lost himself in his videogame. Molly roamed around the cargo space jacked up with nervous energy; she tried her best to straighten up the clutter from having so many people moving through the ship of late. She snapped an attachment on the air hose and blew dust from one surface to the other before deciding the exercise was pointless. Rather than get anything cleaner, it just won her annoyed glances from Walter, who seemed to cringe at the air hose’s hissing sounds.

Molly sighed and put the hose back. “I’m gonna take a nap in the cockpit,” she told Walter. “Come get me when those supplies show up.”

He nodded, then wiggled across the two seats to get more comfortable. Molly strode into the cockpit and keyed the door shut. Grabbing her helmet off its rack, she settled into Cole’s seat and pulled the dome down over her head.

“Mom?”

For once, Parsona didn’t respond immediately. Molly checked the switch on the side of her helmet to confirm the mic was on. It was. She reached forward to the dash controls—

“Yes?”

“Oh, hey. Everything okay?”

A pause. “Yes. I overheard the conversation with Pete. Those poor Callites…”

“This whole planet is flanked—” Molly stopped herself. She felt a sudden wave of heat in her flightsuit for having cursed in front of her mom. Her time on Lok was wearing on her nerves and surrounding her with bad influences. And without Academy professors around to chastise her poor behavior, or Cole around to always try and impress, she could feel herself growing up too fast in some ways. Thankfully, her mother now had some semblance of a presence in her life, which helped. Presently, however, Parsona forced Molly to bear the shame of her word choice in silence, rather than lecture her.

“When your father and I were here,” Parsona said after a long moment, “there was talk about scrapping the colonization efforts on Lok completely. The Navy wanted to move everyone off and abandon the entire planet. They even wanted to mark it off-limits to future expansion.”

“You’re kidding. Why?”

“They couldn’t stop the flow of fusion. That was the official version and the crux of your father and I being here. Your dad was the great Navy hope, you know. He and Lucin came back heroes from the war. They could’ve taken any post they wanted. Lucin chose the Academy, said he could do the most good there.”

“Yeah, for which side?” Molly asked, unable to conceal the disgust in her voice.

“If you and Saunders are correct, it makes a lot of sense. That’s the front line, really, in keeping up their efforts to break through to the rift. SADAR has nothing on hindsight, but I bet your father would’ve put all this together if he hadn’t been blinded by his love for the man.”

“I wish he were here right now,” Molly said softly. And Cole , she added to herself.

“Me too. And I wish I could be there for you in more than voice.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to wish him here and not you. After Dakura… well, I don’t think I’d be any more comfortable if you were here in person. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“It’s just that this is how I’ve only ever known you. I like thinking I could have you in my life forever.”

Parsona didn’t answer at first.

“Forever’s a long time,” she finally said.

“Not for you—”

“Sweetheart, your father didn’t lock me away solely as a backup. He—I could go just as mad in here as I could on Dakura. Cheating death isn’t natural. Our brains just can’t cope after a while—”

“What’re you saying?”

“Just that I need you to be prepared, as any child must be. You might not have me around forever. If something happens to the ship, I’ll be gone. There might even come a day when I’d ask you to—”

“No. Don’t say it and I wouldn’t do it.” Molly looked out her porthole as another ship pulled out of the stables, slow and low.

“Maybe they should’ve abandoned this place long ago,” Molly said. “Maybe none of this Bern stuff would’ve happened.”

“Or it would’ve happened sooner,” Parsona said.

“What do you mean?”

“The official reason we were here was the fusion fuel, but we kept getting bogged down with missing persons reports.”

“The election fraud.”

“If it’s that,” Parsona said. “What doesn’t fit is that the number of Callites disappearing seemed to match the rate of Humans. Only, nobody was much put off by their disappearance to look into it.”

“But why would the government want their blood? To cast votes for the Freedom party? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly. They wouldn’t.”

“Maybe the Callites were just going underground to avoid immigration officials.”

“Which is precisely why we were told to not look into it. It was considered out of our jurisdiction. Still, the viability of Lok depended on a rising population. Instead, it was dwindling, even with the land giveaways and tax incentives. The disappearances outpaced the inflow of colonists. Your father used to say Lok was doomed with or without the fusion trade.”

“Do you think the Bern could’ve been up to something? Could they have been trying to secure the other rift by running everyone off?”

“I don’t know. Seems convoluted and roundabout for them. Maybe—” Another pause. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

Parsona highlighted a target on SADAR. “Look,” she said.

Molly tracked the moving object. It was a passenger class shuttle rising up from the outskirts of Bekkie and heading straight for space. She pulled up the town overlay map and looked for the side street café where she and Walter had been sitting. She followed the departure trajectory and saw that it matched up with the general direction of the other shuttle they’d watched lift off.

Molly wanted to ask “Why?” but sat and stared in silence, instead. She looked up from the blinking blip on the screen to the carboglass and scanned the buildings beyond for a rising plume of jet exhaust. She saw nothing through the haze of dawn and was forced to watch via SADAR, forced to watch as the shuttle nearly reached the ionosphere before the altitude indicator stopped climbing. It paused at apogee, and then the altimeter began to count down with a sickening sense of looming finality.

“How can they do that? How is that legal?”

“They’re letting the Bern do their dirty work for them. Probably calculated what a shuttle costs versus having to move the same illegals back to their planet over and over.”

“But they’re sending them to their deaths. Doesn’t anyone care?”