Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

“Thrusters are coming up now,” Cole radioed. “But they won’t be ready for a full burn for a bit longer.”

Molly thumbed the mic. “Roger. We’ve got company.”

“Already?”

“Yeah. Change of plans. Get the thrusters up and get ready to hold us steady.”

There was a pause. “Molly, I… I don’t think I can do that—”

“You’ll have plenty of room, just get ready.”

She turned to Walter. “Go get in the other ship,” she told him.

He holstered his computer and darted out of the cockpit.

“No looting!” Molly added.

Ahead, the Security ship rose clear of the hangar, spun around slowly, then began accelerating their way. The radio was turned way down, but she could still hear nonstop threats being broadcast their way. She reached forward and flicked the unit off, then reduced thrust as she began rolling the two ships over. Gradually, she positioned Parsona on top, spinning her own view of the parking deck from the 500.

“Get ready!” she commed to Cole. She pulled under the first exit through the deck—nothing more than a large, square hole of trussed-up regolith left open by a lowered landing pad—and diverted the thrusters to boost them up. Parsona popped above the moon’s crust, still attached to the 500, the Security craft bearing down on them both. The armed ship would be on top of them as soon as they cleared the parking deck. The Stanleys inside were probably waiting to capture them where their clients’ ships couldn’t be harmed; they must think a clean escape was going to be impossible.

As the SADAR beeped with a missile-lock warning, Molly began to suspect the same thing. She tried to level her thoughts, even as the world outside turned sideways. It helped to imagine herself on the bottom of the moon, falling down through the crust, rather than half inverted and rising up. The whine of the overworked thrusters made the illusion hard to maintain, however, and she watched, powerless, as the parking deck fell away with agonizing slowness.

She waited until they were clear of the crust, counted to five, then keyed the mic.

“Now!” she barked into the radio.

She reversed the thruster controls, but left the accelerator at full. Now, rather than forcing Parsona into the clear, the full power of the 500 was trying to drag them both back down into the opening in the moon. She jumped from her seat and sprinted down the center aisle of the ship, grabbing the airlock jam to swing herself through. She jumped up for the hatch, pulled herself over the lip, felt the switch in gravity fields, then crashed into a heap on the floor of her own airlock deck.

She groaned in pain, and could feel the vibration in the deck as her ship did likewise, trying to counter the more massive thrust from the 500. She forced herself up through sheer will and jumped across the airlock to close the outer hatch. As soon as the indicator went green, she released the locking collars.

The GU-500 popped free, its thrusters and the moon’s gravity, powering it back down through the landing pad shaft. Molly stood up and peered through the viewport, watching the ship race away as Parsona slowly rose. Just before it fell through the crust, she saw the blue hull of the Security ship come into view.

The two crafts slammed together, the wings of the inverted 500 snapping in half and wrapping themselves around the small craft beneath it. It looked like a fierce bird of prey snatching a blue robin out of the air, driving its meal deep into its lair—

A massive explosion ended the illusion, the ball of fire spreading out among the gleaming hulls before rising up through the regolith and toward Parsona’s belly. Molly turned away from the harsh scene and leaned out the airlock door, her hand on the jamb. She looked up the center of the ship and saw Cole gaping back at her from the pilot’s seat.

“What in the world?!” he yelled, his voice still raspy and weak.

Molly limped toward the cockpit, her ankle twisted from the fall through the airlock.

“Did you think we were keeping that ship?” she shouted back.

Cole shook his head, his shocked expression fading to a grim smile. He turned and increased thrust, leveled Parsona out, and headed away from the moon, careful to keep the Gs low and the vector straight.

None of them had flightsuits on, of course.

Which would pose all sorts of problems as a Navy fleet, led by Admiral Saunders, prepared for their jump into the Dakura system.

Dani pulled the vehicle to a stop at the edge of the government district. Edison lumbered out of the back seat, and Anlyn followed. As she stepped to the sidewalk and approached the passenger door, the window slid open.

“Be careful in there,” Dani said, leaning over from his seat to catch her eye.

“I will be,” she said.

Dani glanced at Edison, then his lance. “Don’t use that unless you win the vote, and only outside. The spectacle will be just as important for our cause as the politics; otherwise, the vote won’t stick.”

Edison nodded.

“We need to go,” Anlyn told them both. She pulled Edison toward the crowded walkway as Dani waved, then merged back into the traffic. The couple marched swiftly as the crowd parted to either side, the confused jumble of foot traffic becoming ordered and sedate ahead of them.

The crowd morphed into two walls of Drenards, all of whom gawked at the couple as they strode through the heart of the government district. Part of the treatment could be attributed to the royal regalia Anlyn wore, signifying herself as the next in line to the throne.

Her large companion explained the rest.

“Use English when you’re conferring with me,” she told Edison. “Few of the Circle Members are fluent.”

“Understood,” Edison replied. “My Drenard vocabulary lacks finesse.”

Anlyn reached up and put her hand in his. “Nonsense. I’ve never seen anyone pick up a language so fast. I just hope you don’t overlearn it the way you have English.”

“My understanding of that last is non-optimal.”

Anlyn squeezed one of his large fingers. “Exactly. Now, remember the rules. Most votes are controlled by kicking members out on technicalities. Any slip-up and our voices won’t be heard.”

“My familiarity with such gatherings contains both accuracy and precision. Glemot Councils operated in parallel fashion.”

“Okay, here we go…”

They passed under the Clockwise Gate and into the Apex, the arbitrarily chosen “top” of the Drenard home planet. With all the important, habitable land arranged in a ring, locations were given by distance from the top, which is where the Circle met. One direction away from the Apex translated best as “clockwise” into English, but “spinward” would also work. The other direction was “counterclockwise.”

Not only did land value plummet according to distance from the Apex, even elements of Drenard psychology could be accurately measured in the manner residents of the upper ring looked— metaphorically, of course— down on those that lived and worked throughout the lower half of the ring. Clockwise residents even argued with counterclockwise folk, as if the direction around the ring were somehow any less arbitrary than the chosen top and bottom of the planet.

Once one place had been chosen as special, of course, subsequent improvements had surely made it so. While most of the great ringed city around Drenard stayed in perpetual twilight, a cone of reflected and filtered sunlight bathed the massive circle that made up the Apex.

It was one of the few places on Drenard where flora grew in the open, unshielded by glass. Acres of gardens spread here in a complex of labyrinths, all protected by a high exterior wall to shield out the persistent wind, but otherwise uncovered. The wall itself was webbed in colorful ivy that weaved around and up the barrier, popping with blooms that shivered up high where vortexes of wind dipped into the gardens.