Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

“I think we should continue to Lok, dear.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me, Mom?”

“Plenty. But it’s for your own good.”

“Stop saying that, seriously. I don’t wanna hear how important our mission is without knowing what I’m doing. I mean, look at where that’s gotten me. I have no home, almost no friends, no safe place to go, and barely enough to eat for a few weeks. Oh, and I’m being led around by my dead mom who I recently found out worked for the Drenard Underground.”

“Sweetheart…”

Molly checked her watch. “Fifteen more minutes for the hyperdrive to cycle. I’m leanin’ toward jumping back to the fleet’s last position, seeing what happened.”

“Your father and I did fall in with the Drenard Alliance. What the Navy calls the Underground.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding. Why keep this from me? Anlyn’s my friend, I would’ve listened.”

“I know that now. I hate that you’re caught in the middle of this, but it’s so much bigger than you or me. You just got interrogated by the Navy, imagine if you’d known—”

“They interrogated you as well. What did you tell them?”

“I told them the same thing your father did ten years ago, just in case they’d listen. Of course, I repeated the same things over and over again, so they’d think it was a logic tree. I watched them board, let them think I thought it was you.”

“What did you tell them? And you’ve got twelve minutes before I jump back to the fleet.”

“That the Drenards are not their enemy.”

“Ha. I’m sure that went over well. ‘The race that’s been blowing up your loved ones for almost a century really want to be your friends. Come hunt lizards in sunny paradise.’ Was that it?”

“You’re upset.”

“Damn right. As much as I love Anlyn, I barely escaped that planet alive. People there tried to kill me—”

“A dispute between lovers was the way Anlyn explained it—”

“Yeah, but—”

“Have you ever wondered why the war never leaves the Drenard arm of the Milky Way? The Galactic Union and the Navy have both been told the war can end at any time; all they have to do is stop trying to enter that portion of the galaxy.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s the same message your father came back to Earth to deliver in person. He had to flee after receiving the official reply.”

“What a stupid thing to keep from me, if true!”

“Perhaps, but telling you the war is actually a blockade action just leads to more questions. Difficult questions…”

She had a point, because the next one formed on Molly’s lips, like a reflex: “What are they keeping us from?”

“Not keeping, Mollie. Protecting .”

“Fine,” she said. “What are they protecting?”

“ Us .”

“My grandfather served on this Circle for two full cycles,” Counselor Yur said from the Light of Speak. “He was adamant about the danger posed by the existence of Humans. Even when the first signs of the so-called prophecy came to light, he recognized this as mere coincidence. People finding what they sought. It’s increasingly clear that my grandfather was correct. The existence of a race of people with such incredible resemblance to the Bern makes it impossible to perform our duty of policing this galaxy. We have allowed a dangerous forest to grow as we try to guard against individual trees.

“The decision is not an easy one, I agree. It never should be easy to wipe out an entire species. But when not doing so will lead to many thousands of races going extinct, the choice is much simpler. I will be voting, as I always have, for the extermination of the Humans. The argument that we cannot guard the Great Rift while also launching an offensive against their fleets ignores our success at holding this arm of our galaxy while doing the same. Our Navy is more than up to the challenge of warring on both fronts.

“I defer the rest of my time and give up the Center to my good friend Counselor Bodi.”

Yur bowed slightly, turned around, bowed again, then headed for the wooden bridge. He had not chosen to address any of the other Counselors and give them a chance to speak, a tactic that would not win him any favor. However, his arguments had been heard before and were unlikely to sway anyone on the Circle. Bodi, and others who planned to change their vote for war, represented the new wind. They were the ones etching away at canyon walls from unexpected directions—eroding new paths for Drenards to walk.

Anlyn watched her ex-fiancé take the Center of Speak for the second time. He refrained from looking at her, probably fearing she’d usurp him again. As much a bumbling fool as he could be, as thorough as he was at discovering and making mistakes, he rarely repeated them.

“Thank you, Counselor Yur, for the remainder of your time.” Bodi bowed in his direction before turning to face the largest concentration of Human sympathizers. “Fellow Counselors,” he began, “as I was saying just a few hours ago, our duty to this galaxy is being forgotten .”

Several Counselors stiffened at this accusation, the remembrance of duty being one of the five Great Virtues of any good Drenard citizen. Bodi let the insult hang in the air before continuing. He placed one of his pale blue hands on his own chest, fingers splayed out across the colorful regalia on his tunic.

“I am also to blame,” he said. “And the lapse is easy to forgive once it is understood. There is an inherent tension between two of the Great Virtues: remembering our duty to protect the galaxy and remembering our duty to our neighbors. For too long, we have placed the latter virtue ahead of the former. We have tried to balance both, living on the fine line that exists between them, but I fear our grip on the scales is slipping. We have put the entire galaxy in danger in order to protect the Humans.”

Anlyn cringed from the mixture of metaphors. She couldn’t understand what her father had seen in this man.

“And what have the Humans done? Despite numerous envoys who have assured them complete freedom in the rest of the galaxy, they demand to know what lies in our corner. They attack, and their reason for attacking again is that we have defended ourselves. Upheld one of our Virtues.

“I respect our forgiving nature. I do not call for us to live in the full sunlight of war, but neither do I think we should move to the dark and allow ourselves to freeze due to the coldness of our compassion.

“We are a race born on the edge, squeezed on either side by two different dangers, and that is where we find ourselves today. Perhaps that is why we have grown too comfortable with the fire of Humans on the one side and the black hole in space that we defend on the other.

“The vote has always been one of holding this line with the Humans or of pushing out to extinguish them. I find this decision to be untenable. There is an alternative that has been discussed much in the past but soundly rejected—even by myself.”

He paused and scanned the crowd, lifting his arms and splaying his stolen tunics for effect. “We should tell the Humans about the Bern threat,” he said. “We should let them look amongst themselves for signs of infiltration. The vote I submit to the Circle today is this: either we tell the Humans about the Great Rift, and the nature of the Bern Empire, or we whittle their numbers down until the Bern can no longer hide among them.”

“Second,” cried Yur.

The Drenard beside him nodded. “Third,” he said.

Anlyn froze, disbelieving. Five more Counselors cast their votes, putting the decision—if such a biased dichotomy could even be considered a “decision”—before the Circle.