Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just pulled in today, and some people claiming to be friends with my father —”

“Scottie?” Sheriff Browne interrupted. “You come in on Parsona?”

Molly swallowed. “That’s right. And I—”

“Can’t help you,” the Sheriff said. His newspaper flapped back up in front of his face, and his hat sank down a few inches.

“Can’t, or—”

“No pets, ma’am. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

“But I—”

“No pets!”

The Wadi’s head recoiled from the outburst. Molly reached up and rubbed its back, trying to soothe it. “Could you at least tell me where I might find someone?” she asked. “I’m looking for…”

“Ain’t no tourguide, neither.”

“…a woman, a Callite that goes by the name of Cat.”

The newspaper came down, just low enough to expose Browne’s eyes.

“Cripple Cat?” he asked.

Molly looked to the card players. The other lawman gave her a huge smile. She turned back at Sheriff Browne. “Uh, I guess. I just know her as Cat. Or Catherine. Do you know where I can find her?”

The Sheriff pulled his feet off the desk and shot forward as his boots fell heavily. Molly took a quick step back.

“You’re lucky to know her as Cat. Most people don’t.” Browne shuffled some papers around on his desk and came up with a few stubs. He handed them out to Molly. “Twenty each.”

“What are they?”

“Tickets to see Cat.”

One of the card players chuckled again and got another visual blasting from the sheriff. Molly reached into her pocket for some change from the cantina and held it out. Sheriff Browne looked at the two coins.

“Just one ticket?”

“Just one,” Molly said.

Her heartbeat quickened as she took the stub.

She was getting close, she could feel it.

10

Cole startled awake as if from a bad dream. His arms and legs jerked reflexively but wouldn’t move; they were pinned in place. He blinked, gradually bringing the world into focus, fearing more of the bright light. What he found proved worse.

He was strapped to an inclined platform, his legs tied down a meter apart, the thick ropes looped around his ankles and through holes in the solid steel. He glanced up at his hands, which were similarly bound high over his head. He tried jerking down on them and felt his bruised ribs sing out in pain, jolts of electricity lancing from his chest to every new bruise across his body.

“Good luck with that,” someone said.

Cole turned to his side. He had to lean his head forward to look around his own arm, then saw Riggs tied up a few meters away, strapped to an identical structure: an angled sheet of steel halfway between flat and vertical. He also noticed several empty racks scattered about the small room, all roughly arranged around a gated drain in the center of the floor.

“Couldn’t tell if you were breathing or not,” Riggs said. “Was gonna be pissed if you’d already died on me.”

 Cole grimaced. It felt like the room was swaying, but it could’ve been a problem with his head. He leaned it back against the steel and thought he could hear the crunching of snow reverberating up through the metal contraption and into his skull. He assumed they were still on the move, just in a bigger craft. Above, a ceiling of dark plastic allowed a wan glow of light to filter into the room. The spots were gone from his vision, but his headache lingered.

“How long have I been out?” he asked.

“No clue,” Riggs said. “Longer than I was, obviously.”

“Yeah,” said Cole. He tried to push up with his restrained ankles to take some of the pressure off his ribs, but every movement caused him to wince in pain.

“Doesn’t feel too good, does it?”

Cole looked over and saw a smirk on Riggs’s face. He decided to roll with the jab, stunned that Riggs could actually take pleasure in Cole’s condition as if he had nothing to fear himself.

“What do you think they want with us?” Cole asked, changing the subject and also trying to remind Riggs that they were on the same side and had a common enemy to worry about.

“I’m guessing it’s nothing good, but at least they seem to want us alive. Maybe ransom. Surely they’re not dumb enough to kill a Navy pilot, which means I’m probably safe. You still got no clue where you jumped us?”

Cole wondered how best to tell Riggs that they might be in hyperspace. But then, he couldn’t shake the doubt, the feeling that it had been an auditory hallucination. He couldn’t even remember what he’d heard, exactly. He glanced down at his flightsuit, looking for the bulge of the red band in his breast pocket, but he was unable to tell if it was there or not.

“You didn’t double-check your jump vector, did you? We could be anywhere in the galaxy right now, right?” Riggs groaned. “Flankin’ useless.”

Cole clenched his jaw to hold back the retort forming in his throat. He twisted his arm in the restraints, trying to force his thumb flat so he could pull it through the knotted rope.

“Well, at least they’re Human,” Cole told Riggs, trying to change the subject. “I think so, anyway. They were speaking English around me.”

“I can do you one better. They speak Late-Millennial English.”

“Do what? How can you tell that?”

“Junior Academy poetry reading.” Riggs grunted; it sounded as if he were attempting to arrange himself more comfortably, or pull himself free. “I had to memorize that accent for a recital.” He said the last in a strange voice, one that nearly matched what Cole had heard from the men.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cole said.

“What? Me in poetry class? Or that you either discovered time travel or jumped us to a frozen rock full of Late-Millennial poets?”

“They don’t hit like poets,” said Cole.

“Yeah, you’re right, but they don’t have to be poets, just from the same era.”

“Twenty-first century?”

“Late. Or early twenty second. Jeez, man, did you sleep through English and history?”

“Yeah, I was more interested in Planetary Astronomy. Listen, I don’t think we’re on a planet. What would you say if I told you we were in—?”

A click of metal and an explosion of light cut him off. Cole shut his eyes and turned his head to the side as hinges squealed, and a door across the room opened. He waited until he heard it slam shut—returning the small space to a comfortably lit state—before reopening his eyes. He blinked rapidly and tried to focus on the shape shuffling toward him. Several men wrapped in fur had joined them in the cramped space. Two of them crouched down on either side of the door, their goggles off and dangling around their necks. One had the fur over his face pulled down, exposing a snarl.

The third man approached Cole and Riggs. He slowly pulled his goggles off and pushed his arm through the strap to secure them around his elbow. His face was completely covered with strips of fur, dotted with melting snow. Reaching up, the man began unwrapping himself, gradually revealing a tan face with a leathery complexion