Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

positives she’s been fooled by in the past, the many strange things that always end up being nothing. Or at the very least, a different sort of something.

She studies the images intently, focusing her perception, needing to make sure… but there isn’t any doubt:

The Bern.

Thousands and thousands of ships, some of them carrying hundreds of smaller ships, are arranged in a grid for battle; they’re jumping into her land from a dozen different galaxies. She sees them crossing through hyperspace before forming up in the midlands—that part of the sideways cone where the snow flies. She sees them preparing to invade the Milky Way, sees them sliding through an open rift and out over a dry and dusty land. She sees death and destruction on a scale the universe normally reserves for the ends of time.

The old woman waits for the scene to change, for any indication that this is the future, but it remains solid. Unwavering. And in a land where things happened out of sequence, where cause and effect have to be re-learned, where it’s often impossible to distinguish what happened and in what order, she sees quite clearly that this has already begun.

“Mortimor!” she thinks. She focuses the word into the red band, sending it out to all the other paired bands, the devices that can intercept even the softest of thoughts through hyperspace and beyond.

“Pops, can you hear me?”

She waits.

If he can hear her, he doesn’t think it. The red band remains silent.

And so the woman known as the Bern Seer lies motionless on her leather saddle, zipping along just before the very edge of time. Ahead of her, a scene she once glimpsed with blind eyes plays out yet again, only clearer this time. The frightening visuals dominate her senses, downing out the other events taking place elsewhere. She’s left with only the Bern to watch.

And a lifetime of doubts, an eon of fears that she had seen incorrectly, or had started a panic over some fleeting dream, gradually washes away. Those old worries regarding her senility are driven off by a flood of the now. A flood of horror.

Countless years she has endured, waiting, living with the anxiety of having possibly been wrong.

And suffering the even worse terror that she may have been right.

Part XI – Worlds Apart

“It isn’t the distance that tears—it’s what’s stretched between.”

~The Bern Seer~

1

“My name is Mortimor Fyde, son. Welcome to hyperspace.”

“Hello,” Cole asked out loud, “is anyone there?”

He shook his head. His thoughts were still rattled from the crash landing, his vision partially blinded from the harsh light outside. He knelt on the buried canopy of the stolen and upturned Firehawk and groped for the strange voices he thought he’d heard during the crash.

It was nearly impossible to concentrate, however, with someone else trying to yell at him. Riggs, his former Academy mate and friend, hung overhead, strapped to the nav chair, completely restrained. Cole could see the whites of his eyes glaring down at him, his cheeks puffing out around the tape, his nostrils flaring with rapid, shallow breaths. In the dull, green glow of the emergency lightstick, Riggs’s angered visage seemed outright menacing, like a monster eager to attack. He grunted more unpleasantries through the tape and shook his head side to side, his eyes squinting with rage.

“Okay, hold on,” Cole said. He stood and reached for a corner of the tape. “Stop struggling.”

Riggs held still, but his eyes tunneled straight through Cole. The tape came off with a loud ripping sound, followed by a bout of cursing.

“You flanker!” Riggs yelled. “What in hyperspace have you done? ” He shook his shoulders, struggling against the restraints and the flight harness.

The sight of Riggs’s bound arms made Cole wince with guilt. Tying him up had been necessary during his and Molly’s escape from the Navy, but after the brutal crash they’d just endured, the bindings seemed cruel and pointless.

“Cool your jets,” said Cole. “I’m just as confused as you are.” He touched the red band on his forehead, thinking as loud as he could, but the voices had gone silent. He took the Drenard invention off and held the lightstick close to check that the seam was in the back—

“Why’re we upside down?” Riggs yelled. “What’ve you done? Get me out of here, Cole, I mean it.”

“Okay, okay, just save the air. There’s atmosphere here, but I don’t know what’s in it.” Cole stuffed the band in his breast pocket and reached up to undo the restraints around his old friend’s elbows and hands. “Don’t get crazy, okay? I’m gonna untie you.”

As soon as one of Riggs’s hands came free, he slapped Cole’s away and worked on the other strap himself. “Where in hyperspace did you take us?”

“Funny you should ask like that.” Cole watched Riggs fumble with his harness; he jumped aside just in time. Riggs landed on the inverted canopy with a thud and a crunch.

Cole went to help him up. “If my sources are… well, unless I’m hearing things, we might be in—”

Before he could finish, Riggs was on top of him, swinging wild blows with his fisted flight gloves.

“Stop it!” Cole yelled. He grabbed one of Riggs’s arms after a blow grazed the side of his head. Pulling down on the arm, he twisted his body and tossed Riggs over his hip. Riggs spun and landed with his back against the glass canopy; Cole fell on top of him, spreading his weight out to hold his old friend in place.

“Stop,” he said again as he groped for the lightstick. It had rolled beneath them, reducing the glow to almost nothing.

Riggs panted hard in the darkness; he twisted his shoulders and hips in an attempt to buck Cole off.

“Listen to me—”

“Flank you.”

“Seriously, Riggs, listen. Hold still—”

“Get the flank off me!”

“Okay, I’m getting off, but no blows. Just relax for a second.”

He got off Riggs and backed to one side of the upturned cockpit. Riggs scrambled away, grabbing the lightstick as he went and holding it out between them.

Cole showed his palms and tried to imagine how his old friend must see him: some mad vigilante—a dangerous criminal. There was the theft of Parsona, the death of Admiral Lucin, and what had happened on Palan during the floods. He knew none of it looked good, especially the recent act of kidnapping Riggs and escaping from the Navy, which he couldn’t even begin to deny.

“Hey,” Cole said. “I’m not gonna try and convince you I’m innocent—”

“Good,” spat Riggs.

“I’m not even gonna ask you to put aside your hatred of me—”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

“Fine. But unless I’m hearing voices, we need to get out of here, which means working