Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

“I think they set down in the lake,” Scottie said. “That’s a shame.”

As they got closer to the wreck, Molly saw he was right. Lok had no oceans, just a few puddles the locals exaggerated by calling them  “lakes.” The StarCarrier had landed right in the middle of one; the nose of the great ship was buried in a muddy crater and surrounded by pools of water covered in oil and fuel—some of them on fire. A wall of mud and dirt had been thrown up by the force of entry, forming a berm on the perimeter. The resulting barrier and moat looked purposefully built, like a warning to interlopers saying: “Stay out.”

Molly flew over the glistening brown wall and felt sad for the flashes of light twinkling on dry ground—the flapping of displaced swimming things. As she banked around to perform a full circuit of the ship, keeping Parsona low enough to feel safe from the fleet in orbit, she couldn’t help but see the once-powerful craft in the same light as the fish: an animal out of its element with no way of putting it back. A thing dying, if not already dead.

As they rounded the port side, the stenceling on the side of the ship came into view, and Molly lost what little breath she’d been holding.

ZEBRA-9200 “Gloria”

This wasn’t just any StarCarrier, it was the very one she and Cole had escaped from two weeks ago. The realization made her feel like thrusting away from it, as if it still posed some threat to her. She read the hull designation several times, the surge of adrenaline passing as she forced herself to remain calm.

“So big,” someone whispered.

Molly nodded. Up close, the ship seemed even more massive than it had in space, perhaps because the enormity of an entire cosmos wasn’t swallowing it up, providing some sense of scale. It took almost fifteen minutes to do a slow lap around the mountain of metal. There were no signs of life, no lights or movement from survivors. Everywhere along the ground, the ship’s hull was a twisted mess of shrapnel and torn plasteel, entire decks of the carrier crushed and impassible.

“There’s no way in,” Cat said.

“And no safe place to land and walk in from. I don’t know what we were thinking to come out here.”

“Curiosity,” Scottie said. He leaned over the control console to peer up at the metal cliff looming ahead of them. “And didn’t that kill the cat?” he asked.

“What about the hangar bay?” Cat asked, ignoring Scottie.

“We can look,” Molly said, “but I’d think they’d have shut it before reentry.”

She took Parsona up and spiraled around toward the ship’s belly, remembering the last time she had flown along that very section of the massive carrier. Four Firehawks had been escorting her—their missiles armed and locked. The size and shape of the hull hanging in space had filled her with fear. She’d been convinced the Navy was about to airlock her and her friends for a string of tragic events.

Now, despite the unease she felt from recognizing the craft, it leaned sadly in the dry atmosphere of her backwoods home planet. Unmoving. Harmless. It didn’t seem right that such a large creation could meet its end in such a short period of time, or end up somewhere as inconsequential as Lok.

“Damn thing’s open,” Scottie said, pointing to one of the carrier’s airlock bays. “Can we fly in?”

Molly pulled up opposite the airlock. The StarCarrier was leaning to one side, the open hangar pointing up to the sky, which meant she had to angle Parsona’s nose down so they could see inside. She reached for the spotlight controls before noticing the lights inside the bay were still functional.

“Something’s not right here,” she said.

“Nobody’s home,” said Cat.

That’s exactly what didn’t seem right. Molly could see the full length of the tilting hangar, all the way to the far wall, which hung way below them. There should’ve been a pile of Firehawks and Scouts down there, trillions of dollars of destroyed Navy hardware lying in a pile.

“Must’ve been in the fight,” Cat said.

“Or the crew used everything they had to escape.”

“I didn’t see nothing fly out on its way down,” Scottie said.

“Me neither, but there were Firehawks raining down earlier, before we left Bekkie.”

“Not enough,” Molly said. “There would’ve been hundreds of them aboard.” She turned to the others. “Should we peek inside? Look for survivors?”

Cat turned to her and shook her head. “Ain’t no one survive this. Not a crash like this.”

“Yeah, but there’s still power. Maybe someone—I dunno, I just always think there’s a chance.”

“If you wanna stick your nose in and take a sniff, be my guest. But get ready to hightail it when this puppy goes down.”

Molly turned the radio down to its lowest broadcast setting, just in case anyone in the fleet above was listening in. She brought the mic to her lips.

“Zebra wing—” She hesitated, trying to think up a lie, then figuring it didn’t matter. “— Parsona here. Any survivors, please come back on twenty-two eighteen.”

They waited. She adjusted the squelch until a faint hissing and popping assured her the speakers were operational. Nobody responded.

“Just a peek,” she told the others. She gripped the flight controls and replaced the mic, then nosed Parsona forward, back into the same bay from which she’d fled with Cole just a few weeks prior.

An easy in-and-out, she promised herself.

35

“You want me to meet someone called the Bern Seer?”

Cole shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve had enough of the Bern.”

Mortimor laughed. “She’s no more a Bern than you or I, Cole. She’s the one who’s been watching them come. She’s on our side, if there is such a thing.”

“Where is she? Here?”

“No—”

“Further ahead,” Arthur interjected, shouting above the rain. “As far ahead as you can go, in fact.”

“Why does she want to meet me?”

“Won’t say, but she’s calling in a favor, a big one, and… well, I can’t force you to go, but I’d owe you one of my own if you did.”

Cole looked down at his hands beneath the folds of his clear plastic poncho. Water coursed across it, giving his flesh an artificial sheen.

“I’ll go,” he said quietly.

“Good,” Mortimor said. He slapped Cole on the back. “Now, let’s get out of the rain. I’ll introduce you to doctor Ryke, who’ll take you out.”

Cole followed the two men forward, the pelting at his back driving him along and the rain to either side making him feel as if he could fall clean off the roof and go drifting after the droplets forever.

“Wait,” he yelled up to the others. “Who’s Ryke? Aren’t you guys coming with me?”

“Sorry,” Mortimor said, waiting up for him to catch up. “We’ve got plenty enough to do without a trip forward.” He worked his hand out of the poncho and put it on Cole’s back, urging him toward the stairwell. “Besides,” he said, “she specifically asked to see you alone. Ryke’s just driving you.”

“Driving me? In what?”

••••

Half an hour later, Cole found himself cowering in the passenger seat of the answer. They called it a hyperskimmer, and it raced across the water on three foils, skipping like a cast stone and feeling completely out of control. As the craft sped directly into the driving rain, Cole fought the urge to scream; he ground his teeth and