Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

think the Bern threat is more important than your haste to find your father. If we could get rid of them, it would also put an end to the attacks from the Drenards. The entire pretense for their offensive, their drive to stop the Bern attack, it would no longer make any sense. Billions of lives would be saved.”

“I agree with the tactical assessment, but I don’t see how my staying is much help. I don’t see how any of us can stop this.”

“You might be right, but I feel compelled to try something. And perhaps I’m wrong to see you and your ship as two of our greatest assets.” Saunders looked past her at the scattered campfires. “All I need to do now is figure out how to destroy a fleet that made mincemeat out of mine and do it with a hundred staff members that are closer to retirement than their last active combat duty.”

Molly laughed. “Now you’re talking crazy.”

“Hell, isn’t this the kind of crap you lived for in the simulators?”

“I guess so,” Molly said. “But none of that was real.”

“Yeah?” Saunders’s face drooped, sadness and fatigue pulling down on it as his false humor rested for a moment. “Well, nothing about this situation feels real, either.”

••••

Molly walked Saunders back to his group, then wandered toward Parsona, stopping along the way to help a group string a tarp between some trees. She recognized the faded blue plastic—it had been folded up in a corner of the engine room as long ago as Palan. The string was also hers, and the small group of survivors were quick to thank her for everything she’d done. She nodded politely in response to their effusive gratitude and made her way toward the ship.

The brief interaction put her in a somber mood as she thought about leaving those people to rush off to hyperspace. In the back of her mind, she toyed with crazy schemes for taking down the Bern. It was her favorite Academy pastime, dreaming an end to war. Suddenly, however, it seemed more real: the fighting and being in a position to do something about it. But what?

She expected her friends would be aboard the ship, getting some well-deserved rest. Instead, she found them around a small fire they’d built under Parsona’s starboard wing.

“Why aren’t you guys inside?” she asked. She crouched down by the fire and extended her hands toward it.

“Walter said we should stay out here tonight, just so everything feels fair.”

Molly shot him a look. His face was aglow, his metallic-looking skin reflecting the firelight.

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging.

His look didn’t inspire much confidence in Molly. “You had better not be up to anything,” she told him.

“I’m not! I sswear.”

Molly held his gaze a moment longer, her eyes narrowed for effect.

“Is the Admiral okay?” Cat asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I think he just had a dizzy spell earlier.” Molly rubbed her hands together. “Now he’s putting a lot of pressure on me to stick around and help them fight the Bern.”

“It’s a lost cause,” Scottie said.

“How d’ya know it’s lost?” Cat asked.

“Besides the fact they knocked a StarCarrier out of orbit? How about the rumors the Drenards are invading the rest of the Milky Way?”

“Hogwash.” Cat said.

“He’s right about the Drenards,” Molly said. “Saunders confirmed it.” She looked at Walter. “That means Anlyn’s probably in trouble, or at the very least that her political efforts didn’t go very well.”

Walter shrugged. He poked at the fire with a stick, sending up a spiral of twirling sparks.

Molly turned to Scottie. “What about that fuel we discussed? I’m still willing to pay double.”

Scottie frowned. “I can get my hands on some, but I’d prefer to work out the use of your ship, just for a day or two—”

“We already discussed this.”

Scottie stared into the fire. “I’ll see what I can do. How much do you need?”

“A full tank.”

Scottie laughed. He stopped and looked around at the others, seemingly amazed that nobody had joined him. “You serious?”

Molly nodded.

“But you already have a quarter tank in her. And yeah, I looked. It’s what I do.”

“It’s Navy issue,” Cat told him.

“Oh.” He glanced over at Molly. “Oh! You’re not looking to move something hot, you’re thinking hyperspace!”

“Keep your voice down,” Cat told him.

“You thinking that’s the safest place to be right now, or something? How’s that more important than getting my friends to safety?”

Molly shook her head. “I’ve got people there that need me.”

“You’ve got people here that need what you’ve got even more. Do you—” he turned to Cat. “Does she even know what that drive’ll do?”

Cat shrugged.

Scottie jabbed a thumb back at Parsona’s hull. “Do you know what you’ve got in there?”

“I’m starting to wonder,” Molly said.

Cat leaned back from the fire and rested on her elbows. She scanned the clearing for any Navy folk, then looked over to Scottie. “I can vouch for her,” she said. “Consider her a part of the Underground if you have to.”

Scottie stood up and walked around the fire and sat down beside Molly. He leaned his head over and reached his hands out toward the fire, animating with them while he talked. “Friend of mine built it,” he said. “Ronnie Ryke. We called him Doctor Ryke, even though he never even finished grade school. Still, smartest damn feller you ever knew. Built the thing in his garage, tinkering with the very laws of physics.”

“It was the fuel,” Cat inserted.

He held out a palm to quiet her, but nodded. “Right, see I was—well, skimming some fuel from my boss, trying to make some ends meet, and I owed Ronnie for some work. He had me pay him in fuze, doing test tube stuff with it. I thought he was growing his own critters, but he weren’t interested in the biology—”

“Critters?” Molly asked.

“Creatures. Little organisms.” Scottie scrunched up his face. “Didn’t your dad tell you what fuze is made of?”

“I was six years old, Scottie. Just tell me already!”

Cat laughed and Walter looked up from his storm of sparks, seemingly paying attention.

Scottie leaned uncomfortably close. “It’s like a colony of little cells, okay? And you know how a nadiwok sees in infrared? And how a cloud viper sees with ultrasound?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, fuze can see hyperspace. Or through hyperspace, anyway.” He looked over at Cat, who was leaning back, smiling. “Am I explaining it right?”

“You’re doing fine.”

“You’re telling me that fusion fuel is alive?” Molly asked.

“Well, yeah. And Ronnie got to messing with his own hyperdrives. He figured the fuze market was too competitive, but nobody was building and selling hyperdrives on the down-low, see? And he was smart about it. Figured out why nobody else could duplicate what the Navy built. He even had some ideas about who had actually built the first drives. The key had something to do with how the Navy treated their fuze. Their method shocks it into action, killing some in the process, which is why the needle goes down. But Ryke figured out how to build one that got around that. His drive coaxed the critters where he