Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

his hands on top of the heavy device, holding it firmly in place. He leaned close.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just such an important election. Hold still, there’s only a tiny—”

Prick.

Her index finger had already been hit once that day in order to secure a full tank of water for Parsona. The metal needle hit that fresh wound, and it felt like a bullet ripping through the pad. Molly gasped as the pain shot all the way up to her elbow like an electrical current. She slapped the top of the counter with her other hand and bit her lip to keep from yelling out. The Wadi shot down her back, sticking its head under the hem of her shirt, its tail swishing madly.

With a loud click, the ‘F’ at the top of the machine popped up, and the chemicals in her blood logged one more vote for the venerable Freedom Party.

The clamps loosened soon after, and Molly withdrew her finger. She pressed it into her shorts, which were already spotted on both sides with brown dollops of dried blood. The Callite bent down and smiled as he removed the reader from the case. He laid it on the counter, and then dropped an “I Voted” adhesive healing strip on top of it.

Molly grabbed the reader and shook the strip off onto the counter. The stupid things just made her hands more useless.

“Thanks for shoppi—”

“Flank off,” Molly grumbled. She dropped the reader into her shopping bag of assorted fruits and hardware parts and shooed the Wadi to her shoulder. She stalked away from the booth, kicking up plumes of dust with her flightboots as she went.

All around her buzzed yet another dry, dusty village she couldn’t wait to get out of. And as soon as she found Walter and finished her latest project on the ship, that’s exactly what they’d be doing. For the past two weeks, they’d traipsed halfway across her birth planet looking for an old acquaintance of her mother’s: a Callite that went by the name of Cat. The ephemeral alien possessed an uncanny blend of notoriety and elusiveness. Everyone knew her, had recently seen her, but wherever they gestured, Molly and Walter found only another trace of her passing— another nod and extended arm pointing them ever after the mysterious woman. But now Molly had a solid lead on Cat’s whereabouts, even though she loathed where it was taking her.

High above the small village, another Bern ship tore through Lok’s atmosphere, its passage marked with a loud rumble. Molly fought the urge to look up, to see which direction it was heading. Like the other ships, it no doubt came from her father’s old place, leaving the rift she had failed to close. Whatever Byrne had done, it had been enough. Or, if her mother’s guess was right, it wasn’t the old rift they were coming through at all, but rather the new one Byrne’s body had made when it was zapped out of existence. Molly wasn’t sure which scenario made her feel more guilty. Either she’d failed to stop him from opening the old rift, or her life had been saved by the same act that now threatened the rest of the galaxy. Either way, a door to a very bad place was currently open, and Byrne’s fleets were pouring through. Her feeble, bumbling efforts to stop him had come too late and proved too little.

Molly walked faster as the ship roared up into orbit, her cheeks burning with the memory of her failure. She concentrated on looking straight ahead, ignoring the complaints from the other market-goers. Even though none of them could possibly know of her involvement, the presence of the ships filled her with a paranoid dread, as if the annoyed crowds might suddenly realize the fault was hers and descend on her in the form of an angry mob.

“The Liberty party has the best plan for dealing with those things,” a lady walking behind her said. A male voice agreed, but a Callite walking the other direction didn’t. Molly quickened her pace even more as an argument broke out, the din of political discourse competing with the roar of thrusters vaporizing air.

If there was one thing she had learned and learned well regarding Lokian elections, it was that the process spilled copious amounts of blood. For votes and otherwise. And frankly, she was growing sick of the sight of the stuff.

As she left the squabble in her wake, she felt ever more impatient to do the same for the entire village. Her entire planet, even. All she wanted was to get to hyperspace, to find Cole, to be in his arms, and to see her father. Hopefully, the next stop would be their last. The problem was, Cat the Callite’s trail seemed to be taking them toward Bekkie, Lok’s capital city.

The absolute last place she wanted to be with elections looming.

4

Cole worked the manual crank to open the landing gear hatches and heard the distant hiss of air leaking inside the ship. He grabbed his helmet from the ground and snapped it on, even though his suit could only retain an hour or so of air. Riggs left his helmet off as he worked the last bolt out of the panel behind the seats. He pulled the sheet of flimsy steel free.

“Drenards, it’s freezing out there!” Riggs said. He turned to Cole and smiled at his closed visor. “The air’s fine, man. Frigid, but breathable.”

Cole lifted his visor and felt the draft of cool air on his face. It didn’t match the bright, searing light he’d seen during their rapid descent. “I wanna go first,” he told Riggs.

“Be my guest. I’d rather keep you in sight, anyway.”

Cole bit his tongue and grabbed one of the survival kits before ducking under the back of the hanging nav seat. He squeezed past Riggs and pushed the kit into the maintenance tunnel, then crawled head-first after it.

Cole held his biostick aloft as he worked his way across a series of jutting pipes and bundled wires. Above him, a smooth track ran into the distance, a mechanic’s car hanging from its rails just a few meters ahead. Inverted and useless, the track and car taunted Cole as he moved across a rough terrain of mechanical systems, trying not to cut his flightsuit open on any of the sharp hose clamps.

The air he crawled into became more frigid by the meter. Cole snapped his head forward, locking his visor down against the biting cold. He could see light coming in from an opening ahead, which reminded him of a little problem: the blinding light they’d encountered during the crash landing was still out there. Without the canopy filters, they’d be blinded in an instant.

“What’s taking you?” Riggs asked from behind.

Cole leaned on one elbow, his chest resting uncomfortably on a pump housing. He flicked his visor up and yelled back through the cold air: “That blinding light is still out there. It’s gonna be hard to see a thing.”

“Follow the grease-monkey track,” Riggs yelled up to him. “There’s a tool locker past the belly panel. Might be some welding plates in there.”

Cole nodded and continued forward, heading toward the bright shaft of light. It came down through the nose gear bay, just five meters or so behind the cockpit. The harsh rays filtered past the landing pads and the hydraulic gear. Soon, more spots danced in Cole’s vision. He thought his sight was getting worse until one of the spots flew through his open visor and hit him in the face.

It was snow. A flurry of dancing flakes streamed down through the open hatch.

Cole didn’t dare look up as he passed beneath the shaft. He kept his head down and stowed the emergency kit off to the side before heading deeper into the belly of the Firehawk.

“Damn, it’s snowing,” he heard Riggs say. “Doesn’t burn the tongue, either, so we’re good on water.”

Cole felt relieved to hear Riggs thinking like that. It gave him hope that they could work together to survive the mess they were in. He crawled over a piece of ductwork and felt the red band push into his ribs. It reminded him of the voices he’d heard during their crash landing. He wondered if they’d been real, or if he was just losing his mind. Maybe he had been hearing things amid all the alarms. Was he really in hyperspace? What did that even mean? Had he hallucinated the entire conversation?

He felt himself leaning toward the latter. They were probably on a planet, somewhere near the polar caps. Any time now, the Navy would trace their hyperspace signature and come to rescue them.

Well, rescue Riggs, anyway. They would want to imprison him.

He continued to crawl forward, not sure what to believe. Or even hope for.