Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“—need to fall back. Listen to your translators. Group two will have the lead from here on out, assuming they make it through. We’ll give them time before zipping up the rift. Until then, nobody transmits on standard frequencies. Keep chatter to a minimum on this channel. Follow your instructions and be good Berns until we can sort this out.”

“Group Five, affirmative.”

“Three, out.”

The chatter ceased, leaving the cockpit silent. Molly shook her head and grumbled under her breath.

“Why so glum?” Cat asked. “This could come in handy. We’ll know what them bastards are thinking before they pull it.”

“I know,” Molly said. “It’s just… one of those voices reminded me of someone. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

She waited for the chatter to return, but the radio remained silent, the bar graphs flat and mocking. Molly let out her breath, drew in a new one, and reached for the ship’s controls, pulling Parsona out of its low hover and up along the tilted cliff of steel toward Gloria’s hangar. Behind her, Scottie keyed the cockpit door open and went back to join the climbers. Walter leaned toward the radio, presumably to shut it off.

“Can you leave it scanning?” Molly asked him. “Just in case the Bern say something important?”

He nodded and pulled his hand away. “Why would they be sspeaking Englissh?” he asked as he returned to his computer.

“They have to be good at blending in,” Cat answered.

“They look a lot like us,” Molly added. “Do you remember the guy from Dakura that nearly—that you rescued me from?”

Walter nodded.

“He was one of them, but you would never have known it.”

Molly saw Walter flinch. He looked at her with a strange expression—fear mixed with something else. She thought she understood how he felt, having been floored by the revelation herself.

“The ssame guy that sstrangled you,” he hissed.

“That’s right. We don’t have to worry about him anymore, but now you know why they speak English. You have to keep all this a secret, okay? People would panic, otherwise. Nobody would know who they could trust.”

Walter sniffed and nodded.

Molly guided Parsona into the Carrier’s hangar, high up the ship’s leaning belly. As she flew along the downward-sloping floor, she sensed Walter was dying to ask her another question, or possibly tell her something. She nearly pressed him to come out with it, but the more important task of close-quarters piloting required her attention.

She flew at a steep angle down the calm sea of riveted steel, ignoring the craggy reef of ruined and twisted Firehawks piled up at the bottom. Just above the open stairway door, she spun Parsona around and lined up the open door with her own ship’s cargo bay. As the landing struts settled to the decking, she locked the thrusters and accelerator just right to keep the ship from sliding back or flying forward. Parsona was basically in an inclined hover, held fast to the side of a steep cliff with her skids pressing against the bay’s decking.

Walter excused himself. He left his computer behind, crawled over the control console, and padded back through the cargo bay. Molly turned and watched him scurry past the climbers and their piles of gear, wondering what had gotten into him. She turned back around and adjusted the throttles one final time, double-checking that Parsona wasn’t sliding through the StarCarrier’s hangar.

Satisfied they were stable, Molly keyed open the cargo door, allowing the muffled anger of Parsona’s thrusters to invade the hull. She watched the cargo cam as the door opened fully, its rim swinging out and touching down to the StarCarrier’s deck.

The Navy climbers wasted no time, lowering bags of gear and coiled ropes out the opening and toward the stairway door below. The visual effect was surreal: Objects dangled out of Parsona sideways, even as her grav panels kept everyone upright inside the cargo bay. In the vacuum of space, Molly was able to cope with there being no true down, but seeing Lok’s gravity have an effect beyond her ship made her head spin.

Scottie and Ryn seemed unaffected by the vertigo. The large Human and Callite stood by the open bay door and shrugged harnesses on. The duo watched the Navy climbers intently, duplicating their knots and rope-handling, absorbing everything from the first climb that they’d need for the next one.

Molly felt fortunate to not be going on either expedition; she opened a packet of cheese for the Wadi and settled back in her seat for the long wait. She checked the rate of fuel burn from the thrusters and watched the video screen as the climbers scrambled backwards out of the hatch, one by one. The Navy guys seemed comfortable as gravity took a ninety degree turn; they bounced along on bent knees, letting the rope slide through their harnesses and gloved hands as they descended like spiders on thick strands of silk. Scottie and Ryn went last, mimicking them as well as they could, feeding the line in fits and starts as they scampered uneasily toward the stairwell. Molly felt a sudden surge of panic as the enormity of the expedition fully set in. She watched Scottie disappear into the doorway last. The collection of ropes twitched across the decking in time with some unseen movement.

The Wadi finished with the packet of cheese and went to work on the wrapper, nipping Molly’s finger as it did so. Molly yelped. She was sucking on her finger when Cat joined her in the cockpit.

“How’s everything up here?” Cat asked.

“Restful,” Molly said, pulling her finger out of her mouth. She nodded to the cargo cam. “I’m surprised you’re not going with them. Seems like your sort of thing.”

Cat stepped gracefully over the control console and slid into the nav seat. She placed a mug of steaming something in one of the cup holders.

“I think the boys will have more fun without me,” she said.

Molly laughed. “You mean without them feeling weak and pathetic in comparison?” She remembered Cat’s display in the opera house and wondered if the Callite couldn’t do the climb without a harness.

“Maybe I just wanted some peace and quiet, like you.” Cat laughed as she said it, like there was some inside joke Molly wasn’t privy to.

Molly smiled politely and looked over her shoulder to see where Walter was, but there was no sign of him. For the thousandth time, she wished there was a camera in his stateroom. For the thousandth time, she shuddered at the thought and retracted it.

The handheld radio squawked: “Belay, this is descenders. We’re through the stairwell and playing out line to the armory, over.”

Molly checked the cargo cam, only to see a half dozen taut lines and nothing else.

Cat squeezed the portable radio. “Roger,” she said.

“Belay and over,” Molly repeated, shaking her head. “What is it with men and their love of jargon?”

“I think one of those guys fancies himself a professional climber. You know what a belay is, right?”

Molly nodded. “I did some climbing in the Academy, which is also where I learned how much boys love jargon and acronyms.” She pulled the plastic wrapper away from the Wadi and threw it into the small trash bin behind the controls. Reaching into the vacu-seal compartment by her seat, she pulled out her leftover sandwich from the flight out. She only got it halfway to the Wadi before the animal snatched at it greedily, sniffing for the rest. Molly felt like her poor Wadi had gotten even smaller in just the last day.

“This is group four. We’re clear of the rift.”

Cat reached for the portable radio, but Molly grabbed her arm. She nodded toward the dash. “It’s them,” she said, indicating the ship’s radio and Walter’s computer.

“Group three, copy. Welcome to the party.”

“Five, copy. What’s the latest on one and two?”

“Two is queued up, not sure how far out. One is not going to make it, I hate to report. Over.”

Molly leaned forward and turned the volume up. Parsona’s thrusters and open