Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

cycles ago—the band of hospitable land on Drenard between cold night and hottest day made population growth a real concern. Back then, the Wadi Rite served a sick culling purpose, a twisted and sanctioned system of eugenics designed to weed out the weak. Now, with offworld settlements and two wars absorbing as many offspring as Drenard couples could make, the Rite had become a hierarchical selection process for some quasi-meritorious caste system. Except, paradoxically, it now meant bureaucrats and office workers were selected for their physical prowess, their tendency toward risk-taking, and their aggression. It was a trifecta of traits that had predictable consequences for the ruling of Empire: the hot-headed now dominated discussions and stifled other sorts of progress.

In Anlyn’s much cooler opinion, at least.

“You’ve been awfully quiet on this trip,” Coril pointed out. “You’re not scared or nervous, are you?”

Anlyn shook her head. “No. I think I’m like you, just wondering what we’re doing here.”

Coril looked out at the colors wavering above the canyons. The two cousins were currently much closer to the twin stars of Hori than normal, which made the light shimmering through the air look different.

“You’re not bummed about the throne one day moving off to another family, are you?”

Anlyn shrugged. “Maybe a little. But not because I’d ever want to be king, or because I wish I were a boy. Maybe I just feel a little guilty, or something. I guess I feel bad for my dad for only having me to pin his hopes on.”

“I would never want to be king,” Coril said. “All they do is get blamed for everything.”

“Yeah, but if you were king, nothing would ever go wrong,” Anlyn joked.

The two girls laughed. Everyone said Coril could do no wrong—that problems rolled off her like wind on marble.

“Oh, I’d make plenty of mistakes if I were king,” Coril said. “Don’t forget, I’d have to be a boy.”

They laughed even harder at that, the two of them bending over, panting, and wiping at their eyes. Anlyn peeked back at the hallway and saw one of their uncles leaning against the doorjamb, frowning.

“I think we’re supposed to be taking this more seriously,” Anlyn said.

“Yeah? Well, then they should take us more seriously, first.”

••••

Anlyn spent that night tossing and turning, her head full of nightmares of large empty eggs and hatched Wadi scratching at rock. She awoke from one of the nightmares with a start, her heart pounding and her mind overwhelmed by the sensation of a nearby presence. She sat up, clutching her sheet—and a large figure at the foot of her bed shifted, as if startled by her movement.

Anlyn flinched.

“Gil? Is that you?”

“Not so loud,” he hissed.

Anlyn leaned closer, blinking away the sleepiness and peering at the dark form sitting at the foot of her bed. “Gil, what in Hori’s name are you doing in here?”

“I can’t do this,” he said softly.

Anlyn saw him shake his head, her eyes gradually adjusting to the soft light filtering in from the hallway. Gil had always been one of the few male cousins Anlyn didn’t mind being around. He rarely teased her, possibly because he was familiar with being on the receiving end so often. At the age of two Horis, he was just barely double the size of a female youth, which put him on the small side among his more manly classmates, who rarely let him forget it.

“You’ll do fine on your Rite,” Anlyn told him. “Our uncles wouldn’t send you into any trouble you couldn’t handle.” And certainly not us girls, she thought to herself.

Gil scooted closer, forcing Anlyn to tuck her feet up under herself.

“But I don’t think I can do it at all. I mean, kill a real Wadi.”

“It doesn’t have to be a big one, Gil. You can always—”

“I know, I know, size doesn’t matter for me. My dad’s got a cushy job waiting no matter where I end up ranking. It’s not that. And it isn’t the moral objections, I mean, I fantasize about killing one as big as my dad.”

“And shaped like him, too?”

Anlyn and Gil had to stifle their giggles. The two of them scooted even closer.

“I’m scared,” Gil said flatly.

The cousins sat in silence, digesting the concept.

“I think I’ve always known I couldn’t do this. I don’t know how I even got here.” Gil reached out and fumbled for Anlyn’s hands. She squeezed him back.

“Is there anything I can do?” Anlyn asked. “Anything I can say?”

Gil shook his head. “I wish you were bigger so we could swap places. No one would know with our Wadi suits covering us from head to toe.”

Anlyn felt a sudden sadness for her cousin as she realized just how terrified he must be to utter such craziness. She rubbed his arm. “And I would do it, Cousin, but the escorts would know. And anyway, I’ve heard rumors that they use tracking devices to make sure nothing bad happens to us. But I promise, if there was a way…”

Her voice trailed off, and the two of them sat together on the bed, their brains consumed with shame and pity.

“I should go try and get some sleep,” Gil said. “Thanks for talking.”

“You’re welcome,” Anlyn said, but she felt like a fool as soon as she uttered the words. She couldn’t remember saying anything that might’ve made him feel better. She only began to conjure up decent reassurances as Gil slid out of the room, his large silhouette hunched over and sad as it turned out of sight.

18 · ???

Anlyn woke when it became hard to breathe. It was her body’s way of jostling her into consciousness, telling her to do something. It was a warning that the air in her suit had grown too thin.

As she came to, she had a moment’s doubt about where she was. She had been dreaming of her Wadi Rite, and now she found herself floating in space. All around her were bright stars and pyrotechnics—the flash and silent explosions of a major war.

A circulating fan whirred near her ear, moving air around her helmet, but her lungs told her that precious little oxygen remained inside. Her breathing had become wheezing—each laborious inhalation a vaporous disappointment. Her suit was kind enough to filter out her toxic exhalations, but it couldn’t create oxygen from nothing. Gradually, a vacuum was forming within her suit to match the one embroiled with fighting beyond.

As she spun around in her ejected pilot seat, Anlyn got a sweeping view of the action taking place around her. Bolts of plasma the size of Drenardian skyscrapers could be seen coursing through the cosmos. They travelled near the speed of light, but the distances they crossed meant their path could be followed, actually watched. Anlyn tracked them with surreal detachment. One of the bolts impacted the bright orb of a nearby planet. The cylinder of energy punched through an atmosphere choking with smoke. It struck land, already little more than magma, and a red crack appeared in the crust. The energy was so great, chunks of the planet’s continents exploded away with enough force to drive them into orbit. Some of these jetted through space, glowing and trailing coronas of fire. Others fell back to the surface, throwing up destructive echoes of the initial blow.

Amid this chaos, two fleets swarmed, intertwined. The crafts seemed impossibly fast and agile, but they all were, and so a continuous stream of them winked out in puffs of spectacular coordination and aim. Dozens of orbital stations seemed to be the targets of these buzzing attack fleets. Swarms of missiles agitated around each one, brought down by equal swarms of countermeasures. Another column of hellish plasma erupted from a nearby station and began its lightning-quick stampede toward another planet in the distance.

Anlyn sucked in fruitless gasps while she lost herself in the swirling battle. Her head had already begun to