Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

out, his fingers working the trigger over and over without seeming to realize he was doing it.

“I think we’re almost there,” Anlyn told him. She looked to the bridge. “Besides, it’s a wide one. Just stay low and keep your shield ready.” She turned back to see him probing a Wadi hole with his graspers.

“Gil, seriously, we need to keep moving.”

“Fine,” he said.

Anlyn shook her head. She wished—and not for the first time—that she’d gone with Coril. She held her shield out and pushed the deploy switch a quarter of the way down its glideline. The top and sides of the shield immediately grew, the overlapped panels sliding away from one another. She adjusted the switch until the shield was wide enough to cover her in a crouch but not too big to catch excess wind. Once she was satisfied, she stooped down and crept out onto the bridge.

They were called bridges, but of course she walked across bare rock hardly different than the last thousand paces of stone. The actual bridge was a metal column embedded in the canyon walls much further ahead. That column spanned the canyon horizontally, positioned in just the right way to throw a shadow back to the exact spot a path was needed. On the other side of the canyon from Anlyn, the bright sunlit wall ended, and another shadowpath began right at the bend in the rock. Anlyn knew that in most cases, the shade bridges were situated at turns in the canyons just like this one. The shift in angle brought an end to the shadow on one side of the valley just as it began creating a new one on the other. The bridge simply allowed them to move across the boiling hot wasteland in between.

Once out on the beginnings of the bridge, Anlyn waited for the wind to pick up a little more. It was dangerous to cross during the lulls, for the lulls never lasted for long. All they would do was make her complacent, causing Anlyn to relax her muscles before the gusts came. She waited until the howls sounded about average, then shuffled out, keeping the sunshield sideways to the wind ahead of her.

Anlyn had practiced with the shields on windy rooftops where the force was steady, but had never operated one in such unpredictable gusts. She had very little warning before a stiff blast of wind hit her. There was a slight increase in pitch from the shrill calls upwind—just enough to make her adjust the angle of the sunshield—and then the mighty breeze wrapped itself around her. Anlyn fell to one knee and placed a hand out on the rock; she angled the shield to provide suction, just like an atmospheric flyer’s wing, and used the flow to pin herself in place. Behind her, she heard Gil curse. She glanced over her shoulder to see that he had already started out on the bridge with her.

One at a time! Anlyn yelled in her head. But of course, without their D-bands, he couldn’t hear her.

The distraction of him crowding the bridge caused her to lose focus for a second, and she felt the stiffening breeze claw at the edge of her shield. Anlyn got it back under control as the wind passed, the breeze dropping down into a dangerous lull. Before she could steady herself, preparing for the next gust, Gil thundered by. He ran, fully upright on his long and powerful legs, knocking Anlyn out toward the sunside.

She fell, off-balance. She nearly threw her hand out onto the sunrock to stop her fall, but some innate sense of self-preservation won out over her instinct to brace herself. Instead, she swung her sunshield out, digging its edge into the floor of the steaming rock. Her hands and arms went into the full fury of the Horis, but the suit easily reflected their sunshine. It was the rock in the always-heat that could hurt her.

Pushing off with the shield, Anlyn threw herself back into the shade of the bridge. She heard a cry from the canyons, heralding the arrival of more wind. Her legs, already shaking from the near-fall, kicked off, responding in fear just as Gil had. She retracted her shield and ran. She ran like a fool Wadi being chased by a pack of males.

21 · Darrin

The first weeks of Anlyn’s captivity in the Darrin system were the worst in some ways but the best in others. Best, of course, being a relative term. The bad parts came from the confusion. Anlyn was kept in a cell by herself, the other cages around her packed with anywhere from several to a dozen aliens, mostly Humans. She was treated as a curiosity by a few and as a scourge by most. Even the younger Humans spat at her between the bars, using words Anlyn could figure for cussing just by the energy and invective put behind them.

Lots of adult males came and paid visits; they were always careful to shimmer their suits before they stepped in the cell with her. Anlyn learned quickly not to put up a fight. If she thought there was a chance of hurting her captors—or possibly ending her own life with the effort—she would have. But any sort of kinetic blow just shocked her with more of the electricity, jolting her like a blast from a Drenardian guardlance. And so she allowed the Humans to inspect her, prodding her in the most humiliating fashion in front of the sneering, spitting spectators.

When her captors weren’t around, Anlyn spent her time huddled, her knees to her neck and her back to the lone solid wall. They had taken her stolen flightsuit and left her with the short undertunic she’d put on so long ago, back when her father was still alive and only one person ever touched her against her will. She sat like that, enduring the odd cycle of artificial light and dark, as she watched the Humans and the others come and go from their cells, their energy to yell at her and spit at her seeming to fade with time.

It wasn’t until much later—many, many sleep cycles later—that Anlyn would see anything good about those first weeks. It took her that long for the confusion to be understood as a blessing, for her to appreciate how wonderful it could be to not know what was going on around her.

After at least two dozen sleeps, the men in the dark tunics with the thread-thin stripes began pulling her from her cell, just like they did the others. They first led off a group made up mostly of Humans. They paused before bringing Anlyn out and marching her off in the same direction.

The sight of her along a new stretch of prisoners elicited fresh howls and new volleys of saliva. The Humans banged their palms against the bars, a sound that wouldn’t have been too loud if there had only been a few of them doing it. So much anger directed at her made Anlyn cower deep inside her own skin. But then, some other part of her wished she could speak their language. She wanted to yell at them, to let them know that they were only alive because of her people. She felt an urge to spread the seeds of doubt among them, to detail the treacherous nature of the Bern and that they were likely infested with them.

Had she known English at the time, she probably would’ve yelled all of that and more. And of course, she would’ve been ignored as their enemy and as a raving lunatic.

Outside the hallway of cells, her captors led her through several gates and down a long corridor. They finally passed through a door at the end and into a wide room humming with electricity. Anlyn could feel heat from the machines hanging in the air—the stuffiness that came from cabinets of computing power inadequately ventilated. Along the far wall, the other prisoners were already being situated, made to lie flat on their stomachs on padded beds. A dozen men in the dark, tight-fitting tunics cinched straps across their backs and clipped wires here and there. White helmets studded with more tangles of multi-colored wire were strapped down on the prisoners’ heads. Some of the Humans tried to twist away; they shook their heads in an effort to resist the procedure. Others seemed to prefer not to get the small jolts from the shock-devices that came from putting up a fight.

As Anlyn was pulled toward one of the padded tables, she felt a compulsion to disobey, to kick out at her escorts, to put up enough of a struggle that they’d be forced to kill her—but her body was too fatigued to do her bidding. Or perhaps it disagreed with her mind’s wish to have their combined life snuffed out. Before she could summon her courage, she felt herself being lifted up and shoved flat on the padded table. She turned her head to the side as they strapped her painfully in place.

A man in a white tunic—a proper one with a flowing bottom—rushed over. He seemed to be arguing with the ones in the dark, open-front tunics. There was a lot of shouting, then the pinch of straps across her back and the bite of more straps into her legs. The man in the white tunic was shoved away. More yelling followed. Painful pricks bit Anlyn’s skin as wires were clipped, unclipped, and reclipped. Several people seemed to want to be in charge at the same time and disagreed on where things went.

The helmet came on last. They held her head in place, being rough with her as they strapped it beneath her chin. Anlyn shouted her own string of curse words, unleashing a fury built up over so many imprisoned sleeps that the time seemed to stretch back into forever.