Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

mind scrambled for purchase. Looking down at her hands, how they trembled so, Anlyn couldn’t imagine going into battle in such a state, much less attempting to lead so many others. The sudden lack of confidence was unsettling. For countless years, she had flown into combat knowing she would win, and she had been able to do so almost on autopilot. She had formed a habit of warfare in order to avoid punishment and pain. She had fought without caring, and so fought without fear—without fear of failure.

As she went over the weapons systems, each powerful device a trophy from her days as the best customer-wrangler in either Darrin, she confronted the awful taste of preparing herself for a different kind of fight: A fight she cared deeply about. A fight she would be crushed to lose.

The difference was light years apart.

“Gloria leader, wing two.”

Anlyn snapped out of her cold thoughts and keyed the radio on her helmet. “Wing two—” Her words came out as whispers; she swallowed and tried to find her voice. “Wing two, go ahead.”

“Requesting permission to assume command of one of wing three’s ships,” the pilot said. “The two missing flight crews were both in our wing, leaving us with eight.”

Anlyn hesitated. She didn’t know any of the pilots and only knew what a few of their ships were armed with. As skilled as she had been in a cockpit, she had always flown into battle solo, never with even so much as a wingman. Her stomach sank; she could feel the back of her neck thrum as her heart raced and pounded.

Molly was meant to do this, she realized. My thirst for revenge has cursed everything. This has all been a mistake.

Lady Liberty seemed to do a barrel roll as her mind reeled. She even wondered if she’d upset the prophecy somehow. She was no Human, just a Drenard. Did that mean anything?

“Gloria leader?”

Anlyn keyed her mic. “Uh, negative wing two. I’m transferring two of my squadron to you. Wings two through four will go in with a full complement of ten. All wing leaders copy?”

“Four copy.”

“Three copy. And we have just one drive left to modify over here.”

“Wing two, here.”

“Two, go ahead.”

“Gloria leader, that leaves you with just eight ships.”

“Copy that,” Anlyn said.

She silently wished she could give up even more.

•• LOK ••

“We could just as easily argue about this on our way to the Carrier,” Scottie told the others. “We need to get a move-on before the fleet from Darrin gets back and finds that big ship still up there.”

Ryn grunted. “Hell, they can argue about it all they want. We’ll be climbing down to the armory.”

Ryke stared up at the ceiling and scratched the thick, white tangle of beard below his chin.

“What’s on your mind, doc?”

“Nothing. Just… theoreticals.”

“Well let’s hear ’em,” said Cat.

“It doesn’t apply, sorry. It’s just a problem Arthur and I were working on. This would’ve been one of its uses if we’d ever gotten it to work.”

Cat took a step closer. “Do I have to throttle it out of you?”

Ryke shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand half of it. Besides, it ain’t workable.”

A look from Cat, and he held up his hands, preparing to explain.

Scottie and Ryn must’ve seen the look as well—they stopped their impatient shuffling and crossed their arms, hugging themselves still.

“We were working on a way to bring people back from raids instead of using the skimmers.” Ryke turned to Cat, who had been on her fair share of raids in hyperspace. “We had just lost another lad due to a frozen locator, so we started thinking outside the box in a big way. The idea we came up with was to create a small rift, like the kind I made back in my house, the very kind the Bern are using now—”

“What, and you would just step through that rift and grab someone from the other side?”

“Theoretically. Problem is, we never figured out how to make a rift that isn’t grounded to hyperspace on one side, but not the other. When one object is scurryin’ about—like the surface of Lok for instance—you can compute the blasted equations and link up between here and hyperspace. But between two moving objects, like Lok and that ship up there, it just can’t be done. It’s like in physics, going from a two body solution to a three body—” Ryke frowned and narrowed his eyes. He rubbed his whiskers. “See? I’m losing ya, right?”

“Well, what was your idea, then?”

“It’s useless, really. The idea was you could open a rift from your location to hyperspace, jump someone to the other point and have them open a rift to the same spot in hyperspace.” Ryke meshed his fingers together. “Basically, you would try and sandwich the two rifts together, allowing you to step right through.”

“Like the two rifts we used in your house that one time?”

Ryke nodded. “Only, the rifts would be far apart over here and near together in hyperspace, the opposite of what we did back then.”

Cat ran her hands up over her face. “But you’d need a console on both sides, right?”

Ryke nodded.

“So this helps us none.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you!”

Ryke scanned their faces. There was no sound in the cockpit for a long while. He scratched his beard.

“We need to try something,” Parsona said, her voice cutting through the tense silence.

“I know,” said Cat.

“But what?” Ryn asked, shrugging. “Wouldn’t Molly just want us to continue on? I mean, this was her plan.”

“I know what we need to do,” Cat said.

Everyone turned to her.

“You guys need to go ahead to the Carrier. Take out as many ships as you can with the missiles. Try to wound the big ship, maybe send some bombs up, but away from where Molly jumped.”

“And what’re you gonna do?” Ryn asked.

“You guys are gonna send me up first. Right now. With the platform.”

“Where?” Scottie asked. “To that big ass ship? You want us to send you up after them?”

Cat nodded. “A meter or two from their coordinates, to the side and up.” She turned to Ryke. “I’ll radio back her condition and coordinates. Maybe it’ll be something you can use.”

“No,” Ryke said. “No way. It won’t do any good, and we’ll just be tossing your life after hers. Besides, you’re the only one of us who can fly this ship, so even if you have a death wish, you aren’t as expendable as you like to pretend.”

“Actually,” Parsona said, “that’s not true.”

The gathering looked toward the dash, as if meeting the ship’s gaze.

“What’s not true?” Scottie asked.

“That Cat’s not expendable?” Ryn laughed.

“No, that Cat’s the only person here who can fly me,” Parsona said.

“I can.”