Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“I’d be surprised if anyone survived it.”

The cracks spread all the way around Molly’s shell until they met on the other side.

“Just in case, though, I’ve dispatched a ship to finish them off and another to wipe out your friends attempting to close my rift.”

Molly fought to contain the anger welling up. Shouts and screams were bubbling within, ready to explode through the fissures. She kept her eyes on her lap. She could feel her Wadi vibrating against her thigh, almost as if it were absorbing and containing her rage.

“If only Lucin were here to see how you’d failed him.”

The words stunned Molly. Rather than provide that final spark, sending her anger bursting through her wall of silence, they somehow defused it all, draping her with confusion. She felt her urge to scream deflate, even as the shell that had been holding it back crumbled all around her.

“Lucin was a traitor,” she said, the words lingering as a whisper. She pressed her chin down against her sternum and fought back the urge to cry.

“That he was,” Byrne said. He leaned down to the side, his head looming in Molly’s blurred vision. “He was a traitor to his own people.”

Molly shook her head. “He was one of you,” she hissed.

“Was,” Byrne said. “He was one of us. And if he’d been stronger, this would’ve been his prophecy to fulfill. But they sent flesh and blood to do a machine’s job.”

Molly peered up at Byrne. His mouth was spread out in a rapturous smile. He continued:

“The pathetic irony, of course, is that my superiors never wanted to trust machines like me in command positions. The hubris of meat-filled skulls makes them think the things they make can’t replace them. But the weakness is in the fleshy heart, not the robotic mind.”

The mention of Lucin’s heart brought back horrible memories: Images of Cole’s bullets tearing through Lucin’s back. Rich, dark blood pooling up through the wounds. Earlier memories, like of him in the principal’s office weeks before, preparing to give her the news of Parsona’s discovery—

“A machine never falls in love with the enemy,” Byrne said. “We never lose sight of our objectives, of what needs to be done. Emotion can’t get in the way.”

“Lucin was the enemy,” Molly said. Again, it was almost a whisper to herself. She forgot where she was, forgot about Walter to the other side of her, forgot about the noises from the cargo bay, forgot about the Wadi frozen in the folds of her pocket. All she could think about was Lucin, and Byrne’s confusing talk.

“We’re pretty sure he turned his back on us sometime during the Dire War, maybe even at Eckers. Something happened to make him never file another report with us. He retreated to the Human Academy, hiding from his superiors, shirking his duties—”

Molly shook her head. “He was working for you.”

“Not me. I was sent here to replace him. Lucin failed us all. And if what you said weeks ago is true, you did us a favor by killing him.”

“No.” Molly crushed her teeth together and pinned her chin to her chest. She pulled against her restraints, not because she thought it would snap them, but because her muscles needed something to do, some way to burn.

“He was working for you to the last,” she said through clenched teeth. “He was trying to steal my ship. He said he was going to use it to end all wars. He was trying to wipe us out, just like you are now.”

She repeated the words in her mind, silently, to herself. She had to remind herself that Lucin was a traitor. She needed him to be a traitor. Otherwise, what had she done?

Byrne laughed. “The only war Lucin was working to end was the one between the Humans and Drenards,” he said.

Molly shook her head.

“Oh, yes. We know exactly what he was trying to do. Our agents in your Navy, the ones keeping the flames of war stoked high, had no end of trouble dealing with the waves of tolerant cadets he sent their way, all of them spouting a desire to cease hostilities one day, to find some kind of peace.”

“You’re wrong,” Molly whimpered.

“Am I?” Byrne bent even lower in the corner of her vision. “Or are you just trying to justify what you did?”

He sat back up in his seat. Molly couldn’t help it: she turned to follow his movement.

“Is it better for you to remember him as a traitor, rightly slaughtered, than as a hero to your people wrongly killed?” Byrne smiled, his face blurred in the coating of tears Molly could neither blink away, nor wipe with her bound hands.

“Maybe that was your true role in all of this,” Byrne mused aloud. “How delicious if your great contribution to our victory was to have murdered our biggest threat and your sole ally!”

The tears flowed freely as Molly’s head drooped toward her lap. In the muffled distance, past the thrumming pulse in her ears, she could hear Byrne and the pilot laughing. She could hear Walter hissing in confused annoyance to her side. She licked the salty wetness out of the corners of her mouth and felt more tears course down her cheeks. She could see and feel them splatter on her thighs. Molly tried blinking the blurriness away. She tried to focus on what was real and true, on what was false and a lie.

Why had the discovery of Lucin’s betrayal back at the Academy stunned her in a way Byrne’s words now could not? Why did finding out he was a Bern make her reel, while discovering he may have been a traitor to them seem to resonate?

It was because he had loved her.

She knew that. The hugs and solace, the advice and long talks, the risks he took to help her achieve a life worth living, the sacrifices he had made to win her admission to his school—none of it made sense if he was her enemy, but it all made perfect sense if he was working against them.

It explained why he had no family other than Molly and his wife. She even understood why he would need to keep it a secret, why he couldn’t tell her about the ship, about her mom, about the hyperdrive, about anything. He wasn’t being sinister—Lucin had been afraid.

More tears fell, and Molly ground her teeth in frustration. Byrne and the pilot were talking, but she couldn’t bother to listen. Walter hissed something to her, but his words were a poison to avoid swallowing. She cried to herself, chewing on horrible truths, grinding her teeth together, losing her awareness of all that was going on around her, unaware even of her hungry Wadi, who was crying as well, grinding her own lizard teeth, and chewing her way through Molly’s restraints.

45 · Three Ships

Cole came to in a cloud of smoke and a noisy din, the confusion and fog of a mighty crash swirling around him. He heard people coughing and groaning, heard wails erupting from the gravely injured, heard and smelled electrical fires pop and hiss and the sickening peals of stressed metal as wings and broken fuselage sagged under their own weight.

Looking down at himself to see if he’d been injured, Cole saw Penny looking back up at him, her eyes wide and unblinking against the smoke. He saw that she had punched her remaining hand through the bulkhead of the Bern ship, anchoring them in place. What was left of her other arm was wrapped around Mortimor, all three of them having braced together prior to impact.

Cole let go with his own mechanical hand and saw that his fingers had pierced the hull plating as well, leaving behind five black holes in the dull steel. He met Penny’s eyes again. They both eventually broke the shocked stare to look down at Mortimor, who lay between them, unmoving.

Cole groped for a pulse with his non-mechanical hand. He wanted to shout to the dying to shut up, to end their racket, to give him a chance to feel.

Penny’s hand went to Mortimor’s forehead. She brushed his dark hair back over his head and stroked his cheek with one of her thumbs. Cole looked to Penny as he fumbled for a sign of life. Her wild red hair hung around