Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

1 · Lok

Three sets of landing struts settled to the packed soil of the Lokian forest, one of them squeaking slightly, in need of oil. Molly looked out through the carboglass where large shadows danced at the edge of a wooded clearing, the black puppets thrown high and wavering from the light of so many campfires. Her mother’s voice continued to drone in her helmet’s speakers, complaining and asking questions about Molly’s refusal to jump to hyperspace. Molly pulled her helmet off and closed its visor, trapping her mom’s voice inside the dented shell.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, apologizing for disappointing her mom and for not being able to explain herself. She placed her helmet on its rack and patted her Wadi as the colorful lizard settled across her shoulders.

Walter turned and faced her general direction from the nav chair. He still had his modified welding goggles on for the jump to hyperspace, which meant he was practically blind.

“But we’re gonna go ssoon, right?” He waved his hands out at Molly, the black goggles contrasting with his silvery skin and making him look comical.

“As soon as we can,” Molly said. “I promise.” She laughed. “Until then, you can take those off.”

Walter hissed his annoyance but reluctantly removed the goggles. Molly wasn’t sure why he had been so eager to dash off to hyperspace to rescue Cole and her father, but he seemed nearly as miffed as her mom about the sudden change in plans.

Even with the visor closed and the volume down, Molly could still hear her mother’s muffled questions raining down from the rack behind her. She felt horrible for not explaining herself better. She felt even worse for not fully understanding the decision herself. As much as she longed to rush off to Cole, as hard as she’d struggled the past weeks to secure the fusion fuel necessary, when the moment had arrived with her finger on the button… she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave the Callites behind who had lost so many family members to Bekkie’s blood-draining operation. She couldn’t abandon Saunders and his crewmen, who had survived a shipwreck that had spared so few. Molly tried not to think she was throwing her life away in a futile gesture of heroism, some primal urge to strike out at the Bern ships that had tormented her home planet from orbit, but given the odds that her return could do any good, there were few other interpretations.

Her Wadi licked the air contentedly as Molly powered the ship down and shut off the flight systems. The colorful lizard from Drenard seemed to be the only crew member left that wasn’t upset at Molly’s decision. She patted the animal on the head and moved to step over the control console, leaving Walter to fumble with his harness. As she hurried back through the cargo bay, Molly began working on an explanation for Saunders and the others as to why she had chosen to stay.

The cargo ramp creaked out into the Lokian night, and then lowered toward the dew-soaked grass beyond. Molly watched as a clearing full of curious faces were revealed by the descending plate of steel. Cat was the first person to come inside. She jumped to the descending ramp before its lip even reached the ground.

“You forget something?” the Callite asked, a wide smile across her dark, scaly face.

Molly ran down the ramp to meet her, and the two women squeezed each other’s arms. “I just couldn’t leave,” she said, the simple truth slicing through a hundred half-forged excuses. Molly looked over Cat’s shoulder to see Scottie and Saunders stomping up the ramp behind her, their faces scrunched up in confused smiles.

“Besides,” Molly said, “I think I have an idea.”

“What kind of idea?” Saunders asked, stepping up to join them.

Molly looked from the Navy Admiral—her former superior at the Academy—to Scottie, the old illicit fuser and new friend. The two men represented opposite ends on as wide a chasm as law could allow. Molly wondered how best to speak in front of both of them, how to explain her plan without divulging any secrets about Parsona’s illegal hyperdrive—a drive that could move things across the galaxy without a care for what got in the way. Saunders wouldn’t enjoy hearing those details, and Scottie would probably be miffed to hear how much her plan relied on Navy skills and tactics. Molly looked from one of them to the other, not knowing where to start.

“Does this mean you’re not rushing off to hyperspace?” Scottie asked.

Molly shook her head. “I’m staying. For now.”

Saunders pointed up. “Does this plan involve attacking those bastards up there?”

Molly nodded.

“This is gonna be like one of your crazy simulator stunts, isn’t it?” Saunders smiled and crossed his arms. “Well c’mon, let’s hear it.”

Molly held out her hands, trying to slow both of them down. The risk of revealing her hyperdrive to Saunders had won out in her mind—she couldn’t do it, so she needed a cover story of some sort.

“I have a few details I need to hammer out with these guys first,” she said, nodding to Cat and Scottie. She looked over her shoulder as Walter padded out into the cargo bay, his goggles down around his neck. “Besides, it’s already late, and it looks like you still need help distributing the food and water. Let’s tend to the Callites. I’ll talk to my friends later tonight, and we’ll meet with you in the morning.”

Saunders frowned. “I don’t like being left out of the discussion,” he said.

Molly stepped closer, wary of the crowd gathering around the ship, eyes and ears wide. “I know,” she said softly. She felt sorry for the Admiral, imagining how helpless he must feel with nothing to do for the paltry few survivors of his once-powerful fleet. He couldn’t even speak freely among his staff now that she’d told him of the Bern threat and the stark physical similarities between them and Humans.

“Look,” she told him, “I really need you to trust me on this.”

Saunders seemed about to argue, but his frown cracked into a wan smile, his fat jowls lifting just a little. He squeezed Molly’s shoulder and looked out over the two groups of haggard survivors in the clearing.

“I suppose I owe you a little trust,” Saunders said, referring perhaps to having doubted her before and having thrown her in jail. The old man turned back to face her, his eyes wet and reflecting Parsona’s interior lights. “And I’m glad you decided to stick around,” he said, forcing a smile.

Molly nodded and smiled back. She suddenly sensed just how much he meant it, this man who had once expelled her. And for the first time, her decision to stay resonated within her as having been the right choice.

There was no sleep that night as Molly and her friends stayed up and discussed her germ of a plan for dealing with the Bern fleet. They huddled together around a campfire built under Parsona’s starboard wing and nurtured the idea, watching it sprout and grow as they each offered suggestions and pointed out various flaws. They spoke in hushed whispers, and even by the standards of Bekkie’s short days, dawn seemed to arrive in a rush.

Morning was heralded by the popping of rekindled fires within the woods as early risers awoke to stoke dying embers. Gradually, the first smattering of Humans and Callites emerged from their scattered camps; they crossed the clearing on weary legs, looking to Parsona for some odd supply item or just for the use of its bathrooms. Molly greeted them and made them feel welcome, even as Walter cast suspicious glances their way.

When one of the Navy crewmen exited Parsona with a load of fresh laundry, Molly asked if he would send for Saunders, and the crewman agreed.

“Are we sure we’ve got our story straight?” Molly asked. She rubbed her weary eyes and looked to her friends around the fire, each of them nodding with as much enthusiasm as they could muster despite their lack of sleep. Leaning forward, she grabbed a pot of coffee from a flat stone near the fire and topped up her mug. She hoped the jolt of caffeine would help her regain some energy before the day’s plan was spelled out and acted upon.

After a few minutes, Saunders arrived alone, his sagging jowls and dark-rimmed eyes signifying a similarly restless night. He lowered his considerable bulk to one of the blankets and eagerly accepted a cup of coffee, wrapping both meaty hands around the steaming mug. Cat said hello while Scottie greeted the old Navy veteran with the sheepishness of an outlaw waving to a passing sheriff. Walter didn’t even acknowledge Saunders’s arrival; the Palan boy sat across the fire from Molly, continually poking the logs with a stick to send out showers of rising embers.

“You ready to tell me about this plan of yours?” Saunders asked. He blew across the surface of his coffee, sending a wisp of heat toward the fire.

“Yeah.” Molly took a sip of her own coffee and thought about where best to start.

“And what is this plan for, exactly?” Saunders asked. “Will it help stop the Drenard attack? Or is it just for the bastards who shot down my fleet?”

Molly raised her eyebrows. “It’s for all of it. Hopefully.”

Saunders smiled. He took another loud sip from his coffee and waved one hand in a small circle, pleading for her to get on with it.

“My friends here,” she indicated Scottie and Cat. “They know something about these rifts, these tears in space like the one the Bern fleet is coming out of.”

Molly took another sip of coffee, steeling herself for the half-truths that were to follow. “These rifts are everywhere,” she lied. “There’s even one very close to us, right here in these woods, and my friends know how to control it.” Molly chose her words carefully, using the language she and the others had decided upon in order to not reveal the special properties of Parsona’s hyperdrive.

Saunders glanced across the fire at Cat and Scottie. He raised his eyebrows. “Control it?”

Molly nodded. “We can send people through this rift to wherever we like.”

“Wherever? You mean like through hyperspace?”

“Yeah. It’s similar, but without the limitations.” Molly felt a wave of nausea as the lies piled up. Creating a fairytale to keep her hyperdrive secret was going to become burdensome, and fast.

“The thing is, travelling through this rift is a one-way trip,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. She forced herself to meet Saunders’s gaze “We’ve got a plan for how we can make life miserable for the Bern.” She waved her arm toward the edge of the woods where the surviving members of Gloria’s crew were mingling and working to improve the encampment. “We have enough pilots,” she said. “We just need a fleet, right?”

Saunders shook his head, his jowls jiggling back and forth. “Are you crazy? Did you see what happened yesterday? This is not the Tchung we’re dealing with. An entire Naval fleet is scattered across this planet in utter ruin—” Saunders held his mouth open as if to say more, but Molly could see his cheeks twitching, the tears welling up at the bottoms of his eyes.

“I know, sir, just hear me out. The fleet I’m thinking of will give anything a run for its money. It’s the most battle-tested fleet of ships in the entire galaxy.”

Saunders frowned. “More powerful than Zebra, the most advanced fleet in the Navy’s arsenal?” He waved his mug in the air, sending a dark wave of coffee over the edge. “Such a fleet doesn’t exist!”

“It does at Darrin,” Molly said, keeping her cool. “It’s the one place in GN controlled space that even the Navy can’t go.”

Saunders laughed. He set his coffee in the dirt and wiped his palm on his too-small flightsuit. “Darrin? And what fleet do you suppose we’ll use to get that one? They would make even quicker work of us than the Bern did!”

Molly shook her head. “No, we don’t use a fleet. We use the rift. Don’t you see? We send people straight to the ships. We can place teams inside Darrin garages and nab a fleet right out from underneath them!”

Saunders chewed his lip. “Too many problems. For one, even my StarCarrier doesn’t have chart data for Darrin that accurate, so you’d be lucky to end up anywhere near one of their hideouts. I mean, nobody legit has been there since their civil war, and besides—”

“My nav computer has the entire system scanned from just a month ago,” Molly interrupted. She jabbed a thumb back toward Parsona.

Saunders shot her a look that suggested this wasn’t something to brag about.

“Then there’s the pilot codes to consider,” he said. “Nobody leaves their ships unlocked—”

“These guys do. They trust their forcefields way too much. I—well, I kinda flew one of their ships back to Earth the day that… you know, with Lucin—”

“Are you kidding?”

Molly raised her hands. “I swear on my father, I did these things with the best of intentions.”

Scottie leaned over to Cat and whispered loudly: “She sounds like one of us, now.”

The two of them snickered. Molly was so tired, she nearly joined them.

“We would need weapons,” Saunders said, ignoring the others. “The ban on Lok is going to make that difficult—”

“Covered, and it’ll actually be the most unpleasant part of our plan.”

Saunders reached again for his coffee. “Which is?”

“We raid the StarCarrier, sir. We send in a team with climbing gear to rappel down to the armory. You’ve got the access codes, and we need to grab enough flightsuits for the pilots, anyway. I’ll take a small group in my ship to do this while you brief and prepare the others. Some of them might not feel like they’re ready for this kind of raid, but we’re gonna need everyone. You’ll have to make them believe this’ll work.”

“But will it work?” Saunders looked into his mug, staring down at it like an oracle searching a muddy well. “Lok and Darrin are on opposite sides of the galaxy,” he whispered. “If this rift of yours can get them there like you say, it’s still, what, five days flight time to get them back?”

“Actually, sir, I think it can be done in three days. We plotted it out last night on our charts. It requires skirting the galactic center and quick-cycling the hyperdrives each time, but—”

“The hyperdrives will be toast if you quick-cycle them three jumps in a row,” Saunders said.

Molly nodded. “I agree, that’s why—”

“It’s gonna be a one-way trip in both directions, Admiral,” Cat said.

Saunders mulled this over. He looked out toward the edge of the clearing where his people and the Callites were making breakfast and consoling one another for their losses.

“Most of my people haven’t flown a real mission their entire careers,” he finally said. “I’ve got maybe twelve decent pilots over there.”

“Thirteen, including you,” Molly said. “And several of the Callites can fly. The rest will be needed for adequate crew on each ship, and to help during the raids on the Darrin asteroids. Besides, they should be more comfortable behind the stick by the time they get back here. We’ll have them drill some maneuvers on the way.”

Saunders shook his head. “I don’t know. And what’s all this you nonsense? You’re coming with us if we do this. We’ll need you most of all.”

Molly shook her head. “No can do. I’m gonna be busy while you guys are gone.”

“Doing what?” Saunders asked.

“Taking out that big ship,” Molly said, glancing up.

“That small moon up there?” Saunders’s eyes widened.

“Yeah. We think it’s what knocked you guys out of orbit.” Molly nodded to Scottie. “The Callite shuttles from Bekkie didn’t start going down until after it arrived. We think it can control gravity fields in a localized manner. We’ll need to destroy it before you guys come back from Darrin, otherwise you won’t stand a chance.”

“And how in the galaxy are you planning on taking it out with just your one ship?”

“Well—” Molly took another sip of her coffee. “After we send you guys out to Darrin, we’re gonna go back to the StarCarrier.”

“What for?”

“For all the Firehawk missiles my ship can hold.”

“And you’re going to fire them, how?” Saunders frowned. “Have you got any Firehawks I don’t know about?”

Molly shook her head. “We use the rifts,” she said, stretching the truth once again to protect Parsona’s hyperdrive. In reality, she didn’t plan on carrying the missiles out at all. Instead, they would send them up from within the StarCarrier, where she and her friends would be safe and out of sight.

Saunders crossed his arms. “And I suppose these rifts are going to arm them for you as well? Or do you have some magical ability to remotely detonate Navy missiles?”

Molly smiled. She looked across the fire and gave Walter a wink.

“We’ve got it covered,” she said. “And it’s probably best you don’t know.”

2 · Hyperspace

The ready room of the Drenard Headquarters buzzed with the accented whispers of a dozen alien races. They stood in five lines and prepared themselves for one final raid across hyperspace. Cole Mendonça stood amongst them, wearing the same sort of white combat suit as the others and nervously gripping his buckblade. He stared down at his feet, at the dull path worn into the steel beneath them, the sign of many thousands of boots shuffling forward on previous raids.

“Good luck,” someone behind him said.

Cole turned and nodded mutely to Larken, his group’s translator. Larken squeezed Cole’s shoulder, then patted it twice.

Cole glanced over at Mortimor, who had just given a last series of instructions to the five squads before joining the group lined up beside his.

“I didn’t know you were going,” Cole said.

“Ran out of people who speak Bern.” Mortimor nodded toward the row of hyperdrive platforms in front of them where the five pilots sat, their arms wrapped around their shins. “Now pay attention,” Mortimor said.

Cole nodded and focused on the platforms. A moment later, the light over each pilot switched from red to green. There was a loud beeping sound from the row of control consoles followed by a pop as the five large cages in the back of the room—cages Cole had designed and helped build—vanished.

A moment later, the pilots followed, winking out of existence with a muted pop, as air from the room crashed together to fill the void they had left behind. The row of navigators jumped up to take their place on the platforms. They turned, fell to their butts and tucked their chins, only having three seconds between jumps to prepare themselves.

Cole glanced over at the navigator in Mortimor’s line. A lock of bright red hair spilled out of Penny’s hood as she settled into place. Her eyes met Cole’s for a brief moment just before her head went down. There was a soft pop, and she too disappeared from the room, leaving Cole awash in a tremble of nerves.

It was all happening so fast.

Cole’s heart missed a beat as he took a step forward, shuffling the steel decking ever duller. He chanced a glance to the side at the neighboring line. Mortimor was looking straight ahead, the man’s beard and combat hood hiding whatever he was thinking. Cole wished he’d known Molly’s old man was going on the raid. He would’ve switched places with someone to be in Mortimor’s group and been able to keep an eye on him—

The lines surged forward again. Cole felt Larken’s hand on his back, pushing him along. Suddenly, Cole found himself beside the console operator, right in front of the jump platform. Marx, the Callite swordsman who would help Cole clear the Bern ship’s corridors, plopped down on the platform. The alien looked up and time slowed down to a crawl. Cole watched Marx’s arms wrap around his shins, saw the man’s scaly chin tuck against his knees—and then the alien was gone. More air crashed together so close, Cole felt the sucking breeze on his cheeks. He jumped up to the platform and sat down as quickly as he could, then spun around to face what he hoped would be an exit once he popped inside the steel cage. In the back of his mind, he counted:

Three.

He grabbed his shins and tucked his head, squeezing his buckblade as tightly as he dared without crushing it. A thousand sword fighting tips from his practice sessions with Penny flashed through his mind.

Two.

A sickening sensation clawed at Cole’s stomach as he wondered if the raid was a mistake. He tried to remember what the Seer had said about free will, but then the silent counting in his mind clicked down to—

One.

The ready room of the Underground Headquarters disappeared. One moment, Larken was standing before him, looking down at his sword and waiting his turn. The next, Cole was seeing the interior of a metal box. He fell half a meter out of the air and landed on his ass, smacking solid steel. Cole felt a rush of adrenaline—the raid had really begun! He sprang forward and launched himself through the clean hole the pilot had cut in the side of the cage. It was a couple meters to the ship’s deck below. Cole hit the plating in a roll and looked around.

Marx stood off to starboard, his buckblade drawn. The Callite turned and glanced over his shoulder at Cole.

“Go,” the alien said. Marx spun and ran down the corridor, looking for Bern crewmen to kill. Up ahead, Cole could hear the pilot and navigator stomping forward to secure the cockpit. Cole felt a sick lurch in his stomach as he imagined where they were: His squad had just jumped across hyperspace and into the belly of an enemy ship flying in formation with thousands of other enemy ships. He looked once more to Marx, but the Callite was already out of sight, disappearing around a bend in the corridor. Cole remembered his duty, that he should be running in the opposite direction. He spun and headed off, catching a glimpse of Larken as the translator leapt out of the suspended cage.

The image of the metal box stuck with Cole as he ran aft. Protruding from a solid bulkhead—twisted sheets of metal peeled back from the expanding grav plates—it had worked exactly as he’d imagined. No matter where the box had ended up in hyperspace, those expanding sheets of steel in its center would’ve provided a safe pocket of emptiness for them to arrive inside of. The first part of his plan had worked flawlessly. Cole felt a surge of hope wash away some of his anxiety. He was that much closer to Molly.

As he ran down the ship’s corridor—his thoughts straying from his duty—Cole finally remembered to flick off the safety on his buckblade. He reminded himself of the grisly task that lay before him: he would need to kill without hesitation.

He ducked through a passageway, the thick airtight door left open and secured to the bulkhead. There was a funny script of writing above the hatch in neat red ink, the shape and style of the language resembling nothing Cole had ever seen. The peculiar writing stood in stark contrast to the rest of his surroundings. Otherwise, Cole could’ve been running through a Navy ship. The size of the passageways, the spacing from ceiling to floor, even the height and ergonomics of the control pods on the walls—they were all identical to a Human craft.

Cole turned a corner and was reminded why this was so. The figure strolling down the hallway in his direction looked perfectly Human. Even the confusion and shock on the Bern’s face were familiar, and much easier to read than the red script had been.

The Bern crewman fumbled at his belt—whether for gun or radio or what else, Cole didn’t wait to find out. He continued his run and flicked on his buckblade, unleashing the molecule-wide wire made stiff by the hilt’s exotic magnetic field. He swung up in an angle four as the Bern pulled something from his hip—

The Bern’s head fell sideways, removed from his torso in a slanted wound from neck to ear. Cole danced out of the way, cursing himself for being so sloppy, and not just for the fountain of gore erupting from the Bern’s neck and splattering the wall, but the poor reflex of going for a soft spot. He needed to remember the power of the weapon he was holding. The goal was to aim for the torso, or anything difficult to miss or hard for the enemy to pull out of the way. There was no such thing as a “soft spot” for the buckblade. There were just spots. Any spot would do.

As the Bern’s body finished slumping to the ground, Cole gathered himself together. He took one look at his artificial arm, remembering the stakes. He then turned and ran deeper into the ship, stopping to check every turn, nook, and corridor.

He took his next two victims by surprise. Both deaths were uniquely horrific, but neither felt as personal as he’d feared they would. The blade slid through their bodies, and even some of the ship’s equipment that got in the way, without an ounce of resistance. It felt more like casting a spell on someone from a distance than a physical strike. All he did was wave a wand—and a body was split in two.

Cole took every right turn as he headed aft to make sure he covered the entire deck. He went through a dozen Bern in the process. He tried to remember Mortimor’s warning to do minimal damage to the ship with follow-throughs, a real concern when fighting in close quarters with buckblades. An accidental swipe could easily destroy something crucial in a ship they needed in order to escape hyperspace.

Rounding another corner, Cole nearly collided with Marx, who was jogging the other direction. Both swordsmen flinched, readying to strike—but they were able to restrain themselves. They stood in the passageway panting, splattered with alien blood, holding their invisible swords and smiling grimly at each other.

“Any stairs or lifts?” Cole asked, out of breath more from the adrenaline dump than the long run.

“No,” Marx said, his English accented with the coughing sound of a Callite. “Looks like a single deck design. Lucky we didn’t end up in mechanical spaces.” Marx nodded the direction Cole had come from. “Let’s get to the cockpit. Sweep your side again.”

Cole gave Marx a thumbs-up, then wondered if the Callite even knew how to interpret the gesture. “Gotcha,” he said, and ran off the same way he’d arrived. Once again, he couldn’t believe how well the raid was going.

The last thing Penny saw of the ready room was Cole, the poor boy’s face drenched in nerves. Then she closed her eyes and waited for the drop in her stomach, followed by the crashing down to the deck.

As soon as her butt hit cold steel, she launched forward, expecting to find a clean hole cut in the side of the cage. What she found instead was Jym, her pilot, pressed up against one wall and cursing at his clearly malfunctioning buckblade.

Penny felt a wave of panic; she barely remembered to jump to the side and get out of the way of her next squad mate, but self-preservation moved her just in time. She powered up her own blade and pushed it through the cage wall. As she began making a wide circle through the solid steel, she heard a pop of air behind her, followed by the sound of Stella gasping with alarm at the sight of the cramped cube, a cube that should’ve been empty.

Penny turned to warn her, to drag her out of the way, but it was too late. A few heartbeats later, Gregury jumped in and fused with Stella. The squadmates became a sickening, two-headed monster—half Serral and half Human. Screams of raw agony blared out of them both—fading to gruesome moans as intertwined organs ceased to function.

Jym threw down his sword and grabbed Stella’s boots. He threw his hands up, flipping the tangled mass of limbs backwards and out of the way. Penny pressed herself to the wall as Mortimor fell out of the air in a tight ball, missing by inches having some part of him fused with one of the others.

The screaming from Stella and Gregury fell silent. Penny thought about putting them out of their misery with her blade, but they were already dead before she could steel herself. Jym, the group’s pilot and therefore responsible for cutting an exit out of the box, cursed and kicked his dead buckblade in disgust.

Mortimor scanned the tight confines of the box and seemed to take it all in. He reached down and picked up one of the dropped swords from the two dead squadmates. “Jym, you go forward alone and clear the cockpit.” He handed him the retrieved sword. “Penny, you take Starboard. I’ll clear Port. Go!”

Penny nodded. Translator and navigator had instantly become swordsmen, she and Mortimor reverting to older, more comfortable roles. She finished her cut in the wall and kicked the center of the crude circle. The heavy steel fell away, exposing the Bern ship’s decking half a meter above the floor of the box. Two sets of legs stood there—Bern crewmen studying the strange cube that had appeared inside their starship. Penny swiped through all four limbs with a wave of her hand. She jumped out to the deck and silenced the screaming forms before they hit the ground.

It was a messy start, blood slicking the deck around the box, but Penny didn’t pause to help the others. She ran aft along the port side, thinking of the look on Stella’s face before Gregury had jumped in, and how different she had looked just moments later with her wide, lifeless eyes. The horrific sight—the suddenness of the switch from life to death—gave Penny fuel for moving swiftly through the craft, slicing down all the bewildered Bern who stood in her way.

The windshield of the impounded Bern craft was dusted in a never ending torrent of snowflakes. The flurries impacted right in front of her and slid to the side, gathering in miniature drifts. The sight of the stuff, coupled with the harsh whiteness beyond, made it easier to fly by the instruments than stare into the mesmerizing sameness.

And so Anlyn Hooo—Drenard Princess, member of the Great Circle— kept her head down as she piloted the Bern craft through hyperspace. It had been two weeks to the day. Two weeks of exhausting one-hour shifts, causing her to develop a powerful antipathy to the sight of the relentless snow outside. She preferred to rest her chin on her chest and monitor beneath drooping eyelids their ship’s position within the vast invasion fleet, following everything from the instrument readouts.

Edison snored beside her in his gruff and intermittent way. The massive Glemot, her co-pilot and fiancé, was fast asleep with the radio mic clutched in his paws. Anlyn checked the ship’s clock, dreading the answer to her weary and eternal question: How much time left on my shift?

Forty minutes.

It filled Anlyn with guilt and dread. Dread for the perceived hours and days it would take for those forty minutes to tick down and guilt for knowing that Edison would have to take over for her once they did.

Another ship passed through the open rift ahead, and the fleet adjusted accordingly. Anlyn felt a rush of adrenaline as she leaned forward, gripped the control stick, and matched the precise movements of the Bern. It took every ounce of her will to fly like a fresh pilot, alert and ready, rather than the half-dead thing she had become. A thousand times over the past weeks, Anlyn had foreseen the end to hers and Edison’s endurance: There would be a wobble and a gradual falling out of formation. Barked orders full of suspicion would follow, and Edison’s sleep-deprived lies would not wash them away. The final stage would be missiles and plasma bolts to end their fitful ruse—

A loud bang in the rear of their ship interrupted Anlyn’s thoughts. Edison bolted upright, the radio coming to his mouth in reflex. He scanned the dash before looking to Anlyn in confusion.

“Diagnose!” he said in his native English.

Anlyn shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She tried to force the cobwebs aside and think clearly. “It sounded mechanical, but none of the gauges have so much as twitched.” She looked to the SADAR, but it was nearly useless in the driving snow. “The fleet is moving again. Maybe it was a collision?”

Edison began to rise from his seat to go inspect the cause of the noise, but Anlyn placed a hand on his chest and attempted to push him back.

“I can’t speak Bern,” she reminded him. She glanced at the mic in his hand. “Stay here in case the fleet calls. I’ll go see what it was.”

She unbuckled her harness while Edison yawned—his long furry arms running out of room for a decent stretch. She ducked under his elbow and padded out of the cockpit on wobbly legs, heading aft. In her sleepy pilot brain, she went over all the possible causes for the loud, metallic sound. A ceiling panel could’ve fallen loose and slammed into the decking. A storage cabinet could’ve vibrated off its rivets. One of the generators could’ve thrown a rod.

But then she heard something else, something easier to recognize. It was a thumping sound, rhythmic, just like the footfalls of someone running.

And it was getting louder.

Cole finished his second sweep of the port side, seeing nothing more than the messes he had left behind the first time. He reached the cockpit after Marx and helped the large Callite drag Bern bodies out of the way. It looked like the pilot and co-pilot had cut down several Bern in taking over control of the ship.

Despite the design of his Underground boots, made to grip through blood and ice, Cole found himself slipping and sliding as he drug a Bern’s torso out of the cockpit’s narrow hallway. There was a gruesome normalcy to the task, like arranging furniture, that nearly made Cole gag. He forced himself to not look the dead man in the eye as he added him to a pile Marx had already started. The Callite threw a plastic tarp over the figures while Cole looked for something to mop up the blood. There was no way they could work with such a thick pool of it right in the cockpit. He pulled a jacket off one of the Bern crewmen, looking away from the Human-like face as he did so. He threw the jacket down into the spilled gore and pushed it around with his boot, trying to mop a path through the mess.

“Ryke was right about the windshields,” Cole heard the navigator say. “They’re already darkened, so we won’t be needing our goggles.”

“Keep em around your necks anyway,” someone else in the cockpit barked.

A third voice burst out in a strange language, causing Cole to pause from his dirty work and scramble for his buckblade. The cadence and inflection of the words sounded similar to what several Bern crewmen had been shouting before Cole had cut them down.

“Shhh!” somebody hissed. “Complete silence!”

Cole left the soiled jacket wadded up against the bulkhead and stuck his head in the cockpit. He watched as Larken, the squad translator, leaned forward from one of the seats and spoke foreign words—the same type of words—into the mic. Everyone froze, anxious and tense.

When he stopped speaking, a voice came through the radio again. Larken held his eyes closed and turned to face the pilot. He nodded now and then as the rapid Bern continued.

“What was that about?” the pilot asked as soon as the voice fell silent.

“They want us to check for any problems. One of the other ships called something in, and now they won’t respond.”

“You want me to go check?” the navigator asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

“Moron,” the pilot said. “We’re the problem.”

“One of the other squads must be in trouble,” Cole said.

“That’s why we sent five groups,” the pilot muttered. He turned to the navigator. “Call HQ on the carrier frequency, but keep it short. Just give them our velocity and the coordinates for our cargo bay, one meter off the deck. Tell them we’re secure and can hold as much as they can send.”

The navigator nodded and pulled his long-wave radio from his pack.

The pilot looked over his shoulder. “Marx, you and Cole head back to the cargo bay and coordinate our arrivals. Let’s pack as much as we can into this puppy, just in case we’re the only ones who make it through to the other side.”

“Yes, sir,” Marx said from behind Cole. The Callite stomped aft through the thin skim of drying blood.

Cole took off after him, his thoughts divided between how well his squad had done on their portion of the raid—and on which of the other groups had run into trouble.

Penny raced through the ship’s corridors, the dying screams of the last Bern crewman echoing in her ears. She slowed to round a bend in the passageway, then found herself in the aftermost section, the rumble of powerful thrusters audible through the thick bulkhead.

The sound intensified as a door opened. A Bern engineer stepped out, his gray coveralls spotted with grease stains. Penny sliced him in half before he could even register her presence. She watched the two pieces of meat fall to the deck, strings of interior organs spilling out in a thick soup. She studied the odd arrangement, the fleshy interior, and felt more curiosity than horror.

A rhythmic clanging rang out over the roar from the open thruster room. Penny kicked the door shut to hear better. It was footsteps. Someone running. She prepared her blade just as Mortimor jogged around the corner and came to a panting stop.

“You okay?” he asked. He pulled his blood-specked hood back and ran his fingers through his graying hair.

Penny nodded and lowered her sword. “I think this is the last—”

Before she could finish the sentence, Penny flew into the air and slammed into the rear bulkhead. Mortimor followed, his limbs flying out for balance. Gravity returned, and they both fell to the deck. Penny felt her weight lessen again, like the ship was dropping altitude, but the grav panels should’ve more than compensated for any maneuvering. She looked across at Mortimor, her hands splayed wide and her fingers digging into the grating on the floor.

“The cockpit!” Mortimor yelled.

Penny pushed herself to her feet. The whine of the thrusters in the next room suddenly lowered in pitch—and then the engines began screaming higher and harder than before. Something was wrong. She took off, churning up the meters back to the cockpit, her legs hammering away at the artificial gravity, her mind willing it to last.

The pounding of the approaching footsteps came faster than Anlyn could retreat. She stood, frozen in place, comprehending the noise but not understanding how it was possible. When the Bern rounded the corner, dressed in a suit of all-white, she collapsed in stark horror, her already fatigued legs turning to soup. Her brain boiled with confusion and fear. She scrambled back from the figure and tried to scream for Edison, but her voice wouldn’t heed her. In the back of her muddy mind, she finally matched up the banging sound she had heard with a ship locking to theirs. She imagined a squad of Bern troopers boarding their craft. She wondered what mistake she’d made to end their ruse.

We’re doomed, Anlyn thought. The figure approached, his eyes wide and his hands clenched together high over his head. Someone else ran up behind the Bern—some unknown race—also with his hands double-gripping an unseen device.

“What are you waiting on?” the alien in the back yelled.

In some fuzzy corner of Anlyn’s mind, she realized he had yelled it in English. This alien, also in all white, tried to get around the Bern, pushing him to the side.

“It’s a Drenard, man!” The Bern held the alien back and looked toward Anlyn. “Maybe she’s like a sex slave or something.”

“Sex slave? You stay away!” Anlyn yelled. She kicked her feet at the decking in an attempt to scramble toward the cockpit.

“Stop moving,” the Bern said. He leveled some sort of object at her.

“Wait!” The unknown alien reached for the Bern ahead of him. “She speaks English?”

Another Bern ran up behind the other two, his uniform identical.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. He spotted Anlyn. “What the flank?” He spoke some Bern to her while he reached for something on his belt.

“She speaks English,” the other Bern said over his shoulder. He looked again to Anlyn, his eyes narrowed warily as he stepped forward. “Where’s the rest of your crew?” he asked her.

“Screw this diplomacy,” the other Bern said. “We need to secure the cockpit!”

All three figures moved closer—and then the faces of the two Bern turned as white as their suits. Their eyes bulged as they gaped high over Anlyn’s head.

“Desist!” Edison roared from behind her. He followed with something equally terse and forceful in Bern.

Anlyn turned to see her fiancé reared up, the fur along his arms waving as if in a stiff breeze. She scrambled away from the three figures and tried to get to the other side of Edison, eager to put his imposing bulk between herself and this strange threat that had invaded their ship.

Penny sprinted toward the cockpit, fearful of the mechanical failure that had lifted her and Mortimor off their feet before slamming them to the deck. When she reached the ship’s cargo bay, she noticed a bright light flooding down the corridor from the cockpit: It was the telltale flash of hyperspace’s unshielded and blinding photons.

Penny pulled her goggles out of her collar and forced them in place with one hand. She heard the drone of a steady wind and felt the air in the ship grew colder as she got closer. She stepped over two dead Bern, their guts spilled and dripping through the deck grating. The ship’s grav panels lurched again, sending her sideways into another bulkhead. Penny bounced off and staggered forward, calling for Jym, their group’s pilot. A flurry of snow swirled around her, melting in the air.

“Up here!” Jym yelled. Penny ducked into the cockpit and saw the Pheron pilot peering back from one of the flightseats. Beyond him, the ship’s canopy had been blown wide open, letting in the snow and light. The fur on Jym’s face whipped around in the breeze, but even that, coupled with his black goggles, couldn’t hide all the alien’s panic.

Penny ran toward the nav seat to help with the flight controls, then saw the spot was already occupied. A beheaded Bern, his arms still twitching, sat behind a collection of smashed instrument panels.

“What happened?” Penny asked. She attempted to pull the body out of the seat, but it must’ve weighed a ton.

“No flankin clue!” Jym yelled. “And that thing ain’t flesh.” He let go of the controls and waved a hand at the Bern. “Took its head off from behind, and the flanker went ballistic, smashing the dash and the canopy. I think the grav systems are toast. I’m not gonna be able to keep us airborne!”

Penny peered through the hole in the canopy, past the snow billowing in to dust the controls and ice everything over. Beyond the craggy hole lay the endless white of hyperspace and the flurries she hated so much. Looking down at the beheaded Bern, she didn’t see any organs inside the neck, just the sheen of metal. It made her feel nauseous, looking at it. She pulled out her sword and gritted her teeth. Carefully, using slow motions, she carved the mechanical Bern and his chair in half, right down the middle. Another clean sweep sideways—careful as the ship lurched again—and she had pieces small enough to carry out of the cockpit. Again, no blood and hardly any oil or grease.

After the body parts were removed, Penny crouched behind the nav controls and tried to help Jym pull the ship’s nose up. The SADAR screen ahead of her was demolished, giving her little to go by, so she looked to Jym’s instruments as a guide. A voice crackled through the radio, barely audible over the whipping wind. It said something in Bern right as Mortimor staggered into the cockpit, breathing hard.

“Did you catch that?” Penny yelled back to Mortimor.

He reached for the mic. “Yeah,” he said. He surveyed the damage to the dash and sucked in a deep breath. “Both of you keep quiet.”

“What’re you gonna say?” Jym asked.

Mortimor shot him a look. His chest heaved with another deep gulp of air, his beard catching the snow. “I’m going to tell the rest of the Bern fleet that we’ve suffered a mechanical failure so they won’t think anything’s amiss.” He looked to Jym’s instruments as he brought the mic up to his mouth. “And then I’m gonna inform them that we’re going down,” Mortimor said grimly.

Cole and Marx coordinated arrivals as the Underground kept their jump platforms busy evacuating the base of its personnel and essentials. Anyone assigned to Support Crew, they directed aft. As members of the Evac Crew appeared in the cargo bay, they assigned them duties and loaded them up with the gear also coming through every five seconds or so. Cole marveled at the military precision of it all. An absolute flood of people and supplies were washing aboard the ship.

Up in the cockpit, the flight crew did an incredible job of holding the Bern craft steady while updating HQ with coordinates. Each arrival appeared in the exact same spot of empty air. The more that came aboard, the more Cole felt a step closer to getting out of that infernal place and tracking down Molly. He was so close he could practically remember what her hair smelled like, when just a few days ago he’d had difficulty picturing her face—

“We’ve got trouble!”

The shout from the cockpit shattered Cole’s thoughts. He and Marx glanced at each other. Marx pulled a large sack of supplies out of the arrival point and handed it off to the alien who had jumped in just prior.

“I’ll go,” Cole said.

Marx nodded as another member of the Underground fell out of the air and landed in a neat crouch. “I’m gonna insist Arthur come with the next group,” Marx said, reaching for his radio. “Protocol and seniority be damned, we need him here.”

“Agreed.” Cole slapped Marx on the shoulder and ran to the cockpit.

“What’s going on?” he asked the flight crew.

Larken spun around. The mic was trembling in his hand. “First group’s going down,” he sputtered. “Someone from the ship broadcasted a mechanical failure in Bern. I’m pretty sure it was Mortimor.”

The pilot took one hand off the steering column and grabbed Larken’s wrist; he pulled the mic away from the translator’s mouth. “You’re not gonna transmit anything to them, are you?”

“No, man! I’m just waiting for the Bern to get suspicious!”

“Calm down, both of you,” Cole said. He stepped up behind the translator and checked the strange-looking SADAR, which was a beehive of blips and odd figures. “Where does it show their altitude?” He glanced over the shapes on the screen, not recognizing any of them as numbers.

“Right there.” The pilot tapped the screen. “And that’s group one’s ship.” He indicated one of the blobs. “They’re going down soft by the looks of it. Not far from the Luddite camp.”

“Is that their camp there?” Cole reached over and tapped the screen.

“Only thing low enough,” the pilot growled.

“Well then, they aren’t going down near them,” Cole said. “I think they’re trying to land on them.”

The radio squawked with more rapid Bern. Larken turned to the pilot, his knuckles white around the mic.

“I think he’s right, sir.”

The trio of white-clad warriors shuffled down the corridor toward Edison and Anlyn, their courage seeming to have rallied as they raised the strange cylinders in their hands.

“Desist!” Edison roared once more. He berated himself for leaving his lance in the cockpit as Anlyn scooted safely around him. “Stay where you are!” he tried in Bern.

One of the Bern stiffened and pulled back on the alien ahead of him. “We’re taking over control of your ship,” he returned in Bern. “On your knees!”

Edison took a step back and growled at Anlyn to return to the cockpit. As she ran off, the three attackers surged forward, the one in the front bringing his empty hands up high as if wielding an invisible club.

Edison threw his feet forward and fell flat on his back, sending a shiver through the deck. He brought his knees up to his chest as some unseen thing whizzed through the air above him. Kicking out with his legs, he caught the figure in the chest and sent him sprawling back into the other two.

Something clattered to the ground nearby. Reaching forward to grab it—a metal cylinder of some sort—Edison paused. The bulkhead to the side of the device was sparking. A thin line of destruction streaked across the solid steel as the cylinder rolled across the deck toward him. Edison’s scientific thought processes kicked into high gear. He picked the thing up, keeping the laser end pointed away. He leveled the device at the three men.

Nothing happened.

Insufficient range, he figured.

He took a step forward, and the other two figures in white dropped their cylinders and raised their hands.

“We give up!” one of them said in English.

“Excellent maneuver.” Edison aimed the strange cylinder at the one who had spoken in Bern and switched to that language himself:

“Now, who in hyperspace are you people?”

Cole watched the blip on the SADAR, the one showing Mortimor’s ship descending toward the frozen wastelands of hyperspace. The pilot and translator were yelling back and forth, arguing about what to do for them, but it was mere background noise. All Cole could think about was what might have gone wrong with Mortimor’s group and how he should’ve been there with them.

He snapped himself out of the unproductive thoughts and looked around at the bickering crew. The raid was going to fall apart over this, he realized. Mortimor’s mythical status as leader of the Underground was now going to be a distraction rather than a motivating force.

Cole ran out of the cockpit and returned to the cargo bay. He tore open one metal cabinet and locker after another, looking through the ship’s supplies for anything resembling a gravchute, or even an old-fashioned glider. Every five seconds or so, he heard a soft pop as more people and gear arrived from HQ. The finality and awfulness of the raid, of using up what remained of the fusion fuel, of abandoning the Underground’s headquarters, it all dawned on him as a colossal mistake.

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. Cole turned to find Arthur Dakura frowning at him.

“What’s the emergency?” Arthur asked. He looked annoyed to have been brought aboard out of order.

“One group is going down,” Cole said. He slammed a locker shut and flung open another. “And I’m going down after them.”

Arthur grabbed Cole’s shoulders. He pulled him away from the cabinet just as Cole started rummaging around inside it. “That’s a negative,” Arthur said. “Drawing any more attention will just threaten the other squads. Now, which group did you say is going down?”

Cole clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I told you,” he said. “Group one.”

Arthur’s eyes darted back and forth, searching Cole’s.

“Mortimor’s group,” Cole whispered.

Anlyn reached the cockpit and made sure the Bern ship was still holding position and that the fleet hadn’t adjusted itself around them. She grabbed Edison’s lance and ran back aft as the sounds of a struggle and a bout of yelling sent shivers of fear up her spine. She half expected to find dozens of Bern in the cargo bay by the time she returned, the illusion of another ship locked to theirs still lingering.

She entered the bay with the lance level, fully prepared to send its pyrotechnic fireworks into her enemy. What she found instead was Edison standing bold before the three figures, something in his hand aimed at them. Two of the figures held their arms in the air. The other clutched his stomach, in obvious pain, but still attempting to speak. His efforts were interrupted by the arrival of two more white-suited aliens running up from the rear, neither of them Bern. Anlyn recognized one of them as a Pheral, the other a Callite. Her head swelled with confusion; the Bern were not known to ally themselves with other races.

The original three held the new arrivals back, telling them in English to be careful. Edison roared at the two in the back to drop their weapons, which they refused to do.

Anlyn stepped beside Edison with the lance level, hoping it looked suitably fierce. “Which of you speaks English?” she asked.

“We all do,” the Pheral said. He pulled the white hood off his head, revealing his yellowish, mottled skin. “What’s a Drenard doing working for the Bern?”

“We’re not with the Bern,” Anlyn said, beginning to sense that this group wasn’t either. “This is Lord Campton, and I am Anlyn Hooo. We are members of the Drenard Circle and come as ambassad—”

Anlyn fell silent as the group of aliens sank to their knees, their eyes wide and mouths open. Weapons that had been held at the ready immediately moved into tucked positions of submission.

“Hooo of the royal line,” one of the figures whispered.

The one clutching his stomach seemed to forget his pain, his grimace morphing into a wide smile as he looked up at her and Edison. “We are members of the Drenard Underground,” the man said. “We are protectors of the rift, and we are honored to serve.”

Softly, one of the five began saying something, chanting. Others joined in.

Anlyn stood, welded to the decking in abject shock, just barely able to make out the words. They were the words of the Bern Seer. The collection of aliens were chanting the prophecy.

Edison and Anlyn turned toward each other, neither of them able to speak.

Edison lowered his weapon.

And rolled his eyes.

3 · Group Two

The steady flow of gear and evacuees into group two’s hijacked ship ceased for a moment. Marx and members of the Evac Crew stared at the empty space in the center of the cargo bay, their feet shuffling impatiently. Finally, the air popped, and a gravchute and set of jump gear appeared seemingly out of nowhere and fell to the deck in a jumbled heap. Cole rushed forward to his special delivery, ignoring the grumbles from the others as he passed. He pulled the chute and gear out of the rough circle of aliens and to an empty corner of the cargo bay. He began shrugging the gravchute over his white combat uniform as Arthur hurried over and resumed his protestations:

“If Mortimor was here to tell you himself,” Arthur told Cole, “even he would say you shouldn’t go.”

Cole nodded his agreement and shrugged the other strap on. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. He could clearly remember Mortimor berating him for going it alone after two traitors in a hyperskimmer.

Arthur squeezed Cole’s arm and pulled his hand away from the straps before Cole could cinch them tighter. “I really can’t let you do this,” Arthur said, finally going for all-out force.

Cole grabbed Arthur’s wrist with his new mechanical hand and squeezed back even harder. “And I can’t let you stop me,” he said.

Arthur grimaced and let go. The old engineer and roboticist rubbed his wrist. “Ain’t that the dog biting the hand—?”

“I’m sorry, Arthur, I really am, but I can’t leave hyperspace without him.”

“And how do you plan on getting him back?” Arthur asked. “There’s no one at HQ to man a skimmer. Are you just gonna stay behind in hyperspace with him? Look, he’s like a brother to me, so I get where you’re coming from, but he specifically told me—he ordered me to keep an eye on you.”

Cole glanced down at the chute’s controls to check the battery levels, then looked up at Arthur. “I have to try something,” Cole said. “I can’t go back if we don’t. Molly would never—I’d never forgive myself.”

Arthur rested a hand on Cole’s shoulder, but his grip no longer felt as if it were meant to fix him in place. It was a clasp of understanding, of finally getting where Cole was coming from. He looked around the bay at all the commotion, at the supplies and people pouring through. A crate of powercells for the buckblades arrived with a sharp crack of air. One of the crate’s boards popped loose as it slammed into the deck, disgorging cells. A frantic swarm of activity ensued, attempting to clear the space before the next arrival. Arthur turned back to Cole.

“Listen to me, there’s no point in going if you don’t have a way back.”

Cole pulled the harness points tight on the grav suit and slapped the battery pack for good luck. “I’m taking care of my half by going down there. You got any ideas for the other?”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, damnit, I do. But if Mortimor asks, you have to tell him this was all your plan. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Fine,” Cole said, smiling. “What is it?”

Anlyn and Edison stood together in the rear half of the Bern craft’s cockpit, leaning on one another, thankful to no longer be needed. Weeks of abject exhaustion had been peeled away by the adrenaline rush of being boarded by attackers, and then the relief of finding out who the strange men were. Anlyn knew of the Underground; she had heard whispers among her uncles of this distant band of rogues fighting for peace between her people and the Humans. She never expected in her wildest dreams to meet any of them, much less for them to know who she was. And now they had arrived, seeming like Bern attackers, several of them looking like Bern in every way possible, but proving to be saviors with their piloting expertise and ability to translate Bern and operate the radio. She and Edison finally had a crew to take shifts and allow them to rest.

None of the Underground members had resting on their minds, however. While two of the crew manned the cockpit, the remaining three worked to clear the cargo bay. Anlyn wasn’t sure how these people had arrived, but they were going to use the same trick to bring in even more of their comrades. The prospect of having someone take over for them, to go and sleep or shower or eat if she chose, made Anlyn’s head swim with relief. She rested her head against Edison while Len, the translator sitting in the nav seat, conferred with the rest of the Bern fleet. Anlyn looked up to Edison, sensitive to any sign of double-dealing, but he had his brow down and kept nodding, as if he agreed with what was being said. When the chatter ceased, Len hung up the radio and turned to the others, frowning.

“We’re eighth in line,” he said. “Our group commander is sending us the coordinates for the rift now.”

The tension of the past weeks melted out of Anlyn’s muscles. Not only did they now have extra crew to take shifts, there was actually an end in sight. An end to the snow, to the constant maneuvering, and an end to the stifling claustrophobia of being surrounded by a vast enemy fleet. Her skin positively shivered with the thought of leaving that place, but she had a difficult time reconciling her joy with the dour look on Len’s face.

“But isn’t that good?” she asked.

Len shook his head. “It doesn’t give us much time to get our share of people and supplies out of HQ, which means an extra burden on the others. Especially since—” Len turned to Douglas, the pilot. “One of the squads didn’t make it. It was Mortimor’s group, so we’re down to four ships.”

Douglas cursed under his breath. He shook his head. “So who’s in charge?”

“Over here? I don’t know. Arthur isn’t at HQ anymore—he jumped out of order. Everything’s gone to hell. What I do know is that the first group through the rift is temporarily in charge on the other side, so we need to focus.”

“Alright.” The pilot nodded. “Go tell the others, then. We need to get Ryke and his equipment up here. We’ll take the lead on the other side, which means closing this damn rift might fall to us.”

“What’s going on?” Anlyn asked. She stood aside as Len pushed his way past and disappeared aft. “You’re trying to close the rift? Will that stop the invasion?”

Edison returned to his seat and adjusted one of the radio dials. The pilot turned to face Anlyn. “We’re going to close the rift from the other side. Even if there wasn’t a massive fleet guarding it over here, there’s just no way to access it in this slop.” He gestured toward the snow. “Honestly, though, this whole thing was thrown together in a few days. You’re best off talking to Ryke about it when he gets here.”

“That’s not the Ryke, is it?” Anlyn asked. Among the whispers of the Underground, his legend, how the first messages sent to Drenard led to the group’s formation, was less hushed talk and more of a canyon’s howl.

“The same,” said Douglas. “He’s gonna be pretty excited to meet a member of the Circle.”

“It isn’t an honor, I assure you. Especially not now. Haven’t you heard of the invasion?”

“This one?” Douglas waved one hand at the windshield, his brows drooping. “Yeah, I’m aware of it.”

“Negative,” Edison said, settling back in his seat. “The one with Drenard as its originating locus.”

“My empire has declared war on the Humans,” Anlyn explained.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Douglas said. “Why would they do that?”

“I have no idea. Why am I defying the Circle’s decree? Why did you join the Underground? Why are any of us doing anything?”

Len ran back into the cockpit. “Ryke’s on his way, sir, but there’s gonna be a delay. Some emergency shipment to group two has the timetables fouled.”

“Emergency equipment? What for?”

“It wasn’t clear. HQ said they were putting something together for a rescue attempt of group one. It sounds like that new guy is jumping down to help them.”

The pilot turned, his eyes wide. “Cole? What do you mean, jumping down?”

“Gravchute, sir, but it’s all rumors from what I can tell. Sounds like the kid wants to bail out of group two’s ship, if you can believe that. If you ask me, there’s way too much chatter about it on the carrier frequency. It’s gonna get us spotted if they keep it up.”

“Well, at least we’ll be through the rift before the fool causes too much trouble and gets the rest exposed.”

Edison grunted. “Uncanny similarity between label and behavior of a Cole I’m acquainted with.” He rose from his seat and moved aside for Len to take his place.

Anlyn laughed.

The pilot jabbed a thumb at Edison. “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Anlyn said. “Just that the guy you’re talking about reminds him of a friend of ours. Same name.”

“Yeah? Yours a troublemaker, too?” The pilot shook his head. “This kid’s been in camp for less than a week and he’s got the brass to chase down infiltrators in a skimmer when he hasn’t even been checked out to pilot the damn machines.”

“Figured it out pretty quick,” Len said as he adjusted something on the dash.

“Yeah?” The pilot turned to him. “Did those two hyperskimmers come back in one piece?”

“No, but neither did those two traitors,” Len rejoined.

Douglas shrugged. “Still, that shouldn’t give him license to dream up a raid like this.” He laughed. “Then again, rumor has it he’s dating the old man’s daughter, and we all know where that’ll get you…”

“He’s dating Fyde’s daughter?” Len asked. He reached back and slipped his arms into the flight harness. “Hyperspace, man, I didn’t hear that rumor—”

“Wait,” Anlyn said. She grabbed Len by the shoulder. “Fyde? Mortimor Fyde?”

Len smiled. “Perfect. Nothing can get out of hyperspace, except of course for Mortimor’s reputation.” He turned to Anlyn. “Whatever you’ve heard about the old man—”

“No,” Anlyn said, shaking her head. “Your Cole and our Cole are the same person.” She turned to Edison. “What in the galaxy is he doing here?”

Edison shrugged. A rare, confused look settled across his face. It was a look that gave Anlyn chills.

Further aft, there was a loud pop of air.

The first in an eager line of people and supplies had boarded their ship.

Before stepping into the airlock, Cole let Arthur check his gravchute. After going over the straps and readouts, Arthur slapped Cole’s helmet twice. Cole turned and raised his visor.

“Wish me luck!”

“What I wish is that I’d been able to talk you out of this.”

“No way,” Cole said. “I’m looking forward to it. Now get back, I wanna beat them down there.”

Arthur pressed his lips together but nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Good luck.” He scanned Cole’s jumpsuit one more time, his eyes flickering over the combat harness. “Better put those grenades in a pocket before you jump. The pins’ll pop loose if you go down hard.”

Cole nodded and unclipped the two precious grenades—gifts from the normally tight munitions officer. He backed into the lock, leaving Arthur just past the jamb, then slapped the inner hatch shut and turned to the outer door. Spreading his feet wide, he grabbed one of the handles rimming the hatch and memorized the location of the door controls. He slid his black goggles into place and snapped his visor shut. Reaching out in the new and absolute darkness, he felt for the controls, lifted the protective cover, and pressed the red button. The outer door before him irised open, and a flood of hyperspace photons peeled his blindness away, the darkened goggles providing him with normal vision.

There was a little suction from the wind outside, but not much. Cole stuck his head out to see where the wings were on the Bern ship; he spotted them high and behind. He turned and saw Arthur smiling at him through the porthole, his own goggles down over his eyes. Cole gave the old trillionaire the thumbs-up, then jumped out sideways, stiffening his body to plummet faster as he angled down through the curtain of fluttering white snow.

Cole immediately felt the frigid air through the fabric of his flightsuit, but most of the wind’s noise was blocked out by his helmet. Just as in his Academy jump training, there was an odd sensation missing from leaping out of a moving ship. He expected his stomach to rise into his throat, but nothing of the sort took place. All he felt was the friction of a cold breeze as he plummeted like a dropped dart.

Cole checked the altimeter on his wrist to gauge his rate of descent. It was an older Navy model, nearly an antique, but the controls had been easy enough to work out. He held the device in front of his visor and watched it tick down the meters of elevation on the several grids. One showed his falling rate, the other his distance to target—which was locked onto the coordinates of the Luddite camp. Cole altered course by twisting his torso as he switched the grav chute into reverse for maximum speed. If group one was able to slow the descent of their Bern craft enough, he just might be able to beat them to the ground.

Cole looked back to the altimeter on his wrist and wondered what sort of ship had carried the outdated device to hyperspace. What ship had brought the gravchute, for that matter? An older model Firehawk? One of the ancient Sparrows? Definitely something Navy and a few generations back, he thought. He moved his hand aside, satisfied with his rate of descent—just in time to see a Bern ship coalesce out of the snow directly below him.

“Flank!”

Cole threw his arms wide and cupped his gloved hands to catch the air. He slowed and veered to one side, missing the flying craft, but coming close enough to create a wash effect, which sent him tumbling in a confused ball. He threw his arms and legs out again, fighting to stabilize himself, then saw another ship go by in the distance. The tight formation of black shapes hung in the snow all around him, nearly invisible in the flurries until it was too late.

As soon as Cole regained control, he forced himself back into a dive and zipped down through the sideways snow, despite his trepidations. When he glanced at his altimeter again, he did so quickly, resuming his vigilance and hoping his near miss hadn’t shown up on the Bern craft’s SADAR.

He was a few thousand meters up and five hundred off target when he saw the dark mass of the Luddite camp below. The massive black village moved across a white backdrop of packed snow so solid, it made the spotted air seem suddenly gray. Cole angled his body to correct course, relief washing over him as he no longer needed to fear a midair collision. His comfort was brief, however. Orange flashes—naked fires—blazed across the rear portion of the Luddite village. The flames winked through the snow, delineating the outline of a ship-like form sprawled wide across the camp. It was Mortimor’s ship. Cole was late for the party.

When the top of the village’s tall mast zipped by just a few dozen meters away, Cole popped the chute’s controls in the other direction. The grav nullifiers kicked upward, the straps wrenching the air out of Cole’s chest, and still he continued to fall, his incredible velocity too much to quickly overcome. Even through his closed helmet, he could hear the gravchute screaming above the wind. Cole glanced at his altimeter. Fifty meters. Steering with his shoulders, he picked a clear piece of forward decking where Byrne’s ship and a Firehawk had been parked during his last visit. He felt a sickening sensation as he saw how many fur-clad Luddites were running to and fro below him.

The deck swelled closer. Cole braced for impact.

The idea was to hit running, but he came in too fast. His knees buckled, and he went into a roll to dissipate the force. He felt his pack bang violently against the deck, and he ended up in an uncomfortable sprawl. Cole pushed himself up, quickly unbuckled his harness, and let the overworked chute drift to the ground. And then, out of nowhere, a Luddite came at him, screaming. Cole yanked his buckblade free and fumbled for the switch. The man swung at him with a sideways blow.

Cole immediately turned his blade vertical and locked his new arm in place. Pistons and rods stood firm where once muscle and sinew lay. His attacker’s buckblade bounced back before it reached Cole’s, repelled from the like gravitational field so fast, it simply flew out of the figure’s hands. Cole stepped out of the way, allowing the man’s momentum to carry him by, then brought his own blade down on the man’s shoulder and out his opposite hip.

The man’s torso fell a few meters from his legs, his heart visible in its ribcage, still beating. Cole looked up from the two pieces toward the downed ship in the distance, far beyond the mast. All across the deck, dozens of figures moved toward the crash site—more than Cole thought he could fight through. He considered the plan Arthur had come up with and suddenly felt too exposed to pull it off. He was one idiot, alone and ill-prepared, against a legion of hardened maniacs. With the crash of the ship, the element of surprise was gone. Every able-bodied Luddite was now crawling across the camp, looking for trouble. And in his white suit, Cole stood out like an albino on a Mediterranean beach.

He looked off to the side, beyond the village’s railings, at all the snow streaking by. He kept turning and faced the bow, where a massive wall, shaped in a tall vee, parted the sideways flurries.

The plan had been to meet up with Mortimor and the rest of his crew, then wait for Arthur’s special delivery to extract them. But first, Cole thought he should take a bit of a detour and do what he did best:

Improvise.

4 · Luddite Camp

Penny helped Jym up from the ground, the pilot having been thrown out of his seat when their hijacked craft crashed into the Luddite camp. Mortimor clung to the dash nearby; he peered through the busted canopy at the jumbled structures in the village below. It had been Penny’s idea to try and land on the Luddite village, partly to do some damage, but mostly to keep from being buried in the snow and pushed back into the oblivion of hyperspace.

Jym clasped Penny’s wrists and stood up with her assistance.

“Thanks,” he said, gathering himself.

He seemed about to say something else, but Penny raised her hand to quiet him. She leaned toward the cockpit door. Somewhere aft, she could hear the hiss of plasma torches and the clanging of outer hull plating. “They’re already cutting their way inside,” she told the others. “I don’t think they’re happy with our parking job.”

“We’ll make our stand in the cargo bay,” Mortimor told her. He patted Jym on the back, and both men reached for their blades.

Penny nodded her agreement, and the three of them made their way aft, leaning to one side to compensate for the tilt of the deck and the Bern craft’s busted grav panels.

“If anyone gets caught and interrogated, this was the extent of the raid, okay?” Mortimor gave them both a serious look. “It was just us, and our goal was to bring down one of their ships and damage the village. No word of the other crews, no matter what they do to us.”

They nodded, each of them well aware of the Luddite fondness for removing limbs.

Mortimor led them out of the cockpit. “Penny, you stay behind as backup in case one of us goes down. Jym, you cover the port side.”

“Don’t try and protect me,” Penny said. “I’m the best here with a blade.” She stepped ahead of the other two. “I’ll take the starboard—”

“Watch out!” Jym yelled, raising his buckblade.

Penny turned and got hers up as well. Two Luds stormed into the bay, slowing up when they saw they were outnumbered. “Do this fast,” Penny said. “We’ve got to take them in small bites.”

Mortimor ran down the far side of the cargo bay, threatening to flank them. Penny pushed forward, forcing them to think about two dangers at once. One of the men seemed timid, the kind who would throw his sword at a foe, then run. Penny screamed and lunged at him, giving Mortimor time to get behind.

The coordinated attack took just a few seconds, and then there was more mess piled up in the ship, Human and Bern bits indistinguishable.

“Are we better off down on the village deck?” Jym asked “It’s gonna get awful crowded in here.”

Penny looked to Mortimor and saw a grim seriousness in his furrowed brow and set lips. “It’s just a numbers game, isn’t it?” she asked him. “We’re just seeing how many we can take with us?”

Mortimor nodded. “Hopefully this’ll scare the Bern and speed up the invasion. Maybe we’ll end up ushering the other groups through the rift quicker. I say we take out a few more Luds here. After that, they’ll know what they’re up against, that this isn’t a friendly crash landing.”

“And then what?” Jym asked.

Mortimor shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’ll be long before we find out.”

Cole sprinted away from the crashed ship and toward the bow of the Luddite village. He angled to starboard, his improvised plan hatching as he went. He headed for the edge of the giant wedge that parted the horizontal snow of hyperspace and kept the flurries from settling on the deck. It was nothing more than a thick, vertical wall of steel in the shape of a V, creating a sideways roof over the mobile town. With his sword extended and held firmly by his waist, Cole jogged close to the wall, the handle of his blade held just centimeters away. He could only hope that the invisible buckblade was long enough to extend all the way through the metal plating. Looking back as he ran, he saw a jagged line being created—the rise and fall of his gait measured in a fine crack of destruction through the tall shield.

Cole paced himself, recognizing that he had a decent jog ahead. He settled into a rhythm and concentrated on his breathing, trying to ignore the increasing heft of his boots. He followed the tall V to the bow, checking now and then to ensure that his blade was still on. Then he traced his way down the port side.

Before he got through three quarters of the other side of the wall, Cole heard a satisfying groan of steel as the remaining section struggled to hold up the rest. He cut another dozen meters, running faster and waiting for the wails of distressed steel to increase their pitch, and then he sprinted down the rail directly aft, pumping his legs as fast as he could to outpace what he figured to be a toppling mountain of metal about thirty meters tall.

He looked back only once, which was all it took to run even faster. The wall was bending around the portion still connected, singing and shrieking as thick metal crumpled like tin. An avalanche of snow shivered from the wedge, and more than a meter of hard pack calved off like a fractured iceberg. The great white sheets crashed and exploded on the deck, followed soon after by the cliff of thick, welded plates that formerly made up the bow shield.

The force of the impact shot up through Cole’s boots like an earthquake, throwing him to the ground. He rolled and slid, came to a graceless stop, then spun around, gasping for breath as he surveyed the damage he’d wrought.

He had easily cleared the falling wall, even though it had felt a lot closer when it hit. The massive wave of packed snow had slid closer, but probably never posed a threat even if it had reached him. Hitting him in the face—spotting his dark goggles with blooms of moisture—came the only bombardment from his efforts: Snow. Flying sideways and already dusting the deck, the flakes spun and twirled around him, creating a thick mist of white as they coursed through the air unabated.

Looking aft toward the crash site, Cole watched the spreading veil twist its way toward the distant structures, swallowing everything in a sticky cloud. Dark shapes could be seen moving about, the ferocious slam of steel having created just the sort of panic he’d hoped for. The other part of his impromptu plan seemed to be working as well: He could now see the dark figures more clearly. Swaddled in their matted furs, they stood out stark against the new white land he had unleashed.

Cole jogged aft and stopped to retrieve his grav chute. He found it already dusted with snow. He slung it over his white uniform, then pulled his buckblade back out and flicked off the safety. Picking out the nearest Luddites, he stole their direction, his sword armed and at the ready. As he closed the distance—their beastly shapes standing out clear as day against the snow—he wondered just how well they would be able to see him.

Penny and Mortimor stood over another pair of overanxious Luds, the pieces of them leaking fluids. She heard someone barking orders further down the hull and knew the easy kills were done. The furballs were getting organized.

“We can’t stay here,” Mortimor said.

“What about the floor?” Jym asked. He traced an imaginary slash through the decking.

“No!” Penny said, holding out a hand. “There’s no telling what you’d slice through. The forward thrusters might get their fuel from somewhere aft of here.”

“Then how about around the portholes?” Jym asked. “Maybe there’s a rooftop to jump to—”

“We’re too high for that,” Mortimor said. He pointed to the flakes of snow drifting through the busted canopy. “In fact, are we higher than the camp’s bow shield?”

Penny powered down her sword and ran toward the cockpit, disappearing into the swirling flurries leaking through the hole in the canopy. “No way we’re that high,” she called back to them. “The main deck can’t be more than twenty meters up.” She looked out through the shattered glass at the rooftops below. The mast in the distance was just a hazy strand of black rising up through a sudden blizzard.

She turned back to the others. “I think the impact of our crash took out the bow shield—”

A loud bang cut her off, followed by a shudder that travelled through the deck. Penny stepped back into the cargo bay as several identical, calamitous sounds reverberated through the hull.

“What is that?” Jym asked. He turned side to side anxiously, his buckblade held out.

“Careful,” Penny said, flipping on her own blade in case she needed to protect herself from his.

Another bang. Extremely close.

Mortimor looked up at the ceiling. “I think they’re surrounding us, preparing to come in from the top.” He motioned with his hands. “Everyone in the center of the bay, back to back. Watch your angles.”

Jym and Mortimor lined up facing aft, and Penny formed the head of the triangle, watching the cockpit. Another bang rang out, and then Penny heard the dull pounding of footsteps on the roof of the ship. Someone whistled in the distance—the only warning they got before a dozen Luddites began cutting their way down through the ceiling. There was a horrible din of clanging metal as cut circles of steel clattered within the mechanical spaces over their heads. And then came the shrill fury of Luddite war-cries, paced by the stomping of their approaching boots from all directions—

Cole skirted the tower’s base, partly because of the small group guarding its perimeter, but mostly out of fear of its effects on time. The grav chute on his back made jogging uncomfortable; Cole cinched it tighter and steadied it with one hand while he held his blade in the other. He entered a small clearing he remembered from his last desperate run through the village. The only difference now was the looming hulk of a massive spaceship sprawled in the distance.

As Cole neared, he thought he could see figures running across the wings of the ship, far above the deck. He stopped near one of the sheds and watched more dark blobs scurry up what looked like steel beams dropped onto the fuselage, giving the Luddites a way up. He reached down and turned his chute to full lift but left the power off. He wondered if his idea would work or if he’d have to scurry up the beams after them.

Putting his blade away, Cole took a few deep breaths as he picked out the first building. Visualizing each step—virtually running his muscles though the entire process—he dug one boot into the deck and pressed the other against the wall of the building behind him. Grimacing, Cole shoved off, running as fast as he could for the low structure he’d chosen.

The distances were complete guesswork, made on intuition and a feel for the chute’s power on the way down. Cole jumped up about ten meters before reaching the wall and jammed the chute on. His stomach dropped, his throat constricting at the odd sensation of going up through the air higher than his legs had sent him. Even so, he’d been overly optimistic—he reached the top of his augmented leap and drifted back down much too far away, his forward momentum from the sprint taking him directly toward the building’s steel wall.

Cole braced for impact and brought one hand up to protect his face, the other reaching for the roof’s edge. He hit so hard, he nearly bounced off, but his right hand clutched the top of the wall with an iron grip, leaving him dangling.

Tensing his new arm, and with the aid of the grav chute set to max, Cole vaulted to the top of the roof with an eerie ease. The combined might of the two devices, chute and arm, made him feel giddy. Powerful.

He shut the chute back down so his feet would have enough traction to run and lined himself up with a taller building across a wide alley. Cole took off, planning in advance the next sequence of jumps on his way up to the Bern craft’s cockpit.

The Luddite battle cries came from all directions, nearly masking the thunder of rushing boots. Ceiling panels rained down, cut in rough circles, one of them nearly crashing on top of the defensive trio.

The clanging of so much steel just added to the confusion. Penny almost left one nearby attacker to Mortimor, then realized the Lud was in her zone. She feinted high, and he brought his blade up to counter. Penny changed levels in a blur, swooping for his ankles. The Lud’s boots stayed planted in an expert attack base, even as the rest of him collapsed to the deck, screaming. Penny finished him off with a slice across the torso, then turned to fend off a blow from a second Lud who had jumped down from above. In her peripheral, she saw Mortimor and Jym parrying their own attacks from behind.

The war cries mixed with agony wails as several Luds bled out. Penny checked over her shoulder after sending an attacker’s arm flying and saw that Jym was among the screaming. He writhed on the deck, one of his legs off, but he continued lashing madly at the ankles of the men aft of him. Penny turned around as two more Luds jumped down. She dispatched one, but left herself open to the second. She saw the attack while still following through with her own, but it came too fast. Her non-sword arm was left hanging out in space from the twisting momentum of her torso. It came off clean, just below her elbow, and a deep nick opened along her thigh as well.

She ducked the next blow rather than block it and went for the knees with an angle two, taking away the fur-clad man’s mobility.

“Cockpit!” she yelled to Mortimor. She dispatched the wounded attacker who had taken her arm and ran forward as more of the hoard rained in around them. Penny turned to see if Mortimor was still with her. She ground her teeth when she saw blood streaming down one of his hands and running off in a tight rivulet. It splattered the deck as he performed unorthodox, desperate swings with his other hand.

There were at least a dozen Luds in the cargo bay. One of them silenced Jym as the group pressed forward, forcing her and Mortimor toward the cockpit. More banging rang out above, letting Penny know there was no safe exit. They were surrounded and critically outnumbered.

One began barking orders to the others, planning the last surge, when Penny realized the encirclement was complete. With a loud bang, a large portion of the cockpit canopy fell in just as she and Mortimor were squeezing through the passageway. She barely had room to defend herself as two Luds crashed through the opening, their swords held on opposite sides and poised for a deadly pincer attack.

Penny picked one of them to counter, the other side of her body bracing for a killing blow. Tensing up, she swung her blade into position, when both men froze. Their arms went slack, the pincer attack falling into limp impotence. Both their torsos opened with an avalanche of intestines, bright joints of spine sticking up through the mess as the tops of the men fell away.

As the lifeless, gory heaps crashed to the deck, they revealed behind them the hazy outline of someone in white—someone framed fuzzily against the torrent of snow. Penny couldn’t make out much of their savior, but she did note the barest hint of a classical fencer’s stance—a stance normally guaranteed to get buckbladers killed.

Cole put his blade away. He held on to the edge of the canopy with one hand and fumbled inside a combat pouch with the other. He pulled out one of two blast grenades and clipped the pin to a snap on the front of his suit. Ahead of him, Penny and Mortimor were backing into the tight cockpit, slipping on the mess he’d created on the floor. Without adequate room for defensive posturing, their repelling blades threatened themselves and each other as much as they promised to protect them. Beyond his two wounded friends, Cole saw a file of attackers lining up for their chance at a killing blow.

“Grab on!” Cole yelled into the cockpit. His boots tenuously gripped the ship’s icy hull as he held out a hand toward Penny.

Penny screamed over her shoulder at Mortimor, who relented, turned, and put away his blade. He stepped onto the pilot’s seat and reached for Cole.

With a loud cry, Penny lunged and swung at the first Luddite to enter the cockpit. Their blades flew away from each other and did damage to the ship. Mortimor scampered up onto the dash and out into the snow-streaked air, yelling for Penny to follow. Her attacker pressed forward, threatening them all with any rebound from Penny’s blade.

Instead of blocking, however, Cole watched as she dove forward, below the attack, swinging upward at her foe’s elbow as she flew inside his range.

Both of them crashed to the ground, slipping in the guts on the decking. Penny pushed herself up as the next guy came storming in. She turned, sliding, and scampered toward the others as an invisible blade whisked back and forth behind her, eager to cut her in two.

Cole let go of the jagged canopy and ripped the grenade from his suit. He tossed it over Penny’s head and yelled: “Jump!”

One of Cole’s arms held Mortimor with an iron grip—the other reached out for her.

Penny came through the hole in the canopy, crashing into both men. They all clutched at one another, falling backwards onto the icy nose of the great Bern ship. Cole fumbled along the side of the grav chute, struggling to find the damned power button and trying not to lose his grip on the others as they slid across the slick steel.

He was still fumbling for the switch when they reached the edge of the gracefully curved nose, and then all three went tumbling over and out into the great quiet and snow-filled air.

5 · Luddite Camp

Just as the three of them slid off the nose of the Bern craft, Cole heard a satisfying thump from the grenade he’d left behind. The trio tumbled into the air, the snow below and all around them brightening for a moment as the flash of the explosion reflected off a million flecks of floating ice.

Cole didn’t have time to enjoy the effects of the blast. They plummeted through nothingness, spiraling down toward the metal decking far below, while someone screamed in his ear—

It was the gravchute, Cole realized.

He held Mortimor—his new arm clinched tight around the man’s waist—and Penny latched onto him with an iron grip of her own. The chute trilled with a dying might, pushing up with every ounce of engineering left in it. Still, they hit the deck like they’d fallen from a story up, all three of them flying away from each other with grunts and sickening thuds.

The gravchute felt fit to explode, the heat of the thing scorching Cole’s back through his combat suit. He sat up and cut it loose, watching as it shot up from the deck before falling silent and crashing back down a stone’s throw away.

Mortimor seemed slow to get up, one of his arms pressed tight to his stomach. Cole stood to help him, then felt a jolt of electricity in his ankle, tendons crying out for him to go prone and remain there. He ignored them and limped to Mortimor, hoping it was just a sprain.

Helping the older man up, Cole noticed the deep gash in his outfit, right across his abdomen; Mortimor’s white suit was splattered with streams of red, his arm cut as well.

Mortimor must’ve seen the look on Cole’s face.

“It’s not that bad,” he said, grunting as he got to his feet. “What’s bad is you jumping down here to die with us.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Cole said, grimacing. Penny limped over, her buckblade already out as she looked to the sky for pursuers. Cole saw for the first time that one of her hands was missing, almost up to the elbow. He nearly gagged at the sight of fluid leaking out of the stump, until he realized it wasn’t blood.

“You okay?” Mortimor asked her.

She held up her arm. Her eyes narrowed as she peered at it through the snow. “The problem might be my leg,” she said, indicating a deep gash in her thigh. “Actuator cable got severed.”

Cole wanted to ask just how much of her was Human, but the look on her face reminded him that they were out of the pan, and now they needed to escape the fire. He unzipped another pocket and fumbled for his radio, looking around the wreckage as he did so to get his bearings.

“We’ve got to get away from the ship,” he said, nodding forward and toward the village’s mast. “Can everyone move?”

Mortimor and Penny both nodded and scampered uneasily toward the camp’s bow. Cole took one step and collapsed to his knees, the pain in his ankle overpowering his adrenaline.

Penny saw him go down and limped back to him. She put her blade away and wrapped her arm around his back.

“Guess you just answered your own question,” she said.

Cole grunted, adjusted his goggles, and let her carry the weight from his bad foot. The three of them labored forward into the snow, leaving a trail of blood and hydraulic fluid behind.

“What’s this about a plan?” Penny asked. “Is it better than your last one?”

Cole grimaced and nodded. He pointed with the radio’s antenna, gesturing to an alley through the line of buildings ahead, the same ones he’d used to leapfrog up to the cockpit.

“There’s a small clearing through there. We need to get to it as quick as we can.” He squeezed the transmit button on the radio as Mortimor led them through the flurries. “Thrower, this is Relay,” he said. “Limber up for the toss.”

He and Penny ducked into the alley after Mortimor. Cole looked over his shoulder and checked for signs of pursuit.

“I don’t like the sound of your code,” Penny said.

Cole ignored her and flicked on the radio’s locator. They exited the crack between the two buildings and found Mortimor standing over two halves of a man, his buckblade out, his wounded arm leaking a steady stream of blood. Cole reached for his own blade and looked around for signs of danger, but there was nothing through the thick veil of snow that he could see. He hobbled past Mortimor, toward the center of the clearing, and was amazed to see how quickly the drifts were forming around the bases of the buildings. Then he recalled how swiftly Riggs’s Firehawk had been buried. He spoke into the radio again, wincing as he did so at the thought of his dead friend.

“Thrower, Relay here. Toss away. Miss to any side by a few meters.”

“What’s going on?” Mortimor asked. He tucked his blade away and clutched his arm to slow the bleeding. His neat, brown beard was covered in flecks of melting snow, giving him the look of a mountaineer. The blood splattered all across his white suit, however, made him appear more like an emergency room surgeon.

“Huddle together,” Cole said. He pulled Mortimor close, realizing suddenly how much he had come to like the old man. It was almost impossible to imagine surviving this, actually being someplace safe and warm where nobody was bleeding, but he still felt an overpowering urge to get there, that mystical sanctuary, and to do his best to impress this man who felt more like a father than anyone ever had.

He pulled Penny closer and fumbled for the other grenade. He clipped it to his suit as a loud popping sound preceded the nearby clang of metal on metal.

Cole glanced around and spotted the jump platform that had popped out of thin air, sent by one of the larger cage platforms at HQ. It was a big sacrifice, slowing the evacuation. The fact that they sent it at all reminded Cole how much others must also feel for the old man. He let go of Mortimor and limped over toward it.

“Is that what I think it is?” Penny asked.

Cole nodded and pushed the control console off the platform’s base. He used his strong arm to drag the battery Arthur had wired up, tucking it in the lee of the console to keep the snow off the contacts.

“What’s to stop them from following us?” Mortimor asked.

Cole pulled out his radio; he turned and patted the grenade on his chest. With a smile, he squeezed the transmit button. “Catcher, this is Relay. Feed the numbers.”

“Oh, flank!” said Penny. She pointed over his shoulder.

Cole turned as the first dark form exited the narrow alley and charged through the snow toward them.

“You first!” Cole shouted to Mortimor. He shoved the older man toward the small platform and drew his blade. Mortimor seemed on the verge of arguing, then glanced down at his blood-soaked uniform. He nodded weakly and took a step back. Cole turned as Penny sliced through the first attacker, her handless arm swinging for counterbalance and sending out a gray stream of fluids among the white flakes.

Yet another surge of adrenaline coursed through Cole’s body, numbing the pain in his ankle and staving off exhaustion. He thanked his overworked gland, wondering if the last month had somehow tripled its reserve, and shuffled through the slick film of snow to pull Penny back. Behind him, half a shout from Mortimor was cut short by a pop of air. Cole didn’t turn to make sure he was gone—he just urged Penny to get in place as two more men came forward, the snow swirling around them and coating their fur. The cluster of Luddites approached slowly now, wary like a pack of beasts stalking a wounded prey.

Penny moved to flank them, but Cole yanked her back and shoved her toward the platform. He kept his eyes on the men as he shouted over his shoulder: “Go! Before more come.”

One of the men lunged, his arms spinning with a powerful attack. Cole raised his blade, trying to visualize the angles of deflection, when Penny’s arm flashed beside him, throwing something.

The man went down in a heap, the front of his fur wrappings split open, a buckblade hilt lodged in his sternum.

The other men took a step back, moving their blades to a defensive position as they watched their friend writhe on the ground. Cole heard another statement half-said, this time by Penny, followed by a pop of air. He backed up slowly and glanced down at the grenade dangling from his chest. Several more men entered the clearing. Cole was alone, but preparing to jump out after the others.

“He’s mine!” someone roared.

A figure stepped forward from the rest, pulling the other beasts away by their shoulders. Cole felt the edge of the platform behind him with one boot. He reached up and wrapped his hand around the grenade, preparing to drop it near the pedestal, to count to three, and then to jump out. His wild plan was coming off without a hitch.

He looked up as the approaching figure began unwrapping his face, revealing blond hair so bright it made the snow seem dingy and gray.

Too late, thought Cole, as he began to tug the grenade loose. He looked down to make sure the pin was going to come free, then caught sight of a different glint of metal: a scratch in his new hand, the pink flesh peeled back to reveal a small hydraulic rod lined up with one of his knuckles.

Cole loosened his iron grip on the grenade and watched as the piston responded. He remembered how he had come to possess the hand. He remembered what the Luddites had done to Riggs. He remembered what he had done to Riggs.

Cole let go of the grenade completely, dropping his arm away from his chest. He reached instead for his buckblade, metal wrapping around metal. He peered up at Joshua, the man who had taken his arm, and forgot for a moment the need for his own escape…

Penny fell out of the air with a thud. The second half of her scream, a warning to Cole, remained caught in her throat, cut short by her skip across hyperspace. Several pairs of hands clasped her, dragging her out of the way before they began searching her for damage.

“Send the numbers!” someone yelled.

Penny looked toward the voice. It was Arthur, who stood at the inner edge of a circle formed around the spot she had just fallen through. A group of aliens stood there, waiting for another arrival.

A bright flash of a welding torch blossomed in Penny’s peripheral. She noted the stench of burning metal as some mechanic worked to staunch her loss of fluids.

“Not now,” she told him. She pushed the various worried hands away, the amount of stimuli buzzing on all sides driving her over the brink. She looked around for Mortimor, only to find his legs sticking out from a clustered mob of soldiers pretending to be medics. Scanning the sparse assemblage, Penny realized she wasn’t on a lifeboat full of hope. Whatever group had received them, it wasn’t the basket getting all the best eggs from HQ.

She grabbed the sleeve of one of the men inspecting her various gashes. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Three groups are through the rift,” the man said. “We got a bum slot in the queue.”

The man started to say more, but Penny’s mind was already elsewhere. It felt like it had been an hour since she’d vanished from the Luddite village and spilled out across the deck. Surely it had been long enough for the platform to recharge. Where was Cole?

She looked back to the center of the empty circle, her gaze joining dozens of others as they waited for another pop of air.

“Where the hell are you?” Penny asked no one.

Cole could see in his peripheral that he was being surrounded. He could also tell that Joshua would strike down any of his own men who dared attack him first. He put the crowd out of mind, which had him forgetting the potential danger inherent in the jump platform—the ease with which Ryke’s magical device could be used against the ongoing raid above.

He forgot these things and instead took a step forward, raising his sword and trying his best to not limp on his busted ankle. Cole remembered what Penny had told him during their first buckblade lesson: There was nothing heroic about these fights. There were no speeches. It was one slash and then it was over.

Keeping his feet in an orthodox fencer’s stance, he swung his blade through the air like a traditional sword, which elicited chuckles from the tightening circle and forced a smile across Joshua’s face.

The Luddite leader moved fast, darting into range and swinging one of the power angles Cole had hoped for, one designed to cut his torso in half. Cole locked up his new wrist, his elbow, and his shoulder, making his arm a solid extension of the rest of him. He transferred his weight to the ball of his good foot, bringing his blade around to block the attack.

The rebound should have ended him. The like magnetic fields should have thrown his own blade into his knees, taking off both limbs in a gory recreation of his first sparring mistake. Instead, with his stance soft and with all his weight on the ball of one boot, perched perilously atop the icy decking, the force of the magnetic repulsion spun him completely around, his elbow, wrist, and shoulder locked solid.

Cole went full-circle, twirling like a child’s top. He raised his blade as he went. For a brief moment, he was blind to his own attack, facing away from Joshua and his men, watching his hand as it steered the invisible blade through the air in a great circle.

When he completed the pirouette, expecting to slice Joshua in half, Cole felt with disbelief as his buckblade rebounded off Joshua’s sword once again—blocked.

But the rebound was milder the second time.

As the spinning world fell back into focus, Cole saw why: His sword had passed through Joshua’s waist to meet the man’s still-frozen attack on the other side of his body, bounced off, then slid back through the man’s chest once more.

Cole threw both arms out and regained his balance as Joshua fell in pieces.

The wide arc of fur-clad warriors lit up with furious shouts, screams of disbelief and outrage. Cole took a step toward the platform, counting. Several of the men ran forward, their full-throated fury befitting their animalistic garb, their arms high with attacks meant to kill.

When Cole got to “three,” he took a last step back, activating the platform with his weight and dropping a small metal pin before he went.

He left the howling men with a gentle pop of air.

Followed by a very loud bang.

Cole fell out of the air and slammed into the metal decking of the Bern ship. A scattering of snowflakes—caught up in the platform’s energistic bubble—drifted down around him. An alien rushed to his side and began probing for wounds. Beyond, a cacophony of shouts and worried conversations merged into a nervous, indecipherable patter.

The Underground member tending to him said something in a foreign tongue. Cole shook his head. He looked around for Penny and Mortimor as the leg of his combat suit was cut back to expose his injured ankle. In a cluster of confused, trembling bodies to one side, Cole saw Penny’s bright, red mane. She was in the same pose in which he’d first seen her: Leaning over a patient, splattered with blood, a mask of rigid worry on her face.

“Penny!”

She looked up, and Cole read the news in her set jaw. One of Mortimor’s hands clutched the folds of her combat suit just below her shoulder. Cole tried to swallow the lump in his throat; he attempted to stand, but the alien medic forced him back down. The figure held Cole in place while a needle went into his ankle, deep as the bone. Cole clenched his teeth at the pinch and metallic sting. A surge of icy numbness spread through his foot. The alien stood back, still chattering in a foreign tongue.

Cole rose and hobbled over to Penny and Mortimor, practically hopping on one foot. A corner of the hijacked Bern ship’s cargo bay had been transformed into a disorganized operating room. A Pheron knelt on the other side of Mortimor and was just finishing sewing up a wound on his exposed abdomen. The skin all around it was smeared pink from being wiped free of blood.

Cole collapsed by Penny. “What’re we waiting on?” he asked. He glanced toward the cockpit. “We need to get him help. We need to get back to HQ—”

“There’s nothing there,” Penny said, shaking her head. “These are the last of the technicians. Everyone’s out.”

“We need to get through the rift, then.”

Penny nodded toward one of the crewmen. “They say we’ve got about a day of waiting.”

Cole looked around. Most of the gathered figures were peering back. They were looking to Mortimor, who lay perfectly still, his head in Penny’s lap.

One more glance at the man’s wounds, and Cole saw quite clearly that they might have a day of waiting ahead of them, but Mortimor’s body didn’t have a day of life left in it. The old man’s eyes fluttered. He looked up at Penny as she stroked his brown hair, streaked with gray.

Mortimor coughed. A shaking hand came up to cover his mouth much too late. Cole reached for a pad of gauze in the medical kit and dabbed at the fresh blood on Mortimor’s beard, unable to stand the sight of it there.

Mortimor closed his eyes.

“I need you to stay with us,” Cole demanded.

“A little rest,” Mortimor whispered, his voice a quiet rasp. “A little rest, and I’ll be just fine.”

“No,” Penny said, gently shaking his shoulders. “You need to stay awake. I need you to keep talking.”

Mortimor shook his head, just barely. He started to say something, then another coughing fit seized him. Flecks of foamy red flew past his shaking fist. Some of it spotted his beard.

“Can’t,” he croaked. His lids fell shut slowly, then reopened. “Hurts to talk,” he whispered.

Cole rested a hand on the old man’s chest and tried to think of what to say to keep him engaged. Mortimor turned to him, his eyes half shut.

“Talk to me,” he said, as if sensing Cole’s thoughts.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Cole told him feebly. “We’re queued up for the rift. Once we get through, we’re gonna get you some better help.”

Mortimor closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t wanna be lied to,” he whispered, his voice barely audible.

What he said next was even closer to silence—his lips moved, but Cole couldn’t understand a word.

“What?”

Cole leaned closer. “What did you say?”

“Tell me—”

Mortimor grimaced, his hand moving to his pink-stained stomach. “I want to know about her,” he whispered, “before I go.”

“Who?” Cole asked. “And you’re not going anywhere. You just hang in there.”

Mortimor coughed, sending up another crimson shower. He shook his head feebly. “No more lies,” he whispered. “I don’t have time for them.”

“What do you want me to say?” Cole asked. He looked to Penny for help, but her attention was fixed on Mortimor. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Mollie,” Mortimor croaked. He said her name again: “Mollie. Tell me about my daughter. Talk to me about what she’s like while I rest my eyes just a little—”