Cinthya, the fleet’s Cultural Advisor turned to Bodi. “Are you really worried about the loss of Drenard life?” Byrne thought she sounded more professionally curious than shocked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bodi said, which caused more than a few spines to stiffen. “The start of our invasion was coordinated to ease the progress of this one. If we wait until the Drenards have already wiped out the Humans, I assure you we’ll have a messier time scrubbing their blue filth out of this galaxy than we would have otherwise. They’ll be battle-hardened and they’ll be everywhere.”

“Bodi is right,” Byrne said. Chairs squeaked as everyone turned their attention back to the table. “But we still have plenty of time before we need to worry, and every passing day, more of our ships arrive from hyperspace—”

“Hello, hello, hello. Testing. One. Two.”

“I’m sorry, more of our ships arrive from—”

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Pardon me,” Byrne told the division heads. He turned to his assistant and nodded. “I believe our agent is making contact.”

The young officer jumped up from his seat and inspected the band on Byrne’s forehead. “Is it coming through okay? Do I need to rearrange anything?”

Byrne wanted to wave him away. As he collected his thoughts, forcing them into the circuits of the Drenardian Communicator, he suddenly realized why the fleshy Bern touch their ears while talking to distant people. With all the curious gazes pointed his way, Bern had an overwhelming urge to rest his missing hand along the band’s edge, signifying to the others that he was speaking to someone not present—

••••

“I’m here. Iss that you, Walter?”

Walter nodded. He reached out from the covers and flicked off the overhead lights. He could pretend to be asleep and continue to talk if Molly barged in.

“Walter, iss that you?”

“Yeah,” Walter thought. “Lissten, about that meeting—”

“Yess, Walter, I wass jusst disscusssing that with my ssuperiorss.”

Walter dug his fingers into his ears, as if he could plug the annoying hiss.

“I loaded the coordinatess you gave me into our hyperdrive, jusst like you ssuggessted,” Walter thought, “But sshe didn’t make the jump.”

“But you promissed,” the voice said.

“I know, but there’ss been a change of planss. I don’t think we’re jumping to hypersspacse anymore.”

“What’ss going on, Walter? I can’t promisse you all thiss gold if you can’t come through for me—”

“I think we’re gonna be jumping individual people to ssomewhere tonight,” Walter interrupted. “I’m gonna have to undo the changess I made to the hyperdrive or they’re gonna find out. I’m ssorry.”

“Individual people? What do you mean?”

Walter pulled his sheets up over his head. “There’ss thesse sshipss here keeping uss from going anywhere, sso I think ssome friendss of mine are gonna ssend people ssomewhere with the hyperdrive. I’m gonna have to change it back to the way it was.”

“Walter, iss there any chancse you could ssend yoursself ssomewhere with the hyperdrive?”

Walter thought about that.

“I’m not ssure,” he thought.

The voice in his head was silent.

“Hello?” Walter thought.

“One ssecond,” the voice said.

“I don’t know what to do,” Walter thought miserably.

The intolerable silence grew.

“Okay, Walter, I’ve got ssome numberss I need you to jot down.”

Walter fumbled at his belt for his portable computer. He powered it on under the covers, filling the small tent with an eerie luminescence.

“Okay,” Walter thought, as soon as the screen lit up. “What kind of numberss?”

“Thesse are ssome new coordinatess,” the voice in his head hissed. “I want you to jump to them asss ssoon asss you can.”

“I’ll try,” Walter thought.

“And, Walter?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t forget to bring Molly along with you.”

“Okay,” Walter thought.

Images and dreams of a cube of gold the size of a moon filled his imagination, as vivid and bright as the voice invading his mind.

“I promissse,” he hissed out loud, enraptured by the vision of so much shiny goodness, all of it soon to be his.

14 · Parsona

Molly clipped her harness to the eyebolt by the cargo door and stood ready to haul in bags of supplies. Each of the climbers had at least one black duffle, which they pushed ahead of themselves using ascenders that ratcheted along the ropes in one direction while refusing to slide down in the other. The sound of the thrusters holding Parsona in place erased the labored grunts of the climbers as they made their way up to the cargo bay and handed off the gear. Walter even emerged from his room to help out. He took one of the bags from Molly, nearly dropping the heavy sack as she let go.

The climbers scampered into the bay thankful for the grav plates, which altered the downward direction their bodies felt. Molly joined Walter and Cat in bringing them refreshments, nobody commenting on the blood stains on their boots and knees, the marks from their climb through a stairwell littered with the day-old remains of their crewmates.

“Are you sure we need another run?” Molly asked. She felt like doing anything she could to spare them another taxing ordeal, physically as well as emotionally.

One of the Navy men nodded as he sipped from his thermos. Behind him, Scottie leaned back against a bulkhead, taking deep breaths. Molly glanced out at the system of ropes rigged up across the decking beyond. Because of the grav plates and the thrusters holding them in place, it looked like she could just stroll out and walk along them. She had to remember the way the Firehawks had fallen the other day to appreciate the forces at play beyond her own decking.

The climbers rested for almost an hour before setting off again. Cat volunteered to spell Scottie or Ryn, but neither would hear of it. After they disappeared down the ropes, Walter made himself scarce as usual, and Molly and Cat returned to their boring duties as radio sentries and gossipers.

As before, they picked up sporadic chatter from the ships overhead, but nothing that seemed important. It wasn’t long before Cat and Parsona resumed the argument they’d been in the middle of before the climbers had returned and interrupted them:

“I just don’t see how you can sympathize with the Bern,” Parsona said, not for the first time.

Molly looked to Cat and watched her shrug. The Callite turned to gaze out her porthole. “I didn’t say they can do no wrong. All I’m suggesting is that the Underground might be the rebellious upstarts, and the Bern maybe got a right to try and quash them.”

“Now it’s them, huh? What happened to us?”

Cat waved her hand. “What’s it matter in the long run? Can you really think in absolutes like this? It’s like—”

Molly smiled and fed some of her protein bar to the Wadi as Cat struggled for the right word.

“It’s like what?” Parsona asked.

“Aw, hell. I was gonna say it’s like you can think like a computer, or something, but it wouldn’t have come out right.”

Parsona and Molly both laughed.

“I don’t mean to be obstinate,” Cat said. “I guess I’ve just thought on these things so long that I’m pretty sure there ain’t an answer.”

“Wait a second you two.” Molly leaned forward and turned up the ship’s radio.

“Affirmative, group designation four. Maintaining coordinates relative to—”

“It’s nothing,” Cat said.

“Yeah, it’s just that voice. I swear it reminds me of someone—”

“—approximate vectors. Edison out.”

“Flank me,” Molly whispered.

“No,” Parsona said. “It can’t be.”

“You two wanna fill me in?”

“Can we can transmit?” Molly asked.

“Yeah,” her mom said. “We’re riding the same frequency in order to listen in. I’m patching it together right now. But you don’t really think—?”

“I don’t know.” Molly shook her head and reached for the mic. She thought for a moment, then squeezed the transmit button. “Hello? Does anybody read me?”

The radio popped, and then a voice announced: “Carrier frequency compromised. All groups switch to secondary.”

A round of “copies,” followed, and then the radio fell silent.

“Well that sucks vacuum,” Cat said.

“Give me a second,” Parsona told them.

They waited.

“Try again. I think I have it, but there isn’t any chatter right now.”

Molly bit her lip and thought about what to say. “My transmission is scrambled too, right?” she asked her mom.

“Yes, but if the entire fleet is using this carrier wave, they’ll all hear you. Keep that in mind.”

Molly keyed the mic. “Mechanical bear, this is the Wadi queen, over.”

The same voice from before responded immediately: “Frequency compromised. Switch to tertiary.”

“Copy.”

“Negative,” a gruffer voice said. A familiar voice. “Break, break. Fifth group is maintaining secondary carrier frequency.”

Silence. Then a different voice. Higher. Softer. Still familiar.

“Molly? Is that you?”

Molly swallowed and blinked back tears.

“Anlyn?”

The trepid male voice returned: “This is group command, switch to tertiary frequency immediately.”

“Command, this is group five,” Anlyn said. “That’s your commander’s daughter. Please hold.”

“Anlyn,” Molly said into the mic. “Are you in that fleet up there? Can we talk? What are the Drenards doing with the Bern? How did you—What’s going on?”

“These aren’t Drenards, Molly. We—it’s complicated. We’re with some people from hyperspace. We control three ships up here—hold on a sec.”

Molly stared at the dash, waiting. She could hear her own heartbeat.

“Sorry, Edison had to say something on the other radio. We have command of three of the ships up here. There’s a few hundred people scattered between them.”

“What? Like refugees?”

“No. Warriors. They have a plan to close the rift but weren’t expecting the fleet to just be hanging out here. None of the Bern ships seem to be moving on, and we can’t act until they do.”

“They’ve been like that for weeks, just holding formation and shooting down anything that moves.” Molly let go of the transmit button, then squeezed it again. “About this Underground . . . are they from Lok? Do you have—? Is—?”

“I’m sorry,” Anlyn responded quickly. “We just learned what’s been going on ourselves. Another ship is still queued up to come through the rift. Your dad and Cole—” Anlyn paused. “It seems one of the ships went down on the other side.”

Molly gasped. Her heart pounded through her flightsuit. But still, she was just as much thrilled to hear someone relate their recent condition as she was dreading whatever had gone wrong. After keeping her thoughts and fears pushed into deep recesses for so long, she could feel them suddenly popping free, stirring and agitated and impatient.

“Reduce chatter, you two.” It was the other voice from the fleet.

“He’s right,” Parsona told Molly. “A constant stream is easier to stumble onto and hack.”

Molly looked at the mic in her hand, trying to sort out what was most important to say, what information she needed to best assist their combined efforts to defeat the Bern.

“How did the Underground infiltrate those ships in the first place?” Parsona asked, throwing one of her own queries onto Molly’s heap.

“My hunch is that the Bern are staging up here to protect their supply chain,” Cat told her. “You should probably tell them that.”

“Gimme a sec,” Molly told them. “I can’t think.”

She knew what she needed to say. She needed to speak to this other voice, to tell whoever was in charge up there that they were all in this together and that they needed to work that way. She tried a few phrasings in her head, then squeezed the transmit button.

“Command, we are with the Underground as well.” She looked over to Cat, who nodded, approving. “We are currently working on a plan to take out the large ship up there and possibly the rest of the fleet. It’s imperative that we talk.”

“Negative,” the voice said. “Any movement up here, and we’re sitting ducks. Maintain radio silence until the fleet moves out of this system. Nobody acts until then. Over and out.”

Molly cursed. Having friends so close and not being able to speak with them was going to drive her insane. She looked to Cat. “Any ideas?”

Cat shook her head.

“Molly, Anlyn here. We’re coming to you. I need coordinates for your cargo bay, and then I need you to clear out. Wait. Hold on—”

Molly heard voices conferring on the other side of Anlyn’s connection.

“Molly, make sure those coordinates are for a space one meter off the deck. And make them exact.”

Molly pulled up her nav screen to get her current position.

“How exact?” she asked.

“Edison exact.”