“What is?” Cole asked.

“Choose that one,” Larken said. “It’s defenses.”

Cole scrolled down to it and pressed the control dial in with a click. Everything seemed to work just as he’d expect, even if he couldn’t read any of the gibberish on the screen.

“Anything?” he asked Larken.

“The chaff looks like it works.”

Cole laughed. Chaff was useless on the ground. He jogged the control dial to the left, and the previous menu came up. Again, he marveled at the familiar design aesthetics.

“What about weapons?” he asked.

“Scroll down,” Larken said.

Cole did.

“There!”

One of the menus was lit up. Cole had already begun moving to select it when Larken pointed excitedly.

“What is it?” Cole asked as he drilled down into the menu.

“Oh shit,” Larken said. He slapped Cole on the back.

“What the hell am I selecting?” Cole asked.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Larken said.

••••

“Get those flankers!” Scottie yelled. He and Ryn pumped their fists in the air as the lead ship spiraled out of control, a plume of dark smoke trailing from its rear. Their allies in the Bern craft, one of the squads Ryke had formed up with in hyperspace, had nailed it with a series of laser blasts. As the wounded ship went down, it spat out desperate bursts from its own canons, but the shots flew wide over the old village. Where the bolts of plasma struck the earth, they sent up geysers of dust and soil in fantastic kinetic explosions.

“Aw, shit!” Ryn said. He grabbed Ryke by the shoulder and pointed behind them. The third ship, the one from the rift, had doubled back and taken a perfect bead on their comrades in the ship above. Plasma cannons erupted, furious bolts of pure energy lashed through the sky, and one of the shots clipped the wing of the allied Bern craft.

The hostile ship closed, adjusting its angle of attack. Another round of plasma flared across the gap, catching the ship square, and their friends blossomed into a lumpy ball of orange with a black, smoky fringe.

Gone, just like that.

The attacking ship banked hard, pulling away from the fireball it had wrought, and angled down toward the base of the rift. It had dispatched the only ally Ryke and his friends had nearby, and now it was turning around to do the job of its wounded comrade, which finally reached the ground a kilometer away in a mad, screaming, explosion.

The two blasts from the destroyed craft reached them at almost the same time, the roars of destruction deafening and coming from all directions at once. The three friends flinched in unison, ducking from the onslaught of compressed air that followed the explosions. Recovering quickly, they stepped back from the console, watching the remaining ship line up on them, bringing its cannons to bear—

And then another ball of flames appeared, another explosion, right where the enemy ship had been. The orange cloud blinked into existence like an eyelid peeling back on an impossibly large and brightly colored orb. The fire blossomed out, its edge fusing with the billowing smoke from the other ball of airborne destruction, three large ships meeting their sudden end in bizarre and rapid succession.

Ryke scanned the sky, dumbfounded, looking for a clue as to why they were still alive and the Bern ship destroyed. He finally saw, and followed, a thin plume of gray smoke, an ephemeral and dirty rope of exhaust, as it threaded its way through the bright, blue, Lokian sky back to Mortimor’s downed ship. It was the spiraling vapor trail of a lone missile that hung in the sky, slowly dissipating but still tracing the flight of its maker to the sad, crashed craft on the horizon.

Group two’s ship sat there, listing to one side, a wing drooping, its body broken, and yet—still very much deadly.

48 · Byrne’s Ship

As soon as Molly noticed the Wadi chewing through the webbing holding her in place, the creature stopped and looked up at her, its scent tongue flicking out like a whip. Molly blinked away her tears and noticed the sheen of wetness on the Wadi’s eyes. The animal blinked at her. Its tongue spiraled out, then disappeared back in its mouth.

Molly looked to her restraints, which were partially eaten through. She tested them, wrenching her hands apart, but they wouldn’t budge. She glanced to her side to see Byrne and the pilot conferring. To her other side, she saw Walter watching her and the Wadi with interest. Molly turned her attention back to her lap. She focused on the chewed portion of the harness, imagining herself eating through it. She ground her teeth as she had been doing moments earlier.

Her Wadi resumed its efforts.

Her Wadi could read her emotions!

So much dawned on Molly all at once: The tongue-flicks and the head-bobs, the hiding in her pocket when Molly was frightened, the pawing at the air when she was enraged. All the nuances and small behaviors Molly had superstitiously been reading into for weeks were confirmed! Her desire to avoid anthropomorphizing the animal had blinded her, and now she knew how the sheriff had used her Wadi to attack his deputy!

The webbing holding her into the seat parted, leaving her hands shackled, but her arms free. She thought about having the Wadi test the metal bands around her wrists with its teeth, but worried they would be too much for her jaws. Molly kept her hands in place so she wouldn’t alert Byrne and turned and saw Walter eyeing her freedom. He glanced down at his own buckled harness.

Molly looked to the Wadi, who stuck out her tongue and waved it in the air.

Yeah, Molly agreed, but half an ally is better than none.

She forced the words to the surface, just as if she were wearing a Drenardian headband, then realized the Wadi probably didn’t use language that way. Why would it know English? She closed her eyes instead and tried to form pictures in her mind that the animal might understand.

It was harder than she thought, so reliant was she on using words to convey instructions and meaning. And then there were the distractions spinning around her and within her that made it hard to think: Her father’s crashed ship, the returning Darrin fleet and how she’d failed them, Byrne and the news of Lucin, Walter’s latest betrayal. The more she tried not to think of them, the faster these distractions bubbled to the surface.

Molly pictured a god-like arm sweeping them all away, leaving just the blackness behind her eyelids. She pictured herself there, along with the Wadi. She imagined the two of them high up in the air and glowing white. She then placed the Bern crewmen below them, shrouded in black. She added Walter last, up with her and the Wadi, as painful as the picture was to create.

Molly opened her eyes and looked down at her lap.

Her Wadi stuck out her tongue. The creature’s head cocked to the side, almost as if in confusion, or deep thought.

Rather than ignore the temptation to read into the animal’s body language as she would have before, Molly took it all in and interpreted the Wadi’s look as she would from a Human. Something about her mental image must not be right—it must not make sense to the Wadi. She closed her eyes and reexamined the image she had formed as if she were an alien—and she saw everything wrong with it all at once.

There was no telling if white was good and black was bad to the Wadi. Of course! The animal lived in dark caves, avoiding the twin suns of Drenard. And it lived down in the canyons, not up in the harsh air. Molly wiped the image out of her mind, realizing at once that her prejudices were opposite the Wadi’s. She tried to start over, concentrating on the very basics, the primitive building blocks of communication. She could feel a sheen of sweat tickling her scalp, could hear Byrne and the pilot talking in the background. She swept her imaginary god-arm across all the wrong images looming behind her closed lids. She tried, for the very first time, talking to her pet Wadi piece by mental piece:

She started with an image of her own neck, big enough to fill her imagination. Just her neck and shoulders. She pictured the Wadi on it, tail curled tight, rough cheek brushing just behind her ear. Molly tried to feel it. She took a deep breath and tried to exude the calm, good feelings that came from security and safety.

She panned back. She brought Walter into the image. Molly imagined her arms around his back, her head leaning on his shoulder. A tremor of disgust threatened to invade, but she stifled it. She pictured the Wadi moving to Walter’s shoulder, feeling safe and content there.

Zooming out even more, she brought in the Bern. She gave them snapping jaws and filled them with aggression. Rather than feel fear of them, though, the kind of fear that made her want to retreat into a cave, Molly swelled herself with bravery. She made a show of striking at them, of the Wadi pawing the air at them, but not launching an attack just yet. First, she showed Walter’s hands breaking free, the Wadi chewing through his harness. Her final thought was of the Wadi striking out at the pilot while she and Walter went for the armless Byrne. She filled the attack with such confidence, even Molly began to feel it. She opened her eyes to see the Wadi already moving, already biting through the webbing holding Walter to his seat.

It was happening.

Molly had thought it, and now it was happening.

She was about to fight the Bern, in that cockpit, with her bare hands.

Walter’s arms came free. He undid the strap across his legs while Molly fumbled to do the same with hers. The Wadi burst off Walter’s lap and launched for the back of the pilot, just as she had imagined. Molly jumped up to wrap her bound wrists around Byrne’s neck. She yelled for Walter to help, but saw, in the corner of her vision, that he was running the other way, out to the cargo bay.

Molly cursed him. She threw her hands over the top of Byrne’s head and brought her shackled wrists down to his throat. She leaned back, trying to crush whatever he was made of.

A shriek erupted from the pilot. Molly kept her eyes tight, her jaws clenched. She didn’t need to see what the Wadi was doing to know. She’d seen the animal tunnel its way through flesh before.

Whatever Byrne’s neck was made of, though, it wasn’t flesh. Even with Molly leaning all her weight back and her feet braced on the base of Byrne’s seat, she couldn’t feel the surface of him budge. It was like trying to strangle a lamppost.

Byrne roared something and began to sit forward, bringing Molly with him. She hadn’t worried about him doing harm to her, not without his arms, but she quickly realized she’d been mistaken. Byrne bent at the waist, pulling her into the back of his seat, then kept bending forward even more, his mechanical spine showing no limit to the forces it could impart.

Molly was crushed and smothered against the back of his seat. She could feel the strain on her shoulders, the bite of the shackles on her wrists, and wondered which joint would give way first and if it would happen before she suffocated. She felt the urge to gasp in pain, but her cheek and neck were twisted against the back of the padded headrest, her jaw forced to the side. With a sickening pop, Molly felt one of her shoulders leave its joint, the tendons and ligaments crying out in pain. Tears formed in her eyes and were trapped there. Molly couldn’t breathe. She pictured her death, her failure, her stupidity.

The other shoulder felt as if it could go at any moment, and Molly realized the danger of picturing such things, the sort of pain and confusion she was leaking to her Wadi. With only half a breath in her lungs, she pictured instead her Wadi attacking Byrne. She pictured raw hate and destruction, all aimed at the armless man. She concentrated her fear into fury, her pain into punishment.

Her shoulder was blasted with another wave of torture, but it was the pain of coming back together. The pressure came off Molly’s jaw, then her cheek. She felt Byrne writhe beneath her aching wrists. She pulled back, brought her hands up over his head, and nearly fainted at the jolt of agony as her shoulder popped back into place. Her arm went numb past her elbow, down to her wrist. She stood, despite the fear she might pass out if she did, and saw the Wadi tunneling through the side of Byrne’s head. Its little tail spun madly, its hind legs clawing at the air, its head fully inside Byrne’s.

The powerful, armless, robot went berserk. He straightened his legs, attempting to jump out of his seat, but caught his knees on the dash and ripped a panel clean off. He tried throwing his head to the side to bash the Wadi against something, but his shoulder hit the dead pilot, who was slick with blood.

Molly tried to steady Byrne in order to protect the Wadi. She found herself transfixed by the sight of the animal, clawing through steel and twisted rods. She held Byrne’s shoulders, her own arm screaming with shining pain, when something popped. There was a loud, cracking sound followed by a brief flash of light, and then a sizzle from Byrne’s head just before his body went limp, slumping down into his seat.

The Wadi’s hind legs emerged, its tail wiggling. It pushed against the side of the ruined head, trying to extract itself from the hole it had dug. Molly reached up to help, then recoiled at the zap of electricity and heat. The rear half of her Wadi shivered, then fell still.

Molly ignored the pain and grabbed the animal quickly. She wrapped her hands around its waist and pulled it out. She heard herself cry out when its front limbs, then neck, came out limp. Molly pulled the animal against her chest. She adjusted her grip, using the sides of her arm to distribute the searing heat and keep it from ruining her hands.

Before her lay two lifeless Bern. Her every joint was in agony. Her Wadi was deathly still. It had all happened in an instant. Not even a minute.

Walter.

Molly turned around, searching for him, wondering where he had run off to, and saw that he had closed the cockpit door behind him.

She rushed to the door and slapped the controls to its side.

Nothing happened.

She peered through the door’s round observation port. In the cargo bay beyond, she could see Walter standing off to one side, just on the other side of the door. Molly pounded the glass and yelled for him.