With that, he snapped the reins, and the Theryl threw her head back. She let out a whistle, a trilling call more like a bird’s than any mammal Molly knew of. Her front hooves left the sidewalk for a moment and waved excitedly in the air. And then they were off—tearing down the dusty street, weaving through traffic, with Molly and the Wadi holding on for dear life.
The sheriff and Theryl moved as one, leaving Molly to move awk-wardly as something else. She let go of the useless little handles and wrapped her arms around the sheriff’s waist. She managed half a yelp as they picked up speed, the Wadi’s tail wrapping around her neck and squeezing off the rest of her outburst. All around her was the thunder of Theryl hooves and the strange and sickening rise and fall of its peculiar gait.
Molly concentrated on the rhythm of the beast and tried to move with it instead of fighting it. Each corner they rounded threw her timing off as everything leaned to one side or the other. After dozens of blocks flew by, the sheriff yelled something, and Clementine pulled to a halt in a staccato of clocking hooves.
“There,” the sheriff said. He pointed to a squat building at the end of the road, out on the edge of town. A tall fence studded with lookout towers ringed the structure; inset into this was a small guard station, which seemed to offer the only access through.
“Flank!” The sheriff’s arm came up, his finger tracking something rising from behind the building. The roar of the shuttle’s thrusters hit them moments after the realization they’d arrived too late.
“No!” Molly yelled. She tried to scream more, but the sheriff nudged the Theryl forward, and she had to hold tight to his back. The animal moved at a furious pace, making the previous jaunt seem like a stroll by comparison. Even the roar of distant thrusters couldn’t match the raw fury roiling beneath them.
Holding fast, Molly wondered if they weren’t better off heading back to Parsona and giving chase in the atmosphere. What good was the sheriff expecting to do? Arrest the department of immigration? That would be too late for her friends. She peeked under his armpit and saw the world ahead in brief flashes each time his hands came up with the reins. He steered right for the guard gate, urging the Theryl to dizzying speeds with loud “ha’s!” Ahead, the wall of steel wire and coiled razor jounced a dozen meters closer with each glimpse.
Molly tried to yell for him to stop, but the Wadi and the raw speed clutched her breath. She visualized all of them smeared across the fencing and wondered if the sheriff planned something as foolish as ramming the thing down—
Suddenly, the Theryl’s gait stuttered, almost as if it had come to the same realization. Its hooves skipped, its back sank down, and it took two strides that felt different. Then the rear legs of the animal flew up, lashing out straight to either side so quickly that Molly felt her stomach sink as her chin was pressed down to her chest. She grabbed her own wrists around the sheriff’s waist and squealed as the Theryl jolted into the sky, the rough gallop gone in a buzz of whipping wind.
Opening her eyes a crack, Molly caught a brief glimpse of the Theryl’s four legs spread to either side, a thin flap of skin stretched out between them and catching the air. Below, the coils of razor wire passed in silence, the Theyrl’s leathery wings waving at the fence with mock indif-ference.
The gliding seemed to draw out forever before the legs reached for the ground, the flap closing up over its belly, and the thunder of hooves on packed dirt resuming. Molly felt her spine compress with the landing; her teeth clapped shut as her jaw hit her sternum. She fought to secure her grip on the sheriff and peeked through his armpit with her tear-streaked eyes. She saw the squat building looming directly ahead, the fence having been cleared with an impossible leap.
“Whoa!” the sheriff yelled.
Molly leaned back as he pulled the reins; the thunder faded to drums and then to a steady knocking. The sheriff threw one leg over the Theryl’s head and jumped off to the ground. He turned and held out his hands as Molly slid down after him.
“A little warning next time?”
He smiled at her as he rubbed the large animal’s neck. “First time on one?”
“First and last, I hope.” Molly truly meant it. The Theryl turned and snorted at her, its wide whiskers making it seem sage and comical at once.
“Alright,” the sheriff said. He glanced back toward the guard gate, which was suspiciously lacking in the activity department. “Let’s poke our heads in and ask some questions.” He looked up at the fading roar of the shuttle, the white hull perched atop a column of thick smoke. “Maybe we can convince them to turn that thing around—”
The sheriff fell silent; he shielded his eyes to look up through the glare of morning sun. Molly did the same and immediately noticed the odd gap in the shuttle’s exhaust, the dash of blue sky between puffs of interrupted smoke. The shuttle stood high above, sideways, its thrusters dark and quiet. The craft grew larger as it began its slow descent—its plummet to the prairies of Lok.
“Hyperspace!” the sheriff cursed. He drew his pistol and continued to watch the shuttle fall toward the horizon. Molly wondered what he thought he was going to do with the weapon, if it was just a reaction to danger, or perhaps a desire to put something near death out of its misery.
“We’re too late,” Molly said as the Wadi cowered against her neck, its scales scratching her like course sandpaper.
The sheriff glanced at the nearby entrance to the building and reached inside a saddlebag. He pulled out a dozen long plastic strips, the same kind Molly used to secure hoses in the thruster room.
“If there were legals on that shuttle,” he said, “that gives us the right to arrest them.” He handed the strips of plastic to Molly. “Consider yourself deputized.”
Molly swallowed hard, an image of the last deputy flashing back in her vision. Before she could object to her new role, the sheriff strode off, walking to the door with a stride of purpose and vigor she hadn’t seen in his carriage around the office.
“Hey, wait,” Molly said, hurrying after him. “Shouldn’t I have a gun or something?”
“No, you don’t need a gun.” The sheriff paused at the door and peeked through the glass, cupping one of his hands by the side of his face. He grabbed the knob and turned to Molly. “Just stay behind me. We’re here to arrest them, not kill them.”
Molly nodded. She looked at the quickcuffs he’d handed her and figured she’d still feel better with a gun.
“Let’s go,” the sheriff said.
He pulled open the door and stepped inside. Molly followed him into a dimly lit foyer; she let the door slam shut behind her. Once her eyes adjusted, she saw an empty reception desk at the end of the hall with a set of double doors beyond it. The sheriff strolled across the room and glanced behind the desk. He placed one hand on the set of doors and turned his head to the side.
“Let me do the talking.”
Molly nodded once more.
With that, the sheriff pushed open the doors to the immigrations building. He and Molly stepped inside, expecting to find a labyrinth of cubicles, or perhaps a maze of tiled hallways studded with fluorescently lit offices. Either option would’ve felt familiar and would’ve matched the cliché of a large building built on bureaucracy.
As the doors yawned wide, however, the sheriff cursed out loud at the sight that greeted them. It wasn’t the office building Molly had expected. And yet, it was a sight more familiar. More sickeningly familiar.
“Flank me,” Sheriff Browne whispered.
Before them lay a room of high beds, most of which were occupied by prone figures. What Molly was drawn to, however, were the bags. Rows and rows of them hung from the beds, many of them already full of blue Callite blood.
“Holy shit,” she said.
She was so focused on the bags, on all the blue spirals of blood flowing from strapped arms and through the tubes that she was barely cognizant of the flurry of activity. About ten workers, their aprons splattered blue, cried out in alarm and rushed toward Molly and Sheriff Browne. The first gunshot startled her out of her shocked reverie. Molly flinched and dropped the bundle of plastic strips. One of the men running their way spun around, his arm flying akimbo, a bright, wet wound flashing out on his shoulder before he fell behind a gurney.
BLAM!
Another shot, and another man twirling from the impact. Browne held the gun straight ahead and lined up for another squeeze of the trigger. He fired again, and Molly found herself ducking from the noise, her hands going to her ears. Two more rapid shots, and Browne started backing up, yelling something to Molly, but her ears were ringing from being so close to the gun’s report.
One last loud bang, and the sheriff lowered his gun and started fumbling with it. Molly glanced through the smoke from the shots, the smell of spent gunpowder tickling her nose. Slowly, gradually, the world around her came back into focus. She watched Brown’s lips move beneath his mustache, saw him cursing at his gun. She watched him drop a handful of shells; they spun toward the floor and bounced and rattled there.
Molly looked back up at the remaining workers running their way. They came around the last row of gurneys topped with draining Callites, yelling and jostling and full of rage. Molly’s ears continued to ring. She remained frozen in place, watching events as if through another’s eyes. Her gaze fell to a nearby Callite, who was lifting her head and looking Molly’s way.
It was Cat. Her lips were moving.
“Run,” she was shouting.
Molly could hear it, now. Could match up the ringing in her ears with the movement of Cat’s lips.
“Run.”
But the men were already upon them.
The first man headed straight for Sheriff Browne, tackling him before he could reload. He crawled on top of the older man and began pummeling him senseless. Molly moved to help—she felt the Wadi fly from her neck—when a figure reached her at a dead run, his fist a blur.
Molly ducked and twisted out of the way just in time, letting the man fly past; his splattered denim coveralls barely registering in the back of her mind as something she should recognize.
Two more men scrambled around Cat’s gurney to join the fray. There was a shout from behind her, and Molly turned in time to see her Wadi slung by its tail and thrown down against the tiled floor. The creature went limp, and the man, his neck bleeding, went back to pounding on the sheriff.
Someone slammed into Molly’s back, sending her flying forward. She landed near her limp Wadi and was unable to take her eyes off it. She felt a rage coursing up inside, filling her up. A man stood over her, his boots planted to either side. He reached down to seize her, to drag her up, and Molly let him. She let him pull her up by her collar while she kept her body limp and half balled-up. As soon as her feet came under her, she kicked off the floor, jumping straight up as hard as she could, sending her head into the man’s nose.
His screams seemed to frighten off the ringing in her ears. The world returned to a normal speed as it resumed making noises. The man over a limp Sheriff Browne turned and realized the fight wasn’t over. He stood to join the others as Molly backed toward Cat’s gurney.
“I got this!” the man with the bleeding nose said, but the other men kept creeping forward. Molly finally recognized one of them as being Pete. She watched him spit through a sneer as she circled Cat’s gurney. She reached for the straps across her friend and started fumbling with them. The man she’d attacked lunged forward and grabbed at her wrists, forcing her to stop and pull them back.
“Nose!” Cat yelled.
Her head lifted off the gurney and turned to Molly.
“Now!”
The man was still leaning over Cat, his hands on her straps. Molly reared her fist back and threw her shoulders into the punch. She cracked the man on his already bleeding nose and felt a jolt of pure pain shoot through her knuckles and waver up her arm.
“Palms!” Cat said. “Use your palms!”
Molly obeyed and threw her left palm after the last punch. She struck him with the heel of her hand, using her armbones like battering rams. The blow slammed into the man’s face as he was already falling forward from the last blow. His head bounced off Cat’s stomach and flew back; his body crumpled on the other side of the gurney. Molly shook her right hand and watched as the other three men strode forward.
“Fight their joints,” Cat told her. Her voice was solid and unwavering, despite her condition.
“What?” Molly looked around for something to wield as a weapon, or someone to help her, but it was just a sea of still bodies and blue bags.
“You aren’t fighting them,” Cat said. “Just their joints. Pick a joint and fight it.”
One of the guys rounded Cat’s table and swiped at Molly. She bobbed her head under the blow and circled away, all the while pondering what Cat was saying and trying to remember everything she’d learned in her Naval combat classes.
The figure yelled something to the other two, keeping them at bay. He lashed out with a spinning kick meant to decapitate Molly. She fell into a crouch as his boot whizzed by, then lunged forward with her own foot. She caught him on the side of the knee as hard as she could and watched him wobble backward.
Molly turned to see what the other two men were doing—
“Forget them,” Cat said. “They’ll come one at a time.”
“Why?” Molly yelled. She danced to the side as the enraged worker shot forward, his attacks angry and telegraphed. As he passed by—his fists attacking the space where she just was—she threw the ball of her knee into the side of the same leg she’d already attacked. The man roared and fell to the ground, clutching his leg. Molly lined it up like a Galaxy Ball and kicked his knee as hard as she could with the steel toe of her flightboot. The man gurgled with pain, but a kick to his chin cut the sound off.