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.