Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

23

Molly had no idea how long she’d slept. The urge was to stay there forever. To waste away between the sheets, carried off by invisible critters one dead cell at a time. But her brain hummed with questions, urging her up and out. Part of her needed to see the damage she had wrought, to see if the ring of destruction had fizzled out or finished its task.

She rolled over and extended her numb legs out of the covers. Her jumpsuit was on; she couldn’t remember getting into bed. Lowering her bare feet to the cool steel decking, she wiggled her toes. Her mind still felt hazy—disconnected from the rest of her body.

Her sling lay folded on the dresser. She donned her flightsuit first, then secured her arm with the woven Glemot grasses. Perhaps this was all that remained of their planet. Molly fingered the reeds, brown and dry—she couldn’t help but think how readily they would burn.

Soft sounds from far away trickled into her ship, warning her that a door was open—an outer world attached. She followed the sounds of distant pumps and circulating fans through the airlock. Down the long corridor and out the carboglass observation window she could see Glemot, like a beacon of cruelty. There was no one by the window—or so she thought. As she got closer, she recognized the black silhouette. Against the pitch-black of space, his ebony fur made him almost invisible. Molly could only distinguish the fringe of the massive beast, so dark it verged on purple, as it sheened in the light of distant stars.

“Good morning, Molly,” he said without turning.

Molly met his reflected gaze high in the glass. “Is it morning?”

“Up here, it’s morning when you get up. It’s evening when you become tired.” He turned to look at her. “Maybe, for me, it will be evening forever.”

“Who are you? And do you know what happened down there?”

“My real name would sound funny to you,” he interrupted, his voice a sonorous bass. “Call me by my Earth-language name.”

“Which is?”

“Campton.”

So many of Molly’s recent memories were still bubbling to the surface, it took her a moment. “Like the tribe?” she asked.

“Just like the tribe. And yes, I know what happened down there. I caused it, not you.”

Molly stared at him, her teeth clenched. She envisioned climbing up his back, her fists full of fur and fighting to the death, but his imposing bulk, his calm stillness, the sadness in his eyes—they confused and paralyzed her.

“I know you have many questions, I see the obvious ones on your face, but first I would like to give you some answers you don’t even know to ask for. Will you listen?”

Molly turned away and squinted at the fiery orb. She touched the glass hesitantly, as if the planet could burn her, but the thick pane was cold from the vacuum of space. Outside, a fiery new star existed where a green planet had once been.

“I’ll listen,” she said, “but I can’t promise you I’ll understand, or my anger will lessen. I’m pretty kinetic right now, but you probably don’t know what that—”

“I know what it means. You’re upset. Angry. I understand that. If I don’t sound like my brethren, it’s because I’ve lived up here with Earth’s archives for so many of your years. And I’m old. My wisdom has grown far beyond the juvenile stage that most Glemots… Well, imagine a human that learned so much about language, it could babble back and forth with a child. That should help you grasp—”

“So now I’m a baby to you? I said my anger wouldn’t lessen, I never promised it would remain where it was.” She turned around and sank to the decking, her back against the glass. Not wanting to look out the window, or at Campton, anymore, she stared down the hall into the small mouth of her ship.

“No, Molly. You are not a baby to me. I have come to respect you greatly. Edison is quite taken with you and your friends. I just… don’t think my kind can empathize enough to talk for another’s ears. They talk for their own.” His voice trailed off. Molly wrapped her arms around her knees.

“I use the present tense, but if the fire has met itself on the far side, Edison and I may be the only two Glemots left in this universe.”

Molly had been thinking it. Spoken, the horror became real. “Why?” she whispered.

“Other answers come first. You need to know something about our kind. I do not think you’ll be able to carry this with you otherwise.”

Campton paused, as if considering where to begin. “Glemots do not die from natural causes. Barring accidents, properly nourished, we live forever. It’s a poor design, even though most other species yearn for it.” He paused for a moment.

“I don’t understand the point.”

“Sorry. The problem is that we continue having children. Our population grows. Our solution is warfare and murder. Almost all Glemots die at the hands of another. If we did not, there would never be room for new Glemots. This is why our species thirsts for a balance.”

Molly swung her arm to the side, slamming the glass beside her. The sharp slap echoed down the corridor. “What kind of balance is THAT!?” she yelled, not willing to face it.

“The ultimate kind,” Campton said. “You need to understand, the Glemots were a threat to the universe. I did not see this until a friend explained it to me: that once we realized the surface of our planet was not the limit of our niche, we would begin an expansion outward. We would fill every crevasse, every nook, and all else would perish. Eventually, we would run out of even that much space and begin to kill one another anew. We would be right here, right where we started, but there would be nothing besides us.

“When we discovered technology, most of us were eager to begin this expansion. Some cautioned against it. A Council decision was made that we hold off on development while we worked out the balance calculations, which were more complex than any we had attempted before. But a small group, led by a good friend of mine with the Earth name of Leefs, built a starship and went off to learn more. They had defied Council decree and were to be executed.”

“They went to see the gods,” Molly said.

“Ah, you know the legends. But probably not the facts that spawned them. Leefs returned a changed Glemot. He had learned about the universe beyond. Hunted by the Council, his band of rebels tried to get the message to the rest of us. Meanwhile, we were waging a new war on imbalance with our technology. We flushed the Navy out of our system with EMPs—”

“They were NUCLEAR BOMBS!” Molly slapped the floor in protest.

“That is what they were to you. When you built them on your planet they were designed for this.” Campton swept a paw above her and toward the planet below. “A side-effect of your device is a pulse that wipes out electronics. It’s a by-product. But they are the same thing, Molly. Camptons built them for the pulse, and our by-product is what you saw yesterday.”

“Why build something like that? Are you all insane?!”

“Are you?” he asked. “The EMPs are what drove the Navy away. Incapacitated their ships, scrambled their communications, and made this station a lifeless hulk for some time. The balls of fire they created in space were as meaningless to us as the pulse was to your Japan and your Israel. While my tribe grew in power in order to restore the balance decreed by the Council, Leefs was trying to explain the great threat our race posed. Of course, none of us would listen, even when they kidnapped me and tried to…”

Campton fell silent. Molly turned to him, but the large creature looked away.

“It wasn’t until Leefs died by my own hands that I understood. That is when I felt the truth of his last words in my own claws. Like a fool, I went to the Council. I wasn’t calculating anything. I should have just taken one of the orbital EMPs and activated it without a word to anyone. Instead, the council found me insane, which is un-useful. I was designated for termination, as they would say. But the doctor couldn’t do it. Watt couldn’t kill his own father—”

“You’re Watt’s father?!” Molly asked.

“Yes, and Edison’s grandfather.” He gestured toward Molly’s splint. “And I recognize his work. I am glad you met him.”

“Are you glad I KILLED HIM?!” she demanded.

“No. Not glad. Satisfied, maybe. Resigned. But so was he. I imagine he was there when they activated the device.”

The thought made Molly feel sick. She remembered the familiar form overseeing the repairs and a knot crept up into her throat. Again, thinking on the one who died was about to make her cry, where the billions just left her numb.

“He would be happy you mourn him.”

“SHUT UP! JUST—SHUT UP!” She smacked the floor again and bent over, her forehead nearly touching the metal plating. Tears dripped down from the pull of artificial gravity and broke up on impact.

Campton remained still, looking out into space. After a few minutes, he spoke softly, “I am sorry for using you like this. I really am. I am sorry the one had to be someone like you, someone who really cares. It would have been better if those UN ships—”

“Why was Watt helping you if he was a Campton?” She wasn’t sure why she wanted to know, but she did. She couldn’t fathom why Edison would help do this.

“Leefs was Edison’s other grandfather. Watt’s marriage was a forbidden one. Whitney did not just bring her father’s blood into that union, she brought his ideas. Watt understood better than I what needed to be done. If he could have gotten his paws on the device, or convinced Orville to join us—”

“I’ve heard enough,” Molly said. She tried to get her legs beneath her, but Campton sank to the floor, a gentle paw resting on her shoulder.

“I do not think I have said what you really need to hear. It is very important.”

She looked away, but settled back to the ground.

“Things change, Molly. And we must let them.”

“Let them? Or force them?” she asked.

“It is hard to explain this to someone who lives such a short life, so let me try to give you some tools you can take with you, some thoughts you can explore as time closes your wounds. Please, just hear me out.”

“Talk.”

“Let me ask you a question.” He turned to the side and nodded at the burning ball beyond the glass. “Why was Glemot beautiful?”

The past tense choked her up again, but she wanted him to know. This was getting to her own questions. “Because I felt it. We all did. There doesn’t need to be a why, it just was. It made me feel better than I ever had in my whole life, if just for a moment!”

“Ah, so the beauty was in you and not out there?”

“You’re getting ready to start sounding like my… like my navigator. And I hate those talks.”

“I understand, but tell me, would Glemot be beautiful if no brain ever beheld it? If it was the only thing in space?”

“I would know it was beautiful.”

“And there you are again. Creating a ‘you’ in order to create the beauty. Do you not see? The beauty is in us, our senses, our experience of Glemot. Glemot is just a ball of rock covered with mold.”

Molly shot him a look.

“Which universe would contain more beauty, a space with Glemot and no one to ever know it, not even us making up the example, or a universe of billions of people, like you and me, who were shown a mere photograph of Glemot? Which one would contain more beauty?”

Molly weighed the two and didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

“The sad truth is this: the way to create more beauty in the world is to create more organs that can sense it. The wrong solution is to selfishly limit those organs so the few, already alive, can hog the beauty for themselves.”

“How can you talk about creating when you just helped me commit genocide?!”

“Because neither extreme is correct. My old tribe was right to worship balance, but wrong to think they could control it. Glemots would have destroyed the universe, or filled it to capacity before warring with one another on a scale beyond even my ability to calculate. Nothing would have remained, not even a picture.

“Leefs was right when he came to me and explained the threat we posed. Balance has been restored, and our planet will come back, as beautiful as ever. If I choose, I can sit here and watch it happen. For me it will not take much time at all.”

“It will never be the same.”

“You are correct. And it shouldn’t be.”

They both fell silent for a moment. Molly digested this.

Then Campton continued, “When I was a pup, our species lived huddled near the equator. Ice covered most of Glemot as our sun went into its usual period of hibernation. Only a thin band of green ringed the planet. When the ice retreated, our desire for balance and stasis sent us into a fury. At the same time, the expanding zones of lushness created a rush to reproduce and gather resources. It was a bounty and we cursed it for being foreign.

“Glemot, of course, did not care. It had been doing this long before we were around. It will do it long after we are gone. Only our star will finish the cycle when it expands and consumes the four planets nearest it.”

They both sat in silence again, thinking.

“I wish you could live a long life, Molly. That you could come back here thousands of years from now. You might pick me up in your spaceship and take me down to the planet. The ash will be good for the soil. And all of Glemot’s water percolates up through the unbroken plate, feeding the entire surface from beneath. We could explore the new planet together, meeting creatures and eating fruits that do not yet exist anywhere in the universe. And that is the thrill of change. The diversity of beauty that occurs when we do not cling too hard to what we love. Maybe none of this will ever make sense to you. Perhaps your span of living is much too short. But I have come to know these things. My friend and I made a very tough decision based on this knowledge, one that hurts me more than you will ever know.”

Wiping tears from her eyes, Molly looked at him. Campton’s chest heaved as he pulled in a breath and let it out slowly.

“I will sit here and cry for longer than you will live,” he said. “I will question myself and balance cold calculation with the surety of my heart, and I will never know why one is stronger while the other is right.”

Molly stood up. Her brain was full and she’d heard enough. She turned back to the ship, her bare feet sticking to cold steel. She could hear Campton’s deep voice following her down the corridor. “I will never forget you, Molly Fyde,” he whispered, “For the rest of my years, I will remember and think of you…”

But the rest never reached her. Like Campton’s thoughts, they would live with him in orbit. Alone and forever.

24

Cole woke to the sound of the hyperdrive spinning up and almost rushed out of his room without getting dressed first. He emerged from his quarters hopping on one leg, tugging at his pants and cinching them off.

“Molly?” he hollered.

“Sshe iss in the Captain chair,” Walter said, popping his head out of the engine room. It nearly scared Cole to death.

“What in the world is she doing?”

“We’ve been topping off the hyperdrive coil, Navigator.” Walter spit the last word out with a sneer, obviously thinking he outranked Cole with plenty of room for several crew members between.

“What? How long have I been asleep?” Cole reached into his room for his only shirt and pulled it over his stiff back.

“Long time. I have sstored much while you do nothing.”

Cole shot him a look and hurried to the cockpit where he found Molly going through the pre-flight routine. He leaned over the control console so she would notice him before he spoke. He didn’t want to startle her. “Feeling better?” he asked.

She looked at him. “A little. Not much. And good morning.”

“Is it morning?”

“For you it is. Walter hasn’t slept a wink. I’ve no clue what keeps him going. Well, the loot, I suppose.” She finished booting the nav computer and swiveled in her seat to face him. “Sit down,” she said.

“I’d rather go talk to our hosts, figure out what in hyperspace is going on around here.”

“It might be better to hear it from me.” She gestured toward the nav chair again.

Cole sat and studied her closely. “What? You talked to them?”

Molly nodded. She told him what she’d learned from Campton, who he was, why he had fought to extinguish his own race. Cole listened, his own anger turning to confusion, then disgust. He controlled the urge to interrupt until Edison’s name came up.

“He’s Edison’s grandfather?”

“Yeah. And it gets weirder, turns out he’s descended from the Leefs as well. We can diagram it later if you like, but can we please work on getting out of here and talk about this between jumps? I can feel that place burning from here, like it’s on my skin. I’d jump into space if that’d make the feeling go away.” Cole saw her lips purse into the slimmest of smiles. “I’d even be willing to endure a few of your horrid jokes, see if that’d help.”

Cole relaxed. “My jokes are nebular,” he said.

Molly rolled her eyes at him. “Well… go tell them to Walter. The drive is warming up and showing eighty-five percent. Stand by the coupling and I’ll let you know when you can release it.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” He gave her a salute.

She made a rude gesture.

The fusion feed snaked across the hallway in the rear of the ship, leading through the airlock and into a mechanical hatch. Walter fussed with some crates, trying to shove them into one of the cargo pods.

“How’d you make out, there, pal?”

Walter flinched and Cole felt some revenge for the scare earlier.

“Lotss of goodiess. The Navy can keep their reward!”

After another shove on the crate he turned back to Cole and said, “Forget you heard that. Very little ssleep for the Cargo Officser.”

Cole slapped him on the back and ducked into the mechanical room. He couldn’t believe most of this ship’s parts had been scattered in the dirt a few days ago. It looked even cleaner than before. Parsona was probably more reliable having passed though Glemot hands.

The Glemots.

He forgot about the fusion feed and rushed down the corridor to the observation glass. The planet was half-lit up by the planet’s sun, the terminator between night and day splitting the planet in two. But you couldn’t tell. Both sides were lit up. They were just slightly different shades of orange and red. However long he’d been asleep, it wasn’t longer than it took a planet to burn.

There was no sign of the two Glemots. Cole considered going off in search of them, Edison at least, but the branching hallways going off in all directions left him not knowing where to start. Peering up through the glass, he could see entire wings of the Orbital Station jutting out into space. There was a lot of potential for scavenging here, but the empty expansiveness of it all just left him feeling overwhelmed and lonely. He trusted that Walter had stocked up on enough valuables, stuff they could trade later for actual necessities.

Feeling far removed from the Parsona—and Molly—Cole left the planet behind and jogged back toward the ship. He could hear her yelling “One hundred percent!” just as he ducked through the inner airlock door.

“Gotcha!” he hollered back, trying not to sound out-of-breath.

He unplugged the fusion cord and stowed it back in its locker. The only thing tethering them to the station now was the airlock. He stepped through it to return the Station’s section of the fusion feed and opened the filling hatch, releasing the putrid odor of dried fusion fuel—the smell of something rotting or dying. He averted his head from the familiar scent, an odor that permeated ship hangars and OS fueling stations, and coiled the cord into the hatch.

Securing the locker, Cole looked around a final time to make sure everything was in its place. The usual procedure of cleaning up for the next ship jarred him into a realization: there was nothing keeping people away from this Station or the planet anymore. The Navy would be very interested in hearing about what had happened on Glemot and sending a recovery team to secure their property. He considered this as Edison and his grandfather strolled into view. Cole corrected himself, recalling the way their ship had been commandeered. It would never be safe here.

The two Glemots conferred, their low grumbling rolling down the hallway, indecipherable. Cole fought the urge to go and talk to Edison, to wish him farewell. There weren’t any ships on the station, but he could imagine the two beasts eventually whipping one up and going down to survey the damage below. When the larger alien wrapped Edison in an embrace, Cole realized the pup had different plans. Edison turned away from his grandfather and started lumbering down the corridor toward the Parsona. He had a bundle over his shoulder.

Cole’s heart ached with conflicting emotions.

Deep down, he felt connected to Edison on a primal level. Their all-night adventure to rescue Walter and engineer Parsona’s escape, no matter what horrors it had led to, had sealed their fates to one another. They had also risked their lives for each other under the forest floor, saving one another from certain death. There was something in their male makeup that would never let them forget this. If Edison came and asked to join their crew, Cole would not hesitate. But then—he had Molly to consider. He couldn’t imagine her wanting a constant reminder of this tragedy around. He wondered if she could ever again see his coat without remembering the matted blood and the stench of death on it. And no matter what he felt for Edison, Molly came first. Her feelings came first. Especially now.

He steeled himself to turn Edison away—when Molly brushed past. She walked down the corridor to greet him, throwing her good arm around the large youth and leaning into his fur.

Edison dropped his bundle and returned the embrace. Molly’s face was buried in his robe, but Cole could still hear her muffled sobs. He respected the moment and ducked back through the airlock hatch.

Behind him, down the corridor that pointed out to Glemot, another orphan officially joined their unlikely crew.

They never saw the fires on Glemot again. Molly pulled the airlock door closed while Walter secured the last of his loot. Everyone changed into their flightsuits. For two hours they did a full pre-flight check, going over all of the ship’s systems; it was the first chance they’d had to observe proper ship procedures since acquiring Parsona. There was no doubt they were running away from something once more, but they could do it at their own pace this time.

While Cole went over the engine room and checked the thrusters in the lazarette, Edison made some changes to the crew seating. In less time than it took to prep the ship, he was able to modify the two jump seats on the starboard side to better accommodate his bulk. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a flightsuit that would fit him, but he assured Molly and Cole he’d be fine, just as long as they didn’t lose cabin pressure.

Walter stuck his head in the laz. “Edisson keepss moving toolss!” he complained.

Cole replaced the dipstick back in the thruster and wiped sweat off his brow. “You two need to get along, okay buddy?”

“I like Glemotss better when they’re on Glemot,” he told Cole.

“Well, he helped me save your butt,” Cole reminded him. “You guys need to get along. Hey, why don’t you show him your videogame?”

Walter huffed out with a hiss, and Cole finished his check of the thrusters. He secured the rear door before heading up the hall to the cockpit. Parsona was full, he realized. Unless they wanted to start bunking together, they needed to stop collecting runaways. At the rate they were going, they’d look like a bus of refugees by the time they got back to Earth.

He nodded to Walter as he crossed the cargo bay and gave Edison a playful slap on the shoulder. They were bent over Walter’s little computer, grumbling and hissing, while it emitted sounds like exploding fireworks.

Cole joined Molly in the cockpit and marveled at how natural all this felt, like a home. He even considered the “girlie” chair his, so long as Molly didn’t rub it in.

“Everything good back there?” Molly asked.

“Pristine. The thrusters are purring better than before. You ready?”

“Absolutely. Popping the outer seal now.”

Cole grabbed the flightstick with his left hand and nudged Parsona away from the station. He peeled away for a long run on thrusters. No matter where they went next, they didn’t want anyone tracing them back to the Glemot system from their hyperspace signature. Besides, the entire crew had agreed: a few days of burning thruster fuel would be good for them. It would allow Molly’s arm to heal, along with her other, internal, injuries.

After a few minutes of steady thrust, Molly turned down the music in the cockpit. Hearing her parents old collection of tunes was just making her sad, anyway.

“I vote Navy,” she said. “Avoiding them hasn’t seemed any safer than trusting them.”

“I agree,” Cole said. “Both have been equally dumb so far, which is why we need a third or a fourth option.”

“It is an either/or scenario, genius.” Molly immediately felt bad for her tone of voice. It was an old habit that was starting to feel silly: calling Cole names instead of telling him how she felt. She’d been doing this for two years in the simulator, and Cole had always returned the jousting. Molly wasn’t sure what was different, if it had been the Academy, if she was growing up, or if she had just grown weary of the ruse.

The worst part was, she didn’t know how to stop this routine once she’d started it. A thousand times, even before this adventure, she’d wanted to tell Cole she was attracted to him. But she’d built a wall around her, erected with a million tiny insults, and she didn’t know how to start taking them back. She just couldn’t get the first word of that sentence out of her mouth.

Molly wondered if boys felt as stupid as girls sometimes do.

“Not necessarily, sweetheart,” Cole responded. And two of Molly’s questions were answered.

“There are different ways of running to the Navy,” he continued, “and different ways of avoiding them.”

“Do tell, snookums.” Gods, she couldn’t stop herself!

“Before I do, you want the chase camera up to watch our six?”

She didn’t need to be reminded what was back there. “I’d prefer not,” she said, “if you don’t mind skimping on protocol.”

“No problem. So, like I was saying, we have new options now.”

“Well, yeah. For one thing we have a full hyperdrive. Two jumps and we’re home.”

Cole nodded. “We also have a Glemot. And loot.”

“A Glemot. Sure. But what does Edison have to do with anything?”

“Well, I’m starting to think we keep flying into deep trouble with an unarmed aircraft, and it’s none too wise, so what we could—”

“You want to militarize Parsona? After what we just went through?!”

“Especially after what we just went through. I’m not saying I ever want to see a nuke again, just that we need some chaff pods, at least one laser, and maybe a missile rack or two. I’m starting to feel naked without them.”

“That’s because you’re a delusional paranoid who thinks everyone is after us.”

“Haven’t they been?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “So what’s your plan?”

“Darrin, one of the systems we considered before we settled on Glemot. We couldn’t reach it before, but we can now.”

“Remind me why we were considering Darrin?”

“It’s on the way to Canopus—and Earth. It was settled by humans, which is a plus. And it’s another spot the Navy doesn’t like to go. But for known reasons, this time.” Cole leaned forward and consulted the report on his nav screen. “Darrin is dominated by its arms trade. It’s a pretty hot place, as in illegal. It would’ve been good cover before, but now it’s even better. I saw some of what Walter managed to scrounge together and there’s some quality parts and computer supplies in the holds. I have no doubt we could get a lot for them. I say we jump to one of the two Darrin planets, trade some of our goods for arms, and have Edison hook it all up. At least then, whatever we decide to do next, we’d have a few options. Hell, if Parsona or the UN ships had military-grade jammers, the last week wouldn’t have happened.”

“Nonsense. We have no idea what kind of jammers it would’ve taken to stop what they did. I agree with your premise, don’t get me wrong, but not your conclusion.”

He opened his mouth to argue another point, but Molly cut him off. “Do they allow strangers to come in—especially Academy cadets—and just take their weapons?”

“According to the Navy, their only motivation is money.”

“How old are those reports?”

“Twenty years. But c’mon, how much could change in twenty years? We’ll bounce back and forth and have the two planets begging us to take their goods!”

Jumping into a star system for the first time posed some tough navigational decisions. Safe entry points were rare, the few good Lagrange areas were normally cluttered with satellites and commercial traffic. With the Darrin system, the conundrum was reversed: it had two habitable planets and so many good Lagrange points, it was hard to settle on just one. The luxury of choice caused a paralysis just as real as the fear of jumping into a system full of debris. Partly because, if something went wrong after a careful selection, it was the navigator’s fault, not fate’s.

Without an Orbital Station’s Bell radio, there was no perfectly safe method for jumping anywhere. But—as navigators loved pointing out to shaky pilots—the ridiculously long odds of two ships jumping in-system at the same time and place were mathematically implausible.

Pilots loved pointing out, in response, that it happens now and then anyway—math be damned.

Ships went missing all the time and superstitious pilots loved jumping the gun and blaming a hyperspace collision. It didn’t matter that in most cases these ships showed up later with a valid excuse (or were busted for doing something illegal). Every pilot remembered that initial scare plastered on the front page of their reader’s daily and then they ignored any good news buried on the fifth tab two days later.

Molly was forever accusing Cole of this sort of reasoning; the calculating navigator in her had not yet given way to the paranoid pilot. She still marveled at his ability to remember the hits and forget the misses, leading to all sorts of paranoid conclusions. Take the Navy, for instance. Molly felt sure they could jump their way to a major Navy station, perhaps at Canopus, and everything could be explained. The death of the men on Palan—their whereabouts since—everything.

But Cole had some good arguments for being cautious, and Molly was willing to be tactical. They’d had some close scrapes, she told herself. And then, there was the other reason to go to Darrin. One Molly was just becoming aware of. It was an irrational excuse, but she knew the moment they returned to Earth with Parsona, Cole would be off to the front lines and she’d be back in class at Avalon. The investigation into her father’s death would mothball her ship for months, if not years. It would be two more semesters to graduation before she could go off to make it as a ship’s captain, even if she could win some jobs as a young female pilot.

Their adventure had gotten off to a rough start, to say the least, but who’d want to go from flying around the galaxy to pretending to be a kid again? It was hard enough to go from being trained by the Navy to save the universe to hearing Gretchen Harris rave about how nebular her new sneakers were.

The more that happened to her, the quicker she grew up—making the idea of going back seem impossible.

Then again, if she was right and Cole was wrong, what would the Navy say when they showed up with Parsona armed to the teeth? Calling this the prudent option was stretching it. Cole, of course, insisted the additions would be defensive in nature, but Molly knew how the Navy would see it.

Cole continued to debate entry points and jump offsets while Molly thought about the overall direction they were heading and how far they were from reaching their goal. What was their goal? To get home? Was home still Earth? Or was it becoming this ship?

“Cole.” She interrupted his argument for Darrin I, which was just as well since she wasn’t listening to a word of it, “How long ago did we leave Earth?”

Cole looked up to the ceiling as if the answer was on one of the readouts there. “Let’s see, how many 24-hour cycles did we spend between Palan and Glemot?”

“Four,” Molly offered.

“Okay. Fourteen days, total. Counting today. Oh, man. Really? Has it only been two weeks?”

“I was just thinking the same thing. And about our final destination. Beyond arming the ship and challenging the Navy to a fight, what’s our ultimate plan, here?”

“What? I don’t want to fight the Navy, I’m in the Navy. I just don’t trust whoever is screwing with us. And that’s my final destination. Standing in front of the person who toasted our simulator and watching their nose bleed.”

“So this is all about the Tchung simulation for you?”

“Yeah. What else is there? We’ve had some crazy stuff go down in the last two weeks, but it isn’t that strange when you consider we landed in a pirate zone the day of the rains with our Navy contact shut out, and then we jumped into a civil war on a planet nobody has ever returned from. In all likelihood, you and I have used up our Crazy Quota for the rest of our lives. Hey, we can’t go into every situation expecting to plan a prison break or to pick up another runaway.”

“Says the guy who thinks the Navy is after us.”

“Would you rather jump to Canopus, Menkar, and then Earth? You really think we’d get past Canopus?”

“I think I’m with you on feeling naked without any way to defend ourselves. And Edison’s toga is no good if we have to press some Gs.” Molly sighed. “Okay. Let’s hit Darrin, get some jump suits, add a few discrete defensive options, and then see about Canopus.”

“Excellent. Glad we agreed on this. Again.” Cole gave her a lopsided grin. “Now, are we settled on Darrin I over Darrin II?”

“Fine. But if they brag about how their ‘new houses are older than Darrin II’s old houses,’ I’m leaving.”

Cole laughed at his own Euro/American joke and started keying in the jump coordinates.

Molly couldn’t help herself, she began double-checking him, fighting the rise of nausea in her stomach ahead of the jump. Her intestinal tract could anticipate them just from her thinking about it. The simulators were great at inducing the nausea that was supposedly common to hyperflight, but after a few jumps in Parsona, Molly was starting to think the Navy had the volume too high. Her stomach hurt far more in training than it had during the flight to Palan or Glemot. In fact, she couldn’t remember getting sick when her father brought her to Earth from Lok. It seemed like one more thing the Navy thought best to overdo.

Still, as Cole punched in the arrival coordinates to the spooled-up hyperdrive, Molly could feel something gnawing at her. Maybe this time her stomach knew something she didn’t? Cole counted down out loud and placed his finger over the jump switch. Molly gazed through the porthole on her side in anticipation, expecting the familiar sight the Navy had gotten right: stars shifting a little in space.

Instead of this, however, Molly was treated to the jarring horror of all those pinpricks of light simply disappearing.

A Darkness took their place. Poised to strike.

25

“What the hell?” Cole asked.

Molly assumed he referred to the new void they’d entered, but she turned and found him fixated on the SADAR. She looked at her own screen—the normally black and green display was slathered in red warning lights. She’d never seen anything like it. She leaned forward and peered through the canopy—into the impossible blackness beyond. Where in the galaxy had they ended up? How could it be devoid of stars?

The emptiness had bits of detail: a fuzzy line of lighter gray, a jagged string of deepest black. It looked like a wall of charcoal shifting before her.

And then it hit the carboglass, right in front of her nose, with a jarring thunk.

Molly nearly flew out of her skin, yelping like a girl in a horror holo. She instinctively threw her right hand up to shield herself from the thing coming at them, her elbow catching in the grass sling. Cole shifted the flightstick back, moving the ship away from whatever it was.

They crunched into something behind them. A sickening thud and the screech of twisting metal tore through the hull, setting Molly’s nerves on fire. The familiar shiver of a bad docking maneuver overcame her, but this time it wasn’t a simulator. She glanced at the SADAR; red flashes filled the entire screen. Parsona crept forward again, toward the mysterious darkness that had left a mar on the carboglass.

Molly peered through her side porthole and caught a glimpse of a star—it was quickly obscured by something black, and then it flashed out again. When it disappeared once more, she realized where they were. Her chest filled with the dull terror that overtakes someone when they realize, only too late, what sort of danger they’d just avoided. It was the same feeling she’d had a week ago when the hyperdrive nearly zapped her arm off. Only this could have been worse. Much worse.

“Don’t move the ship, Cole.” She reached across with her left hand and rested it on his. “We’re in an asteroid field.”

“Bad noisse in the back!”

Molly turned to see Walter behind their seats, one hand on her headrest, the other pointing toward the rear of the ship. Edison was twisting around in his crew seat and looking forward, a quizzical furrow in his brow.

“Oh my gods—” Cole squinted through his own porthole, watching black shapes twist by, the occasional star poking through. “It’s dense!” he said.

Molly tasted adrenaline in her mouth. That they were alive wasn’t accessible to the part of her brain that knew they’d very nearly disappeared forever. She tried to plan the next move, but she was still admonishing herself for what a stupid thing they’d already done. She watched Cole zoom the SADAR all the way out, but it just turned the display solid red, unable to distinguish individual contacts. He shook his head. “We should totally not be here.”

“You’re right, we should be in the L3 off Darrin I.”

“No, I mean we shouldn’t be here here. In the cockpit. Talking about this. Existing. I’m looking at, say ten meters to the rock behind us and about twelve to the one that bumped the nose. There’s a biggie to my right and a cluster of junk on your side. WHOA!”

Molly flinched. “What?!”

“Man, something just moved across the edge of my range fast. Not all of these are just milling about. We need to get out of here, and quick-like.”

Walter hovered between and behind them, hissing at the bad news.

“Go strap in, buddy,” Cole advised.

He put his hand on Molly’s shoulder. She could feel the cold through her flightsuit.

“It’s okay, Walter, I need you to go buckle up. I don’t want anything happening to you.”

He nodded vigorously and backed away, his eyes fixed on the shapes beyond the glass.

“How’s your wrist feeling?” Cole asked.

“Better. Why? Do you want me to take this?”

“Either that, or we need to switch sides. I’m not comfortable over here at all.”

“I’ll take it, then. It’s been feeling better, I’m just getting in the habit of letting you drive. Do me a favor and call out distances if I get too close.”

“You’re too close right now.”

“Hilarious. Now… watch me get closer.” She pulled the sling over her helmet, the brown Glemot grasses stabbing her with memories. She dropped it in her lap and rubbed her wrist before gripping the flight controls. They felt strange and familiar at the same time; Molly nudged Parsona forward with the smallest of thrusts.

“Uh, you want to fill me in with your plan?” Cole pressed his helmet back into the chair, turning it away from the looming mass as it drew near.

“Making some room. How close are we?”

The nose of the ship banged softly into the meteor, answering her question. She gave a twitch of extra thrust to keep the hulk from bouncing away, a ship-to-ship docking trick that prevented multiple impacts.

“We’re pinned,” she said. “Increasing thrust, let’s hope there isn’t anything bigger on the other side.”

Ramping up the throttle, Molly pressed Parsona forward. She was a porpoise pushing a black ball through water. Out of balance, part of the meteor jutting toward the windshield got closer. Molly gave one more burst of thrust before pulling back. Plumes of forward thruster kicked up dust from the rock ahead, but there was no impact as the massive wall rotated and receded, clearing out the space beyond.

Like Cole had said, it was dense. Dangerous boulders and wannabe moonlets drifted lazily on every side, like primordial monsters grazing on vacuum. Molly held her breath, as if a noise could spook them and create a deadly stampede. A small, skittish lump of rock smashed into one of the larger ones, sending it twisting amid a cloud of quiet debris.

Molly flipped on every exterior floodlight and set the external cameras to cycle at one second intervals. She needed three more brains to process it all. Cole, at least, gave her another. “Incoming, starboard side,” he said.

Molly twisted the ship down and away, like a bullfighter sucking his cape into his side. It wasn’t a big one, she noted as it slid past, but it would’ve made a dent. “Any idea which way is out?”

“Not from the SADAR.” Cole whipped his head around, look-ing at each portal. “There!” he said. “I just saw a cluster of stars at ten o’clock.”

Molly turned to port a few degrees. She saw the flash of lights beyond the weaving shapes of black. She moved forward with as much trust as skill, feeling like any second could be the beginning of something bad.

“Should we have the boys on lookout?” she asked.

“Good idea. Walter, Edison,” he shouted over his shoulder, “get to some windows in the airlock or the staterooms, holler if anything gets too close!”

“Definition of ‘too close’?” Edison asked.

“Uh, fifty meters, pal.” To Molly: “Two o’clock.”

“I see it.” She flicked the flightstick around with ease. Her wrist was stiff, but it didn’t hurt as bad as it had just two days ago; she needed to remember to ask Edison what had been in that balm. She was starting to suspect it wasn’t just topical.

She dodged another small rock; it felt good to be flying again. Every now and then the moving shapes dictated a new “up,” and Molly rotated Parsona, providing width for the wings and readjusting her sense of top and bottom. After a few close calls she started to feel the thrill of being in the simulator, running down canyons in atmospheric flight, banking around sudden turns with a blue ribbon of water below. And Lucin thought those games were a waste of time.

“Is it thinning?” she asked.

“I can’t tell yet. I think we’re in a bit of a pocket here. Yeah, I can see the edge on SADAR now. Keep going this direction.”

More stars were visible, but the motion of the asteroids became more violent as they neared the periphery. A small chunk the size of one of their escape pods crashed into a monster in front of them, calving the latter in two and turning the former into dust.

“Damn.”

“As soon as I see nothing but stars, I’m making a run for it,” Molly said. “Some of these puppies are blazing out on the edge.”

Edison roared from the airlock. Molly saw it and dodged out of the way, pulling between two large, slow moving moonlets. They were coming together, about to pincer Parsona, when suddenly the path ahead looked mostly clear.

“I’m going for it,” she said, thrusting forward and out into clear space, free of immediate danger.

They both breathed a sigh of relief while Cole dialed out the SADAR, adding some range to the display. They could now make out the edge of the massive asteroid belt. The location indicator—a device that took the arrangement of the stars outside and compared them with known charts—beeped. It had reacquired their position.

“Where are we?” she asked. She was dying to know, desperate to determine what had happened with the hyperdrive. She hoped it wasn’t something the Glemots had reinstalled improperly.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cole said.

Molly looked away from her flight path long enough to check for herself. They were right where they had intended to be. Just outside of Darrin I’s third Lagrange point. The problem: Darrin I was no longer where it was supposed to be.

“Flanking Drenards,” Cole said. “I think I know what we were just flying through.”

“Educate me.”

“That, back there—that was Darrin I.”

Molly glanced at the SADAR overlapped with her star charts and she saw what he was getting at. “Wait,” she said. “What are those?” She pointed to the large contacts ahead of them, well beyond the wall of dangerous rock they were leaving behind.

“I don’t know, but are those ships coming out of them?”

“My gods. I think they’re heading this way.”

There must have been a hundred of them. Possibly more. They streaked directly for Parsona from every direction, having pulled out of what Molly assumed were small space docks of some sort. It was hard to tell at this distance.

“BUCKLE UP!” she yelled over her shoulder. She could hear Edison banging his way back toward them and hoped Walter was doing the same. She turned perpendicular to the oncoming ships and gave her crew time to strap themselves in.

“I have over two hundred contacts. You think we should get back in the rock? Because there’s way too much mass here to jump away.”

“I’m never jumping blind again. Are the boys strapped in?”

Cole pulled up the cargo cam and used the control stick to twist the view toward the crew station. “Yeah, buckling up now.”

Molly hit the thrusters with a sharp burn, zooming along the wall of rock and looking for any strays. They were really being squeezed here. Luckily none of the attackers had launched any missiles yet. She wouldn’t consider diving back into the asteroids until they did.

That’s a weird formation, she thought. The SADAR showed bizarre flight patterns: the ships were blazing toward them, but they continuously crossed each other’s flight planes, jostling against one another rather than fanning out to prevent various escape vectors.

“Geez, girl, do you have a bounty on your head? Because those guys are coming at us like the first one wins a prize.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. It’s like junior cadets playing Galaxy Ball, each kid running after the orb and nobody running to space for a pass.”

“Yeah. And now we know how the orb feels.”

Molly pulled a few Gs and flew closer to the field of debris. She placed a large straggler the size of a small moon between her and the herd of eager pursuers. The Parsona was fast for a civilian craft, but every single one of the ships coming after them was reeling her in like she was sitting still.

“I’m starting to agree with you on feeling a bit naked without some defenses.”

“Some consolation. Hey, no two of those ships are the same. SADAR doesn’t even register the designs.”

They were already halfway upon them. “And?”

“I don’t know,” Cole said, “it just reinforces that these guys aren’t together. That and their tactics.”

“You want me to pull over and roll out the welcome mat?”

“Yeah, when hyperspace freezes over. I’m just sayin’ that they don’t seem happy with us, but we’re not under a coordinated attack.”

“Oh, great. So all I have to do is defeat each ship, one at a time, without weapons? Remind you of something?” She had the long trail of ships in a tight clump now, slanting down from their distant docking stations and toward the meteor field. Now that their angle of attack had been herded into a single vector, she pulled the stick up hard, hoping it wouldn’t be too many Gs for Edison.

“Good idea,” Cole said. The flat trajectory along the rocks had everyone lined up. Instead of running from two hundred ships, Molly could now act like she was running from one. If they could get clear of the mass from the asteroid belt, maybe they could jump back to the coordinates they’d just left, the one known landing zone they could be comfortable with.

“Some of them are wising up,” she said. Dozens of the pursuers were branching out in various directions while the bulk of the pack just altered course straight toward them. They still weren’t acting coordinated, it’s just that a few were willing to take a gamble. Molly looked at how far they’d need to get to make a safe jump and it didn’t look good.

She altered course again as swiftly as she dared. The vid screen still showed the two boys, and Edison seemed fine. With the new vector, Parsona was heading slightly toward the mysterious, dark stations. The herd shifted, adjusting course and jostling around each other for position. Again, their selfish tactics were hurting each individual, slowing them down and giving her an advantage. As soon as the pack had itself arranged, she went back to her last vector and watched them jockey once more.

Three of the gamblers had gotten lucky and were clear favorites. They would reach Parsona well ahead of the others, who were too busy fighting amongst themselves. Molly could almost sense the frustration of the herd as their vectors fluctuated. The uncoordinated insanity made her more nervous than a textbook attack would have.

“Not enough space,” Cole said. He’d completed the mass equations on the computer that Molly had performed in her head.

“I know. I’m just culling a few from the herd. I want to see what they’re up to on a small scale. Didn’t want all the pack getting to us at once.”

“You thinking piracy?”

“Yeah. Scavengers or pirates. They want us alive and they want us bad. Hell, I haven’t felt this desirable since my first day at the Academy.”

“Ha. Until the boys realized you were better than them.”

“Yeah, I guess the romance didn’t last too long. Hold on.”

Two more maneuvers widened the lead for the three closest ships. Parsona felt a little sluggish to Molly. Maybe they’d done some real damage backing down on that asteroid.

When the trio behind them got within a hundred kilometers, Molly knew for sure they weren’t out for a quick kill. She was being evasive, with random spirals and some standard low-G stuff, but they still could have tested her with laser fire. One thing she could see was that these guys were good, one of them especially. He was flying as the leader with the other two only keeping up by mimicking his every move. And some of those moves reminded Molly of the Tchung AI, but with more creativity.

Cole whistled at one point, obviously admiring the same thing.

“How are you guys doing back there?” Molly called over her shoulder. She really needed to get a suit and helmet for Edison; it seemed they couldn’t go anywhere in this galaxy without needing to pull serious Gs.

“Edisson won’t give me my game back!” Walter hollered.

Molly smiled and shot the vid screen a look. She was going too easy on them. She moved the G-warning up to twenty, giving her more room to play. Now she really started toying with the guys behind her. She’d set up some obvious habits earlier, like a boxer who would always lower one glove before a hook. She quickly switched to the same tell for jabs. It was a feinting process that worked well on experts, the pilots that memorized patterns during dogfights. It almost made two of the ships careen into one another. The third seemed to anticipate it—or he was just getting lucky again and again.

“I think they just want to play ‘tag,’” Cole said.

He had a point. Mr. Lucky was within a few hundred meters now, and there was no other reason to get so close at these velocities. She could hit the brakes or turn the wrong way and they’d both be in a galaxy of trouble. In fact, the closer the ship got, the less she could try to do in order to shake him. Any bold move would spell suicide and the two stragglers were making up ground. Parsona was pinned.

The lead ship rolled around her and presented its belly; Molly recognized the maneuver, even if she didn’t understand it. She eased back on the throttle and held a steady course. “Turn on the outer airlock lights and prepare for boarders. Whoever this ’troid is just won the rare honor of meeting a Glemot.”

Cole laughed nervously and flipped the docking switches. He unplugged his suit and gave her shoulder a squeeze before heading aft.

Her suitor made his move, darting in with such suddenness and skill that the maneuver was over before she realized it’d started. The airlock collar clicked, confirming the union. The rest of the blips on SADAR reacted at once, breaking off the chase and vectoring back to their lairs. In a way, the response was even eerier than the manner with which the hunt had begun.

Molly didn’t waste time pondering the strange behavior; she launched herself away from the helm and headed after her crew, ready to kill with her bare hands if needed.

Edison had already set up for an ambush; he stood aft of the airlock passage, just inside Walter’s room. Molly took up a position with Cole and Walter at the end of the cargo bay to serve as a distraction. Cole handed her a wrench, his eyebrows arched with worry.

The airlock door hissed open. Their own door. Not blasted down, but sliding aside as if welcoming company. Molly tried to stay focused, expecting a flood of boarders with weapons drawn.

In strolled a man wearing a business suit and swinging a briefcase.

“Wai—” She nearly got it out before Edison lunged. The Glemot pup swung a set of claws at the man’s head, and it looked like a direct hit. But instead of decapitating the man, Edison’s fist snapped back and he howled in pain. Molly reached out to grab Cole and Walter, but they were both too stunned to make a move anyway.

The businessman seemed untouched. He turned his back on Edison and approached Cole, a pale, meaty hand outstretched. Fine wisps of hair were combed from one ear to the other over a bald pate and his fat cheeks were held apart by a small, smiling mouth. His suit sang as it rubbed on itself, shiny in the way expensive things were when they begged to be admired.

“Excellent choice, my good sir,” he told Cole. “You’ll not be disappointed. Albert Gaines at your service. I look forward to doing business with you.” His jabbering filled a cargo bay full of naught else but shocked silence.

Molly watched Cole accept the hand and allow it to be pumped. Edison, still holding his arm, looked to her for orders to try again. She raised her hand slightly, palm down. Edison nodded and examined his hand, brushing aside fur as if some mystery lay beneath.

Albert dropped Cole’s hand and looked appreciably around the cargo bay, sizing it up like someone looking for an apartment to rent. “Excellent. Wonderful bones. Obviously in need of some improvements, am I right?” He met each of their eyes with a glow that suggested they were all his favorite. “I’m right,” he confirmed. He held out his briefcase level with the ground, his bushy eyebrows raised as if to say, “there should be a table here for this, but there isn’t—what gives?”

Molly broke the spell that had fallen over her crew. “Just what in hyperspace do you think you’re doing here?” She stepped forward and pulled Cole back at the same time, a maneuver he seemed more than happy to go along with. “I’m the Captain of this ship, and I want to know who you are and what you were thinking out there. You nearly got us all killed!”

Albert dropped the briefcase to his side and let out an exasperated sigh. He reached into his coat, creating a clichéd sense of panic in the entire crew. Out came his pudgy hand, holding a business card. The expensive-looking suit made more noise as he extended it to Molly. “Albert Gaines, Ships Armaments and Defense Procurement. And I assure you that I was not trying to get you killed out there. The opposite is true, my dear lady. I was merely protecting you from those… vultures.” He spat out the last with clear contempt.

Raising the briefcase up with both hands flat underneath, like a babe being offered to the gods, Albert asked, “Now, where should we put this so we can go over the contracts?”

Molly and Cole locked eyes, each probably hoping the other was going to take over. The stalemate left Molly in charge. “Contracts?” she asked.

Albert pulled in a breath and looked her up and down. There was nothing sexual about the leer, but it gave her the creeps nonetheless. She felt like he was sizing her up for a coffin, or figuring out the best way to shear her. He smiled, brushed past Walter, and plopped into one of the crew chairs with the briefcase placed across the perfect creases along his thighs. Two gold-colored locks flicked opened with a loud click. The lid swung up and out came several pieces of paper. He tapped their edges on top of the briefcase to line them up.

“This is obviously your first time in the Darrin system for business. Not many regulars jump into the middle of old Darrin The First, you see. Crazy business, that. Trying to sneak up behind us or get yourselves killed. But hey, I like your style, and the customer is always right!

“As you can see, if you look outside, my ship is taking us back to Albert’s Arms. There, we will be able to set you right up with whatever you need. Provided you can pay for it, of course. But before we go over that, I need you to sign these sales representation agreements. I’ve already worked hard to win you over as a client, and I sure don’t want you to make the mistake of working with my competition. Not a one of them would look after you the way that I will. I give you my guarantee.”

The smile returned. Molly looked from it to the view out the cockpit windows and saw that they were turning slowly back to that string of distant lairs.

Albert cleared his throat. “Now then, the contracts…” He held them out to Molly.

26

Even a decade of military jargon and naval technical manuals did not prepare Molly for the convoluted abuse of the English language she held in her hands. She gave Edison’s immeasurable IQ a chance, but it was even worse for him. His need for absolutes in communication recoiled from the lawyerly phrasings. Each sentence could mean three or four things when read individually; taken together, they had all the potential of a chess game prior to the first move. His advice was to burn them, not sign them.

She considered giving Walter a chance, he hailed from a planet of devious barterers, but the boy was too distracted by their new guest. He kept sizing Albert up like a direct competitor, but he also wore something of a leer, an expression Molly often saw him direct toward her. Other than his video game and loot, she’d never known anything to fascinate him so.

Albert must’ve noticed the way Molly was staring off into space. “You seem confused by the contracts,” he said, “but I assure you they’re standard fare. We use them all the time. It just means you and I will do all of our business together. If you need something I don’t have, I’ll ask around—no need for you to go elsewhere. It’s all about making this process easy on the customer.”

Molly laid the contracts in her lap and leaned back against the bulkhead. “Easy on the customer? Are we even customers? I’ll tell you what’s confusing me, and it isn’t these contracts: it’s you. And this place. What in hyperspace just happened? We jumped into an L3, found a ring of rock instead, got pounced on by a fleet of suitors, then you practically mated with my ship without even buying her flowers.” She picked up the contracts and waved them at Albert. “And now you wanna get married?”

Cole covered his mouth and stifled a laugh.

Albert beamed. “Well that explains your odd behavior! And quite nicely, as well. Your charts are a tad out of date, I must say. Not very safe, as you’ve just learned. No worries, I also have the latest star charts, several versions in fact, from the survey efforts of three major races. For a special price, we can load the trio into your ship’s computer! My goodness, you sure are lucky to have found me. One of the first things you’ll learn about Darrin from the Bel Tra charts and reports—and I’m giving this information to you at no charge, even without those contracts signed, just to show you what sort of man I am—is that the war between Darrin the First and Darrin the Second in the year 2402, a very somber year for us, did not go well for either side. The belt you flew into is all that remains of Darrin the First, and they didn’t get the worst of it. Darrin the Second is in smaller pieces. Not to brag, but much smaller. They lie scattered beyond our far more sensible orbit.” He wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered for effect.

“I kid, of course. We’ve set those differences aside and now all the people of Darrin get along famously. We’ve had peace for seven years straight! Not a shot fired. Well, pretty much. Besides, the few of us that deserve to make a profit have found it more lucrative if we compete on an individual level, rather than banding together and squeezing as a unit. Things get out of control that other way. It’s really a shame we didn’t think of it earlier, but what’s done is done and business is finally getting back to some of the pre-war levels.” He frowned, then added in a somber voice, “After accounting for changes in population and per-capita GDP.”

“You people blew each other’s planets to bits?!” Cole had gone from covering his mirth to controlling his outrage.

Albert recoiled from the outburst and looked sad, but only for a moment. He beamed once again and boasted to all four of them, “You want the best starship armaments in the galaxy? You obviously came to the right place!” He gestured toward the contracts, still smiling. “Now, please sign away before we arrive at my store. We must do these things properly or my impeccable reputation for fair-dealing could suffer. Nothing you sign there mandates a minimum purchase amount, and frankly if your budget is reflected by the ship’s condition—well, please understand that I’m used to dealing with a more demanding clientele and will consider our transactions over the next several days as a favor to you in the hopes you’ll always return to me when you need a good deal.”

Albert spread his arms and gazed hungrily at the papers. “But of course you will. It’s all there in the contracts, after all.” He smiled at each of them as if they were the only people in the universe.

Signing the contracts put Molly in a bad mood. She despised being forced to do anything. Even if it was something she’d been planning on doing already. They’d come to Darrin to make illicit improvements on a starship, so they expected to put up with shady arms dealers on back-moon shipyards. But having someone force her to do the exact same thing made her want to resist. The urge was as infuriating as it was nonsensical. She would’ve been happier if the escape from the asteroid belt had been met with laser-fire. At least then she’d be dealing with a threat she understood.

Albert pitched products while the two mated ships cruised back to his shop, seemingly on autopilot. These “feeding frenzies” were reserved for new clients, he assured them. Brutal markets meant each customer had to be “won over.” The little scuffle between Darrin I and Darrin II had decreased supply somewhat, but the demand had shot down even faster. The word was not completely out that the system had returned to business-as-usual, and Parsona’s unwise entry demonstrated another unfortunate reality: the buyers of their astral charts were probably disappearing from the market altogether. Literally.

“Once we get my charts installed and register your ship as one of my exclusive clients, you’ll be able to come and go as you please,” Albert told Molly. She forced a smile and considered telling him how unlikely a return to Darrin would be.

A beeping sound interrupted the discussion and Albert pulled something from his belt, a small black device with just a single-line LCD display. He held the gadget up and squinted intently at the readout. “We’re about to land,” he announced to the room. He flapped back one side of his suit jacket and struggled to thrust his pelvis away from the seat before securing the device back to his belt. With a satisfied grunt, he pushed himself up, collected the contracts with a grin and a wink, and busied himself arranging them in his briefcase.

“Not many of these old GN-290s around, are there?” He smiled at Molly, his face completely innocent.

A chill spread through her limbs, her palms moistened and began to cool. What in the galaxy did he mean by that? Did he know who they were? Was there a bounty out on the ship? She shot Cole a glance. His arms were folded across his wide chest, his face frozen in a glower.

“It was a few design flaws that did this model in,” he said. “Putting the cargo bay on the starboard side with the airlock, for instance. Horrible idea. Can’t open both at once. We’ll leave the ships docked so you don’t have to land her, but that means you’ll have to pass through my baby to enter the shop. Do me a favor? Don’t touch anything as you go through. And do not feed the Drenard.” He laughed out loud.

Molly tried to soothe the tension out of her body, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his briefcase. It felt as though a chunk of her soul rattled around within.

As they entered his hangar bay, a soft light filtered through Parsona’s portholes and moved from front to back, popping through each window in turn. Every head swayed in unison as the landing gear scraped on metal decking, signaled their arrival. Molly was furious at the gear for lowering at another’s behest. For the second time, someone else had assumed command of her ship, and she hated it as much as people controlling her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Albert began with a flourish, “welcome to Albert’s Arms. Please follow me for a quick tour. Again, mind the mess as we pass through Lady Liberty, I was not expecting company today.” He winked at Molly as if this were a private joke between the two of them and strolled back into the airlock as calmly as he had exited it. Molly felt another stab of betrayal when she heard her outer airlock door slide open for Albert. Walter rushed after him like a puppy while Cole gave her a vicious look. Edison was still absently rubbing his injured paw.

“I don’t like this any more than you guys do,” she said.

“We aren’t the ones that signed those contracts, though, are we?” Cole replied.

“Flank you, Cole.” Molly shot out of the crew seat and stormed across the cargo bay. “As soon as we arm my ship so you feel less ‘naked,’ we’re out of here. And straight to the Navy this time. I’m sick and tired of doing whatever other people want.” She trailed the rant behind her and spun into the airlock, slapping the doorjamb with her palm as she ducked through.

Yeah, it was a design flaw, she thought. She squeezed through the outer door and marched across the mating tube to Lady Liberty. She had pointed out the airlock problem to Cole while they were on Glemot, but hearing it from someone else made her angry. Or maybe her disgust with having signed those contracts had her lashing out.

She stepped through the coupling into Albert’s airlock and nearly choked on the smell. Something sticky and formerly edible mixed with the odor of plastic upholstery; the combination assaulted her olfactory senses. She could hear Walter and Albert in an animated discussion beyond and hoped the boy’s bartering skills were being put to good use. She also hoped Albert’s shop didn’t smell anything like his airlock. She stepped through the inner hatch and joined them in a room lined with spacesuits and padlocked storage compartments. It looked like a Navy MP locker room. She could only imagine what an arms dealer would keep in those bins.

Albert smiled at her. “Right this way,” he said jovially, stepping into Lady Liberty’s cargo bay. Walter followed and Molly hurried after them before Cole and Edison could catch up. She already regretted lashing out at them, but fought the urge to be contrite.

The cargo bay was a wreck, but at least the open ramp allowed fresh air in from beyond. Albert and Walter clanged down and out to the hangar. Molly took two steps and glanced to one side, down the hallway of Albert’s ship. She felt the urge to snoop, looked the other way, saw something move in her peripheral.

She froze.

The shape. The color. Years of training triggered synapses wired for fear. Molly reached for a stunner that wasn’t there. She pawed behind her for Cole. She looked for a stick or a weapon of some sort.

Albert was not joking about having a Drenard onboard.

27

The Drenard’s presence triggered a primal kill response in Molly. Her nerves, already frayed, sent jittery commands to adrenaline-soaked muscles. Her knees went numb and she would’ve collapsed, but Cole arrived in time to steady her.

She looked back to mumble her thanks and saw the mask of pure terror on his face as well. She spun back around, expecting to be attacked at any moment, but the creature hadn’t moved. Huddled on the floor, not five meters from her, was a living Drenard. The race they and the rest of the GU had been at war with for longer than she’d been alive. This was what they were programmed for at the Academy: hunt down and kill Drenards. Pictures of them graced their gun-range targets, their punching bags, the Navy’s recruitment posters. Training holos incorporated front-line video from soldiers lucky enough to encounter and mow them down. A generic-looking representation of a Drenard popped up on the scoreboard after simulated battles to tally victorious kills.

This creature looked similar enough to startle her, but as most of her fear and rage drained away, she saw that it wasn’t exactly like the aliens from the videos and posters. The biggest difference was how small and emaciated it looked. The hairless body was a lighter shade of blue, almost translucent. And instead of wearing the white flight suits and combat armor of the Drenard Navy, this one had on nothing but dirty, tattered rags. Shackles on both of its slim ankles completed the pathetic getup; a chain snaked from them around the corner and into the cockpit. The miserable thing had its knees bent up to its chin—long, thin arms wrapped around its narrow shins. With large, wet eyes it peered directly at Molly and the last of her fear and anger fell uselessly to the metal decking. Pity and shame started to rise up in their place.

“A real beaut, eh?” Albert called up from the cargo ramp, his voice full of pride. “One hundred percent real Drenard. Not another like her this side of the Milky Way. Priceless, as you can imagine, but I’d never sell her. No sir-ree.” He marched back into the ship, smiling at Molly and Cole as if their reaction pleased him. He crossed to the poor creature and patted its head.

Molly watched the captive flinch slightly, the chain rattling like a spooked snake. But the Drenard’s eyes never left her own.

“Anlyn here sure brings in the customers, let me tell ya. Just a gem. And it’s true, you know. They can go forever without food. All you have to do is water them. Damnedest thing. She’s learning English too. Pretty good at it, but she doesn’t choose to say much. Still a little frightened, but coming around. Come this way and I’ll give you a full tour of the shop and introduce you to my family.” He went back to the ramp and waved them along. “I’ll give you a sense of what I have in stock and you can show me what sort of price range you’re looking at. Then I’ll let you get some rest and talk over your needs with your weapon’s officer. I’m assuming that was the clever fellow who tested my private shields?” He whirled on Molly and held his hand to one side of his mouth, but said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Doesn’t say much does he?”

Molly didn’t respond, and it didn’t feel as if Albert expected her to. He strolled out into the open hangar, a constant flow of jabber following him. The habit reminded Molly of his contracts: a heap of words designed to hinder communication rather than facilitate it. She cast one last look at the Drenard and followed him out into the cavernous hangar.

The walls of his shop were rough stone, the entire facility chewed out of a massive asteroid. Cabinets and shelves lined one wall, a flat workbench another. Above the latter hung a wide board with hundreds of hooks. Every tool she knew—and some she didn’t—was suspended there. She turned to the others; Edison’s fur bristled at the sight of it all; Cole had disappeared.

Molly spotted him wandering toward the rear of the ships, mesmerized by the door they’d flown through. Primarily because it wasn’t there! She rushed over to join him, stopping in the pocket of heat near Lady Liberty’s thrusters. Ahead of them a plane of light shimmered where the hangar ended and the vacuum of space began. An invisible wall somehow kept the two separate. A forcefield.

“Look, but don’t touch!” Albert called out gaily.

Molly and Cole half-spun toward the warning and ended up locking eyes with each other. His were green and wide, his brows raised. Molly knew what he was thinking.

“You want one,” she guessed.

“Oh, yeah, I want one. Are you kidding? This stuff is still science fiction on Earth. Crap we read about in the pulp that circulates through the Academy.” Cole lowered his voice. “And this creep uses it for his garage door.”

“Don’t forget, he’s wearing one as well. Talk about not feeling naked, he could be naked and still be invincible.” Molly looked away from the forcefield and down at her feet. “Speaking of feeling naked, I’m sorry about what I—”

Cole reached over and squeezed her hand. “Forget it. I’m sorry too. Hey, you think his field comes from that black device on his belt?”

Molly turned to one side, in her peripheral she could see Albert by the workbench, explaining something to Edison. She supposed all was well between the two, the attack forgotten. “I don’t think so. More of a silent communicator. Maybe just a readout from his ship. Look, we need to play this like a simple shopping trip. The guy just wants to trade and make a buck, and we want what he has. We’re as powerless here as we were on Glemot, maybe more so. So don’t make any moves we might regret.”

He nodded and dropped her hand. “What do you make of that Drenard? I almost rushed the poor thing to take its head off. Could you believe we were seeing one in person like that?”

Molly looked away. “Let’s talk about it later. I’m… I’m not sure what I felt. No, that’s a lie. I… I felt the same thing you did, but I’m not sure what I feel right now. Sick, I guess. I don’t like seeing anything chained up like that.”

“Oh, gimmee a break. I remember you checking Orville’s restraints with care. And that was a Drenard in there.”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it right now. Later. Just stay focused on what we came here for.”

Cole scrunched up his face and turned back to the forcefield. “Sure thing, Captain.”

“Hello, guys?” Albert called across the hangar. “I’d like to introduce you to my wife.” A large woman stood beside him, wiping her hands on her apron, prepping them for a polite shaking.

Molly led Cole over to the rest of the group. Her eyes flickered over to the distasteful sight of Parsona and Lady Liberty, still conjoined. The sense of violation would not go away, and it left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Gladys Gaines.” Her outstretched hand still had some white cooking residue on it.

Molly accepted it and found her grip warm, inviting. She reciprocated the gentle shake. “Molly Fyde,” she said.

Albert lifted a hand to the side of his mouth for another loud aside. “The ship’s captain,” he said, obviously impressed with Molly’s age or gender. She wasn’t sure which irked her more. Actually, that’s not right. She definitely knew which one.

Cole repeated the ritual with Mrs. Gaines, introducing himself.

“What can I get you kids to drink? Tea? Coffee? You’ll be joining us for dinner, I hope?”

Molly lost herself in the surreal scene as her crew put in beverage orders with a gun-runner’s wife. They were understandably eager to drink a beverage that wasn’t in a bag, but their excitement stabbed at her chest. This wasn’t supposed to be fun.

Edison’s joy hurt her the most. She recalled that glorious meal on Glemot and realized, for the first time, that the poor pup was used to eating like that regularly. It had been a unique and glorious one-time event for her, but for his taste buds, it was the accepted standard. Eating would probably never be the same for him.

Albert snuck up behind Molly and put an arm across her shoulders, causing her to flinch like the chained-up Drenard. “Is the furry one your Weapons Officer?” he asked her.

They didn’t have a weapons officer, she nearly told him. They’d never had any weapons before; they’d only been a crew for two weeks. Fortunately, she stopped herself, understanding the need to tell Albert as little as possible. She already felt as if he knew too much.

“Actually, that would be Cole,” she finally said. “He also does navigation duties.”

“Ah, excellent! Then I can deal with one person for both armaments and the star charts we discussed. I’m assuming you’re still interested in that triple package? It really can’t be beat, you know. And I’ll provide free updates for the next fifty years, just stop back by anytime. Now, Walter and I have been talking payment. The chap is very sharp, thinks highly of some of the goods you guys have to offer. But I have to tell you, the Navy tech he’s bartering with isn’t quite as rare as he’s making out. I’ll be doing you a favor, honestly, to take it off your hands. But don’t you worry about any of that nonsense just yet. Let’s eat some dinner and get some rest. We’ll have plenty of time for business tomorrow.”

But Molly couldn’t relax on command, even if she wanted to.

Later, in her bunk, her belly stuffed with a home-cooked meal, Molly still couldn’t make herself relax. Despite her exhaustion, there was no way she’d be able to sleep. And it wasn’t just seeing the Drenard for a second time—curled up in a ball on the cockpit floor as they returned from dinner. Nor was it the pressure of the business to conduct the following day. These didn’t help, to be sure, but Molly’s torment came from other thoughts.

First, she couldn’t help but second-guess her decision to avoid the Navy. Cole was persuasive with his theories, but she trusted Lucin completely, which made running feel wrong. Was she really betraying the closest thing she had to a family just because some dreamy boy batted his eyes at her? Lucin would feel betrayed when Parsona returned with chaff pods and laser canons. It seemed logical to her when she agreed to this mess, but now she was hearing her crazy explanation from Lucin’s perspective, and it sounded like pure gibberish.

Then there were the deaths she’d been responsible for. Glemot was almost too big a mistake to fully comprehend. Even as used as she’d been, she felt the full weight of a race’s genocide on her shoulders. The depression she’d dipped into briefly wouldn’t leave her, as hard as she tried to fake it for Cole’s sake. She could feel how edgy and dangerous she’d become, able to snap without provocation. It worried her.

And the more personal, up-close deaths haunted her with a more vivid ferocity. The sight of Edison flaying that council member. The numbness in her elbow when she struck that Navy man. The look on his face as the rains of Palan smeared him against that windshield.

Her big adventure and romance in space had turned into a mess larger than herself. Other people were getting hurt. She had watched everything she’d hoped for and dreamed of dissipate into the cosmos or get crushed into small pieces.

Molly wondered what the other kids at Avalon High would be up to right then. How great it must feel to be developmentally stunted. They could be physical adults, but gloriously brain-dead from years of rote memorization and regurgitation. Numb to the world from playing with toys well into adulthood rather than being honed for the ugly reality of a dangerous life. Molly had always felt so superior to those kids: beyond them in wisdom, power and ability. But that solid view was developing cracks. Which of them was happier right now? Which of them continued to hurt the universe?

Molly tossed her body to its other side, trying to find a comfortable pose, as if the conundrum were physical. She had no idea how long she’d been doing this, or what time it was, when she thought she heard a noise echo back from the front of her ship. She sat upright, already developing the unnatural skill that all pilots and captains possess: the attenuation to any change in the direction of their ship’s heading and a sensitivity to any foreign sound, however slight.

She slid out of bed and pulled on her jumpsuit, eager to be awake and doing something rather than in bed and dwelling on her sadness. As she slipped her shoes on, she found herself hoping it was Cole, unable to sleep himself. Hopefully he’d be willing to talk some. Because if it was Walter reorganizing the cargo bay at this hour, she was going to have a hard time being nice.

Unfortunately, Molly had no plan for what to do if it was Albert Gaines nosing into their ship’s computer.

28

“What in hyperspace are you doing?”

Albert was leaning over the flight controls, fiddling with something on her dash. Molly felt an intense burning sensation creep along the surface of her scalp. Her entire being wanted to reach out and see if that damn shield of his was active.

“Molly!” he turned and beamed. He held a small device up for her to see. “Just checking your nav computer, seeing which adapter I would need to get those star charts installed. Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Well you should have,” she spat.

“Of course, of course. Hey, this is a strange collection of gear you have here. Some really nice stuff mixed in with some obsolete—I hate to use the word ‘junk, but let’s not beat around the bush, okay? Maybe after we get you set up with defenses and charts we can talk about swapping this SADAR out for something, let’s say—more ‘appropriate’ for the type of work this ship was designed for. I could probably work out a discount on the chaff pods if we did that trade.”

“The SADAR unit stays,” she said. “It was my father’s.”

She immediately regretted saying this. Her anger and lack of sleep made this conversation potentially dangerous. She took a deep breath. “Look, just… please get off my ship. I’m tired and we can do our business later, okay?”

“Sure. Absolutely. No offense meant. I’m a full-service kind of guy. You get your rest and don’t worry about a thing. I’ll check back in with you in a few hours.”

Molly waited for him to leave. She listened to the traitorous swish of her own airlock obeying his commands and then crawled into Cole’s navigation seat and tried to get some sleep.

When a hand squeezed her shoulder hours later, Molly incorporated it into a bad dream featuring Albert and Drenards. She nearly snapped the arm connected to the hand, but it shot back in fear.

“Wow. Easy, tiger. Just checking in on you.”

It was Cole.

“Gods,” Molly groaned. “You scared the hell out of me. Don’t do that.”

“Do what? I touched you. And you’re in my chair.”

Molly rubbed her eyes and tried to twist the cramp out of her back. “Technically, Cole, every chair in this ship is mine.”

“Man. I was just checking in on you. I got scared when you weren’t in your room, and the door was open and I couldn’t get through the airlock to go find you. Sorry for being worried.” He turned and stalked out to the cargo bay.

“I’m sorry,” Molly called after him. “Cole, wait. I was having bad dreams, you just scared me, okay? I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

She leaned around the seat to see if he’d heard. He paused near the crew seats, his back to her. “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t sweat it. It’s my fault, I guess. I… I keep forgetting that I’m just along for the ride.”

“That’s not true,” said Molly. “We’re in this together.”

Cole looked back over his shoulder. “Are we? ’Cause I thought you were running to the Navy when we got outta here. That you felt like I was controlling you—”

“I didn’t mean that. My head’s been screwy since Glemot…” She glanced at the other chair. “If you wanna talk…”

“Nah, I’m fine. Gonna get dressed and hail our jailor.” He marched off toward the rear of the ship.

Molly grabbed his helmet from its bin above her and flopped back into the chair. She checked her reflection in the visor, forcing a smile that seemed wooden and unnatural to her. “Well, I’m not fine,” she told herself.

Cole’s voice rumbled through the hull from the loud hailer. Molly put the helmet back and scurried toward the airlock. The boys emerged from their rooms, weary-eyed and confused.

“Morning,” Molly said as she joined them by the airlock.

“Morning, Captain,” Walter hissed.

“Pleasant awakenings,” grumbled Edison.

Molly squeezed Walter’s shoulder and patted Edison on the arm. I’m fine, she lied to herself.

Cole’s voice boomed in the distance, muffled by Parsona’s steel shell. She stuck her head in the airlock as he repeated his request in the loud-hailer. She could see the volume cranked all the way up, a setting used more for atmospheric flight than hangar bays.

The outer door whisked open, causing Cole to jump back.

“Ah, good morning!” said Albert. Without even needing to look, he reached in and turned the volume all the way down. “We can scratch off looking at hailer catalogs this morning, can’t we?” He said it with a friendly smile and no trace of sarcasm. His hand remained on the knob, touching it like he owned it. “Come, let’s get down to business, shall we?” He turned and made his way through the mating tube toward his own ship.

“Be right there,” Molly called after him. “Leave the door open for us so we don’t have to ring you, okay?”

He turned, the smile returning to his lips a hair too late. “My pleasure, Captain. Just trying to give you kids your privacy. Come to the lobby when you get freshened up. I’ll be taking care of some paperwork.” He strolled off, calling out as he went, “Just because I treat every customer like they’re my only concern doesn’t mean they’re my only customers!”

“The friendlier he gets the more I want to strangle him,” Cole remarked, watching him disappear.

“Tell me about it.”

Molly stuck her head into the cargo bay, looking for Walter. He was fiddling with his computer and telling Edison which things to pull out and where they were located. He seemed giddy with anticipation, probably eager to get bartering.

“Walter, I need to speak with you.”

“Of coursse, Captain. You know I love our talkss.” He holstered the computer and smoothed his gray jumpsuit. It was still too big for him, the wrinkles and folds just moved down to his waist, making his thin frame seem pudgy.

“What’s your sense of Albert? Smelling sense, I mean. Does the guy reek to you?”

Walters face scrunched up in concentration, the dull sheen of metal flesh glowing slightly. “Not one bit. I meant to ssay ssomething lasst night after dinner, but I wasss too sstuffed to remember. Ssomething Palan insside is sscreaming ‘a lie!’, but no ssmell. Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Yess, but I musst tell you a ssecret.” He glanced at Edison, paused, then continued. “Palanss can rarely ssmell a lie on each other. We’re sso good at it, sso many generationss of—bargainerss. It’ss only useful for… tourisstss.” He had a hard time spitting it out. “Of coursse, I’m telling you what otherss tell me. I know little of thesse thingss. I would never lie to you, Molly.” His face flattened into a shield of sincerity.

“I know you wouldn’t.” She turned to Edison, glanced at his paw. “How’re you holding up?”

“Adequately improved.” He flashed his wide teeth. “Unless your preference is otherwise, I would appreciate the opportunity to conduct repairs on the aft section of Parsona with the day’s initial hours.”

“That would be great, Edison, thanks. Are you sure you don’t mind helping us install whatever we trade for today?”

“Few actions could increase my pleasure more.”

She patted his fur. “Thanks. Cole and I are going to meet with Albert. Keep an eye on Walter for me.”

Edison nodded and Molly returned to the airlock, where Cole was waiting for her.

“After you,” he said.

Molly ducked through the airlock hatch and crossed once more to Lady Liberty. Albert had clever excuses for the arrangement, but she had finally figured out the real reason for keeping the ships together: he just wanted to keep them locked up at night.

She felt another tinge of trepidation as she stepped out into the ship’s cargo bay. Knowing that a live Drenard lived aboard was unsettling. She glanced to the creature’s corner of the bay—it was empty. The thick chain, one end bolted to the bulkhead, snaked across the decking and curled up into the navigator’s seat. Something moved. Molly saw the Drenard’s head, small, bald and translucent blue, peeking around the corner. Those sad, wide eyes once again locked onto Molly’s.

She froze, then raised one hand toward her sworn enemy. Her fingers bent slightly in a small wave.

The head sucked back around the corner and the chain jangled softly.

Molly felt Cole’s hand on her back, guiding her toward the ramp.

“Hey, do you—”

“Yeah, I saw it,” he said. They clanged down the ramp together and he headed straight for the store entrance. Molly pulled him to a stop.

“That wasn’t what I was gonna ask.” She paused. “Do you think Albert was flying Lady Liberty yesterday?”

Cole’s eyes widened and darted up to the ship’s cockpit. “The Drenard? Gods, I bet you’re right! If so, man…” Cole shook his head. “The simulator doesn’t do them justice, does it? Wow. That would totally explain the Battle of Eckers, eh? And how they keep holding us off with inferior numbers.”

He glanced back up at the cockpit and chuckled. “That Drenard is better than you, you know.”

“Hey, I was working with a fractured wrist and a busted thruster.” Molly couldn’t believe his boy brain—making everything a competition—or the fact she fell right in with him. “Wanna tell me who wrecked my thruster?” she asked.

“Hey, I had nothing to do with your wrist, Ms. Sensitive.” He dodged back as he said it, obviously expecting a slap to the shoulder.

Molly considered it, but the return to their usual banter didn’t feel normal yet. They’d have to fake it a while longer before she could hit him in play. She forced a smile, hoping it didn’t look as bad as it had in the visor, and crossed to the store lobby.

She entered and Albert rose from behind his desk. “Welcome, welcome!” he said, as if a customer had just strolled in from the street. “And here’s our Weapons Officer. Good morning, Cole!”

“I just saw you five minutes ago,” he complained, a thumb pointing over his shoulder.

“Of course, of course. I’m just excited to be doing business with you two. I’ve been updating my price sheets, and I really think we’ll be able to cut you a fantastic deal. Nothing top of the line, not for what you have to trade with, but something better than what you have now, right? I mean, anything is better than nothing!”

He moved around the desk and handed Molly a tablet. It displayed defense and arms modules with specs and pricing. He pointed at a number in the corner. “Here’s your total. I’ll let you know when you exceed the value of the goods that your wonderful little Cargo Officer has set aside.” He smiled and said it again. “Wonderful title, that. Cargo Officer.” He laughed again at some private joke.

Cole ticked items off his fingers. “Chaff pods, ECM, two lasers, a missile pod, suits for the crew, hand-stunners, a better first-aid kit—”

“Whoa, slow down,” Molly said.

Albert’s chuckling stopped; he looked at them gravely. “Are you kids planning a little war?” The serious facade cracked with more laughter. “Just kidding, of course. That sounds great, I’ll get right on it. The suits, of course, will take some time. I have a friend a few shops down the row who has the material we’ll need, and my wife is a wizard with alterations. Let me get started on that while you two take your time with the catalogs. Just mark here,” he indicated a box, “with anything you’re interested in. Add as much as you like, we’ll compare the packages when I get back.

“Oh, and make yourselves comfortable,” he gestured toward a leather sofa crouching behind a glass table on the other side of the lobby. While Molly and Cole followed his gaze, Albert snuck away to his living quarters, his fancy suit singing as it rubbed together.

They plopped down with the tablet between them and started hammering out the details. Without knowing what they could or couldn’t afford, they had to set up multiple packages in a wide range of prices. When they came to pages of Navy regulation products they recognized, and a few pieces of forbidden technology from other races—Drenard included—the tactical debate turned into an ethical argument.

Molly felt relieved that her father wasn’t there, that he couldn’t see her in this seedy joint, contemplating the purchase of contraband. The guilty feelings that had kept her awake the night before came flooding back, making her feel tired and depressed. Gradually, Cole assumed command of the conversation and Molly’s doubts wilted under the glare of his cold rationality.

The Weapons Officer ruse had become reality without her noticing.

They had been at it for over an hour when Walter came in, looking sheepish. “Where’ss Albert?” he asked them.

Cole nodded toward the living quarters. Walter didn’t hesitate, rushing after their host as if he were welcome anywhere in the asteroid. As the door swung open, domestic sounds flooded the lobby: cabinet doors slamming, children screaming after one another, Mrs. Gaines admonishing someone and Albert’s voice an echo, backing up his wife.

Molly shook her head at the normalcy. This combination of arms dealer, captor, slave holder, family man, and business tycoon made pegging Albert impossible. She could dwell on one aspect of the man, depending on whether she wanted to vilify him or attempt to trust him, but neither answer felt right. She needed him to sit in his lair, rubbing his hands together as his henchmen gathered around and he planned his domination of the galaxy. Anything redeemable—if he oozed all that slime simply to help his family slide through life—made him harder to loathe.

What Molly needed was a reminder. “Are you good here?” she asked Cole.

He looked surprised. “You going in there as well?”

“No way. I just… I wanted to check on Edison. See how the thruster repairs are going.”

“Yeah, sure. I think I know what sort of balance we’re settling on here. Go ahead. And hey, if the crazy bear has added two more thrusters and upgraded the landing gear, don’t be surprised.”

“I won’t,” she grinned.

Because I’m not checking in on Edison, she added to herself.

29

Molly entered the hangar to the sounds of Edison hammering on Parsona’s aft section, performing repairs. She used the cover of the two ships and the loud noises to sneak up Lady Liberty’s gangway. Entering the cargo bay, she noticed the chain still led around the corner of the cockpit.

Molly hesitated for a moment.

Then she took a few steps toward the front of the ship, approaching from the side to get a clear view around the doorjamb while keeping her distance. When the chain rattled slightly, Molly nearly turned and fled out to the hangar, but somehow she kept her nerves in check.

The small, blue head peeked out at her. Molly raised both hands, showing her palms to the alien. The eyes withdrew, but she could still see the crown of its bald scalp, the light from the hangar filtering into the carboglass and then through its clear skin. It looked like a mere child, half the mass of an adult Drenard. Molly’s size.

So frail, she thought to herself.

Molly took a few more steps forward and the rest of the head withdrew. She called out softly, “It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m a friend, okay? My name’s Molly.” She continued to reassure the Drenard, and herself, as she crept into the rear portion of the cockpit. When she could see its shoulder over the edge of the nav chair, she stopped. Fighting to keep her voice steady, she asked, “Your name is Anlyn, right? That’s a very pretty name, Anlyn. Very pretty. My name’s Molly. Can you say my name?”

“Molly.” It came out less than a whisper but more than a sigh. The pronunciation was flawless. It seemed the act of communicating at all was what the creature needed practice with.

“That’s right. My name’s Molly. I’m a ship captain. A pilot. Do you like to fly?”

Molly saw an immediate reaction. The alien’s smooth head turned to her, its pale eyes locking with her own. The sight of this poor thing gazing up at her filled Molly with the anguish of conflicting emotions. Part of her wanted to sweep the girl into her arms. Part of her just wanted to bash those chains. And years of training lashed out at both ideas.

Anlyn parted her thin, blue lips. “I can fly,” she said. “But I don’t like to.”

Molly wanted to ask her why, but the Drenard cut her off.

“You’re not supposed to be here, and I’m not supposed to talk to you. Albert will hurt me if he finds us. Go, please,” she whispered.

Her head pressed back to her knees, her eyes fixed on her toes.

Molly thought of a dozen things to say, but remained silent. She imagined herself walking a little further and touching that clear shoulder, but she didn’t. Instead, she became overcome with sadness. A new kind. Directed at someone besides herself.

She turned and followed the chain back to the cargo bay.

Molly found Edison at one of the workbenches, working a rag over some contraption. He turned to face her as she approached, a massive smile dominating his face. “Technology is spectacular,” he said. “I’m extremely appreciative of the opportunity to manipulate it.”

She scratched his arm and pressed her lips into a flat line. “Have you seen the girl in Albert’s ship?”

“The Drenard? Absolutely. Extremely fragile, in my estimation.”

“She’s a slave, Edison.”

“I concur. Liberated organisms do not decorate themselves with chains.”

Molly thought about some of her classmates at Avalon and wondered if arguing Edison’s point would serve any purpose. Probably not, she thought.

“You desire assisting her, correct?” Edison asked. “Emancipation? The similarities to Cole’s plan in liberating Walter immediately returns to my attention.”

“No, buddy. I mean, yeah, I wanna do something for her, but we’re not in any shape to help out. Nothing Albert’s about to sell us is gonna dent the stuff he keeps for himself.” She thought about this—about the obvious need for such an imbalance. You can’t sell arms that you don’t have your own defenses for. She glanced at the invisible hangar door. And you could never release defense technology like that into the wild; it would put an end to your arms trade. The irony of it all—the way the market worked here in Darrin—it hurt Molly’s brain the more she examined it.

“Hey, I need you to do me a favor. I’m not sure if it’ll help, but there’s an hour-long back-scratching just for trying, okay?”

Edison nodded vigorously, agreeing before she even got to the details.

Behind them, a pale blue head rose in the cockpit’s porthole and two small eyes watched the scene below.

The wetness on them could’ve been mistaken for the glare of hangar lights on carboglass.

Molly re-entered the lobby and found Cole, Walter, and Albert crowded around the store computer. Walter nodded gravely as Albert summed up the list Cole had picked out. Molly joined them on the other side of the desk to see for herself.

The list contained more than she felt comfortable getting, and more than she figured they could afford. Cole seemed satisfied, however, and she’d resigned herself to leaving him in charge of this. The more she could distance herself from this decision, the better off she’d be. If Lucin wanted to blow a gasket later, she’d blame the mods on Navy-boy.

“Excellent choices,” Albert said, slapping Cole on his back. “You guys sure are lucky to have come to me, and that I like you so much. You couldn’t get a deal like this anywhere else in the galaxy. Of course, my wife won’t be happy to see how well old Walter here talked me down. Haha!”

Walter, Molly noted, did not have the carriage of a victorious Palan. It was hard to think of their little Cargo Officer as a bastion of humility, but here he was, showered with compliments and shrinking from them as if they stung. Molly also noticed that he couldn’t stop sniffing the air around him. She tried to hurry things along. “Can Edison begin installing the gear soon?”

“Installing? My goodness, dear, we don’t have the facilities for that! My garage is for the upkeep of my own ship. Highly illegal and improper to have you cobbling your war plans together here in my shop.”

His look of feigned moral outrage almost seemed sincere. “No, no, these things are best left to the less scrupulous monsters over at Darrin the Second’s line of shady establishments. Of course, I would never recommend your going over there. Frightful place, naturally. Vicious people. It’s better to go somewhere else in the galaxy that does that sort of thing.”

“Are you kidding?” Molly frowned. “You’re gonna dump this gear in our cargo bay and send us somewhere else to have it installed? And where else can we go besides Darrin?”

“Dear, dear. I’m sorry for any confusion, but it’s all in the contract. We can’t be in the business of modifying starships for combat, no sirree. Wouldn’t do. We’d have the Navy around here asking too many questions. Those unscrupulous jerks over around Darrin the Second’s asteroid field, now those guys will do anything for the right price. Good thing they don’t sell gear, I tell you. They’d pull shady deals that might put us right out of business over here.

“Now, I say those rats can’t be trusted, but if you do decide to go over there—again I recommend against it—there is one guy I’d suggest you see. Not too bad as far as Darrin the Second folk go. I’ve had some dealings with him in the past. As straight-shooting as that lot gets. You tell him I sent you and he’ll cut you a deal, no doubt. I’ll even call and tell him you’re coming.”

“Great,” Molly muttered. Now she understood how they could afford all this gear. The next question was: Did they have enough left to install it?

It took another day to procure the new flight suits, which provided plenty of time for finishing the physical side of the trade. The first order of business was to finally separate the two ships. To Molly, it felt like removing restraints from a dear friend. She and Cole had decided that this was the intended purpose: to keep their crew guarded until a deal was settled.

Albert boarded his ship and made airs of performing the complicated maneuver himself, but Molly knew he wasn’t flying. She watched as Lady Liberty decoupled and slid to the side, nearly brushing up against the hangar wall. Parsona’s cargo ramp could now be lowered and the swapping of goods could begin.

The computer technology that Walter had stowed all over her ship was crated up and carted off. Albert’s children joined in the fun, carrying off some of the lighter bits, oohing and ahhing at various spoils while their father chastised them to keep it down. Walter stood by the door, checking every item with a hiss, and making entries in his computer.

When Albert indicated all was square, they started moving the wooden crates of contraband aboard, the sight of which made Molly’s gut sink. The illegality of these actions crashed into her upbringing and her training. It could’ve been justified in a Navy hangar, or as part of a sting operation, but the truth was, she was a civilian. No, a criminal—on the run and dealing arms.

It filled her with shame.

“Excellent doing business with you, my dear. As soon as the suits arrive, you can be off. Please tell Frankie I said hello and that he really should move shop over here. Nasty blokes he deals with over there.”

Molly nodded absently. She wished the suits were already here so they could just leave. Somehow she doubted Darrin II could be as bad as this inhospitable and soulless wasteland.

That night they dined again with the entire family. With no business to tend to anymore, there was an eager gaiety surrounding the meal, but Molly still couldn’t partake in it. So far, in what she’d seen of the galaxy, the fairy tale she’d concocted in her brain didn’t exist except in her imagination. The gorgeous scenery on Glemot had been marred by the nasty brutality of its people. The cliffs of Palan were pockmarked with prison cell windows. She had no idea what Darrin I or II even looked like. War had turned them both into rubble.

Molly played with her food. She felt envious when Edison excused himself early, but sat with her own thoughts until the end of the meal, as was expected of a ship’s captain.

Albert shook hands with the entire crew; Mrs. Gaines pecked each of them on the cheek. It felt too bizarre for Molly. She went through the motions numbly, smiled weakly at the exhausted children, and followed Cole and Walter back to their ship.

Strange, but she felt a little sad that they didn’t have to cross through Lady Liberty to get there. She yearned for a chance to say goodbye to the Drenard. And to point out the changes that Edison had made to Lady Liberty.

Namely, to its chains.

Molly slept horribly for the second night in a row. She left her flightsuit on and lay on top of her sheets, waiting. When Albert knocked on the cargo door, she leapt up to open the ramp and help him load the parcels. The sound of the hydraulic arms gearing down the hatch stirred the rest of the crew. They appeared just in time to not have to do their share of the work.

Everyone exchanged a final set of goodbyes while Molly checked the engine room. As she crossed the cargo bay to the cockpit, Albert told her that the shield would go down as soon as he retreated to the store lobby. Walter shook his hand a final time, pumping it madly and hissing something to the big man privately.

Molly closed the ramp and hurried forward to fire up the thrusters. She waited while Cole checked the restraints on the weapon crates and Edison put away a few scattered tools. Walter pawed through one of the crates, pulling out his brand new space suit.

“You won’t need that today,” Molly told him. “It’s gonna be a long, slow burn across to those other thieves.”

Walter seemed annoyed at this, but he put the suit back in the box, patting it proudly.

“Let’s get buckled up,” she told everyone as she performed the last of the pre-flight checks.

Cole joined her in the cockpit and booted the nav computer. “Brand new charts!” he said.

“Yeah, but you know what they say: those things are out of date the second you install them.”

“True. Hey, can I delete our old charts from the system? They’ve been nothing but trouble, anyway.”

“Absolutely,” Molly said.

Cole typed in a few commands and hovered his finger over the enter key. Molly shot a hand out and grabbed his wrist. “Wait,” she said. “The nav tracks from the trip with my father. Gods, I know it sounds stupid and we really don’t have the space to spare, but… will you hold off on deleting those charts?”

“Sure thing,” Cole said, smiling. “And that doesn’t sound stupid to me at all. When we get some time, I’ll copy the tracks and waypoints over to the new charts and clear up the space.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. Are the boys strapped in?”

Cole checked his vid screen and gave her a thumbs-up. Molly had the chase cam up to watch for a change in the forcefield. When the shimmer of light disappeared, she pushed the thruster throttles forward, gently lifting the ship. She retracted the landing gear immediately, keeping them from scraping on the decking as the Parsona slid backwards into space.

She spun the craft around just outside the door and faced the long line of asteroid-based shops strung out in the distance. The sight of them gave Molly a sudden impulse to do a full burn, charring the far wall of Albert’s hangar with black soot, but she resisted the temptation. Instead, she nudged forward—expecting resistance at any moment—but finding none.

30

Molly had hoped leaving the crooked line of shops in Darrin I would bring relief. Instead, she found herself heading out to their mirror image. SADAR showed the line of asteroids marking Darrin II in the distance. Beyond them, drifting and colliding, another ring of planetary debris loomed.

They could have chosen to jump across through hyperspace, arriving at Frankie’s shop in less than an hour, but Molly had lied to Albert about being low on fusion fuel. She looked forward to the respite of another slow burn, beginning to appreciate the time between waypoints that she once found painfully dull.

She locked in two Gs of acceleration, the most Parsona’s grav plates could balance out and allow movement about the ship. When they reached the halfway point, she’d spin them around and decelerate at two Gs until they reached Frankie’s. She left Cole on watch and went to take a hot shower, her second of the day. Walking past the crates of illegal arms in the cargo bay, she had a feeling that another mere rinse would not make her feel much cleaner.

At the workbench, Edison tinkered with yet another project. The sight of him in his Glemot robe, fresh and white, deepened her funk. Otherwise, she would have stopped and given him encouragement and inquired about his latest invention.

Molly paused by Walter’s room before turning into her own. Through the closed door, she could hear him mumbling to himself in his own language. The sounds of water bubbling over stone were interspersed with hissing English words for which his language had no substitute. “Navy” and “video game” caught her ear, creating the illusion that she understood a bit of the Palan tongue.

Molly had completely forgotten about her promise of a reward. What would Lucin say when he found out the Navy owed money to this strange kid? And surely the boy wasn’t thinking about blowing his reward on those silly games of his.

After her shower, Molly yanked her jumpsuit out of the washer/dryer. It was still slightly damp, but she pulled it on anyway. The uncomfortable coolness matched her mood. She strolled out to the cargo bay and froze at the sight of an opened crate. Edison leaned over the contraband, fiddling with something.

Molly didn’t want to dissuade her friend from showing initiative, but those crates represented something bad about herself—she didn’t care to see them toyed with. She also didn’t want to take out more of her frustrations on her friends, so she walked to the other side of the crate and gently asked him what he was finding.

“Plasma inducer in excellent condition,” he told her. “Impeccable. And fully charged, no less. Simple mounting procedure required, is all.” He looked up at her with a wide smile. “Installing these units would be highly enjoyable.”

Molly scratched his head. “I know you’d enjoy it, pal. And if Albert would’ve let us use his garage and tools, you’d be doing just that. Heck, if there was a safe place we could go right now that had a pile of scrap metal and something bigger than our ship’s welder, I’d take you there.”

She looked down into the open crate at the long gleaming shaft of the laser canon. “Imagine having to scratch my back before I scratched yours. Like in a Council meeting when you have to give someone a vote to get a vote in return. That’s why we have to go to Frankie’s.”

Edison nodded. “My understanding of the situation is complete. Just expressing my imagined pleasure.”

She patted him again and set off to relieve Cole when something Edison had said made her stop in her tracks. She whirled on him. “Did you say those things were already charged?”

He nodded. “Fully. A simple depression of this mechanical device discharges a stream of modulated plasma with an amplitude of—”

She held up both hands. “I understand. Do me a favor? Please put the lid back on and go check the chaff pods. Or try on your space suit and make sure it fits and breathes all right, okay?”

“Absolutely, captain. With haste.”

She exhaled, turned to the cockpit and nodded at Walter. The boy had returned to his computer, programming away. Despite her annoyance with him wasting time with that game, she couldn’t imagine life on Parsona without that thing to baby-sit him.

“Bored?” she asked Cole as she wiggled into her chair.

“Yeah, and loving it. You missed a new arrival while you were in the shower.” He pointed to the SADAR display.

Molly looked. Back at Darrin I the entire fleet of pushy salesmen raced out of their shops to greet a new customer. Except, unlike her, this buyer had jumped in safely and knew to sit and wait. Molly felt sorry for the poor guy, then caught herself. Anyone doing business here did not deserve her pity. Herself included.

One of the red blips rushing out had a clear lead. Molly imagined it was Anlyn, chained to her chair and out-flying everything in the system. She hoped the poor girl found Edison’s alterations before Albert did. And as much as she’d love to watch the starved slave bust free, Molly hoped there’d be a lot of distance between Parsona and that fight before it broke out.

“There has to be a better way of conducting business,” Cole said, studying the chase on SADAR.

“Well, whatever they were doing before worked none too well.” She traced her finger across the SADAR image of all that debris, wondering what had happened, who had fired the first shot, and how many people had died. Her brain flashed back to Glemot, but she didn’t allow it to linger there.

“Hey, Cole, what was it like where you were born?”

“It was like Portugal.”

“I’m serious. Your village, what was it like?”

“Small and dirty.” He paused a moment. “But I loved it there. No, actually I was bored out of my mind back then, but I love to remember myself as happy there. Maybe it’s because I know I’d be happy there now.”

“You wouldn’t be bored after a while?”

“Possibly, yeah. After a few weeks of doing nothing I’m sure I’d be yearning for the rainy season on Palan.” He chuckled and turned to face her. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know… I just feel sometimes like you and I don’t really know each other as well as we should. All those hours in the simulator together, and we spent most of our time talking about previous hours in the simulator. There’s times when I feel like you weren’t born until you got to the Academy.”

“Well, don’t you feel that way about yourself sometimes?”

“Me? No. Not really. I think my upbringing, my father especially, had a lot to do with who I am. It made me into something that wanted to join the Academy in the first place.”

“Hmm. I suppose the same is true for me. But it was my friends that made the difference.”

“What do you mean?” Molly knew nothing of Cole’s old friends.

“I just stayed in trouble a lot. Made some mistakes. When I got in one bad fix, my only way out was either to run from the authorities or join them. I chose the latter. Went to a recruiter and signed up for the Navy. The aptitude tests said ‘pilot,’ so here I am.”

“Yeah, in the navigator’s chair.” Molly laughed at her own joke and Cole joined her. It felt good.

“You know what isn’t funny?” she asked after they settled down.

“You.”

“No, the fact that you’re in the same spot now that you were back then.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Well, we’re in a jam and the choice has been to run from the police or run toward them. Only this time you are making the opposite decision.”

“Hmm. Hadn’t thought about it like that.” They both fell silent for a moment. “It’s gonna suck like a hull breach when I wake up one day and realize I was wrong both times.”

Molly hoped he meant that to be funny—but neither of them laughed.

Albert had marked Frankie’s shop on their charts. They were several thousand meters from the nondescript asteroid when Molly thumbed the short distance radio and tried to hail him.

“Frankie’s Mods, Parsona, channel sixteen, come in.” She released the mic key and glanced over at Cole. He was watching the SADAR intently.

“This is Frankie’s Mods on sixteen, over.”

“Frankie, this is Molly, the captain of the GN Class starship Parsona, requesting permission to land.”

“Permission granted. The door’s open. We look forward to doing business with you.”

Molly looked to Cole again. “See? Now this is how you’re supposed to do it. None of that scaring-people-half-to-death and chasing-them-all-over-the-star-system nonsense.”

Cole nodded and turned back to the dash. But as paranoid as he was being—as intently as he studied the SADAR—there was no way he could’ve known that one of the bumps on the back of Frankie’s asteroid was a Navy Firehawk, lying in ambush.

Molly moved cautiously into Frankie’s hangar, a carbon-copy of the one they’d left earlier that day. She braced for an impact as Parsona broke the plane, wondering if the locals ever got used to the fear of hitting one of these glass doors.

“I wonder where Frankie’s ship is?” she asked.

“Wife’s probably out shopping for milk and eggs, or taking the kids out to Galaxy Ball practice,” said Cole.

Molly shook her head at the image, another strange glimpse of domestic normalcy in the middle of an arms-dealing village. She felt extremely sad for the kids growing up here. Once again, she made a promise with herself: never return to Darrin, ever again.

After clearing the entry, Molly spun Parsona around and docked Navy-style, with an eye for leaving suddenly. The invisible door shimmered to life in front of them and atmosphere poured visibly from large vents in the ceiling. Their landing gear settled, rocking slightly, as they came to rest.

Molly thumbed the cargo ramp and she and Cole joined the boys by the crates, everyone rested up and expecting a long day of hard work as Parsona had some fangs installed. Molly was torn about the method but resigned to the outcome. She hurried down the ramp ahead of the others, eager to get this over with.

She rounded the rear of the ship as the door to Frankie’s shop opened. An old man in a blue mechanic’s suit strolled out; Molly started to introduce herself and her crew when a second man entered the hangar.

The strangest sensation overcame her. She recognized the guy, but some other part of her brain knew: the person she thought it was could not possibly be here. The two pieces of logic collided over and over, both trying to find purchase but grasping for the same sliver of her attention. Molly stood there dumbly, waiting for the thoughts to sort themselves out.

Cole helped her by providing a name, cementing the impossible thought in her head. “Jakobs?” he asked. It sounded like a question to Molly, but it wasn’t. It was the lilt of confusion.

The boy nodded gravely. He looked more like a man now. He and Frankie both had weapons in their hands—and they were leveled at the four of them. Molly’s brain revolted against what she was seeing.

Cole started to say something else, but Jakobs interrupted. “On your knees, Cole. Hands behind your back.”

“Flank you,” he replied.

Jakobs moved the gun slightly and fired a shot into Edison’s chest. The pup released a deep howl and collapsed forward, right on his face. The floor shook with the impact and Molly heard herself scream. She ran to her friend, threw herself on her knees, her chest across his back, protecting him.

“On your knees, Cole.” Jakobs moved the laser pistol back.

“Do it!” Molly yelled, feeling for any sign of life in Edison.

Cole sank to the ground, his hands on top of his head, and spat obscenities.

“Don’t worry, the Glemot will be fine,” Jakobs told Molly. “Heard you were traveling with one, but personally, I never believed it. I’m gonna owe Dinks a beer now.”

Molly felt Edison’s back rising and falling, but just barely. She glared at Jakobs. “Dinks?” she asked.

“Yeah, he should be bringing the ship around soon. We read the few reports the Navy system had on these brutes,” he pointed the pistol to indicate Edison, “and I never really bought it. Now that I see how small they really are, I guess I was right to doubt the intel, just wrong to think you weren’t flying with one. Can’t wait to hear the story there.”

“Where did you hear this?”

Frankie pulled plastic strips out of his coveralls and cuffed Cole; he gave Walter a careful appraisal.

“Plenty of time to talk about that later,” Jakobs said. “First, we need to get you back to Lucin and turn this traitor in.”

Molly’s thoughts were still on Edison when she realized that Jakobs meant Cole.

“Traitor?” She repeated the word. Surely, she’d misheard.

Frankie guided Molly away from Edison’s body and secured the Glemot with multiple strips of strong plastic. Molly couldn’t speak; Cole alternated between cursing Jakobs and pleading with her to listen.

Jakobs holstered his weapon and asked Molly to come and sit so he could explain some things to her. She walked through the door leading out of Frankie’s hangar, the confusion behind her closing like a fog in her wake.

31

“Don’t feel bad. He had us fooled for a long time as well.”

Now that they were standing close to one another, Molly could see the faint marks on Jakobs’s face from Cole’s handiwork. Those medical reports were flashing back to her, each entry corresponding to a white line on his young skin.

“You have to be wrong,” she said. “Whatever you think Cole’s doing, he’s not. I can explain why we’re avoiding the Navy. When we got to Palan—”

“We know about Palan,” he interrupted. “We found the three office workers who died in the rain. We found Simmons—you probably knew him as Drummond—and we’re pretty sure Saunders and Cole were behind it all.”

“What?!” Molly had no idea “traitor” implied all this. “No,” she said. “They were trying to kill Cole. He’s working to uncover the whole thing. You have this backwards.”

“I understand what you think, I just need you to look at something with an open mind, okay? Just watch this video, it’s a lot simpler than trying to convince you that the way you remember things was not how they happened.”

He held a small video device out for her. She took it.

“Watch,” he repeated.

She did.

The still image displayed on the screen made her throat constrict with nostalgia: the simulator room. A long line of white pods and a wall of bare block. Someone walked on-screen. It wasn’t a still image; it was a security video. A cadet, walking away from the camera, went straight to her old pod, fourth on the left. He did something by the rear of the simulator. He looked around once.

Molly knew.

When he finished, he returned the plate and fastened it. He turned back the way he’d come, facing the camera. But she didn’t need to see his face to recognize the way Cole walks. Her world shattered.

“Why?” she asked, the question directed more at the boy in the video.

Jakobs took the player back and tucked it away. He motioned to the sofa, but she couldn’t move. “Listen,” Jabobs said, moving closer. “Your father’s ship was discovered almost a year ago, long before you heard about it. The Navy wasn’t too eager to get it back at first; the guys holding it were asking far too much for a civilian craft. Lucin pushed as hard as he could, but there was a lot of resistance. He just didn’t want to get your hopes up before he had the craft in hand. He asked me to tell you that.

“When Saunders realized what was going on, he blew his top. He thought Lucin’s past was destroying his focus, his ability to do his job. He wanted you gone and he… he promised Cole a major promotion to Special Assignments if he helped him out. After the Tchung simulation, he had you expelled, and he thought that’d be the end of it.”

Jakobs shook his head. “But Lucin thinks the world of you. He kept fighting for the Parsona and doting on you during weekends and breaks. When he went over the replays from the Tchung simulation, he suspected Saunders was up to something. The problem was, he went to Cole to help uncover it. He was trusting Saunders’s own agent to uncover his plans. Since then, Cole has been doing everything he can to keep you away from the Navy while he tries to get in touch with his boss. We don’t know what his next move would’ve been. Fortunately for us, when an arms dealer called to report someone traveling with a Glemot, he gave us the name of the ship and someone high up recognized the name Parsona, called the Academy, and luckily, Lucin heard about it first. We’ve been trying to keep all this in-house, of course. Cadets that know you and that Lucin can trust.

“So here we are. And everything’s gonna to be fine, now. We’ll get the prisoners secured aboard Parsona—in your staterooms or the escape pods—and then you and I will follow the Firehawk to Canopus. There, the Navy can take over.”

Molly understood the words, but it didn’t feel as if she heard them. They just appeared, like mysterious wounds after a long battle.

“I know it’s a lot to absorb, but think about this: Lucin will be able to get you back in the Academy once Saunders has been exposed and put on trial. You might even get to fly again. And I know me and some of the cadets were hard on you, but we were all hard on each other, it’s part of the toughening-up process…”

Molly locked her eyes on his. Jakobs paused, but seemed to take the look the wrong way. He moved closer. “…and I don’t know about you, but I always thought there was something between us. Something physical that we never—”

She slapped the next words out of Jakobs’s head. As hard as she could. Pain lanced out of her tender wrist and shot up to her shoulder. It felt like electricity. It felt great.

She turned away from him and marched back to the hangar, ready to go wherever they were taking her. As long as it was away from here.

When she entered the hangar, Molly saw Dinks hovering in his Firehawk outside the forcefield. He waved at her through the carboglass; she ignored him and stomped into the cargo bay. Walter sat at the workbench; he looked up from his game.

“Cole iss a bad guy?”

“I don’t know, pal. And I don’t wanna talk about it.” She glanced around. “Where’s Edison?”

“They took him into hiss room. He iss chained up. Awake and very angry.”

“Angry is better than dead.” She hesitated. “And Cole?”

“Locked up too. But I am not in trouble, they ssaid. Navy reward.”

“I’m sure they’ll give you a big reward. Now don’t worry about this Navy stuff, okay?”

“Okay, Molly.” He bent back over his game.

Molly wanted to go and talk to Cole, but she knew her voice wouldn’t work, even to ask him to explain himself. The raw hurt and sense of betrayal she felt at that moment—the ability to be completely crushed by another human being—made her realize something. She had, indeed, been in love with Cole.

And now she hated him for it.

“You sure you don’t want to fly us out of here? It is your ship.”

Molly looked over from Cole’s seat where she was nestled in the depression he’d made. She shook her head, her helmet twisting with the momentum.

“Okay,” Jakobs said as the shimmer of light ahead of them vanished. Parsona lifted unevenly from the floor, one of her landing struts scraping loudly across the deck for a few meters, then they punched through the boundary of the hangar and into space.

Dinks took the lead in the Firehawk while Jakobs followed. When both vessels were clear of the asteroid they turned and started out to a safe hyperjump point.

Molly turned to Jakobs, “Are Cole and Edison going to be okay in the staterooms?”

He glanced over, then jerked his head back forward, concentrating on flying. “They’ll be fine. I told Dinks to take it nice and easy out to the jump point. From there it’ll be two short hops to the Orbital Station at Canopus.”

“And then to Earth, right?”

Jakobs looked at her again, longer this time. “Eventually, yeah. But you do realize they’re gonna court-martial Cole, right? The Navy should be able to put a panel together at Canopus in a few days. We’ll probably be there a week or more. You’ll have to testify, of course.”

Testify? Against Cole? The thought had never occurred to her. And testify to what? Sabotaging their simulator, playing dead, and then kidnapping her? Or for saving her life several times since?

Jakobs kept turning to study her face through their open visors. She noticed Parsona’s nose drift down and to the right whenever he did this. The fact that this clown had graduated early and been put on Special Assignments irked her.

“If he was a civilian, he might get life in prison,” said Jakobs. “But he’s Navy. Ship theft and going AWOL are capital crimes. Hell, even if the murders of the Navy men don’t stick, he’s just purchased illegal arms. This is just the stuff we know about. There’s no telling what will come to light once we get you and your crew on the stand.”

Her crew. Walter. The nuke on Glemot. Molly felt sick to her stomach. And Jakobs wasn’t through.

“They’ll airlock him for this, Molly. I hope you realize how serious this is.”

She spun on him. “Airlock him?! Kill him?! Those guys on Palan died in the rains. They were trying to kill us! The jail we broke out of? They were going to kill Cole that very day without a trial! And we bought guns because everywhere we go, the boys in black seem eager to do us harm. Your little ambush is what we’ve been running from.”

Jakobs’ face turned red. “Ambush? This is a rescue mission. The Navy said I could shoot Cole on sight if I needed to. It turns out your hero has a shady past, and now he has a service record to match. So stop defending the guy. He’s the one that screwed you during the Tchung simulation and got you kicked out of school.” Jakobs pointed to the scars on his face. “Look what he did to me!” He took a deep breath and looked ahead, correcting his course.

“You saw the video yourself,” he went on. “And when the Navy Panel sees that and the evidence brought in from Palan, your friend is gonna get what’s coming to him. Now get on the right side of the law before I consider cuffing you up in your stateroom.”

Molly looked down at her palms, resting in her lap. “I need to use the bathroom before we jump,” she said meekly.

What she really needed was to get away from Jakobs and that conversation. But also, a small part of her hoped that just being nearer to Cole would provide some answers. She had so many questions welling up. If she could be wrong about him, she didn’t think her brain could ever again be trusted to draw a correct conclusion.

Walter hissed at her as she entered the cargo bay, trying once more to show her his videogame. It had become a little contest between them: him eager to show off his work and her hunting for an excuse. Right now, she didn’t have the energy to play, so she leaned over and pretended to be interested in his computer.

Even in her funk, she had to admit: the game was impressive. She’d seen enough of them around the Academy to appreciate the graphics. Surely he hadn’t programmed the whole thing. “You made this?” she asked.

“Yesss,” Walter hissed, his voice dripping with pride.

“It’s amazing,” she told him. And it was. Running across the surface of a detailed planet, a space cadet waved blasters in both hands. There were all kinds of things to shoot and kill—typical boy stuff—but done realistically enough that even she might get into it. She handed it back to Walter, who beamed at her.

“Keep it up,” she said, patting his head. Walter resumed control of the figure, destroying things for points, while Molly retreated to her stateroom. She closed the door and hoped that small ounce of attention would keep him satisfied all the way to Canopus. She didn’t have enough energy to take care of herself, much less someone else.

She sat in the bathroom for a few minutes, pretending to use it, then got up and flushed the air chamber, capping the pointless ruse. After another pause, waiting for answers that should’ve been forming, she gave up and walked out of her room.

Instead of going to the cockpit, though, she snuck back to Cole’s quarters. His door was locked—sealed with her Captian’s codes. She could key it open and demand answers, but how would Jakobs and the Navy see that?

She took off her helmet and pressed her cheek to the door. The thrumming of the thrusters vibrated through the metal, singing along the length of the ship. Molly could hear her pulse racing through her ear.

She pulled herself away and went to Edison’s door, pressing a hand to the cool metal. She wondered what the Navy would do with him. Especially when they found out he was one of the last of his kind. The pain of what happened on Glemot piled on top of her new miseries, crushing her. She didn’t know what would come out in a trial, but it would be difficult to explain the things she didn’t understand herself.

She headed toward the cockpit and noticed that Walter’s door was open. She stepped inside, looking for any excuse to stay close to the two prisoners. Surveying herself in the mirror over Walter’s dresser, she hardly recognized the person looking back. The girl’s brown hair was too long—matted and unkempt. Her eyes appeared too old for the rest of her. Her mouth was sad. The poor thing’s shoulders drooped like someone who had worked for years under a heavy burden.

Molly took a deep breath and tried to hold it in. Her eyes wandered to a few of the pictures Walter had taken and printed out with the ship’s computer. They were tucked in the frame of the mirror, their edges curling.

One showed a group of Glemots working on Parsona. She didn’t even know he’d snapped any photos back then. The lush greenness in the background didn’t do the planet justice, but Molly reached up to brush her fingers across the image—the image of a land she’d helped destroy.

Another photo he had on display must have been pulled from one of the security feeds. It showed her patting Walter on the head. She didn’t even remember when it had taken place, and before she could be upset at him for hacking into the ship’s computers, she saw another picture behind it. Hidden. She pulled it out. It didn’t make any sense. She stared at it, as if it eventually would.

The picture showed the simulator room at the Academy, taken from eye level. A few cadets milled about that she didn’t recognize. Rows of simulator pods faced the familiar block wall.

Why in the galaxy would Walter have a picture of this? She turned the photo over and looked at the back. Nothing was written there, but it wasn’t the photo paper the ship used. Where had he found this?

She put it back in its place and reminded herself to ask him about both pictures. The one he hacked from the computer upset her, almost as much as the hidden one confused. Molly put her helmet back on and stepped back into the cargo bay. Walter looked up at her, sneering. He was playing his game and obviously having the time of his life.

She thought about the video game.

And the picture of the simulators.

Her vision squeezed in from the edges until only the center was visible, like looking through a straw. She nearly fainted to the ground, staggered forward, steadied herself on one of the large crates, then sank to her knees.

Molly looked up to the cockpit and spotted Jakobs’s video player on the panel by his seat. Past Jakobs, and through the carboglass, she could see the Firehawk ahead of them. Dinks was slowly pulling away for the jump through hyperspace. Beyond that, glints of a fleet winked in the starlight, dashing about in a cluster. The ships of Darrin I were chasing down another customer.

Molly took all of it in—and none of it. Her brain raced and reeled, assembling pieces like a planet coalescing out of dust, all of them orbiting Walter’s video game. How realistic it looked. The little cadet running around with his pistols—she recognized that figure. Knew his artificial gait from somewhere. She realized how easily that alien world could be substituted for a room full of simulator pods.

For a Navy reward, of course.

Jakobs turned to look back at her, his visor up. He must’ve been yelling at her to return to her chair so they could prep for the jump. Molly knew this, but she couldn’t hear him—her head pounded with depression and rage. She pulled the lower half of her helmet closed, sealing it tight. If anything, the pounding just got louder.

She dug her gloves under one side of the crate, tossed the lid off and peered down at the gleaming metal contraption inside.

Molly thought about them killing Cole. For what? For protecting her? And they would do it with bad information. Dirty information. It reminded her of that day in Saunders’s office. Of being berated after having done everything right. And now an innocent man, a good man, was going to be killed by liars and cheats.

Over her dead body.

Over all of their dead bodies.

She sighted down the length of the crated laser cannon, eyeing Jakobs. He froze in the act of unbuckling his harness, his mouth and eyes wide open. Molly allowed herself to sink down—down into the well of dark thoughts rising up within her. Part of her, some sliver of sanity, yelled. It pleaded for a return to her senses. But it was a small girl—lost in a nightmare—unable to find her voice. The rest of Molly flared with anger. Betrayal after betrayal had finally worn her down. Eaten to her core. Her thin crust of hope had been ablated off by a galaxy of cruelness.

She peered into the crate. Her head roared. She ignored the consequences and hit the lever Edison had shown her.

Hit it and held it.

32

Dinks died never knowing he was in danger. One moment he was spooling up the hyperdrive, the next moment a bolt of laser bored a tunnel through his defenseless Firehawk. The vessel combined explosion and implosion in a confused cloud of debris with a hint of gore.

Molly, Jakobs, and Walter flew through the new hole in Parsona’s carboglass. The vacuum outside sucked at them greedily, pulling out every ounce of pressurized air within. Molly didn’t even try to catch herself on the edge of the windshield as she went past. She concentrated on reaching Jakobs ahead of her.

She collided with the boy’s legs and held fast. They both glided ahead of Parsona through a slightly warmer patch of space: the cloud where Dink’s Firehawk had been. Molly pulled herself up Jakobs’s body, which felt rigid with shock. His visor had snapped shut with the loss of cabin pressure, but there was always a delay. Molly could see it in his eyes; they were bloodshot and full of fear. Blood trickled from his nose.

Molly considered saying something through the suit’s radio, but decided he didn’t merit the trouble. She fumbled for the latches on his helmet, her gloves thick and unwieldy. Even in his haze, Jakobs seemed to grasp her plan. He pawed at her arms, trying to wrestle them down. They struggled for a moment, twisting in space. Molly’s fingers found the snaps, there was a satisfying click felt through her gloves, but silent in the vacuum.

The helmet shot off from the internal pressure of his suit and Jakobs’s face swelled immediately. The look of fear drained out of his face, replaced not with pain or anger, but incredulity. His eyes pleaded with her, begging to know how she’d uncovered the lie.

No part of her cared to satisfy him.

Molly heard the speaker in her helmet keyed as a radio made contact. The sound startled her at first, then a voice crackled through. There was no mistaking its owner.

“Sssorry.” It sounded like the air leaking from Jakobs’s suit, as if it could make itself audible.

Molly turned away from the lifeless body to look behind her. Walter floated alone between her and her damaged ship. She could see blood coming out of his nose and down his lips through the lower half of his helmet. She shoved off Jakobs’s body as hard as she could, gliding toward the one that had betrayed her.

“Sssorry,” he said again, as she reached to him, the force of her arrival sending them into a slow spin. She held him, their helmets almost touching. He mouthed an apology over and over again. Molly thought for a moment about groping for the latches on his helmet as well, but she stopped herself from considering it.

They were both dead, anyway. Their suits held mere hours of atmosphere. With no way to maneuver back to Parsona, Molly resigned herself to holding the Palan boy until one of them breathed their last. Perhaps, by then, she would understand why he’d done it. Could it have really been for a stupid reward? Was it Albert who conned him? She wanted to know, but uncovering a justification as petty as money would just make the betrayal worse.

And did it really matter?

Molly made a rough calculation of the volume of air in the staterooms, wondering how much longer her two friends would last. Would a slow asphyxiation here be better or worse than the airlocking the Navy had planned? She didn’t know.

And she didn’t notice the action taking place in the distance. A fight had broken out near Darrin I, and it headed their way.

Molly snapped out of the trance when a ship exploded just a few thousand kilometers away. The arms dealers from Darrin I closed in on another ship; only this time they were attacking it.

As the group neared, crossing the vacuum between the two planetary orbits, Molly finally recognized the ship being chased. Lady Liberty. The vessel ran and fought at the same time, taking out two pursers with a series of feints and attacks that roused the pilot within her.

At least she and Walter would go out with a good show. As they spun around, facing Parsona and then the fight, they both craned their necks to keep up with the action. One ship with incredible power fought a dozen others with matching defenses—and the solitary one was winning. The only imbalance in this fight lay in their unequal skills.

Several remaining Darrin I ships peeled away—whatever they sought not worth dying for. Molly couldn’t imagine what warranted such deadly fervor, then noticed the lead ship had vectored straight for her and Parsona. During her next lazy revolution, she scanned the space behind her, but nothing lay there save the rubble of Darrin II. Her brain, still hazy, wrestled with the coincidence. Molly remembered: she didn’t believe in coincidences. The melee had something to do with Parsona. Albert was coming back for his gear. Or rushing to Frankie’s defense. In Molly’s state, the alternative never occurred to her, despite the fact that she and Edison had engineered it.

She turned her focus on Walter. There wasn’t enough sunlight out here to blind them, so she hit the lever that raised the mirrored visor and took in his entire face.

He looked horrible, his metallic-looking skin webbed with red lines. Capillaries full of blood strained to the surface as crimson rivulets trickled from his ears and streaked around his silver cheeks. His nose dripped globules of blood that floated around his helmet in the absence of gravity. His eyes were red, like Jakobs’s. The only difference was the way they locked onto hers. They wavered between pain and adoration.

“Sssoryy.”

He didn’t know, Molly realized. He had no clue how this betrayal would make her feel. He didn’t understand the bond that existed between her and Cole. Maybe a Palan couldn’t know. What would a world that washed itself clean each month teach you about building for the future? About creating anything that lasts? What if Molly had known she only had a few weeks with Cole? Would she be just as detached as Walter? Caring about just herself and her own wants? She couldn’t honestly say. She had bonded with Cole in the way that people planning a forever could: with an eye to spending the rest of eternity with one another. Something that Walter couldn’t possibly envision.

Realizing this, Molly thought of something she needed to say to him before one of them breathed their last. She keyed the mic switch inside her glove and answered his pleas.

“I forgive you,” she said.

She whispered it again, holding his little body in her arms, their visors pressed together. “I forgive you, Walter.”

His eyes squinted with pain. Physical, emotional, or both—it was impossible to tell. Walter parted his lips and hissed another “ssorry” as if the last of his life leaked through his teeth. Small spheres of blood and salty water collided in a chamber of dwindling air. They stuck to one another but did not mix, like the helmets pressed together beyond them.

Lady Liberty approached and Molly held Walter’s body tight and waited for laser fire to consume them both. She didn’t look up until the gleaming hull blocked out all else. The cargo ramp opened up—the ship slid sideways to swallow them!

Molly instinctively reached out a hand to clutch a zero-G hold as they skidded across the ship’s decking. The cargo door hinged shut and air and gravity were both pumped into the room. Molly lay on her back, unwilling to move. Ever again, if need be. A broken length of chain rattled as gravity snaked it back into a heap.

The cockpit door slid open and a figure emerged. With silent steps, it crept up to Molly and Walter. She should’ve known. Should’ve recognized the maneuvers. Albert wasn’t on this ship at all. His prisoner had returned the favor of a rescue.

Molly stirred and fiddled for the release catches on her helmet. Anlyn rushed to help her. The alien seemed to understand what she wanted and delicately reached for the clasps. The helmet came off with a pop.

Tears rushed from both sets of eyes. The young Drenard leaned over to hold her.

“Molly,” she whispered, in a soft, clear voice. “I don’t want to fly ever again.” The poor creature’s eyes were wide, unblinking, coated with tears. “Please don’t make me fly, Molly. I don’t ever want to fly again.”

Molly was speechless and numb. She wrapped her bulky space suit around the fragile creature, swallowing her up and wishing she could pull her inside.

“I promise,” she told Anlyn. “I promise you’ll never have to fly again if you don’t want to.”

The Drenard sank into her chest, taking in deep breaths of freedom.

This time, when Lady Liberty and Parsona joined together, it was consensual. Walter had been cleaned up and locked in one of Lady Liberty’s staterooms. He seemed to be more emotionally drained from his treachery than physically harmed from its consequences. Molly left him to suffer alone as she rushed to the airlock of her ship.

When she opened the inner door, the air in the lock puffed out toward the cockpit and then into open space. She breathed through her suit, back at the scene of her deadly outrage. The crate lid floated by, a sign that no gravity awaited her—the panel must’ve been destroyed in the blast.

She worked her way forward, toward the hole in Parsona’s nose. There should still be air in the staterooms, but she needed to work fast. She pulled out an emergency patch kit from one of Walter’s well-organized emergency bins and began inflating the flat disk. She adhered it in place, the two epoxies mixing and turning the pliable material into hardened steel. In the middle of the expansive carboglass windshield there would be a massive disk of blue plasteen, but at least she could try and return atmosphere to the rest of the ship.

As she suspected, the gravity panels were shot. Luckily, the life-support systems rebooted to full operation. Molly pumped air back into the ship, enabling her to open the airlock between the two hulls.

She opened the outer door from inside the airlock, watching the air between the two crafts mix. Anlyn pushed away from the comfort of gravity to join her. One of her small, translucent hands worked into Molly’s padded flight gloves. Together, they floated toward the staterooms, pulling along at the recessed holds in the floor.

Molly opened Edison’s door first and Anlyn helped her remove the restraints from the frightened and confused Glemot. He asked them a confusing stream of questions and fumbled in the odd state of atmosphere and weightlessness. Molly left Anlyn to try and soothe the bristling bear with her soft, angelic voice. Two aliens, polar opposites and each rarely seen by any other race, tried to comfort one another. They were already at the back of Molly’s mind as she pushed off toward the room across the hall.

She punched in the code to unlock Cole’s room. Tears of worry were already floating out of her eyes and through the weightless air. It seemed to take forever for the thing to hiss open. When it did, their eyes met and Cole mouthed her name. She pushed off the jamb, rushing toward him and wrapping him in her arms, his own still tied behind his back.

“I’m so sorry, Cole. I’m so sorry.” She held each side of his face with her hands and kissed his forehead. She apologized again and again through her tears and the wetness she left on his skin.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay.” He tilted his head back to look up at her. “Gods, I’m glad you’re all right. Stop apologizing, okay? I forgive you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m doing everything wrong,” she sputtered. “Everything I try to fix, I make it worse. It makes me not want to try anymore.”

“Untie my hands, Molly.”

“See?” she blubbered, wiping the tears off her face. “I can’t even rescue you right.” She tried to laugh but it came out as sobs.

As soon as Cole’s hands came free, he reached up and held her face, one hand cupping each cheek. Molly released her hold of the ship and she floated in space, held only by his embrace.

They looked at each other for what seemed an eternity. Cole’s face had a blank serenity Molly had never seen before. The tension that lived eternally in his brow, either from worry or deep thought, had disappeared. His mouth exuded happiness without smiling. Molly thought he’d never looked so gorgeous, so desirable, and so much like what she always pictured was beneath his mirrored visor.

“You make everything better, Molly Fyde.”

She started crying and tried to shake her head. In the absence of gravity, it just set the couple spinning.

“You do. You just don’t see it. You’re like that damn simulator, taking points from yourself whenever you do something brave. Look at how many times you’ve rescued me. On Palan. Here. You’re the bravest, most incredible person I know.”

Molly parted her lips to argue—and he kissed her. Pressed his lips to hers. They held each other like that for a moment. Molly felt her worry and pain drifting out, sliding through every tingling pore of her being.

Cole pulled back and flashed her a mesmerizing grin. “I’m sorry, were you about to say something?”

Molly glanced up. She had been on the verge of correcting him about something. What was it?

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Technically… I saved your ass twice on Palan.”

Cole tried to laugh.

But Molly interrupted him.

Outside, two ships drifted. Locked together and sharing an atmosphere. They orbited each other around a common center, spinning in the absence of gravity.