“Something’s not right here,” she said.
“Nobody’s home,” said Cat.
That’s exactly what didn’t seem right. Molly could see the full length of the tilting hangar, all the way to the far wall, which hung way below them. There should’ve been a pile of Firehawks and Scouts down there, trillions of dollars of destroyed Navy hardware lying in a pile.
“Must’ve been in the fight,” Cat said.
“Or the crew used everything they had to escape.”
“I didn’t see nothing fly out on its way down,” Scottie said.
“Me neither, but there were Firehawks raining down earlier, before we left Bekkie.”
“Not enough,” Molly said. “There would’ve been hundreds of them aboard.” She turned to the others. “Should we peek inside? Look for survivors?”
Cat turned to her and shook her head. “Ain’t no one survive this. Not a crash like this.”
“Yeah, but there’s still power. Maybe someone—I dunno, I just always think there’s a chance.”
“If you wanna stick your nose in and take a sniff, be my guest. But get ready to hightail it when this puppy goes down.”
Molly turned the radio down to its lowest broadcast setting, just in case anyone in the fleet above was listening in. She brought the mic to her lips.
“Zebra wing—” She hesitated, trying to think up a lie, then figuring it didn’t matter. “—Parsona here. Any survivors, please come back on twenty-two eighteen.”
They waited. She adjusted the squelch until a faint hissing and pop-ping assured her the speakers were operational. Nobody responded.
“Just a peek,” she told the others. She gripped the flight controls and replaced the mic, then nosed Parsona forward, back into the same bay from which she’d fled with Cole just a few weeks prior.
An easy in-and-out, she promised herself.
35
“You want me to meet someone called the Bern Seer?”
Cole shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve had enough of the Bern.”
Mortimor laughed. “She’s no more a Bern than you or I, Cole. She’s the one who’s been watching them come. She’s on our side, if there is such a thing.”
“Where is she? Here?”
“No—”
“Further ahead,” Arthur interjected, shouting above the rain. “As far ahead as you can go, in fact.”
“Why does she want to meet me?”
“Won’t say, but she’s calling in a favor, a big one, and . . . well, I can’t force you to go, but I’d owe you one of my own if you did.”
Cole looked down at his hands beneath the folds of his clear plastic poncho. Water coursed across it, giving his flesh an artificial sheen.
“I’ll go,” he said quietly.
“Good,” Mortimor said. He slapped Cole on the back. “Now, let’s get out of the rain. I’ll introduce you to doctor Ryke, who’ll take you out.”
Cole followed the two men forward, the pelting at his back driving him along and the rain to either side making him feel as if he could fall clean off the roof and go drifting after the droplets forever.
“Wait,” he yelled up to the others. “Who’s Ryke? Aren’t you guys coming with me?”
“Sorry,” Mortimor said, waiting up for him to catch up. “We’ve got plenty enough to do without a trip forward.” He worked his hand out of the poncho and put it on Cole’s back, urging him toward the stairwell. “Besides,” he said, “she specifically asked to see you alone. Ryke’s just driving you.”
“Driving me? In what?”
ѻѻѻѻ
Half an hour later, Cole found himself cowering in the passenger seat of the answer. They called it a hyperskimmer, and it raced across the water on three foils, skipping like a cast stone and feeling completely out of control. As the craft sped directly into the driving rain, Cole fought the urge to scream; he ground his teeth and gripped the dash in pure terror, wondering how the hell Doctor Ryke could see where they were going. As the craft’s forward skiff tore through the watery surface of hyperspace, it kicked up twin roostertails to either side—large sheets of foaming whiteness that created an artificial canyon the small vehicle seemed to glide through. Every now and then, Cole glanced over to Ryke to make sure they were going to be okay. Each time, he found the strange man fiddling with a dial on the dash or looking at Cole while he talked.
“Don’t you need to concentrate?” Cole asked the doctor.
Ryke looked at him for a long while. He took one hand off the steering column and scratched his thick, brown beard. He rubbed his bald head and adjusted his black goggles. Cole couldn’t take it anymore. He turned and peered down the narrow chute of visibility created by the roostertails, certain that they were travelling far too fast for anything meant to come in contact with water.
Earlier, the vehicle had seemed pretty damn nebular, back when it was in the garage and sitting still. It was basically a flat triangle of steel sitting on three runners and topped with a sleek bubble cockpit. Ahead of the cockpit was a flat deck with a crane-like apparatus stowed flat. The whole thing was painted stark white and appeared fast even when idling. Cole had been excited to crawl inside, but now that they were racing along, hydroplaning across the wet surface of hyperspace half-blind, he just hoped to survive long enough to get back out.
“Concentrate on what, exactly?” Ryke finally asked.
Cole shook his head and pointed forward. “On where we’re going!”
“Oh, I know exactly where we’re going. Alls you gotta do is head right for the rain.”
“Well, we seem to be doing that awful fast,” Cole said.
Ryke laughed. “If we didn’t, we’d never get there!” He leaned over toward Cole, as if about to confide in some secret. “She’s shaped like a cone, you know.”
Cole peeled his eyes away from the smeared carboglass. “What? The Seer?”
That really got Ryke going. He laughed and slapped his thigh. “Don’t be silly! It’s hyperspace that’s shaped like a cone.”
“Can we talk when we get back?” Cole asked. “I’m feeling a little sick.”
“No problem. You just listen, then, and I’ll do the talking.”
Cole groaned.
“It all comes in at a point, hyperspace does. Like I said, it’s pretty much a cone, but laying on its side. And it’s always moving, not just the stuff in the air, but the surface, too. It’s always sliding back into the past with new stuff and happenings coming in at the tip.”
He paused, scratched his beard, and fiddled with a dial. “Not sure where it all goes, though. Maybe back around? Still working on that . . .”
Leaving the dial alone, he pointed forward, through the center of the two roostertails. “Anyways, the Seer lives out there. Impossible to miss her as long as we head into the rain. All the way forward, hyperspace ain’t so far around. Like I said, it’s the tip of a cone, so we don’t need a map. Now, getting back is different, but quicker. That’s what the radio’s for, so they know where to meet us.”
“Mortimor and them.”
“Right. Now, you keep quiet, not enough room in here to get sick.”
Ryke scratched his beard.
“Darnation, I was about to ask you a question. You gonna chunk if I ask you to nod?”
Cole shook his head. What he should’ve said was the listening was making him queasy. He altered his grip on the dash and saw his right hand had dented it, leaving impressions under each finger.
“I heard you was on Mortimor’s ship, the Parsona.”
Cole nodded.
“I built her, you know. The hyperdrive, anyway, not the ship. You notice anything peculiar about it? The hyperdrive, I mean.”
Cole shook his head.
“Hooo-eeee!” Ryke hollered. “That’s right!” He slapped the steering column with a flat palm. “Done her up good!”
Cole felt like sticking his head between his knees.
“Broke my heart to see her go, especially seeing as how.”
That piqued Cole’s interest. He turned to the doctor, who was looking right at him, one hand idly twisting a dial on the dash.
“What do you mean, seeing how?”
“Stolen,” Ryke said, growing solemn. He glanced forward for a picosecond, then stared back at Cole. “Dontcha know?”
Cole shook his head.
“Been about a year, now. Outside time, anyway. One of the sentinels—the guys that ride out in a perimeter around the HQ—they saw a patch of stars in the rain. Looked like a rift. We was prepping Parsona to make a break, get as many of us out as we could, when Byrne took off with her by himself. Broke Mortimor’s heart.”
“How did Byrne get his hands on the ship?” Cole asked.
“What? It was on the roof. We never even kept the thing locked.”
“Yeah, but where did Byrne come from? Why didn’t you guys stop him?”
Ryke stared at him. He rubbed his beard. “Darnation, son, how ill-informed are you? Mortimor and Byrne were best of buds. Joined at the hip. That skinny freak took us all in.”
“He lived here? Byrne?”
“Of course. We all came together. You do know he delivered his daughter, right? He was there when she was born. Saved his wife’s life. That’ll bond you to a feller.”
“He—he delivered Molly?” Cole’s nausea began to take a different form.
“Yup, but he didn’t work his way into the group then. Not completely. Naw, it was really when Parsona took ill. That Bern bastard had loads of money. The sort of group we were, it never occurred to us to question anything for fear of those questions being redirected our way. When he offered to set her up at Dakura with the high and mighty, that pretty much made him an honorary member.” Ryke shook his head. “A Bern in the Drenard Underground,” he said.
Ryke turned away from Cole and peered through his side of the cockpit, even though there was nothing to see there but a wall of foamy spray. “I reckon we were all blinded by the glimmer of that jerk,” he said softly.
“Any idea why he might’ve abandoned the ship when he got to Palan? You think he was worried the Navy might still be looking for it?”
“Don’t know. Maybe. I’m more curious about why that rift even went to Palan. How in hyperspace did it form? Makes no sense, really. When we heard one was open, we figured it’d be one of ours on Lok actin’ up.”
“One of yours?”
“Yeah. Dontcha know? I’m the stupid genius that got us into this hubbaloo. Tried to help the resistance stage an invasion, but they got their butts whooped. Now that same passage is being used the other way around.” Ryke lowered his bushy brows. “You looking a might bit pale, son, you’re not gonna get sick, are ya?”
Cole shook his head. “No. Just confused.”
“Good! That means you’re paying attention. And yeah, I’d love to hear the story of what went down on Palan. Bet that’s a good one.”
“So why did Mortimor hide his wi—I mean, do you know about . . ?”
“Parsona? Yeah, he told Arthur about her after the ship vamooshed. That was a row. Like admitting to a good friend that you stole from him. Why hide her, you ask? I’ve got my own theories, but we ain’t talked about his wife much. I reckon—just from my dealings with her, helping set that rig up—that she was gonna go crazy in that thing. Crazy as artificial intelligence can get. One’s and zero’s all scrambled, if you know what I mean. I think he was just freezing her in time to lock her away like that. Putting her down without erasing her, you know? Like he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Same reason people put their loved ones in cryo, even though there ain’t no chance of getting them back.”
Cole rolled that around while Ryke glanced forward for just a second.
“Other idea is he was hiding her from Arthur once he showed up. Or maybe he didn’t trust Byrne deep down, I don’t know. I think he was a lot ashamed of stealing her away—the selfishness of it all. Poor boy loved her too much, if such a thing’s possible.”
“It is,” Cole said.
“Yeah? I wouldn’t know.”
Cole sat and watched Ryke power the hyperskimmer along, looking forward for the longest time he’d seen him do that, his goggles hiding whatever he was thinking.
“You’re an okay guy, Doctor Ryke,” Cole finally said.
“That’s what they tell me!” the man hollered, laughing. “Ooops, there she is.” He pulled back on the throttle and the roostertails receded, giving Cole a wider expanse of blurry nothingness to squint into.
“Where?” Cole asked.
“There!” Ryke said, pointing.
Cole peered through the sheets of spray until he saw it. At first, all he spied was some water flying upward—then he saw the hooves the water flew from! As they got closer, he could see a team of six horse-like animals galloping behind a small house, a shed roof over them and a porch to one side. At the end of the porch lay a small wall blocking the rain, creating a protected pocket for vehicles to dock up to.
Ryke eased into the space, putting them in the lee of the small wall as he matched speeds with the shack. He flipped a switch and Cole watched two claws come out the side of the skimmer and grab the walkway, pulling them tight.
“You go on ahead,” Ryke said, popping the canopy open. “I’m gonna wait here and spell the Theryl’s, give them hooves a rest.” He patted the throttle lever for effect.