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.