“Hey, girl.” He stopped a meter from where she’d risen from her seat. The last time they’d seen each other, it was in an embrace that felt wonderful, yet awkward.
Molly wasn’t sure what to do.
“Hello.” She waved a little, as if he was much further away. “You packed light.” She nodded at the backpack over his shoulder.
“Yeah, you too. Is that your only bag?”
“Yup. It’s only a few days, right? I figure most of our time will be on the trip out and the trip back, stuck in one outfit forever. It saved me from thinking too much on what to wear.”
“Well, you look great. You look like you’re getting more sun.”
She hoped enough to hide the blushing. “They let us go outside.”
“No way!” And they both laughed. “I like the hair.”
Molly instinctively put a hand up to brush some of it behind her ear. “Thanks.”
“So,” he said, “You wanna go ahead and get on the ship and get comfortable?”
“They aren’t boarding for another half-hour, I don’t think.”
Cole pulled a Navy badge from under his collar. “You sure?”
“Gods, Cole.” Molly glanced around nervously. “Don’t be such a Drenard, we’re supposed to be undercover.”
“Forget about it. We’re stellar until we jump into Palan. C’mon, let’s go check out our seats.”
Molly grabbed her bag and hurried after him. It was amazing how natural this felt already. Five seconds of nervousness after a week of dread, and it already felt like they’d grown up together in a civilian world. Acting normal. Just being friends.
Molly suspected her time at Avalon, training to be a regular kid, made this a stronger feeling for her than it was for Cole. But so far, he led the way. Maybe he was really good at this undercover thing after all.
The pass worked wonders on the gate security and boarding stewards. The scrutiny might have lasted a bit longer than for two adults, but the handheld scanners beeped their consent, and this seemed to be enough for their wielders.
Once they got onto the ship itself, they were treated like royalty. First-class tickets meant sleeper chairs with pillows, blankets, and divider screens. The flight attendants delivered juice and then busied themselves putting their bags away.
Molly had mixed feelings about the treatment. She was used to doing things for herself. And the way the pretty women were doting on Cole was probably no different from the way she was being treated, but it still made her feel possessive. She tried to wrestle this jealousy aside so she could enjoy some luxuries her parents would never have been able to afford her. Part of her inwardly resented the Navy for pulling strings and doing something nice for once.
Just as she was thinking this, Cole launched out of his seat and started for the nose of the ship. Molly guessed he was going to the restroom, but he passed the sign and continued toward the cockpit door. She couldn’t believe his gall; she leapt up and set off after him. He was already smooth-talking the navigator by the time she got there.
“—same instructor.” Molly caught the end of what the navigator was saying. She poked her head into the cramped cockpit and was struck with how young the speaker looked. He couldn’t be much older than twenty.
Cole squeezed himself into a smaller pocket of the room and let Molly in. “This is my girlfriend Molly.” The navigator nodded his head and the pilot raised one hand, his back to Molly as he fiddled with a radio set.
There wasn’t enough room in the cockpit for all of them and this new “girlfriend” term as well, so Molly tried to push the word back into coach.
“Jeremy here went to the Academy. He had Rogers for Basic Flight.”
How had they already shared this information? Cole was in his element, and Molly had a sudden pang of doubt about whether or not his being nice to her had anything to do with how he felt or whether it was just a product of his ever-present charm.
“Is that a Grumin 4200?” She leaned into the space between their two chairs and pointed at the SADAR screen.
The navigator smiled. “Now I know they don’t have those at the Academy. But, yeah, that’s the latest and greatest. If we turned it on, we could see the shuttles attached to various gates of the Station.”
The pilot quickly pressed a button near the SADAR, taking it off standby mode and down to a black screen. He made it quite clear to the little gathering that the devices on the dash was his and his alone. Molly took the hint and leaned back toward the door. Her arm pressed up against Cole’s. It started feeling really hot in there.
“Well, gentlemen, thanks for letting us look around,” Cole said. “We’re going to go settle in before the stampede begins.”
“Good thinking,” said the navigator. “You kids enjoy the trip.”
“Bye,” Molly said with a little wave.
••••
Back at their seats, Molly arranged her belongings as if she were in a simulator. Her computer went in front, creating a miniature dashboard. She tucked her document reader by her right leg. As she buckled herself in, she noticed Cole performing the same ritual. To her left, she noticed. In the pilot’s position. They hadn’t even checked their seat assignments, they’d automatically taken their usual positions. It made her wonder how hard it would be to assume command on the Parsona. Or if he was even expecting she would.
Cole dropped a tan folder in Molly’s lap, interrupting her thoughts. “Reading material,” he said.
It wasn’t heavy, but it bulged slightly as creased paper tried to spring back into shape. She gave their depositor a sarcastic smirk. “I brought my own, thanks.”
“Not as good as this, girlfriend.” He drew out the last word, already sensing that their cover annoyed her. But Molly wasn’t sure if he realized why that was. For now, it seemed to be playful banter.
“What is it, sweetie?” She opened the folder.
“Everything I have on the sabotage.” He made quotation marks with his fingers as he said the word. “Did Lucin tell you why we were graduated early?”
“Yeah, he said some of you didn’t need the extra semester.”
Cole laughed at this. “Well, that’s crap. You remember that last mission? The one with the Tchung having a few extra ships?”
“Hmmm. No.” She gave him a withering look. “Doesn’t ring any bells, sorry.”
“You’re hilarious. Now look, there’s something serious going on here. We never did another full-scale mission after that one. And even though our class did better than some others, there wasn’t anything particularly inspiring about individual performances that day. Well, except for yours, and you got expelled for it. But get this, our simulator was never used again. Ever. Right up to the day some of us were graduated. Check the maintenance log.”
Molly thumbed through some reports and maintenance schedules.
“It’s the green one, there.” Cole tapped the edge of a piece of paper and then continued in a lowered voice. Other first-class passengers, mostly humans, were filing onto the shuttle now.
“I was teamed up with Riggs in his simulator, and his navigator got the boot down to Services.”
Molly looked up from the folder. “You were a navigator for Riggs? Not that he isn’t a good pilot, but why weren’t you just given a new navigator?”
Cole looked startled for a second. “Didn’t Lucin tell you? I was demoted after the Tchung simulation. I graduated with the navigators based on my scores from the previous year. I mean, I get to keep my simulator hours if I ever want to be one of those guys.” Cole tossed his head up toward the nose of the plane, “But no Navy ships for me.”
“Oh.” Molly looked back to the folder’s contents.
“Hey, I’m not upset, so don’t get all pitiful on me. Hell, you always wanted to be a pilot more than I did. I love the math and the tactics. And training as a pilot made me one helluva navigator, so I have no problem with the decision. I’m more worried about this conspiracy. Our simulator was taken off-line almost before you were out of the building.”
“That makes sense,” said Molly, “the thing was screwed.”
“No. It was screwed with.”
“That’s right, you thought you saw Jakobs by the control panel of our pod earlier that day.”
Cole corrected her. “I never said it was Jakobs.”
“You said it was someone who reminded you of Jakobs.”
“Right. Same size, same swagger, but it could have been anyone in Navy black. Look at this page right here.”
Molly pulled out the one he indicated. It was a library computer log. “How’d you get this?”
“I had two months left at the Academy to gather this stuff together. And you wanna know what they demoted Riggs’s navigator down to?”
“What?”
“Cryptography.”
They both giggled at this.
“He got me a lot of this stuff. The rest I got through Saunders’s secretary.” Cole’s voice seemed to taper off at the end of this sentence.
“Do I even want to ask how?”
“Yeah, you obviously do. But I don’t kiss and tell.” Cole raised and lowered his eyebrows suggestively. He was obviously lying.
“Yeah, right,” Molly said. “So what do the library records tell us? Oh.” She traced Jakobs’ name. “Lemme guess, this is the time when you thought you saw someone by the simulator?”
“Bingo. Wasn’t him. Besides, he isn’t smart enough to do something like this. And why would they shuffle me around, graduate us early, close down that simulator, any of the other stuff if it was a cadet prank?”
“No way. You’re suggesting this was higher-up?” Molly started flipping through some more pages, wondering what Cole had uncovered.
“I’m not sure. But the people they graduated were not the best cadets. They were the few people close to you, the ones that really interacted with you on a daily basis. Whether it was the people that liked you, which would be me and. . .” Cole scratched his chin and made a point of looking up at the ceiling of the fuselage.
It took a few seconds for Molly to get the joke. “Ha. Ha,” she said.
Cole beamed in triumph. “Thanks. So it was me and Riggs and the people bullying you all the time. Only six of us were graduated early. And what sense does it make to demote me and then say I’m obviously too capable for another semester?”
“Well, Lucin did confess something to me that day. But you have to promise not to tell.”
He gestured to her lap. “You’re holding crap that can get me thrown in the brig for a very long time. Try and think of those documents as a promise ring, okay?”
Molly smiled. She hoped she twisted her lips enough to make it seem sarcastic. “Saunders had it in for me,” she confided. “Lucin said he and his wife had three daughters and no boys, so he didn’t want me to succeed or something.”
“That seems a bit backwards, but it might be better than what I’ve been working on.”
“Yeah? What’s your big conspiracy?”
“I was starting to think it had something to do with your father.”
The words punched her in the gut, the folder heavy in her lap. Molly chewed on Cole’s suggestion. The idea was ludicrous, yet seductive. She shook her head. It was tempting to have this be about something more significant than schoolyard pranks, but she knew that wasn’t true. It was just a fantasy to want the Tchung simulation and her expulsion to have greater meaning, for the cruelty of life to have some larger purpose.
“That’s ridiculous,” she finally said. “I don’t know the first thing about my father’s disappearance. I haven’t seen him or the ship since I was six years old. And besides, they didn’t find it until after they booted me out.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking your father was connected before I even heard of the Parsona.”
“Why? How could you?”
Cole gestured to the folder. “Because this is too much effort for a bunch of cadets. It has to have something to do with your father. Nothing else makes any sense.”
“Sure it does. Somebody screwed with our simulator because I was in it. Part of that sabotage included getting you killed from a minor scrape and leaving me in charge. The rest of this nonsense is someone cleaning up afterwards.” Cole frowned at her, clearly unhappy with her sound reasoning and its banal conclusions. “Look,” Molly continued, “I agree that this had to be higher up, that it wasn’t a simple prank, but no way does this have to do with my father. Somebody just wanted me out of the Academy. I mean who knows how to program those pods besides the geeks in IT? Saunders not only had access—”
“It wasn’t Saunders, he’s too fat and—”
“Don’t interrupt. I know it wasn’t Saunders you saw, but he could have had any of the IT guys do it. And we know his motive: he didn’t want me in the Navy, and he had the power to pull off the early graduations, so it all fits.”
“None of the IT guys were transferred.”
“What?”
“That yellow slip is the personnel change summation for the end of the year. If they were trying to hush this up, they didn’t move anybody who would’ve been able to do the most illegal part of the job.”
Molly shuffled through the folder, looking for the slip. “What are these thick white bundles stapled together?”
“Heh. I brought those along for your enjoyment. They don’t have anything to do with my theory, though.”