by Hugh Howey
Cole shook his head and patted Molly’s gloved fist with his. Her AC revved up to whisk away her body heat, partly rising from the shame of the score and partly—from something else.
A window on the right side of the summation screen opened up and Captain Saunders scowled back at the cadets, his round and oversized head resting on rolls of fat. “Not bad, boys.”
Molly cringed at the masculine pronoun, a military staple.
“This exercise is meant to test your endurance and teamwork. Two days of sleeping in shifts before a battle is the real deal. This is what any of you who actually graduate and fly for us can expect. We’ve been putting senior flight crews through this exact maneuver for over thirty years. Those numbers look bad, some of them especially, but you’ll be pleased to hear you’ve fared better than any other class since I’ve been here.
“Too bad you’re all dead,” he added sarcastically. “Not screwing up worse than previous generations of know-nothings means I don’t want to hear you celebrating. If more of you had recognized the real danger was the flanking craft and not the main body, we could’ve seen this scenario defeated, a feat real Navy pilots pull off in their sleep. But it’s hard to match their coordinated defense with twitchy trigger fingers on some of you and inoperable ones on others.
“The three bottom crews need to report to me immediately for a dressing down; the rest of you hit the showers then start writing up your failure reports. And I want to read what you did wrong, not excuses for why you did it wrong. The real winners today were the Tchung, so don’t feel proud for getting lucky. Dismissed.”
With that, the screens went translucent, and Molly stared out at the familiar wall of cinder blocks. Out her starboard side porthole a line of cramped simulator pods stretched out for a hundred meters. Their hatches popped open almost in unison, but she couldn’t hear them—their hatch was still shut.
Molly snapped her helmet off and looked at Cole. He held his own helmet in his lap, his face serious.
“I don’t care what they say, you did great.”
“Thanks.” Molly loaded the word with sarcasm and rolled her eyes. If she ever allowed herself to take a compliment from Cole, her face would betray the way she felt about him. It was the only thing she had in common with these boys: the need to be mean in order to keep her distance.
“I’m serious. Another thing: let’s keep the sabotage business to ourselves for now. All they need to know is that the weapons systems were off-line. They should adjust our score for that. Get rid of that bogus wingman penalty, at least.”
“Sure thing, Captain.” The half-smile turned into a full one, even if it was forced.
“You know, it’s not really a sign of respect when you say it like that.” Cole grinned and popped the hatch, letting in the sound of soldier boots as they clanged down the metal platforms outside the musky, slept-in simulators.
Jakobs and Dinks loitered by the rear of their pod. Molly could guess why.
“Nice shooting out there,” Jakobs said, smiling from ear to ear with the demented visage of the sleep-deprived. “Oh, I’m sorry, you never even got a shot off, didja?” He checked with Dinks, who validated his joke with a silent, breathy laugh.
Molly glared at Jakobs. “Your lapdog is panting,” she said. “Does he need some water?” She tried to push past them, but Jakobs grabbed her arm, spinning her around.
They glared at one another while the other two boys sized up the situation. Jakobs was tall for a 17-year-old, and he had the sort of good looks that inspired poor behavior in boys. He’d been getting away with figurative murder his entire life—soon the Navy would pay him to do it for real.
“Go to hyperspace,” she told him.
“Flank you,” he said, his dark eyes sparkling with a glint of superiority. Molly knew better. He bullied for acceptance, scaring people into liking him. She focused on his Roman nose and dreamed about punching it.
“Go watch the replay, ass’troid.” Cole spat the words and tugged Molly away from trouble. She wondered if he was sticking up for her or protecting Jakobs from a beating. And if he was defending her, was it simply as his navigator?
She turned and marched out of the simulator room with her eyes fixed straight ahead, the rims of her ears burning. The hyperspace nausea, induced with subsonic bass speakers, churned up her stomach acid. Or maybe that was just Jakobs and Dinks.
From behind, the duo kept hounding her during the long walk down the hallway. She couldn’t hear them over the pounding of her own pulse, but she could see the effects of their taunting. Sneers of petty delight spread across the faces of every cadet they walked by. Everyone was ignoring Saunders’s commands, reveling in how well they’d done.
All except for the Academy reject, of course.
••••
Outside Captain Saunders’s office, Molly and Cole joined Peters and Simons on a well-worn wooden bench. The four clustered together, shoulders touching, as muffled shouts wormed their way through the wall panels. It was somehow worse that they couldn’t make out specific words. The Captain’s tone was more torturous—raw and full of all kinds of nasty potential.
At the tirade’s end, a moment of silence descended as excuses were likely made. Everyone on the bench could imagine the lame apologies; they were all busy rehearsing their own. The door opened with a slight click, and two despondent students shuffled out, not even pausing to wish their comrades luck.
As second-worst performers, Peters and Simons went in next. The muffled shouting resumed. The space between Molly and Cole felt more oppressive and stuffy than the crowded bench had seemed just moments ago. She wanted to talk, but she could tell Cole didn’t. It was like being back in the cockpit—next to his corpse. She needed a partner, but he was unable to reciprocate thanks to some external command to do nothing—that pressure from the other boys in the Academy to see her as a girl in every way but the one that mattered.
Or was it an internal command Cole felt? Was it a complete lack of the type of feelings Molly had to force herself to keep in check?
There was a third and far worse possibility: Maybe he felt the same way and kept waiting for her to engage, while Molly’s need to be a man amongst boys prevented her from finding out.
A period of silence jolted her back to her senses, and she and Cole sat up as straight as possible. After another round of muted apologies, the door clicked and the two boys filed out of the office. Simons glanced over his shoulder at Molly. The beat look on his face made her want to rush to him—give him a hug and tell him everything was going to be okay. She didn’t know him that well, but a few minutes on that bench together had been as much of a bond as she got out of most cadets in the Academy. She hoped her expression communicated her concern for him.
It probably just looked like fear.
Following protocol, Cole stepped into the office first. Molly took up a space to his right, her hands overlapped behind her back. She forced herself to meet Captain Saunders’s gaze and saw how tired he looked.
He was a big man, but still not fat enough to fill his skin. It hung down around his face, sagging in leathery flaps, as if he’d spent most of his career on a large planet. His white uniform, so immaculate and crisp it seemed to glow, squeezed folds of flesh from his collar. A wall of small, rectangular medals stood bricked up over his left breast—accolades from a lifetime of service.
He didn’t begin by yelling at them the way he had the others, which worried Molly even more.
“What in the hell am I going to do with you two?” he asked. He sounded sad. Confused. Molly wondered if he really wanted their input, but she wasn’t going to say anything unless she was addressed. Cole stayed mum as well.
“There were enough targets up there that you could’ve fired blindly and hit something.” He looked at Cole. “Mendonça, I’m disappointed in how quickly you were knocked out of action. I blame you for that—but everything else falls on this young lady.”
Saunders turned to Molly and looked her st
raight in the eye. His disappointment was worse than the anger she’d been expecting. She felt her mouth go dry and knew if she spoke—her voice would sound unnatural. Broken.
Saunders listed her offenses, referencing a report projected onto his desk. “You misfired a missile, you went into hyperspace during a battle—” At this, he glanced up to ensure his disgust registered. After a pause, he went on. “You pulled over 40 Gs in battle. You deployed your landing gear?” He shook his head. “But the worst is that it appears you released your full ration of chaff at once, which is a tactical mistake, you didn’t even arm them first, which is inexcusable, and you did this with the worst timing possible—taking out the rear half of your bird in the explosion.”
He looked up at Molly. “Navigators go through flight school for a reason, Cadet Fyde. The basics are expected out of you in the event your lesser talents are needed from the nav chair. I didn’t expect you to shoot down any enemy, but you did everything you could today to get yourself killed and the Navy’s equipment destroyed.
“I’m not certain this is a problem we can fix, to tell you the truth. You’ve had a hard time fitting in here, and I’m sure you know I was against your enrollment from the beginning. I never cared that the Admiral and your old man were close. I have a lot of respect for both of them, but I will not be held responsible for graduating someone who might get my boys killed in a real battle.”
Cole raised his hand. “Sir, I—”
“Can it, Mendonça!” Saunders pushed his bulk up from the chair and rose slowly. His jowls were still moving from the outburst, and he jabbed a meaty finger in Cole’s direction. “If you spent less time sticking up for her and more time getting her up to speed, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I’ve had it with you putting her ahead of the rest of the fleet, son. You’re dismissed. Now get out of my office.”
At this, tears drizzled out of Molly’s eyes and started rolling toward the corners of her mouth. She licked away the salt, ashamed her partner might see her like this.
Cole stepped forward to salute Saunders. He clicked his heels together and jerked his arm down to his side. As he spun around, his eyes met Molly’s tear-filled ones, and she saw his cheeks twitch. Water had already formed a reflective barrier on his brown eyes. For a brief moment, they were looking into each other’s visors again. Molly’s lips trembled at the sight, and with the thought of being expelled and never seeing him again.
He brushed against her as he moved to the door, leaving her alone with Captain Saunders.
“Are you crying, now? My goodness, girl, what made you think to join the Navy? Did you really dream of being like your father one day? Did you think you could bring him back from the dead?” He stopped himself, but had already gone too far. He looked down at his desk.
“Dismissed,” he said. It was like the last bit of air went out of him to say it. Molly forgot every bit of Navy protocol and flung herself out the door and after Cole.
But her pilot was already gone.
3
Molly wiped the wetness from her cheeks and set off for her bunk. If she skipped a shower, she might be asleep before the boys came back to rag on her. There was certainly no point in writing up her battle report if Captain Saunders’s hints of expulsion were true.
For once in her life, she didn’t care about the Academy or becoming a pilot. She didn’t look forward to post-battle reports and tactical analyses. There’d be no fantasizing tonight about what she’d have done differently had she been at the stick. Instead, an overpowering sense of disgust and shame propelled her down the empty halls. She just wanted an escape from the abuse.
“Cadet Fyde?”
Molly turned to see Rear Admiral Lucin standing in the doorway of his office. His customary hat was off, his weathered head streaked with extra wrinkles of worry. Molly felt one weight come off her chest and a different one take its place. She longed to run and wrap her arms around the old man, but she hadn’t done that for years. She wondered what it would feel like to be comforted like that again.
She snapped to attention, instead. As much attention as her body could muster. “Sir.”
“Could you step into my office, please?” Lucin vanished into the pool of light pouring out of his doorway.
Molly fought the constriction in her chest as she followed him inside. Lucin was the reason she was in the Academy. He had fought alongside her father against the Drenards. She knew it was a cliché—the military student doted on by the old general—but the stereotype existed for a reason. When children followed their fallen parents into battle, they were inevitably surrounded by the survivors who had promised to look after them. She wasn’t even the only one in the Academy with ties, just the only girl.
After her father left, Lucin had taken her in and enrolled her in the Junior Academy. It gave her a place to live. More importantly, he let her spend as much time in the simulators as she wanted—which was a lot. As long as she kept her grades up—which was never a problem—she could sit in a full military-spec Firehawk simulator for hours.
Sometimes longer.
At first, Molly would just soar around the simulated vastness of space, pretending to search for her father. Or maybe just trying to recapture her memories of him. One of her earliest recollections was of sitting on his lap in Parsona’s cockpit, her mother’s smell—the only thing she ever knew of her—lingering off to one side. Perhaps it had happened when she was an infant, or maybe the scent of her mom was just infused in the navigator’s seat. Maybe she’d made it all up.
She had clearer memories of flying with her father as she got older. How her eyes would flicker from the stars to the lights and glowing knobs on the dash. She could remember his hands on the flight controls.
During their last trip together, he’d let her do a lot of the steering. She remembered how frightening his trust had been. Instead of holding her hands steady, preventing mistakes, he just turned and peered out at the stars through the glass, talking to Molly in that deep and powerful voice of his. Usually about her mother.
They may have been running away from one life and into a new one, but she didn’t remember either of them having a care in the world.
The first time she fell asleep in the simulator, it was Lucin who found her. She had startled awake, afraid she’d be in trouble. Instead, the old man—so much older than she remembered her father being—scooped her up in his lap and let her fall back asleep. The stars kept drifting by through her eyelids, a little more of the simulated galaxy foolishly searched.
Now they stood in his office, a Navy desk and so much more between them. As soon as she’d entered the Academy, Molly could no longer be his daughter. Favoritism had to be countered with rigidity; love with harshness. Despite this, everyone whispered she was only there because of his string-pulling. So every ounce of love she went without, the affection other cadets were showered with by their families, had been given up for nothing now that she’d never graduate.
“Care to sit?” Lucin gestured to the simple wooden chair across from his desk.
Molly shook her head. She didn’t want to be too comfortable; it would make leaving his office impossible.
He nodded once, and Molly saw how tired he looked. Despite his age, Lucin had a very lithe frame—tall and thin. His youthful gait was a fixture at the Academy, his pride in its operation evident in the bounce of his step and his eternal smile. Perhaps this was why the cadets loved him so much. Captain Saunders could whip them into shape while old Lucin bounced in to tousle their hair or slap them on the back. But all of that was missing from Lucin’s face right then. Molly could see the fatigue in his sad and wrinkled eyes. His undying devotion to the Academy—which was capable of filling his chest with unmatched joy—could also break his heart. It was doing so right then.
“Captain Saunders called.”
Molly nodded.
“Hey, I’m sure when I go over the tapes, I’m going to be impressed with whatever you did out there. You always amaze me with your t
ricks, maneuvers even this old dog never heard of, but Saunders is in charge of the personnel decisions, and he has it out for you.”
Molly looked at her feet to hide the tears, but one of them plummeted to the blue carpet, sparkling like laser-fire in the harsh rays pouring through the window. Lucin fell silent as the tear winked out of existence in the worn sea at her feet.
“I’m talking to you as your friend now, not as the old geezer who runs this joint. Look at me.”
Molly did.
“I love you.”
A strange bark came out of Molly, something between a gasp and a cough. Her breathing grew rapid and shallow as she started crying in earnest, her shoulders quaking uncontrollably. She hugged her elbows and tried to hold it all in.
Lucin may have been crying as well, but she couldn’t see anything. His voice may have just sounded funny because she was hyperventilating.
“I do, Molly. I love you like my own daughter. But you don’t know what I’ve had to do to protect you from him. I know it isn’t fair, but if you think life has a bad reputation for that, the military puts it to shame. There’s a lot of politics involved. And look, I’m babbling here so don’t repeat any of this, but Saunders and his wife couldn’t have boys. They have three girls, and maybe he’s taking that out on you as well.”
Lucin sighed. “I just don’t know what to do here. He says you’re out. Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?”
Molly bobbed her head and dragged her hands down her cheeks. They came away slick. She wiped them on the front of her flight suit.
“Maybe this is for the best. You can still be a pilot somewhere else, but you’ve seen what it’s like in the Navy. They just aren’t ready for you yet. Listen, I know Commander Stallings, he runs the Orbit Guard Academy, I can get you in there. You’ll have a great career flying planetary patrols. Atmospheric stuff. None of this navigation junk. Don’t you think that would be better?”
