by Hugh Howey
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 Eart
h 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.
