Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

••••

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—”