Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

Once they were both in and before she could ask what they were doing, Walter clipped something onto her back with a loud snick. He contorted his body to do the same to himself. Then he gave her one last wicked grin before shoving her over the edge.

Molly couldn’t help it—she screamed. As loud as she could.

She dropped three meters straight down before the harness yanked at her chest and sent her zipping away from the ledge. The webbing around her thighs pinched her viciously, but before she could register the pain, she was hurtling forward into a stiff breeze, flying toward the far side of the canyon. Something mechanical screamed above her, steadily increasing its pitch. A wheel on a wire, spinning.

It was impossible to see in the wan moonlight. Even so, Molly could sense the bulk of the other side approaching, as if a different sort of blackness loomed ahead. She braced for impact, pulling her hands above her exposed head, but none came. She continued to fly at near-terminal velocity as the large wall of dark hardly got closer. It was huge.

She flew further, the bitter wind stinging her eyes and chill bumps popping out on exposed skin. A gust of wind tore through the canyon, whipping the slack wire sideways and eliciting another wild scream of pure terror. Molly tucked her knees to her chest and wrapped her hands around them, shivering and terrified.

She wanted it to stop.

Gently.

She could barely hear the whine of the wheel above her over the deafening wind, but she noticed a shift in its pitch, a blessed lowering. Her stomach dropped as she started gaining altitude, having reached the bottom of the drooping wire that stretched across the canyon. As she slid up toward the other side, her speed slowed to something only moderately insane. She urged it to reduce even further when a new danger occured to her: not enough speed and she’d drift back to the center of the canyon. Toward Walter, if he’d been crazy enough to follow.

She blinked the tears out of her eyes and squinted into the darkness, straining to see what was ahead, to see if that wall of black was getting any nearer.

Without warning, something appeared below her: a rock ledge of some sort. She pulled into an even tighter ball, scared of hitting something, but the platform was several meters below. She glided above it, still moving dangerously fast, when two vertical nets of webbing began slanting in from both sides. She was flying into a wedge of some sort, still rising up and losing speed. As soon as they squeezed in close enough, Molly reached out and grabbed at them. Her right elbow snagged itself in one of the loops, twisting her violently to the side as the crazy ride came to an end.

Then Walter slammed into her back, forcing the air out of both of them with a combination of grunt and hiss.

Walter won his breath back first. “Fun, no?” He laughed. It was the sound of air escaping a balloon.

Molly would have slapped him if it didn’t mean letting go of the webbing. “Maybe if you told me first, you jerk.”

Her complaint just increased the air pressure of the balloon. “People pay good money to do thisss.”

Molly climbed up the netting to take the slack out of her tether. It was awkward, but she was able to reach around to unhook herself. She climbed down until she reached the bottom of the netting and to the walkway below. Above her, Walter made noises as he struggled to free himself.

She reached out and tested the platform before letting go of the webbing. Solid rock, probably carved out of the cliff. She didn’t need directions from Walter—one way led out to emptiness—so she hurried toward the face of the canyon, the sounds of a descending waterfall working through the ringing in her ears.

Walter caught up to her and ran past, huffing for breath. When they got to the end of the walk, he led her over a turnstile and pushed through a flimsy door leading into the canyon wall. The hallway beyond was wider than the ones in the prison. The soft glow of electric lights illuminated their passage through a room full of harnesses and a waiting area with benches. No rusty gates barred their way as they wound down a flight of steps. Molly followed Walter through a large room with lots of tables and chairs and a small stage, and then into some mechanical spaces. A loud humming emanated from somewhere nearby.

“Generatorss,” Walter explained, as if he could smell her confusion.

Hydroelectric, she figured, remembering the ribbons of water cascading down. She followed along through more mechanical rooms and toward the dull roaring. Every piece of machinery they passed had the look of obsolescence. It all seemed cobbled together and poorly maintained, with wires snaking from one point to another along the ground rather than properly routed through ductwork or the ceiling. Tools lay scattered by one large electrical cabinet, probably left there until something else broke. Wouldn’t be long, she surmised. Tape seemed to hold much of the equipment together. It was as if things were fixed just enough to get them running and no more. Why do preventive maintenance and help out whichever clan took over next?

As they snaked through several more industrial-looking passages full of wheezing equipment and squeaking bearings, Molly thought about how closely Palan society resembled its weather. They let everything get out of control here, not a care in the world. Meanwhile, they waited for the next violent wave to sweep through and start things over again. To Molly, it seemed like a process that celebrated erosion—and all that was good for was digging large ditches.

The depressing sight of so much ruin and the long jaunt through repetitive scenery had her mind wandering away from what she was running toward. This made the shock so much more intense when she burst through another door, no different from the rest, and staggered—fighting for her breath—into the large cavern on the other side.

Molly couldn’t believe what she was seeing: Parsona.

13

She could’ve picked that shape out of a used shipyard full of a thousand hulls. It was the profile of a family member: a large window spanning the cockpit, rounded nose below, wide-swept wings that made her as good a craft in atmosphere as she was in a vacuum.

It was a classic design, inspired by the first ships to soar in space and float to the ground.

She was beautiful.

Along her back were the ridges for flight control and the jutting vertical fins many of the modern starships went without. Two small wings, identical to the larger ones at the rear, stood out below the cockpit windows. The hump behind one window marked the life-support systems, a vulnerability that partly explained the GN-290’s discontinuation.

Despite her age, and the limited run of the model, she looked swift, even at rest. Flecks of paint were missing here and there, and lots of micro-meteor burns streaked down the hull, but overall the ship looked to be in fine condition. And aside from being lazily parked nose-in, a habit typical of jittery pilots, Parsona looked ready to fly.

Frozen in the doorway, Molly absorbed the sight. She wanted to shout for joy, but thoughts of Cole being locked up in a rock cell tempered her enthusiasm. She needed to get to work.

Walter seemed to agree. He clapped his hands to break her spell and asked about getting the hangar doors open. Molly nodded and watched him scamper over to a rusty console. She left him to it and rushed around the other side of the ship where the cargo ramp stood wide open. Her feet hit the old metal, the sound and spring of it taking her back to her childhood. Inside, familiar scents greeted her, bringing back more memories. She paused, feeling closer to her family than she had in ten years.

Then the enormity of their predicament hit her, making her feel alone and overwhelmed. This was a massive piece of machinery. Real machinery. She’d learned to fly in a simulator. In classrooms, she’d learned basic maintenance and mechanical duties. Now she stood in the cargo bay of a starship over fifty meters long. When she fired it up, actual mechanical bits would be roaring into motion, not the simulated vibration of a glorified computer. The thought of taking off in this thing without someone here to help her made her stomach flip; she had a sudden urge to use the bathroom.