Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

“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 Earth 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.