Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

below. And Lucin thought those games were a waste of time.

“Is it thinning?” she asked.

“I can’t tell yet. I think we’re in a bit of a pocket here. Yeah, I can see the edge on SADAR now. Keep going this direction.”

More stars were visible, but the motion of the asteroids became more violent as they neared the periphery. A small chunk the size of one of their escape pods crashed into a monster in front of them, calving the latter in two and turning the former into dust.

“Damn.”

“As soon as I see nothing but stars, I’m making a run for it,” Molly said. “Some of these puppies are blazing out on the edge.”

Edison roared from the airlock. Molly saw it and dodged out of the way, pulling between two large, slow moving moonlets. They were coming together, about to pincer Parsona, when suddenly the path ahead looked mostly clear.

“I’m going for it,” she said, thrusting forward and out into clear space, free of immediate danger.

They both breathed a sigh of relief while Cole dialed out the SADAR, adding some range to the display. They could now make out the edge of the massive asteroid belt. The location indicator—a device that took the arrangement of the stars outside and compared them with known charts—beeped. It had reacquired their position.

“Where are we?” she asked. She was dying to know, desperate to determine what had happened with the hyperdrive. She hoped it wasn’t something the Glemots had reinstalled improperly.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cole said.

Molly looked away from her flight path long enough to check for herself. They were right where they had intended to be. Just outside of Darrin I’s third Lagrange point. The problem: Darrin I was no longer where it was supposed to be.

“Flanking Drenards,” Cole said. “I think I know what we were just flying through.”

“Educate me.”

“That, back there—that was Darrin I.”

Molly glanced at the SADAR overlapped with her star charts and she saw what he was getting at. “Wait,” she said. “What are those?” She pointed to the large contacts ahead of them, well beyond the wall of dangerous rock they were leaving behind.

“I don’t know, but are those ships coming out of them?”

“My gods. I think they’re heading this way.”

••••

There must have been a hundred of them. Possibly more. They streaked directly for Parsona from every direction, having pulled out of what Molly assumed were small space docks of some sort. It was hard to tell at this distance.

“BUCKLE UP!” she yelled over her shoulder. She could hear Edison banging his way back toward them and hoped Walter was doing the same. She turned perpendicular to the oncoming ships and gave her crew time to strap themselves in.

“I have over two hundred contacts. You think we should get back in the rock? Because there’s way too much mass here to jump away.”

“I’m never jumping blind again. Are the boys strapped in?”

Cole pulled up the cargo cam and used the control stick to twist the view toward the crew station. “Yeah, buckling up now.”

Molly hit the thrusters with a sharp burn, zooming along the wall of rock and looking for any strays. They were really being squeezed here. Luckily none of the attackers had launched any missiles yet. She wouldn’t consider diving back into the asteroids until they did.

That’s a weird formation, she thought. The SADAR showed bizarre flight patterns: the ships were blazing toward them, but they continuously crossed each other’s flight planes, jostling against one another rather than fanning out to prevent various escape vectors.

“Geez, girl, do you have a bounty on your head? Because those guys are coming at us like the first one wins a prize.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. It’s like junior cadets playing Galaxy Ball, each kid running after the orb and nobody running to space for a pass.”

“Yeah. And now we know how the orb feels.”

Molly pulled a few Gs and flew closer to the field of debris. She placed a large straggler the size of a small moon between her and the herd of eager pursuers. The Parsona was fast for a civilian craft, but every single one of the ships coming after them was reeling her in like she was sitting still.

“I’m starting to agree with you on feeling a bit naked without some defenses.”

“Some consolation. Hey, no two of those ships are the same. SADAR doesn’t even register the designs.”

They were already halfway upon them. “And?”

“I don’t know,” Cole said, “it just reinforces that these guys aren’t together. That and their tactics.”

“You want me to pull over and roll out the welcome mat?”

“Yeah, when hyperspace freezes over. I’m just sayin’ that they don’t seem happy with us, but we’re not under a coordinated attack.”

“Oh, great. So all I have to do is defeat each ship, one at a time, without weapons? Remind you of something?” She had the long trail of ships in a tight clump now, slanting down from their distant docking stations and toward the meteor field. Now that their angle of attack had been herded into a single vector, she pulled the stick up hard, hoping it wouldn’t be too many Gs for Edison.

“Good idea,” Cole said. The flat trajectory along the rocks had everyone lined up. Instead of running from two hundred ships, Molly could now act like she was running from one. If they could get clear of the mass from the asteroid belt, maybe they could jump back to the coordinates they’d just left, the one known landing zone they could be comfortable with.

“Some of them are wising up,” she said. Dozens of the pursuers were branching out in various directions while the bulk of the pack just altered course straight toward them. They still weren’t acting coordinated, it’s just that a few were willing to take a gamble. Molly looked at how far they’d need to get to make a safe jump and it didn’t look good.

She altered course again as swiftly as she dared. The vid screen still showed the two boys, and Edison seemed fine. With the new vector, Parsona was heading slightly toward the mysterious, dark stations. The herd shifted, adjusting course and jostling around each other for position. Again, their selfish tactics were hurting each individual, slowing them down and giving her an advantage. As soon as the pack had itself arranged, she went back to her last vector and watched them jockey once more.

Three of the gamblers had gotten lucky and were clear favorites. They would reach Parsona well ahead of the others, who were too busy fighting amongst themselves. Molly could almost sense the frustration of the herd as their vectors fluctuated. The uncoordinated insanity made her more nervous than a textbook attack would have.

“Not enough space,” Cole said. He’d completed the mass equations on the computer that Molly had performed in her head.

“I know. I’m just culling a few from the herd. I want to see what they’re up to on a small scale. Didn’t want all the pack getting to us at once.”

“You thinking piracy?”

“Yeah. Scavengers or pirates. They want us alive and they want us bad. Hell, I haven’t felt this desirable since my first day at the Academy.”

“Ha. Until the boys realized you were better than them.”

“Yeah, I guess the romance didn’t last too long. Hold on.”

Two more maneuvers widened the lead for the three closest ships. Parsona felt a little sluggish to Molly. Maybe they’d done some real damage backing down on that asteroid.

When the trio behind them got within a hundred kilometers, Molly knew for sure they weren’t out for a quick