Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

two despondent students shuffled out, not even pausing to wish their comrades luck.

As second-worst performers, Peters and Simons went in next. The muffled shouting resumed. The space between Molly and Cole felt more oppressive and stuffy than the crowded bench had seemed just moments ago. She wanted to talk, but she could tell Cole didn’t. It was like being back in the cockpit—next to his corpse. She needed a partner, but he was unable to reciprocate thanks to some external command to do nothing—that pressure from the other boys in the Academy to see her as a girl in every way but the one that mattered.

Or was it an internal command Cole felt? Was it a complete lack of the type of feelings Molly had to force herself to keep in check?

There was a third and far worse possibility: Maybe he felt the same way and kept waiting for her to engage, while Molly’s need to be a man amongst boys prevented her from finding out.

A period of silence jolted her back to her senses, and she and Cole sat up as straight as possible. After another round of muted apologies, the door clicked and the two boys filed out of the office. Simons glanced over his shoulder at Molly. The beat look on his face made her want to rush to him—give him a hug and tell him everything was going to be okay. She didn’t know him that well, but a few minutes on that bench together had been as much of a bond as she got out of most cadets in the Academy. She hoped her expression communicated her concern for him.

It probably just looked like fear.

Following protocol, Cole stepped into the office first. Molly took up a space to his right, her hands overlapped behind her back. She forced herself to meet Captain Saunders’s gaze and saw how tired he looked.

He was a big man, but still not fat enough to fill his skin. It hung down around his face, sagging in leathery flaps, as if he’d spent most of his career on a large planet. His white uniform, so immaculate and crisp it seemed to glow, squeezed folds of flesh from his collar. A wall of small, rectangular medals stood bricked up over his left breast—accolades from a lifetime of service.

He didn’t begin by yelling at them the way he had the others, which worried Molly even more.

“What in the hell am I going to do with you two?” he asked. He sounded sad. Confused. Molly wondered if he really wanted their input, but she wasn’t going to say anything unless she was addressed. Cole stayed mum as well.

“There were enough targets up there that you could’ve fired blindly and hit something.” He looked at Cole. “Mendonca, I’m disappointed in how quickly you were knocked out of action. I blame you for that—but everything else falls on this young lady.”

Saunders turned to Molly and looked her straight in the eye. His disappointment was worse than the anger she’d been expecting. She felt her mouth go dry and knew if she spoke—her voice would sound unnatural. Broken.

Saunders listed her offenses, referencing a report projected onto his desk. “You misfired a missile, you went into hyperspace during a battle—” At this, he glanced up to ensure his disgust registered. After a pause, he went on. “You pulled over 40 Gs in battle. You deployed your landing gear?” He shook his head. “But the worst is that it appears you released your full ration of chaff at once, which is a tactical mistake, you didn’t even arm them first, which is inexcusable, and you did this with the worst timing possible—taking out the rear half of your bird in the explosion.”

He looked up at Molly. “Navigators go through flight school for a reason, Cadet Fyde. The basics are expected out of you in the event your lesser talents are needed from the nav chair. I didn’t expect you to shoot down any enemy, but you did everything you could today to get yourself killed and the Navy’s equipment destroyed.

“I’m not certain this is a problem we can fix, to tell you the truth. You’ve had a hard time fitting in here, and I’m sure you know I was against your enrollment from the beginning. I never cared that the Admiral and your old man were close. I have a lot of respect for both of them, but I will not be held responsible for graduating someone who might get my boys killed in a real battle.”

Cole raised his hand. “Sir, I—”

“Can it, Mendonca!” Saunders pushed his bulk up from the chair and rose slowly. His jowls were still moving from the outburst, and he jabbed a meaty finger in Cole’s direction. “If you spent less time sticking up for her and more time getting her up to speed, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I’ve had it with you putting her ahead of the rest of the fleet, son. You’re dismissed. Now get out of my office.”

At this, tears drizzled out of Molly’s eyes and started rolling toward the corners of her mouth. She licked away the salt, ashamed her partner might see her like this.

Cole stepped forward to salute Saunders. He clicked his heels together and jerked his arm down to his side. As he spun around, his eyes met Molly’s tear-filled ones, and she saw his cheeks twitch. Water had already formed a reflective barrier on his brown eyes. For a brief moment, they were looking into each other’s visors again. Molly’s lips trembled at the sight, and with the thought of being expelled and never seeing him again.

He brushed against her as he moved to the door, leaving her alone with Captain Saunders.

“Are you crying, now? My goodness, girl, what made you think to join the Navy? Did you really dream of being like your father one day? Did you think you could bring him back from the dead?” He stopped himself, but had already gone too far. He looked down at his desk.

“Dismissed,” he said. It was like the last bit of air went out of him to say it. Molly forgot every bit of Navy protocol and flung herself out the door and after Cole.

But her pilot was already gone.

3

Molly wiped the wetness from her cheeks and set off for her bunk. If she skipped a shower, she might be asleep before the boys came back to rag on her. There was certainly no point in writing up her battle report if Captain Saunders’s hints of expulsion were true.

For once in her life, she didn’t care about the Academy or becoming a pilot. She didn’t look forward to post- battle reports and tactical analyses. There’d be no fantasizing tonight about what she’d have done differently had she been at the stick. Instead, an overpowering sense of disgust and shame propelled her down the empty halls. She just wanted an escape from the abuse.

“Cadet Fyde?”

Molly turned to see Rear Admiral Lucin standing in the doorway of his office. His customary hat was off, his weathered head streaked with extra wrinkles of worry. Molly felt one weight come off her chest and a different one take its place. She longed to run and wrap her arms around the old man, but she hadn’t done that for years. She wondered what it would feel like to be comforted like that again.

She snapped to attention, instead. As much attention as her body could muster. “Sir.”

“Could you step into my office, please?” Lucin vanished into the pool of light pouring out of his doorway.

Molly fought the constriction in her chest as she followed him inside. Lucin was the reason she was in the Academy. He had fought alongside her father against the Drenards. She knew it was a cliche—the military student doted on by the old general—but the stereotype existed for a reason. When children followed their fallen parents into battle, they were inevitably surrounded by the survivors who had promised to look after them. She wasn’t even the only one in the Academy with ties, just the only girl.

After her father left, Lucin had taken her in and enrolled her in the Junior Academy. It gave her a place to live. More importantly, he let her spend as much time in the simulators as she wanted—which was a lot. As long as she kept her grades up—which was never a problem—she could sit in a full military-spec Firehawk simulator for hours.

Sometimes longer.

At first, Molly would just soar around the simulated vastness of space, pretending to search for her father. Or maybe just trying to recapture her memories of him. One of her earliest recollections was of sitting on his lap in