Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

Simmons, a former student of mine, out of Special Assignments and had him attached to me, personally. When he proved ineffectual, unable to secure the ship on Palan himself, I started trying to figure out who had the requisite skills, who I could trust with this secret. Nobody in the service fit.

“Then, one day, Saunders was complaining about having a girl at the Academy for the hundredth time—and it hit me. You. You were the best pilot I knew, you were unhappy here, and you were the legal owner of the ship. I just had to get you expelled so you could claim ownership as a civilian. Once you were in the Navy, you would’ve started a mandatory five-year tour before you had the freedom to go to Palan. I couldn’t wait that long.”

“You—?” Molly still couldn’t grasp it. Cole had tried to prepare her, but she wouldn’t allow it. She stared at the gun in disbelief.

“Yes. I set you up so Saunders would expel you. Hell, I tried a dozen other things before that. It was almost impossible to get him to pull the trigger.” Lucin nodded at the gun. “Pardon the expression.

“You know, as hard as he was on you, I actually think the fat fool wanted you to succeed here. Me? I would’ve been crushed to see you in a career as a navigator. I was doing you a favor, Molly.”

“That’s a LIE!” She leaned forward, her voice shrill. The gun stiffened in Lucin’s hand and Molly fought to control herself. She still needed to know what was so important about Parsona. Everything else she could piece together, given time. The best news was that Lucin had acted alone. If Cole could hear the transmission clearly, she imagined he was breathing a huge sigh of relief. All she could personally feel was the crushing sensation of being betrayed by a good friend. For the third time? Or fourth? Was friendship a bond or some sort of tool?

“That’s a lie,” she said again, sadly.

Lucin wiped the water out of his eyes with his free hand. “It’s the truth. You would’ve been better off graduating from Avalon. If the damn rains on Palan hadn’t screwed things up, you would’ve brought Parsona back here weeks ago, I’d have picked up the trail your father left, and you would’ve graduated and claimed your inheritance. Things would’ve even sorted themselves out if Jakobs had done his damn job. But maybe this is all my fault for trying to get what I needed while keeping you safe at the same time. Maybe I’ve been wrong to put your welfare ahead of my quest to end this war.” He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe it’s time to get serious.”

Molly watched the knuckles poking out from the gun whiten.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” Lucin said. “If you do not answer me, I’m going to put a bullet in your chest. I will not hesitate. And I will find that ship by other means if I have to. So. Final chance. Where is the Parsona?”

His hand came off the desk, extending the gun toward her chest. Molly felt real fear creep up in her throat. She started to speak into the recording device when someone knocked on the door.

Lucin’s eyes swiveled toward the sound, but the pistol stayed put. “I’m counting to three, and then I’ll be putting a bullet into you before I put one through the door and your boyfriend out there.”

“Lucin, don’t do this—”

“ONE!”

The doorknob was just a meter from Molly. It started twisting, rattling in protest of being locked.

“TWO!” Lucin lowered the gun and aimed it at Molly’s knees.

“PLEASE, LUCIN—!”

The banging on the door became insistent. The small office reverberated with too much noise.

“THREE!” Lucin’s arm started to flinch in anticipation of the first shot.

“DON’T SHOOT!” Molly yelled, but not at Lucin.

The banging on the door grew furious. The old oak slab rattled in its hinges.

Shots were fired. Lucin and Molly couldn’t hear them, just the crinkle of glass they made, like three coins dropped into a pile of change. Lucin’s face twisted up as if he smelled something familiar—wondering what it reminded him of. He collapsed across his old desk, his arm locked straight, the gun still pointing at Molly.

Three spider webs in the office window let in tight pools of bright light. Molly bolted out of her chair and pressed both hands across the three corresponding holes in Lucin’s back. But nothing was going to stop them from leaking out puddles of life.

Molly wanted to scream at Cole, tell him how stupid he was, that Lucin would never have shot her—but she needed to convince herself first.

The banging at the door became mixed with worried shouts.

Molly felt like cradling her old friend, her adoptive father, but she could imagine Cole’s voice telling her he had been right and she had been wrong—and they both needed to get the hell out of there.

Molly grabbed Lucin’s gun. If felt nice to have it pointing it away from her. She turned to the door, worried about the fact that someone wanted in as badly as she wanted out. With no time for pleasantries, she turned the knob and stood back, allowing the pounding to do the rest.

When her eyes locked with Saunders’s, she found her own confusion mirrored on his face. Molly still had not yet sorted this man’s innocence. Years of anger welled up within her. And he stood in her way.

She saw him glance at Lucin’s body. Before he could turn back, Molly took one step forward and brought her other leg up after. Her knee was a ball of bone, swinging up between Saunders’s Navy blacks. The blow landed with a dull thud. Molly had to stop the forward momentum of her attack by placing one hand to the fat man’s chest. It became a guide, helping the poor seaman splash down to the blue carpet at his feet.

She didn’t say a word to him, just vaulted over his curling body and rushed down the hallway. If the Navy hadn’t been looking for them before, they would now. But at least she’d know why and what they were up against.

She ran down the checkerboard tile, she smell of industrial cleaning agent stinging her nostrils. For the second time in the past six months, she found herself fleeing the Academy with an unknown future ahead. And once again, she left behind two men with tears of agony on their faces.

This time, Molly Fyde had none.

Epilogue – The Parsona Rescue

“If it’s worth finding, don’t ever stop looking.”

~The Bern Seer~

0

A buzzing erupted by Molly’s head. The unique blend of tone, frequency, and duration created a magical brand of annoyance unimproved in almost half a millennia. Molly swatted at the alarm, groaned, and pulled the sheets up against the chill. The muscles in her back writhed in agony from three days of crawling through Parsona’s holds and bilges looking for the supposed salvation of mankind. The longer she searched, the more she suspected Lucin had lied to her a final time, or perhaps he’d just been wrong. Either possibility made his death more tragic and pointless.

It had been a week, and the tension between her and Cole over Lucin’s death had grown worse. She’d been incredibly hard on him, perhaps insisting too much that Lucin would never have shot her, but Cole remained just as stubborn. He insisted that he’d saved her life, and he refused to apologize.

This unwillingness to bend, to apologize, hurt like a fourth bullet. The first three, nicely grouped, had already done enough damage by killing an Admiral, a rare friend, and severing a thread leading back to her past. Now, just when she needed Cole the most, she found herself pushing him away.

The clock ticked. Another minute slid by. A minute she should’ve used to get up and don her flightsuit. She