Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

Maybe it was the manner in which they’d discovered her: shackled and starving, a slave in chains. She still looked so thin and frail, her blue translucent skin catching the soft light, making her look innocent, pure, and harmless.

But Navy training videos had shown Cole what the Drenard people could do—at the helm of their fighter crafts and with their deadly lances. He had no difficulty seeing past her fragility to the horrors her people had wrought. This mix of emotions made him as wary around the young girl as he was around Walter—Anlyn because of her fierce potential, Walter due to his past treachery.

Ironically, Anlyn’s sleeping companion was a perfect mix of these two horrible traits, and yet, Cole trusted him completely. It didn’t matter that Edison had lied to them a few weeks ago, engineering one of the worst tragedies in the history of the Milky Way. It didn’t matter that the pup’s ferocious bulk and fierce claws could rend Cole in two. They had fought alongside one another, forging that bond of war that overrode all else.

Leaning against their doorjamb, the rumbling snores of the Glemot washing over him, Cole considered this bit of personal hypocrisy. He feared an innocent-looking creature that had saved his life a week ago, but he completely trusted a bear-like alien that had committed genocide against his own race. He had to shake his head at how effective the Navy programming was and at how eager he must be to rank personal experience above tragedies too vast in scope to properly comprehend.

He just hoped he could learn to judge Anlyn the same way: by her actions and not by the biases he’d formed over years of schooled hatred.

Cole pulled himself away from the slumbering couple and headed back to the cockpit, eager to see what the nav computer had to say. As he wandered through the cargo bay, he felt a stab of jealousy at having seen Anlyn and Edison snuggled together. Ever since Lucin’s death, he and Molly had been working through some problems. Even so, he’d considered broaching the subject of sharing a room, but didn’t know how to bring it up.

Or perhaps he was just scared of what Molly would say once he did.

She was still clattering away at her keyboard as he squeezed back into his chair. “If Walter’s screwing with us, he’s doin’ it in his sleep,” he told her.

Molly stopped typing and looked over at him. “Hey,” she said. “Be honest with me. Am I crazy to think this might be my mom? Because this is something that I really, really want to believe, and I’m sick and tired of being lied to and disappointed.”

Cole rubbed his face. He’d been on shift for a long time and really should be getting some sleep. But there was no way he could rest while Molly dealt with something as surreal as this. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “You sure nobody else could know how to spell your old name?”

“I can’t think of anyone. Not besides a bunch of backwoods frontier people on Lok, and they shouldn’t be involved in any of this.”

“What about the titles of those old books?”

Molly shook her head. “Nobody besides me and my dad, I’m pretty sure.”

“I just don’t know,” Cole said. He scanned the screen, taking in the snippets of conversation above the flashing cursor. “I don’t wanna get your hopes up, but we’ve seen some crazy stuff in the past month. The technology they had in the Darrin system blew my mind—”

“Have you ever heard of the Dakura system?” Molly asked.

Cole thought for a second. “No. But the name seems familiar. Why?”

“That’s where my mom says she was integrated into the ship, and where we need to go. Watch.”

Molly typed another question: COLE AND I WANT TO KNOW HOW WE CAN BELIEVE THAT IT’S REALLY YOU_

I CAN PROVE IT TO YOU AT DAKURA_

“See?” Molly asked, turning to Cole. “Pull it up on one of our newer charts. See how far we are from this place.”

Cole leaned forward and switched the nav computer from the bizarre conversation to the duller use for which it was intended. Pulling up the Bel Tra charts—the most accurate depiction of the Milky Way they owned— something horrific occurred to him. He slapped his forehead and shouted, “Flank me!”

Molly startled like the hull had been breached. “Gods, Cole! What?”

“When we were on Darrin, installing these new charts, do you remember how close I came to wiping out the old ones?”

She turned white. “Oh, my gods. I’d forgotten all about that. Do you think it would have— erased her?” She nodded toward her nav screen, having very nearly said “killed” instead of “erased.”

“I don’t know. We need to find out how fragile she is, or if we need to make a backup or something.”

“Good idea. I’ll add it to my to-do list.” She gave Cole a wry smile. “Now, if you’re done giving me heart problems over stuff that nearly happened weeks ago, you can get back to navigating.”

Cole grinned and gave Molly a crisp Navy salute. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and returned to her keyboard.

••••

MOM, WE’RE AT 24% ON THE HYPERDRIVE. COLE IS CHECKING DAKURA AND OUR CURRENT LOCATION_

She hit enter, then thought of something else.

CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? ACCESS THE SHIP’S COMPUTERS OR CAMERAS?_

NO, MOLLIE. BUT I WOULD LIKE THAT. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, AND MAYBE ONCE WE GET TO DAKURA OR LOK, WE CAN WORK ON THAT_

There was a pause. And then her mother fired off a question of her own:

WHO IS COLE? IS HE A BOY? HOW OLD IS HE?_

Molly smiled, and some of the doubts rising up inside began to settle back down. The questions comforted with their normalcy. She glanced over at Cole to make sure he was busy with his calculations, then she leaned over her keyboard to shield the screen from his eyes, launching into a conversation she had long dreamed of having with her mother—but never thought possible.

And not just because her mother had never been around, she thought, glancing over at her navigator.

A few minutes later, Cole sighed and flopped back in his chair.

“Not good,” he groaned. He leaned forward again to switch back to the conversation with Parsona, and Molly started tapping the enter key furiously, filling the screen with blank lines to push the conversation off the top of the display.

Molly stole a glance at Cole and saw him surveying the blank screen of empty prompts, his head tilted as he tried to puzzle it out. She could feel sweat popping out of the pores on her scalp and became consumed with the impulse to scratch her head.

Her mother lobbed a bomb into the stillness.

AS LONG AS YOU TWO ARE JUST KISSING, MOLLIE, THAT IS WONDERFUL NEWS. HE SOUNDS LOVELY_

A contest began: seeing who could turn the brighter shade of pink. Cole tried to look distracted, fiddling with the flight controls, but Parsona had been floating in empty space for hours.

“Uh… nowhere near enough juice to get us to Dakura,” he said. “We can’t even make it back to Lok, which we passed two jumps ago. Our course from Earth to Drenard took us near both, but we’re now too close to our destination to do anything but forge ahead. Unless, of course, you want to get arrested while we ask the Navy for some fusion fuel.”

Molly began communicating the bad news to her mom, eager to change the conversation away from romantic advice:

NOT ENOUGH FUSION FUEL FOR DAKURA. AND WE’RE IN A BIT OF A SPOT WITH THE LAW—CAN’T TOP UP AT ANY ORBITAL STATIONS. WE’VE BEEN HEADING TOWARD DRENARD FOR SEVERAL DAYS NOW_

DRENARD? WHY ARE YOU GOING TO DRENARD? IS THE WAR OVER?_

This woke Molly up to how long her mother must have been shut away in a computer. It felt nice to not be the only one with gaps in her knowledge. Even better was the feeling of having answers to someone else’s questions.