Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

“Ew, no!” Molly turned her head and brought her hands up to his chest.

It came out harsher than she’d intended.

“Fine,” Walter said, pouting. “The cargo door iss bussted, sso good luck getting back insside on your own.” He marched off toward the wreckage of Byrne’s ship, slicing the air with the severed arm and mumbling to himself.

Molly groaned and sat up, Byrne’s arm tugging at her scalp. She yanked a clump of her hair through its grip, and it finally came loose, taking some hair with it. Grimacing, she scooted back to the low wall, dragging Walter’s discarded helmet with her. Her entire body felt sore and on fire; she could still feel at least twenty fingers digging into various sensitive places.

She took a deep breath, rubbed her bruised neck, then worked the helmet in place before keying the mic on its side.

“Mom?”

“Mollie? Thank the stars! Where are you? Are you outside? The door’s stuck—”

“Mom, slow down.” She swallowed painfully and flipped up the visor. Walter’s silhouette stood out against the burning ship beyond the other wall, three arms waving.

Molly took a deep, painful breath, the putrid smell of death filling her lungs. “Byrne was here.”

“Was? Where is he? I thought with the blast that you’d—”

“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice still hoarse. “And he’s gone wherever his hyperdrive took him. It… it zapped him and left his arms.”

“Oh, dear. He’ll be very upset without them.” Her mom paused. “I saw the device running, nothing’s happening there? Is there anything—”

“No—”

Molly coughed, her throat scratched and irritable. Tears welled up in her eyes from the pain, then real tears followed as the rest came back to her.

“Dad,” she sobbed. “He said Dad was here, but he locked him away—”

“Oh, Mollie…”

She looked toward the burning ship, forced herself up and collapsed on the wall. She scanned the horizon.

“Cole…” More tears. “Mom, where’s Cole? Something bad happened to him, I can feel it. It’s just like when dad left—” She brought her hands up to the helmet, supporting her weary mind. “He’s… Cole’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Mollie. Come back to the ship. You’ll have to climb up through the pod bay—”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to.” Lying back along the length of the wall, she looked up at the bright stars in the moonless sky. “I’d be better off joining him,” she said to herself.

Her mother was silent for a while.

“I might be able to help you,” she said.

“Help me what?”

Parsona hesitated.

“Join him,” she said.

Epilogue – The Land of Light

“Of all the incredible places in the universe, none are so strange as what lies between.”

~The Bern Seer~

0

Cole double-checked the jump coordinates and glanced at the gravity indicators. Everything looked great. Zebra command was scattered in the distance; it appeared they’d be making a clean getaway. Even better, the red bands worked across vast distances, allowing he and Molly to travel without losing touch.

“I love you.” Molly thought, interrupting his own thoughts with some of hers.

“Me, too.” He told her. “See you soon.”

He lifted the carboglass shield and rested his finger on the red button. Beside him, he could hear Riggs grunting around the duct tape over his mouth, his helmet muffling his outrage.

Cole felt horrible for his old friend. He tried to think of something to say, but figured it could wait until they were out of danger. Pressing down on the button, he engaged the hyperdrive and watched the field of stars before him disappear, expecting them to shift slightly in place.

Instead, the blackness of space shot full with a blinding light, accompanied by a torrent of deafening sounds.

The filters in the carboglass clamped down automatically, minimizing the passage of photons, but even so, he couldn’t see a thing. His eyelids clinched tight of their own accord. He tried to crack them, but the light was too intense.

“What the hell?” he asked, as if Riggs could hear him over the noise. Unable to open his eyes, he attempted to make sense of the myriad warning beeps and alarms. It sounded as if all of them had been triggered at once.

Is someone there?

He tried to focus on what he could hear and feel, a wave of panic competing for control of his senses. There were too many sounds, too much stimuli, to distinguish any one.

Hello?

His hand went to the flight controls with habitual ease. He had to remember the simulators from the Academy, forgetting the past weeks on Parsona, where everything was laid out differently. He had hundreds of hours of flight time sitting in front of these Firehawk controls; he just needed to think about what to touch and allow his long-term muscle memory take over.

Pops, is that you?

As soon as he gave the flight controls a nudge, he felt his first problem: the stick gave him resistance. The haptic feedback system had kicked in, which meant they weren’t in space anymore—they were in atmosphere! As soon as he processed this, Cole recognized one of the layers of beeping sounds: the stall alert. They were in free fall. He needed lift.

He flipped the switch that extended the wings fully, then shoved forward on the main thrusters while nosing the ship down. There was a sickening sensation as he gave into the plummet in order to create enough speed to fight it. The lift warning went away. Cole could now make out a gravitational proximity alarm. They were near something huge. If the frequency could be believed, it was bigger than a planet. Bigger than most stars.

His stomach flipped in fear.

Penny, silence your thoughts for a second.

Cole tried to open his eyes long enough to check his altimeter, but his lids had mutinied. He could only open them a crack before they snapped back shut. Tears streamed back from both eyes. He couldn’t feel which way was up and couldn’t see the dash to find out. He reached forward with his left hand and fumbled for the gravity panels. He needed to turn them off and get his flightsuit neutralized so he could feel with his body which way to fly.

Who is this?

There was very little change as he turned off what he hoped were the grav panels. He fumbled for the life support controls so he could shut down the anti-G system in his suit. His fingers rested on the button when a silent