Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

face the string of hopeful pilots as the officers and cadets strolled casually up and down between the two lines.

Cole did a quick count of the boys to his side and saw that he was fifteenth from the end. It dawned on him that he was about to be paired up and not with Riggs, who had somehow become his friend over the course of a few whispers. He counted the other row as they wiggled into place. He searched faces partly obscured by the ridiculous loads they were each carrying. When he got to fifteen, he smiled at the boy across from him, who smiled back. His navigator looked vaguely European, with bushy brows and dark eyes. Cole started to nod his direction when the cadet beside him caught his attention.

Cole had to look twice to make sure he was seeing correctly. Riggs elbowed him repeatedly, which confirmed it. There was a girl in the line of navigators. Her hair was cropped short, but her cheeks and mouth, and especially her bright eyes, betrayed her. Cole was positive he’d heard flight school wasn’t open to girls.

“Cole—” Riggs whispered, his tone dire.

“Shhh,” Cole hissed. He watched the fat officer deliberately stroll up in front of the girl and turn his back toward her, as if to shun or purposefully ignore her. The older cadets seemed to be doing the same as they kept toward the other end of the room. As the last of the navigators filed into place, another officer entered the simulator room, an older man, supremely thin, with a plate of medals on his chest big enough to stop a torpedo.

“Pssst,” Riggs hissed.

Cole elbowed him back.

The older officer walked straight up to the heavyset one and whispered something. The larger man nodded, obviously the lower ranked of the two, and walked toward the end of the room, calling for all the cadets to listen up. As he began his orientation spiel in a booming voice, Cole watched the more local action across from him. He saw the thin man turn around, pausing ever so slightly to look at the girl navigator. Cole caught just the barest of smiles on her lips before she looked quickly away from the senior officer, and then the thin man strode off, a smile on his face as well.

“Cole.”

“What is it?” Cole hissed.

“Damnit man, do me a favor,” Riggs whispered.

Cole adjusted his pile of gear and turned to the side to see what Riggs wanted.

“What?”

Riggs bared his teeth, then hissed through them:

“Switch places with me.”

Part XIX – Hope

“Longing is the fuel for dissatisfaction.”

~The Bern Seer~

12 · Lok · The Present

Molly leaned forward in her seat as Gloria’s tail section rose into view. As the rest of the StarCarrier’s hull crept over the horizon, she saw that the downed Navy ship remained upright but was slightly tilted, her black thruster cones pointing obliquely up at the sky.

“It’s a shame we can’t just jump straight out to it,” she mused aloud. Her hand automatically drifted to the hyperdrive controls, feeling the switches that could move them anywhere in an instant, ignoring all things in between.

Cat, standing just behind the control console, laughed. “I think your friends in black would have a question or two about how we did that.” She pointed to the cargo cam where the Navy climbing team could be seen shrugging on harnesses and coiling ropes.

Molly pulled her hand away from the controls and rubbed the pads of her fingers together. “I know. It’s just hard to see how I’m supposed to have this power and not use it any time I want.”

“I ssay we jusst do it,” Walter said from the nav seat. He had his helmet on but with the visor open. He leaned forward and fiddled with one of the dials on the dashboard radio. “Let’ss sshut the cockpit door and do it.” He jerked his head toward the cargo bay. “We’ll tell them we took a sshortcut,” he hissed.

Molly laughed—then realized Walter wasn’t joking.

“This is what gets you in trouble,” she told him. “You need to work on being more patient—”

“Are we there yet?” Scottie asked. Molly turned to see him squeezing into the cockpit beside Cat, who rolled her eyes at the coincidental interruption. She and Molly shared a smirk.

“She’s just coming into view,” Molly said. She turned back around and gestured toward Gloria’s tail cones. “Are our guests clear on the plan once we get there?”

“I think so,” Scottie said. “All they know is they’re climbing down to the armory for flightsuits and combat gear, the stuff they’ll need for the raid on Darrin.”

“Do they seem nervous at all?”

“About what? The ship falling over or something? I guess they figure if it ain’t toppled by now—”

“No, about going back in there,” Molly said. Images of the previous day’s horror flashed through her mind: the mounds of dead bodies, the stairwell draped in gore, people crushed from toppling Firehawks.

“I think they know what needs to be done, and they’re up for doing it,” Scottie said.

“Sounds about right,” said Cat.

Molly glanced over at Walter as he fiddled with the radio. “I’d really rather you didn’t play with that,” she said.

“I’m hearing sstuff,” Walter hissed.

“That’s what radios do,” she told him. “Now please leave it—”

“But I’m hearing weird sstuff. Ssomeone sstrange iss on here.” Walter’s hand remained frozen on one of the knobs, sensing he should stop but unable to pull away. “Anyway, I almosst decrypted it—”

“Decrypted—?” Molly leaned over and saw Walter’s computer in his lap, his arm partially obscuring its screen. She pushed his elbow up and saw wavy lines and moving bar graphs rippling across the display.

Mom!

She slapped his hand away from the dial, then felt along the back of his helmet and turned the internal speakers off.

“Hey—!”

Molly reached up and grabbed her own helmet from its shelf, sending her Wadi scrambling. She brought it down over her head, snapped the visor shut, and reached for the radio switch, dreading what she was about to discover from her mother—

“??? ??? ???? ?? ????”

Molly froze, her hand poised above the radio dials. She looked over at Walter, who had torn his helmet off and had turned away from her. She could see him pouting in the reflection of his porthole. Molly lifted her visor and removed her helmet. She flicked the radio to the external speakers, allowing the strange language to fill the cockpit:

“??????? ????? ??????? ??? ?”

Walter glanced at the dash, obviously interested in the sounds.

From behind them, Cat cursed.