Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

planted another kiss on her visor.

Molly reached up to snap her own helmet off. She had a sudden impulse to check the SADAR for missiles, then realized the threat no longer existed. The image of the black hole, with its mesmerizing event horizon, returned. Molly tried to focus, but her ability to think straight had been sucked down that well, pulled in and destroyed by the attraction of something too beautiful to remember.

Cole held her head just as he had the helmet and pecked her face with loud kisses. He broke away and attempted a frown, which came out more as a subdued grin. “Don’t you put me in a situation like that ever—”

A strange roar interrupted him—an anguished howl rumbling up from the cargo bay. It dissipated the fog in Molly’s head and brought an end to Cole’s celebrations. They both tried to scramble over the flight controls at the same time, jostling with each other in panic.

Molly shoved Cole back into his seat.

“We’re going too fast,” she told him. “Spin us around and decelerate, but no more than the gravity plates can compensate for.”

He nodded gravely and reached for the forward thruster controls; the couple had spent too many hours in simulated warfare to unlearn that ability: snapping to an important task, distractions set aside for later.

Molly jumped down from her chair and nearly passed out. She caught herself on the cockpit wall and waited for the dizziness to pass, for the blood in the rest of her body to redistribute itself after all those Gs and the effects of so much anti-grav fluid racing through her flightsuit.

“MOLLY!” Edison yelled her name in that deep, guttural voice of his, the solitary word thundering up the passageway like an enraged animal. She staggered forward, fighting off another dizzy spell, worried about her large friend.

As soon as she rounded the corner, she saw the problem lay with Anlyn, not Edison. Walter, strapped to the neighboring seat, leaned as far as he could away from her. Edison knelt before Anlyn, his normally dexterous paws fumbling at the flight harness.

Anlyn’s face looked awful. Blotchy and bruised. The sight should have exacerbated Molly’s dizziness, but she was in charge.

Responsible. Adrenaline surged through her body, working miracles. She unbuckled Walter first.

“Give us room,” she told him, which he did eagerly.

Next, she tried to push Edison back, but his bulk was a steel wall draped in fur. “Edison, I need you to get back.”

Edison shook his head, but did as she asked. He cradled Anlyn’s helmet in both paws, rubbing it.

Molly knelt down in front of the young Drenard. The girl’s skin, normally a translucent light shade of blue, had turned a splotchy purple. Individual capillaries and veins streaked across her bald head in a tangled web. Two rivulets of blood snaked out of the hearing holes behind her jaw and tracked forward to the center of her face, pulled there by the force of acceleration.

Her chin rested on her chest as if she were merely sleeping, but the back of her head was ashen. She was clearly suffering from SLAS. Molly tried to remember how many Gs they’d been pushing before the jump and whether any of Cole’s alterations to her suit had required retooling the anti-grav pockets.

She reached into the collar of Anlyn’s flightsuit and encircled the Drenard’s thin neck with both hands, the universal method used to locate an alien’s pulse. It occurred to her as she waited for a sign of life just how unprepared she was for commanding her own ship and its crew. The Navy taught her how to shoot down aliens from a distance but not how to manage living with nonhumans while caring for their well-being.

Looking over her shoulder, she asked Edison, “Do you know where her heart is?”

The pup shook his head. Molly could see the skin around his nose where the fur was thin. Normally it was pink and healthy—now it was as pale as the back of Anlyn’s head.

“Take her to your bunk and get her flightsuit off,” she told him. Molly reached to unplug the suit from the anti-gravity and life-support module but noticed someone had already done so. She ran back for the first aid kit above the galley sink.

As she unstrapped the kit, she watched Edison scoop up his small friend with a paradoxical mix of strength and gentleness, then surge past her with long, even strides, back toward his crew quarters.

••••

Walter watched the ordeal from across the cargo bay, then slid across the wake of all the frenzied activity. He settled into his chair, his elbow stretching out into the seat beside him. Anlyn’s seat. But he could remember back when this whole side of the crew lounge had been his.

Even though he said the word silently, to himself, he did so in English.

Within his Palan brain, it came out as a hiss.

••••

By the time Molly made it back to Anlyn with the first aid kit, Edison already had her flightsuit off. He stood there, the empty suit draped over one massive forearm as he looked to Molly for more instructions. She could tell he needed to be told what to do next. Something. Anything. The color seemed to be draining from his very fur.

Molly knew the two aliens had gotten close during their brief time together, especially over the week they spent alone repairing Parsona. She also recognized Anlyn had taken to clinging to Edison for security. But she had no idea they might be in love with one another.

She did now. The same emotion bursting within her own heart for Cole seemed to visibly pour out of Edison. She recognized it in his worry, in his fear. As Molly knelt to attend to Anlyn, she also realized she had two patients in the room.

“Go get some clean rags and water,” she told him. “I want you to clean up her face and keep her head cool.”

That was the prescription for Edison’s heart. Now she needed to locate Anlyn’s.

There had been no pulse in her neck, and unless she was like the Bel Tra—with their arteries hidden within their very spines—that wasn’t an encouraging sign.

At least the girl was on her back, the blood able to drain down toward the gravity plates in the hull’s decking. Now Molly just needed to get those fluids circulating again. Every known sentient being relied on the potent chemical energy locked up in ATP and fueled by oxygen. Without a constant supply, the girl would die.

Molly unzipped a side compartment on the aid kit and pulled out two plastic tubes, then slid them into the small breathing holes above Anlyn’s mouth. There was no way to know how far to do this, so she pushed until there was some resistance before backing the tubes out a little. With the press of a button, a small compression fan on the side of the aid box whirred to life.

Reaching into another pouch, Molly pulled out the small medical reader and searched “Drenard,” even though she was almost certain she wouldn’t find anything. The race wasn’t in any of the Navy’s aid manuals, either from absence of knowledge or lack of caring. Why she thought there’d be anything in her parents’ old civilian gear was beyond—

Her parents.

Molly turned and bolted out the door, nearly breaking her nose as she crashed into Edison. “I’ll be right back,” she shouted over her shoulder. She dashed through the cargo bay, leaving Edison behind, the poor pup not knowing what to do.

Tears streaming down his fur.

••••

Molly bolted into the cockpit, not bothering to crawl into her seat. She leaned across the flight controls and switched the nav screen over to Parsona’s old charts.

“Everything okay?” Cole asked.

Molly ignored him. A chart of astral information went off the screen, replaced with line after line of text—her mother wanting to know what was going on.

NO TIME. I NEED TO KNOW WHERE THE DRENARD HEART IS_

THE DRENARD HEART?_

LITERALLY. MEDICALLY. ANLYN DOESN’T HAVE A PULSE. DO YOU KNOW WHERE HER HEART IS?_