11
Molly stepped out of the sheriff’s office and back onto the crowded sidewalk. She looked down at the ticket stub she’d just purchased. There was no name on it, just a date, time, and place: that very night at eight o’clock, the opera house. Lok’s extremely short days meant she didn’t have long to wait, but it also meant skipping a shift of sleep. She tried to calculate how long she’ll have been up by the next nightfall—when the Wadi’s claws dug sharply into her shoulder, breaking her concentration.
She turned to chastise the animal, then saw it had cowered down low to peer over her shoulder at something. Following its eyes, she looked across the street and spied Walter walking amongst the crowd.
Molly let a buggy go by, its un-muffled engine blatting loudly as it revved up to cajole the buggy ahead of it. She ran across the street behind it, hot exhaust blasting her bare knees. Weaving through the foot traffic, she took long strides to try and catch up to Walter. The boy was walking unusually fast and quite close to the two Humans just ahead of him.
She nearly caught up to him when a ruckus occurred. Some kid came out of an alley right in front of the couple. The boy collided with them, sending the woman to the dirt, and then ran off without even apologizing. Molly rushed forward to help her and her husband, to see if they were okay. Shockingly, Walter did the same. He steadied the man by the hips to make sure the gentleman didn’t go down as well.
“Are you alright?” Molly asked the lady as she helped her up.
“Little snot came out of nowhere!” she said, brushing the dirt off her knees.
“Now Sandra, it was just an accident.” The gentleman patted Walter on the back. “Alright lad, I’m fine. Thank you very much.” He smiled at Molly and tipped his wide-brimmed hat. “Thanks for your assistance, young lady.”
“Molly!” Walter said. He glanced up and down the street as the couple merged with the crowd and disappeared. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m looking for the person who’s gonna help get us out of here. What’re you doing?”
“Nothing,” Walter said. He thumbed through folds of paper in his hand. “What wass her name again?”
“Cat. I’ve told you that a hundred times.” She pulled him out of the middle of the sidewalk so the crowd wouldn’t have to part to get around them.
“I think I found her,” Walter said.
Before Molly could respond, a young boy forded the river of foot traffic and tugged on Walter’s elbow. Walter turned and pushed him away, hissing softly.
“Did you just give that kid something?” Molly asked.
“What?”
“Was that the kid from the alley?”
“Huh? No!” Walter turned and resumed thumbing through some-thing in his hands. All Molly could see was the top of his stubbled, metallic head, which seemed to be glowing a little. He turned around and pressed a wad into Molly’s hands. She looked at them: a thin stack of tickets, all to that night’s show at the opera house.
She shook them at him. “Where did you get these, Walter?”
“People gave them to me.”
“Gave them?” She reached out and grabbed a fistful of his flightsuit, pulling him close. “Where did you get them? Did you steal them?”
“No! They’re free!” he squealed.
Molly glared at Walter and had a visual of spanking him, right there in public, age be damned. “C’mon,” she said, pulling him back across the street. She veered toward one of the many outdoor cafes lining a busy side-alley.
Walter pried her fist off his cuff and grabbed her hand. As they crossed the street, he practically skipped along beside her, trying in vain to interlock his fingers with hers.
????
A few minutes later, Walter sat across a small café table from Molly, sulking. He took his finger out of his mouth and asked, “Why can’t we go back to the sship?” He pouted and resumed sucking on his digit.
Molly took a sip of her water, which she had made Walter vote for, then leaned back in her seat. “I already told you, some bad people are setting up camp in there, and the sheriff won’t have anything to do with them. Besides, I don’t wanna miss our chance at finally tracking this Cat character down.”
“So let’ss go get ssome gunss,” Walter said. Molly glanced away from him and over his shoulder. Two Callites were walking down the alley, both wearing coveralls splattered with the same purple paint Scottie and his friends had sported. She watched them curiously over the lip of her glass.
“I ssaid, let’ss get ssome gunss,” Walter hissed.
“Get them where? Guns are illegal here.” Molly reached into her glass and pulled out a cube of ice. She squeezed it between the pads of her fingers to numb the persistent soreness there. “That’s why you don’t see people on Lok shooting at each other.”
Walter looked down at his computer for a moment, then back up at Molly. “How do you protect yoursself from whoever’ss in charge?”
“Look around you, pal—this isn’t Palan. A bunch of pirates aren’t gonna take over and let the last people out of prison before putting some different ones in. It doesn’t work like that here.” She raised her voice as she talked, speaking over a protest marching down Main street. Someone on a bullhorn was promising to handle the Drenard invasion differently, and also to get rid of the ships overhead, if only the electorate would throw the current bums out and install him in their place.
“But if the ssheriff won’t help, and he’ss the one with the gunss, how do we get the sship back?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll be gone by the time we return. I think they were looking for someone else, anyway. Maybe they’ll give up. Anyway, we’re just gonna hang out here until the show. We need to find out about the fusion fuel. That’s the most important thing right now.”
“I thought we had plenty of fuel. You don’t tell me anything.”
“Yes I do. I’ve told you a dozen times, you just don’t listen. We need a different kind of fuel or we can’t get back from where we’re going. Besides, this lady might be an ally, which we’re in desperate need of. Our crew has dwindled down to—”
“I’m your ally!” Walter said, beaming.
“Yeah?” Molly took a long pull from her water, and then fished for another cube of ice. “Where in hyperspace were you this morning when I needed you?”
Walter frowned and looked back down at his computer; he’d hardly touched his food. Molly wondered if she should give the plate to the Wadi. She looked down at the creature, which was curled up in her lap, chewing on the tablecloth.
“Are you still not in yet?” Molly asked Walter.
He shook his head, which seemed to glow with an inner light. It was a sign she’d begun to recognize as either shame or excitement. Not knowing which made for some interesting interpretations of his moods.
“Seriously? You can crack a StarCarrier mainframe and remotely hack a Navy-issue missile, but you can’t get a wireless signal in a cafe? Look, just let me pay for it.” She glanced at her poor pinky, rationalizing the sacrifice.
Suddenly, the roar of thrusters in the atmosphere caused everyone in the café to glance up. It sounded at first like another Bern ship heading off to orbit, but they were too far from the rift for it to be that. She and Walter joined the rest of the patrons in searching the sky for the source.
She finally spotted the vertical plume from the lift-off. The tiny ship at its head didn’t match up with the sonic boom it created, as the sight of it reached them well ahead of the lagging noise. It was a strange optical illusion: a silent ship being chased by the grumble of an invisible one. It was especially unnerving as Molly still had not gotten used to hearing spacecraft move.
She looked away from the ship and watched the other patrons follow the scene. They soon began arguing politics amongst themselves, often saying something about Callites and immigration laws.
Walter peered down at his computer, frowning. “Coffee sshopss are much tougher than Naval encryption,” he said, still smarting over her jab at his technical prowess. “They update their sstuff weekly—the Navy takes decadess. Thiss sshop csycle’ss its passsword every half-hour and they usse ten twenty-four bit encryption.” He took a sip of his gelatte and wiped the foam off his lips with the back of his hand. “If the Navy took half thesse precautsionss, you’d probably be dead.”
He smiled up at her. “Twicse,” he added with a grin.
Molly glared at him over the lip of her glass. “You can’t die twice—”
A gasp from the upward-gazing crowd cut her off. Molly shielded her eyes and looked up as well. A second later, the distant roar of the spacebound ship went silent. As she followed the plume of exhaust upward to locate the ship, she saw the craft tumbling down past the pillar of smoke it had created, bow spinning over thrusters, over and over.
Everything in the café froze as the patrons watched solemnly, waitresses frozen in place with pitchers of water dripping condensation. When the plummeting hull disappeared behind the building’s awning, there was a distant rumble, the sound coming from many kilometers away. Everyone gradually looked back to their food. Forks tinked against plates. Whispers began to grow back into conversations.
Molly took it all in, desperate to know what had just happened. Were they testing some kind of new craft? Something to use against the fleet? Everyone else seemed to know something, or at least they weren’t terribly shocked by the display. She leaned over to ask a nearby table, when Walter hissed excitedly.
“I’m in,” he said, his face glowing. He bent over the computer, typing furiously and sneering.
Molly reached across the table. “Let me see it.”
Walter continued to peck away.
“Walter, it’s important. Give it here.”
He frowned and handed over the computer. “Won’t be long before you’re kicked off,” he said.
Molly nodded and moved to swipe the top screen away, then noticed it was Palan’s planetary homepage. The weather forecast was being displayed, showing the projected hour for the next rains. She glanced up at Walter, who was looking back over his shoulder at a political dispute in the alley. She felt a sudden pang of sadness for him as she realized he must be feeling homesick.
Swiping the page to the side, Molly dragged up a new one from the bottom. The few times they’d been connected to the Net in the past two weeks, the datastream had been too thin to do even the most rudimentary of tasks. The remote Lokian villages had suffered from poor connectivity and bandwidth, even when they were lucky enough to find an available signal. A seemingly countless number of items had built up over the past weeks that she really wanted to check on, but first there were a few she had to.
Using the virtual keyboard, she typed: “Molly; Fyde; Navy,” and hit enter. Hundreds of hits registered, but she could see most of them were junk. Lots of false positives and a ton of spelling suggestions for “mollified.” She sorted the results by date, looking for something recent, but there wasn’t anything within the last two months.
She swiped that away and tried: “Parsona; Ship; Navy.”
“You looking for newss about thosse sshipss?” Walter asked. “The oness from the bright light?”
“No. I probably know more about them than the Bel Tra do. Not that that’s saying much. I’m actually looking for news about us. Trying to find out how much trouble we’re in.”
Walter pushed up from his chair and leaned forward. “You ssearching on Latticse?” he asked.
“Yeah. Don’t worry about—”
Walter leaned over the table and snatched the computer away from her. He pecked furiously at the keys while Molly tried to snag it back. “I said not to worry about—”
Walter relinquished the computer. Molly glanced at the screen and nearly dropped the device. She looked behind herself, scanned the crowd, then moved the tablet to her lap and stared at the screen.
It showed the welcome page for the GN Naval database.
“How did you do that?” she whispered.
“Eassy. I already had the passsword.” He slurped through ice cubes for the last of his drink, then looked around for their waitress.
“Is this how you hacked the missiles?”
He frowned at her as if the question didn’t merit answering. “Com-pletely different,” he said.
The waitress came up from behind. Molly moved the computer under the table and threw her napkin over it. Some more water was sloshed in their glasses—their one free refill. Walter was told the gelate top-up would cost. He demurred, peering at the pads of his fingers. Molly glared at him, jerking her head to the side to let him know she needed some privacy.
He finally said “no thankss,” and the waitress moved on. Molly placed the computer on the table as the Wadi munched on her napkin. She looked over the welcome page for the Navy database, the appearance of the familiar site filling her with memories of the Academy. The only difference was the tall stack of red bars running down one side of the screen, indicating her current clearance level. She had no idea it even went that high.
Pulling up the keyboard display, she repeated her search query from Lattice and hit enter.
????
Classified. Zebra Log. 2148.08.12.2214.
Today, at precisely 1934 UTC, the 12th of Eight 2148, two prisoners (Molly Fyde and Ensign-II Cole Mendon?a) escaped from Star Carrier Zebra with the aid of an informant (Walter Hommul) and a suspected Navy accomplice (Captain-III Jason Riggs). Along with their escape, Zebra command suffered the theft of a loaded and armed Firehawk (s/n 492857295-F) and an impounded craft (GN-290 Parsona). The latter had already been deemed both a C-8 High Target and an L-10 Object of Interest.
Memo: Escape was effected by the use of a high-level hack of StarCarrier Zebra’s mainframe and the re-routing of personnel. All, repeat, ALL Navy admins should change their login and password information immediately and begin cycling them according to Navy regs.
Memo: Whereabouts of both craft unknown at this time, but hyperspace signature for stolen Firehawk was found and traced by the science team on the Cruiser Sagan. Whether or not the result was a case of negligent navigation, a suicide mission, or an attempt to cover their tracks remotely, has yet to be determined. The hyperspace signature led straight to the core of Delphi’s primary star, leaving a trace strong enough to drown out Parsona’s exit coordinates. A deeper analysis of the trace will be performed, as will further scans for Parsona’s trajectory.
Memo: All targets and personnel in this case have been upgraded to L-15 Objects of Interest. Zebra command takes full responsibility for the loss, but gladly accepts the High Admiral’s confidence and charge of reclaiming the Navy’s property.
Memo: Please reference Palan Log 2148.06.23.0715 for more on Mendon?a and Fyde. The same suspects were involved in the death of three Navy staff and the destruction of Navy property. They were subsequently assigned L-5 ratings, each.
Memo: Please reference Earth Log 2148.07.18.1640.3 for even more on Mendon?a and Fyde. The same suspects were involved in the death of Rear Admiral Lucin and an attack on other Navy personnel. They were both upgraded to L-10 Objects of Interest following the events detailed therein.
Admiral Griffin Saunders
Z-HQ StarCarrier Zebra
????
Molly scanned the report one more time, frowning at the results of the hyperspace signature scan. Somehow, it actually felt comforting to know what had happened, that Cole had definitely jumped into an object with mass and would likely have ended up in hyperspace. But how had he mistakenly jumped into a star? Did Riggs play some part in that? She peeked up at Walter, who was holding his empty gelate to the sun as if to make the ice melt faster.
The database search also showed the older memos linked to the most recent one. She glanced over the one detailing her and Cole’s escape from the Academy, but she didn’t read it. She could get lost in that memory: the door banging, Lucin yelling, the silent shots, just a crinkle of glass and a life ended . . .
The overall image created by the search results made her feel naus-eous. Two escapes, several deaths, theft of Navy property, and a string of violence. She couldn’t imagine what more the higher-ups would be saying about her if they weren’t so busy dealing with the Bern invasion overhead, or the rumored expansion of Drenard hostilities.
Her mother, of course, had insisted that none of this was her fault, that perhaps things foreseen couldn’t be stopped—but Molly didn’t believe that. The mistakes she’d made, with the Navy and now on Lok, it was Glemot all over again. But unimaginably, impossibly, on an even larger scale.
“You’re wassting the connection,” Walter hissed.
Molly shook her head and looked back to the screen. She tried searching for: “Cat; Catherine; Lok,” but once again got too many hits to weed through them or make sense of it all. Most went too far back to be the correct person. She cleared the computer screen and handed it to Walter, then thought about the odd fatality count reported from Palan. She felt certain four people had died in those flooded streets. And yet: Lucin, Saunders, and now the official reports all claimed three. Did someone survive the rains? Or did they just not find the body?
“We’re in trouble,” Walter hissed.
Molly snapped her head around, her hands moving to the table and ready to push off, to flee or fight. The Wadi, asleep in her lap, jumped up and hit its head on the bottom of the table and came out woozy. But Walter was just looking at the computer. She could see the reports she’d just found back up on the screen.
“Close that stuff out!” she hissed at him. “And you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
He looked up. “Ssorry, but if you didn’t want me to ssee it, you sshould’ve cleared the hisstory tab.”
Molly settled back down, her heart racing. “No, Walter, that’s not the way it works.” She patted the Wadi on the head, comforting it, then leaned forward, hoping he’d see how serious she was. “If I wanted you to see what I was looking at, I would’ve left it up or shown it to you, understand? You can’t take stuff that’s not offered to you. At the very least, you need to learn to ask.”
“Why? If I don’t take it, ssomeone elsse will. What’ss the differencse? It’ss sstill taken, but then I don’t have it.”
“You shouldn’t even want something stolen. You—haven’t you ever had someone give you something?”
“No, not—” he looked down at his flightsuit, his name scrawled across the breast with a black marker. “Thiss,” he said, placing one hand on his chest.
“Okay, and how do you feel about that flightsuit? You love it, right?”
Walter nodded.
“More than that computer, am I right? And yes, I know you stole the computer from your uncle back on Palan.”
Walter looked at his computer, then ran his fingers over the bare patch of material on his suit where he had printed his name.
“I like the computer better,” he said.
Molly threw her hands up. “Oh, forget it.” She threw some credit chips on the table for a tip and shooed the Wadi up to her shoulder.
“C’mon, I think the waitress is telling us to buy something or scram. We’ll go hang at the square for an hour and wait until the show starts.”
She stood up and began weaving through the tables to reach the alley. Walter remained seated. He stared at his computer some more, then looked down at his flightsuit.
“Thiss iss my favorite outfit,” he muttered to himself.