33
The Navy Inspection shuttle broke away from another ship as a ring of crystallized atmosphere puffed from its airlock coupling. The vessel floated down the line of crafts awaiting clearance and locked up with the cargo ship directly ahead of them. Molly and Cole fidgeted in Lady Liberty’s cockpit while they waited their turn. In the distance, ships alternated between disappearing and reappearing in Canopus’s L1, a major hub for hyperspace travel. An old Orbital Station loomed nearby with several large Navy frigates and two cruisers attached to its military wharf. Commercial and private yachts intermingled while the frame of a new Orbital Station took shape not far away.
After the ship ahead of them cleared, their forged documents would receive their first test.
“What’s the plan if the IDs don’t work?” Cole asked.
Molly focused on the Inspection shuttle ahead of them. “We’ll find out soon enough,” she said.
“You’re too trusting.”
Molly assumed he referred to Earnie, the Darrin I scoundrel they’d worked with to secure IDs for themselves and Albert’s ship. “I’m sure he did his best work,” she said. “I sure would’ve, what with a Glemot and a Drenard around.”
Cole jerked his head to the cargo cam. “I meant him.”
Molly looked at her own screen, which showed Walter bent over his videogame. “We both agreed it was my call,” she said.
“Yeah, I agreed it was your call, but I never agreed to agree with it. I’d airlock him right now, but it’d probably create paperwork with the inspectors.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Yes, it is.”
Molly giggled. “Okay, it’s a tad humorous. But give me some time to prove you wrong. You didn’t see him afterward, once he saw the consequences.”
“Whatever. All I know is having him double-check Earnie’s work on the documents is like trying to put out a fire with some plasma. I don’t trust either of them.”
“I don’t either. But Earnie doesn’t know that, so having Walter sweat him out served the same purpose.”
“Forget it. We’re up.” Cole leaned forward to turn on the docking lights and unlock the outer hatch. Molly looked up and saw the Inspection shuttle maneuvering their way.
“I hope ours goes that fast,” she said.
A thump vibrated through the hull, followed by the clicking of collar locks. Molly wondered what this experience would’ve been like if their trip to Palan had gone as planned. She probably would’ve been nervous with the inspection process, but with normal first-time jitters steadied by the surety of innocence. Instead, she had the pure unadulterated terror of guilt working up and down her spine. She followed Cole through the cargo bay, a sudden surge of adrenaline weakening her knees.
The inner door of the airlock hissed open and stern Navy boots stomped out. Molly stopped by the workbench as Cole moved to greet the inspectors.
“Welcome aboard,” he said, his voice much calmer than Molly felt. He shook hands with each of the two men as they popped off their helmets. Molly gathered them politely as if they were having guests for tea. She laid them on Lady Liberty’s workbench and hoped the tension she felt was a normal part of this process, something exuded by the guilty and innocent alike.
The two inspectors surveyed the cargo bay intently; one of them cleared his throat. The other man, brandishing a thick mustache, took the ship’s registry from Cole. He held it in one hand and rubbed his whiskers with the other. The questions came without looking up, but his partner kept a keen eye on everyone’s face as they responded. Now and then he cleared his throat, which made Molly want to unzip her skin and launch herself into space.
“Just three crew?” He injected as much doubt into his voice as possible, making the innocuous seem ludicrous. Earnie had warned Molly it would go like this, every question meant to make bad people lie over stupid stuff, trapping them in a corner they weren’t prepared to fib their way out of.
Cole wasn’t fazed. “Just?” he asked. “We left Earth with two and picked up a deck hand in New Caledonia. Hell, either of us could do this run by ourselves, but you know how insurance companies are these days.”
The mustached man looked up and smiled knowingly. Molly wondered if anyone was immune to Cole’s charm. Besides Walter, of course.
“What’s in the cargo holds?”
Cole loaded his voice with disgust. “Not enough, that’s what. Some computer parts, mostly. Our major trade was outbound. We’re bringing back credits for the company and some software updates. Which means not much of a bonus for the crew.”
Mustache used one of the documents to gesture toward Walter. “And you picked up the Palan on Farar?”
Walter looked up at this. Molly hoped he wouldn’t hiss a sound.
“That’s right,” said Cole. “He was getting off another ship. It’s all in there, the captain’s name and what-not. I never met the guy. I’m sure he ditched the kid for slacking, but we’ve been working him hard, no problems. Isn’t that right, Rudy?”
Walter didn’t move. He’d already forgotten his new name.
Cole turned to look at him. “Isn’t that right?” he asked again.
Walter sat there for a second. Molly thought she could hear his brain whirling into motion.
“That’ss right,” he finally said.
Cole looked back at the inspectors and pointed to one of his own ears. “A little hard of hearing. Probably spent a lot of time in loud engine rooms growing up. You know, degreasing anything the color of his mama’s face.”
The three humans laughed at the alien’s expense. Molly tried her best to join in.
The two Navy men stared at the three young crew members, one after the other. Molly expected them to start poking around, do a full systems scan, check their retinas against the Navy computers. The galaxy had given her a three-week course in cruelty. She tensed for the next lesson.
“Well. Everything here seems to be in order. You enjoy your jump to Menkar. It’ll be outbound lane three and you’ll probably have a half-hour wait.” They each tipped nonexistent hats toward Molly, who waved back in mock-salute. She had to force her arm to do it lazily, years of habit threatening to give her away with a militarily-precise snap of her wrist.
She gave them their helmets back and the airlock shuffled the duo through with a sigh.
Cole turned to Molly. “Well, now. That was easy.”
She gave him a stern look while unspent adrenaline worked its way through her body. She felt nauseous, on the verge of throwing up.
Walter had already gone back to his video game.
????
The jump out and into Menkar went just as easily. Molly’s nervousness shifted to a dull realization: this was commercial space travel. In a trade of instantaneous movement from point A to point B, it was the inspections and the loading/unloading that ship crews got paid for. The long hours of moving by thruster remained a Navy-only affair as they searched for the unscrupulous jumpers that sneaked into busy systems. Legal trade coursed along known paths between peaceful worlds, shuttling goods and bodies back and forth along queues of ennui.
After a few weeks of nonstop excitement, Molly couldn’t tell if she’d enjoy that life or not.
She pulled forward in the outbound lane at Menkar. They’d passed another round of inspections; the next jump led to Earth’s orbit. While they waited, she examined how differently this trip had gone compared to the one she’d expected. They should be flying back aboard the Parsona. With a chaperone. Instead, their chaperone was dead and in his place they had an illegal alien who had nearly gotten them killed. The craft they would arrive in belonged to an arms dealer, while her father’s ship, not even flight-worthy at the moment, underwent extensive repairs by a sworn enemy and the last of a mysterious race.
Molly thought back to that conversation with Lucin under the pink blossoms of the cherry tree. Back then, she’d concocted a fairy tale out of this trip’s potential. So far, it had all gone the opposite direction.
With uncanny timing, Cole reached over and rubbed her forearm as she brought Lady Liberty into Menkar’s L1. The gravity sensors went to zero, the Orbital Station ahead cancelling out the mass of ships behind. She interlocked her fingers with Cole’s and smiled at him. At least one part of her fantasy had come true.
Cole engaged the hyperdrive, and the sprinkle of stars disappeared, replaced with the familiar sight of Earth. Molly felt a pang of regret. Part of her wished she could finish school at Avalon and maybe find work with her father’s old ship. She hadn’t even ruled out the option of selling it and starting a terrestrial business. The dream of reconnecting with her parents had been another massive failure—all she’d found was danger and betrayal. Part of her wondered if digging into her past any further would be a bad idea, just piling up the disappointments.
Fortunately, these doubts comprised a very small part of her. Too much else had changed for her to regress and pine for a lost childhood. She’d become a woman, somehow. She had responsibilities and others to think about—an entire crew of lost youth that relied on her, one of whom she was madly in love with.
Thrusting toward Earth, Molly felt an odd trepidation. Instead of feeling ecstatic to arrive home, she saw the ball of swirling blue and white as just another trap. A gravity well she could fall into and not be able to escape. She glanced at Cole and wondered what he thought about this mission of theirs, if the answers could possibly prove worth the risks. Or?.?.?.?would they have been wiser to run and just keep running?
????
They cleared into a private space pad in New Mexico, just a few hours from the Academy. Molly had one more talk with Walter, making it as clear as possible that he wasn’t to touch anything while they were gone. Anything.
“Yesss,” he said over and over. Molly told him to just keep playing that video game of his. Not to stop, even if he got thirsty.
Walter seemed to like this plan a lot. She closed the cockpit door and locked it, just in case.
Cole pounded up the boarding ladder and into the cargo bay. “I’ve got a rental waiting for us with a full charge. We should get going.”
Molly agreed. They both changed into clothes that Earnie had procured for them. Molly wore plain canvas pants and a loose white top probably meant for boys. Cole had on similar pants, but baggy with large pockets, and a tight T-shirt. They both appeared to be wearing their siblings’ clothes, rather than their own.
Molly gathered her things together. Her assignment on this mission couldn’t be simpler or more rewarding: ask questions and demand answers. The only weapon she needed was the small recording device to transfer everything back to Cole.
Cole’s job was to talk their way in. And, if things went sour, fight their way back out. Molly watched him dig something out of Lady Liberty’s smuggling compartment that she hoped would not be needed, even if his secondary task became their primary concern. She’d tried everything to talk him out of purchasing it, but Cole’s paranoia made compromise impossible.
????
As they drove down the interstate, they went over the plan for the umpteenth time. Cole spent most of the time talking while Molly craned her neck at the scenery speeding past.
Her own planet looked alien.
Glemot green lined the steel highway, fading to dry earth that could use a Palan rain. An incredibly blue sky hung overhead. The sun and the air were crisp and strange after so much time spent inside one ship or another. Molly’s fears about returning to Earth transformed into a dread of leaving. Her thoughts drifted to Edison and Anlyn and how impossibly far away they were. It required three hyperjumps just to get back to them. They weren’t even in this arm of the Milky Way.
The distance made Molly sick. When they formed this plan at Earnie’s, each event was as near as the next word uttered—as close as points on a paper chart. The unfathomable distance that would divide her crew couldn’t be appreciated while they huddled together in Parsona’s cargo bay.
Molly felt an enormous doubt envelop her, followed by a certainty: she would never see her friends again.
“Right?” Cole asked her.
“Yeah. Of course,” she responded.
Cole glanced over from the driver’s seat. “Were you even listening?”
She couldn’t lie to him. “Actually, I was thinking about Edison and Anlyn. How we just left them at Earnie’s and whether we’ll ever see them again.”
He didn’t respond at first, just peered forward while the road slid under the rental. “We will. In a few days, max. We just need to find out if anyone outside of the Academy cares where we are. We’ll never be free until we know.”
“How’d we get like this? I mean, with you devising a plan that takes us to the Navy and me wishing we could just fly away?”
“I think we both went from curious to angry, and you and I react oppositely to each. Now stop dwelling on our friends, we’ll see them soon enough.” He looked at her. “I promise you.”
She really wanted to believe him.