6
From her meeting with Lucin to her arrival on Earth’s Orbital Station, it felt more like a month than a week. Especially with all the lazy scheduling teachers do prior to spring break at Avalon. She tried to concoct busywork for herself, doing all the problems her teachers said to skip, but it barely dented her anticipation.
There was so much to look forward to, she couldn’t decide which part of the trip tortured her the most. Was it seeing her father’s old ship? She wondered if any of his stuff would still be aboard, the old tools scented with oil and the clothes smelling of his hard work.
Or was she giddy at the prospect of owning her own ship? Gods, that thing, even as old as it was, it must be worth a fortune. Molly could start a shuttle agency right out of school. Or be a freelance courier. The opportunities were endless.
To a small degree, it was both those things. But mainly, and it made her feel silly to admit it, she was ecstatic about seeing Cole. She would be sitting beside him on a twenty-hour pan-galactic flight to Palan. Hearing what he’d been up to. Joking with him without the other boys around.
Part of Molly’s preparation for the trip had been to go through her reader and delete a lot of required reading material. Now it was loaded with more adventurous fare, most of it meant for boys. These books were typified by their shallow, male protagonists and the author’s poor grasp of space tactics, but she’d also found a little gem. A series of books about a woman on a frontier planet forging a life for herself. It was the closest thing to a female’s adventures away from Earth that Molly could find, and the setting sounded a lot like her birth planet: Lok.
She was tempted to pull her reader out and start one of the action books, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to take her eyes off the arrival gate. She’d chosen a seat in the Orbital Station, facing the security entrance. Cole’s shuttle should be docking at any minute. Once he arrived and they boarded the passenger ship, their adventure would officially begin.
Molly was glad she’d gotten there first and on a separate flight. Thrusting out of Earth’s gravity well would have been nerve-wracking if Cole had been there. She would’ve been torn between acting cool and nonchalant and wanting to geek out over the experience. It also allowed her to be a tourist. She got to alien-watch a little without him berating her for being a gossip, and she was able to explore some of the shops with all their strange trinkets from various planets.
She’d chosen a foreign snack (the one that smelled least-likely to ruin her breath) and eaten it in the observation bubble, gazing at Earth as it spun below. She felt impatient for Cole’s arrival the entire time, but these were great experiences she probably wouldn’t have thought to do if he’d been there. The alien-watching and the shopping because he might think Avalon had changed her. The Earth-gazing because she feared it would come across as too romantic.
So she sat, chewing minty gum, and stalking Cole’s arrival point. Was she being transparently desperate? She was over-thinking everything.
There weren’t any windows on the airlock side of the Station, so the first hint at his arrival was the stampede of passengers pouring out of security. A man with Cole’s build was near the front—Molly perked up. Then she settled back, trying to look non-committal. It wasn’t him, anyway. Two young men in Navy blacks got her heart pounding, but she knew he’d be wearing civvies.
Molly double-checked her own garb. She had tried on several dresses at the mall before realizing how overtly stupid this would look. Cole probably wouldn’t even like it. So she’d gotten a new pair of khaki pants with these great pockets running down both sides. They kept her legs from looking too skinny, and she fantasized about the things she could organize in them. If she’d actually owned any of those things, of course.
The top was a yellow short-sleeved thing, blousy up top and puffy around the sleeves. It had a slight lace around the collar and hem, and pale blue flowers dotted across the yellow. It looked simple, but Molly liked the way it made the starburst in her eyes stand out. Casual and lovely. Practical and girly. Perfect.
She’d almost bought two of them. Instead, she’d packed some comfortable shorts, a few nice T-shirts and tops, plenty of underwear and socks, and a scarf to tie around her hair. Thinking of this made her reach up and tuck her brown locks behind her ears. Her hair was almost down to her shoulders and she worried Cole would find it too “girly.” She considered cutting it close to Navy regulations, but figured he’d find that too “boyish.”
She was miserable with excitement.
Besides her clothes, Molly had packed her book reader, her portable computer, a new journal she swore she’d be faithful to this time, a flashlight, a small medical kit, and some toiletries. It was more than she figured she’d need, but the panicky sensation she’d forgotten something started washing over her again—then a familiar shape pulled out of the herd and dissipated all her worries.
Cole.
She almost yelled out to him like the schoolgirl she was (but didn’t want to be). Instead, she watched him scan the crowd for her and tried to deduce what emotions were on his face.
He just looked annoyed, she finally decided.
When his eyes finally found hers, she waved and widened her own, as if they’d just seen each other at the exact same moment. His white teeth stood out on his tan face in a friendly smile. He strolled up to her with long, relaxed strides.
“Hey, girl.” He stopped a meter from where she’d risen from her seat. The last time they’d seen each other, it was in an embrace that felt wonderful, yet awkward.
Molly wasn’t sure what to do.
“Hello.” She waved a little, as if he was much further away. “You packed light.” She nodded at the backpack over his shoulder.
“Yeah, you too. Is that your only bag?”
“Yup. It’s only a few days, right? I figure most of our time will be on the trip out and the trip back, stuck in one outfit forever. It saved me from thinking too much on what to wear.”
“Well, you look great. You look like you’re getting more sun.”
She hoped enough to hide the blushing. “They let us go outside.”
“No way!” And they both laughed. “I like the hair.”
Molly instinctively put a hand up to brush some of it behind her ear. “Thanks.”
“So,” he said, “You wanna go ahead and get on the ship and get comfortable?”
“They aren’t boarding for another half-hour, I don’t think.”
Cole pulled a Navy badge from under his collar. “You sure?”
“Gods, Cole.” Molly glanced around nervously. “Don’t be such a Drenard, we’re supposed to be undercover.”
“Forget about it. We’re stellar until we jump into Palan. C’mon, let’s go check out our seats.”
Molly grabbed her bag and hurried after him. It was amazing how natural this felt already. Five seconds of nervousness after a week of dread, and it already felt like they’d grown up together in a civilian world. Acting normal. Just being friends.
Molly suspected her time at Avalon, training to be a regular kid, made this a stronger feeling for her than it was for Cole. But so far, he led the way. Maybe he was really good at this undercover thing after all.
The pass worked wonders on the gate security and boarding stewards. The scrutiny might have lasted a bit longer than for two adults, but the handheld scanners beeped their consent, and this seemed to be enough for their wielders.
Once they got onto the ship itself, they were treated like royalty. First-class tickets meant sleeper chairs with pillows, blankets, and divider screens. The flight attendants delivered juice and then busied themselves putting their bags away.
Molly had mixed feelings about the treatment. She was used to doing things for herself. And the way the pretty women were doting on Cole was probably no different from the way she was being treated, but it still made her feel possessive. She tried to wrestle this jealousy aside so she could enjoy some luxuries her parents would never have been able to afford her. Part of her inwardly resented the Navy for pulling strings and doing something nice for once.
Just as she was thinking this, Cole launched out of his seat and started for the nose of the ship. Molly guessed he was going to the restroom, but he passed the sign and continued toward the cockpit door. She couldn’t believe his gall; she leapt up and set off after him. He was already smooth-talking the navigator by the time she got there.
“—same instructor.” Molly caught the end of what the navigator was saying. She poked her head into the cramped cockpit and was struck with how young the speaker looked. He couldn’t be much older than twenty.
Cole squeezed himself into a smaller pocket of the room and let Molly in. “This is my girlfriend Molly.” The navigator nodded his head and the pilot raised one hand, his back to Molly as he fiddled with a radio set.
There wasn’t enough room in the cockpit for all of them and this new “girlfriend” term as well, so Molly tried to push the word back into coach.
“Jeremy here went to the Academy. He had Rogers for Basic Flight.”
How had they already shared this information? Cole was in his element, and Molly had a sudden pang of doubt about whether or not his being nice to her had anything to do with how he felt or whether it was just a product of his ever-present charm.
“Is that a Grumin 4200?” She leaned into the space between their two chairs and pointed at the SADAR screen.
The navigator smiled. “Now I know they don’t have those at the Academy. But, yeah, that’s the latest and greatest. If we turned it on, we could see the shuttles attached to various gates of the Station.”
The pilot quickly pressed a button near the SADAR, taking it off standby mode and down to a black screen. He made it quite clear to the little gathering that the devices on the dash was his and his alone. Molly took the hint and leaned back toward the door. Her arm pressed up against Cole’s. It started feeling really hot in there.
“Well, gentlemen, thanks for letting us look around,” Cole said. “We’re going to go settle in before the stampede begins.”
“Good thinking,” said the navigator. “You kids enjoy the trip.”
“Bye,” Molly said with a little wave.
????
Back at their seats, Molly arranged her belongings as if she were in a simulator. Her computer went in front, creating a miniature dashboard. She tucked her document reader by her right leg. As she buckled herself in, she noticed Cole performing the same ritual. To her left, she noticed. In the pilot’s position. They hadn’t even checked their seat assignments, they’d automatically taken their usual positions. It made her wonder how hard it would be to assume command on the Parsona. Or if he was even expecting she would.
Cole dropped a tan folder in Molly’s lap, interrupting her thoughts. “Reading material,” he said.
It wasn’t heavy, but it bulged slightly as creased paper tried to spring back into shape. She gave their depositor a sarcastic smirk. “I brought my own, thanks.”
“Not as good as this, girlfriend.” He drew out the last word, already sensing that their cover annoyed her. But Molly wasn’t sure if he realized why that was. For now, it seemed to be playful banter.
“What is it, sweetie?” She opened the folder.
“Everything I have on the sabotage.” He made quotation marks with his fingers as he said the word. “Did Lucin tell you why we were graduated early?”
“Yeah, he said some of you didn’t need the extra semester.”
Cole laughed at this. “Well, that’s crap. You remember that last mission? The one with the Tchung having a few extra ships?”
“Hmmm. No.” She gave him a withering look. “Doesn’t ring any bells, sorry.”
“You’re hilarious. Now look, there’s something serious going on here. We never did another full-scale mission after that one. And even though our class did better than some others, there wasn’t anything particularly inspiring about individual performances that day. Well, except for yours, and you got expelled for it. But get this, our simulator was never used again. Ever. Right up to the day some of us were graduated. Check the maintenance log.”
Molly thumbed through some reports and maintenance schedules.
“It’s the green one, there.” Cole tapped the edge of a piece of paper and then continued in a lowered voice. Other first-class passengers, mostly humans, were filing onto the shuttle now.
“I was teamed up with Riggs in his simulator, and his navigator got the boot down to Services.”
Molly looked up from the folder. “You were a navigator for Riggs? Not that he isn’t a good pilot, but why weren’t you just given a new navigator?”
Cole looked startled for a second. “Didn’t Lucin tell you? I was demoted after the Tchung simulation. I graduated with the navigators based on my scores from the previous year. I mean, I get to keep my simulator hours if I ever want to be one of those guys.” Cole tossed his head up toward the nose of the plane, “But no Navy ships for me.”
“Oh.” Molly looked back to the folder’s contents.
“Hey, I’m not upset, so don’t get all pitiful on me. Hell, you always wanted to be a pilot more than I did. I love the math and the tactics. And training as a pilot made me one helluva navigator, so I have no problem with the decision. I’m more worried about this conspiracy. Our simulator was taken off-line almost before you were out of the building.”
“That makes sense,” said Molly, “the thing was screwed.”
“No. It was screwed with.”
“That’s right, you thought you saw Jakobs by the control panel of our pod earlier that day.”
Cole corrected her. “I never said it was Jakobs.”
“You said it was someone who reminded you of Jakobs.”
“Right. Same size, same swagger, but it could have been anyone in Navy black. Look at this page right here.”
Molly pulled out the one he indicated. It was a library computer log. “How’d you get this?”
“I had two months left at the Academy to gather this stuff together. And you wanna know what they demoted Riggs’s navigator down to?”
“What?”
“Cryptography.”
They both giggled at this.
“He got me a lot of this stuff. The rest I got through Saunders’s secretary.” Cole’s voice seemed to taper off at the end of this sentence.
“Do I even want to ask how?”
“Yeah, you obviously do. But I don’t kiss and tell.” Cole raised and lowered his eyebrows suggestively. He was obviously lying.
“Yeah, right,” Molly said. “So what do the library records tell us? Oh.” She traced Jakobs’ name. “Lemme guess, this is the time when you thought you saw someone by the simulator?”
“Bingo. Wasn’t him. Besides, he isn’t smart enough to do something like this. And why would they shuffle me around, graduate us early, close down that simulator, any of the other stuff if it was a cadet prank?”
“No way. You’re suggesting this was higher-up?” Molly started flipping through some more pages, wondering what Cole had uncovered.
“I’m not sure. But the people they graduated were not the best cadets. They were the few people close to you, the ones that really interacted with you on a daily basis. Whether it was the people that liked you, which would be me and.?.?.” Cole scratched his chin and made a point of looking up at the ceiling of the fuselage.
It took a few seconds for Molly to get the joke. “Ha. Ha,” she said.
Cole beamed in triumph. “Thanks. So it was me and Riggs and the people bullying you all the time. Only six of us were graduated early. And what sense does it make to demote me and then say I’m obviously too capable for another semester?”
“Well, Lucin did confess something to me that day. But you have to promise not to tell.”
He gestured to her lap. “You’re holding crap that can get me thrown in the brig for a very long time. Try and think of those documents as a promise ring, okay?”
Molly smiled. She hoped she twisted her lips enough to make it seem sarcastic. “Saunders had it in for me,” she confided. “Lucin said he and his wife had three daughters and no boys, so he didn’t want me to succeed or something.”
“That seems a bit backwards, but it might be better than what I’ve been working on.”
“Yeah? What’s your big conspiracy?”
“I was starting to think it had something to do with your father.”
The words punched her in the gut, the folder heavy in her lap. Molly chewed on Cole’s suggestion. The idea was ludicrous, yet seductive. She shook her head. It was tempting to have this be about something more significant than schoolyard pranks, but she knew that wasn’t true. It was just a fantasy to want the Tchung simulation and her expulsion to have greater meaning, for the cruelty of life to have some larger purpose.
“That’s ridiculous,” she finally said. “I don’t know the first thing about my father’s disappearance. I haven’t seen him or the ship since I was six years old. And besides, they didn’t find it until after they booted me out.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking your father was connected before I even heard of the Parsona.”
“Why? How could you?”
Cole gestured to the folder. “Because this is too much effort for a bunch of cadets. It has to have something to do with your father. Nothing else makes any sense.”
“Sure it does. Somebody screwed with our simulator because I was in it. Part of that sabotage included getting you killed from a minor scrape and leaving me in charge. The rest of this nonsense is someone cleaning up afterwards.” Cole frowned at her, clearly unhappy with her sound reasoning and its banal conclusions. “Look,” Molly continued, “I agree that this had to be higher up, that it wasn’t a simple prank, but no way does this have to do with my father. Somebody just wanted me out of the Academy. I mean who knows how to program those pods besides the geeks in IT? Saunders not only had access—”
“It wasn’t Saunders, he’s too fat and—”
“Don’t interrupt. I know it wasn’t Saunders you saw, but he could have had any of the IT guys do it. And we know his motive: he didn’t want me in the Navy, and he had the power to pull off the early graduations, so it all fits.”
“None of the IT guys were transferred.”
“What?”
“That yellow slip is the personnel change summation for the end of the year. If they were trying to hush this up, they didn’t move anybody who would’ve been able to do the most illegal part of the job.”
Molly shuffled through the folder, looking for the slip. “What are these thick white bundles stapled together?”
“Heh. I brought those along for your enjoyment. They don’t have anything to do with my theory, though.”
Molly turned to Cole. There was a faint white line where his lip had been busted open. The scar remained invisible unless his full mouth thinned into a smile. “What are they?” she asked.
“Medical files for Jakobs and Dinks. From the day you got kicked out.” He settled back into his chair. “There’s a lot there,” he added, a smirk on his face.
Molly thumbed through the stapled pages and looked back to Cole. The silence in the barracks that day finally made sense. She wasn’t sure she approved, but it was nice to feel him beside her, even across the extra room provided by the first class tickets. She didn’t really appreciate the space, but it was balanced out by them not having to wear their visors, reflecting back the world around them. It was just her and Cole. Their real faces. Scars and all.