Hugh Howey: Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

Molly took the gesture as a compliment.

She keyed up her defense menus and scrolled to the missile chaff.

Four pods were stowed in the rear of her Firehawk, each capable of emulating her ship’s signature. Dropping one at a time should negate this new threat, but the delay would prevent her from protecting the fleet. Precisely what her enemy intended.

When the chaff menu came up, Molly appreciated the sophistication with which their Firehawk had been sabotaged. This was a high-level hack. “Drop” was selectable from the chaff menu, but not the “arm” command. It meant they were as useless as her missiles. Dead weight. And trying to place one of the dud canisters in the path of a homing missile would be like flipping a coin in front of a passing laser bolt.

Molly cursed and pulled on the flight stick, sending her Firehawk back on an arc toward the two ships. Their incoming missiles altered course slightly to hone in on her. There was no way she could out-maneuver them; the missiles could pull as many Gs as it took to track her down. She was limited by biology and her flightsuit.

Dwelling on her own constraints gave Molly another crazy idea. She recognized the old Tchung ship designs they were up against. If the missiles were Tchung as well, they had a design flaw she could exploit: their homing software was slightly more advanced than their thrusters. They could think faster than they could turn . Normally, this wasn’t a problem, as it required extreme velocities before the limitation became a factor. Besides, most targets are wise enough to move away from missiles, so the flaw rarely revealed itself. But it was there.

Molly came about as sharply as she could, forcing out puffs of air against the Gs. She pushed forward on the accelerator. Once again, she was prepared to stand in doom’s path in an attempt to escape it. Cole’s stillness made it easier—she was only gambling with her own life.

Molly shook her head and focused outside the cockpit’s carboglass. Beyond the two incoming missiles, she watched her prey speed toward her fleet. They weren’t wasting time following up the missiles with laser-fire. She was a minor annoyance compared to their primary objective: reaching the Navy’s unguarded rear. They had batted at her as if she were a fly while they stalked a heftier foe.

She wished she had time to appreciate the skill behind the tactics, but the missiles and her ship were closing on each other too fast for her to get distracted. Molly just hoped it was fast enough . She did more dirty math. Her suit could take around 40 Gs; her body could probably withstand a dozen more. She looked at her current rate of acceleration and came up with twenty degrees—that was as much as she could alter direction at these speeds without crushing her brain against the inside of her skull. It wasn’t a large vector change; she’d have to wait until the very last second, fraction of a second, even.

That sort of timing required as much luck as skill. The window was so small, the delay between thinking and doing could get her killed. She’d have to take this into account, somehow. Her left hand twitched slightly in awkward anticipation. Molly wished Cole was the one trying this.

The missiles were nearly upon her, or she was almost on them. Her danger-sense warned her prematurely—screaming at Molly to alter course now . She fought the urge, waiting until it felt too late. Only then did she issue the command to her left hand, feeling it move a millisecond later.

The nose of the Firehawk deflected up the programmed twenty degrees. The missiles vanished from view past the carboglass of her cockpit. Her body was pummeled by the radical shift in gravities.

Molly tensed up, partly to protect herself from the violent force of dozens of Gs, and partly in anticipation of a sudden death.

The corners of her vision turned black. The blood in her brain forced itself into her chest. The ring of darkness tightened until she was peering through a straw.

Molly Fyde passed out.

When she came to, Molly feared the battle was already over. But before she could shake the fog out of her brain, she realized she’d only been out a few seconds. The two missiles were still out there—seeking her ship’s signature. SADAR confirmed this as a curving line that had zipped right past her and was now pulling around toward her new vector, the missiles so close to one another they may as well have been one.

Molly straightened her ship back up and raced off for the enemy craft. The precision of the missile attack had saved her. If either projectile had lagged behind the other, she would’ve dodged the first and eaten the second. For the second time, her enemy’s accuracy had meant her salvation.

At full thrust, she chased down the two ships and took a moment to survey the flow of battle. Her side wasn’t doing half-bad to be so outnumbered. The additional sets of flankers posed the biggest threat as they worked their way around the other sides of the fleet. Her squad mates finally moved to head them off, their slower response negating their functioning weapons systems. They would be too late to do anything about the encirclement, while Molly and Cole had been swift enough but too powerless .

It appeared the Navy forces would be wiped out in a battle for the ages, but it might take longer than Molly initially thought. It was enough to force a grim smile, as sick and sore as her body felt. The Navy geeks that enjoyed scoring these encounters would have a blast with this one.

She returned her focus to the ships ahead of her and the lovely, zooming gifts they’d left behind. She brought up the nav calculator, temporarily comforted by her usual duties. The thrill of playing “pilot” had been tempered somewhat by the pressure of being responsible. A small part of her missed the warm embrace of being a role-player. I’ll do my simple tasks and let someone else risk failing , she thought, then pushed it to the back of her mind. She needed to concentrate on the numbers.

Three moving objects. It was a word problem flight instructors would adore. They’d be able to phrase it so no pilot would understand what in hyperspace was going on. Molly knew better than to make this more confusing than it needed to be. There were really two different problems here, and each could be solved individually.

First, she plotted the speed and direction of her ship and the two flankers. This gave her the coordinate in space at which they would meet if she kept gaining on them. Next, she did the same for her Firehawk and the missiles speeding toward her thrusters. This gave her another set of coordinates. She hoped the first point in space would be nearer than the second, giving her a chance to hurt them before they hurt her .

But the plots didn’t show that. In fact, Molly thought she’d done something wrong. Only a single nav result showed up on her display. She started to run the calculations a second time when she recognized the improbable: both problems had the same solution . She would reach her enemy at the precise moment their missiles reached her . A ship overtaking two ships, being overtaken by their projectiles.

Molly had another thought: Maybe this wasn’t a bad thing.

With the gap between her and the two craft ahead dwindling, she only had half a minute to prepare for impact. She pulled the defense menus up one more time and drilled down to the useless chaff screen. She might not be able to arm them, but maybe she could give her ship a bit of a buffer. It helped that the flankers were now in firing range of the fleet. Distracted with laser-fire from the Navy, they weren’t keeping a vigilant eye on their rears. Molly and the two missiles zipped down their wake, all three players set to meet at a single point.