Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

“Great,” Molly muttered. Now she understood how they could afford all this gear. The next question was: Did they have enough left to install it?

It took another day to procure the new flight suits, which provided plenty of time for finishing the physical side of the trade. The first order of business was to finally separate the two ships. To Molly, it felt like removing restraints from a dear friend. She and Cole had decided that this was the intended purpose: to keep their crew guarded until a deal was settled.

Albert boarded his ship and made airs of performing the complicated maneuver himself, but Molly knew he wasn’t flying. She watched as Lady Liberty decoupled and slid to the side, nearly brushing up against the hangar wall. Parsona’s cargo ramp could now be lowered and the swapping of goods could begin.

The computer technology that Walter had stowed all over her ship was crated up and carted off. Albert’s children joined in the fun, carrying off some of the lighter bits, oohing and ahhing at various spoils while their father chastised them to keep it down. Walter stood by the door, checking every item with a hiss, and making entries in his computer.

When Albert indicated all was square, they started moving the wooden crates of contraband aboard, the sight of which made Molly’s gut sink. The illegality of these actions crashed into her upbringing and her training. It could’ve been justified in a Navy hangar, or as part of a sting operation, but the truth was, she was a civilian. No, a criminal —on the run and dealing arms.

It filled her with shame.

“Excellent doing business with you, my dear. As soon as the suits arrive, you can be off. Please tell Frankie I said hello and that he really should move shop over here. Nasty blokes he deals with over there.”

Molly nodded absently. She wished the suits were already here so they could just leave. Somehow she doubted Darrin II could be as bad as this inhospitable and soulless wasteland.

That night they dined again with the entire family. With no business to tend to anymore, there was an eager gaiety surrounding the meal, but Molly still couldn’t partake in it. So far, in what she’d seen of the galaxy, the fairy tale she’d concocted in her brain didn’t exist except in her imagination. The gorgeous scenery on Glemot had been marred by the nasty brutality of its people. The cliffs of Palan were pockmarked with prison cell windows. She had no idea what Darrin I or II even looked like. War had turned them both into rubble.

Molly played with her food. She felt envious when Edison excused himself early, but sat with her own thoughts until the end of the meal, as was expected of a ship’s captain.

Albert shook hands with the entire crew; Mrs. Gaines pecked each of them on the cheek. It felt too bizarre for Molly. She went through the motions numbly, smiled weakly at the exhausted children, and followed Cole and Walter back to their ship.

Strange, but she felt a little sad that they didn’t have to cross through Lady Liberty to get there. She yearned for a chance to say goodbye to the Drenard. And to point out the changes that Edison had made to Lady Liberty .

Namely, to its chains.

Molly slept horribly for the second night in a row. She left her flightsuit on and lay on top of her sheets, waiting. When Albert knocked on the cargo door, she leapt up to open the ramp and help him load the parcels. The sound of the hydraulic arms gearing down the hatch stirred the rest of the crew. They appeared just in time to not have to do their share of the work.

Everyone exchanged a final set of goodbyes while Molly checked the engine room. As she crossed the cargo bay to the cockpit, Albert told her that the shield would go down as soon as he retreated to the store lobby. Walter shook his hand a final time, pumping it madly and hissing something to the big man privately.

Molly closed the ramp and hurried forward to fire up the thrusters. She waited while Cole checked the restraints on the weapon crates and Edison put away a few scattered tools. Walter pawed through one of the crates, pulling out his brand new space suit.

“You won’t need that today,” Molly told him. “It’s gonna be a long, slow burn across to those other thieves.”

Walter seemed annoyed at this, but he put the suit back in the box, patting it proudly.

“Let’s get buckled up,” she told everyone as she performed the last of the pre-flight checks.

Cole joined her in the cockpit and booted the nav computer. “Brand new charts!” he said.

“Yeah, but you know what they say: those things are out of date the second you install them.”

“True. Hey, can I delete our old charts from the system? They’ve been nothing but trouble, anyway.”

“ Absolutely ,” Molly said.

Cole typed in a few commands and hovered his finger over the enter key. Molly shot a hand out and grabbed his wrist. “Wait,” she said. “The nav tracks from the trip with my father. Gods, I know it sounds stupid and we really don’t have the space to spare, but… will you hold off on deleting those charts?”

“Sure thing,” Cole said, smiling. “And that doesn’t sound stupid to me at all. When we get some time, I’ll copy the tracks and waypoints over to the new charts and clear up the space.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. Are the boys strapped in?”

Cole checked his vid screen and gave her a thumbs-up. Molly had the chase cam up to watch for a change in the forcefield. When the shimmer of light disappeared, she pushed the thruster throttles forward, gently lifting the ship. She retracted the landing gear immediately, keeping them from scraping on the decking as the Parsona slid backwards into space.

She spun the craft around just outside the door and faced the long line of asteroid-based shops strung out in the distance. The sight of them gave Molly a sudden impulse to do a full burn, charring the far wall of Albert’s hangar with black soot, but she resisted the temptation. Instead, she nudged forward—expecting resistance at any moment—but finding none.

Molly had hoped leaving the crooked line of shops in Darrin I would bring relief. Instead, she found herself heading out to their mirror image. SADAR showed the line of asteroids marking Darrin II in the distance. Beyond them, drifting and colliding, another ring of planetary debris loomed.

They could have chosen to jump across through hyperspace, arriving at Frankie’s shop in less than an hour, but Molly had lied to Albert about being low on fusion fuel. She looked forward to the respite of another slow burn, beginning to appreciate the time between waypoints that she once found painfully dull.

She locked in two Gs of acceleration, the most Parsona’s grav plates could balance out and allow movement about the ship. When they reached the halfway point, she’d spin them around and decelerate at two Gs until they reached Frankie’s. She left Cole on watch and went to take a hot shower, her second of the day. Walking past the crates of illegal arms in the cargo bay, she had a feeling that another mere rinse would not make her feel much cleaner.

At the workbench, Edison tinkered with yet another project. The sight of him in his Glemot robe, fresh and white, deepened her funk. Otherwise, she would have stopped and given him encouragement and inquired about his latest invention.

Molly paused by Walter’s room before turning into her own. Through the closed door, she could hear him mumbling to himself in his own language. The sounds of water bubbling over stone were interspersed with hissing English words for which his language had no substitute. “Navy” and “video game” caught her ear, creating the illusion that she understood a bit of the Palan tongue.