Hugh Howey: Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

“Dismissed,” he said. It was like the last bit of air went out of him to say it. Molly forgot every bit of Navy protocol and flung herself out the door and after Cole.

But her pilot was already gone.

Molly wiped the wetness from her cheeks and set off for her bunk. If she skipped a shower, she might be asleep before the boys came back to rag on her. There was certainly no point in writing up her battle report if Captain Saunders’s hints of expulsion were true.

For once in her life, she didn’t care about the Academy or becoming a pilot. She didn’t look forward to post-battle reports and tactical analyses. There’d be no fantasizing tonight about what she’d have done differently had she been at the stick. Instead, an overpowering sense of disgust and shame propelled her down the empty halls. She just wanted an escape from the abuse.

“Cadet Fyde?”

Molly turned to see Rear Admiral Lucin standing in the doorway of his office. His customary hat was off, his weathered head streaked with extra wrinkles of worry. Molly felt one weight come off her chest and a different one take its place. She longed to run and wrap her arms around the old man, but she hadn’t done that for years. She wondered what it would feel like to be comforted like that again.

She snapped to attention, instead. As much attention as her body could muster. “Sir.”

“Could you step into my office, please?” Lucin vanished into the pool of light pouring out of his doorway.

Molly fought the constriction in her chest as she followed him inside. Lucin was the reason she was in the Academy. He had fought alongside her father against the Drenards. She knew it was a cliché—the military student doted on by the old general—but the stereotype existed for a reason. When children followed their fallen parents into battle, they were inevitably surrounded by the survivors who had promised to look after them. She wasn’t even the only one in the Academy with ties, just the only girl .

After her father left, Lucin had taken her in and enrolled her in the Junior Academy. It gave her a place to live. More importantly, he let her spend as much time in the simulators as she wanted—which was a lot. As long as she kept her grades up—which was never a problem—she could sit in a full military-spec Firehawk simulator for hours.

Sometimes longer.

At first, Molly would just soar around the simulated vastness of space, pretending to search for her father. Or maybe just trying to recapture her memories of him. One of her earliest recollections was of sitting on his lap in Parsona’s cockpit, her mother’s smell—the only thing she ever knew of her—lingering off to one side. Perhaps it had happened when she was an infant, or maybe the scent of her mom was just infused in the navigator’s seat. Maybe she’d made it all up.

She had clearer memories of flying with her father as she got older. How her eyes would flicker from the stars to the lights and glowing knobs on the dash. She could remember his hands on the flight controls.

During their last trip together, he’d let her do a lot of the steering. She remembered how frightening his trust had been. Instead of holding her hands steady, preventing mistakes, he just turned and peered out at the stars through the glass, talking to Molly in that deep and powerful voice of his. Usually about her mother.

They may have been running away from one life and into a new one, but she didn’t remember either of them having a care in the world.

The first time she fell asleep in the simulator, it was Lucin who found her. She had startled awake, afraid she’d be in trouble. Instead, the old man—so much older than she remembered her father being—scooped her up in his lap and let her fall back asleep. The stars kept drifting by through her eyelids, a little more of the simulated galaxy foolishly searched.

Now they stood in his office, a Navy desk and so much more between them. As soon as she’d entered the Academy, Molly could no longer be his daughter. Favoritism had to be countered with rigidity; love with harshness. Despite this, everyone whispered she was only there because of his string-pulling. So every ounce of love she went without, the affection other cadets were showered with by their families, had been given up for nothing now that she’d never graduate.

“Care to sit?” Lucin gestured to the simple wooden chair across from his desk.

Molly shook her head. She didn’t want to be too comfortable; it would make leaving his office impossible.

He nodded once, and Molly saw how tired he looked. Despite his age, Lucin had a very lithe frame—tall and thin. His youthful gait was a fixture at the Academy, his pride in its operation evident in the bounce of his step and his eternal smile. Perhaps this was why the cadets loved him so much. Captain Saunders could whip them into shape while old Lucin bounced in to tousle their hair or slap them on the back. But all of that was missing from Lucin’s face right then. Molly could see the fatigue in his sad and wrinkled eyes. His undying devotion to the Academy—which was capable of filling his chest with unmatched joy—could also break his heart. It was doing so right then.

“Captain Saunders called.”

Molly nodded.

“Hey, I’m sure when I go over the tapes, I’m going to be impressed with whatever you did out there. You always amaze me with your tricks, maneuvers even this old dog never heard of, but Saunders is in charge of the personnel decisions, and he has it out for you.”

Molly looked at her feet to hide the tears, but one of them plummeted to the blue carpet, sparkling like laser-fire in the harsh rays pouring through the window. Lucin fell silent as the tear winked out of existence in the worn sea at her feet.

“I’m talking to you as your friend now, not as the old geezer who runs this joint. Look at me.”

Molly did.

“I love you.”

A strange bark came out of Molly, something between a gasp and a cough. Her breathing grew rapid and shallow as she started crying in earnest, her shoulders quaking uncontrollably. She hugged her elbows and tried to hold it all in.

Lucin may have been crying as well, but she couldn’t see anything. His voice may have just sounded funny because she was hyperventilating.

“I do, Molly. I love you like my own daughter. But you don’t know what I’ve had to do to protect you from him. I know it isn’t fair, but if you think life has a bad reputation for that, the military puts it to shame. There’s a lot of politics involved. And look, I’m babbling here so don’t repeat any of this, but Saunders and his wife couldn’t have boys. They have three girls, and maybe he’s taking that out on you as well.”

Lucin sighed. “I just don’t know what to do here. He says you’re out. Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?”

Molly bobbed her head and dragged her hands down her cheeks. They came away slick. She wiped them on the front of her flight suit.

“Maybe this is for the best. You can still be a pilot somewhere else, but you’ve seen what it’s like in the Navy. They just aren’t ready for you yet. Listen, I know Commander Stallings, he runs the Orbit Guard Academy, I can get you in there. You’ll have a great career flying planetary patrols. Atmospheric stuff. None of this navigation junk. Don’t you think that would be better?”

Molly kept her head perfectly still. She would never admit that.

“I also have old friends in the commercial sector. With your simulator hours, you could have your 100 Gigaton license in no time. Run freight or ferry, hell, you could get a job driving those rich snobs around in their fancy space yachts.” Lucin laughed.