Cole did a quick count of the boys to his side and saw that he was fifteenth from the end. It dawned on him that he was about to be paired up and not with Riggs, who had somehow become his friend over the course of a few whispers. He counted the other row as they wiggled into place. He searched faces partly obscured by the ridiculous loads they were each carrying. When he got to fifteen, he smiled at the boy across from him, who smiled back. His navigator looked vaguely European, with bushy brows and dark eyes. Cole started to nod his direction when the cadet beside him caught his attention.

Cole had to look twice to make sure he was seeing correctly. Riggs elbowed him repeatedly, which confirmed it. There was a girl in the line of navigators. Her hair was cropped short, but her cheeks and mouth, and especially her bright eyes, betrayed her. Cole was positive he’d heard flight school wasn’t open to girls.

“Cole—” Riggs whispered, his tone dire.

“Shhh,” Cole hissed. He watched the fat officer deliberately stroll up in front of the girl and turn his back toward her, as if to shun or purposefully ignore her. The older cadets seemed to be doing the same as they kept toward the other end of the room. As the last of the navigators filed into place, another officer entered the simulator room, an older man, supremely thin, with a plate of medals on his chest big enough to stop a torpedo.

“Pssst,” Riggs hissed.

Cole elbowed him back.

The older officer walked straight up to the heavyset one and whispered something. The larger man nodded, obviously the lower ranked of the two, and walked toward the end of the room, calling for all the cadets to listen up. As he began his orientation spiel in a booming voice, Cole watched the more local action across from him. He saw the thin man turn around, pausing ever so slightly to look at the girl navigator. Cole caught just the barest of smiles on her lips before she looked quickly away from the senior officer, and then the thin man strode off, a smile on his face as well.

“Cole.”

“What is it?” Cole hissed.

“Damnit man, do me a favor,” Riggs whispered.

Cole adjusted his pile of gear and turned to the side to see what Riggs wanted.

“What?”

Riggs bared his teeth, then hissed through them:

“Switch places with me.”

Part XIX - Hope

“Longing is the fuel for dissatisfaction.”

~The Bern Seer~

12 · Lok · The Present

Molly leaned forward in her seat as Gloria’s tail section rose into view. As the rest of the StarCarrier’s hull crept over the horizon, she saw that the downed Navy ship remained upright but was slightly tilted, her black thruster cones pointing obliquely up at the sky.

“It’s a shame we can’t just jump straight out to it,” she mused aloud. Her hand automatically drifted to the hyperdrive controls, feeling the switches that could move them anywhere in an instant, ignoring all things in between.

Cat, standing just behind the control console, laughed. “I think your friends in black would have a question or two about how we did that.” She pointed to the cargo cam where the Navy climbing team could be seen shrugging on harnesses and coiling ropes.

Molly pulled her hand away from the controls and rubbed the pads of her fingers together. “I know. It’s just hard to see how I’m supposed to have this power and not use it any time I want.”

“I ssay we jusst do it,” Walter said from the nav seat. He had his helmet on but with the visor open. He leaned forward and fiddled with one of the dials on the dashboard radio. “Let’ss sshut the cockpit door and do it.” He jerked his head toward the cargo bay. “We’ll tell them we took a sshortcut,” he hissed.

Molly laughed—then realized Walter wasn’t joking.

“This is what gets you in trouble,” she told him. “You need to work on being more patient—”

“Are we there yet?” Scottie asked. Molly turned to see him squeezing into the cockpit beside Cat, who rolled her eyes at the coincidental interruption. She and Molly shared a smirk.

“She’s just coming into view,” Molly said. She turned back around and gestured toward Gloria’s tail cones. “Are our guests clear on the plan once we get there?”

“I think so,” Scottie said. “All they know is they’re climbing down to the armory for flightsuits and combat gear, the stuff they’ll need for the raid on Darrin.”

“Do they seem nervous at all?”

“About what? The ship falling over or something? I guess they figure if it ain’t toppled by now—”

“No, about going back in there,” Molly said. Images of the previous day’s horror flashed through her mind: the mounds of dead bodies, the stairwell draped in gore, people crushed from toppling Firehawks.

“I think they know what needs to be done, and they’re up for doing it,” Scottie said.

“Sounds about right,” said Cat.

Molly glanced over at Walter as he fiddled with the radio. “I’d really rather you didn’t play with that,” she said.

“I’m hearing sstuff,” Walter hissed.

“That’s what radios do,” she told him. “Now please leave it—”

“But I’m hearing weird sstuff. Ssomeone sstrange iss on here.” Walter’s hand remained frozen on one of the knobs, sensing he should stop but unable to pull away. “Anyway, I almosst decrypted it—”

“Decrypted—?” Molly leaned over and saw Walter’s computer in his lap, his arm partially obscuring its screen. She pushed his elbow up and saw wavy lines and moving bar graphs rippling across the display.

Mom!

She slapped his hand away from the dial, then felt along the back of his helmet and turned the internal speakers off.

“Hey—!”

Molly reached up and grabbed her own helmet from its shelf, sending her Wadi scrambling. She brought it down over her head, snapped the visor shut, and reached for the radio switch, dreading what she was about to discover from her mother—

“ɮɽʖ ʨʠ˨ ξζδϱ ϛϠ ϡϞѦҨ”

Molly froze, her hand poised above the radio dials. She looked over at Walter, who had torn his helmet off and had turned away from her. She could see him pouting in the reflection of his porthole. Molly lifted her visor and removed her helmet. She flicked the radio to the external speakers, allowing the strange language to fill the cockpit:

“ӁԆԏשמ؋خ ٲٷڱڷᴕ ᴗᶈᶙאָשּׁתּﮀ ﭣﮉﻧ ﻺ”

Walter glanced at the dash, obviously interested in the sounds.

From behind them, Cat cursed.

“What is this?” Molly asked Walter. “What did you do to the radio?”

“That’s the Bern talking,” Cat said, her voice a whisper. “It must be from the fleet.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.” Molly grabbed Walter’s arm. “Walter, how did you—?”

He yanked his arm away, still pretending to be hurt. Molly realized the how wasn’t important. She spun in her seat to face Cat. “Do you understand any of this?”

Cat shook her head. “Not a lick. I heard it plenty in my day, though. Enough to know what it is.”

“Is there any way we can translate it?”

Cat frowned. “Everybody I know that speaks that language is . . . well, gone,” she said.

Scottie smiled. “I can give you a good guess. I bet they’re saying ‘Bern mother ship, this is Bern baby ship, over. Commence galactic domination on my mark—’”

Cat smacked him on the arm playfully, but the blow knocked him against the bulkhead. Scottie went to wincing and laughing at the same time.

“I wass decrypting the Englissh,” Walter grumbled. “Not thiss.”

“Wait,” Molly said. She held up a hand to silence Cat and Scottie’s jovial bickering. “What did you say?”

“The Englissh iss riding a carrier wave.” He pointed to his computer. “I wass decrypting it. For fun. Before you hit me.”

“Oh, gimme a break. I barely slapped your hand away. Now what’s this English? Can you play it?”

“It’ss sstill garbled,” Walter hissed. He wasn’t giving up the pouting without a fight.

Molly took over the flying from Parsona and decreased thrust. She wanted to hear more of the broadcast before they got inside the StarCarrier and the hull interfered with the signal. “Do what you were doing, but play it through the speakers,” she said.

Walter made a show of gazing out the porthole.

Molly took a deep breath. “Please, Walter, as your captain and friend, I’m asking you to do this for me.”

Walter fidgeted in his seat and brought his feet up underneath him. He brushed some nonexistent dust off his shoulder, then reached for the dash. He turned the volume down on the radio and did something to his computer, which began emitting garbled phrases, but clearly English.

“They’re not happy,” Walter said. “That’ss all I can tell.” He placed the computer on the control panel where its speakers could be better heard while he continued to adjust the virtual dials on its screen.

“—nothing we — do for —. Group — and — two — lost. Mo—or went down — Co—. Repeat, form — continue — planned.”

“Can’t you clean it up some more?” Molly glanced back and forth between his computer and the view beyond the carboglass. Parsona’s belly was literally sliding through the feathery heads of Lok’s tall grasses as she continued to pull back on the throttle and move into a hover.

“I already did clean it up,” Walter complained. “It doessn’t get any clearer.”

“— planet Lok. — can — confirm?”

Molly settled Parsona into a hover just a few kilometers from the StarCarrier. She keyed the cockpit door shut, and the four of them leaned over Walter’s computer. The small group fell silent, concentrating on every popping utterance and trying to surmise the missing gaps:

“Confirm. — am — speaking to?”

“Edi—on. I — member of Dre— —cil.”

“— the —”

“Confirm. — are — Exponent.”

“Did you hear that?” Molly whispered.

“Too much basss,” Walter hissed. He reached to adjust the dials.

Molly waved him off. “Don’t. Didn’t you hear—? Why can’t we get the rest?”

“Approxima— —ordinates —.”

“It’ss a carrier wave,” Walter said. “It jumpss frequencsiess oncse a ssecond. I’m jumping after it, but the sscanner tracse I wrote hass too much lag.”

He pulled the computer into his lap and fiddled with it. Molly looked up through the canopy at the steel cliff of StarCarrier looming ahead. Something about the garbled phrases kept tugging on her subconscious, begging her to understand. She heard Cat and Scottie whispering back and forth between themselves—and then someone banged on the cockpit door.

“Tell them we need a second,” Molly said, keying the door open.

While Cat and Scottie chatted with the climbers in the cargo bay, Molly turned to see how Walter was doing, then noticed her nav screen had gone blank. A single line across the top read:

LET ME HELP_

Molly leaned forward in her seat and reached for the keyboard.

HOW?_ she typed.

LET ME TALK TO HIM_

Molly hesitated. She turned and saw one of the Navy men by the door frowning at the unexpected delay. Scottie gestured and made excuses, and finally the man turned away.

“The boys in black wanna know what’s taking so long,” Cat said.

Molly keyed the door shut. “They’re gonna have to wait.” She flicked the speakers on. “Go ahead,” she said to her mom. “Talk to him.”

Cat and Scottie gave her a funny look, then her mother’s voice came through the speakers:

“Walter,” Parsona said. “Do you remember me?”

Walter looked at the dash, then at Molly. “You’re Molly’ss friend, right?”

Molly wondered what he meant, then remembered her mom’s ruse the night Byrne nearly killed her. They had spoken before, but Parsona had pretended to be radioing in from another ship.

“That’s right,” Parsona said. “Do you remember helping me with the missiles?”

“Yeah,” Walter said. “About that, I didn’t mean to be ssso—”

“No, that’s fine. You did great. Now I want to help you.”

“With what?” Walter asked. He looked to Molly and shrugged.

“I want you to give me that program you’re using. I can do the frequency switching a lot faster than your computer.”

“Okay,” Walter said. “I guessss that’ss okay.” He turned to Molly. “Sshould we go and meet her?”

“She’s in the computer, Walter.” Molly pointed to his nav screen, which had gone black except for a blinking cursor. “She’s a part of the ship.”

Walter stared at the screen. He reached forward and poked one of the keys on the dash. The letter ‘W’ appeared, and the blinking cursor shifted to the right.

He glanced over at Molly, then bent forward, typing out the rest:

WALTER_

He hit enter.

HELLO WALTER_

He smiled at the screen, then turned to Molly, beaming. “I thought you were talking to yoursself all thosse timess!”

“Can you type in the program, or do you want to interface with my computer?” Parsona asked.