“There has to be a better way of conducting business,” Cole said, studying the chase on SADAR.

“Well, whatever they were doing before worked none too well.” She traced her finger across the SADAR image of all that debris, wondering what had happened, who had fired the first shot, and how many people had died. Her brain flashed back to Glemot, but she didn’t allow it to linger there.

“Hey, Cole, what was it like where you were born?”

“It was like Portugal.”

“I’m serious. Your village, what was it like?”

“Small and dirty.” He paused a moment. “But I loved it there. No, actually I was bored out of my mind back then, but I love to remember myself as happy there. Maybe it’s because I know I’d be happy there now.”

“You wouldn’t be bored after a while?”

“Possibly, yeah. After a few weeks of doing nothing I’m sure I’d be yearning for the rainy season on Palan.” He chuckled and turned to face her. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know . . . I just feel sometimes like you and I don’t really know each other as well as we should. All those hours in the simulator together, and we spent most of our time talking about previous hours in the simulator. There’s times when I feel like you weren’t born until you got to the Academy.”

“Well, don’t you feel that way about yourself sometimes?”

“Me? No. Not really. I think my upbringing, my father especially, had a lot to do with who I am. It made me into something that wanted to join the Academy in the first place.”

“Hmm. I suppose the same is true for me. But it was my friends that made the difference.”

“What do you mean?” Molly knew nothing of Cole’s old friends.

“I just stayed in trouble a lot. Made some mistakes. When I got in one bad fix, my only way out was either to run from the authorities or join them. I chose the latter. Went to a recruiter and signed up for the Navy. The aptitude tests said ‘pilot,’ so here I am.”

“Yeah, in the navigator’s chair.” Molly laughed at her own joke and Cole joined her. It felt good.

“You know what isn’t funny?” she asked after they settled down.

“You.”

“No, the fact that you’re in the same spot now that you were back then.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Well, we’re in a jam and the choice has been to run from the police or run toward them. Only this time you are making the opposite decision.”

“Hmm. Hadn’t thought about it like that.” They both fell silent for a moment. “It’s gonna suck like a hull breach when I wake up one day and realize I was wrong both times.”

Molly hoped he meant that to be funny—but neither of them laughed.

••••

Albert had marked Frankie’s shop on their charts. They were several thousand meters from the nondescript asteroid when Molly thumbed the short distance radio and tried to hail him.

“Frankie’s Mods, Parsona, channel sixteen, come in.” She released the mic key and glanced over at Cole. He was watching the SADAR intently.

“This is Frankie’s Mods on sixteen, over.”

“Frankie, this is Molly, the captain of the GN Class starship Parsona, requesting permission to land.”

“Permission granted. The door’s open. We look forward to doing business with you.”

Molly looked to Cole again. “See? Now this is how you’re supposed to do it. None of that scaring-people-half-to-death and chasing-them-all-over-the-star-system nonsense.”

Cole nodded and turned back to the dash. But as paranoid as he was being—as intently as he studied the SADAR—there was no way he could’ve known that one of the bumps on the back of Frankie’s asteroid was a Navy Firehawk, lying in ambush.

Molly moved cautiously into Frankie’s hangar, a carbon-copy of the one they’d left earlier that day. She braced for an impact as Parsona broke the plane, wondering if the locals ever got used to the fear of hitting one of these glass doors.

“I wonder where Frankie’s ship is?” she asked.

“Wife’s probably out shopping for milk and eggs, or taking the kids out to Galaxy Ball practice,” said Cole.

Molly shook her head at the image, another strange glimpse of domestic normalcy in the middle of an arms-dealing village. She felt extremely sad for the kids growing up here. Once again, she made a promise with herself: never return to Darrin, ever again.

After clearing the entry, Molly spun Parsona around and docked Navy-style, with an eye for leaving suddenly. The invisible door shimmered to life in front of them and atmosphere poured visibly from large vents in the ceiling. Their landing gear settled, rocking slightly, as they came to rest.

Molly thumbed the cargo ramp and she and Cole joined the boys by the crates, everyone rested up and expecting a long day of hard work as Parsona had some fangs installed. Molly was torn about the method but resigned to the outcome. She hurried down the ramp ahead of the others, eager to get this over with.

She rounded the rear of the ship as the door to Frankie’s shop opened. An old man in a blue mechanic’s suit strolled out; Molly started to introduce herself and her crew when a second man entered the hangar.

The strangest sensation overcame her. She recognized the guy, but some other part of her brain knew: the person she thought it was could not possibly be here. The two pieces of logic collided over and over, both trying to find purchase but grasping for the same sliver of her attention. Molly stood there dumbly, waiting for the thoughts to sort themselves out.

Cole helped her by providing a name, cementing the impossible thought in her head. “Jakobs?” he asked. It sounded like a question to Molly, but it wasn’t. It was the lilt of confusion.

The boy nodded gravely. He looked more like a man now. He and Frankie both had weapons in their hands—and they were leveled at the four of them. Molly’s brain revolted against what she was seeing.

Cole started to say something else, but Jakobs interrupted. “On your knees, Cole. Hands behind your back.”

“Flank you,” he replied.

Jakobs moved the gun slightly and fired a shot into Edison’s chest. The pup released a deep howl and collapsed forward, right on his face. The floor shook with the impact and Molly heard herself scream. She ran to her friend, threw herself on her knees, her chest across his back, protecting him.

“On your knees, Cole.” Jakobs moved the laser pistol back.

“Do it!” Molly yelled, feeling for any sign of life in Edison.

Cole sank to the ground, his hands on top of his head, and spat obscenities.

“Don’t worry, the Glemot will be fine,” Jakobs told Molly. “Heard you were traveling with one, but personally, I never believed it. I’m gonna owe Dinks a beer now.”

Molly felt Edison’s back rising and falling, but just barely. She glared at Jakobs. “Dinks?” she asked.

“Yeah, he should be bringing the ship around soon. We read the few reports the Navy system had on these brutes,” he pointed the pistol to indicate Edison, “and I never really bought it. Now that I see how small they really are, I guess I was right to doubt the intel, just wrong to think you weren’t flying with one. Can’t wait to hear the story there.”

“Where did you hear this?”

Frankie pulled plastic strips out of his coveralls and cuffed Cole; he gave Walter a careful appraisal.

“Plenty of time to talk about that later,” Jakobs said. “First, we need to get you back to Lucin and turn this traitor in.”

Molly’s thoughts were still on Edison when she realized that Jakobs meant Cole.

“Traitor?” She repeated the word. Surely, she’d misheard.

Frankie guided Molly away from Edison’s body and secured the Glemot with multiple strips of strong plastic. Molly couldn’t speak; Cole alternated between cursing Jakobs and pleading with her to listen.

Jakobs holstered his weapon and asked Molly to come and sit so he could explain some things to her. She walked through the door leading out of Frankie’s hangar, the confusion behind her closing like a fog in her wake.

31

“Don’t feel bad. He had us fooled for a long time as well.”

Now that they were standing close to one another, Molly could see the faint marks on Jakobs’s face from Cole’s handiwork. Those medical reports were flashing back to her, each entry corresponding to a white line on his young skin.

“You have to be wrong,” she said. “Whatever you think Cole’s doing, he’s not. I can explain why we’re avoiding the Navy. When we got to Palan—”

“We know about Palan,” he interrupted. “We found the three office workers who died in the rain. We found Simmons—you probably knew him as Drummond—and we’re pretty sure Saunders and Cole were behind it all.”

“What?!” Molly had no idea “traitor” implied all this. “No,” she said. “They were trying to kill Cole. He’s working to uncover the whole thing. You have this backwards.”

“I understand what you think, I just need you to look at something with an open mind, okay? Just watch this video, it’s a lot simpler than trying to convince you that the way you remember things was not how they happened.”

He held a small video device out for her. She took it.

“Watch,” he repeated.

She did.

The still image displayed on the screen made her throat constrict with nostalgia: the simulator room. A long line of white pods and a wall of bare block. Someone walked on-screen. It wasn’t a still image; it was a security video. A cadet, walking away from the camera, went straight to her old pod, fourth on the left. He did something by the rear of the simulator. He looked around once.

Molly knew.

When he finished, he returned the plate and fastened it. He turned back the way he’d come, facing the camera. But she didn’t need to see his face to recognize the way Cole walks. Her world shattered.

“Why?” she asked, the question directed more at the boy in the video.

Jakobs took the player back and tucked it away. He motioned to the sofa, but she couldn’t move. “Listen,” Jabobs said, moving closer. “Your father’s ship was discovered almost a year ago, long before you heard about it. The Navy wasn’t too eager to get it back at first; the guys holding it were asking far too much for a civilian craft. Lucin pushed as hard as he could, but there was a lot of resistance. He just didn’t want to get your hopes up before he had the craft in hand. He asked me to tell you that.

“When Saunders realized what was going on, he blew his top. He thought Lucin’s past was destroying his focus, his ability to do his job. He wanted you gone and he . . . he promised Cole a major promotion to Special Assignments if he helped him out. After the Tchung simulation, he had you expelled, and he thought that’d be the end of it.”

Jakobs shook his head. “But Lucin thinks the world of you. He kept fighting for the Parsona and doting on you during weekends and breaks. When he went over the replays from the Tchung simulation, he suspected Saunders was up to something. The problem was, he went to Cole to help uncover it. He was trusting Saunders’s own agent to uncover his plans. Since then, Cole has been doing everything he can to keep you away from the Navy while he tries to get in touch with his boss. We don’t know what his next move would’ve been. Fortunately for us, when an arms dealer called to report someone traveling with a Glemot, he gave us the name of the ship and someone high up recognized the name Parsona, called the Academy, and luckily, Lucin heard about it first. We’ve been trying to keep all this in-house, of course. Cadets that know you and that Lucin can trust.

“So here we are. And everything’s gonna to be fine, now. We’ll get the prisoners secured aboard Parsona—in your staterooms or the escape pods—and then you and I will follow the Firehawk to Canopus. There, the Navy can take over.”

Molly understood the words, but it didn’t feel as if she heard them. They just appeared, like mysterious wounds after a long battle.

“I know it’s a lot to absorb, but think about this: Lucin will be able to get you back in the Academy once Saunders has been exposed and put on trial. You might even get to fly again. And I know me and some of the cadets were hard on you, but we were all hard on each other, it’s part of the toughening-up process. . .”

Molly locked her eyes on his. Jakobs paused, but seemed to take the look the wrong way. He moved closer. “. . .and I don’t know about you, but I always thought there was something between us. Something physical that we never—”

She slapped the next words out of Jakobs’s head. As hard as she could. Pain lanced out of her tender wrist and shot up to her shoulder. It felt like electricity. It felt great.

She turned away from him and marched back to the hangar, ready to go wherever they were taking her. As long as it was away from here.

When she entered the hangar, Molly saw Dinks hovering in his Firehawk outside the forcefield. He waved at her through the carboglass; she ignored him and stomped into the cargo bay. Walter sat at the workbench; he looked up from his game.

“Cole iss a bad guy?”

“I don’t know, pal. And I don’t wanna talk about it.” She glanced around. “Where’s Edison?”

“They took him into hiss room. He iss chained up. Awake and very angry.”

“Angry is better than dead.” She hesitated. “And Cole?”

“Locked up too. But I am not in trouble, they ssaid. Navy reward.”