“I’m sure they’ll give you a big reward. Now don’t worry about this Navy stuff, okay?”

“Okay, Molly.” He bent back over his game.

Molly wanted to go and talk to Cole, but she knew her voice wouldn’t work, even to ask him to explain himself. The raw hurt and sense of betrayal she felt at that moment—the ability to be completely crushed by another human being—made her realize something. She had, indeed, been in love with Cole.

And now she hated him for it.

••••

“You sure you don’t want to fly us out of here? It is your ship.”

Molly looked over from Cole’s seat where she was nestled in the depression he’d made. She shook her head, her helmet twisting with the momentum.

“Okay,” Jakobs said as the shimmer of light ahead of them vanished. Parsona lifted unevenly from the floor, one of her landing struts scraping loudly across the deck for a few meters, then they punched through the boundary of the hangar and into space.

Dinks took the lead in the Firehawk while Jakobs followed. When both vessels were clear of the asteroid they turned and started out to a safe hyperjump point.

Molly turned to Jakobs, “Are Cole and Edison going to be okay in the staterooms?”

He glanced over, then jerked his head back forward, concentrating on flying. “They’ll be fine. I told Dinks to take it nice and easy out to the jump point. From there it’ll be two short hops to the Orbital Station at Canopus.”

“And then to Earth, right?”

Jakobs looked at her again, longer this time. “Eventually, yeah. But you do realize they’re gonna court-martial Cole, right? The Navy should be able to put a panel together at Canopus in a few days. We’ll probably be there a week or more. You’ll have to testify, of course.”

Testify? Against Cole? The thought had never occurred to her. And testify to what? Sabotaging their simulator, playing dead, and then kidnapping her? Or for saving her life several times since?

Jakobs kept turning to study her face through their open visors. She noticed Parsona’s nose drift down and to the right whenever he did this. The fact that this clown had graduated early and been put on Special Assignments irked her.

“If he was a civilian, he might get life in prison,” said Jakobs. “But he’s Navy. Ship theft and going AWOL are capital crimes. Hell, even if the murders of the Navy men don’t stick, he’s just purchased illegal arms. This is just the stuff we know about. There’s no telling what will come to light once we get you and your crew on the stand.”

Her crew. Walter. The nuke on Glemot. Molly felt sick to her stomach. And Jakobs wasn’t through.

“They’ll airlock him for this, Molly. I hope you realize how serious this is.”

She spun on him. “Airlock him?! Kill him?! Those guys on Palan died in the rains. They were trying to kill us! The jail we broke out of? They were going to kill Cole that very day without a trial! And we bought guns because everywhere we go, the boys in black seem eager to do us harm. Your little ambush is what we’ve been running from.”

Jakobs’ face turned red. “Ambush? This is a rescue mission. The Navy said I could shoot Cole on sight if I needed to. It turns out your hero has a shady past, and now he has a service record to match. So stop defending the guy. He’s the one that screwed you during the Tchung simulation and got you kicked out of school.” Jakobs pointed to the scars on his face. “Look what he did to me!” He took a deep breath and looked ahead, correcting his course.

“You saw the video yourself,” he went on. “And when the Navy Panel sees that and the evidence brought in from Palan, your friend is gonna get what’s coming to him. Now get on the right side of the law before I consider cuffing you up in your stateroom.”

Molly looked down at her palms, resting in her lap. “I need to use the bathroom before we jump,” she said meekly.

What she really needed was to get away from Jakobs and that conversation. But also, a small part of her hoped that just being nearer to Cole would provide some answers. She had so many questions welling up. If she could be wrong about him, she didn’t think her brain could ever again be trusted to draw a correct conclusion.

Walter hissed at her as she entered the cargo bay, trying once more to show her his videogame. It had become a little contest between them: him eager to show off his work and her hunting for an excuse. Right now, she didn’t have the energy to play, so she leaned over and pretended to be interested in his computer.

Even in her funk, she had to admit: the game was impressive. She’d seen enough of them around the Academy to appreciate the graphics. Surely he hadn’t programmed the whole thing. “You made this?” she asked.

“Yesss,” Walter hissed, his voice dripping with pride.

“It’s amazing,” she told him. And it was. Running across the surface of a detailed planet, a space cadet waved blasters in both hands. There were all kinds of things to shoot and kill—typical boy stuff—but done realistically enough that even she might get into it. She handed it back to Walter, who beamed at her.

“Keep it up,” she said, patting his head. Walter resumed control of the figure, destroying things for points, while Molly retreated to her stateroom. She closed the door and hoped that small ounce of attention would keep him satisfied all the way to Canopus. She didn’t have enough energy to take care of herself, much less someone else.

She sat in the bathroom for a few minutes, pretending to use it, then got up and flushed the air chamber, capping the pointless ruse. After another pause, waiting for answers that should’ve been forming, she gave up and walked out of her room.

Instead of going to the cockpit, though, she snuck back to Cole’s quarters. His door was locked—sealed with her Captian’s codes. She could key it open and demand answers, but how would Jakobs and the Navy see that?

She took off her helmet and pressed her cheek to the door. The thrumming of the thrusters vibrated through the metal, singing along the length of the ship. Molly could hear her pulse racing through her ear.

She pulled herself away and went to Edison’s door, pressing a hand to the cool metal. She wondered what the Navy would do with him. Especially when they found out he was one of the last of his kind. The pain of what happened on Glemot piled on top of her new miseries, crushing her. She didn’t know what would come out in a trial, but it would be difficult to explain the things she didn’t understand herself.

She headed toward the cockpit and noticed that Walter’s door was open. She stepped inside, looking for any excuse to stay close to the two prisoners. Surveying herself in the mirror over Walter’s dresser, she hardly recognized the person looking back. The girl’s brown hair was too long—matted and unkempt. Her eyes appeared too old for the rest of her. Her mouth was sad. The poor thing’s shoulders drooped like someone who had worked for years under a heavy burden.

Molly took a deep breath and tried to hold it in. Her eyes wandered to a few of the pictures Walter had taken and printed out with the ship’s computer. They were tucked in the frame of the mirror, their edges curling.

One showed a group of Glemots working on Parsona. She didn’t even know he’d snapped any photos back then. The lush greenness in the background didn’t do the planet justice, but Molly reached up to brush her fingers across the image—the image of a land she’d helped destroy.

Another photo he had on display must have been pulled from one of the security feeds. It showed her patting Walter on the head. She didn’t even remember when it had taken place, and before she could be upset at him for hacking into the ship’s computers, she saw another picture behind it. Hidden. She pulled it out. It didn’t make any sense. She stared at it, as if it eventually would.

The picture showed the simulator room at the Academy, taken from eye level. A few cadets milled about that she didn’t recognize. Rows of simulator pods faced the familiar block wall.

Why in the galaxy would Walter have a picture of this? She turned the photo over and looked at the back. Nothing was written there, but it wasn’t the photo paper the ship used. Where had he found this?

She put it back in its place and reminded herself to ask him about both pictures. The one he hacked from the computer upset her, almost as much as the hidden one confused. Molly put her helmet back on and stepped back into the cargo bay. Walter looked up at her, sneering. He was playing his game and obviously having the time of his life.

She thought about the video game.

And the picture of the simulators.

Her vision squeezed in from the edges until only the center was visible, like looking through a straw. She nearly fainted to the ground, staggered forward, steadied herself on one of the large crates, then sank to her knees.

Molly looked up to the cockpit and spotted Jakobs’s video player on the panel by his seat. Past Jakobs, and through the carboglass, she could see the Firehawk ahead of them. Dinks was slowly pulling away for the jump through hyperspace. Beyond that, glints of a fleet winked in the starlight, dashing about in a cluster. The ships of Darrin I were chasing down another customer.

Molly took all of it in—and none of it. Her brain raced and reeled, assembling pieces like a planet coalescing out of dust, all of them orbiting Walter’s video game. How realistic it looked. The little cadet running around with his pistols—she recognized that figure. Knew his artificial gait from somewhere. She realized how easily that alien world could be substituted for a room full of simulator pods.

For a Navy reward, of course.

••••

Jakobs turned to look back at her, his visor up. He must’ve been yelling at her to return to her chair so they could prep for the jump. Molly knew this, but she couldn’t hear him—her head pounded with depression and rage. She pulled the lower half of her helmet closed, sealing it tight. If anything, the pounding just got louder.

She dug her gloves under one side of the crate, tossed the lid off and peered down at the gleaming metal contraption inside.

Molly thought about them killing Cole. For what? For protecting her? And they would do it with bad information. Dirty information. It reminded her of that day in Saunders’s office. Of being berated after having done everything right. And now an innocent man, a good man, was going to be killed by liars and cheats.

Over her dead body.

Over all of their dead bodies.

She sighted down the length of the crated laser cannon, eyeing Jakobs. He froze in the act of unbuckling his harness, his mouth and eyes wide open. Molly allowed herself to sink down—down into the well of dark thoughts rising up within her. Part of her, some sliver of sanity, yelled. It pleaded for a return to her senses. But it was a small girl—lost in a nightmare—unable to find her voice. The rest of Molly flared with anger. Betrayal after betrayal had finally worn her down. Eaten to her core. Her thin crust of hope had been ablated off by a galaxy of cruelness.

She peered into the crate. Her head roared. She ignored the consequences and hit the lever Edison had shown her.

Hit it and held it.

32

Dinks died never knowing he was in danger. One moment he was spooling up the hyperdrive, the next moment a bolt of laser bored a tunnel through his defenseless Firehawk. The vessel combined explosion and implosion in a confused cloud of debris with a hint of gore.

Molly, Jakobs, and Walter flew through the new hole in Parsona’s carboglass. The vacuum outside sucked at them greedily, pulling out every ounce of pressurized air within. Molly didn’t even try to catch herself on the edge of the windshield as she went past. She concentrated on reaching Jakobs ahead of her.

She collided with the boy’s legs and held fast. They both glided ahead of Parsona through a slightly warmer patch of space: the cloud where Dink’s Firehawk had been. Molly pulled herself up Jakobs’s body, which felt rigid with shock. His visor had snapped shut with the loss of cabin pressure, but there was always a delay. Molly could see it in his eyes; they were bloodshot and full of fear. Blood trickled from his nose.

Molly considered saying something through the suit’s radio, but decided he didn’t merit the trouble. She fumbled for the latches on his helmet, her gloves thick and unwieldy. Even in his haze, Jakobs seemed to grasp her plan. He pawed at her arms, trying to wrestle them down. They struggled for a moment, twisting in space. Molly’s fingers found the snaps, there was a satisfying click felt through her gloves, but silent in the vacuum.

The helmet shot off from the internal pressure of his suit and Jakobs’s face swelled immediately. The look of fear drained out of his face, replaced not with pain or anger, but incredulity. His eyes pleaded with her, begging to know how she’d uncovered the lie.

No part of her cared to satisfy him.

Molly heard the speaker in her helmet keyed as a radio made contact. The sound startled her at first, then a voice crackled through. There was no mistaking its owner.

“Sssorry.” It sounded like the air leaking from Jakobs’s suit, as if it could make itself audible.

Molly turned away from the lifeless body to look behind her. Walter floated alone between her and her damaged ship. She could see blood coming out of his nose and down his lips through the lower half of his helmet. She shoved off Jakobs’s body as hard as she could, gliding toward the one that had betrayed her.

“Sssorry,” he said again, as she reached to him, the force of her arrival sending them into a slow spin. She held him, their helmets almost touching. He mouthed an apology over and over again. Molly thought for a moment about groping for the latches on his helmet as well, but she stopped herself from considering it.

They were both dead, anyway. Their suits held mere hours of atmosphere. With no way to maneuver back to Parsona, Molly resigned herself to holding the Palan boy until one of them breathed their last. Perhaps, by then, she would understand why he’d done it. Could it have really been for a stupid reward? Was it Albert who conned him? She wanted to know, but uncovering a justification as petty as money would just make the betrayal worse.