And did it really matter?

Molly made a rough calculation of the volume of air in the staterooms, wondering how much longer her two friends would last. Would a slow asphyxiation here be better or worse than the airlocking the Navy had planned? She didn’t know.

And she didn’t notice the action taking place in the distance. A fight had broken out near Darrin I, and it headed their way.

Molly snapped out of the trance when a ship exploded just a few thousand kilometers away. The arms dealers from Darrin I closed in on another ship; only this time they were attacking it.

As the group neared, crossing the vacuum between the two planetary orbits, Molly finally recognized the ship being chased. Lady Liberty. The vessel ran and fought at the same time, taking out two pursers with a series of feints and attacks that roused the pilot within her.

At least she and Walter would go out with a good show. As they spun around, facing Parsona and then the fight, they both craned their necks to keep up with the action. One ship with incredible power fought a dozen others with matching defenses—and the solitary one was winning. The only imbalance in this fight lay in their unequal skills.

Several remaining Darrin I ships peeled away—whatever they sought not worth dying for. Molly couldn’t imagine what warranted such deadly fervor, then noticed the lead ship had vectored straight for her and Parsona. During her next lazy revolution, she scanned the space behind her, but nothing lay there save the rubble of Darrin II. Her brain, still hazy, wrestled with the coincidence. Molly remembered: she didn’t believe in coincidences. The melee had something to do with Parsona. Albert was coming back for his gear. Or rushing to Frankie’s defense. In Molly’s state, the alternative never occurred to her, despite the fact that she and Edison had engineered it.

She turned her focus on Walter. There wasn’t enough sunlight out here to blind them, so she hit the lever that raised the mirrored visor and took in his entire face.

He looked horrible, his metallic-looking skin webbed with red lines. Capillaries full of blood strained to the surface as crimson rivulets trickled from his ears and streaked around his silver cheeks. His nose dripped globules of blood that floated around his helmet in the absence of gravity. His eyes were red, like Jakobs’s. The only difference was the way they locked onto hers. They wavered between pain and adoration.

“Sssoryy.”

He didn’t know, Molly realized. He had no clue how this betrayal would make her feel. He didn’t understand the bond that existed between her and Cole. Maybe a Palan couldn’t know. What would a world that washed itself clean each month teach you about building for the future? About creating anything that lasts? What if Molly had known she only had a few weeks with Cole? Would she be just as detached as Walter? Caring about just herself and her own wants? She couldn’t honestly say. She had bonded with Cole in the way that people planning a forever could: with an eye to spending the rest of eternity with one another. Something that Walter couldn’t possibly envision.

Realizing this, Molly thought of something she needed to say to him before one of them breathed their last. She keyed the mic switch inside her glove and answered his pleas.

“I forgive you,” she said.

She whispered it again, holding his little body in her arms, their visors pressed together. “I forgive you, Walter.”

His eyes squinted with pain. Physical, emotional, or both—it was impossible to tell. Walter parted his lips and hissed another “ssorry” as if the last of his life leaked through his teeth. Small spheres of blood and salty water collided in a chamber of dwindling air. They stuck to one another but did not mix, like the helmets pressed together beyond them.

••••

Lady Liberty approached and Molly held Walter’s body tight and waited for laser fire to consume them both. She didn’t look up until the gleaming hull blocked out all else. The cargo ramp opened up—the ship slid sideways to swallow them!

Molly instinctively reached out a hand to clutch a zero-G hold as they skidded across the ship’s decking. The cargo door hinged shut and air and gravity were both pumped into the room. Molly lay on her back, unwilling to move. Ever again, if need be. A broken length of chain rattled as gravity snaked it back into a heap.

The cockpit door slid open and a figure emerged. With silent steps, it crept up to Molly and Walter. She should’ve known. Should’ve recognized the maneuvers. Albert wasn’t on this ship at all. His prisoner had returned the favor of a rescue.

Molly stirred and fiddled for the release catches on her helmet. Anlyn rushed to help her. The alien seemed to understand what she wanted and delicately reached for the clasps. The helmet came off with a pop.

Tears rushed from both sets of eyes. The young Drenard leaned over to hold her.

“Molly,” she whispered, in a soft, clear voice. “I don’t want to fly ever again.” The poor creature’s eyes were wide, unblinking, coated with tears. “Please don’t make me fly, Molly. I don’t ever want to fly again.”

Molly was speechless and numb. She wrapped her bulky space suit around the fragile creature, swallowing her up and wishing she could pull her inside.

“I promise,” she told Anlyn. “I promise you’ll never have to fly again if you don’t want to.”

The Drenard sank into her chest, taking in deep breaths of freedom.

••••

This time, when Lady Liberty and Parsona joined together, it was consensual. Walter had been cleaned up and locked in one of Lady Liberty’s staterooms. He seemed to be more emotionally drained from his treachery than physically harmed from its consequences. Molly left him to suffer alone as she rushed to the airlock of her ship.

When she opened the inner door, the air in the lock puffed out toward the cockpit and then into open space. She breathed through her suit, back at the scene of her deadly outrage. The crate lid floated by, a sign that no gravity awaited her—the panel must’ve been destroyed in the blast.

She worked her way forward, toward the hole in Parsona’s nose. There should still be air in the staterooms, but she needed to work fast. She pulled out an emergency patch kit from one of Walter’s well-organized emergency bins and began inflating the flat disk. She adhered it in place, the two epoxies mixing and turning the pliable material into hardened steel. In the middle of the expansive carboglass windshield there would be a massive disk of blue plasteen, but at least she could try and return atmosphere to the rest of the ship.

As she suspected, the gravity panels were shot. Luckily, the life-support systems rebooted to full operation. Molly pumped air back into the ship, enabling her to open the airlock between the two hulls.

She opened the outer door from inside the airlock, watching the air between the two crafts mix. Anlyn pushed away from the comfort of gravity to join her. One of her small, translucent hands worked into Molly’s padded flight gloves. Together, they floated toward the staterooms, pulling along at the recessed holds in the floor.

Molly opened Edison’s door first and Anlyn helped her remove the restraints from the frightened and confused Glemot. He asked them a confusing stream of questions and fumbled in the odd state of atmosphere and weightlessness. Molly left Anlyn to try and soothe the bristling bear with her soft, angelic voice. Two aliens, polar opposites and each rarely seen by any other race, tried to comfort one another. They were already at the back of Molly’s mind as she pushed off toward the room across the hall.

She punched in the code to unlock Cole’s room. Tears of worry were already floating out of her eyes and through the weightless air. It seemed to take forever for the thing to hiss open. When it did, their eyes met and Cole mouthed her name. She pushed off the jamb, rushing toward him and wrapping him in her arms, his own still tied behind his back.

“I’m so sorry, Cole. I’m so sorry.” She held each side of his face with her hands and kissed his forehead. She apologized again and again through her tears and the wetness she left on his skin.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay.” He tilted his head back to look up at her. “Gods, I’m glad you’re all right. Stop apologizing, okay? I forgive you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m doing everything wrong,” she sputtered. “Everything I try to fix, I make it worse. It makes me not want to try anymore.”

“Untie my hands, Molly.”

“See?” she blubbered, wiping the tears off her face. “I can’t even rescue you right.” She tried to laugh but it came out as sobs.

As soon as Cole’s hands came free, he reached up and held her face, one hand cupping each cheek. Molly released her hold of the ship and she floated in space, held only by his embrace.

They looked at each other for what seemed an eternity. Cole’s face had a blank serenity Molly had never seen before. The tension that lived eternally in his brow, either from worry or deep thought, had disappeared. His mouth exuded happiness without smiling. Molly thought he’d never looked so gorgeous, so desirable, and so much like what she always pictured was beneath his mirrored visor.

“You make everything better, Molly Fyde.”

She started crying and tried to shake her head. In the absence of gravity, it just set the couple spinning.

“You do. You just don’t see it. You’re like that damn simulator, taking points from yourself whenever you do something brave. Look at how many times you’ve rescued me. On Palan. Here. You’re the bravest, most incredible person I know.”

Molly parted her lips to argue—and he kissed her. Pressed his lips to hers. They held each other like that for a moment. Molly felt her worry and pain drifting out, sliding through every tingling pore of her being.

Cole pulled back and flashed her a mesmerizing grin. “I’m sorry, were you about to say something?”

Molly glanced up. She had been on the verge of correcting him about something. What was it?

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Technically . . . I saved your ass twice on Palan.”

Cole tried to laugh.

But Molly interrupted him.

Outside, two ships drifted. Locked together and sharing an atmosphere. They orbited each other around a common center, spinning in the absence of gravity.

Part V - Finals

“Cruelty is foiled by compassion.”

~ The Bern Seer ~

33

The Navy Inspection shuttle broke away from another ship as a ring of crystallized atmosphere puffed from its airlock coupling. The vessel floated down the line of crafts awaiting clearance and locked up with the cargo ship directly ahead of them. Molly and Cole fidgeted in Lady Liberty’s cockpit while they waited their turn. In the distance, ships alternated between disappearing and reappearing in Canopus’s L1, a major hub for hyperspace travel. An old Orbital Station loomed nearby with several large Navy frigates and two cruisers attached to its military wharf. Commercial and private yachts intermingled while the frame of a new Orbital Station took shape not far away.

After the ship ahead of them cleared, their forged documents would receive their first test.

“What’s the plan if the IDs don’t work?” Cole asked.

Molly focused on the Inspection shuttle ahead of them. “We’ll find out soon enough,” she said.

“You’re too trusting.”

Molly assumed he referred to Earnie, the Darrin I scoundrel they’d worked with to secure IDs for themselves and Albert’s ship. “I’m sure he did his best work,” she said. “I sure would’ve, what with a Glemot and a Drenard around.”

Cole jerked his head to the cargo cam. “I meant him.”

Molly looked at her own screen, which showed Walter bent over his videogame. “We both agreed it was my call,” she said.

“Yeah, I agreed it was your call, but I never agreed to agree with it. I’d airlock him right now, but it’d probably create paperwork with the inspectors.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is.”

Molly giggled. “Okay, it’s a tad humorous. But give me some time to prove you wrong. You didn’t see him afterward, once he saw the consequences.”

“Whatever. All I know is having him double-check Earnie’s work on the documents is like trying to put out a fire with some plasma. I don’t trust either of them.”

“I don’t either. But Earnie doesn’t know that, so having Walter sweat him out served the same purpose.”

“Forget it. We’re up.” Cole leaned forward to turn on the docking lights and unlock the outer hatch. Molly looked up and saw the Inspection shuttle maneuvering their way.

“I hope ours goes that fast,” she said.

A thump vibrated through the hull, followed by the clicking of collar locks. Molly wondered what this experience would’ve been like if their trip to Palan had gone as planned. She probably would’ve been nervous with the inspection process, but with normal first-time jitters steadied by the surety of innocence. Instead, she had the pure unadulterated terror of guilt working up and down her spine. She followed Cole through the cargo bay, a sudden surge of adrenaline weakening her knees.

The inner door of the airlock hissed open and stern Navy boots stomped out. Molly stopped by the workbench as Cole moved to greet the inspectors.

“Welcome aboard,” he said, his voice much calmer than Molly felt. He shook hands with each of the two men as they popped off their helmets. Molly gathered them politely as if they were having guests for tea. She laid them on Lady Liberty’s workbench and hoped the tension she felt was a normal part of this process, something exuded by the guilty and innocent alike.

The two inspectors surveyed the cargo bay intently; one of them cleared his throat. The other man, brandishing a thick mustache, took the ship’s registry from Cole. He held it in one hand and rubbed his whiskers with the other. The questions came without looking up, but his partner kept a keen eye on everyone’s face as they responded. Now and then he cleared his throat, which made Molly want to unzip her skin and launch herself into space.