Then again, it was precisely this sort of stunt that won her demerits at the Academy and eventually got her expelled.
She had the cargo security cam pulled up on the dash’s vid screen. It was one more thing demanding her attention. On it, she could see Walter struggling with the long aluminum frame, yelling at her over the howling wind, complaining that the contraption was too heavy.
It shouldn’t be, she thought.
“OKAY!” he hollered. “Ready!”
Molly silently urged Cole to the other side of his cell. She reached over quickly to turn down the hyperdrive a little more, just in case, then checked the security cam again.
The device wasn’t in place. Walter was holding one of the tips in the center of the cell window.
Damn. She’d explained it a dozen times. No way was she going to pull away and go over it again; they were running out of time. She kept her eyes on the video screen and fought to hold the ship steady in the howling wind. Both of her hands twitched with every gust, counteracting each blast of air with an opposite one from the maneuvering jets. Flying while looking at the screen felt like combing her hair in the mirror for the first time. She moved the wrong way, corrected, tried to get the hang of it.
They only had one shot. Molly boosted the ship up a meter or so to compensate for Walter. She also brought the ship closer to the cliff wall, pressing the device in place herself.
The jump coordinates were already plugged in—she’d chosen to move the mass thirty meters straight up. She let go of the maneuvering jets and punched the hyperdrive as fast as she could.
With a loud ZAP and a yelp from Walter, the drive fired, trying to move the ship through hyperspace and up thirty meters. But instead of sending these instructions to the four anchor points throughout the ship, they travelled down the less-resistant wire Molly had added. What they found at the tips was solid rock, and not knowing any different—mass was mass—they moved the specified amount to the programmed coordinates.
The window and one side of Cole’s cell vanished, entering hyperspace. Thirty meters up, the material would find no place to return and disappear forever.
On the vid screen, Molly checked the hole she’d made. The size was right and had punched all the way through. She held her breath and moved the searchlight over. Something moved.
Cole.
A mix of dread and relief swelled up inside. He was alive, but what kind of hole had they been keeping him in? The cell was much smaller than the chunk of rock she’d removed. She watched him scoot forward and lower himself to the ledge formed by the evacuated square of stone. She could also see something else on the camera screen: something moving beyond him.
She shut down the hyperdrive to transform the magic wand into a lifeline. “Walter!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Get the pole back up there!” He had let it sag after the zap. Cole stood in the square hole, the incredible thickness of the gaping wall creating a nice perch. He looked over his shoulder at whoever was crawling in after him, then turned to look back at the ship.
“Grab the cross!” Molly yelled at the screen, as if Cole could hear her over the roar of the thrusters. She focused on Walter as he wrestled with the wind for control of the aluminum pole. Molly urged both of them along, wishing she could do more as Walter turned to the security camera and yelled something, shaking his head. His metallic face contorted into a mad grimace from the effort—a sneer of sorts.
Molly felt powerless. The autopilot would never be able to hold them in this wind. She tried to pull up a little to again position the long rod herself, but it sagged too much and hung too far away. She watched the screen in frustration. Beyond Cole, she could see someone squeezing into the hole after him—large hands reaching out.
Cole threw a fist into the darkness and then spun back toward the ship. He was arching his back, trying to keep out of someone’s clutches. He teetered forward, his eyes peering through the cargo bay. It seemed as if he was looking through the security camera and right at Molly as he leaned forward, falling.
And then he jumped.
Molly gasped as Cole vanished beneath Parsona. Her hands twitched, her concentration broken. The tip of one wing made contact with the rock, sending a shudder through the ship. Molly pulled away and heard another loud bang of metal.
It was the chain welded to the workbench pulling tight. Walter jumped away from the lifeline, his hands up in the air, the aluminum pole gone. Molly pulled further away from the cliff, freeing up a hand to switch to the belly cam. There he was, swinging across the vid screen and out of sight, his arms locked around the aluminum cross.
You crazy jerk, she thought.
Molly pulled across the canyon, back to the landing platform outside the hangar bay. The original plan had been to reload at the lip of the cliff, but that seemed too far away. She needed to get him inside the ship before her chest burst open.
It wasn’t until she brought Cole over the landing platform that she could breathe again. She lowered him slowly, saw him drop from a meter up, and waited for him to stagger out of the way. She set Parsona down gently, but the landing gear didn’t even have time to compress fully before she heard him stomping up the loading ramp. She looked over her shoulder to confirm everyone was onboard; Cole staggered into the cargo bay, nearly collapsing.
Fighting the urge to rush to him, Molly concentrated instead on getting off that cursed planet; there was no telling what kind of pursuit they could expect from pirates or the Navy. She keyed the cargo door shut and nosed back into the dawn-streaked canyon.
Below Parsona, four wires dangled, shorted together as the forgotten aluminum frame was crushed by the cargo door. The wires sparked to life, leaving a bright trail in the wake of their flight.
As the starship Parsona rose up and out of the Palan atmosphere, her unique hyperdrive kept humming on an unusually low setting. Instructions continued to stream down to the fused wires, but all they encountered was the fabric of the cosmos.
So they ripped it open—creating a tear in space.
Part III - The Mechanical Bear
“Many undiscovered things . . .
are best left that way.”
~The Bern Seer~
14
Nothing rose in the atmosphere to challenge their flight. Molly wasn’t sure if it was the recent changing of the guard or the general disorganization below. She didn’t care. Physically and emotionally, Palan was proving to be an easy planet to run from.
She wanted to rush back and tend to Cole, but he made his own way into the cockpit. She could see his reflection in the carboglass, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other one reaching forward to tousle her hair.
“Miss me?”
Molly wanted desperately to turn and reach out to him, to verify he was safe. But just the feeling of his cold hand on her scalp made flying difficult. She had too many emotions racing through her, mixing with the adrenaline. She pulled her head away and reached for the radio, dialing it to full scan mode. Her hand shook visibly; she left Cole’s question unanswered.
He stood beside her, peering at the vid screen. She glanced at it as well and saw Walter glaring toward the cockpit.
“I guess not,” he said. “So. You’ve been out making friends while they tried beating me to death, is that it?”
Molly tried to laugh, but thanks to her nerves, it came out more like a cough. “You’re welcome,” she managed, her voice quaking.
Cole slid his hand down the back of Molly’s neck, supporting himself on her shoulder as he leaned over the flight console. He peered through the windshield then scanned the dash, checking out its SADAR unit and nav charts. “She’s a beaut,” he said.
Molly nodded. Cole’s hand no longer felt cold. Or maybe it was just her neck flushing with heat. The adrenaline shakes went away in an instant, replaced with a feeling of paralysis. She didn’t want to move and hoped Cole wouldn’t either.
But he did.
Leaning down, Cole kissed her, briefly, on the top of her head. He patted her on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispered.
As he pulled away and stumbled back into the cargo bay, Molly’s face and ears burned. She could hear Cole and Walter introducing themselves over the pounding of her pulse, but just barely. She tried to imagine how the two of them were going to get along on the flight to Earth, and it made her feel as though she should be remembering something important, something she needed to tell Walter or ask him. Did it have to do with the food cart, or a key? Her stomach interrupted her, the thought of Palan prison food making it erupt in protest. She gathered her voice and threw a request over her shoulder, “When you guys get done talking sports, could you bring me something to eat?”
On the vid screen, she saw Walter bolt into action, hopefully rustling up better fare than he’d served yesterday. Meanwhile, she busied herself with the systems checks she should’ve performed before takeoff—the routine tasks that seem to get in the way of prison breaks. She checked the astral charts first, and the news there wasn’t good. Drummond was supposed to have updated them, but the charts were almost as old as she was. At least a hundred planets had been discovered since these things were made and a few stars were no longer around. Dozens of safe jump zones had moved and better ones located.
Jump zones. Drenards! Molly looked at the small fusion fuel readout and felt sick. It showed 20% and falling! She’d forgotten the aluminum rig and the wires, assuming she could just turn off the drive and it’d be safe.
“Cole?” she yelled over her shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to take the stick for a minute.”
Molly turned as he entered the cockpit, chewing on something. He slurped on a small bag of juice. “Some of Drummond’s stuff,” he explained, his mouth full. “Walter’s bringing you some.”
“In a minute,” she said, taking in Cole’s appearance. His face was bruised and blood was caked below his nostrils. Molly felt an urge to tend to him, but she needed to worry about the hyperdrive first. “Keep us heading away from Palan, and don’t turn on the hyperdrive.”
Cole worked himself into the pilot’s seat. “You don’t want to jump out of here?” he called after her. But Molly was already crossing the cargo bay, heading toward the engine room.
Passing the workbench, she grabbed a welding glove and a scrap of aluminum pipe left over from her “craft time.” She tugged the glove on and clutched the pipe as she entered the engine room—where she discovered what she’d feared she might. The hyperdrive indicator was flashing green; the thing was running, even though the cockpit controls were locked off!
Molly surveyed the main hyperdrive housing. The device was as big as a refrigerator laying on its side. Most of the interior was a firing chamber for the fusion fuel. There wasn’t much else to the device: its principles of operation were closely-guarded secrets. Hyperdrive Mechanics had been a weekend Lab tacked onto their semester of Advanced Thruster Repair. All cadets had to know was how to ensure coordinates were fed properly from the nav computer and to make sure the four drive wires were grounded to the ship’s chassis.
It was the drive wires that Molly had re-routed in order to spring Cole. And all four of the posts she had soldered them to were sparking slightly. They hadn’t been before.
There must be a short somewhere, she thought, probably in the cargo door. Luckily it had happened after Cole’s crazy stunt, or else he wouldn’t be here anymore. He would’ve moved thirty meters up, bumped into the rock in his way, and winked out of existence.
Molly stepped forward, raising the pipe with one arm. She swung it as hard as she could at the nearest post, hoping to break the wire off. Time slowed to a crawl. She flashed back to the day before, to the brutality of hitting that Navy man in the head. At the time, she thought she’d killed him. . .
Molly was jarred back to the present as she struck the post and knocked the wire free. The hyperdrive light went red. And most of the aluminum pipe disappeared right out of her hand!
Only a few inches of the metal tube were left, the rest probably warped thirty meters straight up. The cleanly severed tip stuck out of her gloved fist, the polished metal interior gleaming in a way that no mechanical cut ever could. Molly loosened her grip on the bit that remained and wondered what would’ve happened if the hyperdrive had been turned up a little more. Would she be looking inside her wrist? And what did she think the welding glove would have protected her against?
She left the piece of pipe in the engine room and decided, right there, that this little episode would never leave the engine room.
Returning the glove to the workbench, she accepted the rations Walter held out to her. He seemed extremely pleased with himself and with all the goodies he had strewn around the cargo bay. Molly took a sip of juice and squeezed his arm. “Thanks for getting us out of there,” she told him.
“My pleassure,” he said.
“There are four cabins past the engine room. You can have either one on the Starboard side, okay?” She gestured back toward the rear of the ship. “Right side,” she added, pointing for emphasis.
Walter nodded.
“And since you seem to be good with merchandise and gear, I would love to have you as my Cargo Officer. At least until we get to Earth.”
Walter beamed; it was nothing like his sneer at all. He rubbed the shoulder Molly had squeezed. “Officser,” he repeated.
“Yeah, Cargo Officer.” Molly opened a few drawers and cabinets, looking for the ship manifest. Every compartment appeared to have been rummaged through, not at all like her father normally kept things. She eventually found the clipboard under a stack of manuals for the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems.
“This is a manifest,” she told Walter. “You keep up with everything on a ship with this. How much, what it is, what you paid for it, what you hope to sell it for, who owns it, where you got it, where it’s stored. . .” She ran her finger along the top row, reading the header and wondering if the Palan was able to follow along.
