“Just go inside?” Cole asked.
Ryke laughed. “Way I’s raised, we’re taught to knock first!”
Cole shook his head and crawled out of his seat, keeping low to stay out of the rain. He knelt on the flattened rubbery deck just ahead of the skimmer’s cockpit and reached across for the wooden railing. There was a gate there that hinged inward, but he just stepped over the thing instead.
The narrow passageway on the side of the cabin was unprotected, the water racing through the air sideways, so he hurried to the back and around the corner to find shelter on the wide porch. The heads of two of the animals were just beyond the porch railing, their necks rising and falling with their long gait. One of them seemed to watch Cole with its large, single eye on the front of its head. Long whiskers trailed back from its mouth, making it seem like the creature was smiling. Cole studied the animals as they eased up, their legs just moving in easy circles instead of driving the shack forward. He wondered how long they could run like that.
As he was studying the animals, the shack lurched to one side unex-pectedly, and Cole reached out to steady himself, clutching at the railing. His stupid right hand went straight through it, knocking out a chunk and leaving two splintered ends.
“Ah, hyperspace,” he said, looking at the mess he’d made. He gripped one of the porch’s posts to steady himself while he surveyed the damage, wondering what to do.
“It’ll be fine,” a voice said behind him. Cole turned and saw an old woman standing in the open doorway, her body draped in a thin gown.
He looked back at the broken railing, then turned to her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She waved him over, and Cole noticed she wasn’t wearing goggles to protect her eyes. His heart fluttered with panic. He remembered Byrne, the only other person he’d seen who could withstand the light. He also remembered what they called the woman and wondered briefly if he’d been set up, if this was some sort of trap—
The woman waved again, the sleeve of her gown falling back to reveal an arm narrower than bone. “Come inside and get comfortable,” she said. She backed through the doorway, her eyes focused on something distant and to Cole’s side.
Cole stood a moment, indecisive. He looked over at the rear of the hyperskimmer, its engines purring with the strain of pushing the cabin into the rain. Everything within him said to feel threatened by the situation, but he couldn’t. His normally reliable paranoia failed him for some reason. He crossed the porch, keeping his feet wide in case the cabin shuddered again, and stepped inside the cabin after the woman, who shut the door tight behind him.
There was a brief moment of pitch black as he worked his goggles loose. “I’m Cole,” he said. He blinked in the dim light of the interior and took in his surroundings. The room was tiny, a hair more than a few meters to a side. A neatly-made bed rested in one corner, almost as narrow as the woman herself. The far wall had a counter, a sink, and some cabinets. A large barrel had been strapped to another wall; it sloshed with water, and a hose added more to its contents in steady drips. The entire space crackled with the sound of rain on tin, the boards squeaking as the place rumbled along.
“But then,” Cole said, “I guess you already knew my name, being a seer and all.”
The lady smiled, her wrinkled face not matching her bright, beautiful teeth. She sat down by the head of the bed and patted beside herself. “I’m sorry I don’t have much in the way of furniture. There’s not enough need to merit straining the animals.”
“That’s okay,” Cole said. He sat down at the foot of the bed and fidgeted with his goggles, turning them over and over in his lap. He concentrated on keeping his posture stiff as an uncomfortable silence somehow grew amid the din of rain on metal. He noticed the woman looked near him, but not right at him.
“Your eyes—” he stammered.
“Not so good in low light,” the lady said, laughing. She leaned close to Cole. “Do you mind?” She held up both hands, palms out.
“I— sure,” Cole said. He took her wrists, his hands easily encircling them, and leaned forward as he closed his eyes. She reached for his forehead first, just the pads of her fingers moving lightly against his skin. Cole let go of her wrists and remained still. It didn’t feel invasive like he thought it would. It didn’t feel strange at all. He kept his eyes tight as her fingers moved down to his checks, feeling his jawline and chin.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself looking right into hers; they seemed bright but unfocused.
Cole felt his heart stop for a moment as he lost himself in them—the brown with the yellow starburst, little ridges of black flying out from the pupil, giving them a depth he found . . . familiar.
“Do I know you?” Cole asked, as the lady sat back, smiling.
“Not yet,” she said. “And I’m not who you think I am.”
“You’re not—?”
“Molly?” She laughed, a pleasant sound. “No, I’m not. I’m not half the woman she is.” More laughter. “Literally,” she said, running her hands through the air and down the length of her frail form, “as you can plainly see.”
“Why did you want to meet me?” Cole asked. “Am I supposed to do something?”
“All you need to do is be who you are.” She reached behind herself and arranged a pillow, then settled back, bringing one leg up onto the bed. “Can you keep a secret?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t tell Mortimor, but I wanted you out just so I could meet you. You can tell him it was important if you want, but that’s the truth of it. I don’t have much more to look forward to, but this was one of the biggies.”
“Meeting me.”
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I feel honored, I guess. So, how long do we have? What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, life. Philosophy. The same sort of stuff you’re interested in. I also have a story or two you might find fascinating. But first, I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
“Sure,” Cole said. Already, he felt the most relaxed he had since crashing into hyperspace. The small cabin was like a pocket of normalcy within a raging storm of bewilderment. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Well, there’s a leak behind that counter,” the Bern Seer said, “and for the life of me I can’t see where the water’s coming from.”
36
Parsona’s nose dipped into the carrier’s flight bay, the glare of Lok’s sun replaced by the warm glow of artificial lights.
“Suns ’a britches,” Cat whispered. She cupped her hands around her face and pressed them against the porthole beside the nav chair. Molly hovered the ship just inside the cavernous hangar and looked out to port through her own circle of glass to see what Cat was reacting to.
“Flank me,” she whispered.
It was the Firehawks. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. They were piled high along the upper wall like they’d been shoved out of the way and had somehow gotten stuck there. The StarCarrier’s hangar bay wasn’t empty at all, the ships just weren’t down around the bottom where they should’ve been—they were heaped up along the upper wall to either side of the open airlock.
Molly noted several ships had crashed back to the decking in front of the pile. They lay apart from the rest, forlorn, their wings crushed. The sight made her chest feel hollow, her stomach nauseous. Shapes she equated with power and grace looked like broken animals. Like dead things.
“Don’t make no sense,” Scottie said.
“It makes perfect sense,” Molly whispered. She kept her voice soft, almost as if in reverence of the shattered hulls. She flew deeper into the hangar, then spun the ship around to survey the scene. The pile of debris sat on the sloping deck, up at the top, seemingly in defiance of Lok’s gravity.
“The grav panels went out at some point,” Molly said. “Maybe on impact, maybe before. The ships must’ve rattled around in here, crashing against that side, and then the grav panels kicked back on. Now they’re holding the ships to the decking, which must feel like down for them.”
Scottie leaned over the control console to peer at the wreckage. “Watch your hands,” Molly said, nodding at the controls.
“Yeah, sorry.” He gripped the back of the flightseats and squinted out through the carboglass. “You don’t have any binoculars?” he asked.
Molly shook her head. “No. Just SADAR. Why do you ask?”
“Thought I saw something moving up there,” Scottie said, pointing.
“That’s not—”
“I see it too,” Cat said. She leaned forward and peered toward the line of busted ships. “I’ll be a Drenard’s uncle,” she said, “somebody’s alive in that cockpit!”
Molly was about to argue with them when she saw it as well. Some-thing definitely moved inside one of the shattered canopies. It was impossible to make out any detail—it was just a dark form shifting behind a spider web of fractured glass.
“I’m gonna test the panels,” Molly announced, almost out of habit, as if Cole were there and she needed someone to second the idea.
She lowered the landing gear and settled gently to the decking. As she reduced thrust, Molly waited for the ship to slide back, matching the lean of the StarCarrier, but Parsona didn’t budge. The solid deck-ing beneath them matched the evidence hanging above in all those Firehawks and their scattered debris: the StarCarrier’s grav panels were fully functioning.
“This feels freaky,” Scottie said.
“Forget about the planet,” Molly told them. “Just concentrate on the decking. The decking is down.” It was easy to say, but hard to sound convincing. White puffy clouds slid across the rectangle of blue at the end of the hangar bay. They were looking up a steep slope and trying to tell their bodies it was something else.
“Are we all gonna go out there?” Scottie asked.
“We might need the muscle,” Molly said, already formulating a plan and making a list in her head. She looked back through the cockpit. “We might even need Walter. Anybody know where he is?”
“I have to go,” Walter thought. He peeked out of his room and up the length of the ship.
“Everything okay?” he heard through the band.
“Yeah, jusst—”
“Why are you thinking about sshipss going down, Walter? Iss everything alright?”
Walter cursed himself. He was concentrating on not thinking about that!
“It’ss fine, I jusst need to go help Molly.”
“I undersstand. Hey Walter?”
“Yeah?” He glanced out again, then ran across and snuck into Molly’s room while his mysterious friend kept talking.
“When you come ssee me and bring me thosse armss, why don’t you bring Molly with you?”
Walter knelt by her bottom drawer, looking for the tell-tell hair. “Why?” he asked, dying to end the conversation and get out of there.
“I’d like to meet her. And bessidess, what good iss all that gold if you don’t have ssomeone to sspend it on?”
“I’ve gotta go,” Walter said, pulling off the band. He folded it up and stashed it away, then finally found the hair.
As he put the single follicle in place and snuck out of her room, he thought about a block of gold the size of a small moon. Barrel after barrel of solid gold so big you needed tugs to move them around.
And then he thought of how much Molly would really love a brand new starship. And he would buy her one. But first, he had to get her into orbit to meet this guy, which meant reprograming the crappy ship they were already in. How would he get his chance to do that? Molly wouldn’t trust him near the systems, and whatever she’d done to the cockpit door, it was enough that he couldn’t crack it. It was like the thing had a mind of its own. He had to find a way, somehow. His new friend—the voice behind the band—had said was that he was a very smart Palan and that he would figure something out.
And I will, Walter told himself.
He sure was glad to have met someone who knew he wasn’t stupid.
Molly parked several hundred meters from the pile of ships, just in case any of them shifted. It made for a long hike with all the heavy gear they were toting—and it gave her plenty of time to appreciate how large the hangar was without ships arranged throughout.
Scottie and Urg carried the fuel tank for the cutting torch between them; Molly had the handheld radio and the large medkit; Cat carried a duffle full of blankets, water, and clean rags. Walter had volunteered to carry the torch and its tubing, which had started off neatly slung over his narrow shoulders, but loops kept sliding off, knotting in coils that he had resorted to dragging across the deck.
Together, they approached the Firehawk in which they’d seen move-ment. It lay upside down, on top of another broken ship. Everyone set their gear down in a base camp of sorts, all acting professional and calm. Except for Walter, who hissed with annoyance as he began unknotting the hose for the cutting torch.
“I’ll go up,” said Molly, “since I’m familiar with the torch. Scottie, you and Urg can give me a boost to the wing; Cat, you play out the hose.” She pulled the basic medkit out of the larger duffel and slung it around her neck.
Urg raised his hand.
“What is it, big guy?”
“I wanna look for others,” the Callite said, frowning.
“That’s a good idea. Scottie can boost me himself. Take the radio with you in case anyone starts transmitting.”