by Hugh Howey
She could’ve picked that shape out of a used shipyard full of a thousand hulls. It was the profile of a family member: a large window spanning the cockpit, rounded nose below, wide-swept wings that made her as good a craft in atmosphere as she was in a vacuum.
It was a classic design, inspired by the first ships to soar in space and float to the ground.
She was beautiful.
Along her back were the ridges for flight control and the jutting vertical fins many of the modern starships went without. Two small wings, identical to the larger ones at the rear, stood out below the cockpit windows. The hump behind one window marked the life-support systems, a vulnerability that partly explained the GN-290’s discontinuation.
Despite her age, and the limited run of the model, she looked swift, even at rest. Flecks of paint were missing here and there, and lots of micro-meteor burns streaked down the hull, but overall the ship looked to be in fine condition. And aside from being lazily parked nose-in, a habit typical of jittery pilots, Parsona looked ready to fly.
Frozen in the doorway, Molly absorbed the sight. She wanted to shout for joy, but thoughts of Cole being locked up in a rock cell tempered her enthusiasm. She needed to get to work.
Walter seemed to agree. He clapped his hands to break her spell and asked about getting the hangar doors open. Molly nodded and watched him scamper over to a rusty console. She left him to it and rushed around the other side of the ship where the cargo ramp stood wide open. Her feet hit the old metal, the sound and spring of it taking her back to her childhood. Inside, familiar scents greeted her, bringing back more memories. She paused, feeling closer to her family than she had in ten years.
Then the enormity of their predicament hit her, making her feel alone and overwhelmed. This was a massive piece of machinery. Real machinery. She’d learned to fly in a simulator. In classrooms, she’d learned basic maintenance and mechanical duties. Now she stood in the cargo bay of a starship over fifty meters long. When she fired it up, actual mechanical bits would be roaring into motion, not the simulated vibration of a glorified computer. The thought of taking off in this thing without someone here to help her made her stomach flip; she had a sudden urge to use the bathroom.
She fought these self-doubts and nervously made her way toward the cockpit as the sound of metal scraping on metal filtered in from beyond the ship. Molly heard the hiss of a powerful wind and glanced through one of the portholes. Walter had the hangar doors opening up.
He joined Molly inside the ship, anxious to get underway. “Take off,” he told her.
“It’s not that easy,” she explained. “I have to do some things first.”
“No time. Daylight ssoon.”
“Walter, we can’t get out of here until I fix the hyperspace drive. Arrange those boxes or load some more supplies, I need at least an hour.”
“An hour?!” Walter frowned, then sniffed the air. “An hour it iss.” He ticked off fingers with his thumb. “Four tripss to the ssupply room,” he muttered to himself before hurrying down the cargo ramp.
“I was kinda hoping you’d help out here,” Molly called after him, but the boy was already gone. “Okay then.” She turned to the workbench and charged up her father’s old welding torch. This is going to work, she told herself.
She lost herself in each task: cutting lengths of metal tubing from one of the bunks, welding them into a single rod six meters long, running wires from the engine room. The distraction forced her worries away from Cole and the upcoming challenge of flying the old ship.
It also freed her subconscious to secretly fiddle with a puzzle of its own: if Walter didn’t have keys for the gates leading to Cole, how had he disappeared that direction yesterday without passing back in front of her cell?
••••
Cole lay prone on the freezing floor. He had no choice; his cell was a meter wide and just as tall—a stone coffin. Yesterday, his new friends had to drag him into the hallway to have enough room to beat on him properly. One of his ribs felt cracked from their hospitality, and he’d been spitting up blood all night.
The window at the end of the cell, however, was the primary source of his misery. A steady flow of cold evening air poured in with no way of escaping it. He tried blocking it off with his feet, but even through his boots he could feel the chill damaging his toes. His teeth chattered violently as he rubbed his arms to keep the blood circulating through his chest. The uncontrollable shivering was a relentless assault on his tender ribs.
The only food he’d been given looked like something you’d feed a dog—one you didn’t particularly care for. A hissing Palan had tossed the pellets in by Cole’s head. A tin of water thrown in after spilled across the stone and soaked through Cole’s shirt. He couldn’t turn around to see who tormented him, but the mysterious figure promised he’d be executed in the morning.
Cole wasn’t sure he could hang around long enough to make the appointment.
What hurt the most, the thing that kept digging into him, was having failed to protect Molly. No telling what their captors were doing to her. Would they be given a trial? Would Molly have to watch him be executed? Would Lucin and the Navy ever be able to piece together what had happened here?
Cole’s neck cramped up from the shivering of his head and shoulders, and his jaw felt numb from the continuous muscle spasms clattering his teeth together. Minutes dragged out into hours as he suffered the longest night of his life.
It seemed a lifetime later when the faintest glow of a new day began filtering past his boots. Cole parted them, allowing the chilled air to travel up his stomach and chest. It was worth the pain to watch the distant canyon wall color itself in a welcomed dawn. The sunlight signaled his promised execution, but also an end to the biting cold and the strange mixture of numbness and agony.
I may just live long enough to be killed, he thought to himself. It made him want to laugh out loud, this private joke. Laugh and scream.
Delirium must be setting in.
And now he was hearing things. Over the rush of the wind and the staccato of his crashing teeth, Cole imagined he could hear starship thrusters roaring outside: the high pitch of jet turbines mixing with the loud air nozzles used for maneuvering. It seemed awfully detailed for an auditory hallucination.
Pulling his boots completely out of the window, Cole raised his sore chin and looked down the length of his beaten body.
Through the small square of light, he gaped disbelievingly at the mirage rising into view.
If that wasn’t real, Cole knew he’d really lost it.
••••
Walter tested the webbing harness, yanking the tether that secured him to the cargo bay. He couldn’t believe he was going along with this. He’d nearly mutinied when he learned what Molly had planned. Not that he understood how this would work, but nobody broke out of Palan Max. He’d tried it himself. It was impossible. The only two ways out were bribery and death. And most Palans only had coin for the latter.
Then again, he’d gone and helped her escape for nothing but a promise and the mere hope for reward. What had he been thinking? Or had he been thinking? This girl—floods take him—she was strange and incredible and intoxicating, making him do stupid stuff. And he was not stupid.
Walter watched the canyon wall slide by beyond the porthole, wondering how he’d gotten himself in this mess. Didn’t matter now, he decided. There was no turning back. Someone would be waking his uncle soon, blabbering about an empty cell and a lot of oiled hinges. He just needed to stall the escape and hope the guards had already gotten to the boy. What choice did he have? He couldn’t fly this contraption, and now he really needed to get off-planet. He’d return for the other spoils later. Much later. When someone else was in charge.
He shifted the strange contraption in his hand. It was nice and light; he couldn’t see how this thing was going to free the human. At one end of the pole the girl had welded a wide cross, about six feet between the tips. The other end, about twenty
feet away, had a chain attached which snaked back to the workbench. Four wires trailed from the tips of the cross and disappeared around the corner into some sort of mechanical room.
Walter supposed they could be blasting wires. He’d seen explosives that worked like this. Was the plan to blow through three feet of Palan stone? If so, she was going to be pretty upset when she saw how small the boy’s cell was. And what will be left of him inside?
The loading ramp opened a crack, letting in a sliver of morning light and a loud hiss of wind. He leaned against the tether and tightened his grip on the cold metal.
He’d help rescue her friend, Walter decided, or at least make it appear he’d tried. Besides, he’d have plenty of opportunities to get the human boy out of the way.
Later.
••••
Molly lowered the cargo ramp from the cockpit and turned on the floodlights to illuminate the side of the canyon. Once the ramp extended fully, she pulled the ship up, pivoting it around until the open bay lined up with the solitary, barred window. She shot a brief glance over her shoulder and saw Walter extending the long boom through the opening.
She performed more calculations in her head, thinking about the thickness of the wall in her own cell and how much mass was likely in the rock. She kept dialing the hyperdrive down, far past its lower limits. Safety overrides flashed red and chimed at her relentlessly as the howling wind coursed through the ship. Molly’s hair had grown long enough for the ends to flick into her eyes, but she couldn’t take her hands off the flight controls and the maneuvering jets to do anything about it.
This was her least sane plan. The one that toyed with the laws of physics.
She could only get within five meters or so of the canyon wall, even with Parsona’s wings retracted in their zero-G position. Harsh gusts swirled and buffeted the ship from every direction. Holding her steady while simultaneously performing rough hyperdrive calculations was a challenge of dexterity and clear-thinking unlike anything the Navy had ever thrown at her. Deep in the recesses of her female ego, Molly wondered how many men would be able to pull this off, much less dream it up.
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. Ins
tructions 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.