Even some of the Palan smells started to register in her olfactory nerves as various types of mildew and mold and rot.
The driver performed a post-yell grumble routine in his own language, gripping the steering wheel with residual anger. Molly tilted her head toward Cole’s to explain what she could remember about the torrential downpours and regular floods.
Cole absorbed the PA lesson, his eyes flashing a hint of memory as well. “Drummond, you fool,” he muttered. “We’re gonna have to be quick in the Naval Office to get back to the Regal in time.”
Molly nodded. She leaned forward and interrupted the angry grumbling. “How far away are we?”
“One more than five minutess,” answered the driver.
Molly settled back in her seat, wondering if that was their way of saying “six.” Such an odd place, Palan. Outside the glass she saw two silver-faced people wrestling with a package. It looked like things might get violent. As they passed, she craned her neck to follow, but there wasn’t enough room to turn her shoulders.
She felt Cole twisting to survey the same scene. “Not much law here, huh?” he asked quietly.
“Too far from the war, I guess.” She looked straight ahead. “The fight with the Drenards means fewer security forces on the frontier. Lok was the same way when I was young. I think my dad took me away from that place ’cause of the violence. Crazy how the Drenards can affect us without being able to push the war beyond their arm of the Milky Way.” Molly laughed at herself. “Listen to me. A few months exposure to opinion reporting at Avalon, and I don’t talk tactics anymore, I just moan about the toll the war is taking on innocent civilians.”
Cole grunted. “No one mentions it at the Academy, but everyone must see it when they look at the charts. We can’t win this bloody war. The Drenards have an entire arm of our spiral galaxy well-defended. They never push the fight into our space, and we seem hell-bent on breaking through. It’s become an imaginary wall in space that we throw money and lives at.”
“Well, don’t get me wrong,” Molly said, “I want to beat the snot out of them just like the rest of the galaxy. What they did at Turin—what my father and Lucin fought through—that was the worst sort of crime. Unforgivable. But the way the stars are laid out in this galaxy, with those damn spiraling arms, there’s just too much empty space to stretch supply lines across, even with hyperdrives. It’s like Major Clarke taught us in Philo-History, how the Revolutionary War was immoral, ’cause independence was assured by the Atlantic.”
“Clarke was a loon,” Cole jerked his head toward the world beyond the carboglass. “Try telling these people to wait patiently while progress meanders forward. No thanks.”
The taxi fell silent and Molly sucked in a deep lungful of it. She missed these conversations with Cole. Not so much the philosophy, but the history and the tactical ruminations. They used to stay up late in their bunks whispering bold plans that would turn the tide of war one way or the other, always with bold gambits the generals missed simply from being at it too long. Some of those ideas seemed ridiculous to her now, but then she remembered the stunts they pulled off in the simulators that no AI routine had ever been ready for.
The nostalgia made her chest swell and feel heavy. She’d put that behind her at Avalon. Eventually. She thought back to those big plans and her dreams of being a great Navy pilot, ending the war with the Drenards. She could almost feel the confetti sticking in her hair…
But those old dreams made her sad now. Especially as she looked out at this miserable world sliding by. It wasn’t just her ambitions that had taken a hit, so had this planet and its people. She knew from her Materiel Analysis class what each missile and bomb cost. She imagined what a few munitions could mean here if they were converted to Earth Credits. It drained the last of her giddiness away. The excitement of retrieving Parsona and traveling with Cole back to Earth was being replaced with the ugliness of Palan, the problems detailed by Drummond, and the fear of not knowing what to expect from the looming rains.
Cole had fallen silent, gazing out of the carboglass. Maybe he was thinking along the same lines as she, or was it something else? Here they were, two pilots with tons of potential, crammed together in a dinky cab on this miserable planet and stuck with a worthless guide while a war was being lost. What kind of sense does that make? Molly wondered.
“Do we have to take Drummond with us?” she asked aloud, breaking the silence.
“Who?”
“Drummond. Do we really have to take him with us? Once we get Parsona back, I just want to fly her home ourselves. Spend more time talking like this.”
Cole leaned close to her. “You mean Sssimonssss,” he whispered with a hiss.
They both laughed. And for a few moments, their lives returned to normal.
Their little bubble of metal and glass lurched to a stop. “Naval!” announced the cabbie, not even attempting the word “offices.”
Cole handed him a wad of Navy funds and exited the cramped cab mostly by falling out of it. Molly spilled out the same door, as Cole vaulted over another massive gutter. He turned, and this time she accepted his outstretched offer, his hand wrapping around hers. It felt smooth and warm, unlike the stiff flight gloves they normally bumped together. It reminded her that she and Cole had been around each other as civilians for less than two days, and most of that time he’d been asleep.
It always amazed her to feel the rapid bonds foreign situations could weld. It reminded her of a math camp Lucin sent her to one summer. She was only there for a week, but some of the friendships she’d formed felt unbreakable at the time. Something about being with a person night and day, never leaving their side, made hours feel like months.
As Cole released her hand, Molly thought about how equally fast those undying bonds faded as soon as she and her new friends went their separate ways. She wondered if the same would happen between her and Cole when they got back to Earth.
She snapped away from the depressing thought as Cole held open the door for her. She passed under the GN Creed, Latin for “Expanding Freedom,” and into the foyer of the Naval Offices. There was the faintest impression of an old official seal in the marble tile, but a million shuffling steps had worn it down to a sad smear. A waft of air-conditioning leaked through the next set of doors, beckoning them inside.
The room beyond was much smaller than seemed possible from the block building’s façade. Unless the walls were as thick as the foyer, there was some sort of optical illusion at play. Molly suddenly realized they were in a bunker disguised as an office. A room meant to take the worst kind of pounding and survive. For some reason, walls so thick made her feel less safe. Like she had moved to the center of a bull’s-eye.
A man in Naval black stood behind a low greeting desk, peering down at a mess of papers. Both of his hands were spread out and pressed flat on its surface, as if removing them would send the documents fluttering off to safety. He looked up at the squeak of the door. “No refuge from the rains—” He paused. A glimmer of recognition flashed across his face, or perhaps it was the obvious conclusion that this young couple was out of place on Palan. “Can I help you?”
Cole held out his credentials. “Ensign Mendonça, Cole, Naval Special Assignments, sir.”
The man behind the desk frowned and took Cole’s badge from him. “Didn’t know they had Ensigns in Special Assignments, Mendonça.” He looked at Molly with a sly smile. “You must be the Admiral?”