“Better than new is right,” she muttered.
As tired as she was from being up all night, Molly forced herself to do an engine room check before they pulled away. As she crossed the cargo bay, she saw a few Glemots through the portholes lingering by the edge of the forest, as if to watch their handiwork take flight. Molly gave the engine room a visual inspection and opened the door to the lazarette. The thrusters purred with precision, the fluid and temperature gauges reading normal.
She headed back to the cockpit, pausing to ensure Walter was buckled in tight. The boy seemed immensely appreciative of her attention.
“Looks good back there,” she told Cole as she settled into her seat.
He nodded, checking the angle of the thrusters to make sure they were ready for lift and gave her a gloved thumbs up. Molly pointed to her sling. “You have the honors,” she reminded him.
“Oh—of course,” he stammered.
Molly watched him grip the flight controls with his left hand and felt a mixture of nervousness and humor. “You wanna switch seats with me?” she asked.
He gave her a hurt look. “I’m fine. It’s just been a while… and this baby was a bucket of bolts, literally, like a day ago.”
Molly raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, I’m nervous,” Cole admitted. “Does that make you happy?”
Molly laughed. “Hell no, man, it just makes me nervous, too.” As much as her broken arm annoyed her, watching hours and hours of simulator banter play back in reverse nearly made it all worthwhile. She settled back in her seat while Cole gripped the throttle.
“Liftoff,” he whispered, giving the ship thrust.
Unsteadily at first, then balancing with the increase in height and speed, the GN-290 Starship Parsona suspended itself in the heavens once more. Walter whooped from the cargo bay. Molly checked the chase camera and watched the trees recede into forest and then into a carpet of green. After a series of wild escapes, such a banal exit seemed foreign and strange to her. She braced for the ship to be taken over, wondering how long it would be before the EMP cleared the ground of electronics. They’d be out of the atmosphere before long, but she knew from experience that the range of those bunkers extended out to the largest moon.
Every second that nothing bad happened got them closer to the Orbital Station. Molly felt as if their luck was finally changing for the better.
The thing hiding in Parsona’s escape pod #2 would have agreed with her completely.
22
Mekhar huddled with a few other Leefs in the small clearing, disbelieving his good fortune. Many years of precise calculations led up to this moment. That he had been picked with the flip of a stick symbolized much: The Great Ambush embodied Glemot planning, yet it would be topped off with a flourish of randomization.
He could see the fear and envy in the eyes of his tribemates. Their fur shivered anxiously, along with his own. One of his paws rested on the impressive device in the center of the group. He glanced expectantly from it to his great leader, waiting for the signal.
The sounds of heavy marching filtered through the trees, likely from the Campton forward guard. The legions of great Campton warriors would follow, armed with their sharpened sticks and more sinister devices. Mekhar thought of the battles he’d been lucky to survive. He looked down at his scars, like white worms trampling his fur, and recalled how badly things had gone in the past.
This time, though, things would be different.
He leaned forward to shield the shiny device with his wide back. One glint through the woods would give them away. He glanced up at the great leader, but the old Glemot still looked to the sky, waiting on just the right moment. Mekhar could now make out the footsteps of individual Camptons and grew nervous. They could have sprung this trap from anywhere. Why here? he wondered.
The ground vibrated as the main column of Camptons drew near. Mekhar imagined it was the old planet shivering in anticipation. He took it as a mystical sign to begin his assignment, but fought the urge. The great leader would tell him when. His paw moved closer to the first of two buttons.
At first, the roar of thrusters burning in the atmosphere sounded like another column of warriors. When the marching stopped, however, the sound of last night’s hard work became clear. With a great roar, the machine he’d helped reconstruct lifted into space. Mekhar wished he could see the look on those Campton faces as they realized they’d become mere variables in a Leef calculation. He rested his finger on the first red button; the great leader turned to him and held a paw up. Mekhar felt the first chill of hesitation as the enormity of this moment vibrated through him. He met the gaze of this great Leef, who had chosen to live as a Campton, and tried to borrow some of his strength.
The paw closed, leaving a single digit out. Mekhar looked down at his own hand. The claw on his first finger twitched; he forced it into a dull shape. The button went down with a loud click and the device whined up like a turbine, humming with great power. Mekhar thought about what this mechanism was alleged to do and had a moment of doubt. Deep inside, down where calculation gave way to intuition, something told him that the device would not go off as planned. Surely this moment was too big for the likes of him. He looked up, certain he should voice his concerns, when a second digit flicked out of his leader’s paw.
All eyes were on him, and he hesitated. His first bout of weakness had come at the worst time. He scanned the faces around him and felt their surety, found power in their conviction. He moved his finger to the second button and closed his eyes, summoning the courage to do something great. Something terrible.
He pressed down. The button clicked, but no ear would ever hear it. Rushing ahead of that sound was a wave of heat and light, consuming all.
The Camptons, retreating back to their camp in worry, confused by the sight of Parsona rising, never saw it coming.
A dozen alarm lights went from green to red, bypassing amber entirely. Molly’s first thought was another hijack. She turned to Cole, who seemed to understand that pounding the dash was not going to fix this. Then she noticed one of the blips was a munitions warning. There was nothing out the windshield ahead of them.
The chase cam, still selected on the vid screen, held the answer.
“Cole. Oh my gods!” She pointed at the screen. Cole tore himself away from the confusing indicators and leaned over to look.
“What in the galaxy—?”
A bloom of white expanding out from the forest. A circle of smoke ringed a cap of puffy cotton pushing its way up into the cloudless atmosphere. It grew and grew to an incredible size. Part of Molly’s brain knew what she was seeing, but it was unable to communicate with the rest of her.
“That’s not an EMP,” Cole said.
Molly could sense her chest sinking in. It felt hollow. Her vision swam and she reached for her wrist with her left hand, trying to cover and protect the broken parts of herself.
“What have we done, Cole? What have we done?”
The explosion explained the warning lights, but nothing could explain the explosion. How had the Camptons turned an EMP device into a fusion bomb? One had nothing to do with the other. If you could do that, you may as well build your own from scratch.
“It was always a nuke,” Molly said out loud. She could not piece together what had happened over the last day, but she knew this: it was always a nuke.
Below, the ring of smoke was replaced by a hoop of fire. Eerily concentric, it spread out at a furious rate. Beyond the billows of peaceful cotton, orange tendrils of fire and plasma danced and grew. Paradise was ablaze.