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Cole rubbed his face He’d been on shift for a long ti some sleep But there was no way he could rest while Molly dealt with so as surreal as this "I don’t knohat to tell you," he said "You sure nobody else could kno to spell your old name?"
"I can’t think of anyone Not besides a bunch of backwoods frontier people on Lok, and they shouldn’t be involved in any of this"
"What about the titles of those old books?"
Molly shook her head "Nobody besides me and my dad, I’m pretty sure"
"I just don’t know," Cole said He scanned the screen, taking in the snippets of conversation above the flashing cursor "I don’t wanna get your hopes up, but we’ve seen soy they had in the Darrin system blew my mind--"
"Have you ever heard of the Dakura systeht for a second "No But the name seerated into the ship, and where we need to go Watch"
Molly typed another question: COLE AND I WANT TO KNOW HOW WE CAN BELIEVE THAT IT’S REALLY YOU_
I CAN PROVE IT TO YOU AT DAKURA_
"See?" Molly asked, turning to Cole "Pull it up on one of our newer charts See how far we are from this place"
Cole leaned forward and switched the nav computer from the bizarre conversation to the duller use for which it was intended Pulling up the Bel Tra charts--thehorrific occurred to him He slapped his forehead and shouted, "Flank me!"
Molly startled like the hull had been breached "Gods, Cole! What?"
"When ere on Darrin, installing these new charts, do you re out the old ones?"
She turned white "Oh, otten all about that Do you think it would have--erased her?" She nodded toward her nav screen, having very nearly said "killed" instead of "erased"
"I don’t know We need to find out how fragile she is, or if we need to "
"Good idea I’ll add it to ave Cole a wry s o, you can get back to navigating"
Cole grinned and gave Molly a crisp Navy salute "Aye, aye, Captain," he said
She rolled her eyes and returned to her keyboard
••••
MOM, WE’RE AT 24 ON THE HYPERDRIVE COLE IS CHECKING DAKURA AND OUR CURRENT LOCATION_
She hit enter, then thought of so else
CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING? ACCESS THE SHIP’S COMPUTERS OR CAMERAS?_
NO, MOLLIE BUT I WOULD LIKE THAT I WOULD LOVE TO SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, AND MAYBE ONCE WE GET TO DAKURA OR LOK, WE CAN WORK ON THAT_
There was a pause And then her mother fired off a question of her own:
WHO IS COLE? IS HE A BOY? HOW OLD IS HE?_
Molly san to settle back down The questions colanced over at Cole to make sure he was busy with his calculations, then she leaned over her keyboard to shield the screen fro dreaht possible
And not just because herover at her navigator
A few hed and flopped back in his chair
"Not good," he groaned He leaned forward again to switch back to the conversation with Parsona, and Molly started tapping the enter key furiously, filling the screen with blank lines to push the conversation off the top of the display
Molly stole a glance at Cole and saw hi the blank screen of empty prompts, his head tilted as he tried to puzzle it out She could feel sweat popping out of the pores on her scalp and became consumed with the impulse to scratch her head
Her mother lobbed a bomb into the stillness
AS LONG AS YOU TWO ARE JUST KISSING, MOLLIE, THAT IS WONDERFUL NEWS HE SOUNDS LOVELY_
A contest began: seeing who could turn the brighter shade of pink Cole tried to look distracted, fiddling with the flight controls, but Parsona had been floating in eh juice to get us to Dakura," he said "We can’t even o Our course from Earth to Drenard took us near both, but we’re now too close to our destination to do anything but forge ahead Unless, of course, you want to get arrested while we ask the Navy for so the bad news to her e the conversation away from romantic advice:
NOT ENOUGH FUSION FUEL FOR DAKURA AND WE’RE IN A BIT OF A SPOT WITH THE LAW--CAN’T TOP UP AT ANY ORBITAL STATIONS WE’VE BEEN HEADING TOWARD DRENARD FOR SEVERAL DAYS NOW_
DRENARD? WHY ARE YOU GOING TO DRENARD? IS THE WAR OVER?_
This woke Molly up to how long her mother must have been shut away in a coaps in her knowledge Even better was the feeling of having answers to someone else’s questions
WE HAVE A DRENARD ON THE SHIP WITH US HER NAME’S ANLYN, BUT DON’T WORRY, SHE’S A FRIEND SHE SAVED MY LIFE SAID WE’D BE SAFE ON DRENARD AND THEY’D STOCK US UP WITH FOOD AND FUEL_
The screen stayed blank, the cursor flashing Her est the news Molly really wanted to jab the enter key a dozen " sentence off the screen She felt like Cole could see the sweat beneath her hair, then worried heran enele" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>