“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.