Allison spent her literature class staring out the window at the sports field. She had already finished reading the book they were studying. Written the essay and exam while stuck in her cockpit. The whiney angst of Cutter and his crew of misfit teenage mercenaries fighting against corp power. It had been written one hundred and seventy-five years before. She had no basis for comparison. They lived in a dome on an ice ball. She was millions of light years away. Also, the author was an adult. He definitely could not write teenage girls. She had nothing in common with the characters. Street kids surviving in the service tunnels of the New Amazon dome. If anything, the author’s rage against the establishment kind of pissed her off because she was technically part of that establishment.
She blew a stray bang out of her eyes and tapped her stylus on the desk. The teacher left her be. Bit had transferred her study log to the school at some point. It seemed so long as she was quiet and stayed out of the way, they’d just let her veg until they were caught up. She was about two months ahead of them. There was a lot of time to pass in that fighter. The studies had kept Bit from obsessing over her theory that the pair were being manipulated by some higher power.
She only lasted about fifteen minutes of the class before she got bored. She accessed a secure data connection and opened her assigned training. She’d gone from a single one-hour training course on sexual harassment that everyone had to do quarterly, to six hundred hours spread over forty-six courses. Her eyes went wide. She swept the window away and reviewed her personnel file.
Allison scowled at the line that showed her flight status as revoked in a bright red font. She scrolled so she could see the top. She was very upset to see that not only was Major Ghai her commanding officer, he was also her direct report. She had no buffer between herself and him. She had at least had her squadron leader, wing commander, flight commander and an XO. She looked for her trade designation, it was right below her pay grade. She raised an eyebrow at her pay grade, it had gone up two classes.
She tapped the link for Military Specialist. It gave her a warning that she was about to view a classified document and warned her of the penalties if she were to leak the information. She flicked the ‘I understand’ button. Allison blinked as she read the list of training requirements. She scanned the bottom of the file. She noted it had last been updated the day after she was found. As far as she could tell it was some sort of Special Forces posting. She was very confused. She was a pilot and had only basic combat training outside a spacecraft. She swept her personnel file away, did the same with the trade info and logged out of her military ID.
Her day was finished with PE. At least she could do that. She found she was still trying to recover from her zero-G exposure. Even with her preliminary work on the Rampart to regain muscle mass she was still down fifteen percent, and she was getting tired out faster than she used to. All of this was expected from prolonged exposure to weightlessness. She was still in better shape than most sixteen-year-olds. It was very frustrating for her to struggle with things she had found easy before her ordeal.
When gym classes ended, Allison started heading to the changing room when she ran into the Headmistress. Allison remembered she was supposed to go to cheerleading after school so she spun around on her heel and joined the squad that was gathering. She sat near the back on the bleachers and did her best to be invisible. She had decided early on to treat it like it was a detention, she’d do her time and get on with her life. Aryna sat down beside her. Allison looked at her.
“How did you get suckered into this?”
Aryna smiled.
“I heard my friend was joining. I thought it might be fun.”
Allison smiled back.
“It is going to be awful.”
Aryna put up her hand. She gave some suggestions for uniform style, and also suggested Nargle as the mascot. Once everyone saw the holo’s of Oozie Nargle won. Allison let her friend do all the talking. She wasn’t looking forward to this, especially with Trixie in the mix. She had a whole mess of conflicting emotions on the subject of Trixie and she didn’t want to try and sort through them. Once the uniforms, mascot and the rest of the details were sorted out. The headmistress started running them through drills. Allison had to sit down halfway through. The headmistress approached her.
“Allison, are you alright? You seem to be getting tired pretty easily.”
Allison shrugged.
“I’m fine. Just need a drink.”
Aryna ran over and smiled. Allison looked up at Aryna and started shaking her head. Aryna held up her hand towards Allison.
“Headmistress, she can’t say anything because the whole thing is classified, she was stuck in her fighter’s cockpit for almost a month. It was dead in space, and she was in zero-G for the whole time. It’s going to take her time to recover.”
Allison blinked at Aryna in disbelief.
“That is classified! Do you know how much trouble you’re in now?”
Aryna shrugged.
“I’m a Queen, and not a member of your military, they have no power over me.”
Allison frowned.
“They could kick you out of System’s Alliance space.”
Aryna shook her head and laughed.
“No, they can’t. Don’t worry. Besides how is you being stuck in a fighter for a month going to harm the security of the System’s Alliance? You barely made it through gym class. Now you’re doing running drills? Someone had to say something.”
The headmistress looked between the two.
“Allison, you can sit out and watch. Aryna get back to the drills please.”
When the practice ended the Headmistress sat down beside Allison.
“Allison, I’m concerned about you. A month alone in such a claustrophobic space. It brings your outburst this morning into a much clearer focus.”
Allison shook her head and shrugged.
“It’s fine. I had Bit and Oozie. I wasn’t alone. I have a physical training regimen from the military doctors and physiotherapy. I’ll be fine. I just have to be patient.”
The headmistress looked out over the gym.
“You know, the Dark Mother spent three weeks in a starfighter with only an AI for company. She wrote about the experience. She equated it to the time she woke up in a coffin and couldn’t get out for a couple of hours. Only it lasted for weeks. You should talk to someone about all of this. The military has councilors for this sort of thing.”
Allison made a face.
“Yeah, no thanks. I’m fine mentally. Thanks Headmistress, I need to get changed. I’m under house arrest and am only allowed out for school and related activities.”
The headmistress stood up and watched Allison walk towards the changing room. The evening was quiet at the Wanjala residence. Allison took that as an opportunity to start doing what training she could via holo. She was going to need to be on the base for weapons, power armor and vehicle training. Those would require a full holosuite with solid holograms. They were not ready for civilian use yet. They were ridiculously expensive. Enough the System’s Alliance could build a squadron of their new Athena fighters for the cost of one holosuite. The base had two.
That was pretty much Allison’s life for the next four weeks. Aryna had integrated into the school and colony in Allison’s absence, so she had an active social life. Near the beginning of Allison’s house arrest, she’d tried to stay home more, but Allison just encouraged her to go out. Allison had fallen back to her old habits by that time, which was, she was constantly doing training for her new role in the System’s Alliance military. She was in the midst of computer intrusion training when her mother knocked on her door. Allison hit pause on the simulation she was running to hack into an encrypted database. She spun her desk chair around.
“What mom?”
Apiyo smiled.
“You have a visitor.”
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Tyler appeared to the side of her mother. Oozie who’d been curled up under Allison’s desk perked up and sniffed the air. She looked up at Allison. After the nargle seemed confident Allison wasn’t upset by the visit, she went back to sleep. Allison saw that look on her mother’s face. The same one she’d had when Ajay came to visit for the first time. Tyler had his school bag with him. Her mom motioned to the kitchen.
“Should I bring snacks?”
Allison shook her head.
“No mom.”
“I’ll just close this to give you two some privacy.”
“No! Leave it open.”
Her mother sighed and wandered off. Tyler stood there at the precipice of her door. Like if he entered he’d be devoured. Allison looked at him. She hated being interrupted in the middle of a training session, so there was annoyance in her voice.
“Tyler, why are you here?”
He adjusted his glasses and looked towards the east side of the house which would be the front door and his escape route. Allison frowned.
“Seriously? What do you want? I was in the middle of something, so at least tell me why you thought it was okay to visit me.”
Tyler had that deer in the headlights look he usually got when Allison spoke to him directly. Allison looked down at Oozie.
“Hey, you lazy nargle, I think he lost his tongue go help him find it.”
Oozie perked up, and then bounded towards Tyler who looked like he might actually runaway until he noticed it wasn’t a vicious guard dog, but an adorable cat-dog hybrid with big blue eyes. Oozie didn’t jump on him, she just rubbed herself against his legs. He hesitantly reached out his hand but then pulled it back. Allison rolled her eyes.
“Go ahead, pet her. It’s what she wants. She’s a total cuddle monster.”
Tyler reached out hesitantly again and touched the nargle’s white fur. Oozie leaned into it and soon Tyler was down on one knee petting her with both hands. Oozie licked his face running her tongue across his glasses a couple of times. Allison motioned to the door.
“Oozie, go bother mom.”
The nargle bounded past Tyler who stood up and pulled a package out of his pocket. He ripped it open and started cleaning his glasses with the white cloth it contained. Allison motioned to her matter-recycling bin. He tossed both the cloth and package into it.
“Did you get your part of the project done?”
Allison blinked a few times.
“Oh, that was tonight?”
Tyler nodded. Allison started tapping around her holo-HUD rapidly trying to find her file.
“I think I got that finished. I’m sorry I’ve been so distracted with work. Oh, there it is. Just put the numbers in, it will do everything we need and make the report.”
Allison flicked the application she’d created towards Tyler. He adjusted his glasses and tapped something on his tablet. He nodded.
“This… is amazing. You wrote a program to do all the probabilities for us?”
Allison shrugged.
“I wrote it when I was being homeschooled out of boredom. I had a tutor helping me. I had to take a computer course for work and made some improvements. You really think it’s good?”
Tyler nodded. He absently walked further into her room and sat on her bed. He scrolled through the code. He didn’t look up as he spoke.
“We can present on this alone. We could model everyone’s projects in this. It’s genius.”
Allison shrugged.
“Okay then.”
She turned back to her wall and resumed her training course letting Tyler do whatever he was doing. Tyler said something. Allison didn’t hear him because she was focused on what she was doing. She was typing up a storm on a keyboard he could not see. She pressed the commit key and turned back to him after pausing the simulation.
“Sorry, what?”
“What are you working on now?”
Allison glanced at her HUD then answered.
“I’m hacking through Crusader Technologies ICE to steal their project database.”
“Cool.”
Tyler suddenly realized what she had just said and had a what did you just say moment. He adjusted his glasses nervously.
“Uh, should I go?”
Allison shook her head.
“Why?”
“Because that’s illegal and I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Allison laughed.
“Sorry, it’s a simulation. Kind of a test exam before my real one Saturday. Military training. Do you need something more from me?”
Tyler shook his head.
“No, this is everything we need for the project. I’ll figure out how to get home.”
Allison looked out her window at the falling snow, then to her HUD and noticed the falling temperature. It was going to be in the -40 C range that night.
“You don’t have a ride?”
Tyler shook his head.
“My mom is at a party. She said she could pick me up in two hours.”
Allison shrugged.
“Just stay here. I don’t mind. Here.”
Allison swept her hand over her wrist and her AR HUD shifted from augmented reality into actual reality. The hologram appeared in front of her. She turned to her desk and resumed the simulation. Tyler stood up and moved closer. He was staring intently at what Allison was doing. He was maybe three inches from her when he leaned down to get a better view. It was the closest the pair had been in the entire time they’d known each other. He spoke.
“Wouldn’t this be easier with a data jack?”
Allison nodded and kept typing.
“Even if I was old enough to get one, I still couldn’t. I can’t get cybernetics. A halo or data jack was the last course, this is the more advanced one. Air gapped secure system, only accessible with keyboard interface. No data ports.”
She typed in a command to run a daemon. The display showed another ICE down. She had one to go. The simulated VI was threatening to kick her out of the system so she spawned a denial of service attack by typing in a command to run six million daemons to all spam the VI with data requests. This caused a massive delay in system responses. She was able to pull the VI’s system access credentials while the data pull request was stuck in memory. She used that to bypass the last ICE. She killed her denial of service attack. Used the VI’s system access credentials and sent a data request for the whole database. The holo flashed a green box saying success.
Tyler adjusted his glasses and smiled. He realized how close he was and backed up so quickly he fell onto her bed. Allison laughed.
“I don’t bite.”
Then she laughed again.
“Oh wait, that’s a lie, I’m part vampire, I bite a lot.”
Tyler tried to look casual while he straightened up from where he’d fallen. Allison’s holo-phone rang with the tone she’d set the Major’s comm signal too. She didn’t switch her display to holo-HUD. She figured she knew what this was about. She answered it. The Major’s face appeared in front of her.
“Readiness check.”
Allison reached into her desk drawer and pulled out her Qual’sa pistol and her vibro knife. Then she picked up her armor and showed it to him.
He nodded.
“Better. Good night, Ensign.”
“Good night, sir.”
He ended the call and she put her weapons away. Tyler was staring at the drawer.
“You’re allowed to have those?”
Allison nodded.
“Of course. If the colony gets attacked, I’m expected to defend it no matter what I’m doing. What, did you think they’d have us rushing to the base, get our equipment then rush back out?”
Tyler adjusted his glasses.
“I just thought, it was different here then the domes. That people didn’t carry weapons.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a dome. My dad when he’s here is the same way. Raiders, pirates, aliens, they could attack at any moment, with little to no warning. Would you rather us be defenseless? Or armed?”
“Well, I would rather not have to worry about attack at all. I don’t like guns.”
Allison raised an eyebrow.
“Wait, you don’t like guns? So, you’ve never fired one?”
Tyler nodded.
“Tyler, we’re on the frontier, everyone should be able to defend themselves and their families. I’m going to base tomorrow after school, I need to qualify on a new assault rifle. You should join me. I can sign you on base, you can come to the range, and I’ll book some time for me to train you how to shoot.”
“No, I shouldn’t. My mom wouldn’t like that.”
“You don’t have to tell her. Just tell her I’m getting you in to see the fighters. Which I can totally do. They’re going to be doing their big annual recruitment drive. I’ll just say you’re thinking of signing up. People do it all the time. Please? You and your mom live on the outskirts of the colony. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I like you. The thought of you out there defenseless its concerning to me.”
Tyler adjusted his glasses and stared at her floor for a few minutes.
“I guess, I could go.”
“Don’t get so excited about seeing the fighters I see you drooling over on your tablet or anything.”
He looked up at Allison and for the first time since she’d met him, his lips shifted into almost a smile. Allison looked at her holo-display again and tapped the command to send it back to her contacts. Then she swept the AR HUD off to the side so her vision was clear. There was something she’d been meaning to ask Tyler for a couple of weeks. She rubbed the back of her neck causing her long auburn hair, which was currently down to shift and sway.
“So, like, I’m supposed to go to this stupid… thing. The League of Sentient Races has established an embassy here, uh, you’ve been watching the news, right? About the whole new diplomatic ties thing?”
Tyler nodded. Allison bit her lower lip. How was this so hard? He was her friend. He was fascinated by aliens.
“Anyway, there’s this function, a gala, the LoSR High Council has asked me to attend in the middle of fall break on the Wednesday, they want to give me some award or something, and I’m supposed to bring a date. I mean I’d just bring Aryna but like she’s… got her own thing… anyway, I need a date. And I thought, since you were so interested in other cultures you might want to… I don’t know. Come hang out with me there. And I said date, but that’s totally what they called my plus one, but like just friends. I thought you’d be interested.”
Tyler opened his mouth and he just stared at her. Allison blushed.
“It’s okay, don’t worry about it, you’d be bored, and it’s probably going to be lame anyway. I’ll just go solo. Or maybe bring Oozie, she did half the work… or something. I’ll figure it out.”
She turned away to start looking over at her holo-display to get over the embarrassment of being turned down, realized there was nothing to look at because she’d turned it off. She blushed and just ended up looking out the window. She tapped her fingers. Tyler started to say something a couple of times and eventually he managed to get it out.
“What am I supposed to wear?”
Allison shrugged.
“Something fancy? I have no idea. I’m just wearing my Mess Dress Uniform.”
Allison walked to her closet and pulled out the uniform which consisted of a near floor length black skirt, short black jacket with golden buttons, and a single golden band around the end of the sleeves, golden cummerbund, and a white dress collared blouse with a short black tie.
“There’s my service pin too. Kind of wish it had pants. Seriously it’s the thirtieth century. You’d think they’d have gender neutral options. Oh well.”
“I’ll go, if you don’t have anyone else.”
Allison put her uniform back in her walk-in closet. She smiled.
“Cool. So… I’m new at having friends over so umm what do we do now?”
Tyler looked around her room and just shrugged. Allison looked out her window. Normally if she was going to do something with someone, she’d just go to the Commerce Complex, or the holo-arcade.
“Sorry, I’d say let’s go to the holo-arcade but… I’m still under house arrest. Well, umm, do you mind if I do more training? I’m really behind.”
Tyler shrugged, picked up his tablet and started watching something. Allison swept her hand in front of herself and the AR HUD popped up. She launched the next training course.