Chapter 5: Norrin.

“Norrin!” Mom’s voice carried up the stairs and into his room.

He’d had a bad day. Actually, no. Forget that. Saying that today had been bad was like saying the Clone Wars had been loud. It was true, but the reality hardly fit the situation.

As he usually did when he’d had a bad day, he’d gone up to his room without saying much to his Mom, and nothing to his dad who was doing yet another experiment in the lab outside the house.

He’d started his latest game and was enjoying a particularly tense moment when…

“NorrrrrrrrrrIN?”

Mom’s voice had gone up a notch, which told Norrin that he had a minute or two left in his game time. He loved the latest version of Sun Dawgz; he could play the thing for days if he had the time and didn’t need to eat, sleep or use the bathroom.

But Mom was a good mom, and made sure his game time was always interfered with. Especially if he was in the middle of a particularly intense virtual fight with...

“Norrin Mek! You have a guest!”

A what?

Suddenly, Mom’s face appeared on the holoscreen, blocking his view of the game.

“Norrin, I won’t call you again! There is a visitor here to see you, and he won’t be leaving until he tells you a few things you apparently need to hear!”

“Mom!” Norrin yelled back at her image, his hands spread apart. She eyeballed him, and her image vanished. Norrin grabbed his controller with both hands again, only to give up as his character ship blew up in a shower of pixels. Blast! He hated when she did that!

“Norrin!”

Okay, now he knew. Her voice had that slight little tinge to it that said he was on red alert. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d actually followed through on a threat, but when she did it had hit him like the fist of an angry god from the old myths of Kalla VII.

Norrin sighed, threw down his controller and walked to his door.

Another thing Norrin had learned to hate about his family life: his parents liked things so old-fashioned they seemed to be straight out of the Dark Times before the Clone Wars. Norrin had few friends in school, but he still hadn’t even heard tales about a family as backward as his own.

I mean, really, he thought. No one else lived in a house where the doors had to be opened manually. Even the poorest charity case at the Imperial school (and there were fewer of those every year) lived in houses where the door recognized you and opened automatically. That was embarrassing enough- it meant he couldn’t even think about having friends over to the house- not that there were that many anyways he could ask- but he’d be so embarrassed by the primitive tech his family sported he was sure no one would ever want to return.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

All the more embarrassing, considering his dad was the chief weapons researcher for this sector of the Empire. I mean, he thought again, it’s not like we can’t afford it! Good wavy-navy! Why would a Dad so immersed in the latest tech the galaxy had to offer want to dump all of that at the door to his house? Why didn’t they ever ask how that would affect Norrin?

“Nor-Oh! There you are!”

Mom had stopped her latest yell when she saw him descending the stairs. He plodded and galumphed down the flights of steps, completely ignoring Mom as he stalked past her.

“Norrin,” she said, folding her arms and looking at him over her glasses, “there is a very very official looking man wearing a military uniform sitting in my living room right now, and he won’t tell me why without you and your father beside me in front of him. Are you going to tell me why now and perhaps save yourself a doubly-hard consequence?”

Norrin gulped. His eyes bulged, and his breathing rate increased.

“I can see you know exactly why, young man,” she said. “I bet if we hooked up the medidroid to you right now, he’d think one of your blood vessels was fit to burst, wouldn’t he?

“Mom...”

“Don’t you dare take that exasperated tone with me! Do you realize how hard it was for us to get here? How many times your father’s putting his foot in his mouth almost landed us in some little backwater? Where the Moms have to do the educations of their children themselves? Humph! Bad enough we’re in the Outer Rim, at least we’re in the Corporate Sector. But you don’t seem to care! Now Norrin, what happened today? Spit it out! Or so help me, I will take that game system of yours up there and use it to play gravball with a few trees outside!”

“I...there’s a bully at school. I hacked into one of the school computers and...well, I gave him detention for a month.”

“And?”

“Well, it turns out his dad is kind’ve important, Mom...”

“Define ‘important,’ and do it fast.”

“He’s one of the heads of Transit Galactic Shipping.”

Mom closed her eyes and put her hand over her forehead. “You gave a month’s detention to the son of a Transport clan? Norrin, do you realize what that means? It’ll take your father and I at least a month to dig our way out of this one, bribing them with tech we’ve developed, giving away weapons and their mods for free...”

“That’s not all, Mom.”

Ten long seconds passed while Norrin shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other.

“Well?”

“Mara? Norrin?” it was Dad’s voice from the social room. He’d come in from the lab and was in the room with the guest.

And Mom hadn’t had to go into the lab and physically drag him in.

This fellow had to be important. And that made Norrin feel even sicker inside about what the visitor was likely here for.

“We are going to have a long talk after this, young man!” she said, wagging her finger in Norrin’s face.

“Maybe,” Norrin said weakly. If I’m still alive, that is, he thought.

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TO BE CONTINUED...