Lessons

Alwen and Gato jogged back home and both of them quickly showered off the sweat and got ready for the day ahead of them. Neither Alwen nor Gato were much good at cooking so they grabbed a breakfast burrito from a small stand on their way to work. Gato gave her a quick kiss goodbye before hopping on to a water taxi heading to the recently established Vet clan base on Pandemonium, while Alwen hopped into another taxi going the opposite direction to the Temple of Thoth. Alwen wasn’t sure if it was some weird coincidence that the university temple and military temple were on opposite sides of Temple city, or if someone had the foresight to keep soldiers away from the students. Even on Torwen there was a divide between people who used their brains professionally and those who used their muscles, but here on Pandemonium the divide was even stronger. Likely a result of having the most extreme examples of either group in one city.

Gato had picked a Temple closer to the newly built base than the University in the center of Temple city, so Alwen had a twenty minute commute to eat her breakfast and get herself ready for the day. The water traffic in the center of Temple city was much busier than her quiet little residential district as water taxis and water buses zipped from one plaza to another, along with the great lumbering barges that drifted into the city to offload their cargo of fresh produce and daily necessities. Even in these early hours of the Pandemonian morning crowds of people were forming around the open-air market stalls, outdoor cafés, and small sporting fields. New accounting and administration offices and the booming manufacturing jobs were toiling hard to get the planets industry up and running, and all those workers had to pass through the center to go to work.

Temple city was the economic engine that fueled the growing rural and urban settlements on Pandemonium, much like how Noctis had been the focal city in the development of Mars. The steel construction beams, motorized power tools, irrigation pipes, and tractors needed to support the growing towns were all made in Pandemonium before being shipped up river or down the coast.

And right in the heart of this bustling colonial city was a single patch of relative tranquility, Temple City U, or the Temple of Thoth. Here Astarte had the foresight to realize that her new colony would need a steady supply of intelligent and studied individuals, while also realizing that the more well off working pioneers of this world would need a place to send their youth. Pandemonium had only been under Hellworlder rule for a little under a decade, but the pirate lord Greyson had ruled this world for much longer. He had seen it only as a place to store his treasure and repair his ships, but the throngs of Terrans his enterprise brought in through the underground slave trade had needed places to live, farms to feed themselves, and workshops to maintain the city.

Greyson had recognized this need and in uncharacteristic magnanimity he freed the slaves he brought in so that they could work the virgin land of this hidden world. They were more serfs than free people, but it had allowed them to establish themselves and settle down. After Astarte came in they experienced little change besides a stable government, true freedom, and lower taxes. As such there were enough young people with the financial means to seek higher education.

Alwen had learned this all by talking with her peers in the University’s staff and the other students. Most professors had been invited from off world, but they were more than happy to learn their new homes history and integrate themselves into the local culture as Pandemonians. Alwen wasn’t exactly a staff member of TCU, but the fleet had a deal arranged to educate their promoted officers and new recruits here, and the staff was used to the arrangement enough to consider Alwen just another member of the TCU family. It was an odd feeling, but not an unusual one. On her first day back on Femeri Lieutenant Karega had told her that Terran pack bonding was very powerful and versatile. The pirate crew of the Astaroth had pretty much adopted her on sight, whether she wanted it or not.

It was very different to how she often felt on Torwen, she always felt like a guest even among her own people, someone they were just temporarily tolerating. One difference between Torweni and Terrans was their willingness to bond to other people. During their evolutionary history Terrans domesticated many more species of animal than the Torweni. They domesticated other pack hunters like wolves, made peace with solitary creatures like cats, tamed several species of pastoral grazers, and even small insects like bees. The Torweni were amateurs at domestication when compared to Terrans. Earth had more landmass and land based animals than Torwen, which gave them more opportunities to seek out pets and livestock.

Alwen passed through the south entrance with a crowd of students and briskly began her climb to the upper reaches of the Temple. Many levels of the pyramids had huge open arches along the outer walls that let in light. There was even a complicated network of skylights that, with some newly installed mirrors, could shine natural light deep into the building and gave the halls a very natural feel . Showing just how incredibly well designed these pyramids were.

Alwens assigned classroom was on the third level from the pyramids top, which meant she had a long climb before she could start her day. There were elevators, but the temples weren’t exactly designed for them and one had to change between several different elevators to actually get anywhere. Besides Alwen enjoyed the exercise, even if the steps of indestructible stone were just a little too high for her legs.

She finished her quick jog up the stairs only a little out of breath and strode across the mostly empty halls of the upper levels. The Hellworlders were allocated to the upper levels since they were the least accessible and they had less people to teach. Which suited Alwen just fine since her classroom was on the outside and had a magnificent view of Temple city, especially now that the fog was clearing up.

For once she wasn’t the first to arrive. Her new subordinates, Menda, Kana, Foru, and Vira had actually beaten her to class, likely because of the small traffic jam that slowed her down. The four of them were all Torweni who had studied medicine like she had, in fact they had all gone to the same school, graduated the same year, and had all worked at the same hospital after graduation. There was once a time Alwen thought they were her closest friends in the world, well in a certain mindset they still were. As long as that world was Torwen, and none of her new friends were there.

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When she had graduated her father had made sure she was assigned to a hospital her older sister, Toray, managed. There her jealous and petty older sister had made Alwen’s life a living hell, so much so that she decided to escape off world. Granted she had been training to work off world for years prior, but it was Toray’s fault Alwen had been desperate enough to accidentally join a pirate ship. Toray’s pressure and abuse of power had also soured Alwen’s friendships, they were unfairly targeted because of their relationship to her, and they had joined Toray’s hospital to keep their friend group together. Alwen didn’t blame them for being bitter, but it did emphasize how she wasn’t really apart of their group, at least in her mind it did. She wasn’t sure how they really felt about her year and a half away from Torwen.

When she had gone home to seek forgiveness for willfully breaking her vows of nonviolence, the head priestess had both forgiven her and promoted her. Head priestess Genta Miy had given Alwen her blessing, revived a long dead order of Combat medics, the Order of Orath, and made Alwen its head priestess. Since then she had recruited her old friends into the Order of Orath and had been teaching them Terran biology, advanced medicine, along with English and Galactic common.

“Well, well” Vira crooned in decent English as Alwen entered. “Look who is red faced and out breathing.” She said with a knowing smirk. “New boy friend breaking the bed.” She teased.

“Its out of breath, not out breathing. Good pronunciation though, and no he’s not breaking the bed, I’m just winded from running up the stairs.” She left out the fact that they had already broken the wooden bed and replaced it with a metal framed one weeks ago. They weren’t even doing what Vira was implying, Gato had just flopped down a little too hard one night. English and Torweni shared the phrase breaking the bed, but both used it differently. English used it to mean active ‘fun time’, while her people used it to imply a past tense.

Vira was a tall women with deep ruby red colored skin and small stubby black horns poking out above her brows. Some of her Marine friends, mainly Izzy, had described Vira’s appearance as demonic, but in a good way. Alwen personally didn’t see the connection, the Torweni had legends of evil spirits, but theirs were more akin to the appearance of the Kruhur since they were the origin of those legends. The Humans had legends of evil creatures, but there were so many that Alwen couldn’t keep them all straight.

Vira’s grandparents were immigrants from Torwen’s southern archipelagos, and their culture was much more lascivious than the northern Altoran culture. Vira had always held on to those roots despite being raised on Altoray like Alwen, and Alwen had long learned to let her bawdy comments slide.

Foru glanced up “You jog up those stairs? That’s like eight flights.” He was an archetypical strong silent type. He shared Alwen’s defining violet skin, silky white hair, and protruding bone structures along his cheek bones. He was much taller and broader than most Torweni men, and struck a very heroic figure. Though, next to any Terran man he seemed very average.

“Yeah, its good exercise, you guys should also start. Ship life requires a certain level of physicality.”

Menda turned away from her longtime lover Kana, “Why, we’re just doctors?” she asked in Torweni. Kana had the racial features as Alwen and Foru, while Menda was a rare blue skinned Torweni. A trait considered very attractive and beautiful among her people.

“Yeah,” Kana agreed, also switching into their native tongue. “I’m not against exercise, but its not like we’re expected to do anything super physical.”

Alwen was about to speak, about to tell them that when shit hit the fan no one cared about whether you were just a doctor, but she bit back her words. They wouldn’t understand what she was saying until they went through it themselves; also, she did not want to explain that very gross analogy to them. Instead she found something they could actually get their heads around “Half our job is making the crew actually come in for checkups, and now that I don’t have a grumpy old bear to beat them into line we’ll have to drag them in ourselves.”

“What, like toddlers?” Kana asked jokingly.

Alwen tilted her head as she thought “In some ways yes, but very big, awry toddlers; with a penchant for getting shot or stabbed. Actually now that I think about it, I’m not sure there’s actually a difference between adults and toddlers.”

“That can’t be true.” Kana said.

“No really, one night Alice decided out of nowhere that she was going to sleep in my room and just curled up on my legs. Trapped me in my own bed.”

“Alice is the tall furry black and white one with big teeth right?” Menda asked.

“Yes”

Menda nodded, stray locks of black hair slipping forward, “Okay, I know its not really polite to ask, but how are you so casual with all the animal people? I’ve heard the story about how the Union transformed Earths animals, but still?”

“I don’t really see what your getting at.”

Menda looked a little embarrassed but pressed forward “I mean, they’re animals aren’t they?”

Alwen knew she wasn’t trying to sound insensitive, and this was a part of what she had to teach her old friends before they properly joined the fleet. “I understand what your getting at, but you need to understand that we’re also ‘just’ animals. We just happen to be very clever animals who don’t think they’re animals, they’re the same way. We just happen to come across our intelligence over the course of several million years. And when I first met them they were all just aliens to me, the human/uplifted divide didn’t register for me.”

“Right,” Kana said hesitantly, obviously he and Menda had talked about this on their and wanted to get it off their chests. “but now that you know doesn’t it, I don’t know, feel wrong? I mean I could understand if you were dating a human, but Gato’s… different.”

Her eye twitched in irritation, since she began dating Gato she had heard this sort of thing more than once. On one hand she understood that actually having a relationship with an animal was gross, but in her head he wasn’t an animal, he was a person. And that divide made all the difference for her. It didn’t matter what he looked like, what he descended from, or what he had been in his early life, Gato was a person. “I know this is coming from a place of love” Alwen said slowly “but I’ll kindly ask that you to drop it and never bring it up again. I would also recommend approaching the Uplifted with the understanding that they are people, with very complex thoughts and feelings. And they’re hyper aware of people who don’t think of them as people. And for the record, if I ever thought for a single moment that they weren’t people then that would be a nonstarter for any relationship. Understood?”

She looked across the faces of her old friends and saw looks of fear cross their faces. They had felt the change in the room’s atmosphere and knew that Alwen wouldn’t allow any push back on this point. They nodded and Alwen let it drop.

“Alright. By the way, todays going to be different from usual. Doctor Bachir has offered to train you on some of the actual equipment you’ll be working with. So we’re going to focus this morning on English, and in the afternoon we’ll walk over to Caduceus pharmaceuticals and biolabs.” She said changing the topic completely to help dispel some of the tension.

She was in a difficult spot, not only did she need to train these four in Terran biology and space age medicine, but she still had a great deal to learn as well. She was training people in fields she was only just coming to understand, her saving grace was that Bachir had offered to take up some of the slack and go over the subjects she still fuzzy on.

She moved to the front of the room and opened her lesson plan. “Alright, today we’re going to go over the works of the ‘new saints’. Plenty of tricky language here, and it gives us a pretty good look into how the Terrans see things.”