Earth Girl (23 page)

‘I served with your grandmother on Planet First, Jarra. I was rather younger then of course. These days I have a quiet desk job in charge of Earth’s solar arrays up in space. Nice view of the home planet of course, but not nearly as exciting.’

I gulped and nodded. I didn’t know what to say. I was grazzed that a Military Colonel was speaking to me.

‘I saw the commendation. Your grandmother would have been proud of you,’ he concluded.

Commendation? What commendation?

The Colonel gave Playdon a friendly nod, and headed off with the two aides trailing after him. I stood there with a black case, a flag of humanity, and a confused expression.

The class clustered round me. Believe it or not, Dalmora was crying. ‘Jarra, that was just zan! The symbology. Handing down the honour of the fallen hero to the …’ She was too emotional to say any more. I expect she was already planning a vid about Military traditions.

Fian spoke up hesitantly. ‘Have I got it right? Jarra Tell Morrath is your name now?’

I nodded.

‘What’s in the box?’ asked Krath. ‘It’s not her ashes, is it?’

‘Oh no. Just copies of her medals,’ I said. ‘Her closest relative would have got the originals when she died.’

I headed off to the door, meaning to take the flag and the medals to my room, but Playdon stopped me. ‘This seems an appropriate point to mention something else. University Cassandra formally requested that our help in saving their research team should be recorded. That was still being processed when I checked this morning, but has now gone through. The whole class should find they have a note of commendation on their official record. I’ll leave you to read the exact wording yourselves.’

There was a collective gasp, and people all reached for their lookups.

‘A few of you will have an extra bit detailing your individual contribution.’ Playdon continued. ‘Jarra, you have a courage commendation for entering a deep area of collapsing debris to prevent certain loss of life at serious risk of your own.’

The class applauded and I went pink.

Playdon waited for the applause to die down. ‘Jarra, you also have a mandatory official reprimand for disobeying dig site safety rules by deliberately entering a deep area of collapsing debris at wanton risk to safety of your life and equipment.’

‘That’s not fair,’ protested Fian.

Playdon actually gave a genuine smile. ‘I can’t help that. It’s mandatory, but coupled with a commendation it won’t do her any harm. Consider yourself reprimanded, Jarra.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.

It was another ten minutes before I managed to escape. Once I was finally alone in my room, I opened the box to take a look inside. There were rows of engraved metal discs. One for each planet my grandmother served on for Planet First. I’d study them, and their planet numbers later, try and work out if any of the new worlds in Epsilon or Kappa sector were there.

There was a set of medals and Military insignia too. No wonder they’d sent a full Colonel. My grandmother had been a Colonel too and they couldn’t honour her with a lower rank than her own. I was grazzed.

The next day, I woke up and found a mail message from my parents. It was text only, an agonisingly carefully worded few lines. They had been notified the Honour Ceremony had taken place and had watched the recording. They understood it was wholly up to me whether I decided to have contact with them, but they hoped I would.

I read it about five times, with my nerves as tight as Dalmora’s guitar strings, and then I called them.

There was no answer of course. I was a nardle to think there would be. My parents weren’t just in a different time zone, but on Planet First assignment. I remembered what Joth had said. People fighting a giant, man-eating, whatever, can’t ask it to wait because their daughter just called for a chat. The words were silly, but there was a core of truth in them. My parents would be unavailable for calls a lot of the time.

So, I left a message. I asked them to call me when they could, and set my lookup to accept their call as emergency priority. Then I went into breakfast, and ate with my eyes constantly fixed on my lookup. There was still no call when it was time to get into my impact suit, no call when we arrived at our dig site location and it was time for me to start doing my job.

I stared down at the silent lookup. If my parents called and I didn’t answer, they might change their minds like Issette’s mother and never call again. Even if they did, I’d have to wait for hours or days. I’d already waited eighteen years and …

I went over to the tag support sled so Fian could lock the lifeline beam onto my suit. ‘Fian, can you do something for me?’

‘Yes?’

I handed him my lookup. ‘I can’t take my lookup with me when I’m tag leading, but if a call comes in then tell me so I can come and answer it.’

‘You want me to drag you out of tag leading to answer your mail?’ Fian sounded utterly grazzed. ‘You really mean it? Playdon will throw a fit.’

‘Playdon can throw all the fits he likes,’ I said. ‘This is … This is really important. You’ll know the right call, because it’ll be flagged as emergency.’

I started work, trying to concentrate on what I was doing. It was two hours later, when I was tagging the last rocks covering what we hoped was a stasis box, that I heard Fian’s embarrassed voice on the team circuit.

‘Jarra, there’s a call on your lookup.’

‘What?’ asked Playdon. ‘You should all have your lookups set to …’

I ignored him, dropping my tag gun and setting my hover belt to send me skimming back to Fian’s tag support sled. ‘Fian, answer the call. Tell them I’m coming.’

‘Right …’ he said.

‘Jarra,’ said Playdon. ‘You can’t …’

‘Sir, this is an emergency.’

‘Uh, I’ve got two Military officers calling from Planet First,’ said Fian.

I don’t know whether it was because of the desperation in my voice, or Fian’s comment, but Playdon backed down. ‘All right, Jarra answer your call. Team 1 take a break. Team 2 take over.’ He paused. ‘I want to make it perfectly clear that nobody is to take this as a precedent. Making personal calls in the middle of a dig site is quite unacceptable.’

I barely heard him. I reached the tag support sled, grabbed my lookup from Fian, and hovered a short distance along the clearway to give myself some privacy before taking the call off standby. I stared for a moment at the two faces on the lookup screen. I’d imagined various fantasies of my parents over the years, and these were nothing like any of them. They were strangers, they looked true combat Military, they were … I finally managed to speak.

‘Hello.’

They didn’t react for a couple of seconds, and I was panicking like a nardle before I remembered this call was being routed through the dedicated comms portal network all the way between Earth and distant Kappa sector, so of course there’d be relay lag. I saw their faces change as they heard me speak.

‘Jarra?’ asked the woman.

Her hair was almost like mine, though a little longer, and the man … Was there a resemblance between our faces, or was I imagining that? I realized that all they could see of me was an anonymous impact suit. I unsealed my hood and tugged it down. ‘Yes.’

‘We weren’t expecting impact suits,’ said the man. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m on the main New York Dig Site.’ I held up the lookup for a moment so they could get a view of the ruins. ‘This is what I do. This …’

I went all nardle and emotional for a while after that. Later, I got coherent again, and we talked about what had happened when I was born. My parents were honest about that. They’d had a tough decision to make. It hadn’t just been about me and them. They had to think about my older brother and sister as well. I’m not saying that I didn’t still feel hurt that they’d dumped me, but I didn’t yell any insults, and I don’t think I said the exo word.

And eventually my parents had to go and do something Military, and my class had found their stasis box and were preparing to head back to the dome, so we said goodbye. I was both reluctant and relieved to do that. This call had been unbelievable, wonderful beyond anything that amaz or zan or any other words could describe, but I couldn’t handle any more emotion.

‘In theory, we’re on this assignment for at least another three months,’ said my mother, ‘but things are getting messy on this planet so we may have to pull out. If we do, then perhaps you’ll let us visit you on Earth.’

‘That would be … That would be utterly zan.’

I ended the call and headed back to the waiting sleds. I saw Playdon’s distinctive impact suit coming to meet me. I’d broken every rule on the dig site. He was going to kill me, and I didn’t care.

‘Jarra,’ said Playdon, very gently. ‘Was that bad news?’

I didn’t understand his reaction for a moment, then I realized what I must look like. I was shaking, and my face was … I scrubbed the back of my hand across my wet eyes. ‘No sir. At least, I don’t think … It’s just … I can’t explain at the moment, but I appreciate that personal calls are out of place on a dig site. It won’t happen again.’

Incredibly, he didn’t yell at me about that, or my hood being down, or wandering off alone down the clearway. He just accepted it with a nod of acknowledgement.

As we headed back to the sleds, I pulled up my hood and sealed it to hide my face from the class. I’d explain this to them later, I’d tell them the whole truth, but not now. I needed to give myself a few days to recover before facing that ordeal. It wouldn’t be hard to keep up the lies for that long. After the Honour Ceremony, and calls from Planet First, even Playdon believed I was really a norm Military kid who for some incomprehensible reason had sent in her application via an Earth school.

It was three days later, during the evening meal, when my lookup chimed to signal emergency mail. I eagerly hurried out of the hall and answered it. I thought it was my parents, calling to tell me they were coming to Earth. I was already celebrating, planning how I could take them to the places that were special to me, like the tropical bird dome of Zoo Europe, and picturing them meeting Candace. But it wasn’t my parents. It was a Military General, with a solemn, compassionate expression on his face.

I listened numbly as he described how the Planet First team on K19448 had been forced to abandon the planet and make an emergency withdrawal. They’d held a defensive perimeter while people portalled out. The final group holding the line had suffered casualties as they pulled back to the portals. The General said the words I knew from every Remembrance Day. My parents had lost their lives giving new worlds to humanity.

I held myself together until the call ended, but then I went crazy, pounding the dismal grey flexiplas walls of the corridor with my fists. After so many years of bitterness, I’d finally wound up my nerves to breaking point and contacted my parents. They hadn’t told the ape kid to nuke off. They’d called me and talked to me. They’d actually wanted to meet me. It had been … It had been like all the happy endings that ape kids hoped for, and it had ended with a Military General saying …

And then my anger vanished leaving just a feeling of emptiness. I let my hands drop to my sides, because hitting the walls wouldn’t help. Nothing would help now. Fate had finally won, and I didn’t care what happened anymore.

I would have just stood there forever, my life in stasis, but someone else wouldn’t let me. Jarra Military kid instinctively responded to a civilian in trouble. She took charge, protecting me from reality by taking me into her perfect world. I was her now. I was JMK. I was living the dream, and had everything, and could do anything I wanted, anything at all. My parents were still alive, I could portal to the stars, I could be Military, and I could have Fian.

Several of my classmates looked at me anxiously as I came back into the hall, and Playdon came over. ‘Everything all right, Jarra?’

That was my second emergency call from Planet First. No wonder these civilians were concerned, and had been treating me like a fragile glass ornament for days. ‘Yes. Things had got messy on K19 … I mean on the planet where my parents are assigned.’

‘I’m assuming that messy is Military language for extremely dangerous,’ said Playdon. ‘If they’d hit something bad, like the chimera of Thetis, then I can see …’

‘Exactly. It looked like they might have to pull out while under attack, and that can get nasty, but the situation is back under control. That’s great, though it means I won’t see them for another few months.’

Playdon nodded and wandered off, but Fian was still hovering nearby, obviously uncertain whether to talk to me or not. I smiled at the way his long blond hair flopped round his shoulders. It was longer than mine. Of course, civilian hair fashions were long at the moment, while the Military tended to be rather more practical.

Fian clearly noticed the smile, because he came over. I’d frozen him off several times, but it looked like he’d decided to make yet another approach. I wondered why I’d kept giving him the cold shoulder. Nerves I suppose, both about the Honour Ceremony, and about possible complications if I got involved with a civilian. Fian was clearly never going to be combat Military, but I might end up just a historian myself.

I really had to make a decision here. Either I kept all men at arm’s length for at least four years, or I decided I was open to having relationships and dealt with any problems about how they affected a Military career when and if that happened. If I was going to get involved with anyone, then Fian appealed to me far more than anyone else in the class. He was intelligent, fun, and looked enough like Arrack San Domex for me to get a bit powered just looking at him and that blond hair.

Yes, I know it’s a bit silly for a Military Honour Child to drool over the star of a silly vid series like
Defenders
, but I happen to enjoy watching a man with the face, hair, and legs of Arrack San Domex having his clothes torn off by tentacled green aliens.

I’d made my mind up, and it was time to make my move. When you’re Military, and you’ve decided to attack a target, you go for it. No point in a delay that might mean Fian wandering off and turning his attention to one of the other girls. I was tag leader and I was going to tag Fian as mine.