by T. J. Quinn
He could barely hold in his hurt and anger as they walked through the starport to the docking bay where the Argus Lu’s shuttle waited to take him up to board the passenger freighter orbiting Aledus. They had been lucky to find a ship with a crew willing to take a child alone that far through space---especially a psion. But Hankura had already dawned with his telepathic ability, and his mother had gotten him a Belderon trained telepath to teach him basic control.
But once he reached age ten, Hankura’s parents had two weeks to enroll him in the Aledan Psi Institute or remove him from Aledus. Until they reached the shuttle in the docking bay, he’d hoped they would change their mind and go with him. They were angry, he was angry. His siblings didn’t really understand what was happening.
An attractive young woman with short dark hair and sparkling brown eyes was waiting to greet them. His parents each hugged him and told him they loved him. They wished he didn’t have to go. Hankura stood there sullenly and didn’t hug them back. He started to walk away when they released him then stopped and turned back to face them.
“You don’t love me, or you wouldn’t make me go alone. I hate you all, and I’m never coming back!” he shouted ran into the shuttle with his luggage droid trailing behind him.
He’d meant it when he said it, but now after seeing the hardships of Michelle’s life through her eyes, his life didn’t seem as bad. With two more months of space travel to go, Hankura decided to stop feeling sorry for himself and learn more about space travel and how the ship worked. He’d even downloaded specs on the passenger freighter to his foldable computer tablet.
The Argus Lu was a tramp freighter, and they got steady work going between Aledus, Earth, and Velran. Lucy was a Velran trained telepath. Supervising young psions from Aledus was one of her primary duties when she wasn’t scheduling passengers and freight pick-ups. She was the reason the captain agreed to take passengers like Hankura Narcaza to Velran for training.
He wasn’t the first angry, sullen boy they’d transported to Velran and probably wouldn’t be the last. Lucy Allen was born on Aledus. Her parents took her and moved to Velran because of the wretched Psi Laws. Their tour of the Aledan Psi Institute had horrified them with the harsh methods they used to train young psions to adhere to the discriminatory laws that treated psions as second-class citizens. The training employed ‘pain therapy’ and brainwashing techniques to make the psions behave.
Unlike the sub-groups of humans that had varied skin pigmentation and subtle differences in physical appearance, psions weren’t easily recognizable. So, psions were required to wear distinguishing patches on their clothing outside their homes so ‘Normals’ could recognize and avoid them or harass them. It wasn’t just the Normals who harassed them, but the Enforcers too.
Lucy’s parents never thought much about their world’s legal system that was designed to protect Normals from mentally unstable psions until they discovered their daughter was a psion. Then their eyes were opened. Soon as they realized what Lucy’s life would be like under Aledan Psi Laws, they sold their agri-complex and moved to Velran where Psions had equal rights.
Whenever the Argus Lu locked into Aledus orbit, Lucy stayed aboard unless she had passengers to meet. If she went ground side at all, she never left the Port, meeting the passengers just outside the shuttle. She wasn’t the only psion in the crew. Pilot Jack Allen was her husband. While the Captain wasn’t a psion, one of his parents was.
Most other passenger liners would carry adult psions, Argus Lu was one of a small number that accepted psion children. It took time for children to learn control of their ability and shield their minds from the noise of other peoples’ thoughts. Lucy and Jack had taken special training on Velran to help children do that if they didn’t already know how.
Hankura did. His biggest problem was emotional. Their efforts to protect him by sending him to Velran left him devastated. It didn’t feel like protection. It felt like rejection. Why didn’t they come with him? They could afford it. Their agri-complex was fully automated. They didn’t need to be there to run it. The crop was sold through a broker. They didn’t have to do anything but watch yarrel flowers grow and wait for deposits into their accounts. He was their problem child, so they got rid of them.
Hankura had felt his father’s anguish as he walked into the shuttle, but he never looked back, or he would have seen the silent tears that rolled down his cheeks. Natar had forced him to make a terrible choice. Knowing it was the hardest thing she had ever done didn’t make it hurt Ludren any less. Now his first-born son was gone for at least ten years, and Hankura hated them for it. Ludren knew it wasn’t Natar’s fault she felt the way she did, but that didn’t quell his resentment for her part in this solution to protect their son. They would be lucky if they ever saw him again.
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