It didn’t this time. Mr. Rogers shook his head and simply said, “Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because I said you can’t.”
“That’s not good enough. Give me three good reasons why I can’t go.”
“First, you’re too young to go to space on your own,” he said. “Second, it’s too dangerous. And third, you’re too young, and it’s too dangerous.”
“That’s only two reasons you repeated twice. If you can’t give me a third reason, I’m going.”
“Fine,” Mr. Rogers said, his frustration beginning to show. “You want a third reason? It’s because you’re a girl. Bad things happen to young women in the dark recesses of a spaceship a long way from home, and I won’t have it happen to you.”
So there it was. She wasn’t good enough because she was a girl. Mio looked at her foster father for several long seconds, her mouth hanging open. She knew he thought it, sometimes, but she couldn’t believe he’d actually said it.
Without another word, she turned and ran, knowing Mr. Rogers would never be able to catch her with his bad knee. She hit the front door at full speed, slamming it as she passed, and kept going.
* * *
The anger began to drain away as she hit the base of Founders’ Hill, and the long climb took its toll. By the time she reached the plateau at the top, she was spent, and she sat down to catch her breath. Below her, fields and forests spread out to the horizon; the only signs of habitation were the small town of First Landing seven miles off to the left along the cliffs and the isolated farmhouses and barns of the tenant farmers who worked the fields. In front of her, the tractors worked the fields of the Rogers’ farmstead. They would have the fava beans planted before the day was done. They should; her foster family’s machinery was augmented with all of her father’s equipment. If the weather held tomorrow, all the tractors would swap over and plant the Sanchez’s fields. That was the way Mr. Rogers worked. Take care of himself first, then others afterward…if time and resources allowed.
Deep down, she knew she was being unfair. The Rogers had taken her in when her mother died; she wasn’t sure what would have become of her if they hadn’t. There weren’t any orphanages on the frontier world of Adelaide; someone else would have had to take her in. It probably would have been one of the aristos in town looking for a way to steal her family’s land and machinery.
How would her life have been different if she had been adopted by someone from the wealthier class instead of being taken in by the Rogers? She might have had access to more of the finer things in life, rather than having to get by with just the necessities…but then again, judging by the aristos she had met, most of them were even more spoiled and selfish than Mr. Rogers. She might have been consigned to work their farm all day, every day. At least Mr. Rogers made time for her to go to school with Jimmy.
Jimmy. He’d be leaving in two weeks to go to the fleet academy. He’d be out in the stars with her dad. He might even end up working alongside her dad, where he would see him every day.
It wasn’t fair.
Sure he was a couple of years older, but Mio could run the tractors and other farm equipment as well as he could. Mrs. Rogers even told Mio once that she had picked it up faster than Jimmy had. When she had asked Mr. Rogers, even he had been forced to admit Mio’s abilities were “really good.” Of course, he had then added, “especially for a girl.” He only had one child, Jimmy, and Mio knew he had wanted more. Probably even more now that Jimmy was going off to the academy.
If her dad were here, he would have made everything all right. Of course, if her dad were here, everything would have been all right. There wouldn’t be a need for her to go off planet. He had joined the navy to pay off the colonization loans that paid for their land and the tractors to work it. It seemed like he had been coming and going all her life, six months here and six months gone, but things had changed four, now almost five, years ago. She dimly remembered the conversation—he was going to be gone longer this time so he could pay off the loans quicker and come back to live with her forever. He just hadn’t said it would be this long.
Maybe he didn’t love her anymore; maybe that was why he hadn’t come back. Mr. Rogers didn’t respect her because she was a girl; maybe her dad felt the same way. Maybe he had wanted a son, too, and he hadn’t come home because she was a girl and not a boy.
Tears ran down her cheeks, and her stomach knotted at the thought. That couldn’t be it, could it? Her father hadn’t come back because he didn’t love her? Without thinking, her hand strayed to her pocket and found the one rock in her life, her memory cube.
Mio pulled the three-inch square device out of her pocket, looked at it for a second, then pushed the ‘play’ button. Three feet in front of her, a hologram of her father sprang into being. He looked at her and said, “My Mio, I am sorry I must go away. Be strong and know always that I love you and will always come back for you. I love you more than life itself.” Her lips moved along with his; she had memorized it the first day he left, and she had played it at least once every single day since.
Tears continued to spring unbidden from her eyes as the machine turned off, and a vision of Jimmy, blond head down as he worked to climb the hill, took its place.
Frantically, she wiped away the tears and composed herself. It would never do to let him see her like that; he would tell everyone at school all about it, and she would catch grief from her fellow students.
“What do you want?” Mio asked as he approached, a scowl fixed firmly on her face. “Did they send you after me?”
“Did who send me after you?” Jimmy asked, a lopsided grin on his face. “I was down working the tractors when you ran past. I shouted at you, but you didn’t stop. I figured I’d come find out what the fuss was all about.” He smiled at her, the big goofy smile he used to make her laugh, but she was too angry for it to work.
“It must be big,” he continued. “You outran me all the way here. What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up,” she spat. “You’re going up, but I’m not. I’m staying here.”
He sat down heavily next to Mio, worn out from the climb. “Missing your dad again?”
Mio shrugged, not wanting to admit any more than she had to. Although Jimmy was great at being sympathetic, he was even better at telling everyone about it later, and it never paid to reveal too much. “Maybe a little,” she finally said when it became obvious he wasn’t going to say anything else until she answered. The jerk.
“Yeah, I understand,” Jimmy said, talking softly as if his mind was somewhere else. “I’ve been thinking a lot about going to the academy, and how I’ll be away from home for years, myself. It really kind of hit me the other day.”
“Yeah, well you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I want to go, and I can’t!”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I do have to go. The last couple of crops haven’t been very good, and with the new taxes the aristos added, there hasn’t been enough to cover our colonization loans. Either my dad or I had to join the navy, and he couldn’t because of his knee, so it fell to me to do so. Mom and Dad don’t like it, but it’s the only way to save the farm. You should be happy I’m going; if we lost the farm, you’d be out sharecropping some aristo’s farm with us.”
“What? I knew the crops hadn’t done as well as your dad wanted, but I thought that since he had our crops too…”
“No, they’ve been awful, and since dad can’t run all the machinery, mom has had to help him. That’s led to other problems. Dad just didn’t want to tell you because you’re not part of the family. Well, you are, sort of, but not really. You know what I mean.”
“I know there are lots of things he doesn’t talk about with me. I always thought that was because I was a girl, and he doesn’t like girls.”
“He likes you just fine, in his own way, but he doesn’t like to share family business with anyone outside our family. ‘What’s family business stays family business,’ he always
says.”
“So why are you telling me this now?”
“With me going away, Mom and Dad are going to need even more help from you. They may not say it, but they will. I wanted you to know so that maybe you could pitch in a little more and stop being so stubborn and sulky all the time.”
“I’m not stubborn and sulky!”
Jimmy chuckled, then held out both hands, indicating where they sat. “Hey, we’re here, aren’t we? I doubt you came running up here with tears streaming down your face because dad told you a good joke.”
“You saw the tears? You’re not going to tell everyone at school are you?”
“That would be pretty hard, since I’m not going back to school again.”
“You’re not?”
“Nah, what’s the point? I’m 16, so I don’t have to, and I already got into the academy. What’s the difference if I complete another week or two?”
“Maybe you’ll learn something you’ll need at the academy.”
“The academy recruiting poster says I don’t need to bring anything except a desire for hard work and the determination to see it through. I guess they’ll teach me everything I need to know there.”
“You’re not even going in to say goodbye?”
“Why bother? There are only a couple of people there I like, and I can do without the aristo kids making fun of me.” He shrugged. “I’ll see Diego before I go; that’ll be good enough.”
“You’re going to see Diego?” she asked, her head snapping up. “Is he coming by the house?”
Jimmy laughed. “Still like him, eh? Yes, he’s going to be coming by the house.”
“I do not like him. I was just…curious…if he was coming by. So I could make sure I was somewhere else when he did.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Jimmy said. He reached over to tussle Mio’s hair. “That’s why we couldn’t get rid of you the last time he came over, right?”
“No, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t talking about me. You two are always so mean when you get together.”
“I’m sure that’s what it was. For your information, he is coming over one day next week, and I’ll make sure he comes over after school so you can see him.”
“Really?” Mio asked. She coughed, recognizing her mistake. “I mean, really?” she asked again, less enthusiastically.
“Yes, really…” Jimmy’s eyes became distant as he looked at something over her head. “Huh. That’s odd…”
Mio spun around and looked where Jimmy pointed. A line of fire streaked across the sky. A second fireball raced across a different part of the sky.
“What’s that? A meteor shower?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen meteors like that before, and I’ve never seen anything that bright.”
The pair watched the two lights streak through the sky. One vanished over the horizon, but the other continued to grow as it hurtled toward them.
“Should we—” Mio started to ask, but Jimmy grabbed her and tackled her to the ground.
“Close your eyes!” he yelled in her ear as a noise like the thunder from a thousand summer storms assaulted her ears.
Not knowing why, she shut her eyes tightly, but her eyelids weren’t proof against the flash; she could still see the bright light that followed. She squeezed her eyes shut even more tightly than before as the ground bucked and shook beneath her, tossing her into the air. She fell back, only to have the ground rise to meet her, and the breath was driven from her lungs as Jimmy slammed into her. After a subjective eternity that probably only lasted a few seconds, the ground stilled.
“Get…off,” she gasped. When Jimmy didn’t move, she struggled weakly to push him off as her vision began to gray. He finally got the hint and got up, and her vision returned as she began to breathe again.
“What…what was that?” she asked when she was able to talk again.
“An orbital bombardment,” Jimmy replied. “The Turds have come.”
* * *
“What do you mean the Turds have come?” Mio asked.
“You know, the Terran Union,” Jimmy replied. “They’re the only ones who would have bombed us.”
“I know who the Turds are. What I meant was, how could they be here? The front is hundreds of light-years from here; the war is nowhere close. How could the Turds be here?”
“I don’t know, but those had to be orbital bombardment rounds. They certainly weren’t natural.”
“Why?”
Jimmy took Mio by the shoulders and turned her toward the south, where a large mushroom cloud was dissipating in the upper air currents.
“I don’t get it,” Mio said. “It was a meteor, wasn’t it?”
“A meteor that just happened to hit the naval reserve training base?” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “That’s where the smoke is coming from. I’ll bet the other round hit the army training base.”
“Why wouldn’t the Turds have hit the starport at First Landing then, too?”
Jimmy looked at her, mouth open, head cocked to the side, in the look he used to make her feel stupid.
“What?” Mio asked after the silence had gone on for several seconds. She stomped her foot. “Stop doing that!”
Jimmy pointed at the city. “How close is First Landing to the starport?”
“Really close,” Mio replied. “It’s just to the south of the city.”
“Exactly.” When Mio continued to stare at him, Jimmy sighed. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“No, I don’t, and the only thing your sigh is going to do is get you slapped. Really soon, too, if you don’t tell me what the heck is going on.”
“You’re such a girl,” Jimmy said. “Of course, you don’t get it. Did you see the cloud at the navy base? How big an explosion do you think it took to send that amount of debris into the air?”
“I’m not stupid,” Mio said; “I know it was a big explosion. That’s what I don’t understand. How come the Turds didn’t hit the starport and wipe out First Landing?”
“The only reason they’d do that was if they intended to stay here…and here they come!” he exclaimed, pointing over her shoulder.
Mio spun back to the north. Two shuttles raced toward them, and they threw themselves to the ground again as the shuttles roared past, barely clearing the top of the hill. Mio rolled over to follow their flight—they were headed for town!
“We’ve got to help them,” Mio said.
“How? The shuttles will be there in seconds. We couldn’t even get down from this hill in that time.”
The shuttles continued toward the town, and one of them landed at the starport while the other circled overhead. After several seconds, the other shuttle landed as well.
“Did you see the insignia on the shuttles?” Jimmy asked.
“No—I was too busy trying not to get hit by them as they tried to run me over.”
“I was right; they had the Terran starburst on them. They’re Turds.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy said, looking down and kicking a stone. “What I do know is that it’s too late for the town. We better go tell Dad.” He looked up; Mio was already halfway down the hill and picking up speed. “Hey! Wait for me!”
* * *
“The Turds are here!” Mio yelled as she burst through the front door. “Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, the Turds are—”
She stopped as she entered the kitchen. The Rogers were wrestling over a laser rifle. Both looked up with guilty expressions. “Oh,” Mio said; “I guess you already heard.”
“Damn right we did,” Mr. Rogers said. He yanked the weapon out of his wife’s hands.
“You can’t go out with this,” Mrs. Rogers implored. “They’re professional soldiers. They’ll kill you!”
“Well, I was a professional soldier once, too.”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago when you were in much better shape. Besides, what do you hope to do against them? You’re just one man.”
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“I’m just one man, aye, but if I can convince some of the others, we’ll have a force big enough to repel them. There were only two shuttles of troops; there can’t be that many of them.”
“Where is everyone?” Jimmy yelled from the front hall.
“In here,” Mio yelled back.
“What’s going on?” Jimmy asked as he entered the kitchen. “Oh,” he said when he saw his father. “Are we going to defend the farm?’
“No!” Mrs. Rogers said. “I absolutely forbid it! You’ll only get yourselves killed. They can’t be here to stay; just put the rifle away, and they’ll be gone in no time.”
“What are they here for, anyway?” Mio asked. “Are we losing the war?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Rogers said. “This may just be a raid behind the lines. What I do know, is that they aren’t stealing our stuff. Not while my laser rifle still has juice in its battery, anyway.”
The back door crashed open, and a soldier wearing camouflage armor strode in, weapon at the ready. Seeing Mr. Rogers holding the gun, he fired without hesitation, striking the farmer in the chest. Mr. Rogers fell backward, and the rifle clattered to the tile floor.
“No!” Mrs. Rogers screamed.
“Bastards!” Jimmy yelled. “I’ll kill you for that!” He dove for the rifle.
“Don’t do it, kid,” the soldier ordered in a strange accent. “I don’t want to—” He fired again as Jimmy turned with the rifle in his hands, striking Jimmy in the head. The rifle fell back to the floor.
“No!” Mrs. Rogers grabbed a knife from the table and took one step toward the soldier but a second soldier shot her as he came in the door. She fell without a sound.
Both men turned toward Mio. “No!” she yelled, turning and running out the other door.
“Get her, Jones,” the newcomer yelled, and Mio heard boot falls close behind her. Jimmy had left the front door open, and she ran hard for it, pulling it shut behind her as she passed. The Terran soldier was too close behind her and couldn’t stop in time—she heard him crash into the door as it slammed shut. She didn’t turn to look; she kept going as fast as her legs could carry her.
The Mutineer's Daughter Page 3