Ambassador Lissa gradually handed over the role of acting president and, several days later, retired from political life entirely by resigning her role as ambassador in favor of Shiro. He took his golden eagle, Rasta, his girlfriend Stephanie, and both her parents to live with him on 3rd Patrolship, thereby establishing the first Earth embassy in space.
With the Forty-Five now captained by Will of Coria, with Shika, Ash and Octi aboard as newly commissioned members of Space Patrol alongside Krywith and Aewn, Lissa found herself, one sunny afternoon in March, strolling alone down a sidewalk in her hometown. Alone was a rare thing for her these days, and she savored the quiet walk as she turned down one street after the other until her destination came into view.
Home. It was a small two-bedroom house with a neat grass lawn bordered by rose bushes about halfway down the block in a little suburb. The place had sat empty since she and her crew had rescued her mother from OWSF, but Mr. Piff had sent a squad of cadets to set it to rights in preparation for this meeting.
Any nostalgia she had felt drained away from Lissa as she took the little curved pathway up to the door. She had not seen her mother in eight months. She had celebrated her fifteenth birthday in that time, had saved the world in that time; she had even brought an end to schemes on the part of the Jesters that the trial had revealed went back centuries! But as she walked up the two steps toward the house, all that rang through Melissa Phelps’ mind was her conversation with Mr. Piff at the beginning of their journey.
“Would she really want me to let all of Earth be sold off, manipulated, and fed to the wolves so I could be safe?”
“She is your mother,” Mr. Piff had pointed out. “Of course that’s what she wants.”
“Ooh … I’m so grounded,” she muttered under her breath as she turned the knob of the front door.
“Mom?” she called as she entered. “Mom, I’m home.”
Mrs. Izzie Phelps stood in the living room, arms crossed, lips thinned with displeasure. Her brows snapped together as she saw Lissa, still dressed in the galactic fashion with a ruffled skirt cut above her knees and a tight bodice. Suddenly, the trend that had started a rage on Earth upon her return made Lissa feel frumpy. She smoothed her hands down her skirts, staring at the floor.
“Hi, Mom,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“Is that all you can say to me?”
Lissa glanced up at her face and then away. “I shouldn’t have gone off without telling you,” she began.
“You left me stranded on an alien planet!” Her mother’s voice went up in pitch in an impressive parabola. “You flew off into serious danger without adult supervision! You could have died!”
Lissa winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Lissa. You are grounded, young lady—for life!”
“If I may …”
Lissa started. She hadn’t even noticed the third person in the room. Mr. Piff sat on the couch, a fact that looked so surreal to Lissa that she experienced a moment of vertigo. There was a four-eyed alien meerkat sitting in her living room. Her mom was screaming and grounding her for having flown a starship across the galaxy to save humanity from total enslavement. She couldn’t keep down a hysterical giggle, which did little for her position with her mother.
“Lissa Phelps has acted quite poorly.” Mr. Piff was grave. “She has severely violated her daughterly duties and certainly deserves punishment. It is clear she sees it so,” he gestured to Lissa’s downturned face.
Mrs. Phelps only nodded, her arms still crossed in ire.
“However, extenuating circumstances do exist here. By doing this deed, she saved your life and that of two-thirds of your home planet.”
Mrs. Phelps opened her mouth hotly, no doubt to put forth the fact that she did not care, but Mr. Piff smoothly went on. “It is unlikely, considering her popularity on Earth these days, that a ‘grounding,’ as you Earthlings call it, will be sufficient to teach her anything. It is well-known where she lives, after all, which is why Space Patrol has seen fit to ask you to remain elsewhere for your safety while Earth’s political climate cooled off.”
Mrs. Phelps closed her mouth. She nodded once.
“Therefore, I have an alternative suggestion,” Mr. Piff went on. “Rather than grounding her on Earth, send Lissa to boarding school, as you have done in past years—away from Earth.”
Lissa blinked. So did her mother.
“A boarding school in another system?” Mrs. Phelps asked him.
“Indeed. As it is, there is a great deal about the galaxy that is not taught in modern Earth schools. It would be foolish to have Lissa study in Switzerland, where she is a celebrity, when you can accomplish a better education elsewhere.” His tone was dry and amused as he added, “I can assure you their curriculum will teach her to respect authority far better than grounding her on Earth would do.”
“Here, Lissa.” He tossed a packet of hardcopies onto the coffee table. “Look it over for yourself while we talk.” Standing up from the couch, he gave a polite bow to Mrs. Phelps and gestured for her to precede him into the kitchen.
Lissa stared at their retreating backs, a wounded feeling making her stomach roil. I can’t believe Mr. Piff is convincing my mom to ground me on another planet!
After a moment she picked up the packet with lifeless fingers and slit it open.
Puzzled now, she read the cover sheet—and then read it again. Her jaw fell open. Riffling quickly through the forms that followed, she spotted an application for the boarding school. She read the title embossed in sparkling black letters across the top and suppressed a grin. She glanced toward the closed kitchen door where Mr. Piff had taken her mother and her heart lightened. Dear old Mr. Piff!
Taking the packet with her, she ducked into her old room and began to pack.
Epilogue
The trip from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy, where her new boarding school was, took less than the blink of an eye. Escorted by a squad of four no-nonsense Patrolmen, she had said farewell to her mother that morning, whose tight hug had been accompanied by dire threats of dismemberment if she went missing again. She then boarded a shuttle equipped with VOD drive and, quick as a thought, she found herself looking out the window at a desolate asteroid moon.
The first thing Lissa saw when she disembarked from the shuttle was a black emblem blazoned across the entrance to the gray cement building. A black X, smaller at the bottom than at the top, with a single star rising up toward eternity.
It was a symbol she had seen every day on the Forty-Five when Will and his crew traveled with them. The same symbol she had first noticed when Mr. Piff and the 32nd Patrol invaded the deck and captured Captain Nask on her very first day in space.
Lissa laughed again. Dear, dear Mr. Piff!
She took the last step down from the space shuttle to the planet’s surface and walked along a stone path through the square rock garden to the entrance. Her stride was confident as she pressed the glowing button to the airlock blazoned with the same black symbol.
As the doors slid open with a hiss of escaping atmosphere, she cycled through the airlock, shucked her helmet, and tucked it under her left arm, and strode to the desk where a female Jerz in uniform—the same uniform Will had worn—looked up from her monitor.
“Ms. Melissa Phelps?” The receptionist had a translator bot similar to the little brass butler bot aboard the Forty-Five. Lissa glanced at it fondly as she replied.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
The alien female stood and extended a hand in greeting. “Welcome to Space Patrol, Cadet Phelps.”
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Space Patrol! Page 24