“Nervous?” Palla asked in a whisper so the other people in the lift wouldn’t hear her.
Lily considered Palla’s question. Was she nervous? “I don’t think so,” she answered.
“Then what’s wrong?”
Lily kept her face blank and shook her head. “Nothing. I just thought I saw somebody I knew.”
Palla frowned. “The boys?”
She nodded.
Palla shook her head. “Lily, just because you’re in classes with boys that doesn’t mean you should let your focus slip.”
“I’m not slipping,” Lily said a little louder than she meant to. She earned a glance from a couple of other passengers, older instructors or workers, but they turned away just as quick.
“Okay,” Palla said. “I just want to make sure. Last thing you need is to go boy-crazy!”
Lily snorted. The boys she shared classes with didn’t interest her. They were slow and childish, even if they were two years older. It didn’t make sense to her. If she was so smart and in these classes, then where was Krys? The station records she kept checking insisted he was there too. Krys was smarter than her. He knew things she’d never heard of or imagined were possible. And he could spot the flaws in all her crazy ideas faster than she could come up with them. He was the smart one, not her.
She considered some of the boys in her classes and smirked. Okay, maybe she was smart too.
“What?” Palla asked.
“Huh?”
“You’re smiling.”
Lily forced her face smooth and shrugged. “Just looking forward to the simulation.”
Palla studied her a moment longer and then turned her attention back to the displays in the lift. The circular cabin slowed, making Lily feel like her stomach was rising faster than her body. It was, she supposed, what with momentum and the law of inertia. Each lift moved from one habitat ring to the next, matching velocity before docking. The shifting velocity, due to the different habitat ring sizes and speeds necessary to maintain tolerable gravity, was what caused the butterflies in her stomach.
A green light above the door lit up a moment before the door slid open. People stood up from their seats or moved from where they’d been standing. Lily glanced at Palla as she rose and followed suit. The process of using the lifts was still new enough to her she didn’t take it for granted. She figured by the time they made it back to their ring, she’d be used to it—the biomech simulators were located on the innermost ring, so she had four more lift rides to take to get there.
“There should be a faster way to get there,” Lily muttered two lift rides later. “Walking from one lift to the next and waiting for the cabin to arrive. It’s not very efficient.”
“High priority transport is available. Shuttles that go from ring to ring,” Palla said.
“Yeah, but that’s high priority. We don’t qualify.”
“Not yet, maybe.”
Lily glanced at her mentor. Was Palla right? Would she be considered high priority as she got further into her mastery? “Do you really think so?”
Palla waited until they left the lift and were walking side by side towards the next lift station. She leaned her head closer and said, “Lily, we started out rough, but I think we’ve grown a lot these last few months.”
Lily nodded. It was true. She’d turned fifteen and while she didn’t feel any different, she knew she had to be. Palla, on the other hand, had changed a lot. “It’s been good,” Lily agreed. Palla had come around, slowly, and instead of trying to keep all the attention focused on herself, she was using Lily now to keep herself relevant.
“So trust me, you’re going to go a long ways if you can handle this.”
“Handle a simulator?” Lily asked. “How hard can it be? It’s not even real!”
“But it feels real, that’s the point. Don’t think you can breeze through this like you do everything else.”
Lily gasped. “I don’t breeze through—”
Palla turned and fixed her with a stare. “Lily, please. You’re the perfect girl and you know it. Smart, beautiful, caring, and funny. You do everything right every time, and that means you’re lucky too. I’m worried that your luck will run out at the worst time, so I want you to be careful.”
Lily nodded rather than respond. She’d felt lucky and overwhelmed at first too, but as time passed and she started to believe what people were saying about her, it was becoming harder to remember it could all come crashing down. That was turning into her greatest fear. The thing that woke her up at nights. That and the fear that she would finally find Krys on the station but he wouldn’t recognize her.
“This is one of those moments,” Palla said. “If you can’t score well on your first simulator, you’ve pretty much ruined your chances of getting into the armor division. And you’ve already locked yourself into a military path, so anything else is a fast track to nowhere. And with everything President Ondalla is counting on, we’d probably end up manning a deep-space listening post a dozen AU past Pluto!”
“We?”
Palla nodded and smiled. “We’ve kind of tied our futures around each other. Or at least mine’s tied to yours now.”
Lily took a deep breath and nodded. “All right, I won’t let you down.”
“Don’t let yourself down,” Palla said. “As long as you’re proud of your performance, you’ll be doing what’s best for me and everybody else. That’s what President Ondalla wants us all to realize.”
Lily nodded. It rang true with what the president had said as well as what she’d been learning in her classes. “All right, I will.”
Palla grinned. “That’s my girl!”
Lily blushed and continued on her way to the next lift and went on until they reached the closest habitat ring. The two students walked through the corridor and did their best to smile, nod, or otherwise stay out of the way of everyone they encountered. The layout of the ring was well-thought-out and labeled well enough that it only took them five minutes to find the simulator rooms.
Lily stepped in to the registration terminal and pressed her eye against it. She was still getting used to having her retinas scanned after having it done the first time when she arrived at the station only a few months prior. For most children, those born in the controlled environment of a lab, having their identification data recorded in the system was part of the birthing process. For Lily and the others born on Venus naturally, bio-medical identification wasn’t available.
Palla stepped up and scanned her eye and then followed Lily through the door that hissed open. They entered into a hallway with technicians watching monitors and moving back and forth while an overhead screen displayed the simulated arena taking place.
She saw a juggernaut model biomech facing off against a dreadnaught model. The two heaviest biomechs, one built to take a pounding and the other designed to give one. Both were too heavy to fly like the one in President Ondalla’s presentation. The dreadnaught used its better speed to circle around a large warehouse. The juggernaut slowed and turned, waiting until the dreadnaught lumbered into view. The slightly smaller biomech jammed its feet into the ground but it was too late.
The juggernaut fired its massive rifle and sent the dreadnaught teetering off balance. The massive machine corrected and swung back around in time for two of the four short-range high explosive missiles to explode against its shoulder and chest. The other two sailed overhead and tried to arc back around. They hit buildings and exploded without further damaging the dreadnaught.
The dreadnaught fell, cracking the blacktop of the road and leaving gouges as the pilot tried to roll it back to its feet. A second round from the massive 120-millimeter cannon in the juggernaut’s hand passed within a meter of the fallen biomech. The juggernaut paused and stretched one arm towards its adversary. The end of the focusing barrel on the arm-mounted laser glowed red for a moment and then cooled to a darker color as the dreadnaught tried to rise again.
Lily’s eyes jumped to the juggernaut. She saw t
he smoke rising from the black scoring on its thigh. The biomech and its pilot didn’t seem slowed in the least by the attack. While she watched, a second energy weapon must have struck the biomech. The armor on the left side of its chest sprayed outwards and was flash boiled into liquid and then gas by the ten megajoules of energy. As the smoke cleared, she saw the armor was thick enough to survive, but the smooth bowl had been melted into it.
“Lily Strain?”
Lily jumped at the loud voice behind her. She spun and saw a man in a blue and white military uniform standing there. She stiffened and did her best to stand at attention, even though she wasn’t quite sure what that meant. “I’m Lily Strain, um, sir.”
He stared at her and nodded. “At ease, Miss Strain. My Name’s Colonel Rand, but you don’t need to get so formal around me yet. You show me something in there and earn your first set of tracks and we can talk.”
“Tracks?” Lily asked.
“You’re trying out for the armor division, Miss Strain. We use tracks here, not stripes. The only stripes we have are the ones we leave in our enemies’ underwear!”
Lily’s eyes widened and she heard Palla gasp beside her. She nodded. “Yes, um, yes sir. Where do you want me?”
He pointed down the hall. “Last booth is all yours. You’ll get a fifteen-minute intro lesson then we’ll have some missions for you. Think you can handle that?”
She nodded and thrust her chin out. “Absolutely, sir.”
He grinned. “Good, I like that attitude. Go ahead.”
Lily turned and started towards her booth. She glanced up and saw on the display that the juggernaut had used its rifle to fire two massive armor-piercing rounds into the chest of the fallen biomech. Smoke rose from it and fluid dripped onto the ground before the image blacked out. She heard the muffled sounds of somebody cursing and coughing and glanced back in time to see the door of a simulator booth open. A man stumbled out and would have fallen if not for the wall that he managed to reach out and support himself against.
“You’ll do great,” Palla whispered, distracting her from the sight.
Lily smiled at her and nodded. “For all of us,” she promised before heading into the booth and pulling the door shut behind her.
Chapter 24
Krys looked up from the control panel of the hydroponics system and saw Shelby walking towards him. The door shut behind her, blocking out the darkness of the long Venerian night and he tapped a few more commands on the screen. He pressed the execute button when she finished making her way through the greenhouse and stopped next to him.
“What’s this?” he asked as she held out a cup to him.
“Today is Krys Evans’s birthday.”
Krys smiled. He’d managed to get on just about everyone’s good side, whether civilian or soldier, over the past six veeks that he’d been turned into an unofficial member of the community. “Whether I’m him or not?”
She shrugged and took a drink of her cup.
Krys raised the cup to his lips and smelled the fruity aroma. He didn’t notice the tang of something sharper under the fruit until he’d tasted the creamy drink. The sharper taste beneath the collection of mango and orange burned his throat and made him cough.
Shelby laughed. “Never had a stiff drink before?”
“Alcohol?”
She nodded and took another sip.
“Isn’t alcohol banned?”
She tilted her head. “Are you going to report me?”
He laughed and felt his chest and belly warming. “To who, you?”
She winked and turned to glance at the small fields of berries growing under the hydroponic lights. She twisted her head to stretch her neck and then slipped her blue and white jacket off. “Hot and humid in here,” she observed. “Something wrong with the machinery?”
Krys nodded. He’d been sweating since he stepped into the greenhouse. “Irrigation system wasn’t working. Wasn’t enough pressure, so I found a couple of leaks and fixed them. I think I optimized the watering schedule too.”
“You think?”
Krys shrugged.
Shelby turned to study the rows of fruit and herbs. “We need more of these greenhouses,” she said. “Something to justify being stationed here during the night cycle.”
Krys took another drink and found it went down a little easier the second time. He regarded the drink before turning to her. “There’s enough carbon in the repository for a couple of greenhouses, but rigging up the lighting and plumbing would take more supplies than we’ve got.”
She watched him and smirked. “Something wrong?”
“What? No!” Krys grinned. “Just thinking it wasn’t so long ago and I’d have been too young to do this. Um, not that I’m much older now. I mean, uh, just that there was a minimum age and—”
“Krys,” Shelby silenced him. “Venus didn’t have a law about that.”
“We didn’t?”
She shook her head.
“Oh! Mom and Dad always said I was too young,” he said and lapsed into silence.
Shelby watched him and nodded. “I’m sorry about your parents.”
He jerked and stared at her. “What? Oh, well, not much I can do about that,” he said. “Move on and work towards a better tomorrow for the human race. That’s what you keep telling me.”
She nodded and shifted to lift her right leg so she could half sit and half lean against a table. “I don’t have to agree with or like everything I do,” she said.
Krys shrugged again. They’d had enough conversations that he knew where her loyalties were. She was a soldier and a good one, but she was a decent person too. He liked her, and he knew he would have liked her even if she hadn’t saved his life.
“So, um, why are you checking up on me?” he asked her after the silence began to feel awkward.
“Check up on you? Didn’t think I needed to. I was off work and thought I’d say happy birthday.”
Krys winced and looked down at the control panel. He jerked his eyes back up and saw Shelby watching him. Why was she so nice to him? Time and again, she went out of her way where he was concerned. She’d even risked her job and probably her life. He started to open his mouth to ask when she slid off the table and stood up.
“A new supply ship will land soon. Lesk should bring back the supplies you two listed.”
Krys nodded. The colony commander was back. “Um, good, we’ll need them for planting when the sun rises.”
She nodded and took another drink. “I should be going,” she said.
Krys nodded. “Um, okay. Thanks for the drink.”
She smiled. “Don’t let anyone see you with that. Too many people have seen too much of you already.”
He stopped mid-drink and looked at her. “I don’t understand.”
She sighed and leaned against the table again without sitting on it. “Think about it,” she suggested. “Everybody who works and lives here knows about you. Odds are pretty good the word has spread, too. People talk.”
Krys frowned. “There’s not much contact between colonies.”
“No, but people have families and friends all over the solar system. Word gets around.”
“So, um, I take it that’s bad?”
Shelby shrugged. “A young man your age should be in a reeducation center.”
“I’ve been learning a lot here.”
She sighed. “We’ll figure it out when we need to.”
“We?”
“I,” she corrected. “You’re just an impressionable young man and it’s my job to shelter and nurture you.”
Krys snorted.
“What’s that for?”
“You’re what, five years older than me?”
“Six!”
“Five. Today’s my birthday.”
Shelby clamped her lips shut. “I’ve had proper training and education. Five very important years.”
Krys glanced down at the control screen and noted the timer on it. He fought down the smile that threate
ned his face and turned back to her. “Okay, Miss Know-it-all, will you help me out with something then?”
She pushed away from the table and left her drink on it. “Happy to help. What’s wrong?”
“I need to take some readings on some valves, but I can’t adjust them and take the readings at the same time. Can you give them a twist when I tell you to?”
She nodded. “Of course. Where are they?”
Krys pointed beyond the control booth they were in and down into the greenhouse. “Head down there, second aisle, and I’ll tell you when to stop and adjust something.”
Shelby smiled and stepped through the open arch of the booth and down onto the same level as the growing bushes. Each row of fruit was suspended in boxes half a meter off the ground, allowing plumbing and wiring to be exposed. She walked several meters before turning and looking back at Krys. “Well?”
“A few more steps,” he said and then glanced at the panel. “Then beneath the strawberry bin. Look for a round connector with knurling on it. There are markings on it; just twist it clockwise seven marks.”
Shelby nodded and bent over. Krys watched, enjoying the view and biting his lip. He counted down with the clock on the display and just as she dropped to her knees and reached under the bin, the sprinkler system activated.
Shelby yelped and jumped back. She slipped and fell, sprawling on her back in the aisle while a deluge of water drizzled onto her. She climbed to her feet and glared at Krys before she stormed up the aisle and into the booth. She found him laughing so hard he was clutching his stomach and tears were running down his cheeks.
“What—”
Krys tried to contain himself but he burst out laughing even harder. She glared at him and he shook his head before trying to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“I’m going to shoot you myself,” she growled at him before turning away.
“Wait!” Krys managed to gasp.
She stopped and spun, her eyes little more than narrow slits.
“You said,” he paused, gasping for air, “you said it was hot in here!”
She stiffened, lifting her head even as she pushed her chest out. Krys couldn’t help his eyes as they dropped to her wet uniform and noticed how the water made it cling to her skin more than usual. He stopped laughing and stared.
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