Pounding down the path, Fiona hoped she would be able to get Saul help in time. She smelled his fear and his adolescent maleness. It was a heady experience. The motors came closer, and when Fiona broke into a clearing she saw two all terrain buggies racing toward her. They skidded to a stop, and the boys hopped out. Brian and Keith quickly lifted Saul down off the horse and put him in the back of one of the buggies. They wrapped a blanket around him, and Brian or Keith took off leaving the other one behind.
Fiona slid off the horse exhausted from the ride although it had only been fifteen minutes since she had left the lake. Brian or Keith tied the horse’s reins to the back of the buggy. “Hop in. I’ll take you back to the stable.”
“Shouldn’t we get Rebecca?” As she said that, she heard horses approach in the distance. Two boys she did not recognize flashed by waving as they galloped up the path she had just come down.
“Nah, the cavalry’s coming. She’ll be fine. You did great riding. You saved Saul’s life.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, that stupid fool! He knows he’s allergic. We should put him in a space ship and send him off where there are no bugs.” He started the buggy and headed back down the path.
Fiona laughed, for once appreciating the sterile environment she had grown up in. “I know this will sound dumb, but are you Brian or Keith?”
“I’m Keith. You want to know how to tell us apart?”
“Yes, please.”
He pointed to his forehead. There was a scar that would have escaped notice had he not pointed it out. “Brian hit me with a toy truck when we were three.”
“Did it hurt?”
“I don’t remember. Brian has a scar on his left cheekbone where I hit him with a baseball bat when we were six. That hurt. I remember that.”
“I can’t picture you two fighting. You seem so happy together.”
“We love each other, but we fight all the time. It makes our parents crazy.”
“What do you fight about?”
“All kinds of things. For a long time we fought over girls.”
Fiona shook her head. “Do all guys do that?”
“Not all. We just like to fight, and the girls don’t mind.”
“I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have someone fight over me,” Fiona sighed.
“It won’t be us. You’re not our type.”
“What is your type?”
“You’ll see. Our girlfriends are waiting back at the stables. You’ll meet them. No offense, but you’re kind of frail. We like girls that are stronger.”
For the rest of the ride back to the stables, Keith pointed out different types of trees and some of the small animals that inhabited the woods. When they arrived at the stables, Fiona understood what Keith had meant about their girl friends. Brian was standing outside the stable with one half of a set of twins. The other half of the set was walking out to greet them. They were tall girls with long thick hair. The one standing next to Brian had wavy rich red hair while the other’s hair was browner and straighter than her sister’s. Fiona thought about her own closely cropped unmanageable sandy brown hair cut in the style spacers preferred and was instantly jealous. The girls were dressed in fancy boots, tight jeans, long sleeved flannel shirts and wore cowboy hats. They looked like they had stepped out of a western romance movie. It was easy to see why the boys were attracted to them. These were two of the sexiest looking girls Fiona had ever seen.
“Hey, Fiona! You saved Saul’s life. Ambulance driver said to tell you,” the darker one called.
“All I did was hang on to the horse and keep him from falling off,” Fiona answered modestly.
Keith reached out for the girl’s hand. “Fiona, this is my girlfriend Rhonda and that’s her sister Red.”
Rhonda grinned at Fiona’s confusion. “Red has a real name but she hates it. Even her teachers call her Red.”
“That makes you easier to tell apart.” Fiona said.
Rhonda smiled and nodded. Brian and Red came over to take the horse.
“Have you eaten?” Red asked.
“No.” Fiona replied realizing how hungry she was.
Rhonda turned to Brian and said, “Meet us in the snack bar.”
Keith reached into the cab of a nearby pick up truck and pulled out a jacket. “Put this on until your clothes get here. It’s my dad’s. He won’t mind.”
“Thanks.”
Keith, Rhonda and Fiona trouped upstairs to the snack bar. Red and Brian joined them, and they commandeered a large table in anticipation of Rebecca’s arrival with the two boys they had seen riding to her aid. While they waited for their food, Keith called in to check on Saul and let their parents know where to find them.
“Saul is responding to the medication,” Keith said when he finished.
Rebecca arrived with her escort. As soon as she was seated, Rebecca reached across the table to take Fiona’s hand. “You know you saved his life.”
“No,” Fiona answered, “you saved his life when you called in. I just did what you told me.”
One of the boys whose name Fiona had already forgotten raised his hands in exasperation. “It doesn’t matter who saved his life! What matters is that he’s alive, and he’ll live through this. We all had a piece of it. Let it rest.”
There was ripple of nervous laughter as he scanned the group and met each one’s eyes individually. The arrival of their meals stopped the conversation. After lunch was done, they wandered back down to the stables. A light rain had started to fall, and no one wanted to go out in it. Brian was showing Fiona how to brush a horse when Red asked, “Fiona, is it fun to fly in space?”
Fiona blinked. Suddenly she realized the size of the gap between them. “Mostly it’s boring. When we arrive at port or we get approached by pirates, it’s interesting but the rest of the time, it’s pretty dull.”
“Have you ever been attacked by pirates?” Brian asked.
“A couple of times. Mostly they run when they realize we’re protecting the convoy,” Fiona said.
“Why is that?” Keith asked.
“We carry a hundred missiles, and there are three ships like mine on the big convoys. It only takes one missile to knock out a pirate ship. Have you ever seen what a missile does to a ship?”
“No,” Red said. “We’ve never been in space. Have you seen it?”
“Yes, it’s real messy.” Fiona thought for a second. “Um, excuse me, but you hang out with the Solomon clan, and you’ve never been in space?”
Rhonda looked embarrassed. “No, our mother teaches preschool special ed, and we can’t afford flight suits.”
“What about your dad?” As soon as she had asked the question, Fiona knew she had made a mistake.
“We don’t know who our dad is. Our mom won’t tell us. We know she arrived on planet two weeks before we were born so he’s not from here. That’s all we know,” Rhonda said softly.
“I’m sorry. I only recently met my dad, and I’m not his only child. If there is any way I can help, I’ll try to get you a ride on a ship.”
“Is it true you’ve spent your entire life in space?” Rhonda asked.
“Pretty much. I have only been inside an atmosphere a dozen times,” Fiona replied.
“I heard weightlessness is bad for your bones,” Red said.
“Yeah, but we’re not weightless much,” Fiona replied. “We maintain constant acceleration and deceleration so we feel like we are in one G like Earth’s gravity.”
“Do you always travel at one G?” Brian asked.
“It depends on how much of a hurry we’re in and how much we are willing to spend on fuel. Sometimes we go faster than one G but we never go slower,” Fiona said.
“How fast do you go?” Keith asked.
“Every once in a while we go faster, but most of the time it’s one or one point one G. Mom and I traveled at two G for a week once, but I don’t want to do that again. That hurt,” Fiona winced with the remembered pain.
/> “Why did you do that?”
“One of our cargo ships had a reactor failure, and we had to race to their rescue and stand guard until help arrived.”
“What happened?”
“Pirates were there when we arrived. Mom took the pilot seat, and I took fire control. We’d been practicing for months so I kinda knew what to do.”
“Did you kill any pirate ships?”
“Three or four.” Fiona shrugged.
“That’s awesome!”
“No, it took me fifty missiles to do it. Mom was not happy. She said we needed to work on my target practice. If we were in any other ship we’d have been dead.” Fiona grimaced.
“Even a P I?” Brian asked.
“Even a P I,” Fiona said confidently. “A P I with external racks only carries 32 missiles and its lasers. My ship carries a hundred externally mounted missiles and twice as many banks of lasers mounted on outriggers. I have a three to one advantage. The P I ship was designed to chase pirates and hunt them down. It’s more maneuverable than my ship but mine packs more punch.”
“My mom loves her P I ship.” Brian offered.
“No doubt. It’s a great ship, kind of cramped, but easy to operate. The fire control suite in both ships is the same. In a one on one with a P I. I’m going to win.” Suddenly Fiona sneezed and shivered in the cool dampness of the afternoon misting rain.
Rebecca strode over to her. “Have you ever had a cold?”
“No, why?”
Rebecca sighed. “I should have known better.”
“What? I’m fine!” Fiona sneezed again.
“Ships are sterile. There are no nasty little bugs floating around in the air. This is a living planet. There are all sorts of ugly little monsters just waiting for the chance to make you sick.”
“What are you talking about?” Fiona asked.
Rebecca shook her head slowly. “You have a cold. You’ve probably never been sick a day in your life. Right?”
“Um, yeah.”
Rebecca turned to Brian, “Do you guys have your driver licenses yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you take Fiona to the hospital in your dad’s pick up truck?”
“I’ll drive.” Keith volunteered.
“Fiona should ride in the open back. That way she won’t sneeze all over everybody.” Rebecca said.
“We should all go,” Rhonda suggested. “You ride in the cab with Keith so you can call ahead.”
Without so much as a deep breath she picked Fiona up like a baby, stepped up on the truck’s bumper and settled down in the truck’s bed. Brian and Red hopped in the truck bed like they had been doing it all their lives, which they had. Fiona looked at them with bleary eyed amazement. Rebecca climbed into the cab already calling ahead. Brian rapped on the window and Keith started the engine.
Fiona sneezed again.
Brian looked at her and said, “Way too much fun for one day.”
Red swatted him, and they all laughed.
THIRD GENERATION - CHAPTER TWELVE
ISAAC STOOD NEXT TO FIONA where she sat on the exam table. Sabrina waited patiently in a chair by the wall. “Sweetheart, it’s not a cold. You are allergic to something. I guess it was something in the stables. No more going in the stables for you.”
“See, Mom, I told you going to see the horses was a bad idea,” Fiona said.
“Not so fast,” Isaac interrupted. “I didn’t say it was the horses, I said it was something in the stables. You can still ride. It’s good for you. You can go in the stables. Just don’t stay there too long.”
“Uncle Isaac?”
“Yes, Rebecca?”
“If it was an allergy, why did I think it was a cold?”
“Did you stick your finger in her nose to see what color it was running?”
“Euww! NO!”
“That’s the only way to tell without one of these scopes.” He grinned mischievously.
“Yuck!”
Isaac laughed while the others looked at him in varying degrees of shock. He bent over and gave his niece a quick kiss on the forehead. He turned back to Fiona. “Take this prescription to the pharmacy. It will help you get over this attack. Then go check on Saul. Misery loves company.”
Fiona and company trouped to Saul’s room and found him in as good spirits as could be expected for the amount of pain he was in. After a few minutes Fiona and Saul were left alone.
“Fine pair we are!” Saul chuckled. “We can’t go anywhere without something jumping up and biting us.”
“If we hadn’t gone riding, none of this would have happened. Neither of us would be sick,” Fiona said.
“No, it’s my fault, I was showing off and that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention.”
“Why were you showing off?” Fiona asked.
“To impress you,” Saul said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you silly.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the first girl who treated me like me and not like some member of the Solomon family.”
“I don’t understand,” Fiona said.
Saul struggled to sit up. “My grandparents are pretty special. They started this warrior clan. My mother and aunt are the second generation. My older brother, Moses, has made it clear that he wants to follow our father into medicine. That makes me the next in line. I like the military, but I can’t go to the Academy because I have allergies!”
“Really? They would reject you because of your allergies?”
“Yup”
“Can’t your grandparents do anything? Being famous should help.”
“No, they can’t. Their fame is why I have trouble finding girls that don’t treat me like the next heir to the Solomon tradition.”
“To me you’re you. What’s the big deal?” Fiona asked.
“Trust me, it’s a big deal. That is why I like you. You see me for me,” Saul said.
Fiona paused. “Saul, you’re the first boy I’ve talked to like this.”
Saul smiled. “Good. You’re start school tomorrow. I will be out of here in time to escort you. There will be a bunch of girls who will not be happy to see you.”
“Why?”
“They think they own me,” Saul replied.
“Ugh! Life on the ship is so much simpler.”
“No matter what they say, don’t swing first,” Saul cautioned.
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on! Don’t tell me you don’t train in the martial arts simulators,” Saul challenged.
“Well, yeah.”
Saul grinned. “There will be this one named Barbara. She’s been real possessive lately. Wouldn’t bother me if you decked her.”
“Why would I do that? Wouldn’t I get in trouble?”
“Not if she swings first,” Saul replied.
“I wouldn’t attack a stranger.”
Saul laughed. “Don’t try to fool me. I see it in your eyes. You’re all sparkling with the thought of a good fight. Wait until I get out of here, and we can go one on one in the simulators. After school tomorrow! Rebecca will pick the game!”
“Is this like a date?” Fiona blushed.
“Depends on what happens after,” Saul laughed.
Rebecca opened the door with a tray of ice cream. “What are you two talking about?”
“School tomorrow,” Saul answered slyly.
Fiona nodded.
“Like I believe you! I didn’t know what flavor you liked so I brought a selection.”
Fiona quickly picked one out of the pile. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Grandpa has called a family meeting at the equestrian center tonight after dinner. I am to bring you two. I brought your clothes.”
“What’s this all about?” Fiona asked.
“No telling, but when Grandpa calls a meeting after dinner, it’s a big deal. We have to wait and see.”
THIRD GENERATION - CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FIONA WALKED
TO THEIR quarters after the meeting in stunned silence. “That was amazing!”
“Yes, it was.” Sabrina answered softly.
“How do they know all that stuff?”
“The most fanatical, efficient, best organized intelligence gathering organization in the history of the human race. Centuries of paranoia on a cultural level honed to a level inconceivable a few decades ago.” She repeated Admiral Sherman’s speech word for word. She had heard it many times.
“Are they really that paranoid?” Fiona asked.
“More than you could possibly imagine. With good reason,” Sabrina replied.
“Wow.”
Sabrina sighed. They walked in silence for a few minutes. “Fiona?”
“Yes, Mom?”
“Are you good with this?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Saul will be spending a lot of time together.”
“I like Saul and he likes me. What’s the problem?”
“You are a healthy fifteen year old girl. He is a healthy fifteen year old boy, and I am not ready for grandchildren.”
“Mom, do you really think that?”
“I was fifteen, and I remember.”
Fiona squeezed her mother’s hand. “We’ll be good. I promise.”
“Do you think you can handle the rest of what we have to do?”
“Yes, Mom. Isn’t this the sort of mission we’ve been training for all my life?”
Sabrina swelled with pride. “Yes, it is. Now you remember what you can and can't talk about in school tomorrow.”
“I remember. If I deck this Barbara person tomorrow, will you be mad?”
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 102