Earth Flight

I replied without thinking. ‘Me? Why not you?’

Dalmora looked embarrassed. ‘He might not like it.’

I could have slapped myself. The whole class knew Dalmora had a crush on Playdon and he was carefully avoiding being alone with her. I’d been as tactless as Krath at his worst. ‘Sorry.’

Amazingly, it was Krath who saved the awkward situation by speaking in a chattily cheerful voice. ‘The highest ranked officer present has to take command, sir.’

I giggled from pure relief. ‘We aren’t under attack, nardle brain!’

I stood up and went out of the hall to look for Playdon. He wasn’t in the corridor, but I could hear the sound of voices coming from the portal room. The rest of the class were all back in the hall, so who the chaos …?

Remembering the ambush the previous day, I drew my gun before peeking cautiously into the doorway of the portal room, but relaxed as I recognized the two men with Playdon. They were his friends, Rono and Keren of Cassandra 2 research team. Playdon and Keren had their backs to me, but Rono’s eyebrows shot up as he saw my gun. I pulled a face of silent apology and put it away.

Rono patted Playdon on the shoulder, and gave Keren a nod, before coming over to me. He touched his lips with one finger, then gave a beckoning gesture and led me back into the hall. Most of the class didn’t know Rono, so they stared at him in total bewilderment as he went to stand in front of the wall vid.

‘I’m Professor Rono Kipkibor, senior team leader of University Cassandra Archaeological Research Team 2. Some of you’ve already met me, and the rest of you will remember helping rescue my team from under a collapsed skyscraper at the New York Dig Site. I’ll be giving you the rest of your introduction to the California Rift Dig Site.’

I went back to my seat and Dalmora gave me an anxious look. I shook my head at her to show I didn’t know what was going on either.

Rono glanced at the image on the wall vid. ‘I see Lecturer Playdon’s already talked about the island structure of the Land Raft. The giant supporting legs of these islands are made out of diamene, and the island platforms are formed of connected diamene strips.’

There was some furtive whispering behind me, as a couple of the class puzzled over the scar tissue that marred Rono’s dark forehead, making him look like someone in a history vid of the days before fluid patch treatments. The scar was the result of the solemn Keren losing his temper and punching Rono on newly regrown skin, and Rono was deliberately keeping it to tease him. I didn’t understand how two such contrasting personalities had ever got into a relationship with each other.

‘The strips are designed to move independently during earthquakes, so buildings are laid out in wide blocks along each strip.’ Rono tapped his lookup to show a new image on the wall vid. ‘The islands all have identical layouts. This is an aerial view of one of them, showing the central park surrounded by regimented blocks of buildings with wide gaps between them where the strips meet. Guess what we call the gaps between the buildings.’

‘The gaps?’ asked Krath.

‘Correct,’ said Rono. ‘I’m glad someone’s awake out there. As you can see, there are twenty gaps running the length of each island from north to south. They’re connected by one gap running east to west through the centre of the island. Like the bridges, that gap was used for emergency access when the portal network had to be shut down during solar storms.’

He paused. ‘The buildings on the islands have structural frames bonded to the diamene platform, so they’re held firmly in place when the platform angle tilts during an earthquake. All the walls have imbedded reinforcement mesh running through them, but they’re still riddled with cracks and liable to drop lumps of concraz on your head. Every gap has twin red safety lines painted on it. Between those two lines is safe, but you never put a foot across a red line without your impact suit hoods up and sealed. Understand?’

We all nodded.

‘Understand?’ repeated Rono. ‘I want to hear you say it.’

‘We understand.’ We chorused the words like a bunch of little kids in Nursery.

‘Due to the small size of Land Raft islands, there are no emergency evac portals on the dig site,’ said Rono, ‘but there are twin accommodation domes on each island. Teams are assigned in pairs, and co-ordinate their excavation work so they can help each other in case of accidents.’

He grinned. ‘Less experienced teams are always paired with research teams. Cassandra 2 were supposed to be nursemaiding Cassandra 11 pre-history degree course, but we were fool enough to agree to them trading dig site allocations with you lot. I’m sure we’ll regret it.’

There was a nervous ripple of laughter from the class. After months of Playdon’s formal teaching style, we found Rono a bit of a shock.

He waited for everyone to quieten down before turning serious again. ‘The main danger here is earthquakes. If the quake warning sirens shriek, then you evacuate as fast as possible. We’re working on red risk islands, and even a minor quake may push one of the supporting legs past its limit or break the strip connections, so you get the chaos out of here. Understand?’

We responded in ritual chorus. ‘We understand.’

‘One final thing,’ said Rono. ‘Four years ago, Dannel Playdon’s wife was killed at the California Rift. This is the first time he’s been back here since then. You don’t mention that to him, you pretend you don’t notice if he looks upset, and you call me at once if you think he needs help. I warn you that if anybody causes him any trouble, I’ll personally take them to the edge of this island and throw them off. It’s a very, very long way down, so even if they’re wearing an impact suit they won’t repeat the mistake. Understand?’

We all stared at him in shock. I hadn’t even known Playdon had been married, let alone that his wife … No wonder Playdon was so paranoid about dig site safety.

‘Understand?’ repeated Rono.

‘We understand,’ we said.

‘Good.’ He turned off the wall vid. ‘Our domes are in the central park, and that’s perfectly safe without impact suits. Let’s go outside and escape the sickly smell of Osiris lilies.’

He led the way towards the dome exit, and everyone pulled frantic faces at each other before trailing after him. This was the first time the class had ever left a dome without wearing protective impact suits. We’d started the year in bleak winter at New York Main Dig Site, where wolves were roaming outside our dome. We’d moved to Eden, in the heart of a rainforest holding scimitar cats and a whole range of nasty insects. Now we found ourselves in bright sunshine in …

Well, this might once have been a park, but now there were no flowers, only patchy grass and a scattering of stunted trees. Next to our accommodation dome was the usual sled storage dome, and facing us were two matching domes that must belong to Cassandra 2. A pathway ran off into the trees to the right, and over to the left was a curved blue shape.

‘We’ve got a swimming pool!’ Krath shouted joyously.

Rono laughed. ‘The park swimming pools are the best thing about the Land Raft islands. They only needed re-lining with flexiplas to make them functional again. Now pay attention to three safety rules.’

He raised one finger. ‘Number one is obvious. Don’t wander out of the park into the ruins. If you aren’t wearing an impact suit, they’re utterly lethal.’

He raised a second finger. ‘Number two. Birds of prey nest on these islands. Don’t disturb them, because they’ll attack you to defend their young.’

He raised a third finger. ‘Number three. The sun here is stronger than most of you will have experienced on your home worlds. If your skin is liable to sunburn badly, there’s protective sun block in the store room.’ He glanced pointedly at a couple of the class, including Fian. ‘Don’t come crying to me if you forget to use it. Understand?’

He’d got us trained now, so we chanted the words in unison. ‘We understand.’

‘Good.’ He clapped his hands. ‘That’s it. Take a break.’

Everyone else sprinted back into the dome, but I went over to Rono. ‘I’m causing far too much trouble staying with the class. I’ll call my commanding officer and ask to go somewhere else.’

Rono looked apologetic. ‘I was joking about the Osiris lily smell, Jarra. I really wanted to get outside because I love the sunshine at the California Rift. It’s just like back home on Cassandra.’

‘I didn’t mean the joke.’ I struggled to keep my voice under control. ‘Lecturer Playdon shouldn’t be forced to come here and face painful memories to keep me safe.’

Rono shook his head. ‘Playdon wasn’t forced to do this. He had plenty of teams offering to trade dig site assignments, and he deliberately chose this one so he could try facing the past in the company of his friends.’

‘Oh.’ I felt a total nardle.

Rono grinned and patted my shoulder. ‘I’m very glad Dannel Playdon’s students appreciate him.’

The rest of the class started reappearing and heading for the pool. Most people, including Fian, were wearing the skintights they normally wore under impact suits, but a few had proper swimming costumes. Rono ran to the pool himself, pulled off his clothes to show a swimming costume that barely covered the legally private areas, and dived into the water.

Fian came over to join me, and I gave an envious sigh. ‘I can’t go in the water until the skunk juice wears off, but you enjoy a swim.’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll wait until we can both go swimming.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘You will go swimming, Major Eklund, that’s an order.’

He shook his head again. ‘One slight problem, sir. I can’t swim.’

‘What? Everyone learns to swim at school.’

‘Not on Hercules. Deltans feel school time should be spent studying science. When you recover from the skunk juice, you can teach me to swim. Until then, we’ll just watch the others having fun.’

We walked towards the pool, and found the ten members of Cassandra 2 research team had taken over one end of it, while our class were milling round in the water at the other. I saw Krath go over to the diving area and start climbing the ladder to the highest diving board.

Fian frowned. ‘Do you think the idiot’s safe going up there?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Krath’s usually good at practical things, but …’

Krath reached the diving board, waved his arms, and yelled. ‘Look at me, Amalie!’

Our class all looked up, but Rono ignored him. I wished Playdon was here to make sure Krath didn’t break his stupid …

Krath did a perfect dive that included a forward somersault. I relaxed and laughed at Fian. ‘I’m sure Krath would teach you to swim if you ask him nicely.’

Fian made a disgusted noise, and we watched Krath climb the ladder to do an even fancier dive that started with a handstand. A dozen dives later, Playdon appeared next to me and frowned at the crowd in the pool.

‘Why aren’t my class working?’

Rono swam to the side of the pool, and heaved himself out in one swift movement. ‘They are working. They’re acclimatizing to the sunshine.’

Playdon shook his head and shouted. ‘Asgard 6, out of the pool now!’

Rono winked at me and whispered. ‘I knew this would get him back to normal. Playdon hates seeing his classes lazing around when they should be doing something educational.’

The mob in the pool groaned but obediently climbed out and gathered round us in a dripping group. I backed away nervously to stay clear of water droplets.

‘I want to complete the introductory lectures today, so we can start work on the dig site in the morning,’ said Playdon. ‘Jarra obviously won’t be able to wear an impact suit for a couple of days, so Amalie will substitute as tag leader for our dig team 1.’

Amalie looked worried. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘You’ll do brilliantly,’ I said.

‘It will be good experience for you, Amalie,’ said Playdon. ‘While we’re working on the dig site, Jarra can stay in the dome and do that remedial work I set her on the mathematical theorems of historical analysis. I won’t accept trivial excuses like alien spheres for her delaying it any longer.’

‘Nooo!’ I wailed, while the rest of the class laughed at me.

‘Everyone get dressed now and …’ Playdon broke off as his lookup chimed to signal emergency mail. He tapped it, read the message, and looked startled.

‘Colonel Leveque informs me Jarra and Fian’s bodyguard will be arriving within the next few minutes. Apparently, the bodyguard is …’ Playdon paused to double check the mail message as if he was still having trouble believing it. ‘His Excellency Captain Draven Fedorov Seti Raven, Knight of Adonis.’

There was a moment of stunned silence, before Krath spoke. ‘It must be a joke.’

I couldn’t believe it either. The Adonis Knights were descendants of the first colonists on Adonis. Humanity learned a lot from that first colony. Mostly about all the things that could go wrong when people tried to live on an alien world with its own abundant life and intricate ecology and the portal link failed. After that, the Military Charter was written to establish what later became the cross-sector Military. Their first job was to clean up Adonis and make it safe, then their fledgling Planet First teams moved on to open up other colony worlds.

Playdon shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine Colonel Leveque would …’

He broke off because a man in a Captain’s uniform had just come out of our dome. The new arrival couldn’t be much more than twenty years old. He was slim, with short, dark hair, and had what would have been a very ordinary face if it wasn’t for the thin, horizontal, black and white stripes on his right cheek.

I frantically counted the stripes and made it ten. Chaos take it, I wasn’t just looking at an Adonis Knight. This man had completed the legendary set of ordeals based on the first colonists’ struggle to survive, including a desert trek, fighting predatory animals, a week without food, and two days without water.

The title of an Adonis Knight only meant you were a rich aristocrat with heroic ancestors, but completing all ten trials of Adonis … Respect!

8

I had my eyes closed and my face lifted, glorying in the sensation of warm water cascading over my skin. I ran my fingers through strands of squeaky-clean hair and inhaled the faint fragrance of shower spray. This was blizz. Utter ecstatic blizz!

Someone hammered on the bathroom door, and I heard Amalie shouting. ‘Jarra, there’s a queue out here. For chaos sake, come out of there before you dissolve!’

I groaned and reluctantly switched the shower to dry mode. Amalie must have heard the shower change note, because the hammering stopped. A couple of minutes later, I stepped out of the shower and stood gloating at the sight of my wonderfully unblemished face in the mirror. The hammering on the door started again.

‘I’m coming!’ I tugged on my robe, picked up my gun and my lookup from the shelf, opened the door, and faced a queue of three impatient people.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wanted to make sure I got rid of all the Osiris lily smell.’

Amalie groaned. ‘You had an hour-long shower yesterday afternoon. We all told you the smell was gone afterwards. You still insisted on having two more showers and a swim in the pool. The. Smell. Has. Gone.’

‘I could still smell it this morning.’ I sniffed. ‘I think it’s gone now. I’m not sure.’

Amalie sighed and went into the bathroom. His Excellency Captain Draven Fedorov Seti Raven had been leaning casually against the corridor wall waiting for me. Now he escorted me to my room, checking for threats with the tiny sensor in his left hand, while his right hand hovered close to his gun.

I went into the room, found Fian already dressed in his uniform, and got dressed myself. When we went back out into the corridor, we discovered our bodyguard was talking to himself.

‘… understand that but I’m not happy. She’s a potential threat!’

‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with it, Birdy,’ said a disembodied male voice.

I frowned. ‘Where’s that voice coming from, Raven? It’s not your lookup.’

‘It’s coming from the implant bonded to my skull,’ said Raven. ‘It’s SECOP talking.’

‘SECOP? Does that stand for Security Operations?’ I asked.

‘It does, Commander,’ said the voice of SECOP.

I was startled. ‘You can hear me?’

‘In emergency mode, they can see and hear everything I can,’ said Raven. ‘In normal mode, my implant selectively relays statements prefixed with SECOP. Everything else remains private, but my implant has rolling two-hour recordings of everything I see and hear. In the event of my death, or traumatic injury, that data is automatically dumped to SECOP.’

‘It is?’ Fian pulled a face. ‘Next time you stick your nose into something private, I’ll have to remember not to kill you for two hours.’

‘Sorry again,’ said Raven. ‘It sounded like an intruder was attacking you.’

I smothered a giggle. The previous night, Fian and I had celebrated my recovery from the skunk juice by watching a new episode of Fian’s favourite vid series, Stalea of the Jungle. It ended with Stalea throwing her boyfriend across a jungle clearing, pinning him to the ground, and forcibly kissing him. Fian and I were happily re-enacting this scene for our personal entertainment, when an Adonis Knight heroically charged into the room to save us from being murdered.

In the interests of peace, I tried a random change of conversation. ‘Don’t the protection of humanity laws apply to implants?’

‘Implants aren’t banned like robots or clones,’ said Raven, ‘just restricted by the same rules as gene therapy. You can use them to treat medical and cosmetic problems as long as they don’t enhance someone’s abilities beyond the normal human range.’

‘You’re claiming an internal comms system is normal for humans?’ asked Fian.

‘No,’ said Raven, ‘but when Military Security agents are undercover on assignment, a visible external comms unit can get them killed. I’m claiming that’s a cosmetic problem that justifies using implants instead.’

Fian frowned. ‘You’re bending rules that exist for very good reasons. I’ve been arguing with my father for years about this, because my great-grandfather was a member of Cioni’s Apprentices. A huge amount of scientific knowledge was lost in the Earth data net crash. We’re still blindly accepting many things as facts because records state they were once proved. Cioni’s Apprentices were trying to recreate the lost science and proofs, find out what was true or not for themselves.’

He shrugged. ‘I agree with my father that’s a good thing to do, and totally support other scientists working on it, but Cioni’s Apprentices went to inhuman extremes. They didn’t just cause the Freya conflict, and the Persephone incident, but the horror of what happened on Gymir. We need the protection of humanity laws to stop that sort of thing happening again.’

Raven gave Fian a startled look. ‘Your great-grandfather was an Apprentice? Well, yes, I agree the Apprentices took things too far, but plenty of things bend the rules a little. Look at the dome cleaning system. The autovacs break the rules on both robots and artificial intelligence.’

‘No they don’t,’ said Fian. ‘They can’t create another robot, they fail the Owusu intelligence ratings, and they have no digits capable of manipulating …’

I knew the real disagreement here was still about Stalea of the Jungle and privacy, so I gave a pointed cough. ‘I’m starving to death.’

The other two abandoned their argument and we headed to the hall. Raven stopped just inside the doorway, following his regular morning routine of tensely surveying the room for a few minutes, presumably checking to see if any of the class showed signs of having turned into psychotic killers overnight. Fian and I carried on walking to the food dispensers, collected our breakfasts, and went to join Dalmora, Amalie, and Krath at our usual table.

Krath shook his head at us. ‘I still don’t understand why you’ve got an Adonis Knight as a bodyguard.’

I shrugged. ‘Colonel Leveque said he picked Raven because it would be impossible for anyone to bribe him.’

Krath sighed. ‘Yes, the families of the first Adonis colonists all got land grants in perpetuity, so Raven must be stinking rich. I wish I was. All the girls would throw themselves at me.’

Dalmora, Amalie, and I gave him matching glares. Krath hastily changed the subject.

‘Draven Fedorov Seti Raven.’ He started counting on his fingers. ‘Draven is the randomly generated gender specific. Fedorov is the historic reference. Seti …’ He broke off. ‘I’ve forgotten again.’

Dalmora had already explained the Adonis Knight naming system three times, but she patiently did it again. ‘Seti is the month of the fourteen-month-long Adonis year when he was born, and Raven is the Earth nature reference.’

‘It’s too complicated,’ said Krath, ‘and randomly generating a name is a nardle idea.’

‘The Adonis colonists were selected from every region of Earth, and created new traditions to symbolize the fresh start for humanity,’ said Dalmora.

‘Well people obviously didn’t like the new traditions,’ said Krath. ‘Nobody else randomly generates names.’

‘The colonists for other planets in Alpha sector weren’t chosen in the same way,’ said Dalmora. ‘Many of the planets were settled from specific regions of Earth and brought their old customs with them. Other sectors just had open colonization, but you still see major differences between the planets of Alpha sector even today.’

I stopped eating for a moment to join in the conversation. ‘Hospital Earth Administration staff pick what they consider appropriate names for its wards from an approved list. They gave me a different surname as a child, but they let me keep my original first name because Jarra is an old enough name to be on the approved list. They haven’t updated that list for about a century. My best friend from Next Step, Issette, is always complaining about having such an old-fashioned name.’

‘My great-grandmother was called Issette,’ said Amalie. ‘I think it’s a sweetly quaint name.’

I giggled. ‘Please, never say that to my Issette. She’d scream.’

‘Anyway,’ said Krath, ‘I’m glad Raven doesn’t make us use his title or …’

‘Shut up, Krath,’ hissed Amalie. ‘He’s coming.’

Raven put his breakfast tray on the table and sat down in his regular seat, chosen so he’d have his back to the wall and a clear view of everyone in the room. ‘Good morning.’

I heard the wall vid go on, and a presenter say my name. I turned and saw the Beta Sector Daily banner streaming across the top of the vid image.

‘… Commander Tell Morrath as a clan member. The scale of demonstrations, both in support and opposition, increased after the skunk juice attack. The situation escalated further last night, with violent clashes between rival demonstrators outside the Parthenon. We’re now getting reports of demonstrations on other Betan worlds, including Janus, Romulus, Aether and Artemis.’

The image behind the presenter showed a night-time view of the famous Beta Sector Parliament building, with its rows of statues of former First Speakers of Beta sector. The figures of fighting people were silhouetted against the floodlights.

‘The demonstrators are acting as individuals,’ continued the presenter, ‘with clans still awaiting indications from alliances of their official stance on this unprecedented move by a clan of the gentes maiores. The August clan have still made no comment, leaving their alliance and the entire reactionary faction in confusion, though there are allegations that either the August or the Fabian clan are secretly orchestrating the protests against the Tell clan ceremony.’

Lolmack made a noise of disgust and turned off the wall vid. ‘The demonstrations prove we’ve strong public support, but the alliances still don’t have the courage to declare themselves.’