Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga) (8 page)

She took a deep breath. “I was nine years old. My parents got us out of
Ambarad, but we were prevented from leaving the area by the cordon. We had to go back to the city to get food, which was being air-dropped there. That put us back in the heart of the infectious area. All of us caught the disease, and… I was the only one to recover. My younger brother and sister died first, and… at last, my parents too.”

She was silent for a time, floating in the water, eyes looking into some unfathomable distance. Steve reached over and touched her shoulder gently, sympathetically. She started, half-smiled at him, and blinked back the tears she’d refused to allow
herself to shed.

“I – I was lucky to have neighbors who recovered from the disease. They took me in and fed me until the cordon was lifted, after a treatment had been developed. By the time the epidemic was over there were thousands of children like me, who’d lost their parents and most or all of their relatives. We were all declared wards of the State.
”

Steve nodded. “That
almost happened to me when my parents were killed, because I had no surviving relatives on Earth – my parents came there from another planet. If it wasn’t for their lawyer, who fought in court to be appointed as my legal guardian, I’d have disappeared into the state system.”

“
You were lucky he did that for you. Those of us who survived on Nasek weren’t so lucky. The authorities appealed for families to take us in as foster children, but we carried a double stigma – we were of mixed-race ancestry, and survivors of ‘halfbreed disease’. Those were huge obstacles. Few ‘purebred’ families were willing to take us. There was an irrational planet-wide hysteria that we might still carry the disease somehow, even though it had been all but wiped out by then. The public outcry eventually forced the authorities to inoculate everyone in the affected area, even though people like me had already been rendered immune by having survived it.”

She rolled her shoulder slightly to show him
three faint pock-marks on her upper left arm. “The vaccinations scarred us indelibly. Everyone on Nasek knew where to look for them, which made us easy targets for their prejudices and fears. Eventually, with no other alternative, the authorities had to build orphanages to accommodate us. That took a long time. The first year was very hard. We had to live in tent encampments through a cold winter until the new facilities were ready. It was very cold, and there wasn’t enough staff or blankets or food or warm clothing. More of us died while we were waiting. When we eventually moved to the new orphanages, life there was very bad.”

She fell silent for a moment, clearly lost in her memories
. Steve wondered whether he should say something, but decided to remain quiet as she shook her head as if to clear it.

“I spent eight years in an orphanage in the city of
Dhotal, about a thousand kilometers from Ambarad. We went to local schools, but our status as orphans, plus the added stigma that many of us were ‘halfbreeds’, meant that the other kids looked down on us and bullied us. I hated my time there –
hated
it!” Her lips pressed tightly together. “There were six hundred girls in our orphanage. We slept in thirty-bed dormitories, so there was no privacy at all. We had to compete for everything, and the personnel were too few and too busy to give us much individual attention. You can imagine the result – constant competition among us, bullying, victimization, the lot.”

Steve reached out again and squeezed her arm gently, sympathetically. She started as his hand distracted her from her thoughts, then reached up and touched it in acceptance. They smiled at each other for a moment before she continued.

“I was fortunate to be in the middle of the group, age-wise, so I didn’t stand out. I tried to make myself invisible in the crowd, and concentrated on learning all I could. I knew that without family to support and help us, we’d all have to make our own way in life without relying on anyone else. I also learned to fight, as a defensive measure. I guess you can understand that there was a lot of fighting in the orphanage.” Steve nodded silently. “Some of the older girls were really predatory. It was… not good. After a while, a local gymnasium began offering aikido classes, and I signed up at once. I earned my first
dan
black belt before I left.”

Steve
’s eyebrows rose. “That’s interesting. I studied karate at a local
dojo
for precisely the same reason; to protect myself against the bullies in the orphanage. I qualified as second
dan
before I graduated high school. I’ve since reached
sandan,
third
dan,
along with earning my Fleet Expert badge in unarmed combat.”

She smiled. “Martial arts are another thing we share in common, then – and like you, I’ve continued my training. I’ve also earned the Fleet Expert badge, and I’m
nidan
, second dan, in aikido as well. Also, one of the instructors at the gymnasium had retired from Nasek’s armed forces as a Sergeant-Major. He was a master of
shastar vidiya
. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it?”

“That’s the ancient Sikh fighting art, isn’t it? One of our teachers at the
dojo
went to an interdisciplinary martial arts tournament in India, where some
shastar vidiya
masters put on a series of exhibition bouts. He brought back a recording and played it for us. They were very fast, very smooth. It looked to me to be a useful martial art in the close quarters of a
melée.”

She nodded eagerly.
“Yes, that’s it! I’m amazed you know about it – very few people do, outside Indian martial arts circles. Anyway, Ustad – that means ‘mentor’ or ‘teacher’ – Ustad Prabodh normally taught boys only, but he was at the gymnasium one day when I was practicing aikido
kata
alone. He watched me, and something about me must have impressed him. He invited me to join his classes, which I did when I was twelve. I studied under him for six years. There are no Japanese-style ‘belt’ grades in his school, but when I turned eighteen, he awarded me what he called a ‘warrior’s knot’ for the hilt of my
kirpan
. The knot identified his graduates.”

“What’s a
kirpan?”

“It’s a Sikh short sword or dagger, with a curved blade.”

“OK. You called your teacher ‘Ustad’. The way you used it sounds similar to the Japanese terms
Sensei
, teacher, or
Shihan
, a master of an art.”

“That’s right – although, like the Japanese terms, it’s not confined to the martial arts. Anyway, I finished high school at the top of my class. I really wanted to study pediatrics – children’s medicine. I remembered how horrible ‘
halfbreed disease’ had been, and how my brother and sister had died. I wanted to help save other children from that. The trouble was, universities on Nasek were small. Most people did apprenticeships, or a technical diploma, for advanced education. An academic degree was considered high-status. It was hard to get into university at all, and only the rich could afford it without needing a scholarship. The sheer number of orphans left after the epidemic threatened to overwhelm them.

“As a result, most regions imposed new restrictions on university admission. One of them was racial purity – although that was never publicly acknowledged, of course. My school results were right up there with the best, so in theory I was eligible for
a full scholarship. Trouble is, I’m visibly of mixed-race ancestry, so I was told, in so many words, that I was ‘uppity’ for even daring to apply for one. The best I could hope for was training in pediatric nursing at a vocational college.”

Steve
stirred angrily. “In other words, no-one was looking at you as a human being at all – they were judging you by the group to which you belonged, not as an individual.”

“Precisely!
I was caught in a trap. If I wanted to study medicine, I’d have to leave the planet: but that would require money and qualifications. I had to get a degree to be qualified for higher-paying jobs and to be attractive as an immigrant to other planets. Without a degree, I was restricted to lower-paying jobs and couldn’t save enough to emigrate. If I somehow managed to both get a qualification and save enough money, the other planets of the Bihar Alliance would be open to me; but I knew I’d face racial discrimination on most of them. I was stuck.

“
I went to my
shastar vidiya
class that week, and I guess Ustad Prabodh must have seen how miserable I was. He had me stay behind after class, and asked what was troubling me. I poured it all out to him. He had an idea. He’d served with Nasek’s armed forces on several United Planets peacekeeping missions, and came into contact with the Lancastrian Commonwealth Fleet and its Marine Corps on two of them. He knew the Fleet permitted recruits who aren’t Commonwealth citizens to enlist, and earn citizenship after four years’ service. He suggested I apply to the Marine Corps, and assured me I was enough of a fighter to be able to fit in well. In four years I could earn Commonwealth citizenship, and read for a degree through Fleet University at the same time. He said many enlisted personnel did that, and then went on to a civilian career. He saw no reason why I couldn’t do the same.”

She was silent for a moment, a smile on her face as she recalled her reaction.
“I was thunderstruck. I’d never known that such an opportunity existed. If I could qualify, it offered me a way out of the trap I was in. He helped me find the address of the Commonwealth Consulate on Nasek, and I wrote to the Consul asking for more information. I learned I’d have to go there for a week-long battery of tests and a series of interviews. They were offered once every four years, when a Fleet recruiter visited the planet. The next scheduled visit was in a little over two years.”

“What did you do while you waited for them?” Steve asked, idly treading water, moving slowly back and forth as he listened intently.

“I worked my ass off!” She grinned. “I spent those years working in menial jobs, saving enough to travel to the Consulate in Puna, Nasek’s capital. I also studied business and nursing courses at night, at a local college. Most of their courses were at diploma level, but some were accepted as undergraduate qualifications for a university degree. I chose those courses only. Of course, since there wasn’t a wide selection of them, I sometimes had to study something that didn’t interest me or might not be useful, but I didn’t have any other option.

“After two years, I went to
Puna for the tests and interviews. Ustad Prabodh wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation. I think having a retired Sergeant-Major do that, and my high scores in the tests and my martial arts training, plus having several undergraduate courses to my credit, clinched it for me.” She smiled happily. “There were only twenty-five successful candidates from Nasek that year. Most of us were ‘halfbred’. That really burned up the ‘purebred’ aspirants who didn’t make it. I loved it!”

Steve asked, “Did you consider the Spacer or Service Corps, rather than the Marines?”

“I knew only what I’d learned about the Fleet from Ustad Prabodh, and his contact had been with Marines. Since he spoke so highly of them, I didn’t think to investigate the Spacer Corps in much detail, although the recruitment material covered it. If I’d known then what I know now, I might have looked at it more closely. Shipboard life’s more stable than field deployments, giving more time for study. Still, I’ve never regretted becoming a Marine. It’s a great Corps.”

“It
sure is!” Steve agreed. “Besides, we’re all one Fleet, being a unified service. Go on.”

She
smiled. “The Corps paid our passages to Hagan, the nearest Fleet Sector base, where they had a Recruit Training Depot. It was difficult for me at first, because I didn’t speak Galactic Standard English very well: but of course the Fleet is used to people with that problem. I was placed in a preparation platoon, which used hypno-study and immersion techniques to bring us up to speed very quickly. After that I went through Boot Camp, Advanced Infantry Training and Armor School. What fascinated me was the total impartiality in the Fleet. Age, sex, looks, where we came from, who our parents were, how well we’d done at school – none of that mattered. Our superiors judged us solely by how well we did our job, both individually and as part of a team. That was such a revelation to me! No-one even
mentioned
race, or looked askance at my skin color or inoculation scars. It was so… so
liberating!”

“I’m sure it was,” Steve agreed. “I found the same thing at Boot Camp on
Vesta. We had all sorts, from academic types to professional spacers – I was one – to farmers and factory workers.”

“
Uh-huh. I did fairly well during my first four-year term of enlistment. I was assigned to the peace-keeping mission on Radetski – ”

Steve shot upright in the water. “I was there too! I went there twice, first as a merchant spacer at the start of the mission, to help evacuate injured children. Several years later I was there as the cutter pilot aboard
Grasswren,
a heavy patrol craft, as the mission was winding down.”

“You mean you’re
that
Maxwell? The one who dropped a rock on a bunch of terrorists?”