Ellie Quin Book 01: The Legend of Ellie Quin (2 page)

Sean was ecstatic when he first found out.

The last few weeks since he’d been notified had been one long tap dance. They trained off-world, and that alone - getting off world - was worth the price of admission as far as Sean was concerned. The accompanying holo-vid that came with the draft slip listed the worlds that would be visited during the training period. It proudly claimed that every marine would be capable of fighting proficiently in high and low gravity environments, capable of drop-ship, jet-pod and sky-chute deployments and, in addition, would learn a valuable tech skill by the end of boot camp. All of a sudden Sean’s long-held goal of attending college in New Haven had seemed a comparatively unexciting and parochial ambition.

‘So, when do you leave?’

‘The Big Freezer’s due to hit our orbit in about four months,’ he replied.

The recruitment ship for the Colonial Defense Force toured the colony worlds of the Seventh Veil every seven or eight years. It was big, very big; incapable of planetary landings. It was designed to carry up to ten thousand recruits, each housed in their own cryogenic sarcophagus; a huge freight ship carrying a payload of frozen recruits. The journey back to GL5-D (the rather un-poetic name for the planet that was home to the Colonial Defense Force) would take about a month. But a month of three meals a day for ten thousand hungry mouths validated putting the new recruits on ice for the short duration.

‘I bet you’re excited. I mean, just getting off-world alone would do it for me. But to think of all the other places you’re going to see?’

‘Yup, it’s going to be double-great,’ Sean smiled. ‘And, you know, the marines are a mixed gender regiment.’

Ellie knew. He didn’t have to sound quite so gleeful about that. ‘Good for you.’

‘Just like college, only better. Meet chicks, play with guns, see crazy new worlds, get paid…there really is a God,’ Sean looked heavenward and winked.

‘When you finish your tour of duty…eight years, right? I’ll be twenty-seven.’

‘Yuh, I know.’

‘Weird that, huh? We’ll both be in our late-20’s.’ She stared at him. A little too long. A little too intent. He looked away, his cheeks prickled with color. ‘Uh, yeah, I s’pose.’

Nice going, Ellie. Try and keep cool…remember? Cool. Not too grabby?

Not long now. He was going soon. How many more math lessons would he be coming over for? Not many. Sean had things to do to get ready for the Freezer. She’d been half toying with the idea of taking what was likely to be one of the last chances she had left and reaching out for him, planting her lips, firm and unambiguous on his, and declaring she’d been quietly burning for him since he’d started coming over to help out with the math. That, or just keeping a lid on it. Accepting this - whatever this was - was just not destined to happen.

He looked up at Ellie awkwardly. ‘Hey, who knows? Maybe
you’ll
get drafted.’

‘I’m never, ever, that lucky.’

‘You never know. It’s a large universe. There’s usually trouble kicking off somewhere that they need soldiers going in and kicking-’

‘I just want to get off-world, like you. See some things, you know? Visit at least a fraction of this cosmos before I shrivel up and die of old age. It’s not like I want a war. Want to kill anything.’

‘Well, yeah…killing stuff isn’t high up on my list either.’

‘But meeting chicks holding big guns is, apparently.’

Sean couldn’t help an impish grin. ‘Sorry Ellie, I know you’re…umm…that you
like
me. And I like you too, but-’

But
?
Did he just say that?
‘But’ was the polite version of a gentle slap.

‘But not,’
her
cheeks were prickling now. ‘But not like…
that
.’

‘I…uh…’ He shuffled. Looked down at his hands. ‘Not really.’

Ellie felt her stomach lurch. Sick. Why? It’s not like he was dumping her. He taught her domestic arithmetic. That’s it. Oh yeah, and occasionally they shared a laugh, a nudge, a playful dig in the ribs. But this was never anything more than that.

‘I thought…’ she could hear her voice trembling. ‘I thought maybe we were…well, you know? I just thought there was
something
?’

‘Ellie, I’m sorry. I like you. You know I do. But…but…’

‘Will you stop saying that?’ She snatched up her homework. ‘Crud! What are you saying sorry for anyway? I’m, you know, I’m fine!’ Her voice was doing that thing when she got angry, nervous, emotional - going squeaky. ‘I’m happy for you, actually! And glad I won’t have to continue suffering your appalling teaching skills for much longer.’ She got up and headed for the door. She could feel her face growing hot with embarrassment.

‘Where are you going, Ellie? We haven’t finished dom-tech yet.’

‘I’m…I need to change the filter in Betsy.’

Ellie slid open the door and left her habi-cube.

He sat in silence for a while, half expecting her to return a moment later with a playful ‘gotcha’ grin. But no.

He looked around Ellie’s habi-cube as he awaited her return. For the first time it occurred to him how little she had. The room belonging to a girl of nineteen, nearly twenty should have more in it. It ought to look like a cross between a stuffed-toy factory and a cosmetics store. Ellie’s cabin was stark. A bed, a storage cabinet, a desk, and one stuffed toy, a tartan patterned dog she called ‘Johnny’. He knew her Dad paid her pocket money for the chores she did on the farm, but he was damned if he knew what she spent it on. He saved the files they had been working on and turned off the writing tablet.

CHAPTER 3

Ellie sat in a quiet nook of Betsy, well away from the stirring tubweeds. This was her corner of the world, her domain - a wobbly wicker chair and a small glow lamp. She could hear the irritating twittering voices of yet another cartoon on the holo-toob echoing through from the domestic dome, and the guffaw of Ted and Shona as, presumably, another unfortunate character was squashed, diced or blasted into space.

And Sean? Probably he’d just say goodbye to her parents and let himself out.

She looked up at the plexitex ceiling of Betsy. It was dark outside. The sky a rich and deep purple, divided by a golden misty slash; the gas clouds of the nearby Seventh Veil. To the south the faintest tinge of blue-green on the horizon. The glow of New Haven.

There was a thumping sound coming from the tubweed beds. It was, no doubt, the frisky one from earlier on that afternoon taking out hunger-induced frustration on its neighbors. She reached down and grabbed a handful of fertilizer pellets from the bucket and threw it out into the darkness in the rough direction of the misbehaving plant. There was a gentle rustling of leaves and tentacles. She didn’t care too much if the damn plant got its meal or not, or whether another had managed to scoop an extra helping, the thumping had stopped.

Ellie was angry with herself; angry with so many dregging-bloody-things at the same time, she didn’t know which way to spit venom first. That Sean now knew for certain she had - yes, a girly-wirly crush on him…well, maybe that was just more embarrassing than annoying. Sean was a good guy. He wouldn’t brag about it to anyone. Mind you, what was there to brag about? She was hardly catch of the century; a scrawny yard stick with long and lank hair, a plain face and welt marks on her hands and wrists.

She was angry that he was getting away. Yes, that hurt. Envy then; he was getting a chance to go off-world, to see that large universe and the closest she was ever going to get was looking at the stars, watching inbound freighters stitch lines across the sky.

Colonial plot 452; this tatty cluster of dusty agri-domes bang in the middle of this flat, dry, baked-mud world, Harpers Reach. And what was that but a mud-ball planet on the edge of Nebula Cirrus 5, otherwise known as the Seventh Veil. A sparsely populated and generally uninteresting region of space; a little piece of nowhere.

‘This damn farm, this is my universe,’ she muttered to herself. ‘This is all it’ll ever be.’

‘Not necessarily.’

She spun around in her chair. The canes creaked with the sudden movement. Sean stood in the dark beyond the light thrown out by the glow lamp.

‘Sorry Ellie, I wasn’t spying, I just wondered whether you were coming back to finish up on your study session.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad will still pay you,’ she replied testily.

‘Hey, I’m not worried about that. Can I sit with you?’

She thumbed her lip in the dark. ‘Sure…yes, why not?

Sean walked over to her and found an old crate nearby. He pulled it up beside her, sat down and leaned back to look at the sky. Ellie settled back in her chair and followed his gaze.

‘If you follow the line of the Veil to the end, the thin end?…the second bright star in is GL-5. The colonial marine planet, GL5-D orbits that,’ he said.

‘Catchy name.’

He laughed.

They sat in silence with only the distant sound of Ted’s quacking laughter and the rustling weeds.

‘You’re going to see and experience a lot of wonderful things,’ Ellie said, trying to keep her voice steady. Going for something that sounded less like tearsome-wallflower-rebuffed.

‘I know. I’m really lucky that I got a draft ticket.’

‘Is there anything you’ll miss here on Harpers Reach?’

‘What? You mean apart from coming over here and trying to get basic math to stick in that goopy head of yours?’

Ellie chuckled. Sean wasn’t going to miss her, but it was nice of him to crack that funny anyway.

‘Not much else that I’ll miss I guess. Maybe my folks. But I’ll tell you what. I’ve got to admit I’m not looking forward to being frozen. They say in cryo-suspension that you’re not really asleep, just kind of slowed down, so that everything outside your pod seems to happen incredibly quickly like a speeded up holo-film. I don’t like the idea that you’re aware of everything going on but can’t do anything. Like some insect trapped in amber. Know what I mean? You’re, like, stuck in this see-through shell and there’s these things going on outside.’

Ellie’s gaze drifted to the pale glow in the far away sky above New Haven.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

‘There was this guy in cryo who survived when his freighter blew up…asteroid impact or something. But he saw it all happen. Okay, he saw it happen in funky speed-o-vision, but he was aware of it all happening. The ship breaking up, explosions in the cargo hold, the hull ripping open…and then all of a sudden spinning in space. And he knew he was screwed, but just couldn’t do anything about it. Knowing that he would just carry on spinning until the power supply eventually ran dry. I think that was on the toob news a while back.’

‘And they found him?’

‘Yup, he was out floating around for several weeks. They thawed him out and the guy was okay but hysterical. Understandably.’

‘Scary.’

‘Uhuh…I think he sold the rights or something and they’re making a holo-film of it. I guess it turned out alright for him in the end.’

‘Do you think you’ll do any fighting?’

‘I don’t think so, Ellie. It’s mostly a peaceful universe out there. Nothing much to do. Most of the alien cultures in our universe seem to be happy to simply muddle along with ours and trade. If you’re not into fighting, it’s a great time to be a soldier.’

‘What about that new encounter? The one that happened last year?’

‘I dunno, it’s not been in the news much has it? Last I heard, they seemed to be very aloof, but not threatening. Just a very quiet and spiritual race, I guess. The army seems to be more like a police force these days…the occasional terrorist group, but mostly minding that everyone’s being good and not breaking any laws.’

‘Sean…it’s not fair. You’re so lucky to get away from this godforsaken place.’

He couldn’t find a reply that felt right. They sat in awkward silence for a while. Sean had something on his mind, the reason he’d decided to come out and speak to her in the first place.

‘Ellie?…When exactly were you planning on running away from home?’

Her chair creaked in the darkness. She said nothing.

‘Well?’

He could hear Ellie fidgeting uncomfortably.

‘How do you know?’ she asked eventually.

‘Just a lucky guess. And the fact you’ve been hoarding your chore-money haven’t you?’

By the faint light he saw her pull a face. Heard the soft thwack of a fist against a thigh.

‘Ellie? When were you planning to go?’

‘Soon. After my birthday.’

‘New Haven?’

‘Yes.’

She turned to face him. In the green glow of the lamp he could see she looked nervous. ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’

‘You can’t just run off like that…without telling your Mum and Dad where you’re going.’

‘I will tell them…when I get settled and sorted out.’

‘It’s not going to be that easy. New Haven’s a rough place. A
really
rough place.’

‘I can get a job.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about. There are jobs and there are jobs. If you know what I mean?

‘I’ll work something out.’

Silent. The stirring of tubweeds, the burbling of the toob in the family dome.

‘Listen Ellie, I won’t tell anyone if you promise to wait a little longer. Why don’t you hang on here for a couple more years? Grow up a bit more and then try out city life, uh?’

‘Because I’ll go mad, that’s why. Because I can’t face the drudge of being a farm girl any longer. Every day the same old routine, and every night sitting out there and seeing the freighters pass in the sky, the glow of New Haven. Even seeing the faint twinkle of ships entering and leaving orbit and the flicker of light as they go into hyper. That’s the worst part, being teased with a glimpse of those ships, reminded of all the things out there I’ll never,
ever
, see. All the things I’m missing.’

Sean knew what she meant. Most of the farm kids living on isolated farm plots like theirs seemed to be content with their lot, but he, like Ellie, wanted to see more.

‘Listen Ellie, I’m not telling anyone, okay? I promise.’

She nodded gratefully.