Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (75 page)

“About two actually,” Carl Lawson replied, not understanding his parents sudden desire to dissuade him from leaving.  He ignored his father and turned towards the bartender.  “
Señor, otra cerveza, por favor
.”  The bartender nodded and tossed him a can of beer and Lawson couldn’t help but smile.

Where has this place been all my life?

“But you won’t know anybody,” his mother, Eileen, chimed in with her ever chipper voice.  “All your friends and family are on Earth, not to mention your friends in the military.”

Outwardly, his mother was the sweet and caring type you’d find in any homestead across the galaxy, but Carl had known the truth behind it since he was a toddler.  Underneath that façade of motherly kindness was the attitude of a woman who simply didn’t give a shit, and only kept up her disguise to fit in with societal pressures.  The fact that she still treated him like a child, instead of the forty-five year old man that he was, said something about her.  She was the kind of person who would shop for yet another needless product to sooth her own fickle desires on her Lens’ Inter-Lens Service, while maintaining only the barest semblance of attention during what someone else would consider a very personal conversation.

“Mom,” Carl said with a sigh.  “Why do you think I’m even doing this?  The only friend I still have left is coming with me, so why stay.”

The statement wasn’t a question, and he didn’t expect his mother to answer anyway.  Not because she knew it hadn’t been a question, but because he knew she didn’t actually care.

John Lawson ignored his wife and pressed on.  “You realize, son, that if you leave, you’ll be doing little more than admitting your own guilt and running away in shame?”

Carl turned away from his mother, who no longer seemed interested, preoccupying her attention instead on the young Cuban bartender whose biceps were at risk of bursting through the sleeves of his tropical style shirt.  He fixed his father with a stern gaze and lowered his voice.

“Is that why you’re here?  To convince me to stay on a world that would rather see me hung by the gallows because the firing squad would be too quick?  There’s nothing left for me here.  At least if I go, I can visit in a few years when things have quieted down.  In time… who knows?  Maybe I’ll be able to return one day.”

“No one is saying you should go on the Lens and draw attention to yourself, son, but if you stay and lead a quiet life, at least you can say you kept your honor intact and stood your ground.”

“Whose honor exactly am I protecting?  Yours or mine?  Better be careful, dad.  You don’t want to be taken off the list of all those holiday parties you’re always invited to.”

“Don’t take that tone with me.  I’m past caring about whether what happened was your fault or not, but our reputation has already been blemished by all this as it is, and the only thing you can do to repair it is to stare your accusers in the face and refuse to admit defeat.”

“I already did that.  Don’t you remember when they stripped me of my rank and all my accomplishments and held me up as an example to save face with the Chinese?  No, I did my part thank you much.  I think I’m well and done with all that bullshit.”

John Lawson folded his arms and glared at his son, watching as Carl swallowed that last of his beer.

“Don’t do this, Carl.  Don’t expect a home to come back to if you do.”

Carl smirked at his father and picked up his travel bag before getting to his feet and throwing some anachronistic monetary coins down on the table.  Physical money may have been extinct on Earth for centuries now, but for those traveling to the outer colonies, it was a necessity, not to mention for those few who knew to stop at this lovely hole-in-the-wall before departure.  “Don’t worry, father.  I haven’t been coming back to one since the day you tried to save your
own
face in all this at no one’s expense but my own.”

With nothing left to say to his father, he reached out and grabbed his mother’s arm before passing by her.  He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek, knowing he’ll miss her despite all her faults.  “Say goodbye to Lilly for me, mom.”

Eileen flicked her eyes away from her beefcake pretty for just a second.  “Oh, your sister will miss you terribly.  Won’t that help you cha…”

“Goodbye, mom.”

“Oh, well, goodbye, dear.”  She turned back to her lustful desire and said nothing else.

Lawson looked back at his parents, now both ignoring him for completely different reasons.  He couldn’t believe it had come to this.  His own parents had turned their backs on him in a time when he needed them the most.  When the entire world was against him, he should have been able to turn to them and expect comfort and reassurance, but no such sentiment existed, and he was on his own.

Carl Lawson versus the universe.

He turned and headed towards the door, stopping only briefly to take in the surreal atmosphere of one of the most unique places he’d ever visited.  With a nod of approval he walked out into the dusty streets and turned north towards the only sign of progress and hope as far as the eye could see: the spaceport.

And his future.

High Earth Orbit /

ISLAND Liner
Sierra Madre
– Green Zone /

Command Deck – Bridge /

11.06.2595

08:35:16  Zulu

“Ship’s status?”

“All indicators save one show green, ma’am.”

“What’s the situation in Power Conduction Shaft – Delta?  Are we on still on schedule?”

“Senior Chief of Electronics Jaheed is on it, ma’am.  His controller indicates he should have the problem locked down well before our time of departure.”

“Good,” Ship Master Mei-Xing Na replied behind a hard smile, pleased at her new crew’s performance.

She abhorred incompetency – a cancer that had to be rooted out of as soon as it was discovered – and would not have been pleased with lackluster personnel.  Whether her perfectionism was a byproduct of her Chinese ancestry or her own tenacity for perfection was anyone’s guess, but she knew that her own personal level of expectation came from hard work and a selfless dedication to the fruition of her life’s goals, and today would mark her first steps towards fulfilling her destiny.  Today, she would take her first voyage as the ship master of an ISLAND Liner, and she wasn’t about to let incompetency blemish such a step.

“Ship Master,” another voice called out from her right.  “Docking Control has indicated the first wave of shuttles are on approach.  We should expect our first class passengers to arrive within the hour.”

Mei-Xing nodded, but a sneer crossed her face at the continued use of the Common language amongst her crew.  It was an excessively antiquated speech, an ugly speech, burdened and littered with the drivels of the old English language.

It may have been the language of international trade, commerce, and cooperation centuries ago, but the galaxy is so much bigger now!
She thought. 
With Chinese as the dominant language on more planets than any other, isn’t it time for us to speak our own language, with our own people, on our own ships?

She frowned.  There was little hope to be found in such thoughts.  The Americans were still too heavily involved in galactic affairs for Common to just go away, even if all they’d been reduced to was a security guard for planet Earth.  There was also the problem that while all ISLANDs were crewed by Chinese, they were still staffed by their subservient Indians, creating yet another language barrier.  Mei-Xing sighed to herself.  Since Common was taught to every new born baby alongside their own native languages, there was no way to change the status quo now.

No matter how disgusting it felt on Mei-Xing’s tongue.

“Ship Master?”  The voice spoke again.

“Very good, Mister Chen,” She said, glancing at the chronograph in the upper right hand corner of the oval Lens situated in front of her left eye.

08:36:02.

Only a minute late.  She supposed that was within even her standard of punctuality, especially considering how complex the last twenty four hours before an ISLAND launch was.

She blinked and sent a slight mental nudge towards her Lens, and a visual feed of the docking bay sprang into view.  She saw the deck crew scurrying about with guidance lights in their hands, red carpets sprawled along the deck to help facilitate the boarding of travelers, and concierges, ready at the beck and call of any passenger to set foot aboard the
Sierra Madre
.

Good, good.

With another mental nudge, the Lens feed shifted back to her To-Do-List, which she kept as her default setting.  She checked off the numbered event concerning the arrival of passengers and looked at the next thing on the list.  She already knew what it was, but the internal comfort of continuously checking her lists gave her piece of mind.  Item number five for the day was to rest until 14:00:00 when the next item on her list came about.  It was barely nine o’clock in the morning, but she’d already been on the bridge for nine hours performing the ISLAND’s pre-flight check lists with her bridge crew.  Feeling weariness creeping in, she stood and surveyed the bridge.

The bridge was built like the quarter of a sphere removed from the remainder, with the ship master’s at the very center, raised above all other stations by a semicircular platform about a meter above the deck.  Arrayed around her from left to right, along the curved interior of the viewport that encased the bridge were her officers’ duty stations.  Everything from navigation to communication to ship’s systems and a half dozen other flight sensitive tasks.  Beyond these stations, wrapping around the entirety of the curved section of the bridge, was the transparent viewport that connected the bridge to the emptiness of space.  It wrapped above and behind and around Mei-Xing as she stood at the foot of her dais, and all she could see was space.  It was something she had enjoyed immensely since her first moment on the bridge of her new command only one week ago.

Immaculate, the bridge was lit with bright lights and streamlined interfaces.  It had red carpeting on the floor and wood paneling along the bulkheads, luxury items that simply screamed: civilian.  It was nothing like the cold steel and colorless white Mei-Xing had seen aboard the Allied Space Navy’s ships of war she had toured during her training. 

Interestingly, she had to admit that she approved of the sterility of those ships more.

Finally, directly behind the ship master’s chair was the lift, which she promptly started for.

“XO,” she said as she stepped off her dais.  A small man with a well-greased comb over straightened from his position overlooking the shoulder of the ship’s Communication Officer.

“Ma’am?”  He asked.

“The bridge is yours.”

“Aye, ma’am,” he replied with a slight nod.  Mei-Xing did not return it but made sure her look lingered just enough to be obviously suggestive.  Her executive officer didn’t dare make mistakes while she was away, and her subtle look served as a reminder that he’d better not.  It wasn’t that she was unsure of his abilities, in fact, she couldn’t ask for a more competent first officer, but that she never dropped her persona, not even for him.

She didn’t want her crew to fear her, but she demanded their respect all the same.

She turned and entered the lift, but instead of indicating her intended destination with a simple thought through her Lens, a door whooshed open in front of her, opposite the one she’d just came through.  Stepping through, she entered the atrium of her personal quarters, a space about the size of a small living room despite its sole purpose as a place to receive guests and store her footwear.

Once through the lift doors, which silently closed behind her, she immediately slouched her shoulders and rolled her neck.  She wasn’t a machine, despite what others may think, and she needed to relax as much as the next person.  She slipped off her bulky duty boots and placed them in a small compartment that quickly retreated back into the bulkhead after she’d placed them within, and opened the large, ornate door to enter her new home.

Those who knew anything about space travel, especially those like the Chinese or Americans who dominated the practice, understood that space was always at a premium aboard a spacefaring vessel.  The Americans would especially understand this, as their use for space travel revolved almost solely around combat, where every cubic inch of a spaceship was used to fit ammunition, life support, provisions, berths, or any number of mission critical essentials.  The Chinese understood this as well, and abided by such a concept with most of their ship designs.

But not for ISLAND Liners.

Inter-System Luxury Aerospace Destination Liners had no need to worry about space constrictions.  Each ISLAND was almost five hundred years old, beginning their lives as simple transport shuttles that ferried supplies from Earth to China’s first colony on Mars in the late 21st century.  But as time progressed, repairs and refits had been necessary, giving designers the unique opportunity to build on top of the existing infrastructure, creating larger and larger ships.  Four hundred years later, those original ships had grown to immense sizes, each slightly different from the next.  Each ISLAND was literally the size of Europe’s largest countries, hundreds of kilometers long, and half as wide and tall.  Shaped like an angular, blocky cone, the engine block was the wide base and the bridge its tip.  They were space worthy countries capable of supporting millions of passengers.