Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (36 page)

“But I’m still no
team leader, not for real, anyway,” Alice said. It was the ‘but’
statement that Stephanie was holding back, she was sure.

“You’ll get there
with experience. I didn’t sign on with the captain as a leader, it
took me a lot of missions to get there. I got to know people, how
they thought, who they were, and those relationships taught me a lot
about my style of command, and eventually I was ready to take the
lead. You should try to get along with Remmy, by the way. He’s good
for downtime.”

“What? My stalker?”
Alice replied. “When I was in the Rangers he checked my profile
constantly, ten times a day, sometimes more.”

Ashley emerged from her
quarters and smiled at them as she fell in step. “Where we goin’?”

“Officers’ mess, to
see the captain,” Stephanie said as she checked Crewcast. “I
think Alice and I want turns at talking to him. Alice says Remmy has
been stalking her, by the way.”

“Really?” Ashley
asked. “How’d I miss that? I haven’t seem him staring at you in
the mess hall with dreamy eyes or anything.”

“Well, it looks like
Alice has been stalking him, too,” Stephanie said with a smile,
looking up from the communications and utility unit covering her
forearm. “He did check your profile a lot while you were in the
Rangers, eleven times one day, an average of five times a day the
rest. Checked out a few pictures of you at the beach too, but mostly
he was checking your daily commentary.”

“How many times did
he check my beach images? I can’t see that,” Alice asked,
flushed.

“Six, but he’s only
human, and you’re about the same age, maturity-wise,” Stephanie
replied.

“Yeah, right!”
Alice protested.

“The system does not
lie,” Stephanie replied. “Speaking of which, there were eight
days in the last month where you checked his profile fifteen times.”

“In eight days?”
Ashley asked. “That’s not too bad, kinda crushy though.”

“Oh no,” Stephanie
laughed. “Fifteen times a day on eight different days. It says you
checked stats, his daily commentary, and you watched three holos of
him in training, and you Rangers don’t wear much on the obstacle
course.”

Ashley filled the hall
with a gleeful screech and clapped. “He’s even your size, you’d
be so cute together!”

Alice was mortified. “I
was tracking him! He’s been competing with me since the beginning
of Rangers training. It’s annoying, we’re supposed to be a team,
just like you said.”

“Wait, it shows here
that you checked his profile a few days before he checked yours,”
Ashley said as she checked her own comm unit. “Was there romance on
the obstacle course?” she asked with a grin.

Alice brought up the
holographic clip she used to glare at when they were in training. She
had randomly been placed on the starting line of Circuit D3, one of
the most challenging obstacle courses, beside Remmy. She started the
holographic playback right before the moment that she’d never
forget. A second before the starting buzzer sounded, Remmy looked at
her and winked. “He completely threw me off my game, got ahead of
me right away and when I got to the rope swing he did this.” She
advanced to a latter stage of the course, when she had just finished
climbing a muddy wall with hidden hand-holds. Remmy finished just
ahead of her and swung across the elevated mud pit with ease, then
flung the rope back across the span. Alice was clearing muck from her
eyes, so she didn’t see the thick rope and it struck her squarely
in the forehead, knocking her off balance and back down the climbing
wall. “I nearly broke my neck! That’s four metres!”

“Not on purpose,”
Ashley said, nearly doubled over laughing.

“Nope, I’d say he
was trying to help and didn’t check his timing,” Stephanie
agreed. “He probably didn’t even see who he was swinging the rope
back to.”

Alice deactivated the
little hologram and shook her head. “It had to be on purpose,
that’s why he’s been in my sights all this time.”

Ashley giggled and
nodded. “I’m sure it has.”

“No, as my
competition, he started it. I scored in the bottom that day, and he
made top three,” Alice insisted.

“You ever ask him
about it?” Stephanie asked.

“Are you kidding? No.
He’d just laugh, that’s how he is.”

“You know, there are
a lot of other, older ladies in these beach holograms too,”
Stephanie said. “If this is a real problem, I can use my security
access to see who he was looking at. Do you really think he’s
stalking you?”

“Yes,” Alice said.

“Okay, let’s see
who he was looking at in these images,” Stephanie said as she
reviewed the behaviour capture data. Alice couldn’t see the
information. To her frustration, Stephanie was reviewing the files in
privacy mode. “Yup, he was looking at Shiriza in all of them, and
for your information, he asked her out the day after she dropped out
of the Rangers.”

“Oh,” Alice
remembered the woman. She was fairly nice, older than both her and
Remmy by several years, but a little frigid. Shiriza was beautiful
though, and fairly exotic looking, with dark skin and wavy dark hair.

“She turned him down
and banned him from her social profile,” Stephanie said. “The
story gets worse from there.”

“For who? Her or
Remmy?” Ashley asked.

“Remmy. She said some
nasty things about him to all the women in her circle of friends.
Might explain why Remmy didn’t have much luck dating in Haven
Shore, not for lack of trying. He’s about as awkward as a one
legged stool.”

“Ouch,” Ashley
said. “Points for dedication, though.”

“Definitely,”
Stephanie agreed. “But he also isn’t stalking you. Looks like he
checks out your profile because he thinks you’re a friend. Probably
likes that you follow what he’s doing.”

“Yeah, right,”
Alice retorted.

“Listen, Crewcast
doesn’t make mistakes with this kind of thing. From the behaviour
analysis I’m seeing, he thinks you’re too young for him and
probably sees you as a kind of kindred spirit, there’s nothing
weird about it.”

“Speaking as someone
whose been ogled and followed,” Ashley said in a much kinder tone
than Stephanie, “I can tell you this is a good thing. He’s short
on real friends, I think, and he’d probably be easy to get along
with.”

“But the movies he
shows, and I’ve seen him joking around,” Alice said. “It looks
like a lot of people here like him.”

“Sure, but he doesn’t
know any of them, they’re all new crew looking for connections
too,” Ashley replied. “You two could be good friends, unless
you’re disappointed that he’s not-“

“No, no,” Alice
said. “If you’re sure he’s not stalking me, then good, and I’m
not disappointed.”

“Well, there would be
no problem if you were,” Ashley said with an impish grin. “Crewcast
says you’re about seventeen to eighteen now, and he’s twenty
three, you’re about the same dating maturity, and there’s nothing
ick-“

“Seriously?” Alice
asked with a screech.

“Just buggin’ ya,”
Ashley chuckled.

“Is this okay now?
You’re not going to accuse him anymore?” Stephanie said in a more
serious tone.

“Yeah, I guess the
evidence can’t lie,” Alice said. “Wish I knew before.” The
hatch leading to the officer’s mess was just up ahead, and it
seemed that was the last place she wanted to be all of a sudden. “I
think I’ll turn in early. See you later.” She accepted a hug from
Ashley before making her way to her bunk.

Taking Control

Rituals were the core
of Ayan’s older memories. In her last life, as Ayan Rice, she was a
soldier first and an engineer second in her training. That may have
reversed later in her career, people depended on her as an engineer,
but the discipline and routines of a soldier were always present.

Things were very
different in the life she was living. She couldn’t help but reflect
on the changes as she shaped her vacsuit into a much smaller version
of itself so she could feel her muscles move unassisted. She was up
before Lacey, hopefully before anyone who would need her could come
calling. That was part of a routine she’d embraced over six months
before, when she recognized one of the major differences between
herself and the old Ayan. It was much easier to get out of shape, and
she wasn’t nearly as coordinated.

Simulations were fine,
they could trick your mind into thinking you were having actual
experiences, feeling actual pain, and exerting yourself as much as
you would if you were actually doing whatever was being transmitted
to your brain. There were a few important things they couldn’t do,
however, like train muscle memory. There were short cuts, like
targeted electro-stimulation, but Freeground fleet training
maintained that there was nothing like getting into workout gear and
having it out on the track, or obstacle course, or firing range, or
sparring room, or whatever activities you wanted to practice to the
point of reflex.

Ayan’s purpose that
morning was two-fold. The run would clear her head, and she wanted to
challenge her fear of heights. It wasn’t a full-blown phobia –
that was rare – but an intense fear. The large octagonal tower top
had transparesteel windows around the edge tilted on a forty-five
degree angle, and a wide gangway one level up. Tamber was still
shrouded in the shadow of night, but the moon had turned to reveal a
starry night. People who grew up on colonies with an Earth
configuration with one moon said it was difficult to adjust, but
Ayan’s sense of time was tied to nothing but a clock. The extreme
tidal forces did affect mood and a few other biological factors, but
she was well acclimated after spending months on the ground.

She jogged up the steps
leading to the platform and started running along the inner edge. The
platform was mostly transparent. If she started running in the
middle, it would look like she was running in mid-air, with nothing
but a clear view of the ground so far below. Her palms were sweating,
her heart protested with a vigorous beat, and her mind objected, but
she focused on moving forward.

She remembered feeling
out of shape and facing the choice: begin taking fitness pills that
were normally reserved for people who didn’t have space for
exercise, or start working it off. The soldier in her won, and with a
little embarrassment she approached Oz to coach her. He did, and
those first workouts seemed so long, they were so hard that she found
herself wondering if her body was defective. It took months, but she
eventually got into the shape she wanted. There was no changing the
fact that she was short, or that she would always be thicker than her
previous inception without serious body modifications, but once she
uncovered her natural shape, she began to like it and there was no
way she’d allow herself to slide back. Ayan swore off the fitness
pills as well. Unless she set foot on a starship, she’d depend on
good old physical exertion to stay in shape. As for being clumsy, she
still bumped into things from time to time, but Ayan felt like she’d
taken possession of her body, and mishaps were far more infrequent.

Focusing on keeping her
pace and her breathing constant, maintaining good form and running in
a broad circle around that upper deck eventually calmed Ayan down.
She could jog along that path, at that pace, for another hour, her
comfort increasing by the second. Memories of shrinking away from
safe but high places spurned her on to challenge herself instead.
Most of the time she was the only one who got vertigo in a crowd, and
she wouldn’t have it.

“Oh, good glory,”
she muttered to herself as she altered her path so she was running
along the outer edge of the platform, where it joined with the
transparesteel window. A glance down confirmed that everything
beneath her was fully transparent, and she nearly stumbled as her
knees threatened to buckle. “Don’t be a bloody child, outrun the
fear,” she challenged herself, pushing from a jog into a full run.
“You’re better than all this, everyone else knows it.”

She slowed down to a
pace she could maintain for longer after three more laps and glanced
down. Her hands flailed outward as the sensation of falling gripped
her momentarily, but she kept running and brought them back into
form. “Stupid girl,” she said as she forced herself to look down
while she ran, gritting her teeth as she fought the powerful instinct
to get off the platform. “Finish strong, or move along,” Ayan
said as she stepped up onto the incline of the transparesteel window.
An involuntary whimper accompanied the act of running along the
forty-five degree tilt of the window itself.

It was all she could do
to keep running along those solid as steel but as clear as air
windows. Ayan concentrated on her running form, but forgot about her
pace completely, which had become a dead run. Her heart pounded so
hard she could feel her pulse in her head and hands. “Oh shut up,”
she spat as her comm unit beeped a medical alert. “I’m doing
this.”

It took three full laps
before she started to calm down and her comm stopped beeping a cardio
warning. Ayan was almost out of energy, but smiled at herself as she
slowed a little and decided to do four more laps. “Just to be sure
I’ve done this and didn’t dream it.” Her heart was still
pounding, and every time she saw too much of the ground she had to
fight for balance, but Ayan knew it wouldn’t be long before she
grew accustomed to that vista in particular.

She’d have to
continue to challenge her fear of heights until it was gone, but that
morning Ayan had claimed an incredible victory. She’d gotten over
her fear in little leaps, during obstacle courses while testing
Ranger’s training when she had time, and a couple of other times
before, but taking on her fear when stepping away from the edge as an
option was completely new.