Black Holiday (The Black Chronicles Book 2)

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “Can you show me what kinds of swimsuits they sell?”

  “Affirmative,” the uplink answered, and the hologram shifted to show three miniature figures, roughly the size and shape of Morgan, wearing the outfits.

  The figures rotated through different options, with small boxes below displaying the colors each could be fabricated in.

  “Um,” Morgan stammered, not sure how to phrase the request. “I need to limit the options more.”

  “By color, designer, fabric, or style?”

  “Style, I guess?”

  The uplink rattled off a half dozen style names that meant nothing to Morgan. She picked the last.

  “Define, ‘Bikini.’”

  The three figures merged into a single larger one, showing a swimsuit that was two alarmingly small pieces of cloth.

  “Eliminate Bikini from the options,” Morgan quickly ordered. It was a good thing Gertrude wasn’t there. Morgan could feel her face heating up just thinking about wearing something like that in public.

  Morgan ran through the options again, trying to make sense of the names.

  There, one-piece. Was that what it sounded like?

  “Display a one-piece style.”

  The uplink complied.

  Well, that was a bit better. That was, unfortunately, a low bar to clear.

  “Do swimsuits usually have no sleeves or legs?”

  “Yes. Would you like to connect with a salesperson at one of the shops in question?”

  “No,” Morgan forcefully said. She’d have to go there, eventually, to try something on, but she did not feel like suffering through a sales pitch from one of the workers of either of those stores. Better to figure out what she wanted first, on her own.

  She’d been to both of the stores in question before, while Gertrude had been away with the Daystar Fading, one to get Haruhi some new clothes – amazing how quickly they grew at that age – and the other to get some dresses suitable to wear when she took Haruhi to her church services.

  In both cases the ladies were knowledgeable, helpful, and infuriatingly cheerful and persistent.

  Picking one of the stores at random Morgan set it to cycle through the styles of one-piece swimsuits.

  “How hard could it possibly be to make one of these without some part cut out or transparent?” she muttered to herself.

  Of course, as was fitting for the kind of morning Morgan was having, the uplink heard her, misunderstood it as an instruction, and further misunderstood what exactly she had said.

  It kept right on rotating through different styles on the hologram, but changed so all of them were either partially transparent or had cutouts. There were even several that had both. For those Morgan wondered what the point was, since they actually concealed less than the bikini style she had rejected earlier. Shaking her head she undid her last ‘command.’

  After something like a half hour Morgan finally had picked something out she didn’t utterly hate. She keyed in a request on her uplink for the store to fabricate it in her size so she could go over and try it on. Not for the first time she wished she could just shop like a normal person, as Gertrude or Emily did. After growing up wearing nothing but mass-produced poorly fitting padded coveralls she really enjoyed wearing pretty dresses, but choosing them was so complicated she almost never bothered making the attempt.

  That done she set about gathering the rest of the stuff she needed to pack.

  That was a much easier task; though packing her dresses into her duffel bag was a bit harder than her work clothes, since they would actually wrinkle.

  Leaving the bag on her bunk she at last put her uplink on and headed out for the store.

  As she grumbled about clothes shopping Morgan realized she wasn’t quite so annoyed with Gertrude and Emily anymore.

  Did I get over it, or was I always just frustrated in general and now that I’m annoyed at something else… Morgan wondered to herself, her thoughts trailing off as she pondered it.

  Bah, she thought. I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to go shopping, and then to Albion, and I am going to have fun. Blast those pirates, they’re dead and gone.

  What a way to start a vacation. At least it can’t get any worse from here.

  CHAPTER 2

  There are two basic reactions to someone admitting they don’t know something that ‘everyone knows.’ The first, unhelpful, one is to be incredulous or condescending. The second is to realize that in a galaxy as wide and varied as ours, there will always be more amazing or awe-inspiring things that we as a species or as an individual haven’t experienced, and that at that moment it is our turn to introduce something new to someone else. Besides, I don’t know about you, but watching someone taste chocolate for the first time, or see the Helix Nebula with their own eyes, well, it makes me appreciate them more.

  - Nathan Jones, Founder, Parlon Space Tours

  HARUHI HAD not stopped bouncing around the cabin of Emily’s personal ship, the Graverose, since… well, since before they’d boarded.

  Haruhi had only been six Earth years old when they’d initially travelled up to Takiyama Station, and there hadn’t been any windows in the shuttle then anyway. Add to that that, given her age, Haruhi’s memories of the event weren’t exactly clear, it was no small wonder that the girl was excited to be going anywhere on a spaceship.

  This was doubly true since, aside from some time spent looking at the ships in the hollow center of the station, Haruhi hadn’t seen the outside world at all this whole time. There were no exterior windows on the station she could get to, and she hadn’t gone anywhere on the freighters like Morgan and Gertrude had.

  As was standard procedure for any spaceflight that included a jump, even a hop ‘next door’ like this one, everyone who owned a skinsuit was wearing it, which in this case meant everyone except for Haruhi herself.

  Emily was quietly finishing dealing with a few last details via her uplink in one corner of the overly luxurious passenger cabin, while Gertrude and Morgan sat in the middle and tried to keep an eye on Haruhi.

  Apart from the pilot ahead of them in the cockpit and an engineer behind them in the engine room, there wasn’t anyone else on the ship.

  Except for the four bodyguards, Morgan amended. They were so good at being unobtrusive and blending into the background that she kept forgetting they were there. Given how much Morgan distrusted the police or even police-like entities that was especially impressive.

  Haruhi bounded over to where Morgan was sitting, stopping in front of her, still bouncing up and down on her heels.

  Realizing the implications of this Morgan frowned.

  “Haruhi, where are your shoes? And your socks, for that matter?”

  Haruhi shrugged.

  “They’re in here… somewhere.” She glanced around, a somewhat comically exaggerated movement that told Morgan that Haruhi was being just a bit silly. “See. Over there on that chair.”

  “And would Aunt Emily appreciate you leaving your shoes on her nice chairs?”

  Haruhi just shrugged again.

  “So, Aunt Morgan, what is the jump gate like?” Haruhi asked.

  “Oh, it’s very interesting,” Morgan said. “But how can I focus on describing it when I’m distracted by your shoes?”

  Haruhi didn’t respond directly, but slunk off over to the chair with the shoes – a bit more stompy than bouncy, not that she could manage a proper stomp in bare feet any better than Morgan could. Morgan thought she was trying to be coy about it as she nonchalantly dumped the shoes and socks onto the floor, but if she was, she failed miserably.

  She then wandered over to the viewing port, gazing out at Zion below, the oceans sparkling in the light, hidden here and there by cloud cover.

  A minute or so later, she came back to Morgan’s chair.

  “So, what is the jump gate like?” she said, as if it were the first time she’d asked the question.

  Fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the antics, Morgan answered.

/>   “The gate itself looks like a big silver ring. It’s so big that you can’t make out any details from a ship, since you always go through in the middle.

  “When it opens it looks a bit like throwing a rock into a pond, and the stars behind it seem to waver. Then it changes to a black so deep that we can’t even really describe it. You need to see it yourself to understand just how black it is. Right before you go through, it changes again to a swirl of every color imaginable, and a few I don’t have words for.”

  “That sounds kind of scary,” Haruhi whispered, her big dark eyes wide.

  “It can be,” Morgan agreed. “So big and strange. But it’s beautiful, and awesome too. Besides, without it we’d never have met.”

  “Because we’d be on different planets?”

  Technically that was true, and Morgan thought explaining that they wouldn’t exist if mankind had never been able to explore the stars was a bit much for a seven-year-old to understand.

  “The planets are so far apart that we can’t even really imagine it.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Well, with our fastest ships we can go from Zion to Albion in less than a year, right?”

  Haruhi nodded.

  “Going that fast the whole way it would take something like six thousand years to get from here to my homeworld.”

  “That’s like forever!” Now Haruhi sounded awed, her forehead scrunching up as she tried to imagine it.

  “Close enough.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “The jump?”

  Haruhi nodded.

  “Nope. If you weren’t looking out a window you wouldn’t even notice.”

  “How does it look inside?”

  “It looks a lot like space. Stars and so forth. Only instead of black, it’s grey, and instead of white-looking stars, they’re red.”

  “Why is that?”

  Morgan laughed.

  “I have no idea, Haru. I’m not sure anyone does.”

  “So how do they know how to do it if they don’t know how it works?”

  “Well, do you know why your feet stay on the ground?”

  “They talked about that in class. Gravity.”

  “On a planet, sure. The planet is so big everything nearby is pulled towards it.” Close enough, Morgan added for herself mentally. Explaining the deeper bits of gravity theory to kid would be even harder than explaining how history would have been different if not for space exploration. Not that Morgan understood gravity completely herself. “But what about on the station? Or here on Aunt Emily’s ship?”

  “There’s gravity here too, right?”

  “Gravity plating, sure, but it couldn’t work the same way, could it? Is this ship as big as the whole planet?”

  Haruhi shook her head, her eyes widening at the idea of a planet sized spaceship.

  “So how do the plates work?” she asked, whispering again, leaning in towards Morgan conspiratorially.

  “No one really knows.”

  “That’s silly. How did they make it then?”

  “Well, this was a long time ago, back on Earth. They were making something else entirely, or trying to, and accidentally made artificial gravity instead. A lot of things happen that way. We know it works, but not how it works.”

  “What else is like that?”

  Morgan stopped to think about it, and realized she couldn’t really think of any off-hand.

  “Hmm. Also a good question. How about this?” Morgan said, reaching out and tickling Haruhi’s sides. As the little girl burst into laughter Morgan added, “Why are you laughing? Do you know, huh? Do you?”

  Morgan kept up until Haruhi started squirming, then brought the girl in close for a hug.

  “Now how about you settle down in a chair where you can have a good view out of the window? You’ll be able to see when we jump better if you aren’t bouncing all over the place. And you’re making me dizzy just watching you.”

  “Okay,” Haruhi said, still a bit breathless.

  As Haruhi skipped off Morgan looked towards Gertrude and rolled her eyes, eliciting a chuckle from the other woman.

  “Oh, I’m sure you were just as full of energy at that age,” Gertrude said as she came over to join Morgan, low enough that Haruhi wouldn’t hear.

  “Not really,” Morgan replied, not that she felt like elaborating that by Haruhi’s age Morgan was in intensive training to work the mines as a tunnel rat.

  Glancing over at Emily, Morgan changed the topic.

  “What’s with the extra bodyguards? I don’t remember her ever having this many before.”

  “Them?” Gertrude said, indicating the nearest guard with a tip of her head. “Comes with her new job. More high profile than before. Mostly a formality, really. I can’t even think of the last time a government or military official was attacked on Albion. Or Zion either, for that matter.”

  “New job?”

  “You didn’t hear? Huh, I thought I mentioned it in one of my messages.”

  “Probably. How many did you send over the ten months?”

  “Fifty. Haruhi insisted in sending at least one a week, no matter how little we had to say.”

  Morgan nodded.

  “That’s what I thought, but I only received around forty, I think. Maybe a few less than that.”

  “Good old reliable mail courier system,” Gertrude said, rolling her eyes.

  “Never mind that. What new job?”

  “Our ‘Iron Colonel’ is now a general, though I forget the exact title. I only really paid attention to Naru’s ranks and promotions, the officer levels always confused me.”

  “I thought she had retired?”

  “She did, and I guess she mostly still is? They have her helping with some specific project or other. They needed someone with practical combat experience, and they needed her to outrank the other people involved, so they promoted her.”

  “That requires constant security?”

  Gertrude shrugged.

  “Apparently. Or maybe all the generals have guards, I don’t know.”

  About then Emily herself came over, her call finished.

  “Discussing what to do first when we arrive on Albion?” she asked, her mouth twitching in the subtle way Morgan had learned was her equivalent of a genuine smile. When Emily gave someone a full smile it was best to either get out of her way or do exactly as she wanted.

  “Catching up on old news,” Gertrude answered.

  “A general, huh?” Morgan said. A moment later, she added, “Should I be impressed?”

  Emily laughed.

  “Always nice to have friends who keep your ego in line.” She shrugged, sitting down opposite them. “I suppose it’s impressive enough. This puts me in the top few hundred officers in the Royal Marines. It also means I’m commanding a desk instead of men in the field.”

  “You weren’t doing that before either, though,” Morgan pointed out.

  “True, I wasn’t serving as an active duty officer anymore. But, if there had ever been a need to go back, a war or something, as a colonel I would have been commanding troops. It’s what I’m best at.”

  “Then why promote you?” Morgan asked.

  “Well, not everyone agrees with me as to what I’m best at. Then there are the politics, and a host of other considerations. Besides, it had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

  “That important?” Morgan asked, not quite keeping her incredulity out of her tone.

  “Always seems that way, at least,” was Emily’s less than satisfying reply. “But enough of that. You don’t care about what I’m up to in my spare time, and I don’t want to waste your time. We only have a few weeks and there is so much to do.”

  “I thought the whole point of a vacation was to do as little as possible?” Morgan asked with a frown.

  “For some people, sure. But somehow I don’t think you enjoy that much, do you Morgan?”

  Morgan just rolled her eyes. That was hardly a hard guess
to make. Emily just ignored her and resumed talking.

  “So I’m going to keep you busy, show you all the amazing things of my lands, and the rest of Albion. Or at least what we can manage with just a few weeks.

  “Not counting the museums on Earth – which probably no longer exist – Albion has the best art collections in the galaxy, of many types.”

  “And?” Morgan couldn’t help but ask. She didn’t see much use for art. Books, sure. Or the holo-pictures she occasionally watched with Gertrude. Those at least presented entire stories. But a single image? What use was that?

  Lady Emily sighed, and Gertrude shook her head.

  “We’ll make a cultured woman out of you, Morgan. Eventually. While I will admit that some art doesn’t inspire or beautify the world, true art is very uplifting. You simply haven’t had the chance to see much of it,” Emily responded.

  “Look at it this way. The leaders of Hillman banned art, yes?” Gertrude asked. Waiting for Morgan to nod in agreement she continued. “If art wasn’t important or worthy, why were they afraid of it?”

  That’s an interesting way of putting it, Morgan thought, before responding out loud.

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look. Can you at least stick to the best ones?”

  Gertrude laughed at this.

  “A reasonable request, from someone who doesn’t realize just how spectacular our museums are,” Emily said with a slight nod.

  The ship’s pilot came on the intercom system just then, necessitating a pause in the conversation.

  “Lady Novan, we are next in the queue for transit. Given planetary geography the trip in subspace will roughly fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you, Flight Lieutenant,” Emily responded. “That reminds me,” she said to Gertrude and Morgan as the pilot closed the com line. “Are either of you carrying your pistols?”

  “I left mine on the station,” Gertrude answered, gesturing to the armed guards standing against the walls. “It didn’t seem especially necessary for this trip.”

  “Of course I did,” Morgan said, apprehensively. Why was Emily asking? “I don’t go anywhere without it, especially after…” She trailed off.