by D. Brumbley
“I’m trying to distract myself from my anxiety about hearing from the Initiative, so I changed the subject.” She said it as if it was obvious and made perfect sense, but then went on to answer his question. “I am on the fence. But I asked Greg what he thought, and he encouraged me to meet this match. I know you both want me to also. It won’t hurt to meet him, and tomorrow is my day off.”
“I didn’t realize it was that time of year already.” Her father said with a good-natured smile, since teasing his daughter about her intensity only went so far. She had gotten it from somewhere, after all. “It’s true, we are excited for you to meet him. Skeptical, but excited. I did some digging of my own once you told us his name. Without divulging anything about what kind of digging or any other details, I’ll say that I haven’t found anything to put me off my ease. Yet.”
“Really? If you haven’t found anything, then I’m impressed. Either he’s good at hiding things, or he really is just a genuinely good man. Fighter type or not.” She drank her water slowly and thanked her mother for the plate of food she had prepared, even if it was only a lightly seasoned chicken breast and steamed vegetables. She had burned most of her calorie allotment on her breakfast, which usually she knew better than to do. Jannah was just making her nervous. “Do you think he will like me? I know I’m strange and a bit off-putting. I didn’t even realize that I had offended Greg today until it was too late. I didn’t realize he still had feelings for me. I only went on a date with him one time.”
The complete lack of surprise on her parents’ faces at that announcement was all the confirmation she needed about her own oddness. Even so, her father looked optimistic. “If the match program chose him to be yours, then it knows what he thinks strange looks like and whether he likes it or not. Everything about you and everything about him that the program could glean from your calibration sessions will already have been factored in. It may end up that you both find each other remarkably strange, and that will be the basis of your relationship. I’ve heard of worse beginnings. I’m sure he will like you. He went looking for this the same as you did, keep in mind.”
Mercury sighed but she nodded, since she knew her father was right. Orion Al-Jabbar hadn’t cancelled on the meeting, and neither should she. “I need to have more optimism going into this initial meeting. You two are happy.”
“Very.” Her mother added with a smile as she put down a plate in front of her husband. “The program has more successful matches now than it ever has. You will be happy, I am sure of it.” She smiled wider as she looked across at her daughter, then she went to grab her plate last. On her way across the small unit, she heard both her husband and daughter’s communicators ping at once. “I bet that’s…”
“It’s from them!” Mercury felt adrenaline pump through her body, but her hand remained steady as she held onto her communicator. She slowly exhaled a nervous breath as she set down her utensils, then put both hands on the communicator and opened up the notice.
Mercury Finnegan,
We are so very pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Jannah Initiative. Your skills and high marks as a doctor…
Mercury couldn’t breathe as she stared at the screen, then she turned her green eyes to look at her mother and then her father. “I got in. I got in!”
It was a rare moment to see something that could put their stoic daughter off her cool, and both her parents were grinning from ear to ear as she very nearly squealed. Their daughter, the genius wonder-child baby-doctor, squealing at her acceptance letter. “Of course you did.” Her father didn’t seem surprised at the acceptance either, but he had been in government for the past twenty years. If he was surprised by something, it meant he wasn’t getting enough information from the right people. “They’d be idiots not to come begging for you, and they’ll be richer for having you as a part of them.”
“This is incredible! They are only taking two thousand people this time, and with all the people that applied…” She was still stunned but ecstatic as she read over it again. “I just…Wow! To be able to go to Jannah and to start with a brand new world…” She jumped out of her chair, then rushed over to her father and wrapped her arms tightly around him. “I can’t believe it!”
“You deserve it.” Marcus hugged his daughter tightly and kissed her cheek before he let her go. “You’ve worked since you knew how, so that you could be the best. And that’s what you are. Stands to reason you’d be going to the best of places, to make it even better. We’re proud of you, Mercury.”
She did a little jump-hop dance as she got up and moved over to her mother and hugged her as well. “This is incredible.” She repeated, then she ran her hands over her face. “Wow. Jannah.” Mercury eventually made it back over to her seat, and she sat down quickly. “I suppose I will have something to discuss with my match tomorrow. This must mean he was accepted also.”
Marcus nodded confirmation. “He was. You’d not have been matched if he hadn’t. I’m sure he’s doing his own happy dance right about now, wherever he is.”
“I hope so. I want someone who is just as excited about it as I am.” Mercury settled enough to start to cut into her food, but it was obvious by her grin that she was still overflowing with excitement. “Is there more that you know that you are keeping from me?”
“Always.” His smile had covered up a lot of things in her life, and while she knew it was covering a lot even in that moment, her parents’ secrets were one of the great constants of her existence. “Most of them will be more fun for you to figure out than to just be told by me.” He cut into his own food after pulling his wife in for a kiss to thank her for the meal. “Oh wait, that’s not true. I do know that the Initiative is actually planning on starting with the accepted recruits a little earlier than they had originally thought. The earliest estimates I’ve heard are just a month from now, but nothing that’s been confirmed officially. Even so, you may want to plan accordingly.”
“A month?” She said as she stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken. “Wow. That’s fast. I wasn’t expecting that. But if they want to get started that soon, then I will certainly be there. Matched or not.”
They ate the rest of their meal in relative silence, each of them pondering the implications of the impending future. When everyone was nearly finished, Marcus spoke up again, a little more quietly than before. “Whether it’s one month from now or six, there is one thing I want to tell you, about what to do when you go. Not some kind of intelligence I’ve gathered on it or anything, just…some unsolicited advice, if you’d be willing to take it into consideration.” Their daughter was very much her own person, and sometimes their advice had been completely rejected, even if that rejection had never been out of spite or some kind of teenage rebellion. That just wasn’t their daughter.
“Of course.” She said as she gave her father her full attention, since she was always willing to listen to both of her parents, even if she didn’t always agree with them. “What advice is it?”
He swallowed the bite he’d taken before he spoke, still obviously weighing exactly what he wanted to say in his mind before he said it. “There are going to be people already appointed by the governing board of the Consortium to make sure things run smoothly in the Initiative. Some of them may be going with you to Jannah when the time comes, but for the most part, I’m guessing they’re going to be administrators who’ll stay behind when you leave. They’re going to have a way of doing things already in mind, probably already laid out in very convincing detail, with structures and hierarchies and all kinds of very official-looking trimming. These people, who aren’t ultimately going to be going with you, are going to have their own agenda and they’re going to want you to follow it.” He knew nothing he was saying would be surprising, but he wasn’t finished. “My advice? Don’t.” He let that sink in for a moment, since it was, so far as he could remember, the first and only time in her life that he had ever suggested that Mercury disobey someone in authority. “The peop
le who are actually going with you are going to be the ones who are important in determining how things are run. Not the admins here. Don’t lose sight of that.”
“I’ll…try to keep that in mind.” She said hesitantly, not because she didn’t think what he said was important, but because dealing with life and death often meant that it was better to follow rules, protocols, orders. “I’m not usually a rule-breaker. Or a rule-bender. You know me.”
“I do know you. Which is why we’re having this conversation.” He grinned over at her and pushed away his finished plate. “But you’re also incredibly perceptive when you’re looking for something, and you know how to improvise when things get dicey. I’m telling you this now so you can be on the lookout for things that come from leadership. If they’re not going to work for the Initiative, for the people actually going to Jannah, they should be trashed. It’s going to be your world. Yours and the others who are going with you. No reason to take any baggage along from here you don’t have to.”
Mercury nodded again, since she agreed with her father’s logic and rationality. Sometimes leadership needed to be challenged if it wasn’t for the greater good, and Jannah was a different planet that would be led by different rules. “I hope it won’t be too long before you both can come to Jannah too. I want you there with me.”
“Oh, we’ll follow eventually. The last we were told, we’ll be on the third or fourth wave behind you. So, you know, I expect our house to be fully built, hot tub ready, ocean view, the works.”
“I will do my absolute best to make that happen, Dad.” She laughed softly and grinned at him. “You deserve nothing but the best.”
“So do you, Mercury.” Her father said with another smile. He would make sure she had everything the world could give her. No matter how many strings he had to pull, no matter what favors he had to call in, he would make sure she was taken care of. Always.
* * * * *
Orion loved the burn in his muscles every time the momentum of the ship shifted. He loved the feeling of the controls under his hands, the way everything moved when he said move.
What he didn’t love was when people didn’t follow protocols and left him to improvise his way out of a catastrophic collision.
“Fitch, I need the landing cables out, now!” He didn’t have half a second to spare, even just to look away from the window at the controls. The massive carrier had disengaged almost right on top of them, and their inertia was going to kill both ships in just a few seconds. Not only that, but from the way the other ship was moving, it was obvious the other pilot had no idea what was going on.
“I’ve engaged the landing cables, stop yelling at me! You are incredibly bossy.” Kameron Fitch didn’t like traveling with Orion very often as his second, mostly because he knew so much and it made her feel like an idiot every time. She really was a good pilot. He was just a better one. They were friends, usually, unless they were in the cockpit.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? I was trying not to get us killed!” He yelled without looking at her, grabbing the landing cable controls to latch onto the rapidly-approaching ship. Since he didn’t have the momentum to thrust away from it, he grabbed onto the underside of its hull and used the cables to cushion the impact and shove away from the carrier to get clear. He imagined it was a shock to the pilot of the other ship, but he didn’t really care about that. He cared about keeping his crew and passengers safe. The maneuver threw them all around in their restraints, but at the end of it, the transport ship he was piloting pivoted right around the far end of the larger freighter into more or less open space. Enough for him to maneuver safely, at least.
He let out a heavy sigh once it looked like they were clear, and retracted the landing cables so he could get back to the actual docking portion of the Station where they had been about to land. “Anybody from that freighter tries to talk to us, tell ‘em where they can shove it. I’ll go see the port authority as soon as we get capture. Any casualties?”
“Everybody’s fine.” Kameron mumbled as she worked through her own portion of the checklist, even after a near-miss. They happened more often than people liked. “You’re just wound up because you’re going to meet that doctor.”
“Yeah, well, you would be too.” He shot back quickly, working through his own half of the procedures. “If you ever actually decided that being my copilot wasn’t your favorite thing in the world anymore and you left me to get matched yourself.”
“It’s not my favorite thing in the world.” She said honestly, still flipping switches and recording flight information. “I look like a dumbass next to you. And I know that’s why you’re barking at me. You think that’s how you’re gonna look next to this prestigious doctor. I don’t know why you’re going to meet her if you think you’re not gonna be a good match.”
Orion just glared over at her, and finished the last few steps of his checklist to get them well on their way toward the unoccupied docking bay they’d been assigned. “You’re not a dumbass. I don’t have a real high tolerance for dumbasses, and I’ve tolerated your ass for a long while now. You just hesitate when you shouldn’t. Bad habits I’m trying to break you out of.” She wasn’t wrong, though, and he didn’t bother contradicting her on the rest of what she’d said. He was going to look like an idiot next to the doctor, and he didn’t consider himself an unintelligent person. She was just…very intimidating. At least her record was.
“When do you actually have to meet her?” Kameron looked up from her computer screen and smirked at him. “What if she’s a hideous beast of a woman? That would make me laugh so much.”
“Yeah, that’s because you’re kind of a bitch.” He returned the smirk, and shrugged as if to say he wasn’t going to apologize for it. Not that she would have expected him to. She knew him better than that. “And I told the system that physical attraction is important to me. Not critical, but important. I doubt it would completely leave me hanging like that. Program set a ‘high confidence’ label on us. So I’m gonna take this woman’s hotness on faith.”
“Well, aren’t you shallow.” Kameron scoffed with her eyes on the controls. “What if there’s this fantastic match out there for you and you’re being a dick by thinking with your dick?”
“I am not thinking…entirely with my dick.” He managed to sound at least half-defensive as he said so, pushing away from the control console to let her run the rest of the docking sequence on her own. She needed the practice. “And don’t pretend like you know all my reasons for wanting to get matched. You only know how much of a dick I am when I’m piloting. That’s not actually what I do with my entire life. So how much of a dick I am or I’m not in other situations isn’t something you can really gauge. If the doctor and I start getting along and things go well, then she’ll be for me and I’ll be for her. I’m not gonna make it complicated with soulmates and metaphysical bullshit.”
“I don’t know if I believe in soulmates, but I believe in falling in love. That’s a thing. And it doesn’t have to be with someone supermodel gorgeous. I mean, your sister is a model. I would think you of all people would want something more substantial than that.” Kameron worked quicker the moment he left it up to her to finish. “You didn’t say when you were actually going to see her.”
“Half past second bell.” He said with a nervous sigh he didn’t bother hiding. “So, you know, in about forty-five minutes. No big deal.”
“Oh. That’s soon.” She looked up again and laughed a little. “Did you even get a gift or anything?”
“Did I get a gift. You really don’t know me.” He flipped himself upside down, since there was no up or down to be had at the moment there in the cockpit, working on some of the sensors along the surface above their heads. He just wanted to be sure they weren’t going to have any more surprises. “I’ve got a gift and I even remembered to pack along my Class A getup. In about twenty minutes, I’m gonna look so good, even you might actually like me.”
“Uh huh. Doubt that.
You know you’re not my type.” She looked him up and down anyway as she finished up her procedure. “Good luck.”
“Not necessary.” He grinned at her as he pushed his way out of the cockpit, disengaging his bag from the storage compartment on his way. The crew was busy talking to the passengers and assuring them that everything was fine, and Orion knew he should probably step in and do some of the talking himself, as the pilot for the trip. He had more important things to do, though, and talking to nervous passengers wasn’t going to help make him any less nervous.
Once the shuttle docking port opened and Orion floated down into the linking corridor, he started getting even more nervous, since there were two people with Port Authority insignia on their uniforms coming toward him. He’d never once been actually approached by the PA people before. He thought they just sat in offices and yelled at people they saw getting out of line on their monitors. Seeing them in motion was actually a little eerie. Was Station Nine’s security really just that hyped? “Everything in order, officers? I’m not used to you folks making housecalls.”
“Everything is just fine, Lieutenant.” A severe-looking woman responded, though she barely even looked at him. “That was quite a landing you made.” The woman seemed distracted, but she was trying to make small-talk anyway, which meant she was thinking about something else but didn’t want to be obvious about it. “I’m impressed.”
“Well, that makes two of us. I’m impressed by how outside of protocol the other guy was. It doesn’t take much presence of mind to look behind you when you’re backing out of the dock. That pilot needs a write-up, whoever they are.”
“I’m sure someone is dealing with it.” She looked over at her partner and then down at the communicator strapped to her wrist. Clearly she was under a time crunch. “Must get moving. This is a busy port today, I wouldn’t linger too long.”
Orion managed to look confused at that, but he was accustomed to being hurried along. What he wasn’t used to was people looking nervous when they did the hurrying. “Yes, ma’am. I doubt I’ll be here more than a couple hours, one way or another.” He gave them a brief and informal salute, since he was on their turf, after all, and moved on down the corridor toward the central space of the docks.
