The Initiative: Book One of the Jannah Cycle

by D. Brumbley

  “I don’t think they will stay. My father is a very busy man, but they wouldn’t miss my wedding. I think they will only stay for the day.” Mercury went looking for a clean dress and then attempted to get her hair back in a ponytail. “We’ll get married, they’ll go home. Your family is coming, right?”

  “I think they’re all gonna be here, last I heard. My parents sent me a message last night letting me know they got in, I grabbed them and Misha a room at the hostel over on Arm Six. Khadi’s coming in later today, and Carl is stopping by later with my CO. But that’s pretty much it for my side of the aisle.” He finished wrapping himself up in his jumpsuit with a final snap, and felt comfortable in it, but meeting her parents was still more than a little nerve-wracking.

  “It will be nice to meet the rest of your family.” Mercury grabbed a pearl necklace to wear, a necklace that had been passed down for generations, but the act of wearing it was just another thing to distract her from her nerves about the day ahead. She barely managed to steal another kiss before the computer notified them of her parents’ arrival. Mercury stepped away from Orion to open the door and then smiled at her parents standing there. “You could have given me more warning than a proximity notification ten minutes out. That’s not very kind.”

  “Very sorry, dear. We just thought you’d be out and about by now.” Her father stepped in and took Mercury in a quick hug, but he noticed the giant standing behind her fairly quickly, and looked up at Orion as he let go of Mercury so her mother step in for a hug. “Well. Tall doesn’t quite begin to cover it.”

  “You can say ‘mildly freakish’. I’m used to it.” Orion thought it was entertaining that Mercury’s father was her height, or maybe a few centimeters shorter, but he kept his mouth shut on that score as he took the man’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir. Mercury’s spoken very highly of you.”

  Mercury’s mother hugged her daughter and then smiled as she looked Orion over. “He’s very attractive and tall. You’re lucky. I didn’t actually think the program could find someone ‘significantly taller’ than you are.”

  Mercury just smiled at that response and held onto her mother a moment longer before she replied. “I am lucky. Though I’m surprised you would attribute it to luck, since you and father went on and on about the science behind the matching program just to convince me to put my file into the program.”

  “Well, not everyone gets this lucky. Attractiveness isn’t really a part of the program’s calculations, since it’s not something that can truly be measured.” Her mother continued before she turned to greet Orion. She was definitely shorter than her husband and daughter, but not significantly. “Nice to meet you. You really won our daughter over. We weren’t sure she’d ever agree to marry anyone.”

  “Well, that would be my end of all this luck we’re talking about.” He agreed as he shook her hand. “Your daughter’s an excellent doctor, and a very focused one. It’s not my intention to get in the way of that, but I can understand her skepticism about finding a relationship that allows for that. We want a lot of the same things. That always helps.”

  “That does help.” Her mother agreed and then she turned her attention back to Mercury. “You look very nice, sweetheart.” She reached out and tucked a strand of Mercury’s dark red hair behind her ear that had gotten loose in extreme motherly fashion.

  Mercury reached back and ran her hand over the hair that was tucked back and then she smiled and motioned further into her unit. “Let’s sit. There’s still plenty of time before we need to go for the ceremony.”

  Her mother’s attention was drawn elsewhere when Mercury motioned with her hand and immediately she grabbed her daughter’s hand. “Are you sure we didn’t miss it? You’re already wearing a ring.” She was amazed by the ring, since it was absolutely gorgeous.

  “We were just trying them on before we got the notice that you were arriving. Didn’t want to actually get to the ceremony itself and go to exchange rings only to find out that one or the other of us had guessed wrong about size.” Orion excused smoothly, though he was still grinning at her mother’s admiration. He had pretty well cleared out most of his personal accounts in getting things for Mercury in the past few weeks, but he didn’t mind. What he had left, he was planning to split between Khadi and Misha, his sister-in-law, since he wasn’t going to need personal finances within the Initiative or on Jannah. There was no point holding anything back.

  “Is it real gold? That’s so hard to find anymore.” Claire said as she continued to admire her daughter’s ring. “It must have been quite a fortune.” She looked up at Orion again with a raised eyebrow. “You must have a lot of faith in the match between the two of you.” Claire knew that her daughter was a good woman, smart, loyal, kind. But Mercury was also a workaholic, and she had no expectation that it would change no matter where her daughter went. It was the reason why she wondered if Mercury would ever marry, since she was already married to her work.

  “It’s platinum, actually. Little easier to find, but actually more expensive, strangely.” Orion explained with a grin at the legitimate shock on her parents’ faces. Yeah, that’s right, the pilot from the Edge went all out and decked out your daughter. How do you like me now? ”But you can find just about anything on Three. Plus, the jeweller owed me a favor. I’ve sent him about six couples worth of business over the years and I helped him move some inventory a while ago. So he prioritized it for me.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Mercury teased as she turned her attention back to Orion. “The matchmaker part of you, I mean.” She stepped away from her parents and smoothly stepped up to Orion’s side. “Is it a hobby of yours? Putting people together?” She kissed his cheek and then looked into his eyes. “Your charm worked on me.”

  “I was only responsible for matchmaking on two of the couples. And that was mostly just helping the guy grow a sufficient pair to ask the girl out. I don’t like seeing people just stuck not doing what they want to do. Sometimes they just need a push.” He shrugged and put an arm around Mercury easily, his left hand resting on her shoulder where her parents could easily see the band she had gotten for him.

  “Well, I’m glad you needed no such push with this match.” Her father said with a hesitant smile, since he didn’t entirely know what to make of the giant his daughter was marrying. “I took the liberty of reviewing your flight record on the way over here. It’s impressive. One of the lowest infraction rates in the pilots’ corp but also one of the highest incidents of passenger complaints.” Marcus seemed more amused than concerned, but it was still a strange combination.

  “You’ll have to give me a minute, I’m trying to decide which one of those I’m more proud of.” Orion grinned back. “I tend to fly by whatever path seems best at the time. That involves things getting a little bumpy sometimes, but I stick to safe practices. Half a million moving objects circling the world within about two hundred kilometers either side of standard Station orbit, things can get a little hairy. Last I looked at it, my flight-related injuries statistic is lower than almost anybody in the corp. People may not like how I get them places, but I get them there in one piece.”

  “You’ve kept me safe.” Mercury said sincerely as she briefly thought about what happened with Station Nine. She kissed him with unspoken explanation before she looked back at her parents. “They asked for volunteers to go to Earth to pick up the other half of the initiates. We decided we want to go.”

  “Down to Earth?” That removed the slightly bemused smile from her father’s face, and in an instant, the protective man who had raised her was back in full force. “They can send automated retrieval drones for that. Why would they send anyone down into the atmosphere just to retrieve…them?” He guarded his tongue carefully in most circumstances, but clearly he’d had other words in mind when talking about people from earth.

  Mercury didn’t have quite the prejudice her parents did about Earthlings, but she was definitely nervous about the idea of going down, even thou
gh she was excited about it too. “They have to be seen by doctors and given a first round of treatment before they can leave their planet. Not only that, but they’re bound to get sick on the way up. The Initiative thought it would be best to have pilots and doctors go down who are already a part of the program since we’ll all be working together.”

  “And put you in danger in the process?” Marcus asked sharply, but he sighed heavily afterward, since he could see the matter had already been decided without his input. “What’s your assigned retrieval point, then?” He looked back and forth between them with something approaching nervousness in his eyes as he waited for the answer. The expression was so alien on his usually-confident face that it was jarring, even if it didn’t last long.

  “North America, Midwest district.” Orion answered, since he had gotten the assignment the night before and hadn’t had a chance to talk to Mercury about it yet. “We’ll be leaving Sunday night for an early-morning drop-in, should make landing by 10:00AM local time, half a day on the ground, departure window is between 16:43 and 16:58 for liftoff and escape. Back in orbit by Third Bell Monday morning, probably a little jetlagged.”

  “That’s six hours of ground exposure. Not to mention…” Marcus shook his head. “I’m sure you’ll be taken care of. I just worry about the exposure you’re going to pick up down there.”

  “It won’t be that bad.” Mercury promised, since she didn’t want her father to be worried. “CV doesn’t really start to set in until after 48 hours of exposure, and even then it’s completely treatable and reversible. I’ll be okay, I promise.” She stepped away from Orion to put her hand on her father’s arm. “You know I’ve been studying the virus nearly my whole life, I know more about it than most people going down to Earth.”

  Her mother didn’t look pleased either. “Going to Jannah is one thing. Going down to Earth is not wise, Mercury. We’ve done everything we can to protect you, and you’re just stepping into trouble. Especially being around the Earth-bound. Most of them were conceived with the virus, for crying out loud.”

  “It only transfers person-to-person via sexual fluids or blood, mother. Otherwise it’s completely environmental exposure, eating exposed food, drinking exposed water, eventually the air.” Mercury said with a shake of the head. “And I just told you both that we’re going down there to treat them and then to bring them up here. As long as they have the initial treatment, they won’t pass it after 48 hours of the initial treatment. And they won’t be on earth any longer to be further exposed, though it will take some time for it to fully eradicate from their systems. After a month of daily treatments in space, they’ll be fine. Almost as if they never had it at all.”

  “I know you know more about it than most, Mercury.” Her father’s tone softened somewhat as he said so, but he still didn’t sound happy. “Just be careful, and stay in contact with us as much as you can to let us know you’re on schedule. We’ll be worrying about you, no matter how safe it’s supposed to be.”

  Mercury’s expression softened at his gentle tone. “You know I will. I have no reason to make you worry, and I don’t want to. But I really do feel like this will be a good opportunity. We should get to know these people.” She glanced back at Orion before she looked at her parents again. “We’re all going to be the first people of Jannah. We should probably learn to get along.”

  “They’ll have to be taught some manners first, most likely.” Marcus said with a slight roll of his eyes, and Orion could almost feel the man pointedly not looking at him as he said it. Her parents were a little more judgy than even he had really anticipated, but he could live with that. After all, he was going to be halfway across the galaxy with their daughter soon enough. It would be difficult for them to disapprove of him at that kind of distance.

  “Dad.” Mercury reprimanded softly, since she didn’t want her father to think so poorly of the people that were coming up from Earth. “They’re just like us, except they haven’t had the resources that we have. They can’t be that bad.” She hadn’t actually met anyone from Earth, but she was trying her best to keep an open mind. She was a doctor. Every human was made equal.

  Marcus turned his eyes on Mercury with a subdued smile. “I should have taken you on more business meetings when you were younger. Negotiating with Earth merchants is not my favorite thing.” He chuckled and shook his head, clearly thinking her a little naive. “But hopefully your experience will be different than mine.”

  “I’m sure it will be. These people aren’t negotiating anything. They’re coming up for the same reason that we’re leaving. For a better future.” Mercury looked over at Orion for a moment and heaved a defeated sigh. “This is supposed to be a happy day.”

  “It is a happy day.” Marcus agreed apologetically, then moved to take a seat on the far side of the couch where he always seemed to situate himself when he and her mother came to visit. “So come on, is there anything that we need to do to help set up for this evening?”

  “No, we are keeping it simple. The ceremony will be short, we’ll have a meal afterward, and that will be it.” Mercury was a bit upset that the discussion with her parents had soured the moment, but she was trying to move past it. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Just water’s good, thank you.” He smiled politely at Mercury, but it was Orion who went to go get the water for the man, with a knowing look at Mercury. It was going to be a long day.

  16

  Her parents remained for about an hour to chat and get to know Orion a little bit more, and while Mercury usually loved spending time with her parents, it felt different realizing she loved someone they didn’t entirely approve of. Mercury didn’t want to spend the entire afternoon with them, though, since she wanted to get ready for her wedding ceremony. She and Orion said their brief goodbyes, and she left the unit after he did to walk her parents to their temporary rental unit so they could relax before the ceremony. Mercury walked quietly between her parents through the pristine hallways of Seven before she finally said something halfway to their guest unit. “You aren’t going to tell me what you think?”

  Her father smiled a little more broadly at that question, walking in step with his daughter along the corridor with his hands in his pockets, as usual. “What we think of Orion, you mean?”

  “Yes, of course.” She glared at him even though he was smiling at her. “I’ve been wondering since the moment you laid eyes on him what you think of him.” Mercury glanced from her father to her mother, but her mother just shook her head, clearly not keen to offer her opinion first.

  Marcus stopped in the hallway with a sigh, lowering his head for a moment before he looked back at Mercury. “There’s…almost an obligation in the universe for men to hate whoever their daughters end up marrying. Someday you should do a study to see if there’s some kind of genetic marker for it or something on the Y-chromosome.” He shook his head and shrugged it off, appearing nonchalant about it even though Mercury knew her father had never been nonchalant about anything in his life. “I’m just…surprised by him, I think might be the best descriptor for what I feel about him. I hoped, with the man’s service record, that the program had matched you with someone who shares your ambition, your drive for excellence. Yes, I know he’s an excellent pilot and an obedient officer, but from the way he presents himself, that is all he will ever be. He just isn’t what I imagined for you.”

  Mercury frowned and processed what he said carefully before she replied, since she didn’t want to reply angrily simply out of reflex. “What did you imagine?” She didn’t care to contradict her father, not because she thought that Orion had no ambition, but because she knew that even if she told her father that she knew Orion was what she wanted and the person to make her happy, her father would still view Orion as less. “Greg?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Not a chance. He would have been a hundred times worse. He’d have been a puppy at your heels from the moment you said ‘I do,’ if not well before.”

  “Y
ou both encouraged me to do this and to meet him. I don’t need to meet anyone else, and I don’t want to. I care about Orion, and I think he’s good for me because he’s nothing like anyone I would have chosen for myself. He’s funny even if I don’t understand all of his attempts at humor, he’s risky when I never am, and he forces me to see things differently than I normally would. I need that. I need someone like him.”

  Marcus finally took his hands out of his pockets at that tirade, and closed the few steps between them to lay his hands gently on her arms. “Then that’s all that matters, Mercury.” He said quietly, with the same kind of calm that she knew had pacified the Station magistrates who worked for him and just about everyone he spoke to, even if it didn’t always work on her or her mother. “When this process began and your mother and I told you that we wouldn’t interfere, that we would support your decision and your priorities no matter what, we meant it. He’s not what I expected or would have gone looking for in a husband for you, but I don’t have to like or trust him. I trust you to know what you need and judge whether he can be that for you or not. You wouldn’t have chosen to marry him if you thought otherwise. If he’ll be a good husband to you, and make you happy, that’s all anyone can ask for.”

  “Thank you.” She said simply with a little relief, even though she felt that her father was partially saying it just to put off another argument. Mercury wasn’t looking to fight, though, so she would take it as an offer of peace. They eventually made it to the temporary rental unit, and Mercury scanned her handprint so the unit would recognize her request for the guest space. “We still have some time until the ceremony. Orion wanted me to meet his family and I still need to get ready, but I’ll see you there, alright?”