The Empire's Corps: Book 05 - The Outcast

by Christopher Nuttall

  Sameena hesitated. She had been told that infidels – non-Muslims – were perplexed by even the simplest parts of Islam, or the strict requirements that Muslims were obliged to honour. But part of her wanted Jayne to understand, even though Sameena herself was wondering about the faith. How much of her previously-restricted life had been dictated by the Guardians, rather than Islam itself?

  “I think so, yes,” she admitted, finally. It was still important to her, after all. She didn't need the Guardians – or the Clerics – to be a good Muslim. “How did they do it in the past?”

  “Get the terminal to tell you the direction of Earth, or New Mecca,” Jayne said, after taking back the terminal and glancing at it. “There are programs that will keep track of it for you.”

  She pulled a smaller device off her belt and settled down to read. “Read as much as you like,” she added. “You can't trust everything written down in the shared databases, but much of it has been verified by the clans. I guess that’s what we get for allowing everyone to contribute. But it’s better than the standard Imperial-issue databases. You might learn something useful reading these, while those are full of lies.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Just like the ones on your homeworld,” she concluded. “How many lies do you think you can uncover with a quick search? A hundred?”

  Sameena shrugged. After everything she’d seen and done in the last twenty-four hours, she didn’t doubt it for a second.

  Chapter Five

  This is, to some extent, caused by the fact that value is relative. A desire shared by one person may not be shared by others. For example, bras are worn by almost every mature woman, while the number of men who will willingly wear a bra is vanishingly small. Men, simply put, place less value on bras than women. Women, likewise, will not place so much value on male-specific items.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Science That Isn’t: Economics and the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire.

  Despite herself, Sameena had to admit that crossing the Phase Limit and jumping into Phase Space was not particularly exciting. Her homeworld’s star was little more than a dot of light, while Jannah itself had vanished somewhere in the darkness of space. On the other hand, the moment they went FTL she knew that she was completely safe. The Guardians could no longer even demand that she be returned to the planet.

  “Brad, you have the bridge,” Captain Hamilton said. The viewscreens all showed the same inky darkness, an unholy sight that sent a chill running down Sameena’s spine. “The rest of us will go eat dinner.”

  “Bring me something nice,” Brad said, quickly. “Or should I wait until the end of my shift?”

  Captain Hamilton looked over at Sameena, ignoring his son. “How are you feeling?”

  “Relieved,” Sameena admitted, finally.

  “No nausea?” Ethne asked. “Or even mild discomfort?”

  Sameena shook her head. Jayne had warned her that some people felt uncomfortable when entering Phase Space, while a tiny minority of the human race took it so badly that they had to be sedated or placed in a stasis pod before they could leave their home system. But she’d felt almost nothing, apart from a faint quiver passing through her as the starship jumped into Phase Space. She hoped that was a good sign.

  “A natural-born spacer,” Paddy said, cheerfully. The older man gave Sameena a twisted smile. “Welcome to the clan, my dear.”

  “Food,” Ethne said, firmly. “We can have a small party later.”

  She led the way down to a small kitchen on deck two. Sameena took one look and knew that she wouldn't be able to cook for her new family, at least until she worked out how to handle the cooking equipment. Almost nothing was recognisable, apart from the kitchen sink. Even when Paddy went to work, providing a running commentary as he produced food from a preservation locker and dumped it into a pan, it was hard to follow what he was doing.

  “We took on a consignment of fresh food at Jannah,” Paddy explained, as he cracked eggs and dropped their innards into a pan. “After we finish it, we’re back on ration bars – hello, constipation and irritation. They used to feed us exclusively on ration bars while I was in the military, just to make sure that we were ready to take it out on anyone fool enough to challenge us.”

  “He’s off telling war stories again,” Jayne said, as she pulled the table down from the bulkhead. “I suggest you take everything he says with a grain of salt.”

  Sameena watched quietly as Paddy placed the pan on a metal surface and tapped a switch. The surface – the stove, she realised – started to glow red, cooking the eggs. She stepped forward, studying the stove carefully. It was hard to see how it worked; it certainly seemed more sophisticated than the gas-fired stove her mother had used.

  “Fresh bread,” Paddy said, as he started to ladle out the scrambled eggs. “And jam. And butter. And fruit.”

  Sameena took her plate and started to eat, watching with some amusement as Paddy doled out fruit and vegetables to the two kids. They seemed even more reluctant to eat their vegetables than Abdul had, back on Jannah. The thought caused her a pang of grief. Her brother might have been responsible for her family’s arrest, but he’d been a good brother and she missed him. She knew that she would never see him again.

  Paddy’s cooking wasn't too bad, although the meal was unfamiliar. Sameena couldn't understand why Jayne had grumbled about her husband’s cooking, particularly when she didn't have to cook herself. Or maybe it was just part of their odd relationship ... if there was something she had learned from the terminal, it was that the outside universe had more complex relationships than anything that had existed on Jannah.

  “Thank you,” she said, remembering her manners. “Can I help with the washing up?”

  Paddy gave her a blank look, then laughed, not unkindly. “No need,” he said, as he took her plate and placed it in a drawer. “The automatic washer will take care of it.”

  Sameena stared as he tapped a button, then pulled the plate back out of the drawer. It was clean. Somehow, seeing the washer in action brought home to her just how much her homeworld had chosen to abandon when the founders had left Earth. Sameena had helped with the washing up almost as soon as she was old enough to walk. How much of her life, she asked herself, had been completely wasted? And how many other labour-saving devices had never been allowed on Jannah?

  Jayne placed a hand on Sameena’s shoulder and she jumped.

  “You need to get some sleep,” the doctor said, softly. “I’ll lead you back to your cabin, then tuck you in.”

  “She can borrow Mr. Paws, if she likes,” Regina said. The little girl smiled shyly at Sameena, then looked over at Jayne. “Maybe that would help her sleep.”

  Jayne laughed. “Would you like to borrow a stuffed animal?”

  Sameena shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said to Regina. “I should be able to sleep without him.”

  “I never slept without him for the first month on the ship,” Regina said. “You can borrow him, if you would like.”

  “She said no thank you,” Jayne said, firmly. She looked over at Sameena. “Coming?”

  Sameena nodded and followed her out of the hatch and down towards the cabins. “Mum will be waking you at 0900 tomorrow,” Jayne said, once they were alone. “I suggest that you go straight to sleep. Mum will not be happy if you’re too tired to wake up tomorrow.”

  The bunk was uncomfortable, Sameena discovered, but she was too tired to care. Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, struggling to ignore the omnipresent thrumming running through the entire ship. It was funny, she decided, as she rolled over and pressed her ear into the pillow, how she’d managed to ignore the sound when she was awake, but it had come back as soon as she was trying to sleep.

  She must have fallen asleep, for the next thing she remembered was Ethne shaking her gently. For a long moment, she thought that everything from Abdul’s stupidity to her escape had been a nightmare ... and then reality came rushing back as she opened her eyes. The Capt
ain’s wife – and XO, according to Jayne – was standing right next to her bunk.

  “Time to get up,” Ethne said, sharply. “You need to eat something before you face the tutoring machines.”

  Sameena nodded, climbed out of the bunk and splashed water on her face, careful to allow the drops to fall back into the sink. Jayne hadn't said much about how the ship processed and reprocessed water, but some of the technical documents she’d read on the terminal had stated that the ship had no facilities for mining water from interstellar space. They had only a limited supply until they reached their next port of call.

  Breakfast consisted of a pair of ration bars and a mug of coffee. The coffee tasted awful compared to the coffee she’d drunk on Jannah, something that puzzled her until Ethne pointed out that the freighter had to carry processed coffee and the planet’s inhabitants could obtain fresh coffee. Sameena was still puzzling it over in her head when Ethne introduced her to her other sons, Steve and James. James was so like Jayne that it was easy to tell that they were twins.

  “Welcome aboard,” Steve said, shaking her hand. By now, it no longer felt strange to be shaking male hands. “I hope you become an engineer. There’s no shortage of work for qualified engineers these days.”

  “Bit too late for her now,” James said. “Engineers really start quite young.”

  “We’ll see,” Ethne said, crossly. She gave her sons a look that cowed them instantly. “I shall be expecting you to find something for her to do in the next few days.”

  Sameena was impressed. Boys on Jannah rarely listened to their mothers, certainly not once they were old enough to realise that women were second-class citizens. The clerics preached absolute obedience to fathers – and the clerics themselves, naturally – but they never spoke of obeying one’s mother. Abdul had been a nightmare for Sameena’s mother – and he’d been one of the better-behaved young men. Ethne, on the other hand, seemed quite capable of dominating her children.

  “This way,” Ethne said, breaking into Sameena’s thoughts. “You can chat to the boys later.”

  Sameena felt herself flushing as they stepped down the corridor and into the schoolroom, or so she’d come to think of it. There was no sign of the kids, or anyone else. Ethne motioned for her to take a chair, then sat down on the opposite side of the table.

  “Ignorance can kill,” she said, simply. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sameena said. She’d made a vow to herself when she’d started studying the terminal and making a mental list of documents to read. “I will never be ignorant again.”

  Ethne’s lips twitched. “A very good idea,” she agreed, dryly. She cleared her throat, preparing to lecture. “The Empire firmly believes that everyone must attend a standardised educational program from four to twenty years old, complete with mandatory school attendance and constant testing. We disagree – and we take advantage of a loophole in the law to school our children while they are onboard ship. You fall into an odd category as none of the qualifications you have earned on your homeworld are valid outside your solar system.”

  “I earned none,” Sameena admitted. “My father would never allow me to be tested.”

  “Education comes in three sections,” Ethne continued. “First, the student spends an hour a day using one of the educational programs.” She nodded towards the tutoring machines. “Second, the student completes assignments handed out by a tutor, which are then passed back to the tutor when the ship returns to port. Third, and perhaps most importantly, there are practical lessons supervised by a qualified starship officer.

  “In order to start you on the first – and to prepare you for obtaining assignments from the tutor – we need to know where you are. What I’ve done is program the tutoring machine to give you an examination, starting from the first level and moving upwards to the highest levels. It will measure your basic skills, knowledge of the standard curriculum and a handful of other important points. Don’t worry if you find that most of the questions are impossible for you to answer. There are questions in the machine that I would have trouble answering.”

  Sameena winced. It was hard to imagine anything that would defeat Ethne.

  Ethne gave her a reassuring smile. “After that, we will run through basic starship safety,” she added. “You really have to understand just how dangerous life in space can be.”

  She stood up and walked over to one of the tutoring machines. “Sit here,” she said, pointing to a stool in front of the machine. The console came to life as Sameena sat down. “Would you rather read the questions off the screen or have them read out to you?”

  “Read the questions,” Sameena said, after a moment.

  “Smart choice,” Ethne said. She pointed to the image of a talking face. “If you need a question read out to you, push that button.”

  She tapped a switch and a question appeared on the screen. What is the first letter in the Imperial Standard alphabet?

  “Tap the screen to select the answer you believe to be accurate,” Ethne said. “It will automatically move on to the next one, without telling you if you were right or wrong. You’ll get a full breakdown of your answers at the end of the session. Don’t try to guess the answer, just skip the question.”

  She smiled at Sameena. “Ready?”

  Sameena nodded, mutely.

  “Go,” Ethne ordered.

  The questions, as Ethne had promised, started out easy and rapidly grew harder and harder, forcing her to skip past them. Basic maths was straightforward – her father had insisted that she studied maths with the same intensity as her brother and she knew that she was good at it – but questions on history, science and biology left her feeling slow and stupid. Jannah had taught her next to nothing about the Empire’s history, save only that it was a wretched hive of scum and villainy that the founders had been glad to abandon. Even a couple of questions on comparative religion left her wondering how many other lies she’d believed ...

  Several other questions tested her problem-solving skills. Once she realised that the precise details were there to hide the nature of the problem, she found them easier to solve. Some of them were even practical applications of math skills she’d mastered as a child, then discarded as useless. But then, they would have been useless to a girl on Jannah. There was no way that she would be allowed to seek employment as an engineer.

  “Good work,” Ethne said, as the volley of questions finally came to an end. She’d been sitting at the table, reading from her terminal. “The machine will analyse your performance and then determine the best path of study for you.”

  Sameena slumped, feeling uncomfortably sweaty. Her head hurt; she’d wondered why Abdul had complained so much after examinations, but now she knew. Besides, she had a feeling that his examinations had been more focused on rote learning and recitation than actually forcing him to think. Her exam had been much tougher, even if she hadn't been threatened with a beating for mispronouncing a single word.

  “Drink this,” Ethne said, passing her a flask. The liquid inside tasted odd, but refreshing. “I remember my first exam far too well. Training can be very taxing.”

  She smiled, as if she had made a joke. Sameena didn't understand.

  “My father was a trader,” Sameena said, instead. “He tried to make sure that I learned ...”

  “He failed in his duty to you,” Ethne said, shortly. “Imagine denying someone an education because of their sex!”

  Sameena hesitated, unsure of what to say. On one hand, her father had seen to it that she had received some education, certainly far more than any of the other girls she knew. But on the other hand, he had never insisted that she take exams or tried to enter one of the few career paths open for women. She might have made a good teacher, if she’d been given a chance.

  “I wouldn't have been able to do anything with it,” she confessed. “Jannah has little place for educated women.”

  “You’re not on Jannah now,” Ethne reminded her. There was
a bleep from the tutoring machine. “Let’s have a look.”

  She skimmed through the details as they flowed over the screen. “Interesting ... you rated high in problem solving and maths, poorly in most other fields. Basic comprehension is good; advanced comprehension is very limited, despite your age. There are concepts that you would never have been exposed to on your homeworld, I suspect. Picking them up is going to take time. Still, there’s plenty we can work with. But you probably won’t make an engineer.”

  Sameena blinked in surprise. “Why not?”

  “It can take years of study to become fully qualified,” Ethne explained. “Steve started when he was nine, practically apprenticing himself to my younger brother. By the time he was sixteen, he could dismantle a Phase Drive and put it back together ... which, by the way, is not something we are supposed to do. You, on the other hand, are missing plenty of background knowledge that Steve picked up from birth.”

  She shrugged. “On the other hand, you would make an excellent trader,” she added. “I think I’ll treat you as my apprentice. That will give you some background you will desperately need. But you will still have to work all over the ship.”

  Sameena nodded. She had expected no less.

  “I’m going to work my way through your results,” Ethne said. “In the meantime, I want you to study basic safety precautions. Ignorance can kill.”

  “Ignorance can kill,” Sameena repeated. She had a feeling that she was going to be sick of that phase before too long. But she knew that Ethne was right. “Show me what to study.”

  Ethne grinned and tapped on the tutoring machine. “This is a very basic program,” she admitted, as the screen changed. “And it can be very graphic. But it is still deeply important that you study it. After that ...”

  Her smile grew wider. “I want you to write a report,” she added, “and list everything that could have gone wrong with your harebrained plan to escape your homeworld. The program will show you just about everything, but I want you to use your imagination too. Do you understand me?”