Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  A fitting farewell from a place where no one cared about her.

  The fellow passengers filing onto the shuttle were a mix of merchants and private people. Most wore thick clothing against the stinging dry and cold air, which they were now taking off and stowing cloaks and coats under seats and luggage racks. Walking through the aisle, she scanned the passengers for soldiers, any sign that she was going into another war zone. She saw none. In fact all passengers were decidedly civilian.

  In front of her was a passenger carrying a big bag and before that two merchants in colourful garb. Those were not local ones, men both, both of them rotund and short, with dark curly hair. They spoke to each other in loud voices in a language she had never heard. Izramith knew a bit of Mirani, and they didn't speak that. She knew some Kedrasi and Indrahui, and it wasn't that either. She knew the ghastly Trader Coldi dialect, that very often didn't even sound like Coldi to her ears, but none of the languages fitted what the men were speaking. It had to be keihu, the native language of Barresh.

  Her seat was about halfway down the central aisle. Her duffel was not by far as big as some of the other passengers' bags. She didn't need much, she didn't have much, because she always wore uniform, and had only packed a few sets of her utilitarian grey trousers and shirts. She wore her only pair of boots and her bag contained only a guard-issue toiletry set and two towels.

  She sat down, feeling naked and exposed without her uniform and all her gear. When she went to Indrahui, the contract had told her to bring her gear. The Barresh contract told her specifically not to bring anything.

  Many of the passengers eyed her sideways. She caught a man in garish merchant garb staring at her arms. Her short sleeves covered her initiation scars, but her lower arms were bare. When she moved her hands, muscles tensed visibly underneath the skin. Her right arm bore a fresh scar from a shrapnel strike sustained on the Pataniti battlefield. The skin was still paler than the surrounding skin, and puckered.

  Something hit her in the face. She turned aside to see some sort of long grey thing waving in front of her face. Two women were trying to squish many bags into the seats on the other side of the aisle.

  "Hey." Izramith grabbed the grey thing and wanted to push it away, but it moved. And it was hairy. Damn, what sort of animal was that? "Hey, it looks like your pet is escaping."

  Since when where animals allowed on flights anyway? Didn't they have quarantine at Barresh?

  The grey thing pulled out of Izramith's hands and the woman closest to her turned around, giving her an indignant look. Her eyes were huge, with almost no whites and dark brown irises.

  Izramith pointed at the grey thing. "Sorry, does this belong to…"

  The woman's lips pursed. She had grey skin, with darker markings on the sides of the eyes and into her neck. In fact, the markings were the same colour as those on the grey thing, which now hung in the aisle, moving ever so slightly.

  Damn. She had a tail. Izramith let go of it as if it had burned her hands.

  The woman gave her a hard stare, and Izramith looked away, her cheeks hot. Yes, she should remembered about the Pengali people of Barresh who had tails, but still… Maybe she shouldn't wave her tail in other people's faces.

  The door to the cabin shut with a thud. Crew ushered the last passengers into their seats. A Pilots' Guild employee in his fancy uniform set the security panel next to the door. Lights blinked.

  The crew went in their own seats at the front of the cabin. The floor already rumbled with the vibration of the engines that swelled until it drowned out conversation in the cabin.

  With a lurch, the craft left the ground.

  After a few lights had gone past, Izramith couldn't see anything out the window except darkness. The light in the cabin was off, with only small blue pinpricks showing the positions of major features like the aisle, the back of each seat and the doors.

  The craft hit an air pocket and immediately after that a downdraft, and another air pocket throwing it sideways. Air rushed past the windows. Then they hit three violent bumps in a row. It felt like riding a mining train down the tunnels. Everything in the cabin shook. No one spoke, but a child started crying.

  This was normal for Hedron, Izramith told herself.

  All the pilots complained about how rough flying into Hedron was. The plentiful hot air vents and hot gas clouds caused violent updrafts, and then there would be—

  Whoa!

  The craft dropped sharply, in freefall for a few heart-stopping moments.

  The child cried louder. One of the crew attempted to get out of his seat to attend someone who had called for assistance. He had to rely heavily on the cable attached to his harness and a railing on the ceiling.

  The two men next to Izramith got excited by the view out the opposite window of a delicate purple fingernail that was Veynu, Hedron's twin.

  But that was short-lived when the craft pulled into cloud. The craft rocked sideways. Up became down as the pull of gravity eased and vanished.

  Some people were sick. The two women on the other side of the aisle had produced a small light—on a chain around one of the women's necks, and were looking at samples of fabric spread out over the furthest woman's knees, completely oblivious to the jolting and rocking of the craft.

  And then the sky turned black with many pinpricks of lights. A bright band of millions upon millions of stars scored across the sky at an angle: the swirls and worlds, and star nurseries of the galaxy.

  A child squealed, "Look, stars!"

  Sickness and discomfort were forgotten. Passengers chatted and took pictures. If you'd never left Hedron, you'd never seen the galaxy in its full glory. Not even the people living on worlds closer to the centre would have seen this. This was beauty in its most powerful and primeval form.

  Izramith was still admiring the view when a light started flashing at the front of the cabin. The first of thirteen jumps coming up. A silence came over the passengers. Clearly many people shared her feelings about jumps. Not pleasant. Then there were numbers. Seven… six… five… four…

  Izramith clamped her hands between her knees.

  Three… two…

  A child started crying.

  Two… One…

  The world dissolved in a flash of white. For a moment, she felt as if she was floating in nothingness. Then vision returned, in separate colours which slowly joined and overlapped.

  The vision out the window was clear, and showed nothing except stars of deep space.

  That was the first jump.

  By the time the shuttle had gone through three more jumps, the process was getting old. She leaned her head against the window, and fell asleep.

  * * *

  Izramith woke up with a shock when the floor vibrated. Ashamed, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed her sleeping. But no, the cabin was flooded with light from outside and everyone was looking out the window, where there was blue sky, and something else people from Hedron would never have seen in their lives: sunlight. Izramith remembered sunlight from Indrahui. It was bright and hot and impossible to look into. It was so bright that the glare hurt her eyes. Much brighter than the light room in the settlement. Much brighter than lights in the large agriculture hall.

  And worse than at Indrahui, because this system had two suns.

  The craft banked, bringing a large body of glistening water into view. More water than all of the underground reservoirs in Hedron put together. The glistening silver mass disappeared over the horizon with only a few dark islands breaking the silvery surface. White puffy clouds floated just underneath the craft.

  The craft kept turning, now bringing a view of a land mass rising from the water in a steep cliff that stretched away on both sides as far as she could see. Banks of grey clouds sat atop the cliff. The ground at the top was dark and look like it was covered in hair, but they were still too high to see—

  —To see pretty much anything, because the view outside turned brilliant white, and then grey. Drops of wate
r tracked over the windows—

  —and out of the cloud again. The underside of it was dark grey and jagged.

  A couple of islands protruded from the water between the craft and the dark mass of land.

  Surrounding the islands, there were signs of human activity: walled-off fields full of brilliant green. Vegetation growing in rows. Little vessels moving over the water.

  The islands themselves had human-made structures on them—houses, and other buildings. Streets.

  It was just like pictures and simulations she had seen of Barresh.

  And those huge things between the houses were trees?

  Of course she had seen pictures, but she hadn't realised how big they were.

  The craft descended rapidly now, and the glide became bumpy. On a little island where there were only trees, a plume of steam rose into the air. Hot springs. At least there was something familiar about his place.

  Fields, boats, a jetty all passed underneath in quick succession. The floor rumbled with the power of the downward jets.

  The craft touched down and settled with a few thumps. The crew unclipped themselves from their harnesses. Doors opened. All windows had completely fogged up.

  Passengers got up, took their bags and lined up in the aisle. Some thunks against the outside of the craft indicated that the ramp was in place. People moved, and Izramith moved with them. She presumed that someone would be here to meet her. A faint breeze came in, bringing with it a waft of heat. Commander Blue had warned her about it.

  It's not Asto, she had said. I went to Asto once and my body took about ten days to get up to the right temperature. I don't think I've ever been so sick in my life. Barresh is not Asto, but it's much warmer than Hedron, and it's a lot hotter than Indrahui, too. Indrahui was warmer than Hedron, but still considered to be a cool place with a small and distant sun.

  Izramith had shrugged off the remark. Adaptation, when her body temperature rose or fell depending on the climate, hadn't worried her when she came to Indrahui and she couldn't see why it should worry her in Barresh.

  But shuffling towards the exit, her head became more stuffy and dizzy, and she was beginning to feel like that had been an exceedingly dumb assumption. The air that wafted into the cabin was hot and sticky and the light was so bright that it made her dizzy.

  Come to think of it, nobody she knew at Hedron who had visited Asto had shrugged off adaptation. Everyone spoke of how sick it made them.

  Izramith was never sick, and she had never been in a truly warm place. This was going to be such a lot of fun.

  In the door opening the full force of the heat struck her. Sweat broke out all over her body. Her head was pounding and she had to do all she could to stay upright.

  She stopped on the bridge between the craft and an open-sided building. Sunlight beat down unmercifully. People walked past her talking as if the heat didn't bother them.

  She waited, holding the railing with white-knuckled hands until that horrible feeling that she was going to spew had passed. Her head cleared a little. She made it across the walkway into the building, where it was cooler. A breeze blew across her sweaty skin, making her break out in goosebumps. She followed the tail end of the passengers off the shuttle through a modern hall to a counter where, after inserting the ticket chip, an automated system of trolleys went to retrieve her luggage. It was a neat system, but the lines for the manual document check were very long. Her stomach was doing backflips, and she became certain that there would be spewing in her immediate future. Hopefully after she'd made it outside.

  Hell, if they only hurried up. Why did they only have so few counters in operation? Why was no one using the furthest part of the hall?

  There was a fence on the other side of the counter. Beyond the fence, the floor was bare and there were piles of building materials on the floor. A group of workers sat in a circle, eating. The smell of food drifted on the air. With a typical tang of meat. Coldi didn't eat meat. Her stomach churned.

  Hurry up.

  She shuffled in the line, dragging her duffel across the floor. At this point, her vision had contracted to the back of the person in front of her. Sweat ran down her back.

  One person would go through the gate, show ID, walk through a glass cubicle which opened on the other side when the person's parameters were approved. Then the next person would go in. Sometimes the gate didn't open, and the person was taken aside into a booth.

  The line shuffled closer, agonisingly slow.

  Then the man in front of Izramith went in. He was one of the rotund merchants that were probably locals. His ID scanned. The guard waved him into the cubicle. He walked through and an alarm started flashing.

  With a clang the cubicle doors closed.

  Guards went in.

  The passenger protested loudly and held up his hands. Guards took his jacket and patted him down. He was taken into one of the cubicles on the side, still protesting loudly.

  And then they said that Hedron security was crazy?

  Then it was Izramith's turn. She took a dizzying step forward and handed the guard her ID. He entered it into the scanner—and it came up with a flashing light.

  Damn.

  The guard called another, and he said something in reply, all in a strange language that reminded her of the sound of water gurgling down a hole.

  A third guard came out of one of the interview booths behind the barrier. He took Izramith's ID and beckoned for her to follow him. They bypassed the glass cubicle.

  All the waiting passengers watched her. Izramith didn't like being watched while not on duty and unveiled. Her stomach gurgled and she hoped she could hold on to its contents until she was no longer in view of all these people.

  They entered a room where another guard sat behind a bank of screens. He took her ID from the other guard and scanned it again. The text that flashed over the screen was in a script she had never seen before. The man spoke in his strange language. His non-Coldi voice sounded very deep and strange to her ears.

  "I'm here to work for Daya Ezmi," she said. She had no idea if they understood.

  One of the guards gestured for her to sit down, so she sat, leaning her back against cool metal. The guard left the room through a back door.

  "Look, how long is this going to take?"

  The guard gave her a blank smile.

  Izramith clamped her hands between her knees. Did anyone here speak Coldi?

  Hurry up, hurry up.

  Chapter 9

  The door at the back of the room opened, and in came a woman dressed in a black uniform with five-pointed star embroidered in gold on the chest. A Coldi woman.

  "Ah, here you are."

  She crossed the room and bowed in a subservient pose with her head bowed and arms limp down her sides, palms facing backwards. "Welcome to Barresh. I hope you had a good journey." Her accent was from Asto, and she used formal pronouns of the type hardly anyone used at Hedron.

  There was an awkward silence. Clearly, the woman expected some kind of response.

  Izramith rose. She'd seen Asto Coldi greet each other in this way, but never had anyone displayed this behaviour to her. This was the part of Asto's society that was a mystery to people at Hedron. Izramith didn't know how to perform the superior greeting, but there was a touch to the shoulder involved, so she did that, but she felt like slapping the woman's cheek and telling her to cut this crap. This was why she hadn't wanted the contract on the space relay station, because of the Asto Coldi's stupid insistence to ram this association stuff down her throat.

  The touch on the shoulder meant that the inferior party was allowed to look the superior in the eyes and the woman did just that. Izramith was surprised at her young age, at her sincere expression, like she really believed in these silly habits.

  "They really don't do nimiya greetings at Hedron, don't they?" Her eyes were wide.

  "No, they don't." It probably sounded too angry, but damn it.

  "Then how do you know when you meet a new pe
rson, what your relationship is and whether you or the other person is superior? How do you even survive?"

  "We do." How do you survive? Easily. People at Hedron didn't need a superior to tell them what to do. They did much better with less rigid structures.

  This was stupid. Why send an Asto Coldi to meet her and make her feel like she was an exhibit while her head was swimming and her stomach unsettled?

  She barely managed to follow the woman out of the hall—over a fenced path between piles of building materials—and into a glass lift cubicle. She leaned against the glass while the woman pressed buttons on the panel. On the other side of the glass, a moving ramp took passengers to the building's ground floor.

  "You don't look so good," the woman said, in her distinct Asto accent, and started digging in a pouch that she wore on her belt. "Here." She held out a hand on which lay an orange pill.

  Izramith met her eyes. The woman's face floated in and out of focus.

  "Take it. It's your adaptation playing around with you, isn't it? Come on, take it, don't be silly."

  "Silly?" No one called a Hedron guard silly.

  "Well, whatever." And she was still smiling that annoying innocent smile. "It's that pride thing, isn't it? Like, no one is allowed to see any emotion or any outward sign of distress. That kind of thing. That's not necessary here in Barresh. We'll still respect you if you're sick."

  What the… What did this girl think she was? She hadn't even introduced herself yet. Was it any wonder that Asto and Hedron didn't get along?

  "Come on, take the pill. This helps, believe me."

  Izramith wanted to tell the woman to go fuck herself, but a wave of nausea washed over her, so she took the pill. Put it in her mouth. Tried to swallow it. Her mouth flooded with saliva. Shit, she was going to spew. She swallowed hard. The feeling abated a bit. Coughed. The damn pill was gone. It wasn't on the ground. Maybe she swallowed it. That brought another surge of acid. She coughed again and managed again to push down that puking feeling.