“I assumed as much,” Elvira responded. “Perhaps we can impede their activities.”
“It is certainly worth a try. Now, about living quarters. Mine are dreadfully small.”
“If it comes to that, we can sleep in sleeping bags on the floor,” Ellie Mae said brightly.
Admiral Davidson shuddered. “No, my old bones won’t handle that well at all. We are not sleeping on the floor.”
“I am sure that we can figure something out. After all, two of us are glad to be here, and I hope you are as glad to see us as we are to see you,” Elvira said.
Admiral Davidson turned to his aide and said, “Hold all my calls until I return to the office. I am going to take the ladies shopping. They can’t wander around looking like this now can they?”
“As you wish, sir.”
Admiral Davidson offered an arm to each of the women, and they left the office in the direction of the station’s commercial district.
HOMESTEAD - CHAPTER TWENTY
HELEN AND SEBASTIAN HAD A DAUGHTER they named Colleen. Sean, Colleen and Greg and Avi’s two daughters, Rachel and Wendy were constant companions before they were out of diapers. Working together, the families built houses on rocky outcroppings overlooking the mountain lake where Helen and Sebastian had originally set up housekeeping. Their old modular homes were recycled for use by newly arrived refugees. They converted a meadow bordering the lake into a flight apron for the cargo tug and the P I ships. The mountain lake in front of the house provided them the ability to travel freely since the preferred method for landing and taking off the P I ships and the tug when a hard runway was not available was from the water. They could take off and land vertically, but that used significantly more fuel than taking off horizontally. Horses grazed in the meadows, around the house and along the water’s edge.
A stranger viewing the scene for the first time would probably have used the term “bucolic” to describe their living conditions. The residents, however, still preferred the term “primitive” over anything more poetic. Not that they minded, primitive living conditions free of fear from persecution were better than living in the lap of luxury in fear for one’s life.
A mountain stream guaranteed a constant supply of fresh cold water. The fish in the lake and the small game in the forest provided the growing children ample opportunities to provide dinner for their families. Sean’s skill with a bow and arrow enabled him to hunt the small omnivores that lived in the forest. Sebastian often remarked how they tasted like raccoon. No one else had eaten raccoon and did not challenge him, but these little furry beasts certainly acted like raccoons and seemed at least as smart. Killing them seemed to be the only effective way of keeping them out of the crops. Their pelts were highly prized for their softness and Sean quickly found success as a fur trader.
Sebastian taught the children the love of nature and all things living. Greg and Avi taught them math, science and the mechanics of space flight. Helen made sure they stayed in shape. Gloria taught them the arts and literature. Mark Stonebridge taught comparative religion. Dr. Miller and Dr. Turner both contributed to the children’s life sciences education. Timmy taught the kids how to ride horses as soon as they were big enough to sit upright. Timmy had long ago given up on saddles so everyone rode bareback and used rope halters. None of the horses Timmy trained used a bridle or a bit. None of them needed one.
Avi took the longest of the group to learn to ride, but she was the most enthusiastic once she did. The eight of them would often ride horseback out to the satellite settlement when Greg and Avi needed to be there to assist with the flight school. They often commented at the irony of riding horses to go teach the mechanics of interstellar travel. The humor was not lost on the children.
Avi and Helen often traded small private jokes between them that the others were not privy to. They did share some of their jokes like the one about having spacecraft in the driveway instead of automobiles like normal people. They helped instill finely developed senses of humor in their children even if their husbands were left out of most of the jokes.
All four of the children would often join their parents on trips to meet the cargo ships bringing supplies and taking export products, but only Rachel and Wendy left the system when Greg and Avi took the cargo ship out on a supply run to New St Louis. Rachel and Wendy became as comfortable in weightlessness as they were on the ground.
When Wendy, the youngest of the group, was four, other babies were born to some of the original settlers and the first batch of children found themselves no longer the objects of attention that they once were. Adapting to the change, they found ways to amuse themselves that did not involve their parents. A large part of each day was devoted to their studies. They each had a workstation in their bedrooms which linked to each other and to their cargo ship when it was in orbit. Home school curriculum materials developed by professional educators on Earth had been loaded on the machines. Their progress was closely monitored by their parents to make sure that their lessons were not shortchanged.
Avi and Greg insisted that the girls stay fit, and they spent several hours each day in physical training even when they were on ship. A substantial amount of the physical training was devoted to marshal arts and small arms practice since both Avi and Greg felt strongly about their importance. “Home schooling” took on a new meaning as this family practiced it. With the help of the ship’s computer and its monstrous library, the girls were reading earlier than any of the current child-rearing texts said that they should. Math was part of their daily lives since they used it to help navigate the ships and manage the cargo loads. Having their parents constantly with them helped provide them an enriched environment in which they thrived. If they had any complaints, it was that they had few friends their own age. Sean was older than they were and Colleen was between them, but other than those two, there were no other children on Homestead less than four years younger than Wendy.
The children learned to swim in the clear cold water of the lake and played together in the shallows at the water’s edge never out of sight of their parents view from the houses above. Often on clear cold dark nights they stretched out on the side of the hill and tried to name the constellations above them. The stars in the system further out on the arm of the galaxy from the home central system bore no resemblance to the ones in the text books and they enjoyed making up stories to go with the constellations they created out of random patterns of stars.
Were it not for the intense classes in combat tactics, military strategy and weapons systems and the long hours spent in flight simulators preparing for an attack that could come at any time, the children could have been said to have had an idyllic childhood.
More than almost anything else the girls loved going with their parents to pick up supplies and refugees from New St. Louis. For the trip out they had their parents’ undivided attention, and for the trip back they had lots of new friends to play with. Many of the refugees found the two preteens calming and reassuring. Other than their traveling companions, the girls were often the first openly friendly faces the refugees encountered after leaving Earth. The girls were quite happy to tell the new arrivals whatever they could about their new home.
On one such trip, Rachel and Wendy quickly shucked their EVA suits and secured them in the locker. They had checked the seals on the transport pods and verified that the pods could safely be opened into the ship’s hold.
“Mom! We’re going below!” Wendy shouted into the comm.
“You have one hour before we jump into hyper. You better be in your seats! Make sure everyone is secure back there!” Avi replied.
“Yes, Mom!” both the girls answered.
“Did you see the baby with all the spiky hair?” Rachel effused.
“No, must have been on your side.”
“She was so cute! She smiled at me when I went by her view-port.”
“Race YA!” Wendy propelled herself through the passageway that lead to the cargo bays. Weightlessly caree
ning the length of the ship, her smaller build gave her a definite advantage over Rachel and she arrived well before Rachel did.
They opened the doors to the personnel transports and checked in on each occupant to make sure that they stayed strapped in their seats until after the transition to hyper drive was complete. The refugees were all women and small children. Ellie Mae and Elvira had seen them safely to this point, and now they were about to start the final leg of a journey that for some of them had started six months ago. The presence of two happy, energetic preteens was a welcome surprise. Rachel and Wendy answered as many questions as they could in the time they had. They finally found the baby with the spiky hair. Her mother was quietly crying when the girls entered the compartment. The woman was thin and frail looking. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She was pale with deep set eyes.
“Hey, there,” Wendy said soothingly after introducing themselves. “You’re in the home stretch now. In three weeks we’ll be there.”
“Where are we going?”
“We call the planet Homestead.”
“What will happen to us when we get there?”
“You’ll go to school for six or eight weeks, and then you’ll probably be given a piece of land to farm. You and your neighbors will help each other build houses to live in. You’ll have some cows and some horses and maybe some chickens. You’ll be a farmer.”
“Do I have to pay for the land?”
“Nope, it’s yours as long as you live on it and farm it or until the Swordsmen come.”
The woman burst into fresh tears. “You know they hate you.”
“We’d heard that,” Rachel replied.
“If they find you they’ll kill you.”
“We know that, too.”
“What are you doing to protect yourselves?”
Rachel looked at Wendy before she answered. “I can’t tell you. It’s kinda secret. There is one thing I can tell you. Did you see the ship attached to this one when you docked?”
“The one with all the antennas?”
“That’s a Pirate Interdiction warship. We own it. Actually our mother owns it. We could blast anything that attacks us out of the sky with it. Wendy and I can both fly it. Our Dad has one, too. We left it behind at Homestead. We have more ships, too. If they attack us, we’ll kill more of them than they kill of us.”
“You’re little girls, do you really fly warships?”
“We’ve done it since we were babies. We take one of the P I ships with us wherever we go. We’ve been attacked by pirates, and we’ve had to defend ourselves. We don’t lose.”
“Do you go into combat?”
“If we think there’s going to be a fight, Wendy and I stay on this ship and monitor the sensors,” Rachel said with pride. “Mom and Dad actually do the fighting.”
“Have you helped them shoot down pirates?”
“Yes.”
“So young. It must be awful growing up like that.”
“No worse than some of what other folks like you have told us of their lives. It is what you make it,” Wendy said.
Suddenly they felt a low rumble that translated itself through the ship’s frame as the big engines fired. The weightlessness they had enjoyed started to go away as the ship started to accelerate. “We have to go now,” Wendy said. “We need to be in our seats when we jump to hyper. We’ll come back to play in a couple of hours!”
They waved to the baby who waved back, and they raced for the flight deck.
“Glad you could join us!” Greg said from the pilot’s seat as the girls sped through the flight deck to their cabins to strap in for the transition to hyper drive.
“You have two minutes to transition!” Avi shouted from the co-pilot’s seat at the fleeing girls.
“We’ll be ready!” Rachel shouted back.
“Kids!” Greg said, exasperated, “The fruit falls not far from the tree!”
Avi laughed. “Those are certainly our kids!”
They held hands for a few seconds before Greg initiated the control sequence that would effect the transition to hyper drive.
Once the ship was established in hyper drive, Avi and the girls headed back to the cargo bay. They showed the passengers the kitchen and galley that were in one of the adjacent travel pods. They organized cooking, cleaning and housekeeping details. They also started the education process that would culminate in the passengers becoming contributing members of the community on Homestead. When they were finished at the end of the first day, Wendy noticed the mother of the baby with the spiky hair crying silently to herself, rocking back and forth seated on the floor tightly holding her baby.
Wendy quietly sat beside her after all the others had returned to their quarters. “Hey, are you okay?”
The woman looked up. “Oh, hi, Wendy,” she sniffled. “It’s been so hard. First Billy died and then his brother’s wife died in childbirth, and then his brother wanted to take me.” She looked up at Wendy. “She had ten kids. Ten kids in ten years and he wanted more. He didn’t take care of any of them. They were all monsters. She couldn’t do it, and he beat her when the kids cried, and they were crying all the time. He wanted me to be their mother. I couldn’t do it. I have my own baby. She’s all Billy left me.” She sobbed quietly.
“Was Billy your husband?”
“Yes. He was a good man. I loved him. He was gentle and kind. We didn’t have much money, but his love was enough for me.”
“What did his brother have to do with anything?”
“If a Swordsman dies, his male next of kin is required to take care of the man’s children. He gets to keep the wife as a trophy. Billy’s brother is a hard, heartless man. I would die if I had to live with him. As soon as I sold everything in our house I fled. What else could I do?”
“You did the right thing. I know it’s hard, but you have to put all that behind you. You’re going to a new world. Just about everyone here has a past they would rather forget. Let it go. Pick up the pieces, and join the future. You’ll be happier.”
“You’re a smart kid.”
“Thanks! I have a smart mommy.” Wendy scuffled the baby’s hair and said, “and so does she!” They smiled at each other. Wendy headed to her quarters and bed.
* * * * *
Sean and Rachel became more competitive as they approached their teen years. Their competition manifested itself in many forms. They strove to get better scores on their tests and to show that each knew more than the other in their academic classes. Physically, though Rachel was larger than average height and weight, she was no match for Sean’s strength. She often tried to best him in physical contests, but he would beat her every time. This was a source of great frustration for her.
Sean’s greatest skill, the one for which even his father was no match, was his ability with a bow and arrow. Sean could spot an arboreal animal, shoot it and catch it as it fell before it hit the ground. The kids were even matches at knife throwing and other combat skills. Rachel was a little faster swimmer and Sean was a little faster runner, but with bow and arrow Sean had no equal on the planet. It was at this skill that Rachel set out to beat him.
Every spare minute she could find, Rachel practiced with the bow and arrow until she was reliably striking the target. She varied the size of the target and the distance and kept hammering away until she felt she had mastered the skills to beat Sean at his own game.
Sean’s voice changed suddenly. One week he was a squeaky tenor, and the next week after a few days of silence, he was a throaty baritone. The girls noticed other changes in him soon after that. His muscles seemed more defined. His walk changed. He became more difficult to get along with. One sunny morning in the midst of the changes Rachel asked Sean if she could go hunting with him. Sean, like most boys his age, taunted and teased the girls unmercifully. Rachel’s request to join him drew out his worst instincts, and he picked on her the whole time they walked through the forest in search of game. Wendy and Colleen tagged along behind waiting to see if a fight broke
out between Sean and Rachel. They expected one any minute.
Sean and Rachel had been fighting a lot, and today promised to be spectacular. The younger girls were breathless in anticipation. Few things were as exciting as a good fight especially when they were not in it. On their most recent trip to the satellite settlement Sean had spotted a wooded hillside that looked like it might be the home for abundant quantities of the small omnivores they called “home-coons” because Sebastian thought they resembled raccoons without the stripes. The hillside was about two kilometers away so they headed out first thing in the morning to hunt. The “home-coons” were diurnal, hunting at dawn and dusk. They spent most of the day lounging in the crooks of tree branches watching the traffic below. They could be tempted down out of the trees by something shiny and glittery, but mostly they relied on their coloration to keep hidden from their historical predators who had all suddenly died off along with the large grazing animals.
As they walked, Wendy spotted something white and out of place among the trees. “Hey, everybody! Look over there! Bones.” She took off running in that direction.
“Wendy! Come back here!” Sean shouted. “You know we are supposed to stay together!”
“OOOH, It’s big daddy, Sean!” Rachel teased as she took off after Wendy. “Catch us if you can!”
“Dad’s going to be mad with you taking off!” Sean shouted back genuinely concerned that he was going to be punished for their actions.
Sean and Colleen ran after Wendy, and soon the four of them found themselves in the midst of the biggest collection of bones they had ever seen.
“Don’t touch anything!” Sean ordered. “Dr. Turner will want to see this just like we found it.”
“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Rachel sneered. They stared at the bones for a while until Rachel saw something move in a tree over her head. Quickly raising her bow, she shot an arrow at it. The arrow thudded into the branch below where the ‘coon had been watching them. The ‘coon hissed at them and scampered away.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 20
