The Sixth Line of Defense

by Shiva Winters

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  It had become family tradition sometime when she had still been very young that her father would take nearly two weeks off during their winter breaks from school and all of them would relocate to a distant point away from the base where he could forget about work and they could forget about school. More often than not this usually meant a family skiing trip, to ease her mother's few rare demands and allow her time to indulge in her favorite activity. Vala had suspected on several occasions that her father had taken the position at Sierra base because of the mere proximity to the mountains his wife so adored. This year seemed no different as they loaded onto the military transport plane that would carry them and her father's security forces to her family's vacation home near her mother's favorite mountain. A flight of so many miles and lasting for several hours might have sounded like a bad idea if things hadn't changed and Shiva was about to get stuck in a small passenger cabin with a man she had been all but dead set on avoiding, but it actually felt like a good idea when Vala saw her girlfriend perched on her father's knee as the two of them talked with smiles on their faces.

  Shiva had been just a little reluctant to be moved that far away from Devin's light handed control, but once assured he knew about it, she had settled down and actually seemed to be looking forward to the change of scenery. Her mother adored Shiva almost as much as Vala herself and her father had gone a long way in the previous week to feeling the same way as his wife. For Vala it was simply a relief that her worse case scenario for that confrontation had not come to past. Even though she had been fully prepared to do just about anything to insure she and Shiva would be able to stay together and have a chance at happiness, she would have hated to betray her father and his principles in that fashion. As the time passed by Shiva was soon enough curled up in her mother's arms and the two of the were sleeping peacefully together and her father matched wits with her over a quiet game of chess.

  "So.. college?" He murmured to her after a long comfortable silence.

  "As long as Shiva and I get to go together." Vala agreed giving him a pleased smile.

  "Hmm.. I doubt it would be this coming semester." He told her warningly.

  "I kind of guessed, truth is, I don't think Shiva was quite ready to leave the Academy yet anyways. She was almost starting to believe that she might belong there, it might have been a bit painful for her to give it up so quickly." Vala assured him quickly. In truth she had quite enjoyed the previous semester herself and all the time the two of them had to simply take it easy and just sink into their own private world.

  "She was.. a lot different back then.." He murmured to her as if trying to explain himself.

  "I know.. I have gotten it on good authority from her 'keepers' she has changed a lot since we met. Could you.. tell me what happened, I know it's probably classified, but I could tell it would hurt her too much to really talk about it." Vala requested with a touch of nervous reluctance.

  "There were some serious incidents of violence I really don't want you knowing about.." He murmured back giving her a worried a look.

  "I already know enough about those." Vala assured him quickly. "I would just like to know what Shiva did to set her off on her whirlwind tour of bad schools."

  "Most of us.. thought she was simply lying.." He murmured uncomfortably. ".. it's easy to see now that she doesn't lie because she's really bad at it.. but we weren't really in the mood to listen anyways. When the program first started the children of Series 6 were to be place with military personnel or retired officers who would hopefully be able to help them get past.. all the stuff that was done to them. Shiva was placed with a retired Captain and her husband.. and even she said it was an accident at the tribunal, but we thought she had let her emotional attachment skew the truth of the matter. Well.. one night she woke up to the sounds of Shiva having a nightmare and so she hurried inside to try and wake her up, out of instinct I would guess, Shiva grabs her arm and breaks it in two places."

  "Shiva must have loved her more than just a little.." Vala whispered to him. "She won't talk about it, and she was so desperately afraid I might get hurt the same way.."

  "It wasn't until after we had rendered our decision that it became clearer to me that we might have misjudged her because when that gavel was struck Shiva started crying.. I wanted to do something then, but none of the others wouldn't listen.. but after that.. well just as Devin said she was put into position where she was forced to defend herself and after that it was just easier for all of us to believe she was flawed somehow.." Vala nodded in understanding and patted his arm comfortingly.

  It took a great deal of coaxing to lure Shiva outside and onto the slopes but her father was just able to convince her that she could learn to ski. She spent most of the first day flat on her back or face first in a snow bank, but by the next day she was following the three of them up the mountain. Vala quickly suspected that Shiva was simply emulating the movements of skiing using her gifts to make it appear as if she wasn't a hazard to herself and everyone else on the mountain, since on several occasions she just seemed to skip right over divots and bumps in the fresh powdery snow. But since no one else seemed to notice anything amiss, Vala kept her mouth shut since it allowed them to go wherever they wanted without leaving Shiva alone in the unfamiliar environment. By the fifth day, all the tension had disappeared and Shiva seemed completely at ease as she laughed at her father's jokes as the two of them sat curled up close near the fire place and helped her mother happily in the kitchen as utensils and pots floated smoothly through the air around them. Shiva also eagerly indulged Vala in her own personal favorite sport 'tree-hopping', with Vala riding piggy back, Shiva carried her along at seemingly reckless pace as they launched in and through the branches of the forests dancing across the untouched landscape of snow below them. Even the guards who were watching over them seemed to relax enough around her to smile whenever they had a face to face encounter with her during the course of the day. Vala was just about ready to believe that everything would work out, but as it always the case when thing are going well, that was when the bottom seemed to fall out of everything.