That was when I finally took up my option to get information about my parents. I found out they were Military, so when I was born they had to decide whether they should abandon their Military careers and come to Earth with me. I don’t know what they’d have done if I’d been their first child, but they had two older kids so …
So, yes, they’d dumped me, but when I contacted them … Eighteen years of anger at their rejection. Eighteen years of refusing to let myself indulge in nardle hopes like the other kids. Eighteen years of pretending I didn’t care. It had all culminated in the happy ending all ape kids dreamed of, but so few actually got. My parents had wanted to know me, had been going to come to Earth to meet me. It had been more than amaz, and beyond zan, and then the dream was shattered by a Military General calling to tell me they’d died trying to open up a new colony world for humanity.
Any mention of my parents still started a whole mess of raw emotions churning around inside me. Not just about their death, and the dream of having a family that had died with them, but about my Handicap and the Military career I could never have because I couldn’t leave Earth. Fian and I were carefully avoiding the whole subject. I’m never any good at discussing emotional stuff, and Fian seemed scared to push the issue after the way I’d reacted in the past.
I couldn’t face talking about this with Issette any more than with Fian, so I was relieved when the door opened at this point. Fian came in carrying a black impact suit. His long blond hair was in such a mess that I guessed he’d tried on half a dozen of the protective suits to see which fitted best. He saw the floating holo image and stopped to wave.
‘Hello, Issette.’
Issette waved back at him. ‘I must go now. I need to get dressed and check Keon is ready to give his demonstration. Wish us luck.’
‘Good luck.’ Fian and I obediently chorused the words.
Issette’s image vanished as she ended the call, and Fian looked at me in confusion. ‘Good luck with what?’
‘I’m not sure. Issette’s talked Keon into showing his light sculptures to someone.’
Fian shrugged and changed the subject. ‘Dalmora’s back.’
Fian and I were both members of our class dig team 1, and the other three members of the team, Dalmora, Amalie and Krath, were our closest friends. ‘What about Amalie and Krath?’ I asked.
Fian shook his head. ‘Dalmora’s the only one so far.’
He hung up his impact suit and combed his hair back into a semblance of order, then we headed out of our grey flexiplas walled room, and along a grey flexiplas corridor to the grey flexiplas hall, which was the only room in the dome that could hold more than half a dozen people. We found Dalmora there, an anxious expression on her beautiful dark face, and her waist-long black hair uncharacteristically tangled, desperately apologizing to Lecturer Playdon.
‘Normally I can just portal to Danae Off-world, walk up to an interstellar portal and dial Earth. This morning there were huge queues. There were block portal windows scheduled for the most popular planet destinations, but nothing for Earth, so I had to wait in the main queue for over three hours before I …’
Lecturer Playdon gave up waiting for a chance to speak and firmly interrupted her. ‘Calm down, Dalmora. I got your message explaining the delay, and anyway you’re the first one back.’
‘Really? I saw Lolia in the corridor.’
‘Lolia and Lolmack stayed on Earth to spend time with their Handicapped baby,’ said Playdon. ‘Fian and Jarra stayed here as well, of course, and I was visiting friends at the New Tokyo Dig Site. You’re the first to get back from off world. Apparently, there are major delays on all interstellar and cross-sector portal traffic.’
‘Oh.’ Dalmora seemed to relax a bit.
‘Earth is in the centre of Alpha sector, so you just needed an interstellar portal,’ said Playdon. ‘The rest of the class are coming from planets in other sectors and will have to travel cross-sector to Alpha sector first. Amalie will have to portal cross-sector twice to get here from Epsilon sector, so I’ve messaged her to say I understand she’ll be especially late.’
Dalmora went off to her room, followed by a trail of bobbing hover bags, and Playdon turned on the huge wall vid at the end of the hall. The Earth Rolling News banner appeared above a scene of the Solar 5 spaceship lying in the bottom of a giant crater with its shields glowing against the rubble. The shields suddenly vanished, the escape hatches opened, and figures in Military blue impact suits started climbing out.
I groaned. ‘Not again! It’s been five weeks since the solar super storm and the rescue. I know Earth Rolling News don’t often get exciting news stories of their own, they mostly pick them up from the sector newzies, but really …’