Rebellion in the Shadows

The routine was easy to get used to. Maybe not the mornings without coffee, but everything else fell into place. Notawa was the anchor to everything. She helped me study, ran next to me most mornings, and brought me snacks in between classes.

The only thing she couldn’t help me with was being well-liked. My sessions with Kirtis were intolerable, every meal was full of stares from strangers, and each class was torture. The instructors took joy in calling on me and did what they could to make everything as tough as possible.

“Reconist, which female on the current Collaboration of Engineers is the shortest?” the instructor, Santeeg, asked. His uniform was messy again, and it was distracting. Sending things out to be washed wasn’t hard, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Are you serious?”

“We are profiling each of the engineers on the board. You don’t think it’s important to learn about the people behind the designing process of our aircrafts?”

“No, I just-”

“You just thought you knew better than me?”

“No, I am trying to-”

“You are trying to avoid the question. Five extra laps tomorrow. The shortest female on the Collaboration of Engineers would be the only female on the board, Grakoe Haply. You have her information on your calcumat. Use the desktop to read through it,” he said. He sat at his desk, leaned way back, and was snoring in seconds. Everyone scrolled through the information on their desks. My chin rested in my left palm, I was sleepy before I had finished the first sentence.

Everyone jumped half out of their skin when twenty minutes later my calcumat started blaring. Santeeg was not happy.

“Turn that damn thing off!” Santeeg shouted from his desk. I swiped the alert away. It was an incoming call from my father. The alarm continued no matter how many times I touched ignore.

“Talaya!” He got up from his desk and stomped over.

“I’m trying! It’s busted or something,” I said.

“Get out! Take it to the lab, don’t come back if you plan on making any noise at all,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“No noise? What, you mean like snoring?” I asked. Several of my classmates snickered.

“Out.” He ordered. I got up, and half-jogged from the room.

The sound was louder in the empty halls. With everyone in their training classes, I was all alone. I kept smacking the calcumat all the way to the lab. When I got to the right room, someone poked their head out before I walked in. I unhooked the computer from my wrist and held it out.

“It won’t stop!” I said over the noise.

“Did you try answering the call?” the woman who’d poked her head out asked. It was the same frizzy-haired lady from my combat training sessions. The goggles made her hard to forget.

I answered the comm.

“Hey Dad, I’m in class right now, can I call you later?”

“Just checking in Lala. You doing OK? Everyone still being mean?” The frizzy-haired lady crossed her arms and smirked.

“Talk later?” I ended the call before he could answer but not before my face flushed bright red. Right when the call ended the noise started up again. The lady grabbed it out of my hand and ran into the lab.

“I think the actuator came unlinked from the body monitoring chip. It’s causing the emergency comm alert to call your kin-contact. I just need to uncouple the bad actuator and replace it with a good one,” she said. I had no idea what she said or if she was even talking to me. I tried to stay out of the way.

Humming from servers and processors made the whole room feel like it was buzzing. There were a dozen tables covered with things I didn’t recognize.

The enormous room was split in two. On one side of the room, the dark counters were topped with an assortment of glassware. Some wide at the bottom, some tall and slender, each with different sized tubes clamped to metal towers. A few were filled with colored liquids, while others hissed steam from the top.

The other side was even more intriguing. While the chemicals were all expertly arranged in perfect order, the opposite string of counters were the epitome of chaos. Wires were everywhere, scattered without any semblance of organization. Tools from the comically small to the incredibly large lay around on heaps of circuit cards, screws, and still more wires.

She went to the chaotic side. It fit her appearance more, and I could tell from the way she maneuvered through the mess, that it was all hers. She was struggling with the tiny screwdriver that would budge the screw.

“Damn, its stripped!” she said. She tossed the screwdriver aside and scrambled around the room. The noise echoed so loudly, that I held my hands over my ears. When she found what she was after, her shrill voice shouted in victory. It was a hammer. I understood her plan one second too late.

“No!” I jumped forward right as the hammer slammed onto my calcumat. The blaring alarm wobbled once, then stopped altogether.

“There!” she said.

“The gods! How the hell am I supposed to do anything now?!” I looked at her. She didn’t talk to me but bustled around the lab between tools and beakers. A voice from the door made me snap around.

“Hey Tesser, I stole one of those agitators off the T150, but I don’t think it will work for-”

There was a loud crash on the other side of the lab and the lady tripped forward shouting, “Arwago, we have company.”

“Talaya, what are you doing in here?”

“I’m fixing her calcumat.” While she went to talk to Arwago, a rag overtop a wiggling cylinder caught my attention, as I reached for it, she popped up next to me. “Don’t touch that!” she yelled at me. I held my hands up.

“Oh, OK then. Tesser, I will just leave this here? I have to get back to training class. Comm me later?” with that he walked out the door but not before he set the small item on one of the messy counters. When I turned around to talk to Tesser again, she had disappeared. Another crash and clunk came from the other side of the lab.

“Tesser? Can I just get my calcumat? I can order another one I guess, but I will need the memory crystal,” I was uncertain if she could hear me from where ever she went.

She appeared behind me, scrutinizing me with her light green eyes. Standing this close, I towered over her.

“You’re Lalotay’s daughter?” she asked.

“Why?”

“No reason.” She squinted at me and held out a calcumat, “Here.” It wasn’t the one I had come in with.

I took it and turned it over in my hands. “What’s this?” She had already gone to retrieve the item Arwago had brought in. She threw an oily rag over it and tucked it into her lab coat pocket.

While she walked away, she said, “New calcumat, try not to break it. I already placed your memory crystal into it. Should take about an hour to load everything up.”

“Thanks, I think.” I snapped it over my wrist. It was bigger, but somehow lighter than the old one. Tesser popped back up behind me. How did she keep doing that?

“Anything else? I’m a little busy at the moment, I don’t have to time to babysit a Reconist,” she said. Her eyes burned their way into mine and I was more than happy to oblige her by leaving.

“No, sorry. Thanks again.” I backed away from the work bench she had turned to. The goggles went over her eyes and she started to manipulate unseen items in front of them.

When I stepped back into the hallway, Arwago was waiting for me.

“Don’t worry, she treats everyone like that.” He was leaning against the wall chewing on something crunchy.

“She’s a bit eccentric.”

“She’s allowed to be. She’s probably the smartest person on the planet, maybe even two planets,” he said.

“Two planets?” I asked. He laughed.

“Yes, well maybe just this one. Who knows what is on Arkii?” His comment didn’t seem funny anymore.

“There is nothing on Arkii,” I said. He raised an eyebrow and smirked at me.

“Of course not. Better get back to class. Santeeg is a real grouch if he doesn’t get his full nap, and he won’t be able to sleep until you are back.”

It took two minutes to get back to the room.

Santeeg glared at me when I sat down but said nothing. With my calcumat still loading, I couldn’t read anything. Instead, my mind wandered back to Arwago’s comment.

Arkii was dead. Everyone knew that. The giant planet that orbited us in the sky was our twin, almost identical in size. It was so close, we could see the thick clouds that swirled over its surface. Flashes of lightning crossed the northern part of the planet almost every single night. It was a barren wasteland that was full of sulfurous toxins. At least it had been since we had come here from Earth five thousand years ago.

Arwago liked to joke. He was messing with me. Still, something about his smirk made me wonder.

“Talaya! Why aren’t you reading?” Santeeg asked from the front.

“It had to be reset,” I said, pointing to my wrist.

“Ten laps.” When I didn’t jump up, he added, “Now!” I huffed and left the class to go back to the track.

Twenty minutes later, I sat in the empty locker room with Notawa. She had been sent to make sure I was running my laps. They couldn’t tell what I was doing while my calcumat was loading. Some nervous Admin that watched everyone’s status probably thought I had died. Notawa had her calcumat project a video onto the wall. Neither of us had any intention of running.

“Notawa, has the World Flying Force ever been to Arkii?” I asked. Her head turned away from the video with a look of confusion.

“Why would that come into your brain?” she asked. She was shifting her eyes side to side, looking like I had asked her to commit a murder.

“I don’t know, something Arwago said.”

“Oh him? He’s weird like that. Ignore him.”

“But have we ever been there?”

“In AE 1004, the Earth ship, the SS Star Jumper 7174 full of 4,000 Earth Galaxians, stopped at a set of binary planets that orbited the star Tau Ceti. This was the second stop and they were anxious to find a final habitable planet to set up a colony. They went to Arkii first because with the cloud cover, they assumed it would be rich with water. However, upon sending the probe to the surface, they found the planet to have an unsuitable atmosphere for human life. Amacuro was settled only a few days later and we have stayed here ever since. Don’t forget that, it’s on the exam if I remember correctly.” She always remembered correctly.

“That was it? We never went back? Never got curious about life or minerals?” I asked. She jerked her head back.

“You don’t know this stuff? Maybe we should add basic history to our studies. No, we have never gone back, and we never will. The risks outweigh the benefits. There is nothing there and we can’t maneuver through the poisonous clouds to the dead surface.”

“So why do we need a space program? I mean, what is it for then?”

“The Flying Force Space Academy or FFSA was initiated several years ago to farther expand on security measures, improve communications and to increase global tracking.” The words were taken straight from the mass-comm Master Guardian sent out six years ago.

“Why now though? We have had the tech to leave the planet since we got here, so why haven’t we until now?”

“That’s not really a question I can answer. You want me to speak on behalf of thousands of years of leadership?”

“Take a guess.”

“No, you should just forget about it.”

“What’s the big deal? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about Arkii?”

“Because it’s pointless, and you’d do better if you focused on things that aren’t.” She looked at me square in the eyes. Hers were devoid of their normal cheeriness. It scared me to see them so serious. This was the closest she had ever come to yelling at me. If she told me to drop it, I should listen.

“Sorry. I’m just being curious.” With my apology, she took a deep breath in and the tension that had filled the room was gone.

“It’s fine. Why don’t you eat alone tonight? I have some stuff to take care of and you could use the extra sleep.” I nodded to her. She stood up and patted my shoulder.

“See you tomorrow.” I said.

“Oh and Talaya? Don’t blame me for tonight OK?” she said as she left.

“Why? What’s tonight?” Her only answer was a laugh and I was left alone in the locker room to wonder about her off-hand comment.