The lights flashed twice and the school’s AI called softly, “Five minutes to lights out. All cadets report to their rooms please for bed check.”
“See you in the morning,” Princess Lisa called as T’harla left.
A few minutes later the dorm sergeant poked his head in and cleared the room.
Chapter 3: Arrival on Trena.
“When Queen Jill arrived at Trena Station,” The general began her lecture the next morning, “The station was not the zoo one would expect. Marshal Wilson had prevented mass departures of people from Trena, but he was allowing people from other star nations to go to their home nations, and some Trena citizens whose families were with them and had a safe place to go were allowed to leave. But the space station was not the main departure point for a lot of people. Many people were smuggled off world leaving their families and businesses behind never going through the space ports or the stations. This was a big problem that the crown never got a handle on until the very end.
“No,” the general continued, “the real issue was at this time a lot of people were still coming into Trena. They were either coming home to help their family get ready to leave Trena; or to help close the Trena branch of their company. Security on the station was getting tight. Most people just couldn’t step off a liner or ship and go down to Trena. Customs was getting tough. Queen Jill’s paper work would allow her off the ship but barely and customs could have prevented her from going down to Trena.
“If she had been anyone but the daughter of Marshal Wilson she might have been sent back to Mars,” the General lectured. “Let me set the scene for you.”
###
Now as she waited anxiously for the crew to open the hatches, so she could get the reunion with her father over, she wondered what was taking so long for the crew to open the hatches. Finally the liner’s doors opened and people began to disembark. As she signed off the ship she heard a couple of ship’s officer talking.
“If the owner’s and the authorities had not guaranteed our safety I am not certain that the captain would have opened up.” The assistant purser was saying as he checked her off the ship.
“I was talking with Sparks a little while back,” another officer who was standing next to the assistant purser. “He was telling me of the rumors he had heard. There was a Theocracy flagged bulk carrier that was telling everyone on the ship to ship that the authorities were confiscating ships and press ganging crews. It was an out and out lie and only after the Queen came on the net and set the record straight did the captain decided to open up.”
“Well let’s get our people safely off the ship,” the other officer said.
When she stepped off the ship, she considered returning to its relatively quiet safety. Outside her ears were assaulted by the din of many voices. They all seemed to be shouting and Jill wished for the sanity that her little room on the liner had provided her. Jill set her face in determination and went forward into the chaos. She saw that many people were doing their jobs as best as they could, moving baggage, keeping the docks secure and checking paperwork. Other crowds of people seemed to be lined up behind a fenced area, where their faces showed a variety of emotions, grief, fear and anticipation being the most obvious. They looked hungrily at the ship she had just left, as if it were a five star meal. That made Jill nervously move a little faster away from it. The thought of being between the ship and them frightened her.
As Jill Wilson waited anxiously for the gate to the dock to open so she and her fellow passengers could enter the station proper; she reflected on the two week trip from Mars to Trena. It had been uneventfully monotonous. Except for when that old prostitute on Lobo had tried to recruit her when she had been laying over to catch her next ship, she had, had no excitement. After Lobo she had stuck to the ship. The crew and everyone were talking about the situation in the Trena System, and what it meant to them. As the gate opened Jill Wilson gathered up her one small bag and went through the gate.
Jill quickly moved to follow the few others that were disembarking toward a row of tables and desks. Jill had traveled with her grandmother and been through customs at various places. None had looked this shakily put together. This set up struck her as having been slapped together with whatever was handy including the security fences. Most of the people at the table looked very official and closer to the crowds of tense people behind the fence. Jill saw one thin man jump the line and try to run towards ship she had been on. He was tackled and drug off to another area.
As she approached customs she thought she saw a tall thonian woman that she knew. She towered six foot six and was very muscular looking. Although humanoid looking, her light gold skin, and grey hair speckled with black, and her six fingered hand did little to hide she was a non-earth human female. When she got closer she found that she did know her. She was a friend of her father’s. Commander Atomi. She had met the thonian and her husband several years before when her father had been assigned to Andrea’s World, an independent world that her father and the commander had been assigned to be the joint MP unit for the liberty port.
Jill had almost been a fixture in their home. Not only was the Commander a close friend of her father’s, the commander’s daughter, Lamile, had become a close friend of hers as well. On Andrea’s they had been nearly inseparable. Then over the years when they could, both sets of parents had served on joint assignments. Seeing the thonian, Jill was relieved to spot a friendly face. She wished she could turn time back to those days of her young childhood, playing with Lamile joking with her ‘Aunt’. Aunt Mylea always insisted that Jill refer to her that way, saying that ‘Commander Atomi was much too formal for family and Jill was family!’
“Aunt Mylea?” Jill approached the thonian, wondering why the tall huskily built alien was there. She tried to remember the last letter from Lamile, but it had been over three years ago. Then it didn’t mention anything about a change of duty station for her parents. Then it hit her surrogate aunt was not dressed in the dark gray of the Thonian Space Service but dressed in a scarlet tunic and dark black slacks with a red stripe on the seams. On each shoulder was a single star. On her left sleeve was a gold patch. The patch was that of a horse wearing a crown, around the patch were the words Trena Royal Mounted Patrol. Not that of the Thonian Space Service’s 83rd Military Police Battalion which she commanded. Her father, in that last precious year he before he had left her, had helped the Thonians to stand that unit up and no one had really been surprised that her Aunt and her lifemate had been chosen to be the inaugural command team of the unit. When she and her father had returned to Mars and the Empire it had broken her heart to say good-bye to Lamile.
“Hi Jill,” the older woman said seeing her old friend’s daughter for the first time in years. She had filled out standing almost five feet eight inches tall. The pig tails had been replaced by shoulder length blond hair. The youngster, although obviously nervous with all this commotion, still stood with a poise that Mylea thought some of her younger officers could have learned when she was still in the service.
“Aren’t you in the wrong uniform?” Jill asked. Her friend looked haggard and tired. “No. I had to leave the space service. The TMP hired me.” Her aunt replied.
“Are you a General now?” Jill asked pointing to the star on her aunts shoulder boards.
“Sort of; I am a deputy chief for the Mounties,” Her aunt replied.
“Why are you here?” Jill asked suspecting that she knew why. She was sure that she was about to be turned around and marched back to Mars.
Mylea paused before she answered her young friend being distracted by an older man sweeping up some liter. Mylea thought she knew who the man was. Kellogg, a notorious one time closer with EBio that was the bane of the police authorities and the occasional EBio security officers who were closing fleeing biopeople’s files on Trena. She was wondering if she should park Jill for a moment and arrest the man but when she looked from Jill back to where the old
man had been working he was gone. Rumor had it he was not part of EBio any longer, so he wasn’t one of the people who she was up there to protect Jill from.
“I am here to escort you to down to your father,” Mylea said surprising the teen.
Then seeing Jill’s small bag she frowned before she continued, “Is that all you have?” Jill nodded.
She was surprised that she was travelling so light. Then her frown softened as she remembered her friend had left in the middle of the night and didn’t want to let anyone know she was running away home.
“You mean that you aren’t going to put me on a transport back to Mars?” Jill asked.
“No! Lisa talked your father out of it,” The thonian replied and almost giggled, “I guess I should say we. Your father has never been able to resist us, when Lisa and I tag team him.”
“This Lisa wants me to stay?” Jill asked dumb founded. She had thought that it had been Lisa who had convinced her father to leave her behind.
“Lisa never wanted to leave you behind Jill,” He aunt said, “that was your father’s decision. He was concerned for your own safety.”
“Why are you here and not them?” Jill asked suspecting the thonian was lying to her.
She saw the look on the earth girl’s face and said, “Both Michael and Lisa would be here if hadn’t been for their security detail. Their detail doesn’t like the station. They feel it can’t be secured enough for your family. Even the Queen is discouraged from coming up here right now.”
“Oh,” Jill said looking around at the commotion. She thought she understood.
“Their security detail thought that it would be better if someone you knew came and picked you up. Since I knew you, they thought I was the right person to get you to them. I was also likely to be someone you would trust. Your parent’s detail thought that there might be a closer team following you. We got word that there was one heading this way.”
Jill didn’t know what to say. She felt dizzy. She had been all set to argue her case before this Lisa, thinking she would have to be the one she needed to convince not to send her back to Mars. Now trying to keep what she privately called her adult face on, she wouldn’t cry, but she knew she was close to it. All the relief she had felt just seconds ago at the sight of a familiar face, was gone. It was part of a new internal struggle of emotions; relief at finally arriving, worry about what would happen now, love mixed with anger for a father she had been without for far too long, and now this “closer” team who was following her; whatever that was; that she needed to be protected from. It was almost too much for her to deal with.
“Is this all you have?” Mylea asked again seeing the single bag the girl was carrying.
“Yes,” Jill said.
“Let’s get you through customs.” Mylea tried to sound stern; but was having a hard time of it. As she now took the girl’s shoulder and pointed her in the direction of the entry gates, she tried to avoid looking at the child that was almost another daughter to her as the girl’s lower lip was beginning to tremble and a glisten of a tear was beginning to stream down her check. She was supposed to give Jill the ‘Treatment’, taking her through the regular customs procedures for a person attempting to enter a secure border during times of crisis. This would include several embarrassing scans and interrogations to ascertain exactly whether she was who she said she was or wasn’t. All it just to make sure she was not a security risk to the kingdom. Looking and listening to this girl on the verge of womanhood, trying to act mature and grownup, willing to do whatever was necessary to enter the kingdom to be with her father, Mylea couldn’t do it. She knew that Michael, the girl’s father, wanted to let his daughter know how a runaway could be treated; but she just couldn’t do it. Jill wasn’t her daughter; but she remembered bandaging up her knees, and watching late night holo flicks with her and her daughter. There were other ways to get her father’s message across.
As her Aunt Mylea escorted her to their shuttle, three people seemed to move with them. A tall thonian lead the way, with a husky thirty something brunette fell in beside her, with a young man on the other side of Mylea.
“Aunt Mylea,” Jill asked seeing the three people, “are they with us?” “Yes,” Her aunt replied, “They are your escort.” “My escort,” Jill asked.
“Yes,” her aunt replied as they made their way to a small car that was driven by a man in the same uniform as her aunt. She and her aunt along with the woman agent got into the car. Jill looked around for the others and didn’t see them. They were driven quite a distance through the crowded space station.
Everywhere she looked there were people. There were families, single adults and large groups of people; all intent on going about their business. There was a heavy police presence. Everywhere she looked there was either a police officer standing a post, or several police officers walking or patrolling either on foot, or in a patrol car. All of the police officers wore the same uniform as her aunt.
After a journey of fifteen minutes, they pull into a large open hatch. There the station police checked their identities, ensuring not only who they were; but were they allowed beyond the check point. They were allowed to pass as well as another car behind them.
Once through the hatch, Jill saw that it was a large hangar chalked full of ground to orbit space craft. There were small and large vehicles many of them military. Several of the large craft were easily able to carry a thousand people in one lift. In contrast to the docks, the hanger was almost quiet, and orderly. It made her feel less anxious.
Shortly they pulled up before a small boxy ground to orbit shuttle. It was not more than fifty feet long maybe all of fifteen feet wide and maybe ten high. The small vessel, called a landing craft, its boarding ramp open, was waiting for them to board. As soon as they pulled to a stop, the Mounted Patrol officer standing at the foot of the ramp came up the car and helped them out of the car. As they boarded the landing craft, Jill noticed that the car that had followed them through the check point was now parked behind them and its passengers were following them into the small landing craft.
Once aboard and seated in plush very comfortable seats, the ramp was closed. Their escorts had taken seats near the main ramp giving them what privacy they could. Soon the landing craft was in motion, taxiing to the active launch pad.
Mylea turned to the young woman and said, “Who did your papers? They look good for forgeries.”
Jill looked at the woman not knowing what to say. She had realized immediately that papers that the beta bioperson on Mars had given her were not the same ones she had made prior to leaving Mars.
“Never mind,” Mylea continued, “You will be getting new papers anyway.” “I will?” Jill asked, “You mean if Dad doesn’t send me back.”
“Well your father is furious with you.” The thonian replied. “But Lisa and I have cooled him out a bit. But only a bit! He won’t be sending you back.”
“Oh really,” Jill wasn’t convinced she expected nothing less from the man who left her years ago. She was not convinced it wasn’t this Lisa who was calling the shots. She still needed him. She missed him terribly. “This Lisa will actually let me stay?”
“Yes,” Mylea replied, “Lisa! Right now she is your biggest advocate! She’s always wanted you with them.”
“Really,” Jill didn’t believe the thonian.
“Yes really,” Mylea replied. “Your father did want to send you back; but he can’t now! The political repercussions of sending you back home would cost him and the Queen too much. So for now you won’t be sent back to Mars.”
“Oh,” She looked at her aunt feeling a bit better. She looked away from her aunt to the front of the landing craft where the three escorts were sitting.
“Why do we need escorts,” Jill asked.
“We don’t need an escort,” Mylea responded “you do!”
“Me?” Jill asked, “Why?”
“A couple of reasons,” her aunt responded, ??
?The biggest reason is only the Queen has more authority than Mike. Because of that all of you, Lisa, Abby, you and Mike have been given protective details. The other reason is that EBio wants both he and Lisa dead. I don’t know all the details. It has more to do with Lisa than Mike. One of the reasons he was considering sending you back is he doesn’t think he can protect you.”
“He doesn’t think he can protect me?” Jill asked bewildered. “Why?”
“There is am EBio Closer Team gunning for them,” Mylea responded. “That was why they left the Empire.”
“Gunning for Dad?” Jill asked.
“Yes,” Mylea said, “but because of Lisa. I don’t know the entire story; but it has something to do with who Lisa is, and what she knows. From what Lisa has told me, it’s why she was on the run for all those many years. When your father lifemated Lisa he became one of their targets. Because EBio wants them dead, he wants you off world and on Mars, where you’ll be safer. He feels it is safer for you on Mars, at the Admiral’s estate than here. It’s going to get crazy here and while the Queen gave him her protective detail, and they are among the best I have ever seen, your father just doesn’t know if they are good enough to stop a Closer team from harming all of you.”
“Closer team,” Jill asked bewildered, “What’s that?”
Mylea thought for a minute not sure she should tell the girl. Closer became a fact of life when she became a deputy chief of the Mounted Patrol. Every once in a while the Mounties had to deal with a closer team trying to pick up or assassinate a bioperson living on Trena.
“Jill,” she turned to her friend, “what do you know of EBio?”
“They make the clones or the Biopeople as they are sometimes called.” Jill answered.
“That’s right.” Mylea confirmed, “EBio and their engineers spent quite a few decades developing the Biopeople. Taking the very earliest research files and going from those early trials developing sheep and cats, and finally creating the biopeople. I understand there was quite a commotion when EBio first announced that had created humans in the lab! Many theologians and devout people believe that only a deity can create life and that for mortals, to play with their deities’ creative rights is sacrilege.