To Forge a Queen

  His name was Memo, as he a very good memory. He was a conductor on the railroad, and a sometime stringer for the Corps de Chameleon, the imperial intelligence service. He watched the youngster leave the mess room, which was the third shift’s gathering spot, to head back to her room. He mentally checked his memory and realized that the girl was the person he was to conduct on his part of the railroad. The crew knew he was one of the purser’s office staff, but had no idea he was a conductor on the railroad. Only a few biopeople knew about the railroad and fewer non bios did. He had helped many people including one legendary bioperson who he had seen a couple of weeks back standing next to Sergeant Wilson. Now here was his daughter traveling to Trena. He had to get to get her on to Trena. Safely!

  By the time the ship had reached Rio Lobo, Jill was going stir-crazy. With no room on the ship to stretch her legs, she had to get off the liner for a bit. It had been over a week, a week of sitting around and hardly getting any opportunity to see the passenger level where the passenger gym was located. The crew wasn’t allowed to use it. As a “freeloader” according to some of the more snobby crew members, she deserved the bare minimum of privileges. She was thoroughly bored and felt cooped up. The stop at Rio Lobo was a transfer point. But she would have to stay overnight on the station. Having no money for a hotel she thought she would wander the station. She found a plaza after a bit of wandering the station. After enjoying the freedom of being able to walk more than fifty feet in any one direction, she sat down at a table in one of the outdoor cafes around the plaza.

  Although she didn’t notice him, Memo was watching Jill, as she left the ship. He was running an errand for the ship’s purser, to pick up some packages waiting for them at the station’s drop shipment office. This had given him the opportunity to escort the girl around without the girl knowing about it. He was surprised when she had sat down in a restaurant patronized by the working boys and girls of Rio Lobo. She couldn’t have known that she had. When he realized that it was Thunder’s place, he smiled a bit, wondering how Thunder would handle things. Thunder was the next station master in the line to get Miss Wilson down the line and owned the bar she had sat down in front of. She had likely picked it because it had a casual relaxed feel about it, with people strolling among the tables and chatting, then wandering away with someone. The naive girl had no idea what looked like a friendly atmosphere, was the local meat market for this part of the space station. It was the wrong place for a sheltered naïve girl to be sitting around in.

  He watched her as she looked around and appeared to be a little self-conscience as the strolling men and even a few of the women gave her admiring glances. She hadn’t realized yet that the regulars who worked this stretch along the plaza were starting to act like they would like her to just move on. If they started feeling that Jill was trying to steal their business, it might get embarrassing or even dangerous for the girl. Memo was wondering how to let Thunder know that the girl was her next passenger for the railroad when he spotted his old friend.

  Thunder, saw Memo and nodded. Since he had business to conduct and Jill was at the next station on the railroad he went on about his business. He chuckled when he remembered how the old prostitute had received her nickname. Before she had gotten out of the business a long time ago, she use to tell her clients she felt like a thunderstorm had washed through her after they had finished. It had a novelty that boosted the ego of most of the one-shot customers she had worked then. The locals thought it a clever tag line. She had given the business up and now ran one of those cafes that surrounded the plaza area. Her place was unique, as it offered small private rooms behind her bar. She didn’t run a crew of “workers” anymore as they were all pretty much independent on this part of the station; but she was quite willing to make a profit on their labors in her room rentals. Of course if someone just wanted to sleep during a layover in a clean, fresh smelling room that was just fine with her. Memo thought there had been some trouble she had been in once where she had gotten hurt badly, but he hadn’t ask her. It was her story to share. She was past her prime now, but was still able to work crowd control when things got too rowdy. Memo never saw the cop approach his old friend.

  Jill startled as an older woman sat down next to her.

  “Going loner can be dangerous in this neighborhood, I can protect you” The woman said softly, looking suggestively up and down Jill as she sat at her table.

  Jill looked at the older woman bewildered not knowing what the woman was asking. Unsure of what the woman was even talking about and wondered why the woman was unable to stop staring at her chest. Even the boys at school had not given her the look like this woman was giving her, “Pardon?”

  The woman leaned forward so that her chest was right in Jill’s line of sight, putting a hand on her thigh, and purred, “I can help you make a lot of imperials entertaining some of my clients.” Thunder bit her cheek to keep her face straight as she saw a new idea flare to life in Jill’s brain.

  “I… you mean... No way!” Jill finally got the message, “Get away from me before

  I call for help!”

  As if on cue, the young cop appeared at Jill’s side. “Is this woman bothering you

  Miss?”

  “Yes!” Jill answered seeing that the young man was a cop.

  “Thunder you need to move on,” the young cop said helping Jill get to her feet.

  “Just trying to grow my business,” Thunder, acted put out as she stood up though she thought with a hidden smile that twinkled behind her eyes, “There you go Sergeant Wilson. You went against your own to make sure that the marine who raped me years ago was brought to justice, I’ve just paid you back.”

  “Where you headed miss?” The police officer asked.

  “I am headed to Trena to join my father,” Jill answered, “I have a ten hour layover until my next ship.”

  “This is no place to layover,” the police man commented. “I know of a place that you can stay and they will make sure you get to your next ship.” “I don’t have much money,” She answered.

  “Not a problem,” The young cop replied, “It is run by the Red Cross.”

  “Oh,” Jill said picking up her small bag of things. “Then I guess I should take them up on the offer.”

  “This way then,” The young police officer pointed the way.

  It took a few minutes to walk the distance to the hostel.

  “Big Sue,” The young cop greeted the large black haired intake worker, “Got room for another?”

  “Sure!” the young woman replied, “Who do we have here.” “Jill Wilson,” Jill answered.

  “Alright,” the woman replied as she took out her data pad, “Let me get some information and…”

  The young cop left and went back to Thunder’s place. When he got back young cop asked the old prostitute, “That what you wanted?”

  “Perfect,” Thunder said and kissed him on the cheek, “Just perfect!”

  “Found out who she is Thunder, or at least who her father is.” The cop continued.

  “I am impressed how he helped you and others.”

  “I still owe him,” Thunder commented, “This was only partial payment!”

  “I’ll catch up latter,” he went on along his beat. He didn’t want the Sarge to know he had done a favor for this woman. Some of the older cops had problems with the old prostitute. He had always found her decent to him. To his knowledge she had not been afoul of the law in years. She was always well behaved around him and if she was involved in anything he could not find any evidence of it. He had of course heard that she was a station master on the Underground Railroad but couldn’t prove it.

  ###

  A few hours later the Red Cross worker escorted Jill to her next ship a little better one. The Rover was a midsized liner that routinely went from Rio Lobo to Trena Station. Thankfully, it was only another week to Trena. Every time the ship popped out of transit space, she wa
s the first one in the ships tiny library, to see what had transpired on Trena. The asteroids hadn’t fallen on Trena, but the news media was filled with the current happenings there. When she read the Op-Ed piece that a Lord Rammer wrote condemning her father’s lack of a concise plan she was blistering mad. Although it had been years since she had seen her father, and didn’t really know exactly what he did now, and still in high school, and not really aware of what all was going on in the Empire or especially on Trena; she felt that even she could see that after three weeks that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to have a coherent plan other than to just get off world as best you can.

  Jill decided to train herself to be useful to her father. He wouldn’t have time for fancy welcome home parties and getting to know her all over again, so she had better just make herself an assistant that would know what to do and do it before it was needed. She felt that her father wouldn’t just send her back to Mars if she was his right hand. Using the ships limited library she researched the Trena system and everything that was printed about asteroids hitting a planet. It sometimes got really dry and technical, but she struggled through the information, glad she had taken advanced science courses back home.

  The Trena system had only one habitable planet, with several smaller planets around a G class star. Other than two asteroid belts the only other spectacular thing in the solar system was the gas giant. It had one or two small moons but nothing other than Trena was habitable. Jill sat back, as the news stories finally really sank in, there was no place in the Trena system that the evacuees go to. They would have to leave the system. The space habitats were not large enough to hold the planet of Trena’s population of nearly seventy five million people.

  Jill spent some time learning about Trena herself. If the planet was going to die, she wanted to be able to remember what its own special places had been like. She wanted to be able to replay in her mind what the ice cave and other places the Captain had talked to her about looked like, because she now realized she might never get to see them. She started out learning the typical text book facts that anyone doing a school report would find; that Trena had only about nine tenths of an earth standard gravity, it was little farther from its star than Earth was from the Sun, and it had only a few continents. There was the big one that straddled the mid-portion of the planet that was simply called Main and the others smaller ones north and south of Main also simply called North and South. The main continent was temperate with mild winters and gentle summers, but there was also a desert of sorts in the southern half of the big continent. Most of Trena’s industry was in orbit. At least the real heavy industry was in orbit or scattered through the system, closer to those cursed asteroid belts, where the metals found in the floating rocks that industry used were closer and cheaper to get to. There were a couple of exceptions. Boeing Space Works had a light space craft yard in northern Trenaport, and there was a furniture factory in the north of the main city of Trenaport.

  There wasn’t much about what the birds sounded like wheeling over the gentle sea winds, what the ice cave reflecting sunlight off their icy exteriors looked like, what Trena’s fields of flowers smelled like after a rain. Only the people that lived there could tell her that. After exhausting the library on anything about Trena she could find, she went on to research what would happen when the asteroids struck Trena. What she had found out was not good at all and explained why the world had to be evacuated. A single big rock coming in at thousands of miles an hour would crater the impact area and splash dust into the atmosphere. The dust would obscure the star and prevent the necessary warmth and sunlight from reaching the surface of Trena. That might be survivable as she understood it; but Trena wasn’t going to be hit by just one or two asteroids; it was going to hit by several thousand of all sizes. One or two wouldn’t cause the evacuation of the planet, or make it unlivable. Thousands would. One of the articles that had found its way to the ship was a science piece on what would happen when all these rocks hit Trena. The piece written by three scientists concluded that it would not be a good thing to be on Trena when the rocks fell. They compared it to a nuclear winter that the ancients had feared would happen should the pre empire nations of Earth had ever launched their nuclear weapons at each other. They concluded that with the planetary damage life would be nearly impossible on the Free World. She now fully understood why Trena had to be evacuated.

  As she got closer to Trena she began to worry about her father. It had been five years since she last seen him. That could be a long time for people. She had changed a lot in that time, growing up from a twelve year old ruff-neck, smiling with her pigtails, and skinned knees to a near adult who had begun, who, according to a few boys at school, was attractive enough to ask to some of the school dances. He might not recognize her. She had changed in temperament too. She had been a bit of an air-head when she had last seen her father, but she was much more mature now, certainly. Being a blond was cool but being a smart blond was fun. The look on people’s face when she answered stuff in school or talked to others and they found out she wasn’t an air-head but smart and intelligent to boot was something she rather enjoyed. Her father was in for a big surprised when he saw her. She wondered how much he had changed.

  She also wondered how much he was going to yell at her. She realized that what she had done may not have been the smartest thing she could have done. Traveling on her own had been fun even though it had gotten much more boring after the first ship’s relatively spaciousness and until she had met that woman on Rio Lobo, she had been maybe just a little homesick, but not scared. That memory was why even when the ship later docked for an eight hour layover at another stop, she didn’t leave the ship. Her father wasn’t much of a yeller; he could or had been able to make his point without talking any louder than you would in normal conversation. But he had always been fair, and even when he punished her he had not been too extreme. At least that was what she remembered when she was little, now that she was supposedly more grown-up, it might be different. If Grandma had heard she’d been in hot water at school, or on the base like the time she was in that training area and got hit by accident from a stun grenade, she would lower the boom! Knowing the Admiral, which is what Jill thought of her grandmother when she was being ‘all-business’, there would be yelling with her. As the ship approach Trena Station, she wondered how much trouble she was really in.

  What actually happened was beyond her wildest expectations.

  ###

  It was almost lights out and the cadets were lounging in the Princess’ dorm room. From 2100 to 2300 the senior cadets were not allowed in the freshman dorms. The cadet sergeant who was the barracks chief, a second year cadet, would stay in his room studying and generally out of the Raw Meat’s hair until lights out. It was the only time of the day when the cadets were not under the rigorous discipline of the upper classmen. The princess, her aunt and cousins had made it a habit over the last few weeks to meet in one of their rooms to go over the day and to sometimes study together.

  “Do you remember when Sylvia’s dad left a few years ago,” Lamile asked, “He just left for no reason at all.”

  “Yes,” The princess said. Sylvia was a class mate of theirs. Her father had run away with another woman leaving Sylvia, her mother and brothers and her sisters to fend for themselves. “Why?”

  “Remember how mad she was?” Lamile asked.

  “Yes,” T’harla replied, “I still don’t think she has cooled out!”

  “Yeah,” Lamile continued, “In this last section we read that our grandmother was concerned about seeing her father after five years, but that’s all. I would imagine she would be feeling like Sylvia.”

  “Well this biography mostly tells about how grandma became queen, so they kept a lot of the negative stuff out of it.” Princess Lisa replied, “I have been reading her diaries, and she was indeed a little angry about not being with him. Being left behind when he left Earth and the empire really d
id a number on her for a couple of years. But later she seemed better able to deal with it. One entry as she got closer to Trena showed a little of her confusion over the situation.”

  “From what everyone said,” Lamile commented, “Grandma Jill was not that confused about anything.”

  “Here let me read you a little,” Princess Lisa responded taking out some of the pages she had copied earlier in the day.

  “Tomorrow, we will arrive at Trena Station,” the princess read, “I need to get a message to Dad when I get in to let him know I am on Trena. I am just not sure now how he will respond. He left without telling me why, or where he was going. I still wouldn’t know where he was if it hadn’t been for the announcement of the disaster. I don’t know how I really feel about Dad right now. I am still a little angry how he left me. Even though the letter he sent explained a little I still feel that I could be with him. I just want to see him and hope we can work things out though. Maybe after I hear more of his side of the story I’ll understand more. Over the last few years I have gotten over the worse of my anger over what he did. I just want to know more of the why?

  “I am a little concerned about his reaction when I show up on his door step.” The princess paused to take a sip of water, “Come to think of it I am not certain I know where he is living. Will he let me stay or will he tell me go back to Mars and grandmother.

  “Grand mom must be mad as hell at me.” The room giggled a bit, each knowing what would happen if they took off like their ancestor had, “I wonder what she’ll do when she catches up with me. I wonder what Dad will do when he sees me.

  “I am also concerned about this Lisa. Grand mom talked about her as if she was a saint, and walked on water. But grand mom hasn’t seen her in over 20 years. People change a lot. Some of my friends have a step mom or dad, and they either get along with them or don’t. There seems to be no rule as to how my friends reacted to having step parents. I wonder what this Lisa is really like.”