Please?
“See?” she added, pressing the latch button and waiting for the door to swing down out of the way. “I
do
remember common courtesies. It’s just that usually they have a rank attached to them. The only problem is, you don’t have any rank.”
Thorne snorted. “Maybe you should
give
me a rank, given how I’m supposed to be marshalling all these impending resources for your little colonial survival scenario.”
“Dibs on General!” Fyfer called out, ducking into the backseat before either of them could protest.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thorne snorted, climbing in across from Ia. “One look at your scrawny frame, and they’ll flock to
me
for war field leadership.”
“Ha! They’d be flocking to you to
hide
behind,” Fyfer shot back.
“Oh, please,” Ia groused. “
I’m
the one in the military, remember?
I
get to be the general in this family. Just…not yet. Besides, you’ll need a Security Chief long before you’ll need a General of the Armed Forces, and that spot is already reserved for someone else. Now, take us back home, Thorne. Please,” she remembered to add.
He looked at her, not yet activating the generator. “Didn’t you want to go get a larger chunk of crysium to experiment with, first?”
She didn’t quite slap her forehead, but mostly because she was fumbling with releasing the restraints instead of buckling them in place. “Right! Right…I’ll be right back.”
“And shape it so it doesn’t
look
like a chunk of crysium?” he called out after her, his voice following her into the crystal patch. “Since it’s supposed to be a big
secret
, and all!”
Ia flicked her hand over her shoulder, silently acknowledging and dismissing the rather obvious advice.
Unlike Thorne, who constantly wore his wrist unit, but disliked using it out of some silly fear of accidentally aiming the video pickups into his nostrils, Rabbit didn’t like wearing hers very often. Rabbit believed that Church-planted members of the government were attempting to infiltrate the emergency servicessystems, which used a wrist unit’s transponder to track the movements of each citizen. It was just one more step, she felt, that the Church of the One True God was taking on a path toward a coup of the colonyworld’s government, and a totalitarian level of control over its colonists.
Ia had never disabused her friend of that seemingly wild idea. She knew better. So she knew that Rabbit didn’t always wear her wrist unit. Thorne might not
like
using his to talk with people, but he did wear it every day. Then again, he had classes to attend, public transport to catch, and myriad responsibilities requiring identification and a link to his bank account. Rabbit was independently wealthy, thanks to a little help from Ia and a sizeable winning lottery ticket, and preferred walking wherever possible. Then again, her lighter mass made it easier for her to walk everywhere.
So Ia knew better than to call Rabbit on her wrist unit. Instead, Ia dipped into the timestreams once she was done creating a small pile of marble-sized beads back home. Ia carefully verified that her friend hadn’t changed her mind and gone spelunking in the many ancient lava caves and tunnels under the plateau on which the capital city, Our Blessed Mother, had been built, and headed into the heart of the city.
Rabbit’s gang wasn’t hanging out at the old haunts anymore. Ia didn’t bother to probe the past as to why. It could have been an economic downturn; it could have been pressure from the Church which closed the previous business, or whatever reason, but it didn’t really matter. Rabbit and company had moved their hang-out location from a restaurant serving spicy V’Dan-style cuisine to a Terran Italian restaurant named “Frrrangelico’s”…with a triple
R
for a reason.
Frrrangelico, the owner, was a Solarican: a furred, bipedal, tail-bearing, claw-fingered, felinoid sentient race. It was rumored they had colonies
“See?” she added, pressing the latch button and waiting for the door to swing down out of the way. “I
do
remember common courtesies. It’s just that usually they have a rank attached to them. The only problem is, you don’t have any rank.”
Thorne snorted. “Maybe you should
give
me a rank, given how I’m supposed to be marshalling all these impending resources for your little colonial survival scenario.”
“Dibs on General!” Fyfer called out, ducking into the backseat before either of them could protest.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thorne snorted, climbing in across from Ia. “One look at your scrawny frame, and they’ll flock to
me
for war field leadership.”
“Ha! They’d be flocking to you to
hide
behind,” Fyfer shot back.
“Oh, please,” Ia groused. “
I’m
the one in the military, remember?
I
get to be the general in this family. Just…not yet. Besides, you’ll need a Security Chief long before you’ll need a General of the Armed Forces, and that spot is already reserved for someone else. Now, take us back home, Thorne. Please,” she remembered to add.
He looked at her, not yet activating the generator. “Didn’t you want to go get a larger chunk of crysium to experiment with, first?”
She didn’t quite slap her forehead, but mostly because she was fumbling with releasing the restraints instead of buckling them in place. “Right! Right…I’ll be right back.”
“And shape it so it doesn’t
look
like a chunk of crysium?” he called out after her, his voice following her into the crystal patch. “Since it’s supposed to be a big
secret
, and all!”
Ia flicked her hand over her shoulder, silently acknowledging and dismissing the rather obvious advice.
Unlike Thorne, who constantly wore his wrist unit, but disliked using it out of some silly fear of accidentally aiming the video pickups into his nostrils, Rabbit didn’t like wearing hers very often. Rabbit believed that Church-planted members of the government were attempting to infiltrate the emergency servicessystems, which used a wrist unit’s transponder to track the movements of each citizen. It was just one more step, she felt, that the Church of the One True God was taking on a path toward a coup of the colonyworld’s government, and a totalitarian level of control over its colonists.
Ia had never disabused her friend of that seemingly wild idea. She knew better. So she knew that Rabbit didn’t always wear her wrist unit. Thorne might not
like
using his to talk with people, but he did wear it every day. Then again, he had classes to attend, public transport to catch, and myriad responsibilities requiring identification and a link to his bank account. Rabbit was independently wealthy, thanks to a little help from Ia and a sizeable winning lottery ticket, and preferred walking wherever possible. Then again, her lighter mass made it easier for her to walk everywhere.
So Ia knew better than to call Rabbit on her wrist unit. Instead, Ia dipped into the timestreams once she was done creating a small pile of marble-sized beads back home. Ia carefully verified that her friend hadn’t changed her mind and gone spelunking in the many ancient lava caves and tunnels under the plateau on which the capital city, Our Blessed Mother, had been built, and headed into the heart of the city.
Rabbit’s gang wasn’t hanging out at the old haunts anymore. Ia didn’t bother to probe the past as to why. It could have been an economic downturn; it could have been pressure from the Church which closed the previous business, or whatever reason, but it didn’t really matter. Rabbit and company had moved their hang-out location from a restaurant serving spicy V’Dan-style cuisine to a Terran Italian restaurant named “Frrrangelico’s”…with a triple
R
for a reason.
Frrrangelico, the owner, was a Solarican: a furred, bipedal, tail-bearing, claw-fingered, felinoid sentient race. It was rumored they had colonies
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