Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess by Ray Strong Page A

the leadership and the young men on her ship. She thought only of her mission to get a part to repair her power loader, without which she would fail her cargo-2 rating and not see the increased income for another year.
    Within that lifeless, gray world, a young blond girl bordered the tram accompanied by an older woman who gave her a pathetic smile. From somewhere, Meriel remembered the faces and returned the weak smile, but there was no emotional tug of recognition, and she looked away. It was her sister, Elizabeth, with Aunt Teddy.
    Elizabeth sat next to Meriel and took her hand. “I’ve been looking for you, Sis,” Elizabeth said.
    “Uh-huh,” Meriel said.
    “Where did you go, M?” Elizabeth asked. “I miss you.”
    Meriel shrugged. The briefest memory flickered that once in her life, this young girl meant more to her than life itself, but the thought slipped away, and she just shrugged.
    A tear rolled down Elizabeth’s cheek. “We’ve been at the same docks, and you never come by,” she said. “You don’t answer my texts any more. It’s like you don’t remember me at all.”
    Meriel shrugged again and turned to the window wondering when the blond person would leave.
    Reflected in the window, Mariel watched Elizabeth reach out to her. But just before touching the scar on Meriel’s neck, Elizabeth’s hand clenched into a fist and her frown changed to a scowl. She pulled her hand back, opened Meriel’s purse and rummaged through the contents until she found what she was looking for—the meds, Aristopine, the same drug that the doctors planned to give her and the other orphans from the Princess .
    Elizabeth held the tube of meds up. Teddy nodded and tapped her link a few times and looked up to check the tram stops. Four stops later, Teddy waved to Elizabeth who took Meriel’s arm.
    “Come with me,” Elizabeth said and stood.
    Meriel rose reluctantly. “I need to pick up a part for my cruiser.”
    “We’ll get that next, but first we need to stop here,” Elizabeth said and led Meriel from the tram and through the green-zone corridors.
    Meriel stopped and looked around. “Why are we going this way?” Meriel asked. “I need to fix my cruiser.”
    “Mom said you need my help. You want to do what Mom says, don’t you?” Elizabeth said and Meriel nodded. “Well, then we need to go this way. Come.”
    Before entering the rehabilitation clinic, Elizabeth dropped the tube of meds in the recycling chute at the entrance.
    Elizabeth and Aunt Teddy stayed with Meriel for a week until the meds had flushed from her system, and Meriel finally cried. The meds had helped her push the memories of the Princess to the depths of her psyche and dragged the memories of the kids down with them. Without the meds, it all came back in a rush, but it wasn’t so overwhelming this time, because her little sister had stayed with her through it all. It was there that she learned techniques to control her symptoms, including conscious blinking and contact with the other orphans to keep her grounded in reality.
    When Elizabeth told her of the meeting in the tram, when Meriel had just shrugged, it scared Meriel so much that she swore to her sister she’d never take the meds again, regardless of the nightmares.
    Her ship had noticed immediately because of her noncompliance and the return of her night terrors. They tried to get her back on the meds and threatened her with pulling her work card and certifications, but after her sister scared her, she knew it was wrong.
    Her shipmates didn’t help. “Meriel, just go with the flow,” they had told her. “Take the meds and get along. Lots of us do it.”
    At the time, she didn’t know what to tell them and just remained quiet. What was she, all of fifteen and a half? Now she knew what to say: Why take meds to adjust to a world that sucks? It’s seductive to take a vacation from reality for a bit, hoping that things will be different when you come back to real life, but life