Chapter One
Athena looked up at the medic, and she spoke from the heart. “Downgrade me.”
“With a bit of recovery time, we can get you whole and fetching a higher bond price at the auction.” The medic frowned.
“That will take weeks, and there is an agricultural purchase coming up. I can’t qualify for administrative as is, so I want to go in with the unskilled labour.” She ignored the throbbing in her face.
“You owe quite a bit for your education.”
“And I will owe more for the transport and room and board. But, I will be able to work right away instead of a lengthy and expensive recovery. I have worth as a low-level manager if you authorize the downgrade due to the K’liir toxin in my blood.”
The medic scowled. “You should not have gotten in the way of the claws.”
“Taya is far prettier than I am. I don’t mind the claw marks. They add character.”
“And without extreme treatment, they will not fully heal. You obviously know that, or you wouldn’t be using them as an excuse. It is a shame. You could do so much good as an administrator. The work would be easier, and you could attract an excellent mate.”
“I am not afraid of hard work. I like it. I want to be on a new world and forget the loss and destruction. I want to not think if that makes any sense. The placement officers were so excited by my scores that they didn’t want to listen.”
The medic scowled. “At least try to look pale and confused when they come in to check my report.”
“Thank you. You are saving my sanity.”
The medic patted her arm, and Athena Fox relaxed into the med bed. She had noted that a sound Taya made enraged the K’liir in their first few days of class. With the auction in a few days, it had been easy to put them in the alien’s path and let Taya’s laugh do its magic. She had been hoping for a body shot, but the raking of claws down her face from forehead to chin had come by surprise. The facial markings had a better effect, and with the venom in the claws, it was unlikely that she was going to recover from them without a lot of scarring. She didn’t lose her eye, and that was a blessing, but she now had racing stripes running down her face.
The fatigue in her system was something she would have to get used to. She was going to have low-grade blood poisoning for the rest of her life. It was worth it for the chance to buy herself out of bond several star systems away. A low-level manager was able to gain performance bonuses. It was a filing that the administrators didn’t qualify for. Since she was sure that she would be able to make any quota laid out, she was going to have three years of bond. Then, she would be able to save up for travel in the stars or buy herself a place in the colonies on any number of worlds. Earth was toast. The asteroid had taken out a chunk and destabilized the rest. In less than two decades, there wouldn’t be any chance at sustaining life.
Like many humans, her family was gone. They weren’t with her when the earthquakes hit, and there was no sign of them in the aftermath. She had clawed through the rubble with both hands, and there was nothing left. If they got out, she wasn’t going to find them, so she had accepted their deaths and moved on.
Now, after fighting to survive, she was on the education station, lying in a med bed and trying to think invalid thoughts. If this worked, she would be on her way to freedom on a world with fresh drinking water and sunlight in a matter of months.
She was crossing her fingers that she looked as crappy as she felt.
Three weeks after her downgrade, she woke in another medical facility, and they were busy trying to stabilize her. The sombre staff moved around her with injectors, probes, and she was on a drip. She looked at them, wiggled her fingers and toes to make sure that everything was fine, and asked, “So, what is the problem?”
Four medical professionals turned and stared at her. One of them said, “You should not be awake. You have an infection that we are trying to flush, but it seems bonded to you.”
“Oh. That. It should be in my file. K’liir scratch. I just have to work on keeping myself healthy.”
One of the medics scowled. “They bought you while damaged?”
“My competency scores make up for the defect.”
They flicked to her work qualifications and glanced back at her in understanding.
“So, can I get to work? Time to start earning back my bond.”
She moved to sit up, and she was weak but not immobile.
One of them sighed and said, “You will need to come in once a month for monitoring. That is going to cost a week’s wages per visit.”
She winced. “Because it is a pre-existing condition.”
“Correct.”
“Well, then, as this is costing me money, compare me to my pre-transport baseline and authorize me for work.”
They blinked, and one smiled. “This visit is covered for assignment to the forager and colony teams on Hyrnan. We are going to do a full entry exam at the overseer’s expense. We are here to get you into operational action. Our goal is to do what we can.”
Athena nodded and thought about Hyrnan—newly restructured world, open spaces, open sky. Earthish but still in the tolerance phase. The fruits, nuts, grains, water, and minerals were all being tested for possibilities. She smiled. “Do what you have to do, and then, I get to work.”
The medical team got to work.
Two days after her waking in medical, she was wearing coveralls and standing in a group of mixed species for a morning briefing. They were assigned bunkhouses, dining halls, and would show up in the warehouse every dawn and dusk for briefings.
Athena looked around, and there were only a handful of human faces. Everyone else was a mix of species. She chuckled to herself. Here, she was the alien.
They were called up and assigned into foraging teams. Their goal was to take out a skimmer and catalogue and acquire as many samples as they could without direct risk or harm to themselves—any injuries caused while foraging were covered by the overseer’s medical team.
She went to meet her team, and after they all settled on nicknames that they could all pronounce, they headed into their skimmer to the coordinates on their assignment.
Athena was going to be the navigator; Tohba had piloting skills. The others were acting as spotters for any of the items on the list. They were after grains, fruits, nuts, and seeds.
Tohba glanced at her. “Theena, this is your first world?”
She nodded, checked the location markers, and then smiled. “It is.”
“You seem very calm.”
“The past is gone. There is only the future. This is my future, so it is up to me to explore it.”
He chuckled. “Sound reasoning.”
His soft grey skin had a nap to it, and his huge amber eyes were wide and staring at the world as it flew past. He was like a huge, muscley koala to her gaze, down to the fluffy tufts on the tips of his ears.
“What are you seeing when you look at me?” He glanced at her.
She answered honestly. “A small tree climber with your colouration, but your eyes are much bigger.”