Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dragon sighed.

He looked around his family, assembled at the dinner table, watching him, then sighed again.

In retrospect, he should’ve expected this. For all the trouble Drago had gotten himself into, at least half of it was led by Jaxon – his daughters were fully capable of turning his hair grey by themselves. There was the ‘pet Zeus sewer rat’ incident (‘to remind us of home’), the ‘trying to break into Danae Off-World’ incident (‘Percie left something back at the clan hall, we were just fetching it’), and now this.

‘History?’

Everyone around the table flinched, seeming to expect a torrent of outrage. Completely unwarranted! Well, mostly unwarranted. Well…

‘Yes, Father’ Dracia replied, sticking her chin up defiantly. ‘You know I didn’t enjoy Military school, I want to see what civilian life is like. I’ve already prepared my application and I’ll be sending it in tomorrow.’

He sighed again. While Persephone took after her mother, Dracia was almost as stubborn as her namesake, albeit quieter. The warning looks Madrigal and Drago were shooting him made it clear they would be backing her up, Military Honour Child or not. Clan council would too, she would hardly be the first honour child to not go Military. At least it would keep her safe. Deciding to give in gracefully (or as gracefully as possible), despite the feelings that a Tell child going to Earth arose in him, he smiled (grimaced) at her.

‘If you’d like another set of eyes to look over your application before you send it off to University Zeus, I’d be more than happy to help’

Guilty looks were exchanged. Dragon pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a headache.

‘University Nagual?’

‘Chaos no!’

Dragon sighed with relief, he had no wish for his family to get any closer with his in-laws, not after the incident with Drago when he was younger. While he tried to remain cordial with them, he could never forgive, or forget their treatment of his eldest child. Speaking of him, Drago was making encouraging gestures towards his little sister, encouraging her to spit it out. As usual, Dragon had conflicting feelings seeing his son interact with his little sisters. He was glad they were close, but could never forget that they were near the same age as the lost Jarra. If not for Jaxon’s selfishness, would Dracia and Persephone be as close with their cousin as Drago was with Jaxon?

Pulling his mind back to the situation at hand, Dragon turned back to Dracia to ask where she thought she’d be going, half dreading the answer.

‘University Asgard’

Chapter Text

It was the day after Year End, and all the clan who were able had gathered to wish Dracia luck as she left to go off to her university course. Ever since it had come out that she, a Tell Honour Child, wasn’t going military she had been bombarded from all sides with advice, admonitions, questions, and good wishes. Going off to another sector, surrounded by civilians, the first glimmer of doubt crept into her mind. Too late now though! Gathering her nerves, she said a final goodbye, embraced a tearful Persephone, and stepped through the portal into her future.

Or at least Zeus Off-World. Taken aback by the number people and luggage rushing about, she found a quiet corner to orient herself, and work out where she was going. 20 minutes until the block portal opened to Beta Sector Interchange 3, then an hour and a half before the block portal to Alpha Interchange 6. Cursing herself for leaving it too late to go directly to Earth, Dracia had another 4 hour wait to go via Danae before finally arriving on Earth.

The thought sent shivers down her spine – it was one of the few planets which she’d always been aware of, but never visited. Father always got angry, Drago always got sad, and Mother would change the topic. The most information she’d been able to get was from Drago, who’d had a posting there when she was younger and had told them all about the bizarre weather there, and how they were fixing the solar arrays. It had gone a bit over her head as she was only about 10, but she remembered the vids Drago had sent of a snow fight.

Starting to head towards the queue forming around Cross-Sector Gate 7, Dracia found herself wondering if she’d get the chance to see snow, or a solar storm, or any of the other things which made Earth such a unique world. Surely, surrounded by all the history and ruined cities she’d have a better chance than most – although she wasn’t sure if she’d take Cousin Jaxon’s advice to visit Rome Alive. Tapping through her lookup, she was torn between its depictions of Greek and Roman life, although it didn’t look very realistic, and there seemed to be an awful lot of people… Shuddering, Dracia cleared the viewing and concentrated on not noticing the crowds around her, humming a song under her breath.

There was a certain thrill in being the first of her clan to do anything – nearly everything she did, from getting high marks to getting in trouble, had already been done. And usually done much better than her by someone. But no-one in recent history (ha) had studied history, and no-one had studied at a Gamman university. To be honest, that was one of the parts she was most worried about – despite having travelled to plenty of Gamman, Deltan and even Epsilon worlds, she knew there was always a bit of a culture clash and was aware of the preconceptions many people had about Betans.

Dracia knew she was very well-travelled for an 18 year old, even by Military standards, but she still couldn’t help the shiver which ran down her spine as she approached the inter-sector portal an hour later. Even interstellar portals made her feel a bit odd, but she always came out of longer jumps with a feeling she’d seen something that should never be seen. She’d never told her parents, but Drago and Percie had both admitted they found long jumps strange too – Drago heard music, and Persie would get strange tastes in her mouth – Demeter glowberry juice, or Mirandan almonds, or very strong Fiannan coffee.

Settling down in a rest area, Dracia gave into her nerves and opened her lookup, scrolling to a section on Earth history. Having gone through school as the daughter of the Iron Man of Sobek, and the sister/cousin of the Heroes of Hera, everyone was always disappointed to find a fairly average young girl, who much preferred having her nose in a book than practicing on the rifle range. Her instructors were comparing her to her clan, and her peers always seemed to find her lacking. Going to the Military Academy would have been far worse – hopefully on Earth she could find some anonymity.

A sudden rush of guilt overtook her – she made it sound like she was ashamed of her family and wanted to hide them. Rather, she wanted to hide from them – learn what it meant to just be Dracia, rather than Dracia Tell Dramis (or Dracia Tell Madrigal as she'd been until a few months ago), daughter of the famous composer and the infamous General. Especially after the revelations from her coming-of age ceremony a few months ago… Dracia cringed at the memory, and her reaction, before pushing it out of her mind.

She’d taken the opportunity to scan through the pre-history section of the archives, although these were very bare given both the Earth data net crash, and that the Tell clan was one of the later clans to be founded. Their sister clan, the Blaze clan had more though, including some fascinating texts written by their founder before she left Earth for Beta sector.

Deep in her reading, the time seemed to fly by and Dracia startled when an alarm she’d set on her lookup let her know that she needed to get into the queue to Danae, and from there she’d be going to Earth! It was lucky that she’d only have a short wait on Danae, because she was starting to get quite buzzed with excitement! Queuing up for what looked like yet another fully-booked slot, Dracia noticed a handful of people who’d come through in the same block portal from Romulus, and idly wondered if any of them were history students. There were about a dozen she judged were probably coming to start their courses too, and since they would either be medical or history students then at least five or six would probably be history too – only Foundation courses started this early, the main courses all started a few days later.

Stepping through the interstellar portal, and heading for Departure Zone C, Dracia wanted to facepalm – almost all the ‘students’ had peeled off heading for local portals; obviously far more would be going to University Danae than University Earth! Only two boys joined her in the queue for Interstellar Portal 6, to Earth Europe – one with shoulder length blond hair, and the other with very curly black hair. The ‘social’ part of her mind (which sounded like Percie) suggested she could try striking up conversation, to practice her ‘interpersonal communication’ skills, but the thought was promptly quashed by the more rational side of her brain.

Fortunately it was a short wait, and after navigating to the oddity of Intercontinental Transits (thank you, Drago, for warning her!), Dracia found herself in front of the local portals, with a crowd behind her including both boys. Taking courage from the fact that she clearly wasn’t the only lost and confused student around, Dracia dialled the location code included in her course information, and jumped when the portal started warning her.

‘Warning, your location is a restricted access area. If your genetic code is not listed as authorised for access, then your portal will not establish but your personal account will still be charged for this journey.’

Frantically praying to any Deity that may exist, Dracia confirmed the location, and stepped through the portal into the unknown.

Chapter Text

Dracia stumbled slightly as she stepped through the portal, making sure she still had all her hover bags clustered around her. A tall, stressed looking man of around thirty smiled in welcome.

‘Welcome to University Asgard Pre-History Foundation course at the New York Dig site. I’m Lecturer Playdon, you are…?’

‘Dracia Tell Dramis, sir’ she replied, a little nervously. Lecturer Playdon looked slightly taken aback, before smiling again as he checked her off the list.

‘No need for the ‘sir’ here, Dracia. You’ve got room 4, the student greet will be in an hour and a half in the dining hall.’

As she headed down the corridor in search of her room, Dracia noticed the portal had flared into life again, admitting the fair-haired boy from before. Musing on the improbability that they’d have ended up on the same course, let alone the same class, she heard Lecturer Playdon start the same speech he’d given her. Chaos, she’d completely forgotten civilian kids didn’t call their teachers sir – although at least she’d remembered not to salute. Embarrassed, Dracia reassured herself that at least he didn’t seem to be offended or hold it against her – although she didn’t want to make the same mistake in front of any of the other students.

Eventually finding her room (between rooms 1 and 6, how the chaos did the numbering system work?), she set about unpacking and exploring her new quarters. Not particularly large, although she’d definitely seen smaller, she was a bit nervous about the lack of a bathroom though – hopefully there wouldn’t be too many practical jokesters who targeted the communal bathrooms and showers. The time Beren and Gerrack had booby trapped the clan showers with Zeus eel gel had been deeply unpleasant, and she was glad she hadn’t been the victim of the prank which had set the toilets very very far out of bounds to potential prankers by order of the clan council.

Shivering at the thought, and checking her lookup, Dracia discovered she still had just under half an hour before she had to be at the dining hall. Deciding to go for an explore, she found the dome wasn’t as big as she’d feared – there seemed to be 32 bedrooms, several sets of bathrooms and showers, the portal room, several locked store cupboards, and a large open area in the centre of the dome with chairs and tables in the centre, and food and drink dispensers along one of the curved walls.

Deciding this must be the dining hall, Dracia took a seat at one of the empty tables to one side of the middle. A few students were already scattered around other tables, but they mostly seemed to know each other and be well into making friends. Better to take an empty table than approach anyone.

As more students streamed in, Dracia looked curiously around at the people she’d be living and working with for the next year. Despite the times she travelled with her mother, usually she was only surrounded by military people, and it was interesting to see what differences civilians had. To her slight disappointment, and larger relief, there didn’t seem to be a huge difference. Apart from maybe their posture, but that could be because they didn’t have Dragon Tell Dramis yelling down their ears for slumping. Or any of the other assorted cousins who tried to keep unruly youngsters in check at the clan hall. She was just immensely grateful she no longer had to deal with Cousin Cordelia, especially after…

Dracia was abruptly pulled out of her thoughts by Lecturer Playdon clearing his throat, and repeating his greeting from earlier. She listened attentively as he explained they’d be based at New York for the next two months, and the set up of the dome. When he asked if there were any questions and a girl stood up to ask about the bathroom and windows, Dracia felt herself shrinking down inside. This girl looked like a walking caricature of Beta sector, and Dracia could hear the snide whispers about Betan immorality that had followed her whenever she went to another sector.

Lost in memories, Dracia snapped out when she realised the girl who was now running the introductions was Dalmora Rostha. Dalmora Rostha! Daughter of Ventrak Rostha, who made the History of Humanity series! Looking up at the beautiful girl, Dracia suddenly felt more than a little out of her depth, and almost missed her asking if anyone else was Alphan. She couldn’t miss the call for Betans however, as the girl from earlier stood up. Chaos, it was like she was doing her very best impression of the worst gutter vids! She introduced herself as Lolia, and another boy stopped oogling the girls long enough to introduce himself as Lolmack.

Despite not wanting to be tarred with the same brush, Dracia forced herself to her feet before Dalmora could move onto Gamma sector. Intimidated by the surprised looks of the entire class, she could barely manage to stutter out ‘I’m Dracia, I’m from Beta too’ before collapsing back into her chair and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone around her, cursing herself for her ineloquence and nerves.

‘If you aren’t from Kappa, we seem to have missed you out somehow.’

Dracia looked up at the words, to see Dalmora looking apologetically at one of the other students. The subject of her gaze stood up.

‘I’m Jarra, my family is Military’

Dracia was slightly stunned – what were the chances of two Military kids in the same Pre-History class, let alone the other sharing a name with her dead younger cousin. She didn’t miss the comment about throwing people over her shoulder though, and wondered if that’s why Jarra had gone history – instructors can be pretty strict about not using hand-to-hand outside of class.

A fleeting thought came over her, wondering if her dead cousin Jarra would be similar to this girl who shared her name. She was never spoken of much, the older members of the clan finding it too painful – it was so rare for a baby to die. When they were young, Dracia and Persephone used to imagine what it’d be like having a cousin between them in age, and for a while they had had an imaginary friend called Jarra although they’d been careful never to speak of it aloud.

Their version of Jarra had always been up to help cause mischief around the clan hall – although was terrible as a lookout – and was never scared of anyone, even the clan leader. Eventually, the disadvantages of not being corporeal outweighed the benefit of an imaginary cousin, and the sisters had instead gotten closer to the many living cousins with whom they shared their home. Jarra could never be forgotten by the pair though – she would’ve been in Persephone’s class, and Dracia was sure Jarra wouldn’t have been any less trouble to look out for.

After finishing introductions, Dalmora started splitting everyone into groups, and Dracia was glad to not be shoehorned into a group with the other Betans – instead Dalmora seemed to split the non-Gamman students into two groups, and the Gammans into four. Looking around her group, she saw Dalmora, Military-Jarra, and the fair-haired boy from the portal who she’d discovered was called Fian. Another Deltan (Drew? Hue?) and a girl from Epsilon (not Emily, but something similar…) made up their group. Naturally, Dalmora turned to back Jarra first.

‘Jarra, it’s just totally zan being on a course with someone like you. Military! I chose to come on a Gamman university course because I wanted to meet people from different sectors, but this is even better than I’d hoped for!’

As they chatted about residential schools, Dracia felt the familiar relief return that she could live at her clan hall to attend the Military school on Zeus. The residences weren’t very popular on Zeus because most of the kids had clan halls – it was mostly for any military personal who came from another sector and brought their family. Still, she couldn’t imagine not growing up in the familiar clan halls, surrounded by her clan kindred and safe in her clan’s protection.

Dalmora was speaking to Fian by now, who had already decided he wanted to specialise in pre-history. He seemed to have recognised Dracia from their portal journey too, judging from the smile and nod he’d sent in her direction earlier. He seemed like a nice lad, although his eyes kept flicking over towards Jarra.

All too soon, Dalmora turned her attention onto the next person.

‘So, Dracia, do you have any idea what your favourite part of history is? I hope you’re not suffering too much with the different culture outside of Beta sector?’

Taking a deep breath, forcing herself not to shrink away from all the eyes, Dracia replied.

‘At the moment I’m particularly interested in the end of the Exodus century, and the Earth data net crash. I keep finding different areas to get really interested in, so I’m sure it’ll change a dozen times throughout the course. I’m not finding the culture shock too bad, I’ve done a fair bit of travelling to different sectors with my family when they’ve been…’

Gearing up to admit she was from a military family too, Dracia was interrupted by the appearance of the other two Betans who immediately commanded the attention of the group. As her voice faded out, the pair of Betans set about perusing the members of the opposite sex as if they were meat at the market. Dracia set a hard look on her face. She was of the Tell clan, of the gentes maiores, and would not be intimidated by a gutter clan. The boy quickly broke eye contract, and found himself another victim.

‘Jarra…’

‘I don’t remember your name,’

‘Lolmack,’

Dalmora quickly intervened, possibly remembering Jarra’s earlier ‘throw him across the room’ comment.

‘We have a Lolia and a Lolmack from Beta, very similar names’

‘It’s the clan cluster prefix – Lolia is my half cousin by my father’s first triad marriage.’ Lolmack explained.

That seemed to explain everything to Dracia too – not even part of an actual clan, members of a clan cluster that probably made sex vids. Why oh why did they have to be in the same class as her! She cursed herself for wishing she wouldn’t be the only Betan in the class – at least if it were just her then she might be able to redeem the sector in the eyes of the other students, but that seemed entirely unlikely given their behaviour. Her opinion was not improved by Lolia’s casusal profanity, and the way she argued with Lecturer Playdon.

‘I must remind the students from Beta sector that this is a University Asgard course, and monitored under the Gamma sector moral code. You agreed to abide by that code when you accepted a place on this course.’

Lecturer Playdon looked hard at each of the three of us from Beta, and Dracia felt herself wilting under his gaze and judgement. Lolia and Lolmack just laughed, and continued to tease him.

Eventually Playdon put a stop to their antics and they moved on, with Dalmora turning her attention to the quiet girl from Epsilon (Amalie!). The conversation didn’t flow nearly as freely as before, and no one was disappointed when Lecturer Playdon called an end to it and declared it time for lunch.

‘Jarra, I’m sure you won’t mind me calling on you to help with your military skills from time to time. Perhaps you can show the class how to use the food dispensers?’

Dracia furrowed her brow, wondering why Lecturer Playdon would only pick on Jarra when she had a military background too – not that she was complaining, and she was glad to see Jarra was struggling with the move from military school, judging from the aborted salute. Lecturer Playdon didn’t correct her about the ‘sir’ though, and he seemed to have already taken a bit a dislike to her.

Having hoped to start a conversation with Jarra about the military, Dracia was a bit disappointed to find that her table had already filled up. Instead, she chose to go and sit with the other girls from her group, Dalmora and Amalie, and the group of Gammans who had joined them. Hopefully she could make friends with them – Amalie seemed quite quiet too, and Dalmora was just amazing. Even if she did cause butterflies in Dracia’s stomach.

Chapter Text

By the following morning, Dracia was torn between whether Lecturer Playdon really hated Jarra, he thought Dracia was hiding her military background for some reason, or if Dracia had completely misunderstood his comment when she arrived, and he had no idea she was from a military family.

Not only had he called on Jarra to explain the food dispensers, he also had her explain Planet First and demonstrate impact suits! Already the old inadequacies were starting to creep back in – Dracia knew she couldn’t have explained Planet First so eloquently, and definitely hadn’t had a hope of casually beating the military standard time for suiting up like Jarra did.

Dracia did feel she’d managed not to disgrace herself, in her fairly standard four-and-a-half minute suit up time, and headed out to help answer the cries coming from the other rooms as 28 students tried to put on an impact suit for the first time.

As she exited her room, Jarra was passing and paused in surprise. Dracia shrugged self-consciously, but before she could explain that she was also from a military background, the girls were called away by twin shrieks of despair from further down the hall.

After two very trying, albeit slightly comedic, hours, and some jealous looks from those who had thought she was also a first-timer, Dracia stood with the rest of her class, ready to step out into the ruins of New York. The first thing to hit Dracia was the frigid wind, which immediately lit up her blood and gave her a boost of energy. Looking around hopefully, she was disappointed not to see any snow, although there was ice clinging to several nearby trees.

As the students cautiously took their first steps outside, Dracia turned to look back at the dome. It seemed much bigger from the outside, a large grey structure curving away from above her head. As the class slowly made their way up the hill, she was deeply grateful for the practice they’d had to do at the Military school on Zeus, and sent a silent apology to everyone who’d suffered listening to her complaints at the time. In her defence, suiting up to explore Earth’s lost history was much more exciting than suiting up to run drills!

‘Dracia, wait up!’

Turning, Dracia, saw a suit labelled ‘Dalmora’ come staggering towards her, with ‘Amalie’ and ‘Caytrin’ following behind

‘How are you able to walk so easily? Can you help us?’

Poor Dalmora sounded out of breath, and Dracia was quick to agree – after running laps in the nuking things, movement was definitely something she had sorted!

‘You need to try to move really slowly and smoothly, it’s the sudden jerks which makes the material trigger. It’s easy to finish of your movements slowly, unless you’re startled, but most people have trouble beginning their movements smoothly rather than rushing straight into it unless they’re being consciously slow’

Giving a demonstration of what she meant, Dracia noticed several other people nearby were watching her. After a minute of practicing, their small group was moving much more easily, and caught up with the rest of the group as just before they reached the top of the hill. As the class all crested the hill together, a number of people staggered, their suits locking up as they took in the view.

‘Dear God!’

Someone exclaimed, and Dracia joined in with the automatic cry of ‘Respect!’ that went round. As a member of a clan where nearly every adult was a serving member of the military, all the children had been taught early on that it wasn’t clever or funny to mock or draw the attention of any deities.

Gazing over the ruins. Dracia’s thoughts went back to the records she’d been reading shortly before she left Zeus, of how her ancestors had been forced first to live within the increasingly dangerous city, then flee it ahead of the devastating fire which Lecturer Playdon was now calmly describing. Although various members of both the Tell and Blaze clans had visited New York in the past, Earth Dig Site Federation forbade anyone who wasn’t working there from entering, and the area where her ancestors had lived was in the heart of New York Main dig site. A shiver of excitement went down Dracia’s spine as she realised that she was probably the very first descendant to walk in the footsteps of her illustrious ancestors since they had been forced to abandon New York themselves!

Caught up in nardle fantasies about finding missing clan treasures, or something belonging to those who’d gone on to found the Blaze clan, Dracia almost missed the conversation surrounding recent finds, and the magic technologies lost in the Exodus century, and subsequent data net crash of 2409. She was definitely pulled back to the present when Lecturer Playdon started explaining where they’d be working tomorrow, and sent them all back off to the dome.

Walking back with Amalie and Caytrin again, Dracia decided this was as good a time as any to start making friends. Most of their discussion centred around the glorious view they’d just seen, and the nightmare of moving in impact suits, but as she collapsed exhausted into bed that night, Dracia thought that maybe, she’d be ok in this class after all.

Chapter Text

The following morning, Dracia found herself wide awake at 5am. Cursing herself for forgetting her bio-rhythm meds which would have adjusted her body clock to Earth America time, Dracia decided to make the best of the situation by calling Persephone. Only a year older, it was a struggle to remember any times when the two had been separated for any meaningful length of time. Although she’d only been gone two days, Dracia was painfully aware that she wouldn’t have the chance to portal back home until the class moved dig site in two months, when they’d been promised a few days off to visit family.

After checking the time on Zeus and seeing Persephone would’ve been home from school for about an hour, Dracia decided that it would only be being a good older sister to interrupt Percie’s attempts at doing homework – chaos knew Drago had used the same reasoning on them both before.

The sight of her sister popping up on the lookup screen was enough to sooth the nerves Dracia hadn’t even realised were frazzled. Using her hand to throw the image up as a holo, she barely had time to register that the call was answered before the words started flowing from Persephone’s mouth.

‘Dracia! How’s it going? What’s it like on Earth? Have you been able to do much excavation yet? What are your classmates like? It’s already really boring here without you and the others who’ve started at the Academy. Did you hear about the initiation they got yesterday? Mikel said…’

Sitting back, Dracia let the flood of her sister’s babble flow over her, if she shut her eyes it was like being back in her room at home. Normally she would smack her sister over the head with a pillow, saying her name was so fitting because she resembled a Persephone jackdaw, renown for never stopping its squawking. This would descend into a pillow fight until the pair were exhausted, and would collapse back on Dracia’s bed for a proper conversation. Obviously pillow fights were out of the question, yet another thing that would have to change between them.

As Persephone paused to draw breath (a rare occurrence to Dracia’s mind), she took the opportunity to answer some of her sister’s questions.

‘I’ve not heard anything from Mikel or Kayren yet, I’m guessing they’re mostly sending messages to the clan hall. I’m surprised they’ve had time to send anything to be honest, I’m even more glad I didn’t go military if we had that in store for us! No initiations here, although most of the rest of the class might beg to differ – we had to put on impact suits for the first time yesterday and I’m sure you can remember how fun that is! Apart from our lecturer, only two of us had ever worn them, so at least I was mostly helping rather than needing help.’

‘Two? Who was the other one? Surely they weren’t at a military school? Had they done any excavations before?’

‘She might’ve done excavations before, it wouldn’t surprise me’ said Dracia gloomily. ‘Her family are military too, and so far she’s been utterly amaz at everything – got her impact suit on in under two minutes and everything!’

Seeing her sister’s glum expression, Persephone couldn’t help but sympathise. Secretly, she’d been hoping that her sister’s military background would be enough of an advantage to boost her confidence. It seemed to have done the reverse however, and rather than shining in comparison to all the clueless civilians, she was only comparing herself to this military wonder child.

Turning the conversation away from matters on Earth to the goings on at the clan hall on Zeus, Persephone would only later realise she hadn’t found out the name of the student who was making her big sister feel inferior, and against whom she had silently sworn vengeance.

It was only the noise of people moving around in the corridor that pulled Dracia out of the conversation, to realise it was already gone 7am and that they’d been chatting for over two hours. Hurriedly saying goodbye and ending the call, Dracia pulled on her skintight and some civvie clothes over the top to make it faster to change into her impact suit after breakfast. Making her way into the dining hall, Dracia headed over to Dalmora, Amalie and Catryn who were already discussing the day ahead after snagging a plate of toasted wafers and a glass of Frujit from the dispensers.

‘Dracia! How did you sleep last night?’ Dalmora exclaimed ‘Excited about today?’

‘Mostly nervous,’ Dracia admitted, and the other girls nodded in agreement. Settling down to eat breakfast, there was an undercurrent of nervous anticipation throughout the room, only heightening when Lecturer Playdon dismissed them to get changed and meet him by the exit.

Heading back outside, Dracia couldn’t help admire the landscape – it seemed to be a little warmer and meltier than yesterday, which was a relief as ice would certainly not make life any easier. As Lecturer Playdon led the group over towards the massive sled storage dome, he questioned the class about their experience in sled driving – Dracia was able to raise her hand along with Dalmora and Amalie when he asked who had driven the larger sleds.

Seeing that Jarra also had raised her hand, Dracia decided it would be safer to stick to the same experience of school training trips – the authorised experience she had had rather than the significantly larger amount of unauthorised experience she’d had back at the clan hall…

None of the three of them were allocated the larger transporters to drive, but Amalie was picked to drive a sensor sled. Wishing her luck, Dracia headed over towards the transporters with Dalmora and Catryn, along with Glen and Joth who had joined them at breakfast.

As the sleds slowly wound their way through the dig site, Dracia only listened with half an ear to Playdon explaining the comms system as she was entranced with the wrecks and ruins they were passing by. To think that hundreds of years ago, maybe even a thousand years ago, people had lived here, worked here, raised families here. Had their equivalent of schools, of clan halls, had watched children running through the streets chasing each other. The city and streets had been founded, built, grown, and collapsed, but now they had the chance to be re-discovered. Suddenly Dracia felt very small, in comparison to the history and lives surrounding her.

As the sleds drew to a halt, everyone looked around at the area they’d found themselves. Compared to some of the places they’d passed through, it was rather unremarkable, mostly levelled rubble. Everyone’s attention was drawn back to the sleds as Lecturer Playdon started talking.

‘Now, on a dig site there are five roles. The team leader is in overall charge, and that’s obviously me. The others are tag leader, tag support, sensor, and lift. Tag leader is the dangerous job, because they’re the only person who enters the excavation area, directing operations on the ground, tagging rubble, and guiding the people on the lifts.

‘Next we have tag support and as the name suggests, their job is to support the tag leader and keep them safe. Your impact suits have a tag point at the centre back, between your shoulder blades. If you’re tag leader, your tag support will always have a beam locked onto that point. If the tag leader is going to be hit by a rock, fall into a hole, or be eaten by a bear, the tag support uses that beam to pull them clear. Sometimes they have to react very fast, so instincts and reaction times are important.

‘Under normal circumstances, we only have one tag leader working an area at a time, and therefore only one tag support. In professional teams, and some main university courses, we only have one sensor operator too. Sensor operators monitor the site for hazards, and hopefully stasis boxes. It takes a long time to understand sensors though, and there’s always a lack of good sensor operators so most foundation courses have two people on sensors, and I’ll be watching them too.

‘Finally, the lift operators. They use the beams on the heavy lift sleds to shift the tagged rubble. Unlike most of our equipment, which is Military issue, the heavy lift sleds are standard construction site ones. Again, we’ll be having two of them per team, which is fairly standard across all levels of archaeology teams. Any questions?’

After a little more trouble, it got to assigning roles, and Dracia was unsurprised to see Jarra volunteer as tag leader. As Lecturer Playdon looked around for any more volunteers, Dracia instinctively drew back, already knowing this would be yet another area in which the other Military girl would far exceed her. Eager to take part however, Dracia did put herself forward for the other four roles, and was picked as one of the heavy lift operators along with a Gamman boy called Krath.

After hovering over to Joth on the tag support sled, Lecturer Playdon headed over to Krath’s heavy lift, beckoning Dracia over as well to demonstrate the controls to them both. After showing them how to target the tag with the beam, and lock it on, Lecturer Playdon spent a long time showing them how to adjust the strength of the beam. While Krath had had the advantage in the first part of the lesson from his father’s garbage disposal business, he wasn’t as good as Dracia at the fine control. He glumly admitted that he’d spent most of his time either flinging blocks around, or deliberately trying to do things badly to annoy his dad, which left him rather heavy handed.

As Lecturer Playdon headed over to the sensor sled to explain the workings to Dalmora and Petra, Dracia headed over to her sled. Adjusting the seat and control viewings as she’d been shown, she surveyed the work site. As Lecturer Playdon set up the sensor net, she tried to visualise how the dig would all work in practice. The lift sleds were set fairly high above the people standing on the ground to improve beam access, maybe 2 meters or so. As Jarra swooped out over the work area to start tagging, a shot of adrenaline went through Dracia – she was finally out here, working a dig site!

As Lecturer Playdon called for her beam first, Dracia carefully lined up the beam and engaged it to lock against the tag. As she tried to move it towards the dumping area Jarra had indicated, Dracia winced as it knocked into the other rubble. Sharply increasing the height, the rock safely made it over the mound and into the hole. After a brief moment of panic, Dracia found the command to release the tag and the rock gently settled into the cavity. Returning for her second rock, Dracia was able to avoid any problems by lifting it up more before trying to move it parallel to the ground. Unlike Krath, who was jerking his rocks about, Dracia seemed to move her rocks at a glacial pace and struggled to move in multiple directions at a time.

The cycle repeated twice more, with Jarra tagging rocks, and Dracia and Krath becoming more confident in their movements. They had just finished dumping their third set of rocks, when Jarra suddenly shot into the air then dropped like a stalled aircraft.

Ignoring Joth wailing about hover belts, Dracia craned her neck to see what had happened to Jarra. The impact suit containing her classmate lay motionless in the middle of the rubble, and Dracia was sure she wasn’t the only one who breathed a sigh of relief when Jarra spoke on the comms circuit. However, given that everyone else were novices with impact suits she was possibly the only one bar Jarra and Lecturer Playdon who winced at the automatic diagnostic check. That was certainly not routine, and meant she would’ve been seriously injured if not killed without it! Her estimation of Joth, who had seemed fairly inoffensive at breakfast, dropped dramatically.

There was silence for a while everyone waited for Jarra’s suit to finish its automatic check, then Lecturer Playdon moved people around. Only Jarra remained where she was – Dracia surrendered her heavy lift sled to Amalie, explaining the controls and passing on the tip that it was difficult to judge vertical distances while the rock was below you. Krath handed his sled over to Dalmora, and Geo and Mira were summoned to look at the sensors.

Dracia stopped mid-explanation of the pull-push control as her ears caught up with what was going on over the main comms – what sort of nardle would disconnect the lifeline beam to a tag leader in the middle of the dig site! Shuddering at the thought, Dracia thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t volunteered to be a tag leader – Jarra was welcome to the job!

Sitting back and watching as Amalie moved the tagged rocks, Dracia admired how easy she seemed to make it look. Unlike Dracia, Amalie always managed to get the rocks high enough to pass obstacles, her difficulty instead was when dropping them. While Dracia’s usually settled quite quickly, Amalie tended to set hers a little too far back which made them roll forwards as she released the beam.

After another half hour or so, Lecturer Playdon had Dalmora and Krath swap back again but left Amalie where she was. Instead, he called both Dalmora and Dracia to the sensor sled.

‘Right, Dalmora, I want to see how much you remembered. Can you explain the controls and hazard warnings to Dracia?’

Nervously, Dalmora agreed, and Dracia concentrated furiously on making sense of the complex moving patterns on the eight displays. The six about the edge were monitoring for the main dig site hazards – fire, electric, chemical, water, magnetic, radiation. The top centre display had lots of looped, moving coloured lines, corresponding to the detected outlines, and similarly coloured dots signalling the density clusters and variation matrices. The lower centre display had a similar appearance, but rather than corresponding to the type of material detected, the colours were assigned to different types of probabilities. The movement seemed almost hypnotizing to Dracia. The top one is used to monitor the dig site in real time, and the bottom one to predict how it will respond to the actions of the other members of the team.

Each of the girls was responsible for three of the hazard displays, and watching both of the main displays since they were the most complicated and gave the most information. While keeping watch in case of the appearance of fire, electric, or radiation hazards, Dracia focused most of her attention towards the dancing displays in the centre, watching the interactions of Jarra and the lift beams with the rubble and background noise on the site.

Without almost knowing what had triggered her, Dracia slammed her hand onto the panic button only moments behind Lecture Playdon and slightly ahead of Dalmora. As Jarra vanished from the displays, flying away on the end of her lifeline, the displays degenerated into a mire of activity as the sensors were overwhelmed by the explosion that rocked the sled.

Gasping for breath, Dracia and Dalmora exchanged looks, verging on panic and hysterical laughter. Lecturer Playdon gave them a minute, before turning back to the sensors.

‘Did either of you see what caused that?’ he asked.

Nervously, Dracia pointed to the electrical hazard monitor. ‘I saw a flare up here, or somewhere in this area.’

Smiling, Lecturer Playdon nodded to her before turning to Dalmora.

‘I just caught the movement on the electrical scanner out the corner of my eye’ she explained, shooting an apologetic look towards Dracia. ‘But when the centre scanners were overwhelmed, the fire monitor showed what looked like a shockwave in this area’, motioning to the near upper left part of the holo display.

Approvingly, Lecturer Playdon nodded to them both again. ‘Very good, both of you, for your first day on a sensor sled. I’ll show you now how to identify the problem area. As you build up experience, you’ll get a sense of the characteristics of different type of emergencies – that was characteristic of an old home power unit.

‘Now see, if I choose this option here on the main display, I can scroll back through the recordings to find the moment of the explosion. If I take it ten seconds back past that and set all the displays to run at a third of normal speed, I want you to watch the electrical hazard screen… can you see here, how this anomaly starts to become unstable and oscillate before growing exponentially? And over here, on the main display. I’ll run it again, the problem is you usually don’t get much warning of this type of thing on the lower screen, but if you watch the top screen for a similar shaped anomaly in the purple colours, you can identify where it is on the dig site.’

As they watched the replays in slow motion, Dracia noted the motion on the displays, rapid even at that speed, and was able to locate the source of the explosion. Lecturer Playdon looked very proud of the pair of them, and Dracia found herself grinning madly at having figured out the problem. Exchanging a look with Dalmora, who seemed to feel the same way, Dracia felt a renewed confidence in her abilities.

Lecturer Playdon gave the call to the rest of the team to return to work, and the three of them were glued to the displays as Jarra went in to shoot the home power unit. It didn’t seem to hold any residual charge however, and after another 15 minutes of relatively peaceful work, a call went up from Jarra.

‘I can see the side of it! We got a stasis box!’

Dracia and Dalmora joined in the cheering, and in short shift the stasis box was in the transport sled. Receiving the sensor spikes back and storing them in the transport sled, Dracia and Dalmora climbed up onto the transport sled themselves to join the rest of the team.

Grinning at Amalie, Krath, Jarra and Fian, the victorious team enjoyed the ride back to the dome, chattering about their experience.

Chapter Text

After lunch, the whole class was grazzed to find out that rather than having to wait weeks to discover the contents of their stasis box, Lecturer Playdon was Stasis Q and was planning to open the box that afternoon!

Dracia was dying to ask to watch, and was half relieved and half annoyed that Jarra jumped straight in to ask. Not one to ignore an opportunity though, she raced off to change back into her impact suit, once again only beaten by Jarra. As they waited for the rest of their class to emerge from the dome, Dracia took the chance to start a conversation with the other girl.

‘You were utterly amaz as a tag leader earlier Jarra, I don’t know how you managed to keep going back out, first after Joth and then the explosion.’

Jarra looked startled at first by the compliment, before breaking out in a grin.

‘Thanks, although I’m not certain I’d have gone back out if Playdon had left Joth on my lifeline – I’d probably have had to transfer courses!’ she laughed.
‘You were amaz on the sensors too, especially if you’ve really never been on them before. I can barely make heads or tails of them. What do you think will be in the stasis box? I can barely believe we got one on the first shot!’

Smiling back at the compliment, Dracia and Jarra tossed ideas back and forth, from the sensible (‘maybe a recording of the people who left it’) to the wildly inventive (‘The Mona Lisa!’, ‘Or the minutes from the 2310 Grand Conference!’, ‘Maybe a backup of the Earth Data Net before it crashed!’) and before long the rest of the volunteers emerged to see the two giggling helplessly.

Pulling themselves together, they followed Lecturer Playdon away from the dome, and obediently sat on the sled to watch carefully. Listening with half an ear as Jarra explained what was going on to Dalmora, Amalie, Krath and Fian, Dracia focused on Lecturer Playdon’s movements and stretched her neck to see the hazard tests being carried out. Once the stasis field was down to 10% and Lecturer Playdon declared it safe, they all trooped back inside so the rest of the class could share in the opening of it.

As Lecturer Playdon used the stasis box key to fully collapse the stasis field, which vanished to reveal a grey storage box, the class leaned forward eagerly. All that Dracia could see was a white layer at the top, which was revealed as an ancient wedding dress. Gasping at the beauty of it, she almost missed the old wooden time piece but was struck by how similar the ancient baby rattle from centuries ago was still so similar to those in the clan nursery.

As Lecturer Playdon revealed the data chip, Dracia and Jarra exchanged looks, before both breaking eye contact to avoid bursting out into giggles again at the memory of their earlier discussion. Waiting in anticipation as the vid wall slowly converted and loaded the contents and turned black, the class jumped as a holo of a man dressed in very old fashioned clothes appeared. The holo man smiled around at the class as if he had been waiting them, and in a sense he had been. Recording himself centuries ago in the hope someone would find his memorial box and watch it, his image had been sat, waiting, a spectator to history, to Exodus, to the chimera wars, until they uncovered it several hours ago.

‘I don’t know if anyone will ever bother to watch this. Maybe not, but if you do, I’m Davide and it’s the first of June in the year 2363’

Watching as the holo man, Davide, explained how he and his family were moving to Demeter, Dracia was struck by the difference in attitude between him and his wife Issette. He seemed keen to join his brother and move out into the universe, but Issette seemed to see it as the least terrible option. It was clear she would’ve far preferred to have stayed on Earth, and given the knowledge of how the Earth Data Net collapse less than half a century later would affect life on colony worlds Dracia couldn’t help agree.

That was the problem with the domino effect, Dracia mused. So many people leaving Earth because of bright new horizons, meant more people wanted to leave Earth, driving yet more people to leave. Although she was admittedly biased having grown up on stories of her ancestor Sean Donnelly, Dracia found she could see both sides of the argument rather more clearly than she had previously.

‘Jarra, Fian, Dracia, Dalmora, Amalie and Krath seemed to work effectively together today, so they’re our team 1.’ Lecturer Playdon announced, abruptly changing the subject. Forgetting her previous thoughts, Dracia was filled with jubilation, and was enthusiastically drawn into Jarra’s victory dance

‘Hoo eeee!’

The jubilant mood among team 1 continued for several days and as a result the group grew closer, often sitting together for meals and classes. They formed an effective team both on and off the dig site, soon finding that between them, their strengths covered most of the lecture topics.

Dracia and Jarra both had good knowledge of Exodus century, Fian was amazing at the political factors, Dalmora and Krath were amaz at remembering dates, and timelines. Amalie was the only one who didn’t have a strong point, she quietly confided to Dracia and Dalmora that her education on Miranda had mostly revolved around farming, however she soaked up new information like a sponge. None of them really enjoyed economics or the 17th century, but Dracia discovered a previously unknown talent for maths.

The second day after they’d found their first stasis box, the team were hoping they might uncover a second. The day before had been frustrating, as both ‘boxes’ they’d been chasing had turned out to just be underground cavities. There hadn’t been any more explosions thank chaos, but there’d been a minor landslide when a piece of tagged rubble turned out to have wires embedded in it, twisted around other lumps of concraz.

There were four of them in the sled when it happened, Dracia and Dalmora on the sensors, Lecturer Playdon supervising, and Jarra collecting the spikes to mark their work area, when there was an ominous rumbling. Looking out, Dracia saw several lumps falling from the nearest skyscraper which suddenly felt much closer and much taller than it had previously. As Dalmora moved the sled back to the clearway, Dracia could hear Lecturer Playdon talking on the broadcast channel.

‘This is Asgard Team 6, Sector 22, we’re seeing tower breakaways and nine o’clock. Either one or two sectors out.’

‘This is Dig Site Command. Thank you Asgard 6. Teams in Sectors 21 through 27, move to safe ground’

Ignoring Lolia’s inane questioning, Dracia was focused on the tower, desperately running through scenarios in her head. There were another two towers in a cluster around the tower that was dropping lumps, so…

Before she could finish the thought, one of the other two towers lost its fight with time and gravity, and collapsed with a screeching of metal being torn, driving a thick cloud of dust up around its new resting place.

‘This is Asgard 6. Tower down! Tower down!’ Lecturer Playdon yelled across broadcast channel.

‘This is Dig Site Command. Status check, teams respond please. Sector 21, Earth 19.’

‘Earth 19 secure’

‘Sector 22, Asgard 6’

‘Asgard 6 secure’

‘Sector 23, Cassandra 2’

No reply.

‘Sector 23, Cassandra 2, respond please.’

Nothing.

After moving through sectors 25 (‘Beowulf 4 secure’), 26 (‘Apollo 8 secure’) and 27 (‘Isis 1 secure’), Dig Site Command tried once again to contact Cassandra 2 but were still met with silence.

‘This is Dig Site Command. We have a team down in Sector 23. Sectors 21, 22 and 25 assist please. Sector 22 Asgard 6, you are first response.’

Confusion reigned briefly in the sleds, but only Lolia was fool enough to ask questions. Silenced by a brief but effective ‘Nuke it, Lolia!’ from Lecturer Playdon, the sleds moved out in a line with Lecturer Playdon leading from the sensor sled. It was a blow to hear that the experienced Earth 8 team wasn’t on site today, although Dracia was unsure exactly which sectors the tower had affected. Maybe it was good luck because it meant only one team was in trouble rather than two?

Dracia joined the emergency channel to listen to the co-ordination efforts. Maybe she’d get a bit of a better idea of the current situation and the standard responses, because her mind was currently overwhelmed with information from disaster exercises she’d done at military school.

‘This is Dig Site Command. Team down is Cassandra 2, highly experienced team of 10. Four sleds. Aiming to work near the towers today. Sled data indicates that they hadn’t reached its footprint yet, but were within the fallout zone. Last transmission was from location 22-482-9866-d, five minutes before breakaway, reporting that they had set up sensor spikes and were commencing work. We are currently trying to connect to their suit telemetry.’

‘This is Asgard 6 team leader. Our arrival estimate is 12 minutes. Novice team of 31. Six sleds including two heavy lifts’

‘This is Earth 6 team leader. Our arrival estimate is 66 minutes. Experienced team of 29. Nine sleds including three heavy lifts.’

‘This is Beowulf 4 team leader. We have a team of 16, and eight sleds including three heavy lifts, but we have a problem. We’re the wrong side of that tower group. We need to skirt the remaining two, as well as the fallen one, to reach the rescue zone. By a safe route, our response time is about 100 minutes. Sorry, that puts us close to the two hour deadline, but we’re coming anyway in case the rescue teams hit trouble themselves’

‘This is Asgard 6. Thanks for that Beowulf 4, we’d appreciate you covering our backs’

Sitting back to consider the new information, Dracia felt herself slipping back into her Military headspace. Impact suits wouldn’t protect the civilians inside them for more than two hours, which meant they’d be dead before Beowulf 4 arrived. Earth 8 would be unlikely to have enough time to reach them all, and depending on the location and state of the site they may not reach anyone. Impact suits could take a lot, but unsurprisingly an ancient tower block falling on them wasn’t one of the standard military tests. For all she knew, they could have significantly less than two hours, or even be dead already.

Regardless, that meant their only realistic chance of rescue was Asgard 6. Her class. Her class who had spent less than 10 hours on dig sites. Dracia was horribly aware that all the drills she’d run at school had not only been drills, but also had fully qualified military officers stood by in case they became real emergancies. They had one archaeologist, two military drop-outs, and 28 civilian teenagers.

The news from Dig Site Command that all team members were alive but buried was a relief, especially the news that all their suits signals were green. That gave them time, at least, although it also meant an awful lot more was depending on them.

As the line of sleds approached the location of Cassandra 2 and left the clearway, the seriousness of the situation seemed to become apparent to the rest of the class. In silence, apart from the odd comment from Lecturer Playdon, team 1 arranged their sleds among the rubble. Jarra hovered out to set up the sensor spikes, before Lecturer Playdon said possibly the most terrifying words Dracia had heard.

‘Back to the sensor sled now, Jarra. I want you monitoring the sensors with Dalmora and Dracia. I’ll be tag leading.’

Nuke that! There was no way Dracia felt confident enough to read the sensors unsupervised on a regular dig, let alone over recently fallen rubble! The sensor displays had come to life, and were a jumble of wriggling coloured lines that Dracia couldn’t make head or tail of. Judging by her face, Dalmora clearly felt the same, as did Jarra.

Unsurprisingly Jarra was the first to voice her disagreement, but Dracia was right there backing her up. Part of her felt slightly bad, as if she were throwing Jarra to the chimera, but the military side in charge pointed out it was good tactics – Jarra was far less likely to die tag leading with Lecturer Playdon on sensors than vice versa.

‘With respect sir, the sensors need a lot more experience than we have. We’ve got unstable rubble and people buried down there. We need you on sensors, I should be tagging the rubble.’

‘Jarra is right sir, neither Dalmora nor I have anywhere near enough experience with sensors, that’s why you normally need to watch them too. If you tag lead, you’ll practically be working without sensors because none of us will be able to get enough of a read to give you warnings.’

Lecturer Playdon looked slightly taken aback, looking between the two girls standing side by side.

‘It’s true I’d be better on the sensors, but it’s going to be dangerous, and it’s my responsibility to take the risks, not yours Jarra. However if you’re sure…’

‘I’m sure, sir’ Jarra said immediately. Dracia didn’t think anyone else noticed the slight waver in her voice, and she wasn’t going to comment on it. As much as he was their teacher, Lecturer Playdon was a civilian, and while neither of them had chosen the military life, she and Jarra had both had military upbringings. It’s the job of the military to protect civilians, and chaos take it she would uphold that! She certainly wouldn’t stand in the way of Jarra upholding it either.

‘Right. Jarra is tag leader. Fian, you’re on her lifeline. If you see any rubble moving around her, or anything you don’t like, don’t wait, or ask questions, pull her up!’

As Jarra floated out over the rubble, Dracia settled down to watch the sensors intently. The suit signals were helpfully marked by dots, still a reassuring green. The rubble was still settling, and Jarra sensibly waiting until it settled slightly before starting to level down the site. What Jarra wouldn’t be able to see, but Dracia was horribly aware of, was that the rubble wasn’t just unstable on the surface, but for about 4 meters down. Most would probably be small rocks filtering down, but there could easily be wires ready to conduct electricity, power cells which inly needed one more jolt before exploding. Even sharp enough rocks to damage the suits, cutting into that vital 2 hour deadline. Of which only less than hour and a half remained.

By the time Jarra had levelled out the site, the sensor signals were starting to settle down and Dracia was starting to be able to see the patterns. She wasn’t sure if they’d gotten more obvious, or she’d got more experienced, but decided it didn’t matter for now. Only the sensors mattered, and the 11 lives depending on them.

Seconds felt like minutes, and minutes felt like hours as Jarra painstakingly tagged the rubble and directed Amalie and Krath to dump it here, or there. Dracia could feel everyone’s nerves growing taut as they dealt with various difficulties which they should’ve first encountered in a safer, training ground rather than during a rescue. Amalie and Krath dealt admirably with having to take two rocks simultaneously, but Dracia couldn’t help but shudder when Jarra needed to use a laser gun.

Perhaps more than any of these civilians, she knew exactly how much damage a laser gun could do, and once again guiltily thanked the deity that it was Jarra who was being called upon to use such a dangerous tool. Yes, Lecturer Playdon warned them all over the team circuit that impact suits wouldn’t protect them from a laser gun, but that was nothing compared to having to watch vids of people accidentally slicing their hands off…

Dracia breathed a sigh of relief when Jarra confirmed the safety was back on, then let out a gasp as the girder snapped, catching her arm and sending her flying backwards, and upwards as the lifeline beam pulled her out of the way.

With such events scattered throughout, the team had been working their way down the rubble for around an hour when one of the suit lights began flickering, before turning from a reassuring green to an ominous amber. Lecturer Playdon was immediately back on the team circuit.

‘I’ve got an amber light. Suit failing!’

‘Which one? Where?’ Jarra shouted, but seemed to already know the answer, practically diving towards the signal showing that someone was fighting for their life. The speed with which they now worked made their previous urgency seem almost nonchalant, with regular working rules thrown out. Jarra was tagging at an almost superhuman speed, and Amalie and Krath pulled them from around her, as if in a frantic dance.

Dracia and Dalmora could just sit and watch as one of the primary multidimensional holos showed the hole growing deeper and deeper, getting closer and closer to that amber light. Just as the hole was practically touching the light, it started flickering, from the ominous amber to blood red. The life that it represented was growing closer and closer to being snuffed out. Surely not, Dracia thought wildly, surely that person couldn’t die, not when they were so close.

As the light representing Jarra flew out of the hole, followed by the amber-red light, the two girls breathed a sigh of relief. Surely, they would survive now? As Dig Site Command confirmed they were still alive and dispatched them to an emergency evac portal, Dracia felt the adrenaline suddenly catch up with her. Dalmora seemed to be suffering from a similar effect, looking almost dizzy with relief. Dracia reached out to grasp Dalmora’s upper arm. As she did so, she realised the Alphan wouldn’t understand the meaning behind the Betan gesture, but Dalmora still seemed grateful for it as she exchanged a shaky smile with Dracia.

As the two girls got back to work, their monitoring echoed by the Earth 19 team sensor sled, they once again lost themselves in the swirling patterns of the monitors, watching not only for any more hazards, but any more change in the suit colours. They were fortunate, or rather Cassandra 2 were fortunate as the remaining 9 archaeologists were excavated and evacuated to hospital, their lights remaining a reassuring green until they passed through the portal and vanished from the display.

Slowly, almost leaning on each other for support, Dracia and Dalmora made their way to the transport sled which would take them back to their dome. The rest of their team were clearly suffering from reaction, Dracia noted detachedly, as Krath struggled to keep still and Amalie was still shaking. Fian was hyper-focused on Jarra, who was so exhausted she managed to fall asleep on the bench, Fian’s arm being the only thing to stop her rolling off the bench to the floor.

The jolt as they reached the base drew them out of their musings, dozing, or full-on nap in the case of Jarra. As Fian and Lectuer Playdon guided Jarra into the dome ahead of the crowd, the remaining members of Team 1 helped Amalie who, while she seemed far more physically stable on her feet than Jarra, had still been unable to stop shaking. Lecturer Playdon dispatched Fian to get Jarra to a bathroom, then to her bed, and Dracia took the opportunity to guide Amalie and Dalmora to her own room.

Settling Amalie down on the bed, the three girls stripped off their impact suits and wrapped themselves in fuzzy blankets over their skintights. As Dalmora assisted Amalie, whose hands were still shaking too much to be of any help, Dracia pulled out her stash of caeco drinks, and activated the inbuilt heaters in three of them. Spicing only one of them with her favoured Nagul herbs, she just added a bit of ground cinna-bark to the other two, which she handed to Dalmora and Amalie.

For a while, the three girls just sat, content to exist in each others company, wrapped in blankets, with hot drinks, and Amalie settled between the two other girls. Gradually, her shaking lessened, and by the time the drinks were finished the shaking had vanished entirely, replaced by an embarrassed expression.

‘I’m so sorry, I’ve got no idea… I don’t know what… why couldn’t I stop shaking?’

‘Reaction.’

The single word from Dracia seemed to pull Amalie out of her spiral, and both she and Dalmora looked towards Dracia.

‘Reaction? What, do you mean my reaction to… whatever that was?’

‘Yes, and no.’ Dracia thought for a moment. ‘Reaction… it always hits everyone, but everyone has their own way of coping. I think it’s the adrenaline dump – our bodies create loads of this hormone called adrenaline if it thinks we’re in danger or stressed. Ideally we’d use it up, I don’t know, running from a wolf or something. Because we need to focus through it, staying still and using our brains rather than our muscles, we have to bleed it out in different ways. You just focus on what you’re doing, and your vision narrows and narrows until it’s done and you suddenly look around and have no idea what happened.’

Taking a moment to think over her word, Amalie nodded slowly although Dalmora still looked a bit puzzled.

‘That makes sense. I think I’ve seen some of the colonists back home suffer from reaction. There was an accident, a barn roof collapsed and someone fell through. Even once he’d been rescued and checked over, he still couldn’t stop hyperventilating or pulling at the pocket of his trousers. Even once he noticed, he couldn’t stop his hand. Would that be another way it can manifest?’

‘Yes, it sounds like it. It’s not always about what happened to you either, but how your brain perceived it. That’s why Dalmora and I reacted differently, and you and Krath had different responses.’

Amalie looked down, chewing her lip for a moment before looking back up at the other two.

‘It was alright while we were working, I had a job to do and I knew there probably wasn’t anyone in the class who could do it better than me. I was terrified at first, but there wasn’t a better alternative so I had to get on with it. Just focus on my beam. I thought when that Earth team arrived that it would all be over, they would take over but they wanted me and Krath to carry on. Working with them, it was obvious how amateur we were and I couldn’t stop comparing myself.’

Holding up a hand to stop Dracia or Dalmora interrupting, ‘I know it wasn’t a fair comparison, they must’ve been working as heavy lift operators for decades, but that’s just it. The situation wasn’t dependent on how good we were, it was always that dangerous and we were always that inexperienced, we just couldn’t seem how incompetent we were. I could’ve killed someone by being recklessly over-confident, what if it had been my end of the girder which snapped? I was shifting rubble in the other direction, it could’ve fallen over the person whose suit nearly failed and they could’ve died!’

Embracing the now-panicking girl, Dracia and Dalmora exchanged looks. There wasn’t much they could say correct her, everything she said was technically true. All they could do was hold their friend as she let it out her system.

As Amalie sniffed and started to wipe her face, Dalmora gave her a friendly shoulder bump.

‘You’re forgetting something though Amalie. You could’ve hurt someone, but you didn’t. You might not be as good as the professionals, but you’re still the best heavy lift operator in our class, and regardless of what you may or may not do, you’ll always be our friend.’

Dracia added her agreement, and for a moment it looked like Amalie might cry again, but instead she broke out into a massive grin, pulling Dalmora and Dracia into a tight hug.

‘I’ve no idea what I did to deserve friends as good as both of you.’

Chapter Text

The three girls had held a sleepover that night, none of them really wanting to be alone. The following day was a relief, as Lecturer Playdon didn’t take them back out on another dig, but rather filled the day with lectures. Dracia privately thought this was sensible – while there was something to be said for ‘getting back on the horse’, she doubted any of them were quite ready to go back out yet.

It was also a joy to be able to study nothing but pre-history. At school, while she’d been in the History stream, there were the compulsory extras which cut into time, and the history had mostly focused either on the military or Beta sector. An awful lot of time was devoted to the Chimera wars, and the Second Roman Empire – events which had impacted all of humanity, but had their basis and conclusion within Betan-Military cooperation.

The subject of that day’s lecture was the twentieth century on Earth, long before even regular portals had been invented. Despite humanity only existing on a single planet, you wouldn’t have thought it given the amount of war and pollution propagated, that would be seen as catastrophic even if confined to a Colony Ten planet. No wonder she’d read of it being described as the first modern century – everything exploded (sometimes literally) – the economy, the population size, the size of everything really… Some truly inspirational events, and some truly horrific ones.

Despite her interest, Dracia couldn’t help but be glad when class finally ended – it was a long time to be sitting without any physical activity, even the longer school days included at least one session of exercise a day. Joining the rest of the class in dragging their pillows and blankets into the dining room to lounge around and socialise, the conversation gradually turned towards downtime traditions. Some of the Gammans were talking about their annual school trips to Winter, and the fires they’d make outside.

Amalie told the group they did something similar on her homeworld on Miranda, in the winter with the long, dark nights. Not as dark as on Earth, she hastened to add – Miranda was in a busy part of space, and the stars lit up the surface almost as well as the sun. But it was tradition to limit outside work after the sun was set, rather they’d make a large fire in their main room, work on handicrafts, tell stories and sing.

Several of the other students loved the sound of that, and when Dalmora shyly admitted she’d brought along a guitar, an ancient instrument often used to accompany songs, there was a general consensus she ought to fetch it.

By the time Dalmora returned from her room, instrument in hand, nearly half the class had joined the group, with various other smaller groupings around the room. Jarra and Fian were sat a distance away, but the rest of Team 1 were there, with Krath sat very close to a slightly annoyed looking Caytrin and Amalie sat up the front with Dalmora, having been dragged up there to help sing.

It made for a lazy evening, with well-known songs gradually being replaced by more sector specific ones later in the evening. As the only representatives there of their respective sectors, Dalmora, Amalie and Dracia were called on for several solos, although there was usually an enthusiastic band willing to help out with the choruses.

Initially, Dracia had picked one of the songs common throughout the Military, in the hope Jarra would be willing to sing too, but Jarra and Fian both seemed to have snuck out during one of the earlier songs.

The only snag in the evening was the solar storm warning, and although Dracia felt incredibly nervous about sitting through her first outage, it was nothing compared to the terror some of the other members of the class felt. At around midnight, the songs started to die down, and the group slowly drifted towards the portal room. Already, the normal reassuringly green lights were flickering amber, turning red as the last of the class gathered to watch.

Dracia felt both her hands grabbed from either side, her left claimed by a nervous looking Amalie, and her right almost crushed by an ashen faced Dalmora. Her heart beating loudly within her chest, Dracia searched for the words to reassure her friends, and the class standing around them, but before she could form any, the red lights gave a final flicker, and died. The portal network was down.

Chapter Text

The following morning, it was a very tired group of students who staggered into breakfast. None of them had been able to go to bed until they’d seen the portal safely up and running at approximately 3.30. At the time, it had seemed essential, but faced with a full day of work on less than three hours sleep, if they’d got any at all.

It was incredibly unfair, Dracia mused, how much energy Krath seemed to have, fawning over Jarra and ignoring an annoyed looking Fian. Not for the first time, Dracia looked towards the drink dispenser and wondered if it was true that the muddy Gamman drink was really the source of their infamous amounts of energy. At this rate, it might even be worth the taste, although possibly not the lecture she’d get from her father who declared that ‘no self-respecting Betan would even touch the stuff!’.

Giving in to her exhaustion, Dracia went over to collect a cup, grimacing slightly at the smell and adding sweetening. Returning to her table, the conversation seemed to have rolled around to the previous night’s solar storm. Listening to Jarra’s reassurance, Dracia managed to finish her cup of coffee before Lecturer Playdon called them all to get their impact suits on – they were going back out on the dig site.

Given the excitement of the last 48 hours, between the tower collapse and the solar storm, the morning spent on the dig site was reassuringly boring. They’d moved to a new area within their sector, altering the horizon slightly, but not as much as the loss of the entire tower group. The remaining tower had presumably been taken down the previous day – definitely reason enough to avoid the class being on the dig site to witness another tower fall, albeit a planned and controlled one.

By lunch time, none of the potential stasis boxes had turned out to be real, and the main achievement of the class seemed to be becoming covered in a strange red dust which required going through decontamination.

Dracia sighed at the length of time this would take, but knew it was necessary. Joth, meanwhile, seemed to need someone to spell out why it would be a poor idea to ignore it. The decontaminant spray seemed to linger throughout the day, joined later in the day by the strongly spiced food everyone seemed to choose for dinner. Dracia was disappointed, but unsurprised to see nothing from Nagul, but following Dalmora’s recommendation she found the Danae Mulligatawny to be an excellent substitute. Apparently it was the favourite of one of Dalmora’s several younger sisters.

Soon, a conversation about the trials of being an elder sibling was springing up, Persephone sounding much like Dalmora’s sister Diya. The youngest, always getting into trouble, but normally able to charm their way out. Laughing, Amalie told everyone about her younger sister, Lisbet, who’d once managed to get the entire family banned from their settlement’s only shop. It turned out she’d been sneaking over there to shout insults at the shop owner. He’d eventually let the older members back in, but Lisbet hadn’t been able to set a foot over the door for nearly a decade.

As their conversation started to wind up, Glen and Caytrin came over, begging Dalmora to play her guitar again. As she got up good-naturedly to fetch it, Jarra also came over to join them, greeting her teammates and settling down.

‘Someone tried to teach me guitar once,’ Jarra admitted after a few minutes of listening to Dalmora strumming, and discussing songs with Glen.

‘We were on London Fringe and it rained for three days. By the end of it, everyone made me promise to never try to learn the guitar ever again. I’m not even remotely musical.’

Amalie and Dracia laughed at her pronouncement, with Amalie noting that Jarra seemed to have been on a lot of dig sites before. While this further reassured Dracia’s fading feeling of incompetence, she was surprised to see the slight look of panic on Jarra’s face as she rapidly changed the subject to lightbulb jokes.

‘How many Military does it take to change a lightbulb? This is where you say you don’t know, and repeat the question.’

‘I don’t know. How many Military does it take to change a lightbulb?’

Under Military regulations section 39 section 8.1, one officer, or two cadets in training, should be an adequate personnel allocation to change a lightbulb.’

Dracia laughed, and after a moment Amalie joined in. This seemed enough to draw in the rest of the class, who were lounging around the room, who begged Jarra to explain what they’d been talking about, and to repeat the joke. This seemed to be the cue for the rest of the class to come up with their own versions.

Dracia laughed at Dalmora’s version ‘Alphans don’t change lightbulbs, they’re irreplaceable relics of our cultural history and Alpha sector is honoured to care for them on behalf of humanity’, but frowned at Lolmack’s Betan version involving sex vids, and noticed several members of the class shooting looks in her direction, as well as toward the other Betans. Fortunately, Lecturer Playdon intervened, and Fian and Amalie’s jokes about their sectors were well received.

Thinking they were finished, Dracia turned back to Amalie and Jarra to continue their conversation, but was interrupted before she could even open her mouth.

‘How many apes does it take to change a lightbulb?’ Krath called out to the still assembled crowd. Upon receiving the standard answer he finished ‘If you start giving apes lightbulbs, they’ll want the vote next!’

This had a much more mixed reaction – many of the class laughed, but the rest of Team 1 didn’t get much further than an emphatic eyeroll from Amalie and an uncomfortable look on Fian’s face. It was almost a surprise to Dracia that such strong prejudice really did exist. Oh, you saw it on the vids, but it’s a bit different to hearing your classmate explain why some people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. The Tell clan had made sure Dracia and her cousins respected the Handicapped, knew they were just as human as they were. Of course, at school there were jokes about the Handicapped, but not as many as about civilians, or Alphans, or even particular clans. There was an uncomfortable difference between hearing jokes and hearing people genuinely hate the subject of them.

Before Dracia could say something (she wasn’t quite sure what), an intervention came from one of the most unexpected quarters.

‘The Handicapped are legally human, but the rules on that certainly need to be tightened up. It’s shocking what qualifies as human. Krath does, for example, and you only need to look at him to know he’s really a Cassandrian skunk that’s been trained to walk on two legs.’

‘What?’ Krath gasped, as laughter broke out around them, far more than his original ape joke had gained. ‘You nuking Betan, I’ll…’

Before it could escalate between the two, Lecturer Playdon reappeared from the other side of the room, breaking up the fight before it could properly begin.

‘I can accept this as one of the genuine misunderstanding that arise between students raised in different cultures, or I can treat it as a deliberate insult from Lolmack and an attempted physical attack by you, Krath. The second option means you both get official conduct warnings. Which would you prefer?’ Lecturer Playdon gave Krath a few moments to fail to reply, before turning to the rest of the class.

‘In that case, I’ll just say that everyone should be careful what jokes they make, and that particularly includes jokes about the Handicapped. You should remember we’re all guests of the Handicapped while we’re on this dig site and this planet. Now, I suggest Lolmack and Krath should both go to their rooms.’

Both boys left the room, followed by Lecturer Playdon, presumably to ensure they didn’t restart their fight in the corridor. The rest of the class sat without saying anything,  as an awkward and slightly guilty silence gripped the room. It was only broken by Dalmora, who agreed with Lecturer Playdon and left for bed. This triggered the general exodus of students, and Dracia found herself lying in bed looking up at the curving ceiling and considering the events of the day.  However, lack of sleep rapidly caught up with her as she found herself drifting off to sleep.

The following day, the entire class seemed much quieter. Although whether or not it was due to the ‘ape’ conversation of the previous evening, or the fact it had been a comparatively quiet day compared to collapsing towers and portal outages.

At the dig site, Lecturer Playdon mixed up Team 1 a little, swapping Jarra and Amalie’s spots, and swapping Dalmora and Dracia’s jobs. It was very stressful getting used to a new set of sensors, and Dracia was sure Amalie and Jarra must be feeling the strain too. Since all of Team 1 were giving Krath the cold shoulder following the events of the following day, it seemed Fian was the only one who had a relatively peaceful morning.

Dracia’s morning got even worse about half way through class, when Lecturer Playdon told her to swap with Amalie, and send Jarra over to take her place on the senor sled. While Amalie was understandably relieved to be off the deadly dig site, Dracia certainly wasn’t excited to be taking her place!

After a brief crash course on using the tag gun, she found herself cautiously floating over the rubble, trying to overlay the sensor data she remembered over the dig site. Cautiously tagging a few pieces of rubble, she couldn’t help flinching as the large segments of concraz went flying over her head. Her instinct on the first day that she wasn’t tag leader material seemed to be spot on, and Lecturer Playdon clearly agreed as he called her back after a fraught and tense hour.

After confirming very strongly that she had no wish whatsoever to be considered for Team 2 tag leader, Dracia was relieved to discover that meant all of Team 1 was remaining in their old positions. Compared with the horror of being in the group Jarra was instructing on how to tag lead, it was almost relaxing to try to explain the sensors to Mira, Kai and Jon. Dalmora was instructing another three on her half of the sensor display, before they swapped.

Lecturer Playdon had said he was going to have all the sensor operators working in pairs for the whole year, but that some would feel more comfortable than one set of sensors than the other. The pairs would continue to swap back and forth, so that by the end of the foundation year they should be ready to operate the sensor sled alone on their full degree course.

The whole of Team 1 was tired by lunch time, and Jarra was apparently suffering from particularly painful impact suit bruising. Dracia winced in sympathy, they were not fun. Fortunately, the afternoon lecture wasn’t particularly taxing. Having covered the twentieth century the previous day, that afternoon was focused on the various revolutions and civil power struggles spanning the century, and to what extent they had driven wider international conflicts.

Dracia found herself on fairly comfortable ground – while she hadn’t studied this particular period at school, it seemed humans never changed and it was in some ways very similar to the Second Roman Empire. After several weeks in the class, she had found enough confidence to voice such opinions, and her comment sparked a discussion. The events surrounding the Second Roman Empire were clearly held to greater importance in a Betan Military school, but most of the class seemed to have opinions, ranging from insightful to nardle.

Lecturer Playdon was about to bring the class back to pre-history, when Dalmora volunteered that the next vid in her father’s series was about Artemis, and if Lecturer Playdon and the class wished, she had a copy they could see.

The class was very enthusiastic about this, partly because it was an escape from twentieth century politics, but mostly because the History of Humanity series were utterly zan! Even Lecturer Playdon wasn’t immune.

‘I know we’re supposed to be covering pre-history,’ he admitted, ‘and this is much later than that, but I can’t resist it either. I’ve been waiting for this just as impatiently as any of you. So, Dalmora, please go ahead. You have an eager audience waiting.’

A rush of excitement went around the class as Dalmora went up to insert the chip, and the edit codes appeared on the vid wall. They disappeared after a few seconds, and the opening sequence know throughout humanity took its place, with the timeline of human history. Swiftly and skilfully taking the audience through Exodus century, the two hundred years of rebuilding, the announcement of the Empire, and the succession crisis 40 years later.

As the screen faded to show a single word, ‘Artemis’, Dracia couldn’t help but admit it was a good summary, not that she’d expected any anti-Betan sentiment from such an eminent man as Ventrak Rostha, but she was still impressed at how he’d managed to make both sides of the conflict sound reasonable.

Of course, the story was very familiar to Dracia since it was once of the key stories of her heritage, but it was still oddly emotional to see the events up on the wall, with the series’ characteristically stunning imagery. The horror of Ceron Augustus unlocking the solar array beam, carving canyons of lava across the landscape, killing 47,000 people. The moment the Military drop portalled 20 dart ships in to reclaim control of the solar array from the madman, saving the remaining lives of those on the planet below.

Dracia couldn’t help but tear up as two of the dart ships were vapourised by the beam. Rationally, she knew they were generated images and nothing but pixels, but in her heart she knew vid footage would have looked no different, and that the four officers inside those ships had given their lives to save a hostile Beta sector.

As the memorials began to be shown, Dracia beat Lolia and Lolmack to a salute by less than a second, with Jarra shortly behind. For a moment, the four of them stood saluting, united in respecting the fallen. Gradually, the rest of the class rose to their feet in silence. Dracia felt like the wind had been punched out of her as the second Military memorial, to Corvin Tell Julian, came up. Mutely watching the honour ceremony, and thinking back to her own several months prior, Dracia almost missed the final two memorials and the image fading from the wall screen.

‘That was blatant Military propaganda,’ said a cynical voice from the back of the class. Turning around to face whoever spoke, Dracia was unsurprised to find it was Krath.

‘Shut up!’ shouted Lolia, elbowing her way through the crowd to tower over the still sitting Krath, with Lolmack and Dracia close behind her. ‘Our clan is from Artemis!’

By this point most of the class were moving back from the angry Betans and the idiotic Gamman. Lecturer Playdon moved closer, but made no move to interrupt the unfolding conflict yet. Krath appeared to be the only person in the room not to realise he was without allies in this fight.

‘Oh come on, be realistic.’ Krath rolled his eyes and got lazily to his feet, ‘The end bit was ridiculous including the Honour Ceremonies like it did. My dad says it’s all rubbish anyway because it never happened, and…’

‘One of those honour ceremonies was for a member of my clan, you ignorant lowlife!’

‘If you wish to remain capable of fathering children, clanless one, you will show respect!’

Dracia and Lolia shouted over each other, but the sentiment was clear. When Krath pushed at Lolia, it was not only Lolmack who was leaping to her defence.

‘Leave my wife alone!’ he cried, springing forward.

Fortunately for Krath, three people jumped into restrain Lolmack. Less fortunately for him, Dracia managed to dodge the hands reaching for her and land a very satisfying punch to the face, breaking his nose and spraying his face with blood, before she was pulled away from him. Dracia was ready to break free of the very amateur arm lock to enforce Lolia’s threat with her foot, but was pulled off balance as Lecturer Playdon stepped between the fuming Betans and the speechless Krath.

Krath only grew more speechless when he found out he was the only one being given a red warning for physically attacking another student.

‘Whad aboud Dracia?! Loog ad by dose!’ Krath wailed, said nose being covered by both hands

‘Dracia, you will receive an amber warning for physically attacking another student, mitigated by severe provocation while under high levels of emotion. Do NOT let it happen again.’

‘Yes, sir’ Dracia sulkily agreed, shooting death glares at Krath, who seemed to wither under them. Pathetic. Lecturer Playdon turned around to address the class.

‘Your personal beliefs are not my concern, but your conduct is. Members of this class are from a variety of backgrounds with cultural differences. You will be living in cramped and difficult accommodation for a year, and working in dangerous conditions where one person’s actions could put the lives of others at risk. Anyone deliberately generating conflict among the class will be dealt with.

‘I won’t allow the Betans to amuse themselves by using sexual terms unacceptable to other members of the class. I equally will not allow anyone to be offensive about the Betans honouring their dead. I hope that everyone understands now that they should treat their fellow students with appropriate respect, and I won’t have to issue any more warnings. Classes are over for today. Krath, come with me and I’ll get you treatment for your nose.’

Krath followed Lecturer Playdon out of the room, leaving the rest of the class to cluster around the Betans, clearly unsure where to start with their questions. Dalmora was the first to find the words to address the group.

‘I’m sure I speak for everyone when I apologise about Krath’s behaviour. I also have an apology to make on my own behalf. I had no idea you were from Artemis, or that you’d lost a clan member in the conflict. If I’d known, then I would have asked how you felt before offering to show it to the class. I can assure you that both he and I fully appreciate the scale of tragedy that happened on your world.’

‘The vid was very sensitive,’ said Lolia. ‘We have no complaint about it.’

Dracia nodded in agreement. ‘I thought it was very well done, I promise the only one today who caused offence was Krath.’

Dalmora smiled at her, and Dracia subtly acknowledged the nods of thanks from Lolia and Lolmack. The rest of the class would be unaware of the intricacies of Betan culture, but Dracia would have had the right to expect Lolia and Lolmack to have followed her lead in dealing with Krath. It was a potentially offensive situation between the three of them as to who ought to have taken the lead – Dracia was of a far higher clan, and was responding to an insult of a named dead clan member, but Lolia and Lolmack would have had far more dead relatives who were being insulted, as well as their homeworld.

Fortunately, none of them wished to cause arguments between them, and were all in agreement as to the correct course of action anyway, namely pummelling Krath.

‘I should also apologise for any inadvertent offense I mad have caused by my conduct to either of you, Lolia and Lolmack.’ Dalmora continued, ‘I didn’t realise you were married.’

The two in question just nodded again in acknowledgement, and went off to the side to talk to each other quietly in dialect as Dalmora left. Lolmack put his arm around Lolia and started to lead her off, when Dracia called after them in Betan dialect.

‘Cum pace, gratia, reverentia et favor’ [With peace, my thanks, respect and favour]

Lolia and Lolmack paused in the doorway, turning back before Lolia replied solemnly.

‘Cum honore, gratiam, reverentiam et favorem’ [With honour, our thanks, respect and favour]

The two nodded at each other, before Lolia and Lolmack made a dignified exit. Unfortunately, as Dracia only realised moments after, that left her as the only person available to be peppered with questions.

Despite remaining tight lipped about the brief exchange between her and the other Betans, Dracia was happy to discuss the vid, and willing (if not happy) to talk about her hand-to-hand combat skills, and her clan member who had died. There were a few cautious questions about Betan clan life, but with Lecturer Playdon’s warning about respecting other cultures still rattling around everyone’s head, the questions weren’t too invasive.

In truth, Dracia was perfectly happy to discuss what it was like growing up in a clan, although she could tell that some of the other students were faintly horrified at the idea of living with their extended family.

‘I suppose all the clans are a bit different though. Mine is a military clan, so almost all the adults are military, usually active service. It’s pretty zan because it means you can stay with your family if your parents are off on an assignment rather than having to live in a residence.’

Dracia shot a guilty look around for Jarra, aware she’d been rather tactless since Jarra said she’d grown up in residences, but fortunately the other girl was on the other side of the dome chatting with Fian, Joth and Geo.

‘Having all your cousins around can be a bit irritating, especially if you get nursery duty, but it means you’ve always got people to play with, and loads of mischief going on.’ Dracia continued, before steering the conversation towards childhood pranks, which Mira had plenty of examples of, but Dalmora had very few.

Before she knew it, time had flown by. The groups had remerged, and Dracia only realised how late it had gotten when Jarra got up to leave. Apparently, she’d booked a two hour slot the following morning to talk to her mum who was on Planet First. Dracia could fully sympathise with the time difference problems and hoped for Jarra’s sake that nothing would come up. In the past when Dragon had been on Planet First, and now with Drago all over the place, she found it easier to just send a message asking if they were around for an hour, or even a few minutes for a live chat.

While trying to find a time slot never seemed to work before (someone always got called away for an emergency), maybe it was worth another try? Dracia mused on the idea as Jarra left, now that all five of her family were in different locations and time zones, surely at least some of them would be able to make it, even if one or two had to drop out last minute. Heading off to bed, Dracia sent a quick message to her parents and siblings suggesting the idea. She’d spoken to Persephone and Mother quiet recently, but both Drago and Father had been busy and Dracia was starting to miss her big brother in particular.

Chapter Text

The following morning, Dracia woke surprisingly early, and checked her lookup. She was pleased to discover that all four family members had replied positively to her suggestion of setting a catch up time, and after checking the time on Zeus she called Persephone to bounce ideas/timing off her.

Almost an hour later, after exchanging news, they’d found a time which would currently suit everyone – not an easy task when the different planetary days were to be taken into account! Fortunately everyone was staying on their current planet for at least the next 10 days before Draco was moving assignments, and they were eventually able to find a suitable slot 5 days away.

Coming out of her room to head for breakfast, Dracia saw the retreating back of Jarra. Despite calling out a greeting, the other girl didn’t seem to hear her. Mentally shrugging as she went to get breakfast, Dracia soon fell into conversation with several other members of the class, who had come up with more questions about Betan life since the previous evening.

Fortunately, none of the students were aiming to be insulting, and only came up with one insulting question among the many innocuous ones they peppered Dracia with. While she was pleased to break some of the stereotypes surrounding her home, Dracia was nonetheless relieved when they headed out to the dig site.

Returning from an unsuccessful morning, the whole class was pleased to discover they were moving on from economics to the evolution on New York. Like the rest of the class, Dracia was grazzed at the images of the skyscrapers in their original glory. After the rescue they’d been involved in, Dracia had struggled to see them as anything other than dangers. The idea of living up one of the residential towers, like the Central Park Tower, filled her with terror. Were these people insane?!

It was interesting to see from an aerial view how the dig site had been formed, with a certain logic becoming apparent as the clearways were built. Unlike the rest of the class, Dracia was delighted at the prospect of camping out in the Grand Circle for a few days! She’d gone a few times with school, and a few, much more interesting, times with her family. Amalie also looked excited, but Dalmora and Krath looked very nervous. Fian looked surprisingly enthusiastic, apparently he’d used to hang around the nature reserves and had slept out overnight without a dome or anything. Respect!

As team 1 started to discuss the upcoming trip, Dracia caught movement out the corner of her eye. Frowning slightly and Lolia and Lolmack made their way up to the front, she tried to determine from their body language where this was going…

‘We wish to speak to you all’ said Lolia.

‘We’ve decided that since you people will hate us whatever we do, you might as well know the truth.’

‘We aren’t here because we like history. This dome is primitive, and the dig site… We were forced into this.’

Making the classic Betan sign of rejection with her hand, Lolia continued. ‘Three months ago, we were happy. We had a triad marriage. I was about to have our first child. Lolmack was the father, and we planned that a second child fathered by our partner would soon follow. Our baby was born handicapped. Our partner instantly divorced us.’

Dracia was certain hers was not the only look of shock around the room, and she was suddenly, intensely angry on behalf of both her sector-mates. That type of betrayal was dishonourable in the extreme, and if they had followed the traditional Betan marriage laws then it made that scum an oathbreaker too. She was under no illusions that such a reaction was rare within Beta, but even so…

‘Hospital Earth insisted we must spend most of our time on Earth, or lose our child.’ Lolia continued. ‘Our clan feared the effects if it were known that we had had a Handicapped birth. It would cause the loss of much hard won status. Clan alliance council met and we were told to keep the child secret, or become clanless.’

Dracia gasped, drawing a few puzzled looks towards her, and two tearful ones from the front. No matter how empathetic, no-one not brought up in Beta sector could fully understand the trauma such a thing would cause, for an event that wasn’t under their control. It was downright cruel and horrific for her to consider.

‘We had to find a convincing reason for being on Earth, and the only possible ones were to study history or medicine. Our grades were in arts, so it had to be history. Arrangements were made for us to study under an non-Betan university, to further distance usmand our child from the clan. Our clan makes vids, and we thought to set them in history, but this course is… far harder to bear than we expected. And we cannot see our child. Lolette can’t be with us here, and when it’s evening here it is night at her Nursery. Hospital Earth says she cannot move Nursery every time we move dig sites to another time zone.’

Lolia seems to sag back against her husband, who supported her as he addressed the class. ‘So, despise us, but you despised us anyway, and we have suffered too much to care.’

Dalmora was on her feet before Dracia could finish processing the announcement. Rather than simply nodding along with her classmates to Dalmora’s offer to help, Dracia climbed to her feet too.

‘I agree with Dalmora. Your partner and clan put you in a dreadful position, and behaved dishonourably, but you act with the honour of Theseus towards your child. If there’s any way I can help you or your child, please ask me.’

The agreement of the class was unanimous, with the initial exception of Krath, but perhaps remembering the previous day, he was wise enough not to say anything. Lecturer Playdon, on the other hand, had plenty to say, and plenty of help to offer. The couple were excused from the morning work to visit their daughter, and Lecturer Playdon had several ideas of how they could stay on Earth after the end of the course.

The couple went off, excitedly discussing their options which were so much broader than a few hours ago. Dracia couldn’t help but be pleased for them, they had come expecting rejection and scorn, but instead got acceptance and assistance. As soon as they, and Lecturer Playdon were out of earshot, the class settled down with drinks and snacks to gossip as hard as they could.

Dracia settled down with the rest of team 1, along with Mira and Geo. As she approached, she could hear the tail end of Krath’s sentence. ‘..right thing. An ape baby is better off being raised by it’s own kind.’

Looking up at Dracia’s approach, and her incredibly unimpressed face, Krath gulped, felt his newly healed nose, and remained silent for the rest of the evening. He wasn’t the only one, as Jarra and Fian were also uncharacteristically quiet. Geo was one of the biggest gossips in the class, coming up with wild theories and suggestions of what might’ve happened, until Dracia was tempted to beat him to death with a pillow. Chaos take it, they made vids, they weren’t characters in one!

Slipping off to bed early, Dracia couldn’t help but lie awake, wondering what she’d do in their situation. Oh, it was easy to think what she would do if she had a handicapped baby, what with her having a supportive clan and wanting to study history on Earth anyway. As she drifted off into a restless sleep, Dracia couldn’t help but imagine her father’s angry look, and her mother’s quietly disappointed one. She’d imagined them many times while preparing to say she wanted to study history, but the idea that they’d be aimed at her through no fault of her own was deeply unsettling.

Sighing and rolling over, Dracia tried to shake the thoughts away. She was lucky, her clan was supportive. If, Deity forbid, she did have a handicapped child, or Persephone, or Drago did, then she was sure the child would nonetheless grown up surrounded by the clan’s love.

____________________________

The following day, Lecturer Playdon clearly decided that team 1 had gotten too complacent. Amalie and Krath had lucky escapes, but Dracia once again had to deal with the muddled mess of Dalmora’s half of the sensors. Jarra and Fian had also had to swap positions, and were unhappy with that decision to say the least. It added to the pressure on the rest of the team too, with all four acutely aware Fian would make more mistakes than Jarra, and that Jarra would be slower to save Fian if he got into trouble.

Dracia heaved a sigh of relief as they headed back to the dome, but soon realised she’d let her guard down too soon. The afternoon’s lecture was a hideously detailed look at the sub-surface composition of New York, both human-made and natural. This was particularly relevant to her, as some of the minerals found in the near-coastal regions could interfere slightly with the sensors, making soft sand appear stable rock, and vice versa. Fortunately, as Foundation students they wouldn’t be working in those areas, but Dracia spent a tense few hours taking notes on the different compounds, where they were commonly found, and how to recognise them.

Not content to leave it there, Lecturer Playdon put on several vids of the same dig site, contaminated with different metals, minerals, and pollutants, and required them to identify the likely compounds and their locations within the area. Feeling certain she had failed the test, and exhausted from the mental strain and her sleepless night, Dracia went to bed almost straight after dinner.

To their mutual dismay, Lecturer Playdon kept them swapped into different roles the following morning, and the morning after than. On the fourth day, Dracia was not the only one to sign in relief as Lecturer Playdon swapped them back to their original roles. Moving to a new and exciting dig site, Dracia did find that her time reading Dalmora’s sensors helped her make sense of her own better, but she was sure the day would never come when she’d be able to manage all the sensors by herself.

While a new dig site meant new dangers, it also meant new opportunities, and they were unable to uncover a stasis box before lunch. The family who’d left this box were all existed to head off to Atalanta. They’d left behind a fluffy toy, and an ancient newzie – one which would’ve been ancient even when they left!

The class’s excitement hit the roof when Lecturer Playdon declared it was from the Lost Years – entirely new information! As soon as he’d carefully scanned and translated the pages and sent off the contents, the class eagerly settled down for lunch, scanning and discussing the newzie they’d found. Much of it was similar to watching a newzie from another sector, talking about vid stars, politicians and sports. The distances achieved by some of the land vehicles left most of the class grazzed. Thinking of the sleds, Dracia shuddered at the thought of going at over 200mph – even the fastest ones couldn’t reach 20mph! Although if you didn’t have portals or planes… nope, still crazy.

Dragging the less than enthusiastic class away from the newzie, Lecturer Playdon once again returned to 20th century economics. Trying to stay awake and listen about the First Great Depression was, well, depressing. Lecturer Playdon was half way through describing the effect of a 1930 tariff law, when his lookup bleeped. Looking surprised he scanned the message, looked around the room, panicked, scanned it again, then looked directly at Jarra.

Chapter Text

As the class followed Lecturer Playdon’s look towards Jarra, he began to speak.

‘Jarra, I have a mail from the Military. Their team will arrive in one hour.’

Exchanging puzzled looks as Jarra reassured Lecturer Playdon that the dome would be perfectly appropriate for… whatever was happening, the class waited with bated breath, eager to find out whatever had caused such a stir, and saved them from an afternoon of economics.

‘Jarra is a Military Honour Child. She’s 18 and that was the call for the Honour Ceremony.’ An excited buzz of conversation sprouted up from every corner of the room, talking about all the ceremonies they’d heard about, or seen on the vid channels.

Dracia was hit by the memory of her own Honour Ceremony 8 months earlier, and how glad she’d been that Drago had been home on leave and able to attend. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately Dragon had been under Planet First quarantine at the time. While she felt bad he hadn’t been able to attend his father’s Honour Ceremony, the speech he’d have inevitably given would have been a worry given Draco Tell Dramas’ exploits. Directly after, he’d put in a request for up to three months compassionate leave for after Persephone’s birthday, so he’d be able to attend at least one of his parent’s honour ceremonies.

As the class started to clear away the tables and chairs, Jarra vanished, leaving Dracia as the centre of the babbled questions from her classmates. A few were even surprised to discover she had been Military, since Lecturer Playdon mostly only called on Jarra. She had already decided not to mention she was also an Honour Child – this was Jarra’s day and she didn’t want any of the limelight. Or any questions about her grandfather – he was still rather widely known. She did give them a quick run down of how to stand to attention and salute though.

Having joined Lecturer Playdon in shuffling the class into rows, Dracia slipped into a space between Dalmora and Amalie, which they’d saved for her in the front row. Fian and Krath were on the other side of the aisle with Joth, and there were another four rows behind them. Lecturer Playdon rushed past Jarra to collect the Honour Guard from the portal room. Looking remarkably calm, Jarra walked to the front of the room in the navy clothes she’d changed into.

‘Class, attention!’ called Lecturer Playdon, slipping into the space left for him in the back row. The class stood to attention as Dracia had shown them, and the Honour Guard entered led by a Colonel and flanked by two Captains. The Colonel seemed oddly familiar to Dracia, and she racked her brains as the flag of humanity was unfurled at the front of the room and the Hymn of Humanity played.

As the hymn finished, Dracia tried to discard her thought. She’d probably seen the Colonel in passing at some military function. This Ceremony was about Jarra, and her ancestor. The next words spoken by the Colonel sent all thoughts out of her mind however.

‘On 12 November 2769 Jarra Tell Morath died to offer new worlds to humanity.’

Dracia felt like she’d gone into impact suit blackout. Of course, the mystery Colonel was Patruimagnustriomatrus Riak, she’d only ever seen images of him. She knew he was a Colonel, because Drago had told her about how he’d had Patruimagnustriomatrus Riak as his last commanding officer, and how he’d been trying to convince him to back to the clan hall.

More importantly, how could Jarra, her friend Jarra, be the Honour Child for Amitamagnatriomatria Jarra? Because she certainly was, between the name, date of death, and list of awards, it was definitely the same Jarra Tell Morrath.

Dracia took a breath. Her dead cousin Jarra had been born as an Honour Child for Amitamagnatriomatria Jarra, but she would’ve only been 17. But who else would’ve had an Honour Child for her? The clan can’t have known about this, or Dracia would’ve known. But what if her cousin Jarra had lived? You couldn’t have two honour children for the same person.

Dracia was so caught up in her mental crisis that she almost missed the cue to salute, which would have been dreadful. As the final notes of the Hymn of Humanity faded away and Dracia moved forwards with the rest of the class to congratulate Jarra, her new cousin (chaos, did Jarra even know that were cousins, now if not before?), she caught the end of what Patruimagnustriomatrus Riak was saying to Jarra.

‘I served with your grandmother on Planet First, Jarra.’

I served with your grandmother on Planet First, Jarra. Your grandmother. So now Dracia either had a mystery aunt or uncle, or a cousin who’d been resurrected a year older than she’d been born.

As the Honour Guard left the room, Dracia made a split second decision, and slipped after them towards the portal room. The two Captains went through first, and she called out before the third member of the party went through, converting the Betan dialect into standard Language.

‘Great Uncle Riak?’ The man jerked, as if he’d been hit by a flying bit of debris, before turning back towards her. ‘I’m Dracia? Drago’s sister?’

Comprehension dawned on his face as he turned more fully to face her and gave a small smile.

‘Hello Dracia, I’m pleased to meet you in person. I can barely believe how old you are! Although, of course, you’re the same age as…’ he trailed off, gaze seeming to shift from Dracia’s face to the doorway behind her. ‘Did you plan to be in the same class as Jarra?’

‘No, I had no idea she even existed until just now.’ Dracia took a step forward. ‘Who are her parents?’

Riak took a deep, shuddering breath in. ‘There were circumstances were Jarra was born, misunderstanding and medical issues. The clan have been searching for her for 17 years, and she’s finally decided to contact us.’

‘But her parents…?’

Looking directly at Dracia, Riak smiled softly. ‘Marack and Gemena will be thrilled to come to Earth to meet their daughter again.’

For the second time in the last hour, Dracia felt as if the air had been punched out of her. Swaying slightly, she leant in as Riak pulled her into a gentle hug. ‘It’s not my place to tell you anything more. Your father and brother both know what occurred, and I strongly suspect your mother does too.’

They stayed hugging each other for a few minutes, and as they separated, and Riak turned toward the portal. As they bid farewell and he disappeared through the ring, Dracia turned to rejoin her class and cousin. However, her feet had a mind of their own, and she found herself heading back towards her room and pulling out her lookup.

After making sue the door was properly shut, she selected Drago’s name, and threw up the projection into the air above her. Before she spoke to Jarra, she needed to be certain of her facts.

‘Dracia!’ Drago boisterously greeted her. ‘I’m not late am I? I’ve been ambushed by this dreadful Athenian squirrel. I mean, just look at this moustache!’ Drago pulled a laughing Jaxon into the image, poking at his upper lip.

‘Fine, I get the idea you menace, I’ll get rid of the moustache! I still think it makes me look distinguished, what do you think Dracia, my favourite cousin?’ Jaxon elbowed Drago in the ribs as he spoke, allowing Drago to collapse dramatically onto the sofa. A sudden calm rage overcame Dracia. If Drago knew, Jaxon certainly did.

‘I have a private problem. I’m hoping the pair of you may be able to help.’ Dracia said calmly. ‘Perhaps one of you could help me understand how I just attended the Honour Ceremony with my dead cousin, honouring Great Aunt Jarra!’

Both Drago and Jaxon’s faces lost their colour, and Jaxon looked like he was about to vomit.

‘Jarra…’

‘“For the honour of Jarra Tell Morrath”. Great Uncle Riak conducted the ceremony and said Uncle Marack and Aunt Gemena will want to come to Earth to meet their daughter again. Who would still only be 17. And dead. SO WHAT THE NUKING HELL IS GOING ON!’

Jaxon still seemed to be struggling to breathe, let alone speak, so Drago took the lead.

‘I don’t know about the age thing Dracia, I swear, but you’re right. Cousin Jarra didn’t die, she was born Handicapped, and has been raised on Earth.’ Seeing the rising fury in his sister’s eyes, Drago hurried on. ‘Uncle Marrack was stuck in Planet First, after being called in to deal with an emergency, and Aunt Gemena was having medical treatment, and along with… some other reasons, there was a delay reaching Earth. No-one realised there was a deadline to appear on Earth before the baby was automatically taken as a ward of Hospital Earth and went through an anonymisation process. The clan missed the deadline by a few hours, but by then not even they could track her down once she’d gone through the process. I swear, she wasn’t deliberately dumped Dracia. When I found out what happened, I was only a few years older than you and reacted in much the same way.’

‘Surely it’s not uncommon for the parents to be unable to go with their child straight away? Whenever they used a Handicapped birth as a plot device on the vids, the parents seem to spend several days discussing it.’ Both of her cousins winced, and Dracia narrowed her eyes. ‘How long is the deadline, Drago?’

‘One week.’

‘It was my fault.’ Jaxon croaked, and Drago and Dracia turned to look at him. ‘I was a nukingly selfish child and blackmailed Mother into not going to Earth. By the time she’d talked me down the deadline had passed.’ He drew a sweaty hand over his still pale face. ‘No-one, including me, knew about the deadline, but that didn’t bring Jarra back. Clan council forcibly passed a mitigation ruling for me and tried to grant me forgiveness nearly a decade ago, but they had no right to. Only Jarra can choose to forgive or discard me.’

Dracia leaned back against the pillows on her bed, furious, mind racing. Jarra was her cousin, and had been abandoned, nothing would change that. Thinking back, her father had barely ever let her even see Jaxon when she was little, let along interact with him. That had changed after Drago graduated and joined Jaxon’s team and they’d saved Hera, but the timing could easily be coincidence. It was no secret that their father disapproved immensely of Jaxon and had often told Dracia and Persephone to be more careful in their friendships than their elder brother had been.

Nuke it, this would surely mean Dragon had been right to keep them away from the Cassandran skunk who’d been pretending to be her cousin, so why the nuke was Drago still standing at his side? Dracia could hardly concentrate as Drago and Jaxon gave what she was sure was a highly abridged version of the events that had taken place all those years ago. One thing comment from Jaxon slipped through the fog in her mind, sharply bringing her back to the moment.

‘What the nuking hell did you just say to me? How the nuke can you claim to be remorseful for your actions, and at the same time ask me to continue to lie to my cousin, and keep her from her birthright?!’ Dracia raged at the screen.

‘That’s not what he meant,’ Drago said hastily. ‘Clan council made a plan years ago for how to bring Jarra into the clan if she ever made contact, and they’ll kick the lot of us out the clan if we mess this up.’

Coolly, Dracia eyed up the two men on the vid projection. ‘Jarra hasn’t made contact with the clan.’ They both flinched. ‘Jarra agreed to the Honour Ceremony, but hasn’t messaged a single member of the clan, except me. Do you really expect me to lie to her, my friend and clanmate, potentially for the rest of our lives?’

Cutting the call before Jaxon or Drago could respond, Dracia collapsed back on her bed, setting her lookup to block incoming calls.

Without quite realising how, Dracia found her legs taking her towards Jarra’s room. Placing her hand on the doorplate to request entry, she tried to work out how the nuking hell to approach such a difficult situation. Part of her wanted to embrace Jarra immediately and welcome her to the clan, and part of her was terrified in case Jarra rejected the entire clan out of anti-Betan prejudice.

Not yet in her sleep suit, Jarra opened the door and looked grazed to see Dracia standing there.

‘Congratulations on your Honour Ceremony, Jarra’ Dracia began. ‘You were absolutely zan. I was wondering though, do you have time for a chat?’

Still looking slightly confused, Jarra smiled and nodded, allowing Dracia into her room. The set of medals she’d been given sat on the small table next to her bed, clearly having been being examined.

The two girls settled down on the edge of the bed, and Dracia wondered where best to begin.

‘Had you been to an Honour Ceremony before today?’ she asked, adding ‘I know lots of Military families either have loads of Honour Children, or choose to just have one or two.’

With a hint of relief in her eyes, Jarra replied ‘This was the first one I’ve actually been to myself, although I’ve heard about lots of others of course.’

Dracia hummed. ‘It doesn’t make an awful lot of difference I’d imagine. My family is one of the ones with lots of Honour Children, but mine was still terrifying. I’m the Honour Child for my grandfather,’ she explained at Jarra’s questioning look. ‘And my younger sister is our grandmother’s Honour Child, although she’s not had her ceremony yet.’

‘Around the same time as I was born, my grandfather’s twin sister died, and my aunt and uncle planned to have an Honour Child for her. She was born between my sister Persie and I, we should’ve grown up as a trio but we were told she died soon after being born.’

‘Chaos, Dracia, I’m so sorry.’ So few babies died anymore that it would’ve come as a complete shock to the whole family.

‘Thanks Jarra’ Dracia gave a sad smile as the other girl carefully leaned against her in a gesture of support. ‘But it turns out it’s more complicated than that.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I found out today that my cousin didn’t die. She was portalled to Earth as an emergency pre-empt when her immune system started failing.’ Dracia felt Jarra stiffen next to her, and hurried on.

‘They intended to go with her, and raise her on Earth, but there were complications. My uncle was stuck in Planet First quarantine, and my aunt was having to have medical treatment. There were some other delays, and when my aunt finally made it to Earth she was told she was too late. That she’d missed the deadline to appear, by a matter of a few hours, and that her daughter had gone through the anonymisation process. The family spent years trying to find my cousin, but failed. Hospital Earth said they’d just need to wait and see if she made contact when she turned 14, but she never did.’

Dracia turned to look at Jarra, who was looking very uncomfortable and was studiously avoiding eye contact, fiddling with the side of her bedding.

‘Jarra,’ Dracia waited, until the other girl lifted her head to look at her, eyes unreadable but for a hint of fear. ‘My great-aunt’s name was Jarra Tell Morrath, and I think I’m your cousin.’

Utter silence. Neither girl knew what to say, both terrified of saying the wrong thing. Without a word, Jarra tapped a few times on her lookup, and a display appeared on the wall.

HospEarthWard #746E9B65T2
Parental Record – Names of Birth Parents
Gemena Ray Feren
Marak Tell Galad

Jarra turned a questioning glace towards Dracia, and Dracia nodded once. Despite all the odds, despite the inexplicable extra year, those were the right names. One name could be a coincidence, two might be a mystery, but three matching relatives, including the all-important clan prefix? Dracia launched herself at Jarra, and was surprised at the tightness of the hug she received back. No words were exchanged, and if both girls had moist eyes, well, no-one else was there to see.

Chapter Text

Despite fully intending to spend the evening getting to know her new cousin, Dracia was startled awake by someone urgently shaking her shoulder. Initially confused about who was in her room, Dracia couldn’t help but beam when she remembered the events of the previous day, and caught sight of a stressed looking Jarra urgently waving her lookup.  

Jarra looked about as coherent as Dracia felt – that is to say, not at all. As Dracia woke up enough to focus on the lookup being waved under her nose and scan the message there, she completely understood why. A very short, text only message from her aunt and uncle (Jarra’s parents!!) was there. It was clear to Dracia that they were terrified of Jarra’s rejection, but she was hopeful from Jarra’s reaction the previous day that such fears were unnecessary.  

‘What do I do?!’ Jarra urgently gasped. ‘I... I never intended on making contact with them, I just wanted to know who they were. And then I couldn’t refuse the Honour Ceremony, and now...’ she broke off as Dracia enveloped her in a hug.  

‘Call them,’ Dracia said simply. ‘I promise they’ll love you, and you’ll love them.’ It was a big promise to make, but she felt confident enough making it. Squeezing Jarra’s hand as she stood up, Dracia made her way towards the door. ‘I’ll give you some privacy while I go and get changed’.  

Aware that she’d fallen asleep in her clothes the night before, Dracia darted back to her room and took possibly the fastest shower she’d done since someone had sabotaged the hot water in the clan hall as a prank. Idly, she wondered why she hadn’t received any messages – if Jarra’s parents had seen the vid recording, the clan council at the very least must have too, and realised she was in the same course as Jarra. Opening her lookup, she winced. Dracia had completely forgotten that she’d set her lookup to block incoming calls after talking with Drago and Jaxon. Looking at the list of missed calls, her wince grew into a flinch. That was... a chaos lot of missed calls. Drago and Jaxon had tried calling back more than 15 times after she’d ended the call, and she could predict down to the minute when the vid recording had been released and watched by the clan. Fortunately, most people had only let one or two messages, but her father had left over 30.  

Deciding that that was a situation for Future Dracia to deal with, she quickly dressed and plaited her hair out of the way and made her way into breakfast. Rather to her surprise, Jarra was already there with her eyes glued to her lookup. Having grabbed some food, she slid in next to her cousin (HER COUSIN!) and gave her a gentle nudge. Glancing up at her, Jarra just muttered that her parents hadn’t picked up, before returning to her staring contest with her reflection. Dracia privately wondered if someone had sedated them, rather suspecting they’d spent the previous 11 hours as fixed to their lookups as their daughter now was.  

As the group made their way out to the dig site, Jarra was madly tapping away at her lookup. As she skimmed over towards the sensor sled, Dracia wasn’t fully convinced Jarra would be able to concentrate on tag leading. Jarra followed her towards the sled, pulling her to the side and urgently pressing her lookup into Dracia’s hand.  

‘I’ve set a call from them to be flagged as an emergency. If they call... if they call me Dracia, please pull me out so I can answer it.’  

Accepting the lookup, Dracia nodded firmly. Playdon might go nuclear, but for all she cared he could kick them both off the course. Clan was more important than anything.  

With the precious lookup beside her, Dracia was definitely struggling to stay focused on the sensors, and Jarra didn’t seem to be doing much better. The difference being, Jarra had the skills and experience to cover it, whereas Dracia kept getting concerned looks from Lecturer Playdon and Dalmora. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to have noticed the lookup on the bench next to her. Nuke it, if they hadn’t answered by the time the class returned to the dome, Dracia would call every member of the clan necessary to get them to their lookups!  

Fortunately, or unfortunately, that wasn’t needed. After about two hours of increasing tense work, Jarra’s lookup started chiming. Ignoring the instinctual panic the emergency message alert triggered in her, and ignoring Playdon’s outraged exclamations, Dracia spoke on the team circuit.   

‘Jarra, they’re calling.’  

Dropping her tag gun, Jarra immediately started skimming towards the sensor sled at top speed. As Playdon started to protest to Jarra, Dracia opened a private channel to him. ‘Sir, this is an emergency. I know it’s highly unorthodox, but Jarra NEEDS to answer the call.’  

Opening the door, Dracia pressed the lookup into Jarra’s frantic hands, and ushered her away down the clearway. As Jarra skimmed away, Dracia could see her tapping the answer button and greeting her parents, at long last.  

As Jarra skimmed out of earshot, Dracia turned to Lecturer Playdon apologetically. ‘I’m sorry I can’t give away any private details, sir, but it really was essential Jarra take that call.’ Lecturer Playdon suddenly looked rather sympathetic and nodded. Over the team circuit, he addressed the rest of the class.  

‘All right, Team 1 take a break, Team 2 take over. I want to make it perfectly clear however that nobody is to take this as a precedent. Making personal calls in the middle of a dig site is quite unacceptable.’  

As Dracia and Dalmora headed back towards the transport sleds, Dracia steadily ignored all the questions her classmates were peppering her with. Dalmora, as the only other person in the sensor sled when the call came in, was oddly quiet. Digging out the stasis box would only have taken Team 1 another half an hour, but it was almost twice that before it was triumphantly hoisted up and carried back to the sleds. By that time, Jarra had ended the call, and had been intercepted on her way back by Lecturer Playdon. He spoke to her briefly for a moment, before nodding and turning back. As they made their way back towards the class, Jarra put her hood back up and sealed it, unlike the rest of the class who were enjoying feeling the fresh air.  

Squeezing down onto a bench between Fian and Dracia, Jarra found Dracia’s hand and gave it a squeeze – difficult to feel through impact suits, and had a tendency to freeze up your hand, but the thought was there. Taking her cue from Jarra’s silence, Dracia managed to hold back the floods of questions she was desperate to let loose with. As they made their way back into the dome, Dracia mentally cursed as she remembered the queue of message on her lookup – a brief glance confirmed that their number had only increased since that morning, particularly those from clan council. She would have to answer them sooner rather than later, but the overwhelming size of the task made her very happy to justify her procrastination by focusing on Jarra.  

Lunch, followed by the rest of the day seemed to take an eternity, but finally the class was done for the day, and Dracia could usher Jarra away from the prying ears of their classmates into her room. As soon as the door closed, the cousins embraced tightly, and Dracia could feel the shoulder of her shirt growing damp as she heard Jarra whisper, ‘They... they want to know me. They want to meet me.’  

Dracia couldn’t do anything but hold her cousin as all her stress and fear came flowing out. As Jarra started to sniff and pull away , Dracia sat the two of them down on the bed, and pressed their foreheads together. For a moment she was propelled back in time, to all the times she and Persephone had sat like this whenever one of them had been upset. It was considered very intimate, and rarely done outside the closest family. Nuke it, Jarra had already made her way into the innermost part of her heart, and she wouldn't be letting go for anything. Not again. 

Later that evening as Dracia returned to her room, she mused that she really needed to sort out the absolute nightmare that her lookup was rapidly becoming. A quick check told her she was rapidly approaching running out of room for messages to be left. Not that she'd really expected any different given how many calls she'd got the first night. Leaving it 24 hours wouldn't help at all. One notification stood out however, not a missed call but a calendar reminder of the family call she'd organised. Nuke it all, she really couldn't escape that given she'd been the one to organise. Best to face the chimera to its face, hopefully her mother would be able to dilute her father's inevitable rant.   

It was 15 minutes early, but faced with the mountain of messages she really should respond to, Dracia decided that really, it would only be respectful to turn up early, and that she'd deal with the calls later. With Dragon being on the clan council, Persephone back at the clan hall, and Drago on assignment, hopefully she could get a good idea of the kind of reaction she'd be facing from across the clan. Particularly from clan council.   

Tapping her lookup to enter the virtual room she'd set up, Dracia threw the projection against the opposite wall and settle in to wait. Entering the room would trigger an alter to the invitees that the room was active, so she was not entirely unsurprised when her siblings appeared in short order. Drago still looked somewhat apprehensive of being shouted at again, but Persephone was all excitement, with a dash of youngest-sibling irritation at being left out of the exciting events.   

"Dracia! Why didn't you tell me!" Persephone exclaimed, almost before her image had solidified. Her arms were crossed, but she was almost vibrating in excitement.   

Dracia decided to play dumb. "Tell you what? About my course? Well, we had a very interesting economics lecture..." She was interrupted by Persephone lobbing a pillow at the wall, presumably towards Dracia's image.   

"About Jarra! She's alive? How is she alive? And you've been getting to know her for WEEKS and you didn't tell me? Didn't tell anyone! You're such a skunk! What's she like? Is she..."   

Dracia was well aware that once she got going, nothing would stop Persephone, so she only felt relief when the image of their father appeared, cutting Persephone off mid-rant. Madrigal appeared only a few seconds behind, and then the whole family was present. Before Dragon could open his mouth to start a similar rant to his youngest daughter, Madrigal cut in.   

"Dracia, dear, it's good to see you looking so well. I was worried when my messages couldn't give through. Perhaps you could give us all a run through of the... events of the last few days. Without being interrupted." Duly chastened, Dragon and Persephone both nodded and turned their attention towards Dracia. Drago seemed to have been trying to become one with the wall since Dragon appeared, but he also fixed his attention on Dracia.   

Unwilling to bait her parents as she had her siblings, Dracia took a deep breath and began to explain. She started right back at the beginning, how she'd initially been intimidated by another Military student who was so much better than her at everything. Persephone and Madrigal both appeared confused, but Dragon and Drago, both aware that impact suits were used by archaeologists as well and the Military, seemed to catch on almost immediately that this super-student was Jarra. Skimming very, very briefly over the tower crash, Dracia related the announcement of the Honour Ceremony. How she'd had no idea what was going on until Great Uncle Riak had announced the name Jarra Tell Morath (and neglecting to mention she hadn't recognised him until that point). How she'd initially been confused about the age difference but got confirmation from Great Uncle Riak, found out Jarra was Handicapped, then gone to her and confirmed her parents.    

Persephone, the only one who was unaware of what had happened when Jarra was born, had been outraged when her handicap was revealed and looked as if she was going to interject. Unfortunately for her, Dracia had plenty of experience with her sister (and father) and had surreptitiously muted them both as she began her explanation. Bitter experience told her that she'd never finish her explanation otherwise.   

"...so we spent yesterday evening getting to know each other, and yesterday Jarra spoke with her parents. It seemed to go well, but that’s why I've not had a chance to catch up with my lookup messages yet." Dracia finished, deliberately not going into detail about what she and Jarra had been talking about. Any trust Jarra had in family was delicate, and she would not be the one to break that by blurting out all her fears and insecurities to her family. None of the others on the call looked fully satisfied with her explanation, although Drago looked relieved about how she'd glossed over her call to him and Jaxon. In Dracia's opinion, none of them had covered themselves in laurels in that conversation, although she would certainly do it again if necessary.   

Madrigal beamed over the connection. "I'm glad you're getting the chance to know your cousin, Dracia. When she didn't make contact with the clan when she turned 14, we all feared the worst. While it was likely she just didn't want to make contact, no-one could ever rule out the possibility that she'd died and none of us would ever know. Even if she didn't want to maintain contact, the confirmation of her wellbeing will be a great comfort to her parents."   

"I think she will want to maintain contact," Dracia replied. "She seemed pretty overwhelmed that Aunt Gemena and Uncle Marack responded positively to her. I think she expected her parents to reject her, and that's why she didn't reach out. I don't know how she'll react to the idea of a clan though, from what it sounds like the only important familiy bonds here are between childen and thier biological parents. From what I've seen, found family seems to be seen as a second-best placeholder, and wider biological family, including siblings, as inevitably going to abandon you. I'm not even sure which of those categories she would place the clan in."   

The call fell silent for a minute, as each of the five plotted how best to integrate Jarra into the family and show her that she’ll never be abandoned (again). While they didn't want to scare her off, it was hard to stop the whole clan descending on Earth to envelope their newly found clan member. Dragon in particular, by virtue of his place on the clan council, was well aware of how carefully they would need to tread. While the council's plans had been frustrated three years ago when Jarra turned 14 and didn't contact them, in truth they only required relatively small adjustments to her contacting them now. The fact that she was considered 18 rather than 17 was unexpected, but not necessarily a bad thing as it meant she wasn't so much under the thumb of Hospital Earth.   

"Marack called me almost as soon as the vid was released." Dragon announced. "He and Gemena were naturally thrilled to have confirmation of their daughter's safety, good health, and identity, but were uncertain if she would contact them. She didn't at first, so in collaboration with clan council, they sent her a text-only message in the hope that making the first move would prompt her to reciprocate. Obviously, this was successful, and they are planning to extricate themselves from their current posting as quickly as possible. This process was already underway, as Marack had been offered command of the Earth solar arrays. The situation on K19448 is stabilising, so he should be able to hand over command within a month and take up his new post on Earth. Both he and Gemena have enough accumulated leave to take two full weeks off before beginning, and this should coincide with your course break, Dracia. At this time, they are hoping to meet Jarra properly in person, and devote that holiday to bonding as a unit of three. We are hoping, Dracia, that you'll be able to prepare Jarra for any major culture shocks she might face, and warn the clan of any potential issues before they develop."   

It was suprising, Dracia mused, that they'd be able to hand over a Planet First command so soon. By the sound of it, it was fortunate that it was already in the works, or it would likely take several months rather than a couple of weeks. It was also a wise decsion to exclude Gemelle and Jaxon for now - Gemelle was deep on an assignment from what Dracia knew, and the longer they could keep Jaxon out of the picture, the better as far as she was concerned. After having broken Fidelis, Jaxon didn't deserve to know the sister he'd thrown away, and it would be cruel to ask Jarra to forgive him or develop a relationship with him, especially before she understood just how much he'd stolen from her.   

Once Dragon finished laying out the clan's battle plan, the reminder of the call consisted of her parents and siblings questioning her about Jarra. What did she like, what was she like, how did they get on. The call lasted several hours, before Drago had to report for duty and Dragon needed to go to bed. Persephone also left at this point, murmuring something about homework, and stupid detentions. Dracia really didn't want to know. Soon it was just her and her mother left on the call, who turned the conversation back towards Dracia. How was she getting on, was she still enjoying the course? How was her friendship with Dalmora going? Dracia relaxed back to chat to her mother for a while, reminding her of the times when her mother would return to the clan hall after travelling and would make sure to spend an evening curled up with each of her children to talk about all the things she had missed. All too soon however, they both needed to go. After bidding her mother farewell, Dracia lay back on her bed and skimmed through the messages people had left her. Those from her parents and siblings she disregarded, as she'd already spoken with them. She doubted they would have included anything which hadn't been brought up in their talk.    

After recording a detailed message to her aunt and uncle, and a brief reply to the clan leader, Dracia removed the block on her lookup and set her alarm for the next morning. Lying back in her bed, she couldn't stop the grin spreading accross her face. Everything was going to be all right. 

Chapter Text

For a long time afterwards, Dracia would regret her inaction over that crucial week after finding out Jarra was her cousin. She thought she would have forever. But it was only a few days later during the evening meal that all the progress they had been making came crashing down.  

Team 1 had been sat together chatting when Jarra received an emergency mail and hurried out the room. Their friends looked mildly concerned, but Dracia just figured it was her parents calling for another chat. Dracia had been talking more with her aunt and uncle too, and they were thrilled with the progress they were making earning Jarra's trust. Events were moving faster than expected, and Marack had received confirmation that his replacement would be arriving the following day. Precautions would require both of them to go through quarantine, but it looked like they would be arriving on Earth rather sooner than planned. Jarra had confided her plan of taking them to see the tropical bird dome at Zoo Europe, and Dracia was sure that they'd love it. She'd joked about taking them to visit Rome Live, but Jarra had Opinions about their butchering of history for off-world visitors. Dracia had almost laughed herself silly, imagining a conversation about it between Jarra and Jaxon. Nuke Jaxon, how did her thoughts always seem to get back around to the slimeball.  

Even when Dracia herself got an emergency call, she lost her instinctive stab of panic when she saw it was her father. He always had a habit of misusing emergency calls to signal that he would keep calling until he got an answer. Rolling her eyes slightly, Dracia excused herself from her increasingly worried group of friends, and saw Lecturer Playdon shooting an alarmed look across the room. Both the Military students receiving emergency mail within several minutes of each other was bound to raise some eyebrows.  

Dashing to her room, Dracia answered the call to see her grim faced father staring down at her. Her heart suddenly suck into her shoes - this was not a social call. This wasn't her father Dragon, her Pater. This was General Tell Dramis. And she knew what an emergency Call from a General meant.  

As General Tell Dramis spoke, Dracia seemed to float out of her body. This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be happening. It was so nuking unfair, they'd just got their daughter back, Jarra had just got her parents back, and now they were gone. Gone. They had given their lives to give new worlds to humanity.  

When he finished his clearly scripted explanation, the mask on General Tell Dramis' face cracked for a moment, and her Pater came out from underneath. "Dracia, while I would never normally comment on the behaviour of the bereaved, you should know that Jarra did not respond well to the news, and she currently doesn't have the clan to support her. Please. Help her.'  

Nodding numbly as he ended the call, Dracia sat there in silence, mind whirring. The Tell clan was so small it was uncommon for them to lose anyone, even with most adults being Military. No-one close enough for her to have ever got a Call. The Call every Military child grew up dreading. Nuking hell. Nuking, nuking hell. That must have been the call Jarra had got, mere minutes before her. The call she had rushed out to answer, full of excitement and optimism. Dracia gave herself a few self-indulgent minutes to sob into her pillow, mourning the aunt and uncle she had loved growing up, never seeing enough of but always there when she needed it.  

Hiccupping a few times, she tried to pull herself together. There was nothing she could do for them now, all the hugs ungiven, all the words unsaid. Their souls released back into the universe. Now, all she could do for them is to support their orphaned daughter.  

Timidly, Dracia went to knock on Jarra's door, but there was no reply. Deciding to give her cousin the space she clearly wanted, Dracia returned to the main hall to the entirely unexpected sight of Jarra sat back among Team 1, looking slightly wobbly but nowhere near as upset as expected. Approaching the table, she heard Jarra smiling at Fian. "I've been horribly stressed lately, because of the Honour Ceremony and things getting dangerous on my parents' assignment, but everything is alright now." What. "Maybe we could watch those history vids you mentioned?"  

As Jarra and Fian ran off towards the portal to buy wine, Dracia could only sit there, utterly grazzed. That was... not the reaction she expected. That was not in the top 10 reactions she expected. Her mind had frozen like a lookup which had been dropped in a lake. She would have sat there in stasis forever if Dalmora and Amalie hadn't slid down either side of her, pressing their shoulders into hers.  

"...cia. Dracia?" She pulled herself together and offered a strained smile.  

"Yes? Sorry, my mind had portalled and left my body behind for a moment there." Neither of the other girls looked convinced, but didn't call her out on it.  

"Are you alright? Was your call bad news?" Amalie looked deeply compassionate, as did Dalmora. For a moment she was going to tell them everything, but could she? In retrospect, she wasn't certain if she or Jarra had ever revealed their relationship, and she needed to find out what the chaos Jarra was doing before she said anything. Betan culture required her to allow Jarra to take the lead in how to present this to outsiders. Until she knew how Jarra was planning to handle this, she couldn't say anything which might contradict her. Couldn't reveal that some of her closest clan had died. But she couldn't hide their deaths, their sacrifice either without breaking Fidelis. They had sacrificed their lives, and that needed to be honoured.  

"It... it's nothing good, but nothing I can talk about." Desperately scouring her mind, the best she could come up with was "Military Security have put a block on it. I've only been told because it involved my clan." Both girls looked slightly confused, but nodded understandingly. Justifying it to herself, she HAD only been told because of her clan. Military security DIDN'T announce emergency withdrawals. And she couldn't talk about it until she'd had a chance to talk to Jarra. Nothing she'd said was an actual lie, but she still felt dishonest.   

Desperately grasping for another subject, Dracia asked Amalie how her family was getting on. That attempt backfired spectacularly however, as it turned out that her brother, Henri, had just passed initial screening for Colony Ten. While he had apparently been talking about it for several years, it wasn't uncommon for Frontier men to talk longingly about the equal numbers of men and women, and no-one in the family had thought he was serious. "Mother's naturally very worried about him, but very proud too. She's so grateful to the Military, Dracia, for all the work the Planet First teams do to make the planets safe for colonists like Henri."  

Dracia missed her second chance to speak to her cousin about half an hour later, when Jarra and Fian arrived back with vast quantities of food, then vanished with a few cartons and a few bottles of wine. By now, Dracia had decided that Jarra's reactions to bad news must be more in the vein of her schoolfriend Katlia who, upon getting news that her sister had been severely injured on Military duty, had drowned herself in alcohol and sex to avoid having to accept it. The difference being, when Katlia returned to her panicked family several days later, she'd had the good news that the doctors said her sister would pull through. Jarra's parents would still be dead. But for now, while Jarra remained physically safe, the most compassionate thing she could do was to allow her cousin to work through her denial, retreat into a psychologically safe place, and be there to support her when Jarra was willing to come to terms with her loss.  

The message Dracia found waiting for her on her lookup after class the next day confirmed her plans. It was from clan council, and their instructions were very clear. Follow Jarra’s lead. She was working towards accepting her parents, not the clan. Jarra had the right to take whatever action she wanted against the clan for their breach of Fidelis. That included cutting them off. Rejecting the clan. Denying her parents. Until Jarra indicates differently, treat her as a friend rather than a clanmate.  

Treat her as a friend not a clanmate.  

Treat her as...  

Dracia nearly exploded at the final sentence, which ran counter to every bone, every muscle, every nerve in her body. Clan was CLAN. She would be treating Jarra like a clanless, honourless outsider, as if JARRA had been the one to break Fidelis. Doing this would reduce Dracia’s honour to dirt, but... but if the clan council was right, if this was Jarra’s way of removing herself from the clan, then it would also be honourless to force that connection on her. As if they could throw her away as a helpless baby, then come back in and force themselves, unwanted, into her life.  

True, she and Jarra had been growing closer since they’d discovered they were related, but did that give her the right to impose herself into Jarra’s life? Ideally, she would have a conversation with Jarra to establish her wishes, but that would be selfish while she was grieving her parents.  

Dracia continued to fret about it for several days, during which Jarra withdrew from the rest of the team to spend more time with Fian. Often, the pair wouldn’t even show up for breakfast, dashing in at the last minute before Lecturer Playdon started teaching, and vanishing again as soon as class was over. They still all sat together at lunch, and worked together on the dig site obviously, but they seemed more fractured than previously. Jarra and Fian spent all their time together, and Krath spent most evenings hanging around Mira or Sarah. Dracia, Dalmora and Amalie were becoming very close though, although the secrets she was keeping burned Dracia’s heart when her friends were so open and honest with her.  

Dracia and Dalmora were getting closer in particular after all it was only natural as the two of them worked together in the sensor sled. They’d been growing in confidence in their work recently, especially since Playdon trusted them enough to run the sensors for Team 1 while he tried to form up the other teams. He would make sure to be there at the start and kept an open channel running with them so he could hear their discussions, but he trusted them enough that he didn’t feel the need to be standing behind their shoulders anymore.  

Their time in New York seemed to be flying by, and as much as Dracia was loving immersing herself in history, she was also keen to explore Earth a bit more. She wasn’t quite sure whose idea the trip to Zoo America South (she strongly suspected Jarra though), but certainly wasn’t going to miss out once she heard about it!  

As she emerged from the portal into the zoo, Dracia was hit by a gust of warm, damp air. The hot, humid, sunny environment was so different to the freezing grey digsite, or the stale air of the grey dome. It was only as she looked around at the riot of colour in the flowerbeds and in the transparent domes beyond that Dracia realised quite how little colour she’d become accustomed to.  

“Warmth,” Dalmora’s voice sighed from behind Dracia. “Utter blizz.” As the group moved away from the portals, the three girls looked around curiously.  

“Oh, I like this!” Amalie exclaimed. “I’ve never been to a zoo. We haven’t got one at home yet, but it’s on the planetary development plan for five years time.”  

“Have you been to a zoo before, Dalmora?” Dracia asked curiously. Dalmora made an odd movement with her hand before rapidly cutting it off, a tell-tale sign that it was some sort of Alphan slang she wasn’t supposed to use. Apparently, her school and family had been very strict, but clearly Amalie and Dracia had been bad influences. Her grandmother, who’d been against her going to an off-world university, would be utterly horrified by her deportment by the time she returned for the holidays!  

“I’ve been once,” Dalmora admitted. “But I didn’t enjoy it much. It was on a school trip, so it was all walking around in a line and listening to long talks from the teachers, and we didn’t get to ask questions or spend much time with the animals or anything. There was a session where you could pet some of the animals, but we weren’t allowed to go to it because our teachers deemed it improper. Then we had lots of tests about everything we’d learnt when we got back.” She sighed. Dracia and Amalie traded looks – they’d make sure she enjoyed herself much more this time. Which started with-  

“Ice cream!”  

The class charged towards the ice cream dispensers as one. Ice cream was another new experience for Amalie, who eventually settled on the lemon and thyme flavour on the advice of her friends. Dalmora chose chocolate sashberry, and Dracia got her favourite rose-and-honey flavour.  

As Krath realised Jarra and Fian had disappeared and started to shout, the three girls walked rapidly towards the nearest dome. The last thing any of them wanted was an angry Krath hanging around them all day! The dome turned out to be the rainforest dome, and within seconds of stepping in, they rapidly exited the dome before their ice creams melted all over them. Having ducked around the back, out of sight of the rest of the class to finish off their ice cream and remove the extra layers of clothing they’d brought, the three re-entered the dome.  

Immediately, they were hit by the warm humid air, the sound of water dripping, and frogs chirruping all around them. Amalie gasped in amazement, and the three made their way around slowly, stopping to read all the signs and admire all the animals and plants. While most of the plants could currently be found in a wild, there was a sub-dome which grew previously extinct plants which had been brought back by genome recovery.  

That rainforest dome didn’t have any animals larger than a fist, but the connected domes had much larger animals, seperated from the visitors by plexiglass. Dalmora couldn’t help laughing at the monkeys in their enclosure, and Dracia took a step back to pull Amalie’s sleeve slightly, inclining her head towards a sign reading  

CAPUCHINS AND MARMOSETS 

Feeding and Talk : 11:00 
Meet the Monkeys : 13:30 
To ‘Meet the Monkeys’, please reserve your spot to avoid disappointment  

As both girls looked at Dalmora, who was still utterly entranced in the small troop which had gathered to chatter at her through the plexiglass screen, they were immediately in silent agreement. Amalie moved a little closer to her, blocking her view of Dracia who slipped off to talk to the ranger stood by the sign. A few minutes later, she slipped back into place, shooting a subtle thumbs up to Amalie and completely unnoticed by the enthralled Dalmora.  

As the clock struck 11.00, the ranger entered the enclosure and more people gathered to listen to the talk. The three girls were utterly captivated, not only by the humorous and interesting talk being given, but also by the antics of the monkeys as they descended on the other rangers who had entered with the food.  

“And behind me, you can see my colleague demonstrate why we always tie our trousers shut at the ankle.” The crowd burst out laughing as the presenter merrily gestured to a ranger behind her, who was trying to dislodge a small monkey who had crawled up the inside of their trousers, and who very much looked as if they wished to make a much ruder gesture towards the presenter. “These marmosets usually live in the upper canopy of trees, so their claws are very well adapted to climbing tree trunks. And, indeed, legs.”  

By the time the troublesome marmoset had been removed (and the ranger’s trousers tightly retied) and all the food had been given out, all three girls found their faces were starting to hurt from the massive grins they all sported. As they moved on to the next dome, they were hit with warm, dry air which felt very pleasant after the rather damp hour they’d spent in the rainforest area.  

Dracia’s favourite dome was the mountainous one, she loved the tiny, hardy flowers which existed so high up, and how well adapted they were. She also adored the alpacas, although Amalie was visibly nervous around them, so they didn’t get too close. They were all utterly enchanted by the brightly coloured birds who soared around the dome, hiding in trees and strategically placed nooks and crannies in the cliffs.  

Afterwards, they stopped for lunch, and decided to splurge on the cafe rather than get one of the usual offerings from the dispensers. There were so many options on the menu though, that they struggled to make a decision. After all sitting and staring at the menus for a while, Amalie suggested that they could order a variety of dishes to share, then they wouldn’t need to decide on just one thing to try. The other two quickly agreed, and before long the table was almost groaning under the range of traditional dishes the zoo offered.  

Over lunch they discussed their favourite parts of the zoo – Dracia thought it was the view from the top of the cliffs in the mountainous dome with all the birds flying around, Amalie loved the frogs from the first rainforest dome they went in, and Dalmora waxed poetic about the monkeys. Dracia and Amalie shared a knowing glance, before checking the time – 13.15.  

After paying, Amalie announced to Dalmora that they had a Suprise for her. Substituting the shawl Dalmora had been wearing over her sari as a blindfold, the two plotters led her back to the monkey enclosure, and the ‘Meet the Monkeys’ session which Dracia had sneakily booked them all on to earlier. As they dramatically removed the shawl from Dalmora’s head to reveal their destination, she gasped, hands flying to her mouth. For a moment, Dracia thought Dalmora was going to burst into tears, but rather she flung her arms around Dracia and Amalie, pulling them into a tight hug that almost strangled them.  

“You two are the best friends anyone could ever hope to have.”