Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [142]
Tasia took off her helmet and turned away to hide her grin, but Robb Brindle saw it and shared the smile with her. "Thanks again," he said, taking the helmet and helping her stow the suit, though Tasia was perfectly capable of doing it herself. Still, part of her appreciated his attempt at gallantry. She found it amusing.
They sat together in the mess hall. Tasia listened to the rowdy trainees making jokes about the phlegmlike consistency of the supposed vegetables, but she found them quite tasty. Roamers didn't have prissy taste buds, and they knew that nutritious food was more important than flavorful delicacies.
"So what's your story, Brindle?" she asked, raising her eyes to his open and undeceitful face. "You don't fit in with the rest of those kleebs."
He looked troubled. "I suppose it takes another misfit to notice that but, yeah, I'm different from them. Those guys signed up on a dare because they heard King Frederick's call, and now most of them regret doing it. Me, I always knew I was going to join the EDF, ever since I was a kid."
"Not one for extravagant ambitions, I see," Tasia said.
"Hey, I was an Eddie brat. My parents were in the military, and I grew up in army stations on Antarctica, the Gobi. We were even stationed on Mars for two years. Seemed perfectly natural to me." Robb quickly ate his rations. "I never really thought about another alternative. Always knew what I would do."
He pushed his tray aside and leaned closer. "Turnabout time. What are you doing here? Roamers don't exactly line up to join the military. I'm sorry about how the others treat you, you know. They've got to have someone to haze until they find a real enemy, I suppose."
She shrugged. "From what I've seen, that type of behavior's often a symptom of particularly small penis size."
Robb chuckled. After the joke had passed, Tasia found herself spilling the story about Ross and the Blue Sky Mine and how she had run away to join the Eddies. He looked sympathetic, and then thrilled to hear a direct account of an encounter with the mysterious enemy aliens. He was also fascinated to hear her sketchy descriptions of Roamer life, which was a mystery to most people. Robb finished his cup of bitter coffee, saw that hers was empty too, and snagged it on his way to the refill dispenser. He brought back a full cup for her and set it in front of her hands, though she had not asked for it.
"It must be difficult for you Roamers to live without a home, when the whole galaxy is just waiting to be settled, so many Hansa worlds up for grabs. I'm surprised you keep living in your ships like gypsies."
"It's not like that," Tasia said. "We prefer to depend on our own resources and abilities and not get too coddled like those morons in the decompression exercise today. They wouldn't survive ten minutes of a regular day's work on a Roamer colony."
"Neither would I, probably," Robb said.
Tasia laughed at him. "Unless I was there to lend you a hand, like today. But just because we don't have settlements on beautiful planets, don't imagine that Roamers have no homes. Our 'home' is among our people, wherever they may be. It's not a location but a...a concept."
"Like family," Robb said. She nodded, although his comment brought back thoughts of Jess, then her father...and finally Ross and how hard he had worked to make a success on Golgen. And with that, her anger toward the faceless alien enemy that had murdered Ross for no reason rose hotter inside her.
She left her coffee untouched on the table and returned her tray to the recycler. Robb looked after her, probably wondering what he had done wrong. Tasia just wanted to be alone.
65 JORAX
When occasional Klikiss robots appeared on the inhabited worlds in the Spiral Arm, usually traveling on Ildiran transports, they were curiosities, treated with awe and amazement by anyone who saw them. They arrived like sentinels, self-contained mysteries, speaking little