Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [22]
Even the nearest tram station was the Academy stop, so she couldn’t catch a transport there. She started walking, giving the Academy a wide berth, toward the nearest public station. With her short legs, it would take her a good while to get there. But at least the project was under way.
“Hey! Watch it!”
Felicia Mendoza spun around. She had materialized on a busy sidewalk, and a small knot of pedestrians had to part, like a river flowing around a rock, to get around her as she gathered her bearings. One of the men fixed her with an angry glare, as if it had been her fault where she wound up. Not that he’d have any way of knowing it wasn’t, of course.
But she wasn’t sure what her location was. She was in an urban canyon, with towers of steel around her, but there were many places in San Francisco that could be so described. Felicia wasn’t very familiar with the city-she came from El Salvador, and had moved here only to attend the Academy. She had spent one summer interning at Jupiter Station, and knew that distant locale far better than she did this earthly one.
Getting her bearings wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem, she knew. San Francisco was a temporary home to many tourists and out-of-towners, and the city’s heads took great pains to make it a comfortable place to visit. Kiosks located every few blocks showed transit information, complete with maps and schedules. All she had to do was find the nearest one and she’d be on her way to the meeting point. She was anxious to hear where everyone else had landed, and what their first goal was.
So far, this whole thing seemed like a great deal of fun. She didn’t necessarily expect that it would stay that way. But it might. Being an ordinarily optimistic type anyway, she was willing to accept that small chance.
With a smile on her lips and a spring in her step, she started up the block.
Boon’s feet were soaked. He found this extremely annoying, because it meant that someone had entered coordinates wrong, or there had been a transporter malfunction, or the transporter crew was just plain trying to make life difficult for him. The first two scenarios could have resulted in death or horrific injury, so all things considered, finding himself standing up to his ankles in the freezing surf of the Pacific Ocean wasn’t really as bad as it might have been. But he didn’t think it was either of those two problems-great care was always taken with transporter use, and the crew would not have been haphazard about where they sent a cadet on an Academy project.
Which meant that it was intentional. That ticked him off no end. He didn’t know if it was because he was a Coridanian, or if they simply chose random cadets to harass, just because they could, but the motive didn’t matter to him. He tried to remember their names, so he could make life miserable for them once he was a senior officer, but the names wouldn’t come to him.
He waded ashore. The beach was a dozen or so meters of rocky sand, and he trudged across it, water streaming from his legs and a scowl on his brick-red face.
When this is over, he thought, I’m going to have a serious talk with a certain transporter crew.
Will thought for a moment that a mistake had been made. They were all supposed to be beamed into San Francisco, but he was in a deep forest somewhere. Early sunlight slanted between trunks and leaves, highlighting dust motes and the last traces of morning fog. The air had a rich, fecund aroma he had been used to, in his youth, but had almost forgotten-the tang of pines, the dusky dry smell of summer grass in an arid clime. Tall trees surrounded him and the brush was so thick he couldn’t even see through it. Branches scratching at his hands and tugging at his clothing, he forced his way through the heaviest of it.
A few minutes of working his way out of the tangle brought him to a clearing and an explanation. Thick grass and low shrubs had grown over an old road here, splitting the roadway and