Gatestown
Luna
Sol System
“My mom always told me not to marry a soldier or a cop,” Ellie said with great exasperation. “And here I married both.”
“Marine,” Major, soon to be Lieutenant Colonel, Zollern sharply corrected.
“Whatever.” In some Marine households, that could have started a fight. Brenell Zollern was not such a man. For starters, he saw Ellie too infrequently since his transfer to the Mackinac. They met, fell in love and married while he was a Lieutenant first recovering on, and then serving at Fort Arnold, about two hundred thousand clicks from here. “Here we have peace, and what do you do? You sign on for the first deep space patrol you can find.”
Zollern shrugged. “I’ll retire a rank higher. Every little bit helps.” Since he was assigned to Mackie, Zollern had little time to spend with his wife. Whenever he had leave, most of the time was spent in transit. A few weeks of time together in the past few years were nowhere near enough. She aged far more gracefully than he. Ellie’s dark hair lacked any gray and her brown eyes were as alive with hope as ever. His eyes could never look anything but warn out, not after what he saw while a ground pounder.
Ellie only shook her head in dismay as the two shuffled down one of Gatestown’s streets. Shuffle was all anyone could do on Luna, unless they were born and bred here. Newcomers, especially those from Earth, have difficulty adjusting to the low gravity. Zollern had trained and served in various gravities. After so long in the Fleet’s standard half-gravity, he had little trouble adjusting to Luna. Ellie, on the other hand, stumbled every now and again.
“It’s not as if you’ll have difficulty finding a job,” Ellie chastised him. She saw no need for him to stay in service any longer than the war dictated. By all looks, the war was over and he should be transitioning back to civilian life. Millions of others were in the process.
Zollern frowned at the idea. “Considering that an upward swing in unemployment is going to cause an equally upward swing in petty crime, I’d say I should have no problem in civilian policing.” He just hoped he never had to arrest anyone he served with for something petty. All the people from Luyten Prime that he served with were dead, so that should not be much of an issue. Though it was in the Sol Sector, Luyten received little in the way of visitors. The system just lacked the excitement that Sol or others had to offer.
“You just have to find that cloud inside the silver lining, don’t you?” Ellie sighed. She knew Zollern was not a very optimistic man long before she married him.
“I wished you would have brought Serena with you.” His daughter was conceived on one of those infrequent homecomings a couple of years past. She was in her terrible twos now, and from all the letters, quite the terror.
“Then we wouldn’t have as much time to ourselves,” she said, gently nudging him.
“True,” everything had its price. “But I would like a chance to get to know my own daughter again. Does she ever remember me?”
“Of course she does,” Ellie reassured him, though Zollern was not convinced. Humans did not have much in the way of memories at that young age. Kilrathi of that age had better memories, but only because they reached maturity much faster.
“Has she called my old man father yet?” He put a harsh emphasis on the Luyten pronunciation of the word. “Come to think of it, I’m not even sure which language she speaks.”
Ellie smiled. “She gets English and German confused at time. She’ll speak German better than me before too long.” Considering Ellie knew not a word of the language before she married Zollern, it would not be all that difficult. She spent more than half of the past two years on his world. When it came down to whose planet they were settling down upon, Ellie was glad to pick Luyten; it was far less populous than Sirius Prime, not to mention more reserved and quieter.
“I suppose I’ll get to know her all over again once I get back from this patrol.” His time on the Absolution should last between six months and a year. After that, or rather after he was sure the war was over, and then he could come home. He still did not buy into this cease fire. It was just too out of character. “They send me home, and that should mean the frontier is quiet.”
“Expecting trouble?” Ellie asked.
Zollern almost laughed. “Always. Probably more from the crew than anything else.” Last year he had his hands full trying to find a pair of Mandarins operating onboard Mackie. They were low ranking spacemen who managed to land themselves in engineering. Had he not caught them before they sabotaged the ship’s drive—suffice it say, he would not be here now thinking about it. Such foolishness; did they really expect to survive when the Kilrathi destroyed the ship?
“Maybe from some of the locals too.” Zollern added. “The frontier is home to plenty of hot-heads. No doubt some of the Cats are displeased with this so-called cease fire, so they might be up to no good as well.” The only people he did not expect much trouble from where the Birds, and only because they lacked the technology to be much of a problem. “Searching their ships would be problematic since the Cats tend to take that sort of behavior personally.”
Ellie shook her head. “Just one more year. It’s funny, I’ve heard plenty of Admirals and War Hawks on the news use that phrase, but I don’t think they mean it in the same way. Just one more year, and we can have a regular family life.” In a way, his departure was a small blessing. Being a civilian, she did not have the luxury of being able to fly all over the galaxy. A year will be more than enough time to visit her parent in Sirius and make it back to Luyten before her husband returned home.
Even with a jump point connecting Luyten with Sirius, travelling there was not as simple as hoping on a shuttle. Interstellar travel was expensive. The jump point to Sirius from Sol was less than a day’s flight, but from Luyten to Sol took nearly a week, it being so far from Luyten I. Not to mention such flights were so infrequent that she had to take the route through Cygnus to reach Earth in time to catch Zollern. After this—she did not know. This might be the last chance she had to see her relations.
Zollern knew what she meant in both instances. Perhaps he should keep his eyes open on the Admirals as well while out on patrol. They can be hotheads too, and unlike militias, they have some serious firepower to play with. Just look what happened to Tolwyn. Sure, Zollern felt that the politicians were so desperate for peace that they sold him out, but that was not the main issue. He did disobey the ceasefire order, and as a trained officer of the police, Zollern firmly believed that the law was the law. It did not matter if he agreed with it; his responsibility was simply to enforce it.
“One more year,” Zollern echoed. “After that, we’ll settle down and catch up on all the lost time. Do not worry Ellie, after that, we will be together for the rest of our lives.”