Adult Test, Julie Steimle [ebook reader with internet browser .TXT] 📗

“Opportunities are usually disguised by hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” –Ann Landers—

Zormna Clendar stood, waiting impatiently next to the communications computer with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her ears were perked for any sign of the results for the last Adult Test, which would be sent to that access computer that day. Her dark green eyes were keen on it. She had passed her sixth year mark[1], equal to that of twelve Parthan years, give or take a few months. This was the bare minimum age for anyone to take the Adult Test. Most who tried so young failed. But Zormna was not counting on failure. She was the most advanced cadet in the Surface Patrol on Arras, and failure was not a something she experienced often.

She stood in the main corridor of the Alpha District, watching other Surface Patrol officers pass by on duties, though in reality she was impatient for the results. She had to know.

Zormna let her mind wander as she stood, looking about the inner chamber near the entrance hall of the Alpha District. It was home for her. Comfortable, organized and safe. However, with adulthood, it would be time to leave home—and most graduated cadets did not stay in the Alpha District. They either reentered the Arrassian underground city proper, the middlecity usually, or they joined the Patrol full time then shipped into one of the other districts, such as the Gamma or Epsilon.

Leaving home.

A shiver ran through her as she remembered the day she left her uncle’s for the orphan training school. Before that she recalled when her parents were still alive how they talked about leaving home for some place called the U.S. where her mother had an aunt. Both times there were hopes for a better life for her. But each time she really just wanted to stay in the home that she was in. It wasn’t too different now. She really didn’t want to leave Alpha, but she heard that there were more opportunities in the other districts, places to grow, to become even better.

Thinking of her parents caused tightness in her chest, and she tried to shake it off. Unlike so many children when traumatized, Zormna had a vivid recollection of the early days of her life. It was as if her trauma had created a magnifying glass in her memory so she could never forget it—not anything, including the sounds of their massacre. She could still see her parents’ faces before her eyes as if she had just seen them that morning. She could still hear their voices in her ears as if they had just spoken to her. Zormna even remembered the last things they said to her. “Don’t say a word or they will find you.”

She shuddered and glanced across the corridor at the blank control panels where two men in blue uniforms men crossed Zormna’s vision. She blinked at them, her thoughts returning back to the present. Blue was not a common Surface Patrol color, only worn by the Kevin in fact. She narrowed her eyes at the figures, recognizing them for what they were—P.M.s.

Zormna scowled at the two men, watching them as they continued to walk right up to the compound gatekeeper, Alea Dezbah. How they got this far was not a mystery. Alpha District allowed certain People’s Military officers to enter the compound but only as far as the front gate. They were perhaps the only Surface Patrol district to do so. The others would not have opened their doors for them at all, though in the recent years the People’s Military had been badgering the district leaders to let them in without the Kevin’s approval. Right away the Alea at the gate questioned the two men, taking their identi-cards to check them, though his real purpose was to keep them out as long as possible.

From where Zormna stood she had a good view of their conversation. It had something to do with a computer, but then most requests from the People’s Military did, if it did not involve escaped prisoners or fugitives from the law. On most normal occasions, the Surface Patrol minded their own business while the People’s Military went about theirs. Most in the Patrol would rather spit on a P.M. than talk to him anyway, especially since most orphans were orphaned because of the P.M.s. But the one unfortunate problem with being a Surface Patrol officer was that occasionally the solider had to work with the People’s Military. It was twisted kind of alliance, one they had to keep to in order to maintain their status under the government. 

“Her! She’s a cadet! We want Alea Arden!” She heard one of the People’ Military officers cry out.

Zormna perked up her ears. Now that she was included in the conversation it did not seem wrong to eavesdrop.

“Zormna happens to be a fine engineer. She can reprogram that computer in no time. Alea Arden could do no better,” she heard the Alea say.

One of the P.M.s growled as the conversation dropped down to a hush again.

P.M.s—scrapes, she really hated them. If it had been left up to her, the Surface Patrol would split from them entirely.

Her best friend Cadet Salvar came up from behind.

“What’s up?” Salvar glanced over to where she was looking, his blue eyes only mildly curious.

“P.M.s,” she said, and then leaned back against the wall.

Salvar took a harder peek at the men and shrugged. He then peered up his red head at the communications computer with a smirk.

“You’re waiting for the results, aren’t you,” he said with a grin on his freckled face. “Don’t worry, Zormna. You can take the test again with me.” His voice cracked.

Zormna sniffed. “I won’t be taking it again.”

“Aw, Zormna, you can’t quit. You will end up an impaired adult at seventeen[2] if you don’t watch it,” the boy replied.

Zormna shook her head. “No Salvar. I’m going to pass.”

Leaning closer to her, he laughed. “Nobody has passed this young, and you and I are on the same level.”

Zormna sniffed again, sticking her nose up. “Not so. Girls develop earlier than boys.”

Salvar stopped grinning. His voice cracked again, squeaking high. “You eater! That’s not my point.”

Zormna turned from him. “Oh.”

Salvar rolled his eyes, changing the subject a little as he turned his eyes back on the bickering P.M.s in the gate room. “What’s with them?”

“Don’t know. Don’t really care,” she said.

Salvar scowled. “Oh, come on. P.M.s don’t visit that often. Something’s up.”

Just as he said this, Alea Dezbah strode over to them with the two People’s Military officers in tow. Salvar stood straight up and hit Zormna in the stomach to do the same. She stubbornly straightened up, though looking a little hurt by Salvar’s insistence, especially in the presence of P.M.s.

“Cadet Zormna, I want you and Cadet Salvar to go to the People’s Military compound with these two Durals. They need to upgrade their computer and add new codes.” From the Alea’s gaze she could tell he insisted at the order, doing anything to keep those officers out of his hair.

She set her hand on her hip with a puzzled look. “But shouldn’t Alea Arden—?”

“The Alea is busy at the moment,” Alea Dezbah said, though the People’s Military officers gave brisk nods in agreement with her. The Alea cast them a tired look as he said, “He’ll relieve you as soon as he can.”

Zormna peered up at the P.M.s even as they glared down at her as if she were the last thing they wanted to bring with them. To them the petite, yet fully-matured feminine-shaped twelve-year-old looked more like a liability than an asset. Her head haloed by gold and red curls, she squared her shoulders and held up her chin properly high, staring sharply with her fiery green eyes that usually made people nervous.

Salvar straightened up too, to match her.

“Come on then,” the annoyed People’s Military officer said almost as if sulking.

Zormna promptly followed the men in a brisk march to the door. Salvar tagged along, directing confused glances back at Alea Dezbah who, most relieved, returned to his post.

The People’s Military officers led Zormna and Salvar to a flight platform used for prisoner transport that they were towing behind two P.M. flight scooters. When she saw it, Zormna took a step back.

“I won’t ride on that! I can certainly fly there on my own!” She turned at once to get her own flight scooter.

Salvar latched on her arm, pulling her as he climbed onto the flatbed, urging her up. Zormna stubbornly stood fast, looking likely to kick him as she folded her arms.

One P.M. had already mounted his scooter and looked back. The other tromped over to her. “You will get on the platform without any further argument, flymite.”

Zormna glared back up at the haughty High Class man. “I will not. That is for prisoners and convicts. I am neither. I am a pilot. I fly. I do not ride behind blood sucking—”

“Zormna!” Salvar broke in quickly, still pulling on her arm with a desperate expression on his face. “Get on the platform. It won’t hurt to ride just once.”

Continuing to glare at the man, she refused to budge.

Perhaps realizing that they were going nowhere fast if he didn’t schmooze her a little, the P.M. spoke in a friendlier, though obviously fake tone. “We haven’t another flight scooter. Our time is short. The platform will have to do.”

Making a face with a glace at Salvar who was pleading with all his energy for her to be reasonable, she hefted her chest up in a deep breath and relented.

“Alright. Just this once.” Zormna turned and stepped disgustedly onto the hovering craft then flopped onto the bench across from Salvar, giving him one of those, I-hope-you-are-satisfied looks. She kept her back to the P.M.s, as she didn’t even want to look at them.

Salvar casually, and mostly relieved like, stared off to the side.

The People’s Military officer tromped back to his scooter growling to himself.

The men started the engines up, hovering a foot and a half over the floor before lurching forward through the open main doors. The flight platform jostled behind them.

“Watch it!” Zormna growled, almost thrown off her seat to the floor of the vehicle.

They did not hear her, neither did she think they would care if they did hear. Normally they latched all prisoners to the poles that rimmed the platform so that such people would not even be able to jump off. Instead the P.M.s kept driving, flying the vehicle back through the Surface Patrol corridors to the Surface Gate.

Salvar leaned back against the pole, the air blowing the hair from his face. He smiled. Zormna scowled, having her own short crop of curly hair blown around from the back of her head into her face. Staring at the hair that whipped past her cheeks, curling and twisting like snakes and vines, she sighed, thinking of her mother who she remembered had long hair that curled into ringlets nearly halfway down. She remembered how beautiful she was, her dimpled smile next to her father’s playful grin, two friendly faces now gone from existence, all because they were…. 

Zormna let that thought fall as her eyes fixed on the Surface Gate coming up through the tunnel. The bright lights and crowds of people bustled about the shops as they flew past then above to the higher transit tunnels. The sky traffic in the underground city commerce center was jammed with other cars and flight scooters in each level, some of them other Surface Patrol officers, each one blinking at her on the back of a prison platform—most jeering at her. Some jealousies never ended. So of course they would take advantage