Departure gate, Sanglamore Academy, 3088...
The young man isn't wearing cadet grays. He turned his uniform in after quitting. "I'm done." he'd said.
It wasn't really true, but the humiliation he was supposed to feel, was absent. Simon wasn't the chubby, oversized boy he'd been when he was at Groningen.
at least, on the outside. Years of constant exercising, carefully watching his diet along with his studies, he'd been 'the pick' just at the start of this term.
Simon was a big man, even at eighteen, but he was no longer a FAT man.
It really came down to professor MacAllum's course. It came down to honesty versus success, to choosing between writing what he knew to be true, versus what the professor wanted to hear. Simon decided he couldn't do that.
so he quit.
He walked along the paved road leading to the second most prominent military academy in the Lyran Commonwealth as a former student, rather than hiring a cab, or calling a car, or using a car.
cars passed him as he walked, and to his right, in the fields of Sanglamore, he could see his former cadet colleagues doing all the things he'd spent part of this year doing.
Things he was not going to be doing himself. At least, he would not do them here.
an automobile slowed as he passed the corner gate of the Sanglamore installation.
"Heyo, Tallboy." The driver had a lilting accent, with a strange fluid guttering, "You needa rida yah? Specepaht?"
He stopped and looked through the open passenger window.
The driver was a woman, almost freakishly thin, with the frail build that could never have evolved in one gravity.
"Yeah, I'm heading for the spaceport."
"Kammaboahd, sallright, outa th' open?" she asked.
it took him a moment to process that he was being offered a ride. "Yes please, and thank you?"
the door hissed open, and she folded the seat forward, "baggage th' hold yah."
He put his bag in the back seat, the front seat folded back and she let him get seated and buckled as the door closed.
"Gotta feeelin." the woman said, "Joo drop out, or kekked?"
"I quit." he confessed.
"ah. 'sokay. you know dirtyfeet schools, they shit for teaching." she cracked as she brought the car up to highway speed. "You gone home, or you got better thoughts?"
it was really prying, but Simon felt like he could talk to this stranger about what he couldn't talk to his own family. "I don't know." he said, "Honestly, I just...I wanted to make it through the Naval program, but the lies, the dishonesty..."
She nodded. "You's got th' look, yah. Where's 'home'?"
"uh...well, my family's on Gallery...except for a few relatives on Tharkad..." he sighed, "God, they're going to be livid."
"So don' tell ehm." She said easily, then changed tacks, clearing up her speech a bit. "If you had a ticket, where would that ticket go?"
He frowned, thinking, before he spoke. "Spider moon, in the Kowloon system, if I could pass their entry requirements, that's where I would go."
"Set on bein a soldier then?" she asked.
"I am eighteen, and a Lyran, and patriotic...at least, I think I am."
"Hm. That's a spendy ticket. How'sabout this, You crew on my ship as an apprentice, we're running the circuits, make Kowloon in October next year, If you do good, I'll sign your guild certification, that's extra points on the Coasties' entrance exams right there, sound good?"
His heart lifted, "Yeah!! I'll do that!"
"Mind it's hard work, and not easy, especially for a Dirtyfoot and a greenie, but I know to trust it when I get the feeling. By the way, Beth Zimmer, you'll be calling me horrible names when you think you're private, and 'skipper' when you're on duty." she smiled, "but I'll put the stars under your feet, youngster. What's your name?"
"Simon...Simon Hogarth." he said, flinching a little.
"Huh, weird name, nice and biblical though." the car reached the off-ramp to the spaceport, "We'll get your papers set up at the shed before lift. We'll need to, you don't have a Skin and you'll need one, I'll take part out of your wages for it for the first three months, and if you work out? maybe you'll change your mind and work to get a stake in your own ship."
"I...I don't know what to say?"
"Say...'yes, skipper, i like that', and appreciate the opportunity. We Folk rarely get to recruit Dirtyfeet the old fashioned way anymore." she said with a chuckle.