Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine

of us.” Hood now drawn, the Taelach paused on the birth room threshold, her muscular shoulders leaving room for little else. “Full separation is best. Tell your woman the child is dead.” The rhythmic clicking of her boot heels faded into the early morning mists, replaced, only briefly, by a quickly answered infant’s bawl of hunger. Taelach babies were taught to cry in silence. Laiman, heavy-hearted, turned back to his wife, wishing he could learn the same.

Chapter Two
Listen to your Raisers. Through their wisdom and experience you will rise above Autlach prejudices.
—Taelach saying
Malley leaned out the window, eager for a better view of the courtyard below. “They’re posting! It’s about time. Where do you think they’ll send us? How about a look, LaRenna?” Malley turned to see her roommate closed-eyed and round-shouldered over the music recorder in her petite lap. The earpieces blocked all outside noise as she hummed with the music. Malley sighed and snatched a pillow from the sleeping corner. It grazed the side of LaRenna’s face, knocking an earpiece from her curl-covered head. “Hey! You gonna meditate all day or do we get to see our posts?”
“They’re posting? It’s still early, isn’t it?” LaRenna set the recorder on her chair and joined Malley by the window. “Let’s give it a few minutes to clear out.”
“How crowded can it get? There are only eighty of us up for posting this training term.”
“And all but two of us are down there right now.” LaRenna glanced at the courtyard. “Besides, Grandmaster Quall is there. You want one of her once-overs?”
Malley’s nose wrinkled with disdain. “Not particularly. Quall is still after me because I sneaked out of an Autlach customs seminar.”
“You should’ve stayed.” LaRenna’s finger spotted one of the closures of her roommate’s polished tunic buttons. “It was a damn sight more interesting than that Engineering Maintenance trainer you took in its place.”
“That’s what you say.”
LaRenna gave a cherubic grin only she could manage. “With that class on your records the only thing you’ll EVER be doing is scanning cell reading boards. And it’ll probably be on a repair dock.”
“What’s wrong with a repair dock?” Malley’s mouth puckered.
“Too tame.”
“Tame?” The remark earned LaRenna a sour glare.
“Exactly! No thrill. No challenge.”
“I’m sure the Iralians would be more than honored by your presence at the truce line.” Malley peered hard at LaRenna. “What’s it been now, twenty passes? You’d rather post there I suppose?”
A stray flounce of hair fell across LaRenna’s dimpled chin as she shook her head. “Staring down scale backs? Not me. I’ve a sense of adventure. An explorer vessel is more my style.”
“For you, maybe, but not me. Besides, explorer vessels have little call for Kimshees, or”—Malley made a dramatic pause and poked LaRenna’s upper arm—“snipers either.”
“Sniper?”
“Come on, Renna.” Malley chortled. “Everybody knows your perfect kill ratio on your last three plasma bow exams.”
“I didn’t tell you that.”
“Didn’t have to. Everyone in your training squad’s pissed that you ruined the point curve. And seeing as I’m your roommate . . .” Malley shrugged.
“They should have practiced more.”
“Practice my eye! The only thing you’ve ever practiced hard at is a recorder box. Oh yeah, and bitterwine.”
LaRenna crossed her arms. “Not true! I had to work to get a decent score in linguistics and you know it.”
“Decent?” Malley snorted indignantly and pulled a hair from the corner of LaRenna’s pouting mouth. “You scored fluent in ten Aut dialects.”
“So? You have to be good at something. I seem to recall you gliding through engineering courses I barely scored proficiency in. I’ll never get pilot qualified at this rate.”
“It fascinates me. That’s all.”
“And bores me.” LaRenna’s lighter mood seemed to return. “Too many dry numbers and schematics to memorize.”
Malley’s slowly reacting features started to pull with concern. “Guess we like different things, don’t we?”
“Then why have you bunked with me the last three passes? I’ve kept you in trouble.” Malley, with an expression now on the verge of piteous, joined LaRenna and fingered the fringed edge of the blanket roll nearest her. The reason was plain enough, but Malley always proved too reserved to admit it. “I don’t know. Maybe because you never let me take myself too seriously.”
“What’s the use? Life’s no fun if you can’t see the humor in things.” LaRenna winked at her friend, a gesture that sent Malley’s heart soaring. “Sometimes, the humor has to be coaxed out. Call it creativity.”
Malley lowered her head as an embarrassed chuckle escaped her happy mouth. “Like the time you switched activation agents in Master Riles’s lab? I think she failed to see the humor in the test fuel cells foaming and freezing when they were supposed to be charging. I don’t remember you laughing about those seven off days you spent on night sentry post as punishment either. Mighty creative of you, Renna.”
“You laughed enough for both of us,” LaRenna said.
“That’s because it took an entire moon cycle for the green discoloration to wear off your hands and arms. Was body art what you had in mind?”
“Bet I’ll never be posted on a cell maintenance station.” LaRenna punctuated the retort with a smart flick of her tongue. “That’d have to be boring duty. Worse than a stinking repair dock.” She checked the courtyard again.
“Quall still down there?” queried Malley in futile hope.
“Of course.” LaRenna settled her back against the sill. “She even gives the graduates a hard time. Right now she’s doing a number on poor Salu. Isn’t she senior level?”
“Think so. I wonder what she did.” Malley’s voice remained low, as if believing Quall long-eared enough to hear three floors up. “We’d best stay out of sight. Get back from the window.”
LaRenna cast her roommate an all too familiar grin. She loved to push things one step further whenever possible, a fact that had landed her at disciplinary hearings on several occasions. “But Malley,” she cried with a wave to the courtyard’s occupants. “If I lean out a little more I can spit in the center of