Even in the middle of the celebrations which came with winning the first campaign of a war, 2LT Gibbons and his platoon sergeant Abbot insisted on keeping up with the platoon's PT, tactical exercises and drills, but after months of war, the days after the queen's death still counted as blissful relaxation. Toshiko's shoulder was being fixed without any need for reparatory medicine, and she predictably insisted on keeping the scar. Gibbons had ordered her to keep the arm in a sling, though that didn't spare her from PT – she had spare arms.
Still, it staved off any remote chance at getting bored one might have, so Toshiko was content. One evening, she was feeling particularly content, after a nice shower, so that she was wearing standard issue army fatigues as she wrote about the war and the planet to Sazuko, who was again onboard the Herod, hiding behind Earth's moon. Her hair was an even 5 centimetres now. Her desk was back to back with PFC Lawrence, who was doing her own work, and suddenly snapped to attention, calling Toshiko to do the same.
Gibbons appeared from behind the bunk, holding a file, as the two women saluted; his entire head was still covered in a big bandage which only had slits for eyes, mouth and nose. "Back to your desk, Lawrence," he said, returning the salute, "At ease, Yamada." She assumed the correct stance, sling notwithstanding, and Gibbons looked her up and down. "You look a lot better in uniform, Yamada," he said.
"Thank you sir," she said warily.
He brandished the file: "News from Colonel Southouse. It seems Homo Diclonius isn't finished on Earth. There have been births across the Globe, over ten thousand in one month and a lot more incoming. They're starting to administer a vaccine, but it'll be years and more than a hundred million Diclonii before they sort this out."
She was suitably shocked. "Holy shit... what's Earth going to do about them?"
Gibbons stooped his head slightly. "They're a world of banking and overpopulation. What do you think they'll do?" The projected hundred million births were by themselves a little over four times the entire FFP's population.
She looked aghast at him, and the lieutenant nodded curtly. "Bastards," she hissed. "A hundred million of us? That's enough to run ten FFP's! And those fucking idiots on Earth will just kill them. I'm all for bloodshed but they still make me sick!"
"Yeah, well they can't educate Diclonii properly, can they? I mean, three year old kids with the power to turn adults into sausage meat, almost literally with a thought? All of you need PH educators or you have to grow in isolation until you're socialized somehow. Not only is either a sorry-assed way to grow, but it needs a lot of real estate. Earth's overcrowded and they think you're all mass murdering psychos anyway."
"Then – then we are getting them out of there, aren't we, sir?"
"Negative, Yamada, we aren't doing anything. The feds have sent the Hawking Task Force with Third Army to extract as many of the babies as possible. But don't expect any wonders; there are only so many we can take, and Earth will make trouble. The downer, for you at least, is that once they start growing up, we'll recruit the most able and level-headed, and the rest will lose their inevitable war with the normal humans, and the papers are talking about casualties that will make World War 2 look like a picnic."
"Shit... well I'll have to get my sister and Nana to get the hell off Earth already; I like them both but they definitely don't pack the 'gear' to survive in a war zone, sir. Not to mention it's high time they got serious about careers."
"You'll have to keep your mind on the business here, private!"
"Of course, sir. Wouldn't want those overgrown slugs to forget who's boss."
Gibbons planted his fists on his hips. "No shit! You think we're better than the salt bugs by default, or for some half-assed reason straight out of Mein Kampf?"
"Not what I meant, sir. Cluster one is basically the salt bugs' Nazi Germany, since you brought Mein Kampf up. So fuck'em all."
He picked at his itchy bandage. "Well, you can ask Sawbones to sort those kids out. She's much better than you at that sort of thing."
"Leave the bandage, sir, you'll only make it worse. Anyway, Sazuko can't speak Japanese and the girls can't speak English, but thanks for the idea. I'll ask Terry – I mean Lieutenant Colonel Southouse to do it. I don't know about me, but he's very attached to Nana and Mirai. So he'll probably do it by himself. We'd have to bring that disgusting Kurama fellow along, Nana has a major Stockholm syndrome crush on him."
Gibbons put the file on her desk. "Let's just hope Sawbones won't sign his papers. Well, the LTC sent this to you by name. You just make sure to keep your mind here on Lee, or I will have your ass, and if I don't then Cluster one definitely will. Evening, Yamada."
"Evening, sir!" They saluted each other again; Gibbons turned on his heels and went about his own business. Toshiko sat on her chair, and tried to focus back on the message for Sazuko, but for a long time she could only think about the legions of Diclonius children being born on Earth, and most of their lives would be thrown away on the whims of Earth's asinine governments, and she felt like she would gladly turn the mother world's entire surface into glass.
The culture shock was inevitable and experienced at some point by everybody living in the FFP, humanity's secret cosmic exclave, a militarized state which held sway over some twenty-four million souls, seven more or less hospitable planets, though none as verdant as Earth, and parts of a couple dozens more, such as Lee, and crossed the unimaginable distances of their tiny corner of the Milky Way on partially understood technology from their former masters, who had taken the first people off Earth a half century earlier to use them as weapons of conquest. Out in the open of space, the rules were different, and only the old hands and other Earth-born recruits brought in as adults understood the planet. And as far as it was concerned, she, Yamada Toshiko, was an alien, not that much more familiar than a salt bug would be. She put this in her message to Sazuko, and ended the paragraph with 'Hell, I probably have more in common with them than Earth's people.'
Well, that's my contribution, and the first short story I ever finished. Derailing the continuity of fiction works I like is one of my favourite brain 'exercises'. I have more ideas, but I'd rather see if they're welcome before I commit more time to a sequel.
1