Rob Fourier was an ex-marine sniper turned assassin and spy from the North American Federation with a past as black as his heavily redacted service history. In 2148 CE, Rob shocked his superiors by requesting early retirement. His next assignment almost killed him. He survived, and was rewarded with an even deadlier one.
In 2149 CE, Rob was found close to death with near total amnesia after taking a tailored mix of designer drugs. A leading civilian neuroscientist called Sophia Morgan confirmed his long term memory was gone for good. Someone in Rob's chain of command was merciful that day, and he was allowed to live, albeit under surveillance. To protect him from prying eyes or even somehow reminding himself of his true self they created a complete legend, from grandparents and schooling to known friends and habits. If he tried to contact the "friends" an agent would answer the phone. They told him he was "Elijah Court", who wound up in the police SWAT after a career as a sniper in the army. The story they told him was that he saw one too many bad things and took the pills to forget the nightmares. He believed them.
A year later he captured two members of a Chinese grab team that was sent to capture him. Despite having handled units like that before, he did not recognise them and had no idea why they came. After that, the agency relaxed.
Humanity began to colonise distant worlds in 2152. Scientists tested every applicant's genetic viability, physical and mental health, backgrounds and skills. When Elijah applied, the agency decided to allow it, so as to remove him from enemy reach. Elijah met Sophia again in the gym where they did their fitness tests. The "population mappers" later said they made an ideal match for the first round of "reproduction", but they'd already figured that out.
Shortly after they arrived in 2153, Sophia discovered she was pregnant. On April 11th, 2154, a little girl opened her eyes for the first time on a colony world called Mindoir. Her parents, Elijah and Sophia Court, named their daughter Emily Evelyn Court, after her grandmothers back on Earth.
Three years later, the planners' schedule began to fall apart. The scheme every colonist signed up for called for each woman to have three children within the first ten years of arrival. To ensure genetic diversity, each child had to be from preselected men, either conventionally or by artificial insemination. Many of the colonists, including Elijah and Sophia, refused. In order to defy the administrators, the colonists attacked their buildings and destroyed all copies of the plan and their personal data. Elijah led the assault. On the same day, they sent a virus back to Colonial Affairs back on Earth to wipe the information there as well.
The North American Federation sent representatives and soldiers to sort things out, but there again they were foiled, mostly thanks to Elijah. In the end, the colonists received permission from Earth to govern their own internal affairs, and to withhold personal information from Earth except where Earth services were used or a criminal case could be brought. Mindoir became a miniature federal state, and set the pattern for future colony government.
The colony on Mindoir sat on a slight hill in a huge river delta. The ocean was twenty miles north past a broad swathe of marshy jungle flats which were split by three branches of the river. About forty miles east were two cold volcanoes and a low mountain range, surrounded by dense rainforest. A two to three-hundred-foot cliff marked the edge of a plateau seven miles south along the river. The river itself was a mile wide as it came out of its gorge, and the gorge cut three miles into the rock. At the head of the canyon was a waterfall that could be heard from the colony on quiet nights, and threw up enough mist to create a permanent rainbow overhead. A mile to the west of the colony, the silt rich waters wound their unstoppable way to the ocean. Beyond that vast, blue-grey snake, the jungle went on over the rim of an ancient crater that had long since become a crystal clear lake.
In the first years, the construction effort focused on clearing and cultivating the area around the colony for farming. Hydroponics and airponics facilities would go up later when the second wave of colonists arrived in 2159. By the time the third, much larger wave arrived in 2162, they would move straight into fully functioning homes in a colony with a complete, and expanding infrastructure.
Elijah's role in this was to keep the edges of the jungle safe by hunting and trapping the indigenous animals there. The Court family's house backed onto the fields at the edge of the colony, and faced onto a side street that wasn't "necessary" enough to be any more than a mostly tame garden and a well-trodden path.
Emily quickly conquered their corner of the world. She visited every nook and cranny, and befriended every bug she found, as children do. Her partner in crime was a girl called Georgina who was born a few months before Emily to a couple who lived across the "street". They played and explored together in each new building Georgina's dad built. They terrorised the work crews with ingenious pranks and incessant curiosity. They earned the nicknames, "red imp" and "blue imp" for Georgina's fiery ginger hair and Emily's startlingly blue eyes.
For her fifth birthday, Emily was given a small gun. Elijah and Sophia disagreed about that vehemently. Sophia told Elijah that one day Emily would fend for herself without him, so it was better they teach her how sooner than later. Emily would practice with her dad out in the fields on rocks or fence posts. At around the same time, Elijah began to instruct her in basic martial arts. Some neighbours said she was already going sour, because she liked the violence, but she just loved going on play adventures with her dad.
A year later, she went on a month long trip with both her parents into the fringes of the jungle. For Sophia it was a much needed break from working with people who still distrusted her for administering the first round of inseminations in the early years. Elijah was working. He knew there was a particularly dangerous creature in the area, so he built their camp just outside its territory and planned on a month to track it. He took a week, but spent the remaining time exploring the jungle with his young family. Emily got her first kill that year. It was a creature the size of a rabbit, and she was immensely proud of herself. She was six.
In 2161, Emily's school teacher found her secretly returning two library books; Moby Dick and a book of calculus problems. Emily was a rascal in class who usually ditched her tasks for cheeky games. On moody days, she would sulk rather than work. She was considered an underperformer, but the teacher decided to test that after the library incident. She put a simple calculus problem as the first question on Emily's worksheet, and grabbed it away before Emily could erase her pencilled solution. It was correct. From then on, Emily was given different learning and tasks to her classmates, but remained with the same class. Her behaviour changed overnight. So long as she had something that challenged her she focussed better than her peers. Keeping her challenged was difficult, because she learned faster than anyone anticipated. To fill the gaps when she finished tasks early, she was given constructive things to do, like read grown up books or learn to play games like chess or go, either against a VI or real opponents online.
The summer holidays came, and Elijah stole Emily to accompany him on a two-month trip to scout around an old vent pipe on one of the volcanoes and clear out any hostile creatures. Once cleared, a mining outpost would be built and the area would no longer be thought of as "deep in the jungle".
Emily learned more in that two months than she had in a year of schooling. When they came back, she was bursting with stories. She had discovered and named two dozen entirely new animals, harvested this leaf and that root and learned to prepare them for eating, set traps, learned to sneak up on things ("even Daddy," she claimed), and she had become quite adept with her low calibre rifle.
Sophia was uneasy about her passion for all this. She had long regretted pushing to get her a gun. She only wanted Emily to learn self-defence, not ditch ordinary careers for slogging through mud and possibly poisonous plant analogues. Her fears were put to rest though when she sat on the edge of Emily's bed to tuck her in.
Emily squirmed happily and pulled the sheet around herself. After Sophia kissed her forehead and got up to go, Emily asked, "Mummy, how does Daddy know the creatures can't talk? What if they talk foreign, like Greta? There was a giant froggy sort of thing that gabbled for hours."
Sophia smiled as she sat back down to tell her, "You have to learn how languages work to really know. Daddy was probably right, because most creatures that talk use tools and build things. But if you want to talk to new alien creatures, you'll have to get very good at linguistics – foreign languages – first."
"But what about those chewy 'uns from the news? And the hasa - ha – the blue ladies from the space port? They talk proper."
"Turians and asari," Sophia corrected, barely keeping a straight face. "Actually most of them don't. But they have really clever linguists, and we have really clever linguists, and we worked out how to make computers that translate for us."
"Oh." Emily concentrated for a few moments and then asked, "So I need to be a screen junkie like Don, too?" Don was a technician from the construction team run by Gina's dad. He was Blue Imp's second best friend.
"Maybe. But you could team up with a computer whiz and let them do that bit, so long as you know how to understand the aliens."
Emily snuggled deeper into her pillow and made an appreciative noise when she discovered how comfy she was. "I'll make Don do the boring bits," she announced. "I want to do the talking." Sophia stroked her hair and Emily sighed. In a sleepier voice, she said, "Not today though. N-night, Mummy."
As the years passed, Emily's dream expanded. She wanted to search unknown star systems for clues about new aliens so she could be the first to meet them and talk to them. She snapped up every scrap of learning in her reach, both in and out of school, even on what she used to call "boring bits". Elijah taught her martial arts and shooting. Sophia tutored her in biology, Don taught her coding, and she spent every spare minute listening to recordings of foreign or alien languages. In June, 2165, eleven-year-old Emily sat her first exams in a school hall with all the sixteen year olds of the colony. They were second and third wavers. A few of them had gone to private schools until they moved to Mindoir. Emily outscored them all.
She graduated top of all her classes a couple of years after that. Like the eighteen year olds who hated to be beaten by a thirteen year old, she was fluent in the interspecies "trade tongue", and had basic programming qualifications. Unlike those eighteen year olds, she completed ten subjects instead of four; English, Mandarin, Arabic, Asari, History, Biology, Computer Programming, Mathematics, Astrophysics and Physics. Also unlike her older peers, Emily won a scholarship for a Harvard distance learning course. It wasn't just any "easy" course either, she chose Xenolinguistics.
For all that, however, her favourite two months of every year were the long hunts she went on with Elijah. Even then, she kept up her studies from in the tent.