VII

Enlistment

THE ACADEMIC BOARD OF MARS STREET SECONDARY SCHOOL, REVIEWING THE 2172 GRADUATES

G. DAWSON: Well, what do we know about number seven?

T. RICHMOND: Number seven? Huh. Not much. Her extracurriculars are nonexistent. She comes to school then she goes home. No record of community service hours . . .

F. CARD: There wouldn't be. She's almost like the homeless ones. Beth Shepard's a foster kid. She's been in the system forever. When people serve the community, they're helping kids like her. When she does it, it's helping out the neighbor, and she wouldn't write it down.

G. DAWSON: Her marks are equal to the marks of the six students that rank her, in more challenging courses.

S. GOTTLIEB: What's she taking?

T. RICHMOND: Let's see. (Paging through file) She's dual-enrolled right now in university-level macrophysics, calculus, galactic history, and programming at the Tech. She's also taking AP Linguistics III and Alliance Gov with us. Oh, and gym—but she's auditing that.

V. SWEETING: What are her instructor reports like?

T. RICHMOND: Her instructors like her. They say she's quiet and diligent and always goes above and beyond. But she's also a loner. Lack of extracurriculars aside, even, she doesn't seem to have a place here, ore any real friends at all. But she isn't bullied either.

F. CARD: No. She wouldn't be. Shepard had quite the disciplinary record up until intermediate school. Went through a couple homes because of it. By sixth grade, she was apparently taking on entire groups of those kids that were particularly violent toward others or xenophobic in some way, alone, even if they were two or three years older than her, and giving them something to think about, too. She stopped suddenly shortly thereafter, but word gets around.

S. GOTTLIEB: There's notes here that several of our coaches on multiple occasions attempted to get her to go out for athletics—football, track and field, basketball, women's hockey, the works—but without a scholarship available, Shepard had to decline.

V. SWEETING: She's unemployed? No source of income?

T. RICHMOND: Her Tech tuition is a full academic ride, based on her test scores.

G. DAWSON: Future plans?

F. CARD: None in the file. But I think I could hazard a guess. Shepard won't get lost in the streets.

S. GOTTLIEB: Good. A mind like that—it'd be a positive waste.

Caitlin found Beth at 6 am the morning after graduation, putting the last few things in her old duffel. She zipped it up and swung it over her shoulder. "You're going away, aren't you?" Caitlin asked. Her eyes shone with unshed tears.

"You know the home is for kids, Catey," Beth said. "I'm not a kid anymore. It's time for me to move on." She knelt down beside the kid and gave her one last hug.

"And they'll be after you if you stay. Stace's boyfriend and the others. Make you do bad things," Caitlin said. "Like they made Stace do once. Like my daddy."

Beth stared. She'd had no idea the kid had picked up so much. "Stace is nothing like your daddy and never was," she said. "She never hurt the people she should love and protect. She's good. She and Meg'll look after you, I think, if you keep in touch. Make sure you're alright."

"But you won't."

"No, Caitlin, I won't," Beth said. And yeah, it hurt a little, to tell the kid how things were.

"I'll miss you," Caitlin said. The little girl swallowed, and when she opened her mouth again Beth saw blood where she'd bit her tongue to keep from crying like a big girl. Caitlin held out her floppy stuffed bunny. "Here," she said, thrusting it roughly into Beth's arms. Then she ran.

Beth bit her own tongue, then she nodded, stuffed the plushie into the top of her bag, and left the room. But on the bed she left a datapad novel. Caitlin's favorite. She'd checked it out ages ago and read it to Caitlin, and the kid had asked for it so many times since that Beth had eventually just pinched it from the library, reported it lost, and paid the small fee. She activated it and looked at the cover page. It was an old novelization of the classic vid Star Wars. Beth grinned through the lump in her throat. How different things were from the way humans had imagined it two hundred years ago. She was about to go see for herself how things really were, but she'd leave this for her little accidental roommate.

The Hardins, Theo, and Janey weren't up yet. Beth left a note on the fridge for them.

Jeff and Casey—thanks. And thanks for not asking when I'd be moving so you could file for another kid. I appreciated it. Hope things work out for you two.

Theo—thanks for coming to graduation. Meant something that someone did. Left some music in your inbox. Enjoy.

Janey—left you a box of condoms in your closet. A big one. Seriously, stop screwing around. The drugs are messing up your life enough.

Love,

Beth

Bit bitchy, ratting on Janey like that, Beth knew, but honestly the kid deserved it. For Theo, at least. Maybe Jeff and Casey could actually help her. Stranger things had happened. Better if Janey had to deal with Casey searching her room for weeks, or being relocated to a higher security home, than she ended up strung out, raped, and left for dead in the gutter someplace. That was where she was headed if something didn't change. Janey wasn't going to get smart on her own? Fine. Beth'd taken the last chance she could to make her. It was all she could do.

Beth left the Hardins for the last time and locked the door behind her. She put her key in the mailbox. Wearing her duffel across her body to discourage theft, she walked the couple blocks down to the bus station. The bus that would take her downtown toward Kingsway and Beatrice was just pulling in. Pulling out a few credits from the neat little roll composed of her share of all the take the Reds had come into for the last eighteen months, Beth paid her fare and took a seat.

Her omni-tool vibrated around her wrist, and Beth looked down to see she'd received a message. She pulled it up. Know you're outta here, Shepard. Tear it up for us, yeah? Kick some ass. Love from Stace, Meg, and Hope.

She looked at the message for a second. Smiled. Of course Stace had known. Her fingers moved across the keypad on her omni-tool. Will you be alright?

You know it, came the answer. Always.

We were the best, Stace, Beth sent back. You take care. Goodbye.

Then, just because, Beth dug in her duffel. At the very bottom, she found it, a crumpled, faded napkin, with a string of digits on it. She didn't know why the hell she'd kept it all this time, kept it seven years, but now she punched in Joan Redding's extranet address on her omni-tool and left a message there too.

I wasn't what you wanted me to be, she typed. I couldn't be and survive. But I'll try to be in the future. I promise. Beth Shepard, headed for the stars.

She got off on Victoria and took 26th two blocks down to Beatrice. The clock outside the yoghurt shop and Beth's omni-tool said 7 am. The lights in the recruitment center went on, and a tall, clean-cut man in a blue uniform walked up from the back and unlocked the door, just opening for the day.

Beth clutched her duffel to her, everything she owned in the galaxy. She took a breath. She marched up the sidewalk. She threw the door wide open. The recruitment officer hadn't even made it back to his desk yet. He turned, surprised.

Beth crossed the floor, and stuck her hand out to shake. "Beth Shepard. Where do I sign up?"

A/N: I hope you've enjoyed Little Beth. We're about finished with Shepard's home backstory. The next part of The Disaster Zone, Soldier, will deal with her military history before the beginning of Mass Effect. Soldier will begin posting November 1 next week.

Always,

LMSharp