Heritage (Under Revision)

Chapter 4 – Elena

“Okay, Cadets, today we’re continuing our work on our A.I. Projectors. The holographic processors are faulty and it’s your job, and worth a fourth of your final grade, to find the problem and repair it. You have forty minutes until lunch, I suggest you find your partners and get started,” I say to the class at large.

A few groans can be heard from the back of the class, where my son, Leon, is sitting with his friends, who undoubtedly got very little sleep last night seeing as how all three of them were late for curfew, resulting in a demerit each. The Cadets get weekend passes to explore the ship’s many hot-spots, with a ten o’ clock curfew on Sunday evenings.

The ship, United Earth Ship Poseidon, is fifteen miles long by twenty miles wide and is set up like a regular Earth city, floating in the vast expanses of space. Shops, diners, roadways, a first-rate hospital and arcades are just a few of the ship-town s many features.

As the students pair off to begin their projects, Stella, a strikingly beautiful Cadet student of mine, approaches my desk, holding her A.I. projector in her hand.

“Yes, Stella? Where is your partner?” I ask her, setting down my stack of quizzes.

“She’s not here today, Commander, she was taken to the infirmary last night for the stomach flu. That’s why I came to you, to let you know,”

Stella is probably my best student, and most hard working Cadet in this years’ class. The young men in the class can’t seem to get past her flawless good looks and flowing, fiery red hair. A master in martial arts, a straight A student, a whiz with electronic repairs and beauty that rivals the Greek goddesses. Girls envy her, boys want to be with her, and her teachers, myself included, respect and admire her accomplishments.

“My partner’s not here either, Ma,” Leon says, walking forward and leaning against my desk.

“Leon, in class you are to call me Commander, you know that. Keep it up and you ll get yet another demerit…and tell your father,” I reply forcefully.

Ethan and Leon have a very close father/son relationship, despite the fact that Ethan can’t seem to control him any more than I can. But Leon is his own person, and he lives his life by the breeze.

He’s just as tall as his father, somewhere around six foot three and his hair is a perfect mix of my own and Ethan’s. Sandy brown, with my green eyes. He spends a large majority of his time with Ethan in the training center, working out and building his muscle tone, something which he is constantly bragging about, much to my amusement and chagrin.

“So, Stells, how about you and I partner up today?” Leon asks, in his usual sly demeanor.

“My name is Stella, and I’d honestly rather work with a three-headed Sekrid mutant than to partner up with you,” she replies sharply.

The comment about the Sekrid mutant unnerves me for the briefest moment, causing me to stiffen in displeasure. Our time on that ship was a living nightmare, and the mere mention of such things brings memories of Ethan’s infection rushing to the forefront of my mind.

But now is not the time for reflecting on such things and I grin to myself at Stella’s boldness, because even I, Leon’s own mother, cannot put him in his place the way Stella does.

Ethan tries his best to instill in him the values we were both raised with, but Leon is hell bent on learning the hard way. He’s a trouble-maker like his father was in his younger days, and seems to attract drama and chaos wherever he goes. His knack for troublemaking has earned him more demerits, detentions and public service hours than I care to count. But he is our son, and no matter how much trouble his arrogant attitude induces, we love him.

He has the potential to take my place on this ship in a few years’ time, with his uncanny ability to repair electronics, including the ship’s vehicles, rivaled only by Stella herself. He’s been taken with her for months now, but she won’t give him the time of day. It’s about time someone knocked him off his high horse.

“Actually, Stella…you’d be doing me a favor if you partnered with Leon today. I know it’s inconvenient, but I really want partners working on those Projectors, I say to her respectfully,” She may be a Cadet, but she deserves respect.

Her face tenses for a moment, her mouth pressing itself into a thin line of frustration, before turning to me in her usual, professional demeanor.

“Yes, Commander I’ll do my best,” she says to me with a nod.

Leon leans over the side of my desk, catching me completely off guard with a kiss to the cheek.

“Thanks, Ma,” he whispers in my ear.

Despite wanting to hug him as if he were still my little boy, I must turn on my own professionalism in the classroom, as to not seem biased, and say to him, “I didn’t do it for you, I did it for the sake of this class.”

He shoots me his smug grin, that so resembles his father’s when he knows he’s right about something. The grin that makes me weak in the knees when Ethan flashes it, yet makes me want to punch him out for constantly being right.

I simply point towards the work table that Stella is currently stationed, hunched over the A.I. Projector, directing him to get to work. He turns himself around and saunters over, taking a seat next to her with just a little more bounce in his step than usual.

I notice that Stella’s brow is furrowed in concentration and at once, my motherly instincts kick in, acknowledging briefly what a wonderful addition to our family that she would be. If Leon ever pulls his head out of his nether-regions and gets his act together, that is.

I set to grading more quizzes, noting that most of the Cadets are coming up to speed nicely, with the exception of a few dismal students who just don’t seem to grasp the concept of technological repairs.

Another A paper for Stella, I think to myself, scribbling ‘good job’ at the top in red ink. It still amazes me that we even use paper anymore.

With everything as technologically advanced as it is today, paper seems almost superfluous. It’s uncommon for anyone to not possess a tablet laptop, although, like with most of our technology, even these far outstrip the ones of decades before.

The new tablets are almost paper-thin, made of indestructible Adamantium and can hold up to 3 Terabytes of information, music, and have a built-in 100 mega pixel camera. They are a mandatory necessity for all Cadets and Officers alike.

My thoughts are interrupted, as if on cue, by yet another advanced piece of technology chimes in the pocket of my uniform jacket. The TAP Device (Trident All Purpose Device, TAPs for short) is a multi-purpose tool, somewhat resembling those old cell phones from decades past.

It is a combination holographic-video phone, automotive start key, and habitation module keycard. The standard applications also apply to the TAPs, such as text messaging, email and standard communication calls.

Like most of the new devices, it too is made from Adamantium, which was first being utilized only a decade ago, but is now everywhere you turn around. The TAPs are roughly the size and shape of a nutrition bar, and cannot be accessed without proper fingerprint analysis on the keypad.

Flipping open my TAP, I see a text message from Ethan, it reads:

Need to talk, mess hall @ lunch,

Leon in trouble again

Love - E.

What in the world could he possibly have done now? It’s not even lunchtime yet and Ethan already wants to discuss our son’s contempt for the rules and regulations of the ship.

After typing a quick reply back to Ethan on the plasma touch-screen, I slip the phone in my jacket and turn back to my quizzes.

A loud crash causes me to make a long red streak across Cadet Marshall’s quiz, not that it would matter much, seeing as he’s failing my course. I look up to see what the commotion is, and I’m not surprised when I see Leon at the center of it, arguing heatedly with Stella.

“Oh nice, Stella. This is what happens when you try to take control of the situation all the time!” Leon exclaims angrily.

“Well, if you weren’t being such a stubborn, testosterone-filled moron, it would’ve never happened in the first place!” she replies, just as hotly.

“Oh, whatever. Of course you’re gonna blame it on the fact that I m a guy,”

“No, you’re not a guy, you re some idiotic de-evolution of a guy,” she states, glaring at Leon.

“Where the hell do you come up with this shit?” He asks bitingly.

Annoyance and hurt flicker briefly in his bright green eyes before being doused by anger once more.

“From my brain, which you seem to lack,” Stella replies sarcastically.

Sighing to myself, I remove myself from my desk chair and cross the room to their work station, assessing the situation before me.

“What’s going on over here?” I ask the both of them, looking from one to the other.

“Leon busted the circuit board, Commander, our projector is useless now,” Stella supplies, tossing her fiery red locks over her shoulder and glances at Leon.

Her hair seems just a shade redder when she’s angry, her milky white skin glowing and her aqua-blue eyes glittering dangerously. Leon can’t seem to take his eyes off of her, and his hardened expression from just thirty seconds ago, seems to ebb into something that resembles awe.

“This can be fixed,” I say to them both, snapping Leon out of his reverie, “I’m not going to tell you how though, this is a partners project, so the partners are the ones who need to figure it out.”

“Aw, come on, Ma!” Leon protests.

“It’s Commander, Cadet Blake, what’d I tell you?” I ask him rhetorically. “You two have to figure it out yourselves, and that s that.”

I turn and walk back towards my desk, but I can hear Stella and Leon conversing quietly behind me, almost cordially.

“Well, this is just great,” Leon says.

“Well, no sense in complaining about it, we aren’t going to get anywhere acting negative about it,” Stella replies.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Once again, Stella has knocked him right off of that high-horse, and I, for one, cannot be happier about that.

They sit for a long while, each consulting their tablets at random intervals, brows furrowed as they pass the Projector and circuit board back and forth to each other.

Finally the end of my class approaches, and I stand up behind my desk to address the class.

“Class is dismissed,” I say to all my Cadets abruptly, earning me a salute from each student.

After stowing my graded quizzes into my desk drawer, I lock up my classroom with the keycard on my TAPs, making my way down to the Mess Hall to meet Ethan for lunch. I’m already dreading the conversation, because I know I’ll have to mention the incident with Stella and the circuit board as well, only furthering my husband’s anger.

I see Ethan sitting at the head table, unpacking his lunch and I stride over to him, sitting down beside him and opening my own.

He smiles over at me and places a soft kiss on my cheek, flashing a brief smile before biting into his sandwich.

“So,” I begin, uncapping my water bottle and taking a long drink, “what’d he do now?”

“Our son is a trouble magnet, I can tell you that much. He may be brilliant when it comes to electronics, which he gets from you,” he says, smirking at me, “but the boy could run this entire station into the ground in one afternoon if we weren’t around.

“I won’t disagree with you on that,” I say to him, taking a bite of my sandwich and waiting for him to explain.

“He was in Firearms Class and they were down at the firing range learning how to shoot the automatic M53 carbine rifles, the ones with the optical sights. Well, he took it upon himself to pull the secondary trigger, launching a grenade at the wall and blasting a ten foot hole in it. I’ll tell you this much, the Commanding Officer is not pleased, and neither am I,” Ethan explains, finishing off his coffee.

Well, that’s not the only thing he did today, honey…” I state, looking over at him. Ethan rubs his temples in frustration and turns to me.

“Let me have it.”

“Well by fluke, he and Stella Cooper ended up being partners today, working on their A.I. Projectors, which I guess could be considered my fault, since I asked them to partner up, I begin, but they’re both so damn stubborn that they both ended up punching a hole in the circuit board with the tool they were using. It’s fixable, but I told them they had to fix it together, and I’m making them partner up on it,” I explain, sipping my water and waiting for his reaction.

“Well, first of all, don’t blame yourself for their mistake. You did what you had to do, and I agree with you putting them together to work on it. Maybe this way it’ll loosen some of the animosity between those two.”

My thoughts exactly Ethan, what are we going to do with them? Most parents send their kids to Military school when they misbehave, but hell, he’s already a Cadet and I’m not sure what to do anymore. I worry for him,” I say to him, placing my hand in his and lacing our fingers.

“I don t think he really means to cause trouble, Elena because if that was the case, he wouldn’t show any remorse for his actions. Every time he gets himself into a bind, he always looks regretful and takes his punishment like a man. I just think his curiosity gets the better of him sometimes.”

He leans closer and wraps his arm around my waist, giving me a quick, loving kiss on the lips.

I smile at him adoringly, and I feel once again like I did in the first few months of our relationship. That flutter in my chest when he looks into my eyes. After gathering up my lunch wrappers, I give Ethan one more kiss and head towards the exit of the Mess Hall.

On my way out, I spot Stella talking to Leon at a secluded table in the corner. Ethan was right, he does look remorseful and Stella seems to be comforting him.

Looks like my plan is working already.