Ultima

Chapter 16

I nodded. "Yes, but you've never mentioned your parents."

Amber chuckled. "Yes, they are a bit on the smothering side. I was happy just to be free from their suffocating household."

"Was it bad?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Better than most, I'm sure. Friends had to meet their specific requirements or I wasn't allowed to be friends with them. As you can imagine, being friends with guys was an instant no."

"So it must have been strange when you started getting into engineering and mechanical stuff," I pointed out.

She groaned. "Like you wouldn't believe. Engineering is still a heavily male-dominated profession. When I first started showing an interest in it, my parents tried to stop it. Luckily, I was already in my early teens and was feeling a bit rebellious." I chuckled. "I kept it hidden until I could finally go to university and get a degree."

"I take it you lied to your parents?" I asked.

"Of course," she smiled. "Told them I was going to be a nurse."

"So how'd you end up with the HAN then?" I asked.

Amber held up a finger as our food arrived. After everything was in place, we thanked the waiter and he hurried off. "That's a bit of a mess," Amber answered sadly. "University was...trying. One, I wasn't taken seriously, being female; and two, everyone spent all their time hitting on me. In a class of forty, there were two girls. Me being one of them."

"I can't imagine," I said.

"Neither could I," she replied. "Going from such a sheltered life to that. First, it was flattering, then annoying. Before I knew it, I wanted to pull my hair out of my head." She chuckled and then sighed. "There was one guy that was different, and I thought I could be safe with him. We used to hang out a lot until he started pressuring me to 'take the relationship' farther. After I explained that I didn't feel that way about him, he freaked out. Told lies about me to everyone in class. I didn't know what to do, so I ran. I ran right out of the university and kept running. Nothing was going how I wanted and I was sick of it all. I had no desire to go home but there was nowhere else to go." She took a moment before continuing. "I remember seeing a HAN recruitment booth at the university and looked for one in every town I passed. I finally found one and joined up, using those long hours playing flight simulators at home as a spring board to get into fighter pilot training. It was a chance to be a new person, someone I could like being. I tried to keep my engineering skills hidden but, well, it was difficult. Luckily by then, I was already friends with you and Stuckey, and you two didn't make a big deal out of it."

"More like appreciated the fact that you could teach us what you knew," I said.

"Exactly," Amber said.

I chuckled. "That's one hell of a story."

She smiled, but started to blush a bit. "Sorry, it got a little deep there. I never thought I would say everything but it all just came rushing out of me as soon as I opened my mouth."

"Maybe you've been holding on to it for too long and you just needed to be free," I said.

She nodded and picked at her food. "Maybe. But I've blabbed on for long enough. Your turn, so I can finally eat."

I laughed. There was more I wanted to ask about her, but I got the feeling she had already said as much as she was going to say. "I'm afraid my story is a little bit lame," I said. "As you already know, my parents own a freighting company. I grew up on tales of adventure from my dad and I followed him into the trading profession as soon as I could. I spent most of my time learning the other races' languages because I'm expected to take over the company when my dad finally calls it quits. My childhood and teens are filled with long days of dreaming to be a hero and pushing myself to achieving that. I had no friends except Tiger and Dad's friend Bor, and I was homeschooled. If I hadn't had the chance to interact with so many different races, I would probably be the most socially awkward person in the universe."