Chapter 9: School Daze

The next morning, Samantha escorted the older children in her care to the school. On the previous day the AI had processed the paperwork to enrol them, now she just needed to introduce them to the Principal, a once-again-young woman who went by the unfortunate name of Winnifred.

Winnie had been a principal in her past life, of first an elementary and then a middle school, and had been picked up with her husband, her daughter Jolene and two sons back at the same Sault Ste. Marie hockey tournament that Samantha's family had attended. Like most of the hockey moms at that infamous pickup, her husband was now her sponsor. Now looking as she did when she was twenty years younger, Winnie was also pregnant with her fourth. To her delight, her daughter was pregnant with Winnie's first grandchild, offspring of a Fleet Auxiliary sailor from the ship that had brought them here – Daddy not being all that attracted to incest with his own daughter.

Schooling in the Diaspora was quite different than schooling on Earth, Winnie had quickly discovered. Kids ran through their academic subjects much more quickly than on Earth, for one thing, as the sleep-learning fed the information more-or-less directly into their cerebral cortex. In order for the book learning to "stick", though, it was found that you still needed to do homework, lectures and labs to back that up. Half the student's day was typically taken up with sleep learning at their home pod, while the second half alternated between lectures and labs at the school, and homework in their home pod's computer terminal. A typical student would, therefore, spend about a quarter of their time actually in the physical school itself.

This meant that she could stretch her teachers to cover four times their Earth counterparts' load – and that load was still absorbing instruction at an insanely higher rate. It also meant that the school needed no cafeteria, merely classrooms, labs and fitness facilities, although a handful of picnic tables were scattered around the playground's perimeter. The most popular fitness facility was the swimming pool, so far the only such facility on the entire planet.

Still, the school's total enrolment was at the moment north of 4,000 students. And three more kilopod ships were scheduled to arrive in the not-too-distant future. The Navy was on its way, too, which would add even more students to her total enrolment.

Winnie greeted the four school-age dependants fulsomely. Samantha beamed as each child introduced him or herself to the attractive and deceptively young-looking concubine principal, who was unselfconsciously wearing a potentially embarrassingly short, dark-blue concubine's shift with "Winnie" emblazoned above the pocket. The older woman brought in the children's instructors who whisked each youthful charge off to meet their classmates.

As the last of them left Winnie's office, she turned to her boss. "Sam, a few of the kids that should be here aren't – their sponsors are apparently forbidding them from attending school."

"What the hell?" Samantha was furious. The last thing she wanted – or needed, for that matter – was to have untutored, untrained concubines simply because Daddy didn't want the young'uns to get uppity by learning stuff. "AI, I want a list immediately of all those school-age dependants not registered for school. Copy Colonel Deschenes and the sponsors' superior officers and NCO's."

The list was eight names long – and connected to three newly-arrived sponsors.

Samantha had a quick word with all three sponsors. One was a simple screwup by the sponsor. He sent instructions to the AI to allow Samantha to proceed with the paperwork, and the child in his pod was immediately registered and set up for her first classes right after lunch. Problem solved, no class time lost. The man was quite apologetic for the oversight, and even asked his sergeant for loan of his straw-boss concubine to escort the mother and child to the school so both would know the route. Request granted, and everyone breathed a little easier.

The other two were a little more hard-assed. Instead of sharing a single word with each, Samantha received two words: "Fuck" and "Off", and in precisely that order. They turned out to be immigrants from a certain misogynistic Middle Eastern culture where educating females was not considered the thing to do. While living in the West they'd been forced to send their daughters to elementary school much against their own better instincts. They had the chance now to stop that Western nonsense on their own dependants and intended to take full advantage.

Both recruits were now about to be abruptly brought short in their efforts to enlighten the Great Unwashed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which had some line in it about disobeying lawful commands by a superior officer. Not only was Samantha a superior officer, which made it an offence to be so rude to her, but her orders for all dependants were backed up by every officer, commissioned or not, in the chain of command right up to the Old Man himself.

As smartly as she'd been trained, Optio Samantha Redburn marched to the parade square where Sergeant Kowalski and Corporal Redburn were putting the mixed platoon of new recruits and slightly more advanced privates through their paces in foot drill with the RLI-1 standard issue laser rifle. Escorting her a step behind was the impressive figure of Sergeant-Major Butch Blondell, there more as physical than psychological security. Everyone stared stiffly ahead, so they failed to notice the RS-1 stinger rifle the Sergeant Major carried. Unlike the rifles in the hands of the privates, Butch's weapon was armed and ready.

Already warned via their subvocal links, neither sergeant nor corporal were surprised at the Optio's arrival. Kowalski quickly ordered Shoulder Arms when the AI warned him she was steps away from the parade square.

As planned, the Sergeant Major stopped behind and to the left of the platoon, checking her weapon to ensure the safety was off and the charge set to maximum – an enraged man with the standard Marine enhancement package would be difficult to stop. To the side, a nervous Corporal Redburn prepared to defend his daughter should it prove necessary.