Frontier: Book One - The Space Cadets by Laurence Moroney Page A

are superior.
You and your stupid little people use that word all the time, and
think that you are taking our word for you and turning it against
us. But every time you use it. Every time you call each other by
that name, we win.”
    She could feel the anger rising.
She began to breathe hard. Her eyes narrowed and looked at
him.
    “ You want to hit me, you stupid
slave? Go on. I ’ m right here.”
    He let her go and stood back, arms
wide open. “Go on, you get a free shot. Heck as you ’ re just a girl, I ’ ll
give you two shots. Go on.”
    He turned and addressed the room.
“What is she you waiting for? Right here. A couple of freebies.” He
faced her again. “Hit me with your best shot, you stupid
meteor!”
    She was shaking uncontrollably.
She felt a sob begin to move through her body. She had to get out
of there. She had to leave. Now.
    She ran out of the room, bumping
into other students, hearing the laughter echo behind her. Her
stomach began to churn. She found a restroom and ran into it.
Bursting into one of the stalls, she fell on her knees and
heaved.
    ***
    Feeling a little better, she came
out of the stall and went to the sink to wash her face. With one
hand she held her hair up, and with the other she splashed water on
her face. She plugged the sink to let it fill up with the clean
water.
    She felt a hand on her shoulder,
and looked up to see Lim, the girl that had been sitting at the
table with Bennett.
    “ Let me,” she said softly, and
took hold of Aisha ’ s hair.
    “ Thanks,” said Aisha, throwing
more water on her face, and bending further to cup some water into
her mouth to rinse out the taste of vomit.
    She felt Lim grip her hair
roughly, and with surprising strength push her face down into the
water. She struggled, but Lim used her weight to push
Aisha ’ s neck against the rim of the sink.
The message was clear -- if she struggled, she might choke before
she drowned. She tried to calm herself, and Lim got the
message.
    Pulling her out of the water, she
snarled into Aisha’s ear, “You might think you ’ re hot stuff, but you ’ re
nothing here. And if you ever try to show him up like that again, I will kill you. You got that?”
    Again, Aisha ’ s face was buried in the water, and her head was
banged roughly against the faucet. She felt Lim ’ s grip release, and she pulled herself up. Blood from
her scalp seeped down into the water, thickening and reddening
it.
    She fell to her butt and put her
face in her hands. Sobs wracked her body, and all the control that
she had tried to keep just gave way. She flopped onto the ground,
not caring about the blood seeping from her scalp, and cried more
than she had done in years.
    She wanted to go home.

Chapter
12
Sebastian
    When the Pharisees asked Jesus
what he thought the greatest commandment was, it appeared that they
were trying to trick him. If he picked one over the other, they
could bludgeon him with well-prepared arguments about why the one
he chose was wrong.
    Perhaps Jesus knew, ahead of time,
what Mark Twain famously said -- “Don’t argue with stupid people,
because they’ll bring you down to their level and beat you with
experience.” So he answered them with a sentence that captured all
of the commandments, without being any of the commandments: “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all
your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself”.
    Whether or not you follow in his
ways, you have to admire the intelligence in this answer. The
Pharisees were trying to maneuver him into a fight, but he not only
saw that fight, he won it before it began.
    You might think it a pity then
that they killed him eventually, unless you realize that that’s
probably what he wanted all along. They were pawns in his plan. And
you can do the same with your enemies. Find what it is that they
yearn for, and manipulate them into what you want using
that…
     
    Staggering back to her apartment, she was glad that the