Free An Officer’s Duty by Jean Johnson

baggy clothes, had the curves of a fully grown female. Then again, the petite woman was five years older than Ia, who was now twenty. Like a lot of people with Terran blood in their background,Rabbit also had an Asiatic cast to her features, though hers were more prominent than Ia’s. Her face was moon-round rather than Ia’s more heart-shaped one, her eyes more almond-shaped than Ia’s, and her nose, if dusted with a scattering of freckles, was flatter and broader.
    The moment she pulled back and grinned up at Ia, her other prominent physical feature was visible. Like her namesake, Rabbit had two buck teeth with slight gaps on either side, emphasizing them in a very rabbity way. The grin transformed her from somewhat plain to adorably cute. It was also an infectious smile, as unavoidable as a bright sunny day. Even knowing about it in advance, Ia found herself grinning back.
    “Look at you!” Rabbit exclaimed, flipping her hands at her friend. “You may be stuck among lightworlders, but I think you added a muscle or two—ooh, your poor angel hair!” Her sunny smile switched to a pouting frown, and the implied sunlight went away as surely as the shadow of a thick cloud. “I can’t believe it’s all gone! It used to be so long…I have to touch it.”
    Another flick of her hands beckoned Ia down. Obliging the petite woman, she dropped to one knee and let Rabbit run those small hands through her locks. Her hair was no longer a waist-length mass of soft white with a slight curl. Though it had grown out somewhat from the buzz cut all new recruits received, she had carefully kept it trimmed to the bottom of her ears.
    Thankfully, before the constant contact could threaten to rouse her precognitive senses, Rabbit withdrew her hands. She pinched thumb and forefinger close together and wrinkled her nose. “You need to grow it at
least
one more centimeter, because it just looks wrong that way. It’s too short. And I’m not too keen on the fringe in front.”
    “I’m a combat soldier. It’s not supposed to touch my collar or it’ll get caught in my p-suit’s o-ring, and I also can’t risk it getting in my eyes when I’m suited up,” Ia told her. “This is the longest I can grow it.”
    Rabbit flipped her hands. “Well, just get an angle cut that’s shorter in the back and a little longer in the front, and…and, oh, a widow’s peak cut for the bangs. Something to break up that awful straight edge. You’re not a plexi toy or a robot, you know. You’re a woman. You should
look
like one.”
    Ia started to protest. The timestreams filtered into the backof her mind, showing what she would look like if she made the alterations, and how it would affect the futures ahead of her. The effect was negligible, so she settled on a sigh and a shrug. “I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Good!” The sun came back out, beaming with the approval in Rabbit’s smile. Turning, she waved her hands over her head, fluttering her fingers. “Okay, everybody! For those of you who don’t know?
This
is Ia. Do everything she tells you to do!”
    What a way to put the spotlight on me,
Ia thought wryly.
Unfortunately, I do need it.
Quickly, while the others were still studying her, she skimmed part of her mind into the timeplains, touching and connecting lifestreams to faces.
    “You want
us
to obey
her
? Slag that!” one of the teens scoffed, slashing his hand through the air. He was one of the boys from the clutch that had first risen to face her.
    The boy next to him, similar enough to have been a brother or a cousin, flicked his hand at Ia’s brown T-shirt and brown pants. “Look at ’er! She’s
military
. That means she’s
government
. I don’t pay no attention to no military
skut
.”
    Ia had no idea what a
skut
was, other than some local slang that was apparently now in fashion. The dark mutterings of those who knew who she was told her it was an insulting term, as did the scowl pinching Rabbit’s brow. The petite woman