Changing Course

[Lisanna 0]

"You owe it to your family, to me! I gave life to you, you ungrateful wretch!" Regina Stuart's voice boomed through the parlor at the Stuart Estate outside of London.

 

"Yes, you gave life to me," Lisanna responded with equal fervor. "My life, which is mine to live. If you want a younger version of you walking around you should have cloned yourself instead of hoping for it to happen the old fashioned way."

 

"How dare you!" Regina shouted, slapping her daughter vigorously with an open palm to the cheek.

 

"Never," Lisanna began, vibrating with anger, "hit me again." Her own hands curled into fists, and she felt no qualms about using them should her mother repeat herself. "I am not going to go to Oxford to learn how to be your toady for twenty years. I will work in a soup kitchen mopping floors before that happens." Whipping herself around, she stalked out of the parlor, heading to her room, ignoring the shouting voice behind her.

 

"Come back here right this instant! Lisanna Caroline, how dare you turn your back on me..." The answer to those heated words came in the form of a heavy door slamming shut.

 

Inside her spacious room, filled with antiques and dressed in a manner appropriate to her station and not at all to her liking, Lisanna stood just inside the door, shaking in her rage and despair. "I will not cry," she promised herself. While doing so may be cathartic, she knew that the immediate moment called for planning and a level head. She could let her emotions free later.

 

"Damn her. She cares nothing for me, only for her image. It's my life, my wants, my needs." Opening a set of double doors she walked into her closet, a spacious affair that had been another bedroom once upon a time in the building's history. Snapping up an old leather suitcase, she opened it and set it on the floor before unceremoniously grabbing clothes off the hangers and throwing them inside untidily. When it filled, she repeated the process with the case's mate. All the while her mind whirled, examining options. Where she could go, what she could do. What she wanted to do.

 

Enough clothes packed to get her through, she headed back into her bedroom and slipped her taut, lean body beneath her bed. Using a nail file, she levered up a floorboard, then smoothly lifted it off. Nestled in the sub-flooring lay one of the few modern items in her room, a well crafted lock box, which she extracted. After replacing the floorboard, she slid out from underneath the bed with the case. Opening it, she added cash from her pockets as well as rifling around in her dresser for what she had placed there. Re-locking the box, she returned to the closet and placed it inside a duffel bag. Adding a few more mementos, she zipped it up and placed it with the suitcases.

 

She was leaving, there was no question of that. Staying, or going to Oxford as her mother commanded, would be a surrender she would never be able to live with. She wanted to fly, she wanted to see the universe with the controls beneath her long slim hands. She would have gladly settled for the arduous training of Starfleet to have that chance, but her mother had snatched it away out of her own selfishness. Neither could she just apply for a job anywhere near Earth, where her mother could reach up her claws and snatch that away from her too. Lisanna would have to travel far away, to the frontier of the empire or beyond, to achieve her freedom. Another victory for the strong willed and cold hearted woman who lived for her own glory and a kind eye from the Imperium.

 

Considering her options, the young woman paced long strides around her room. The Empire controlled the dissemination of news with a hard hand, but even official reports of increased pirate activity on the frontier had made its way to Earth. Her parents, privy to the truth, knew the real scope of the problem. Lisanna had even had discussions with her father about it. Thinking of her father, she finally let some tears escape. He was a good man, and a kind one, but weak. He had been trained from birth to serve and obey orders, and presumably from day one had done so with his domineering wife. He was no help to his daughter, though she was sure that deep in his heart he wished he could be.

 

Thinking of how her mother controlled her father quickly dried up the tears, and her resolve cemented. Pirates indeed. What better way to win back her own pride and freedom than to become one of the thorns in her mother's side? It would be difficult to do for a Terran born of families deeply entrenched in the Empire's service. Just being Terran would be difficult enough. She had skills, though, and certainly there would be someone out there with the sense of humor and eye to recognize what she could offer.

 

She began to plan the scenario in her mind. She would have to take her shuttle, the Starlight, and sell it, and that was a squeeze to the heart. She'd dealt personally with the manager of the Akureyri shipyard where she'd eventually bought the shuttle, and from the first time she met him she sensed something conniving in his makeup. She was certain that she could go to him and sell back the shuttle on the quiet. Not for nearly as much as she could openly, but that would take up too much time and there was the danger of her mother hearing about it. Having heard from her father of how many cargo captains were making extra money by smuggling, she also figured she could find one more than willing to add her as a passenger without documenting it, for the right price.

 

Confident that she could pool her resources and get off planet, she relaxed. She could do this. She had to do this, because doing anything else would be to admit defeat at her mother's hands, and she'd rather fling herself into the Sun and burn than live anyone's life but her own.