“Try to find my people.”
That’s what she was afraid of. “And then you’d lead them here.”
“No. I only wish to go home.” He sounded defeated.
She cocked her head. “You can’t leave until the invasion is over, I take it.”
He didn’t answer but scraped out the last of his chili in the bowl.
He’s hiding something.
Well, duh. Of course, the enemy is hiding something.
Given his luxurious accommodations and service at the Laurel Cave Hilton, he had no incentive to volunteer any useful information unless she tortured it out of him—and that wasn’t an option.Having a conscience sucks sometimes.
She tried a different tactic. “Tell me about yourself, your life on your home world.”
He looked wary. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?” She started with something innocuous.
“Our planet takes longer to revolve around our star than yours does, but on my world, I’m thirty-three years old.”
“Do you have siblings? What do your parents do?”
“I have at least one sibling. A brother.”
At least? How could he not be sure of how many siblings he had?
“My parents both served in the military, but I don’t know if they still do,” he added.
“Why not?”
“I was a child the last time I saw them. I haven’t seen them in twenty-seven years.”
“You haven’t seen them in over a quarter century?”
“Children aren’t reared by their biological parents but the ministry.”
“Ministry, like a religious order?”
“No, the ministry is what we call our government. Children stay with their parents until age six when they are sent to ministry education centers.”
Indoctrination camps explained a lot. The Progg never had any chance to develop empathy. “And you never saw your parents? You didn’t go home? They didn’t come to see you?”
“There are annual visits. But my parents never came.”
She gaped, appalled. “Never?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t the only one without visitors. My parents had fulfilled their duty. I was still at the MEC when my younger brother arrived.” His mouth twisted. “He was much tougher than I had been at his age.”
What did he mean by tougher? She sensed a deeper story there.
He continued. “Then I graduated at sixteen and entered the required military service, and I never saw him again either.”
“Sixteen? That’s hardly more than a child.” Of everything he said, that should shock her the least. In the United States, a personcouldjoin the military at seventeen with parental consent or eighteen without. Generally, however, enlisted recruits were in their early twenties.
“We are adults at sixteen. We’re required to serve for ten years,” he said.
