Like most citizens of most worlds with Earth-descended populations, Chen Shizuoka had never traveled outside the atmosphere of the planet on which he had been born.  In human society there were a few jobs that required space travel; otherwise it was for the most part an activity of the wealthy or powerful.  Chen, a poor student from a poor family, was and had always been a long way from either of those categories.

Of course he had - again like most people - read descriptions and experienced re-creations of the generally mild sensations of space flight.  So nothing about the early stages of his first journey away from Salutai really surprised him.  From the spaceport a shuttle lifted him and its gathered handful of other recruits up to an interstellar transport craft that was awaiting them in orbit.  Except for its Templar markings, the transport was an almost featureless sphere, impressive in its size to those aboard the shuttle as they drew near.  Some of Chen's fellow recruits, gathered at a viewport, talked knowledgeably about the type and designation of the ship they were about to board.  Chen knew almost nothing of such technical matters, and was not greatly interested in them.  He supposed that now some such interest might begin to be required of him, depending on what kind of an assignment he drew after his basic training.  He wondered, too, where he would serve.  The Templar organization, many centuries old, and independent of any planetary government or league of planets, existed in almost every part of the Galaxy to which Earth-descended humanity had spread.

But Chen's thoughts, instead of being focused on the new life that he was entering, remained primarily with his friends back on the world he had just left, and at which he now took a lingering last look as he was about to leave the shuttle for the transport.  He had been for most of his life a shy youth, not one to make friends very easily.  And they were really his best friends, those people who had gone out of their way to welcome him into the political protest group.  They had helped him find a direction for his life, had shared their dreams with him, along with the work and risk of organizing the demonstration.  The inflatable berserkers had been his idea, though, and he was proud of it.

Chen's chief concern at the moment was whether any of his friends were also being shot at.  He fretted and wondered how soon he might be able to communicate with them again.  He would send mail, when he had the chance.  He would of course have to try to write between the lines about his real concerns, assuming that what he wrote would be read and censored somewhere along the way.  That wasn't commonly done, or at least he hadn't thought it was, but if they were ready to shoot people down...