In an ideal world, their time at sports would have been a chance to relax and enjoy a break from the rest of their demanding schedules. Not when Kincaid was around. Somehow she made the simplest things difficult.
It wasn’t that her skills were lacking or poor. They were, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was that she’d barely heard of the games they’d all grown up playing. She had to have the rules explained to her. In excruciating detail. Usually more than once. At first her incomprehension and disbelief had been comical. The joke had grown old.
As regards skills, she needed those explained to her too. And demonstrated. And while that was going on, everybody else’s precious, ever so limited, time was being wasted.
The fact that once she started trying to play a game, she was unskilled and uncoordinated was the least of the problems she posed.
At least she was formed up in time. Unlike Wong. Probably Cadet McGinnis’ doing.
The two of them were standing at ease next to each other. It was a study in contrasts.
There was no single obvious difference Andrew could have pointed out, but Cadet McGinnis looked sharp. She looked enthusiastic and ready to do whatever was required of her proficiently and with snap.
Kincaid didn’t.
Kincaid looked adequate. As adequate as she knew she needed to be, and no more. She had an air of doing only as much as she was required to. She felt more long suffering than enthusiastic.
It wasn’t the sort of attitude the Academy expected of its cadets.
Andrew wondered if he was being fair. It could be she was only tired and bewildered and that adequate was the best she could manage.
Andrew had seen her determination on the obstacle course, though. Kincaid had started dismally ill prepared for it. She’d stumbled, fallen down, and incurred innumerable small scrapes and bruises. It was a minor miracle she’d not been hurt worse. She’d soldiered her way through it all. She’d managed to be adequate in the end through sheer determination not to quit.
Andrew wasn’t seeing that determination in regards to learning military deportment and routine. She wasn’t convinced it was important. He was sure of it.
Andrew wished on one level that he could take her aside and somehow drill it into her thick skull that they were important, and that she needed to change her attitude. On the other hand, it wasn’t like he had a lot of spare time and energy himself.
Wouldn’t be doing her or the Space Force a favor in the long run either. Kincaid’s attitude towards military routine was only one of her many deficiencies.
Finally, Wong arrived and hastily formed up. Managed to do so apologetically.
If they didn’t waste any more time, they wouldn’t have to run.
“Squaaadrooon! Aaa-tenn-SHUN!” Andrew yelled. “By the right. By the numbers. Leeffft TURN!”
In general, Andrew was satisfied with the instinctive response of his fellow cadets. They were shaping up well. Even Kincaid wasn’t so bad that it was worth calling her out.
“Squaaadrooon! Foorrrwaard, MARCH!”
And they were off, their boots going crump, crump in the late summer morning’s air.
Andrew checked out Kincaid. She was in step, at least.
Andrew couldn’t help thinking it was a good thing she was so bad at sports. A big enough faux pas on a sports field, and maybe they’d be rid of her by Christmas.
Maybe the frustration would convince her to quit on her own.
A forlorn hope, but a hope nonetheless.
3: Katie Tries Out
Second week of the main part of the first semester and Katie had hoped to get a head start on making up her academic deficiencies. Instead, like most of her fellow cadets, she’d spent her evenings for the last week and a half trying out for various sports.
Most of the cadets already appeared to have a sport they wanted to play picked out. A few were disappointed, but even those had a secondary pick. Colleen, Katie’s roommate, had tried out for the swim team and not quite made the cut. She was good, but some of the other cadets had proved to be much better. She had just made the soccer team.
“Well, I’m not a great soccer player,” she’d said, “but it’s popular and I’ll make lots of friends. Plus, most games are local so no long travel times.”
Katie congratulated her roommate and friend and refrained from expressing her envy. Once Colleen had made a team, she was excused further try outs. She, unlike Katie, could concentrate on her studies again. It hadn’t taken her long to find her niche.
Katie on the other hand had spent her time learning that her athletic deficiencies dwarfed her academic ones.
They’d started off by making her try out for the swim, diving, and water polo teams.
All the cadets were required to make the effort.
In Katie’s case, it was a bad joke. Katie could manage to stay afloat and thrash slowly and painfully in a certain direction. Competent to play water sports, she wasn’t. A fact she got to display before her incoming class of cadets. Good thing she wasn’t easily embarrassed.
Good thing too, it only took the whole of a single evening. Not so good was how every muscle she had, including many she hadn’t been aware of possessing, now hurt. If she survived the Academy, there was no doubt she was going to be in better shape.
Katie had spent the next couple of nights demonstrating her complete inability to play a variety of team sports.
Turned out basketball was a no contact sport. Who knew? The way the upper class cadet officiating had turned red and cursed her under his breath didn’t bode well for her reputation. At least nobody had been injured. Not seriously.
The soccer try out with Colleen hadn’t been anywhere as near as bad. Katie was getting good at running. Her endurance wasn’t bad. She had no idea of what the rules were again. Katie did accidentally step on one other cadet’s foot, but other than that committed no egregious errors. Unfortunately, her ball handling skills were non-existent. That ruled out any chance of making the soccer team.
Baseball had proved a complete dud. Katie couldn’t hit. Katie couldn’t throw. Katie couldn’t catch. The coach had made her try, and afterwards walked away shaking his head.
He’d circled around back to her. “You’ve never played ball?” he’d asked.
“On Ceres? On my family’s spaceship?” she asked back.
“I see,” he’d said. “Probably you have the basic co-ordination, but right now don’t even try to bother with intramural softball. Sorry, not your fault, but currently you’re beyond hopeless.”
They hadn’t bothered to try to make her try out for the football team.
After the team sports had come the racket ball and track and field ones.
The now familiar complete cluelessness regards rules and the lack of any skill had ruled out tennis, badminton, and other racket ball games.
Track and field had turned out to be not quite such a write off.
Katie couldn’t sprint worth a damn, and she was still a complete loss at throwing anything, but over distances she was a reasonable if not great runner. She’d survived the first cut for both longer races and cross country.
Today was her best hope of finding a sport she might actually be good at. Today she was trying out for the modern biathlon. The traditional biathlon was solely a winter sport combining cross country skiing and target shooting with a rifle.
A combination of climate change and spreading popularity had led to the modern variation on the sport that didn’t necessarily require snow. It had also added aspects of old fashioned orienteering where an ability to navigate with a map, and to pick optimal routes were needed. The new sport combined orienteering control points with firing stations. Events could require skiing in snow, but they could also involve navigating cross country on foot when there was no snow. They tended to be held in semi-wilderness, often partly wooded, areas.
Katie could run. Katie had learned how to do so over rough ground the hard way, too. Katie figured she could learn cross country s
kiing. As for navigation, she wasn’t sure she’d be good at that, but she had a hunch she would be. Katie was good at interpreting technical documents and visualizing spatial layouts generally. Whether it’d been on Ceres or navigating in the Belt, she’d never had problems figuring out what lay in what direction.
As for target shooting, she was outstanding at that. The proof was in the pudding, but she expected she’d be one of the better shots among the cadets trying out. Sam, her ex-marine mentor, had been careful not to stoke her considerable ego, but he’d as much as said she was one of the best shots he’d ever seen. Meant a lot coming from an ex-marine.
Not that Sam had ever called himself an ex-marine. Apparently other people called marines who’d taken retirement ex-marines, but marines themselves believed once a marine, always a marine. Guess everyone has their quirks.
It made Katie nostalgic to think about. For a change, she was looking forward to a try out.
It was most of an hour’s bus ride to the site of that try out. Some of the other cadets said hello during the trip. A few others nodded politely, but no one seemed eager to strike up an actual conversation with her.
Once they got there, they automatically formed up in front of the waiting Marine officer. It’d become instinct. Nobody had to actually order it.
Katie examined the man in front of them. It was the first time she’d ever seen a marine with a commission. There weren’t many of them. The Space Force Marine Corps was not in absolute terms all that large. It also had an extraordinarily lean command structure, even by historical standards.
The Marine Corps did not approve of comfortable administrative postings in cushy offices. Promotion was slow. So was turnover. Only a very few cadets every year entered it. Many of its officers were mustangs. Men who’d been promoted from the ranks.
Enlisted men and cadets both had to attend and pass a two year officer training course. It was tough, and many flunked it. The fact that the time on that course didn’t count towards their mandatory service was one reason cadets didn’t often select the service.
Katie wouldn’t have been surprised to see the marine captain in front of them wearing a big red “S” on his chest while snacking on nails.
In fact, he was a rather nondescript middle aged man, albeit one who was obviously fit, and who had great posture.
His hair was short true, but not so short as the buzz cuts the cadets all sported. Katie was looking forward to being able to grow hers longer. When short, her hair stuck up in all directions and needed to be slicked down with gel as soon as it got beyond being spiky fuzz.
Once they were all settled, the captain spoke.
“Listen up,” he said in a loud clear voice, “I’m Captain Svenson. I’m a marine, but I’m not here in a formal capacity. I’m a volunteer. You are not under my command. My charge, yes, my command, no. I do expect you to act like responsible adults. I expect you to listen to me. If I’m not happy with you, you don’t get to be on my team. This will not impress the Academy. You may address me as Coach Svenson. Understood?”
“Yes, Coach,” most of the cadets managed in a ragged chorus. A few misguided “Yes, Captain”s were also heard.
The Coach sighed theatrically. Katie noticed one offending cadet turning red.
“Any questions?” the Coach asked.
None of the cadets dared speak up.
“Not a very curious lot,” the Coach commented. “Forgive me ladies and gentlemen, but I’m going to assume you don’t know everything you need to. I’m also not going to hold your hands.” He waved a sheaf of multi-colored sheets of paper in the air. “These are maps.” He handed them to the rightmost cadet in the first rank. “You should each take one and pass the rest of them on to the next cadet.”
The Coach waited until each cadet had a map.
“Very good. You’re to meet me at the first location marked on your maps. Good luck.”
With that, he turned and sprinted away towards a nearby tree line.
Katie looked at her piece of paper. It showed part of a topographical map. Katie had seen them before. She’d never actually used one, but she had done a whole twenty minutes of research on the Net the night before. Basic concepts seemed simple enough.
Contour lines to indicate heights and slopes, blue areas for water, green ones for woods, and black lines for trails. There was a scale marked in one corner, and large red numbers appeared to indicate destinations. North was to the top. Seemed unfair he hadn’t given them compasses, but it was a clear day. Katie knowing the rough time and being able to see where the Sun was had a good idea of what direction was south, and therefore which way north, west, and east lay.
Sure enough, the big red one lay in roughly the same direction the Coach had gone. Katie trotted off in his wake.
A few of the other cadets straggled after her, including Susan. Susan Fritzsen, who’d been her not so very helpful teammate in the Cadet Prep Obstacle Course Race. Katie glanced back at the young woman. The big, tall, very blond, and very pale, young woman who smiled blandly back at her.
Katie snorted and returned to focusing on where she was going. There was a darkish space between some trees, an opening that was the beginning of a path. Katie wasn’t sure, but she thought it was where Coach Svenson had gone.
In any event, it led in the right direction. After penetrating the bushes at the forest’s edge, the path proved to be wide and smooth. The cool earth with only a light dusting of leaves and needles was far more comfortable to run on than pavement, gravel, or wet grass. Good footing, but easy on her pounding feet.
In what seemed no time they were bursting out into the bright light once more to find their Coach waiting for them by what looked like the firing positions of a small rustic firing range.
“Gather round,” he said when they came within earshot. “No need and no place for regular formations.” He handed each of them some thin booklets. The booklets were titled “An Introduction to Modern All-weather Biathlon Orienteering”.
Susan took hers with a bemused smile. “I love this sport,” she said. “Shooting, skiing, and running around outdoors. What’s not to love?”
Despite her, let’s not say “bitterness” let’s say “lack of being completely impressed”, with Susan, Katie couldn’t help smiling. They agreed on that much.
“You’ve done this before?” Katie asked.
“Yeah,” Susan replied. “All through high school, ever since I was a kid.” She looked at Katie with an assessing glance. “You can read a map, and you’ve got a good sense of direction, right?”
“Sure,” Katie replied.
“You’ve gotten rather good at running cross country too,” Susan continued. “Can you shoot?”
“Yep, and I’m good at it, too,” Katie said.
Susan nodded with a contemplative air.
By this time they’d been joined by most of the rest of the cadets. It’d been a few minutes since the last one had turned up. The Coach looked at his watch. “Roll call!” he called out.
“Cadet Kincaid, present!” Katie sounded off.
“Cadet Fritzsen, present!” Susan called out beside her.
The rest of the cadets called out their names in succession. It was yet another minor, but useful skill, they’d had drilled into them in the past weeks.
The Coach marked them each off on a thin tablet as they called out their names. When they were done, he looked up. “As you may have guessed, that was your first test. You have to be able to think for yourself, read a map, and find your way between places cross country,” he said.
A straggler ran up. “Took too long,” the Coach told him. “Return to the parking lot and wait. Pass that message on to the rest of the stragglers. If you’re all ready and waiting when the rest of us return, it’s worth some brownie points for you, Cadet?”
“Cadet Gauthier, sir!” the straggler replied.
“Very well, off with you, Gauthier,” the Coach said.
Gauthier ran off back the way he’d
come.
“Okay,” the Coach spoke to the rest of them. “How many of you have used firearms before?”
They all raised their hands. Katie had a weird sense of being back in grade school. On the other hand, she doubted that the majority of randomly selected teenagers from Earth, let alone grade schoolers, had any experience of using firearms. The average person lived in an urban area in which fire arms were more dangerous than useful. In most jurisdictions, the authorities liked to monopolize the use of force as much as possible. There were a few dangerous slums on parts of Earth, but even there law and order prevailed by historical standards. These cadets knew firearms because they’d been preparing to attend the Academy for years. It was yet another reminder of how selective the Academy was.
“Good,” the Coach said, looking around. “So none of you will have any excuse for mishandling them. You mishandle a firearm and you’re off the team. You slip up in following the safety protocols, you point your weapon, loaded or not, anywhere that’s not safe, or you forget to look up the spout of one you’re handed, or anything of that sort, and you’re off the team. That’s it. That’s all. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the cadets chorused.
“Good. Just to make sure you know exactly what those protocols are, I will reiterate for your benefit.” By this time they’d all learned not to groan or in any way to editorialize on the receipt of bad news. So there were no groans from the assembled cadets.
The Coach ducked into a small hut nearby and came out with a sleek, black and brown rifle, complete with sling.
He proceeded to demonstrate, loudly, clearly and in lengthy detail exactly how they were to handle the weapon under all possible circumstances. The cadets listened quietly.
When he was done, he picked Katie out of the crowd. “Cadet Kincaid, you will help me with the next stage of the demonstration,” he said. “You will under my direction show exactly how the rifle is safely used to score points at a firing station. Do you have any problems with that?”
Katie Kincaid Space Cadet Page 5