Katie Kincaid Space Cadet

by Andrew van Aardvark

  The Star Rats themselves had used slower than light technology to bring what appeared to be a massive colony ship into the Solar System. They’d set off before humanity had achieved any space travel. Seemed it’d been a nasty surprise that Earth had developed it during their trip to the Solar System.

  Looked a lot like humanity had been spared a fate as very junior partners to the Star Rats in humanity’s own home star system. The Star Rats were strangely unclear on the point.

  It gave nobody any confidence about the consequences of wider galactic contact. At the same time, there was no government that was willing to let some other government be the first to develop the capability. And so they were all working hard to be the first to solve a problem they weren’t eager to solve in the first place.

  Svenson snorted to himself. It was a funny old world. One full of ironies. Ironies like the one that having volunteered to be a biathlon coach left him a lot more time to stand around and think about the wider world. As a professor and active military officer, he had other duties that would have been keeping him busy if he hadn't.

  Svenson could have just enjoyed being in the woods in the early fall, but his contact with the Academy cadets he was coaching had predisposed him to thinking about wider issues.

  Kincaid in particular.

  So much potential, in such a problematic package.

  Smart, motivated, and talented, you’d have thought on the face of it that the Academy and Space Force would both be delighted to have her.

  Not so. The people running the Space Force had become complacent and in-bred. In-bred socially and mentally, if not biologically. When he thought about it, Svenson realized that was true of all the elites currently running Earth. So perhaps not something the Space Force military command had to feel particularly bad about. Only the thing was, sooner or later humanity would finally meet its galactic counterparts. When it did, it was the Space Force officer corps that was going to have to bear the brunt of adapting.

  If they couldn’t deal with one young Belter girl in the form of Kincaid, how in the nine hells and heavens above were they going to deal with genuine aliens?

  Not well, Svenson feared.

  The unfairness of it didn’t bother him. Not to any serious degree. Life wasn’t fair. Fairness was a virtue in some societies. One Svenson approved of in theory. But it wasn’t something he expected of the world.

  So that the whole mess was unfair to Kincaid wasn’t something that unduly concerned him.

  That she had great potential in her own right, and that she was a sorely needed catalyst for change in the Space Force, did.

  He’d long perceived the Space Force as hidebound. He’d underestimated just how resistant to change and outside influences it was.

  Kincaid was going to have a far more uphill battle to remain in the Academy than he’d first thought. It was going to be an even greater challenge for her to bring about useful change in the Space Force.

  That worried him.

  He was uncertain about his own role. He was trying to be encouraging to the young woman. He was trying to give her a chance to excel at something. It was clear she wasn’t used to mediocrity. She wasn’t one to settle for merely getting by. How long she’d be willing to tolerate a career like that was an open question.

  At the same time, her concerns about the time the sport was taking were valid. It was bound to affect her studies. It was also depriving her of opportunities to get to know her fellow cadets.

  He hoped the encouragement of being outstanding at, at least one thing would partly offset that. He also had hopes that the team would do well enough that it’d reflect favorably upon both the Academy and her. If she found herself up in front of a review board, as was all too likely, that might make a significant difference.

  One could hope.

  In the end, man plans and the Lord disposes.

  Svenson believed that fervently, despite not being very religious.

  All of history and his own experience indicated it.

  * * *

  Being perplexed and frustrated were not normal emotions for Henry. Neither was annoyance.

  Additionally, little outright surprised him.

  Today was proving to be a learning experience.

  It was the afternoon of the fifth Saturday in the semester and Henry and his friend, Wolf, had finally felt free to take an hour off. They’d planned to get a beer and enjoy a couple of games of darts in the Cadet’s Mess.

  The Cadet’s Mess was what would have been the student pub on the campus of a regular institution of higher education.

  Like all things Academy related, it wasn’t exactly like any civilian counterpart. It rather reminded Henry of the Community Room in his grandparent’s luxury apartment complex. It had pool tables, board games, a shuffleboard, as well as the dart boards. It was more a quiet place of respite from a busy schedule than somewhere students let go with raucous drinking and partying.

  It did have a bar. As well as tables, chairs, and plenty of wood and brass. It was more like a British neighborhood pub than a jumping dance club.

  Additionally, by tradition all talk of politics, religion, and sex was banned. Talking about work, anything to do with their Academy duties for the cadets, was also highly discouraged.

  This didn’t preclude a great deal of gossip about fellow cadets as it happened.

  A fact that had just been brought home quite clearly to Henry.

  As soon as he’d entered the mess with Wolf, they’d spotted a small group of female first year cadets at one of the few occupied tables.

  The group included Katie Kincaid’s roommate Colleen and a pair of other cadets from her squadron, Debbie Patel, and Eva Karoly.

  It was one of Wolf’s idiosyncrasies that he felt the need to talk to every female in any room he shared with them. It was a constant mystery to Henry how this never offended any of them. Henry imagined Wolf’s obvious interest in the opposite sex being tempered by his consistently being a gentleman about it might be a partial explanation.

  In any event, they’d found themselves in a conversation with Colleen and her friends before they’d even managed to get a drink.

  And, of course, after some pleasantries and pointless inanities about the routines they were all subject to, the conversation had turned to Katie Kincaid.

  At least it was technically a legitimate interest for Henry, as he was her assigned second year mentor. Although in truth, unless a first year cadet had difficulties and reached out, it was rare for an assigned mentor and their charge to interact much after the first month. After that new cadets were basically settled in and not in much need of any help another cadet only a year ahead of them could offer.

  Still, retaining a certain interest was legit.

  “Yes, Katie is spending the weekend at yet another biathlon event,” Colleen had said. “I barely see her anymore.”

  “Can you believe she’s Schlossberg’s granddaughter?” Debbie had put in. “Guess that explains how she managed to be admitted.”

  Colleen had frowned at that. “I’m convinced she had no idea about that.”

  “Well, it’s not like she needed to know,” Debbie answered.

  “She is very smart,” Wolf said, coming to the rescue of Katie’s reputation. “Especially if you remember she’s almost two years younger than the rest of us. That's rare for a reason.”

  Debbie came as close to smirking and grinning at the same time as Henry had ever seen. “Wonder if someone set her and the old Dragon up,” she’d said.

  Eva to her right nodded and took a sip of whatever she was drinking. Wolf went blank faced. It took Henry a few seconds to get Debbie’s meaning and when he did, he tried to emulate his friend.

  Only Colleen missed the point. “What do you mean?”

  Henry liked Colleen. She was a nice girl, if a little nerdishly retiring. She’d never be a politician. Never much of a bureaucratic infighter either. He bit the bullet. “I believe Debbie is suggesting that if anybody
put their thumb on the scales to get Katie admitted this year, they weren’t doing either her or her grandmother any favors.”

  It took Colleen a minute to digest that, but she was naïve, not stupid. “She is two years younger than all the rest of us. If either her or the Admiral had had warning, they could have seen she had some preparation.” She looked around at her fellow cadets.

  They all nodded grimly back at her. Even Debbie reined in her earlier glee at the scandal of it.

  “Geeze, that’s evil,” Colleen had said. “They want to make the Dragon look bad and take the edge off of her legacy so they wreck a young girl’s whole life.”

  “Well, one thing about Kincaid she’s tougher than she looks,” Debbie replied. “I’ll lay money down that she flunks out, but it won’t kill her. She’ll just make waves somewhere else.”

  Colleen had looked like she’d like to have said something about that, but didn’t. Eva had started going on about her plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Debbie had got the hint and gone along with the change of conversation.

  Henry and Wolf had made some small comments about turkey and being stuffed and then had made their excuses. They had a game of darts to play.

  Henry chewed the cud on the issue while watching Wolf sink two out of three darts in the triple twenty ring. Great, he was going to lose at darts too.

  Kincaid was up a creek without a paddle, and he wished there was something he could do about it.

  There wasn’t really. Even if there had been it wasn’t usual for second year cadets to be too interested in first year ones even the ones they were assigned to mentor. That Katie was female and younger was another issue. Not as big a one as her being Admiral Schlossberg’s granddaughter, though. Any unusual help he gave her could easily be interpreted as an attempt to curry favor with the Admiral. Not a good look.

  Henry had learned not to sigh when stumped. He rather regretted it.

  Henry would keep an eye on Kincaid to see if an opportunity to help came. He didn’t expect that.

  He rather expected the poor girl was on her own.

  5: What Are You Doing For Christmas, Kincaid?

  Katie had begun to wonder if there was anything such as being fully awake and fully focused.

  She'd just completed her math final for the fall semester. Her head was dancing with visions of uniform continuity and vector spaces. Some genius had seen that first year cadets couldn't fit courses on calculus and linear algebra both into their schedule. Their bright idea for a solution was combining the two of them into one course. Not confusing that.

  It amounted to doing two half assed versions of the topics in a period of time that was enough for one of them.

  Colleen had confessed to Katie that the only reason it appeared to work was that most cadets learned all the necessary material in preparatory schools before ever getting to the Academy. Most cadets, but, unfortunately, not Katie.

  Katie had thought she was good at math before coming to the Academy. Turned out there was more to mathematics than she had realized.

  Katie like most Belters excelled at the practical applications of mathematics. Katie could calculate a complicated trajectory in her head. She could tell you how much air and fuel would be used down to the milliliter by a ship following that trajectory. Finally, Katie could tell you what the chances of failure were for every part on that ship that was making the trip.

  Tell you the name of every theorem she used to do so, let alone prove every one of them, not so much.

  Katie was getting better at it, though. She had hopes of doing better than average on the exam she'd just written. She'd worked hard enough to earn it. Every minute of every day, wherever she was; on a bus, in a hotel room, or back on campus, even waiting at start lines and finish lines, she'd spent reviewing a bit of math. Every spare moment she'd practiced recalling what she'd read.

  It'd come at a cost.

  Most of her teammates on the biathlon team thought she was distant and maybe a bit crazy.

  Katie had not memorized as nearly as much about history, let alone sixteenth century novels and grammar either English or French. Katie had given them some time, but she'd focused on the math as more likely to pay off.

  It'd been a process of brutal prioritization.

  And it was now time to switch priorities.

  Katie tried to retain some focus on the here and now as she marched back to her dorm room in the barracks. It'd have been a luxurious privilege just a couple of months ago to be allowed to march, not run, and all by oneself from one place to another.

  It was a privilege she'd been bawled out for abusing just a few short weeks ago. Bawled out by the Regimental Sergeant Major for the Academy, no less. Katie had been thinking and somehow forgotten how to march properly. Katie had been 'zunting'. Moving her arms and legs on the same side the same way at the same time instead of opposite to each other. How she'd managed that, she had no idea. Which was all she'd had to say to the RSM when he'd spotted from blocks away, marched over, and expressed his extreme disgust with her very existence.

  It wasn't just the embarrassment either.

  Katie was altogether too aware of the chance she'd end up in front of a review board at some point. A board to decide whether she should be allowed to continue at the Academy. She had her virtues, she knew, but she also didn't fit the profile of a proper cadet yet. Katie thought she was making progress, but she seemed to be constantly discovering things everyone else knew. She was constantly tired. She had none of her normal energy. There was never enough time to do everything she needed to.

  So odds were she was going to screw up at some point and end up being reviewed for it. When the time came, there was no doubt the input of the RSM would be sought, and at this point she didn't think his input was going to be positive.

  Damn.

  In any case, she tried to take the time to think during her solitary march without losing track of either what she was doing or what was going on around her.

  It was draining, being on edge like this all the time.

  Priorities. Christmas was coming up. Katie needed to think about meeting her grandmother. She was going to learn to ski from Susan. She had to get a head start on her academic subjects for next semester. Most of all she had to somehow increase her odds of doing well on the Preparatory Course for BOTC all the cadets would be attending for a week when more normal students would be enjoying their March break.

  It was an integral part of the Academy's brand that it first selected only the best leadership material and that it then refined that material. Anything less than spectacular performance by the cadet class on their BOTC course would be embarrassing to the Academy's administration.

  Only the Academy wasn't allowed control over the running of the Basic Officer Training Course. The wider Space Force Training Directorate retained that privilege for itself.

  The Academy tried to compensate by the means of a preparatory course for its cadets prior to their attending the BOTC proper. A dry run, as it were.

  Formally, there were only three ways a cadet could fail out of the Academy. Misbehavior of some sort was one. In practice it had to be egregiously bad, cheating or mistreating another cadet, or breaking a major law. Failing an academic course was another. Again in practice, a cadet was given every chance to improve. Special tutoring was available. The courses weren't marked that stringently. Very good marks were hard to get, but it was equally hard to outright fail. Cadets who did were usually allowed to repeat a course. Finally, a cadet could fail BOTC, which automatically meant dismissal from the Academy.

  Katie was determined not to let that happen to her.

  Katie intended to study hard at what was needed. She'd show them.

  Marching into the barracks, she was finally able to relax some. You were allowed to walk more or less like a normal person within the confines of the barracks. Proper deportment was expected, but that mainly meant not being a jackass. Thank the heavens for small mercies.

  Entering t
he room she shared with Colleen, she let out a sigh of relief. Katie was constantly worried and tense these days. The only times she relaxed were when actually running a biathlon.

  "That bad?" Colleen asked. Colleen had been among the first to finish the exam. Katie had been among the last.

  "No, I think I did okay on the math exam," Katie said. "It's just that I'm constantly feeling overwhelmed. I don't feel like I can ever relax. Not completely."

  Colleen who'd been sprawled in a chair sat up. "I don't think we're allowed to fully relax until we're lieutenants junior grade at least."

  "I thought once you'd made it through BOTC you were pretty much over the hump," Katie replied. She didn't think she could stand this for years on end.

  Colleen scrunched up her face. She looked like an Irish pixie with indigestion. "That's another of those things that are only kind of mostly true," she said after a pause. "People!" she cursed. "Give me good solid rational math anytime."

  "Amen," Katie agreed. "Any technical subject, really. At least if you pay attention, you know where you are with machines."

  Colleen nodded and then giggled.

  "What?" Katie asked.

  "Well, that's something we both have in common," Colleen answered. "It's kind of funny. Ironic, you know. Also silly."

  "Funny? Silly?"

  Colleen became more serious. "If we paid more attention to people, maybe we'd be better with them."

  "Most people spend a lot of time trying to game each other, it seems to me," Katie replied. "I don't know that it isn't more reasonable to try to be more productive. Isn't productive to always be second guessing people."

  "Yep," Colleen said, "but it's the nature of the job we're training for. Being educated for. Officers are people managers mostly. The technical stuff is mostly handled by enlisted ratings."