"The Bourse," Asteria said. "They're no help either. They say the god of fate decides if a man will live or die. And my father and I were just Unbelievers to them, so they didn't really care about us."
Dai clapped her on the shoulder. "We'll care about us," he said cheerfully. "And when we graduate from the Academy and become Fleet pilots, we can chase those Raiders ourselves."
Asteria didn't reply, but she agreed. If no one else would do anything about the Raiders, she would go after them herself. Not now, of course. Not at thirteen. But in four years, she would graduate from the Academy as a pilot.
And when she was at the controls of a Space Fleet ship—
Well, there would be at least one Empyrean pilot who would go after the Raiders without a planetary administrator's command.
* * *
As she did every day, Asteria went that afternoon (by ship time; of course there was no real day or night, but all ships maintained the Standard twenty-five-hour day of Corona) to the gym.
There the gravity was tuned up to 1.05 normal to provide a more challenging workout. In a singlet and close-fitting exercise pants, Asteria spent forty minutes running on a treadmill, rested, and spent another forty working out on the weight sims. Or planned to. As she was about to try to break her bench press record, Dai Tamlin came wandering in again.
"Working out, I see," he said, sitting in the crunch chair— the one that stressed abdominal muscle exercises.
Asteria ignored him and drew in a deep breath.
"Fancy belt," he said. "What's it made of?"
Concentrate. Close your eyes. Find your center. Slowly now.
At first, the weight was like an immovable object, and then she managed to lift it. She felt the strain in her shoulders and biceps. She was pressing fifty Standard kilos—at 1.05 G, that worked out to 52.5. Her record had been forty-nine.
She felt as if she were lifting the weight of a world, but her straining arms began to straighten.
Dai jumped up. "Let me spot you," he said, moving around behind her head.
"No," she said between clenched teeth, and the effort of speaking distracted her. The weight teetered dangerously, and she began to have the panicky feeling that it would get away from her—
The belt around her waist sent a flash of—energy? It felt electric—into her skin, and suddenly the weight seemed halved. She steadied the bar, lowered it, and raised it again, twice more. "What's the readout?" she asked.
"Fifty Standard," Dai said. "That's great for a girl! What do you weigh, about forty-five kilos?"
"Forty-seven point seven," she said, wondering where the burst of strength had come from. She felt a raging thirst. "And I think a girl can do anything a boy can do."
"I didn't mean—"
She interrupted irritably, "Switch off the sim."
Dai did, and the bar suddenly weighed almost nothing. Asteria got up and went to the water dispenser, taking a long, long, cool drink. Dai sat back down on the crunch machine, shaking his head. "You pressed more than your own weight," he said. "One thing's for sure, you'll pass the Academy PT entrance exam. That just calls for a guy pressing 95 percent and a girl pressing 75 percent—"
"They should be the same," Asteria said impatiently.
"Maybe. Uh, where'd you get the belt?" asked Dai.
"From my father," Asteria said, and it wasn't untrue.
"It's not standard issue. They'll make you give it up at the Academy."
"I don't mind." If they can figure some way to take it off me. Nothing I've tried works.
"My weak spot's going to be unarmed combat," Dai said. "I've practiced, but I'm not very good. How about you?"
Asteria felt a little throb of sorrow. She and Andre, wasting their time with the Okida moves. "I'll just try my best," she said.
"Want to practice a little? I know Jai-chon, Okida, and a little Mazzetta."
"I only know a bit of Okida."
"Let's do a round or two then. I'll go easy on you."
"Oh, will you promise?" she asked sarcastically.
"Sure. I'll pull the moves. We'll just work on speed."
"Well," she said, trying to sound undecided. "If you won't really hurt me."
The adjacent room was set up with a padded floor and walls. Dai insisted on binding his forehead and on tying a red ribbon around his left biceps, the mark of the formal student. Asteria said, "I've never been to an Okida master, so I don't have the sigils."
"That's all right," he said. "They're not really needed, but I sort of feel they help me."
They faced each other and bowed formally, part of the ritual. They fought barefoot and open-handed. As they circled each other tensely, each looking for an opening, Asteria reminded herself of the tenets of combat: Respect your opponent. Divert force into harmlessness. Use an opponent's thrust against the opponent. Be quick.
Dai lunged in, feinted to the left, and then tried to catch Asteria's wrist for a throw, but she snaked away, skipping to the side. He blinked in surprise. "Nice move."
"Thanks."
They danced around each other. Dai was more wary now, keeping his chin down, his green eyes sharp. He seemed in no hurry.
Patience wins more battles than strength, Asteria reminded herself.
"Aren't you going to do anything?" Dai asked at length.
"We'll see."
Without warning, Dai dropped to one arm and swept his legs
around, trying to trip her. Asteria skipped over them and leaped back before he could counterswing, and then as he sprang to his feet, she did a forward roll, catching his legs and shoving hard. Dai tumbled sprawling on his face, and she moved in for two quick ear slaps, then out again, and into defensive posture.
"That could have hurt!" Dai complained, regaining his feet.
"I pulled them," Asteria said in a tone of innocence. And without giving any hint, she did the Snake Strike, thrusting in low and hard to seize his leg—but he leaped, higher than she had thought possible, and she tucked, rolled, and spun back onto her feet as he moved forward and tapped the inside of her left elbow before retreating.
"I could have broken it if I'd wanted," he said.
"And I could have knocked you out when I got your ears," growled Asteria.
Anger is your enemy.
She breathed deeply. He lunged at her. She reached for a throw-hold, missed, and his momentum spun her to the mat. Before she could recover, he had seized her wrist and held it firmly behind the small of her back. "My fall," he said.
"I—don't—concede!"
Again she felt a strange, electric sensation from the belt around her waist. And then—
Later, Asteria couldn't even remember how she had done it, but she twirled her whole body, lay on her back and shoulders, and kicked Dai in the stomach, hard. He lost his grip, tumbled backward, and a second later, she had a knee on his solar plexus and two fingers on his carotids. She refrained from pressing and knocking him out.
"I yield," he gasped.
She rose, wondering why it was so hard to do so—she'd felt an impulse to render her foe unconscious. Worse. She'd felt like ripping his head off!
Dai shook his head. "How did you do that? I've never seen that kind of move, and I've been taking lessons for five years!"
"I come from a Fringe World," she told him. "Out there, we have to make our own fun."
She walked out of the combat room, aware of his astonished gaze following her. Serves him right, she thought. Maybe it will keep him from bothering me. Or at least maybe it will make him more interested in me. She wasn't quite sure which she preferred.
* * *
The Stinger docked at an enormous synchronous station—the size of a small moon. Dai and Asteria shouldered their bags and found their way to the Academy shuttle, a small craft with room for a dozen. The pilot was a Cybot.
"Are we the only passengers?" Dai asked it.
"You are the only two on schedule today," the pilot replied. "It is early. Orientation will not begin for anot
her Standard week."
"Then take us down," Dai told it.
Asteria sat staring out the window. The station receded; the shuttle rolled—not too uncomfortably, because as a small ship, it had no artificial gravity, and they were in free fall weightlessness—and then turned its nose toward Dromia. Its oceans were a brilliant turquoise, its white cloud patterns elaborate etchings.
"Scared?" Dai asked.
"Not particularly," Asteria said.
"Oh." Dai drummed his fingers on the arm of his seat. "I am," he admitted.
"Why?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I'm the first member of my family to make it to the Academy. I won the planetary competition this year on Hovia—do you know Hovia?"
"I've heard of it." Asteria remembered what little she knew: Hovia was a mining world, harvesting a rich asteroid belt. It was a Middle World, not close to the center of the Empyrion, but not far enough out to be on the Fringe. Like many other Middle Worlds, it was said to be moderately prosperous and moderately restless under Empyrean rule.
"We get to send one candidate a year to the Academy," Dai said. "One! And our population is three times your world's."
"I don't know how many Theron sends," Asteria replied. "Anyway, I'm a legacy. I didn't compete for your scholarship."
"If a scholarship student washes out, he can't go home again," Dai muttered. "It's a humiliation to his whole family."
"Would your family treat you like a failure?" she asked.
He shrugged. "My dad supervises the wolframite industry. He started as a miner and worked his way up. He ought to be made the administrator for the industry, but there's a minor Aristo in that position. Lower-level Aristos run everything. Dad can't go any further himself, so he's hoping I'll get into the Fleet, where even a Commoner can be promoted all the way to the top."
"In theory," Asteria said.
"Yeah, in theory. Dad's always called me brainy but lazy. When I was boarding the shuttle to take me offworld, he didn't say good-bye. He just said, 'Come back a graduate or don't come back at all.'"
"And he wants you to be a pilot."
"No, he'd be happy if I went in as a second lieutenant in surface security forces. He just wants me to graduate, that's all." Dai shrugged. "I want to be a pilot. I think my family's hugged the ground for too many years already."
"You'll make it."
"Sure," he said with a sudden grin. "I can do anything!" Then he looked away and nervously added, "Provided I don't wash out."
"Come on. You'll make it through."
"Yeah," Dai said. He took a deep breath. "But I've never been around Aristos much. You can't upset them or treat them with disrespect. And I'm not sure I believe they're born better than we are. If you get in trouble with an Aristo at the Academy, they can wash you out, I hear. So I guess I worry a lot."
Asteria looked at him with mingled irritation and amusement. "You know there's an easy cure for your worries, don't you?"
He glanced at her in surprise. "There is? I wish you'd tell me."
"Don't wash out," she said and turned back to the window. Dromia had swelled to planet size. A moment later, the shuttle bounced turbulently—they had entered the atmosphere.
Somewhere below them the whole future waited.
part 2
the God of 2.5
five
Asteria sat fidgeting. Next to her, Dai occupied a chair, but he
wasn't exactly sitting—not comfortably, anyway, but stiffly, his back straight, his chin tucked in, staring straight ahead. He looked terrified. Their half hour on the planet had not calmed his worries.
The anteroom was in one of the older buildings on campus. The Academy was the size of a city, with all the architectural variety of a settlement more than three thousand years old. The administration building stood twelve stories tall and was made of old-fashioned red brick, with arched, leaded windows and a floor tiled with some hard tan-colored stone that showed fossils, shells, and small skeletons of fish-like creatures. Old-fashioned electric lights still hung suspended on chains like displays in a museum. They were obviously not used, because the ceilings glowed with the standard tribiolumes.
The chairs seemed new, though they must have been designed for maximum discomfort. Asteria hoped she didn't look as squirmy as Dai did to her.
The midclassman who had shown them to the anteroom reappeared in the sharply arched doorway. "Come on, serfs," he said with a mocking grin. "The dragon lady is ready for you."
Serfs. All freshmen were called that—because they "belonged" to the upperclassmen, who had the right to treat them like servants. They followed their guide through the inner doorway. A woman with hair the color of steel, wearing the dark blue uniform of a vice admiral in the Star Fleet space division, stood at a window, her hands behind her back. "Thank you, Scanlen," she said. "That will be all."
"Aye," said the midclassman, saluting. He took one step back, did a crisp about-face, and walked out of the office.
"Entering Cadets Tamlin and Locke," the woman said, turning and staring at them. "The first thing you have to learn is to come to attention when a senior officer is present."
Dai somehow managed to stiffen even more, and Asteria put her shoulders back and stood tall. The woman came and circled them, gazing at them critically. Asteria saw with surprise that she had a small scar on her left cheek—as though a tattoo of the minor Aristocracy had been removed. The vice admiral stood in front of her and said, "Probationary Cadet Locke, ask your friend to show you the proper stance before you meet another officer. At ease, you two."
Asteria relaxed. Next to her, Dai sagged perhaps a millimeter.
"I am Vice Admiral Chen," the woman said. "Commandant of Cadets. Let us hope that in the coming months you won't see very much of me—because if you do, that means you are in serious trouble. You've arrived very early, but that may be to your advantage. You have a few days to familiarize yourselves with deportment and procedures. You'll be quartered in Bronze Barracks 1. There's a female wing and a male wing. Make sure you're in the right one, and don't trust the upperclassmen to tell you which is which. You should be able to tell from the latrines. You will be issued uniforms; you will wear them at all times when you are awake and active on the campus. You may not leave campus until midterm, and then only if you are maintaining an average of 2.5 in your studies. After midterm, if your grades are acceptable and you have no demerits to work off, you may have one half day a month leave time in Haven. Any questions?"
Neither Dai nor Asteria responded.
"Then get to your quarters and collect your gear. Memorize the student code pulsebook. Dismissed."
Dai came to attention, saluted, and stepped back before pivoting, and Asteria tried to imitate him. Vice Admiral Chen's voice stopped her at the door: "Probationary Cadet Locke, remain."
She froze in her tracks. As Dai marched out the door, she turned, wondering what she had done. She thought back to the guidebook: Should she come to attention? Better to do so than risk a demerit.
"At ease," the vice admiral said. She nodded toward another uncomfortable-looking chair. "Sit."
Asteria did, and when the vice admiral stared at her, Asteria matched her icy blue gaze. Silence stretched out.
Finally, the admiral broke it. "You are the nephew of Carlson Locke," she said in a strangely teasing tone.
"No, Commandant. The daughter," Asteria said in a level voice. "My cousin was Andre Locke. I'm…Aster."
"Indeed. Then our records must be in some disorder."
The vice admiral again let the silence go on. She looked as if she expected some kind of response.
"My cousin Andre is dead," Asteria said. "So is my father."
The vice admiral did not change her expression. "I see. How did they die?"
Asteria swallowed the lump in her throat, and quickly, directly, she told the vice admiral about the raid.
The woman drew in a deep breath. "There have been no requests for aid from the administration of Th
eron," she said. "No reports of an attack."
"No, Commandant," Asteria said. "The Bourse of Sanctal can't ask for help on their own, and the planetary government thinks it's merely a local problem."
"That would be Kamedes?"
"Yes, Commandant."
"I see. So you have decided to take your cousin's place at the Academy."
"It was that or be forced to marry into the Bourse," Asteria said. "If the Academy won't have me—"
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