"A legacy appointment is due to any child, niece, or nephew of Carlson Locke," the vice admiral said. "You didn't know that?"
"No, Commandant."
"You know that your father was something of a hero?"
"I know he was badly wounded."
"Do you know the whole story?"
Asteria thought for a moment. "I—I'm not sure."
"You probably don't. But Space Fleet owed your father a great deal after the Adastra incident. Yes, he was wounded, but his efforts helped the acting captain return the ship safely to our space. I see by our records that you're an orphan now. Your mother has been dead for some years." Without waiting for a response, the vice admiral reached for her cap and said, "Come with me. Let's walk around the campus."
The day was warm, nearly uncomfortably warm to someone raised on the chilly Uplands of Theron. Outside the administration building, Vice Admiral Chen said, "You should walk to my left, half a step behind me. Speak only when I give you permission. Come."
The campus of the space division of the Royal Military Academy had a kind of military beauty to it, everything severely landscaped, symmetrical. The lawn was a vivid shade of turquoise. Flower beds lined the walkways, the plants in them standing in ranks like a colorful army.
Away from the Administration section, the architecture became more uniform. The classroom buildings, scattered enough to make the grounds seem airy and open, tended to be collections of long, low wings with arched roofs, like cylinders half-buried in the ground. The vice admiral pointed some out: The Space Sciences building. Biology. Chemistry. History and Government. They came at last to a plaza shaded by umbrellalike trees with drooping spear tip–shaped lavender leaves.
Asteria had seen impressions of the campus before, in pulsebooks, but the real thing seemed different from what she had expected. For one thing, there were few people about. She had expected to lose herself in a crowd, but now, alone with the vice admiral, she felt uneasy, exposed, a moving target. A fountain jetted in the center of the paved opening between the trees; benches, arranged again in severe symmetry, surrounded the central fountain. Beyond the fountain stood a golden statue, somewhat larger than life-sized, of two men.
"Read the plaque," the vice admiral said, nodding toward the base.
But first Asteria stared at the two men. A heroic figure, all chiseled features and determination, supported a clearly wounded young man. The younger man's features seemed vaguely familiar. Asteria looked down at the inscribed plaque and read:
THE HONORABLE ENSIGN SANSON KALIDES
HERO
"That's supposed to be my father he's supporting," Asteria said dryly.
"Sanson Kalides—Lord Kalides now—saved the Adastra and brought her safely into port with the surviving crew aboard," said the vice admiral. In a quieter tone, she added, "Despite the fact that he wasn't actually aboard the ship at the time of the Tetra attack. The ship's captain, Princeps Makath Kyseros, is revered as the officer who gave his life to allow the ship to escape from the attackers. A Commoner Chief Warrant Officer is remembered as someone who was badly wounded and whose life was saved by Lord Kalides, and that is all. That is the official version. It is very important to the prestige of the Kyseros family that these are the accepted facts. You understand?"
"Yes, Commandant."
"Do you? I would advise you not to discuss your family with anyone here. Most of the cadets around you will be Aristocrats," the vice admiral warned. "Be aware of that. Be careful about what you say. Watch your temper. Do you have an advocate on Theron to watch over your affairs?"
Absently, Asteria shook her head, but then remembered her place as a lowly candidate cadet. "No, Commandant. The Bourse are looking after the farm. I'm supposed to inherit it, but I don't know—"
"It's a matter of Empyrean law," the vice admiral said. "Too important to you to allow the Bourse to take care of your interest without someone supervising them. I'll have an advocate appointed. Kamedes will listen to me. Dismissed, Cadet. The Bronze Barracks are that way, beyond the Language and Communications building. On the double."
Asteria saluted, the unsmiling Vice Admiral Chen returned the salute, and then the new cadet did an about-face—not as clean as Dai's had been—and trotted away, feeling uncertain. She wondered if the library was open yet. She had a lot to learn about Empyrean law, about the Academy, about…well, everything.
* * *
One advantage of having turned up early for the term was that Asteria had her choice of rooms. Barracks at the Academy were like dormitories—at least the cadets did not all sleep in one vast bedroom. Still, their quarters seemed made to accustom them to the cramped living areas on starships. Asteria's compartment—she chose it because it was nearest one of the outside doors—was no larger than the little cubby that she had occupied on the flight to Corona. The bunk swung down from the wall. When it was in the upright position, she had access to two wide drawers beneath it, which held everything she owned: civilian clothing, pulsebook reader, textbooks.
She had so few possessions that half of one drawer gave more than enough room. At the foot of the bunk, a recess served as a closet. She hung the five gray first-year uniforms there, along with her gym clothing. A shelf above the hangers held her boots, dress shoes, and athletic shoes. With the bed folded up, she could sit in a chair that folded out from one wall and open up a desk that folded from the adjoining wall: there was her computer and AI unit.
Very stark. She had a few pangs of claustrophobia, but she thought she could get used to it. Hoped she could. If she got antsy in her tiny room, she had lots of space to roam—at least until the other cadets arrived and settled in. The Bronze Barracks were huge, tawny cubical structures made of the same fossil-bearing stone that paved the floors in the Admin Building. The first-year mess hall was on the north side of the small park in the center of a cluster of the four Bronze Barracks. Because it was summer break, the mess hall was operating on a very reduced scale. Meals were at set times, and she had to eat fast. The food was fairly tasteless, and that was the best compliment Asteria could give it.
"I'm taking your advice," she told Dai as they finished their first meal on campus. "I'm going to tell everyone my name is Aster."
"Good idea," Dai said. He looked around the mess hall. Its long tables could accommodate a thousand cadets. "It seems weird to be here all by ourselves."
Asteria nodded. "Lucky for us, though. We'll have time to memorize the student code."
"I've done that already. I can boil it down to a few principles: Do what you're told. Don't attract attention. Don't be different. Always let the Aristos win."
"Same as at home, then."
Dai gave her a long stare. "You didn't have much to do with Aristos where you came from, did you?"
She shook her head. "I didn't have much to do with anybody. I was raised on a farm. No neighbors. My dad and my cousin were almost the only people I saw."
"You never went into civilization?"
"Our farm was civilized!" she snapped. "Yes, I went into Sanctal—that was the nearest town—with Dad or Andre a few times a month. Sometimes we went as far as Central, where the government center is. You know, dealing with pensions and taxes and stuff."
"My planet was thick with Aristos," Dai said moodily as they finished eating. On the table in front of them, their plates were quietly dissolving, taking the last scraps of food along with them as they vaporized into curling white mist that quickly dissipated. "Inspectors, auditors, advisors, administrators." Dai lowered his voice: "All of them idiots. You get a lower-level Aristo too dumb or lazy to make it in the Academy or the Royal Colleges, they get appointed to positions like that. The safety advisor for our mines was a baronet. Advisor! He'd come by once a year and say, 'Continue your safety procedures,' and collect ten percent of our profits!"
"We didn't have inspectors on Theron. Too far out, I guess."
"Lucky."
They walked back to Bronze 1, but before they reached the entr
ance, both of their wrist communicators chirped.
"Yes?" they answered simultaneously.
The same artificial voice came from both communicators: "You are to report to Central Medical for your physical at 1350. That is twenty-three minutes from now."
"Physical," said Asteria. Her eyes flashed to her belt.
Dai glanced at her. "You sound worried. You sick?"
"Not exactly," she replied.
* * *
An hour later, wearing just her underwear, Asteria perched on the edge of an examination table as the medical Cybot brought in a human doctor, a Vallerian woman with the peculiar greenish complexion of her people. "You'll have to remove the belt," she said.
"I can't," Asteria told her.
Frowning, the doctor touched the metallic belt—and yelped.
She shook her hand. "Did you feel that?" she asked sharply.
"No," Asteria said. "The same thing happened when the Cybot touched it."
The Cybot said mildly, "It delivered an electrical charge of more than five thousand volts. Fortunately, the amperage was—"
"Not high enough to cause damage, just discomfort," the doctor interrupted. "That's not Empyrean technology."
"I don't know what it is," Asteria confessed. "It belonged to my father."
"Doesn't it have a release?"
"No." Asteria tugged at it, showing the doctor how the plates had interlocked. "If I try to push it off, it tightens," she said.
"We can cut it off—"
"Negative," the Cybot said. "The material is at least fifteen times more resistant than synsteel, and the circuitry performs in ways I cannot analyze. Attempting to destroy or cut it is too dangerous."
"You're not supposed to wear anything like that," the doctor grumbled.
"I can't help it!"
"Wait here."
Asteria wrapped her arms around herself—the room felt chilly—and waited for a long half hour. Then the door opened again, and Vice Admiral Chen came in together with the greenskinned doctor. "At ease," she said as Asteria hopped off the examination table and brought herself to attention. "Causing trouble already, Cadet Locke?"
"No, Commandant. At least—I'm not trying to, Commandant!"
"Leave us," Chen said to the doctor. She glanced at the Cybot. "You too."
As soon as they were alone, the vice admiral said, "Tell me about that thing. The truth, please."
Asteria told her how she had found the belt, how she had tried it on, and how it had apparently decided not to leave her.
Chen nodded. "It may be alien tech," she said. "In the fighting aboard the Adastra, several of the Tetra spiders were disabled and later examined. I've never heard of anything like this—but of course Empyrean policy is not to copy alien tech. Perhaps your father kept this as a souvenir."
"I don't know about that."
For some moments, Chen stood in thought. Then she opened the door and called the doctor and the Cybot back in. "Rate this as a third-class medical device," she said to the doctor. "Those are permitted."
"But—"
"I'll take responsibility," Chen said. "As you were."
"Aye, Admiral."
Once the doctor was alone with Asteria, she shook her head. "I hope we won't get into trouble for this. Cybot, record the belt as a third-class medical device to—oh, say to aid posture."
The rest of the examination proved nothing except that Asteria was in excellent health. Finally, she was permitted to dress. Next came the records work: forms to complete, surveys to fill out, and even some requests to make. She had "no preference" for permanent barracks assignment, "none" for next of kin, and "remain on campus" for the between-terms leave periods. Finally, with no hesitation at all, she checked that she would "accept" the offer of a third-term experience in space, if her grades permitted. She logged her forms in and was sent back to her barracks—on the double.
She jogged across the campus, feeling a little disoriented. Dromia spun a little more slowly on its axis than Theron, and its day came to about 26.1 Standard hours, as opposed to 23.4 on her homeworld. She had the feeling that the sun should be lower in the sky.
The days at the Academy were going to be very long.
six
Of the 125 girls in Bronze 1, 102 were Aristos. In a way, this
didn't matter. To upperclassmen, all first-term Midshipmen, whether Aristo or Common, were serfs to be ordered around, belittled, and ridiculed. And they were supposed to take it. Silently.
Asteria felt like an outsider among all those Aristos, but even so, it wasn't as bad as she had feared. She could almost hide in the crowd, because the school had nearly equal numbers of boys and girls. At least the other girls in her barracks didn't hang an annoying nickname on her. They called her "Aster," which she now claimed as her name.
That was a relief, because to all the upperclass students who bothered to notice her at all, she was "Disaster." Dai hadn't thought of that variant when he had suggested that she shorten her name. Nor had he thought it necessary to change his own name—so to all the upperclass students who pushed him around, he was now "Die, Scum!"
Lots of fun.
"Serf!" an upperclassman might call to her suddenly. "How many rules do you have to obey?"
"Twelve hundred and twenty-one!" she had to respond immediately.
With an evil grin, the questioner might then demand, "And what is Rule 1013, subclause A?"
If Asteria were slow in reciting it—"An off-duty cadet must always maintain an active personal communicator in case of emergency transmissions"—then the upperclassman might give her a demerit, order her to perform some personal service like cleaning his or her boots, or command her to drop and execute twenty-five push-ups. But she could handle it. She could handle anything. She had to—for her father, for what she had lost. All she had to do was think of the charred cinders and smoky rubble the Raiders had left of her farm.
Beginning on the first day of classes, Asteria had to get up early, 0500 hours. She and the other girls in her dorm crowded into the showers, hastily soaped up and rinsed, and then dried and dressed. By 0545, they had to be in formation outside the barracks and jog to the dining hall. On the double.
"Everything is on the double," grunted black-haired Bala Takeen, one of her dorm mates, the first day. The upperclassman conducting them heard the remark and issued Bala a demerit for talking in ranks.
They were also supposed to maintain silence at the table. They almost had to, because the schedule gave them only twenty minutes to eat. Then they jogged again to physical training class, which began around the time the sun rose at 0615.
"Hi," Dai said to her on their first day in the gym complex. "I'm glad we have some classes together."
Asteria nodded.
Dai smiled. "We can talk here," he said. "As long as we're silent when the proctors—"
"Class, attention!" said the Cybot. Two hundred and fifty students stood stiffly. The Cybot said, "You will report here for physical training six days a week. Three days a week will be spent in zero-gravity training, alternating with three days in normal or enhanced-gravity training. You are going to be split into ten classes of twenty-five students each. As I call your names, assemble here and then follow your instructor. The Honorable Orlin Avers. Viscount Laslik Azora. Deria Basila—"
Dai wound up in the same training class as Asteria. Two of the classes followed an instructor to a gym in which the walls, floor, and ceiling were all padded. "Zero G," murmured Dai.
Sure enough, their instructor, a woman lieutenant named Tasenos, told them, "This is Zero-Gravity Facility Five. You will report here every other day. Today, we have orientation. Form up into five rows of ten. Dress left and right."
Asteria had never heard the term, but Dai was in the row right ahead of her, and she saw him stretch both arms out to his side. She did the same, and the cadets shuffled until they stood at double arm's length from each other. The instructor nodded, stepped back, and said, "Going to zero gravity now."<
br />
Gravigenerators whined. Asteria realized they were in the walls and ceiling—gravity actually was not being canceled out, but equalized, so that the walls and ceiling tugged on her just as strongly as the floor. She felt a momentary sensation of falling.
"Kick off from the floor," the instructor said. "Gently."
Asteria tapped her toe and felt herself rising into the air. Ahead of her, Dai kicked too hard. He soared five meters up and bounced off the ceiling, tumbling back down. A number of others had done the same thing.
"You will have to learn control," the instructor said sternly. "Good job, Allmon, Chresler, Locke, Thursby. Microgravity of point one."
The gentle gravity brought them all back to the floor. "We are going to do that again," the instructor said. "And we'll repeat it until you can rise in formation. If you don't want to be bored, catch on quickly."
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