The Methuselan Circuit

by Anderson, Christopher L.

  Alexander took out his phone with the intention of turning it off. His finger almost touched the power icon on the smooth surface, but then it lit up with a message. He thought it was his folks saying a final goodbye, but to his surprise it read,

  Good luck Alexander and Godspeed. Strap in tight for takeoff. I’ll see you next year. Keep in touch! Katrina.

  Wait, how did she know he was taking off? He looked outside just as the ship’s engines began to whine. There were his parents and Kathy all huddled under the umbrella waving at him. He waved back. There were other families there as well, waving; he hadn’t even noticed them when they got there. He looked through them, and then he noticed a small figure standing alone in the rain. It was Katrina. She didn’t have an umbrella, but she stood there anyway watching the ship depart—the ship she was supposed to be on. As they took off, rising slowly into the gray rain, she saluted and came to attention. Alexander returned the salute.

  The last thing he saw before they disappeared in the rain was his family stepping up to her and taking her under the umbrella. Alexander turned back to his phone and typed in, “I expect to see you up there next year!”

  He turned the phone off and turned to Lisa, but she was already studying her orders on her compad. Alexander endured a flash of guilt and put his phone away. He picked up the compad. It was a silver pad about ten inches by five and less than a quarter of an inch thick. It was silver on the back and a shiny black on the front with a single cyclopean eye peering at him from the top. He touched the face. The eye glowed red, scanning him.

  “Identity confirmed!”

  The screen brightened. There was a short welcoming paragraph followed by a schedule for his first day. The first thing he noticed was that every minute of the day was accounted for. This didn’t really surprise him; actually it was rather a relief. This was a new world and he didn’t mind that things were going to be set up for his first days—at least until he got his space legs.

  Space legs, the very thought almost made him giddy. He had to clench his teeth hard to keep from whooping with joy. The image of Katrina standing alone in the rain helped. There was nothing happy about that. It showed just how thin the margin of success was, but then again it also showed how strong the human spirit could be. Alexander was afraid that nothing and no one could ever have gotten him to come see Lisa off if he didn’t make it. That said a lot.

  The very thought was a big dose of humility.

  Lisa started talking in a soft voice.

  “Why do the Legions and the Fleet both start in the same Academy—why in space? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the Legionary Academy start at West Point and end at West Point?” She was asking herself, it seemed, as she read the history of the Academy in her orders.

  Alexander hadn’t got that far, but he replied automatically, “Because the Legions fight all over the galaxy. They want to impress on the cadets that we’re not just a Terran Service; we serve wherever Humankind requires us to serve. It also gives a good vantage point to show how small and fragile Terra is.”

  “Wow, did you read that somewhere?” Lisa exclaimed.

  “No, but my Dad might have said something about it,” Alexander said. “We talked a lot about it,” he laughed. “I don’t think we talked of much else over the last month.”

  The Lieutenant’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “We’ll be landing multiple times and picking up cadets from all over the Pacific Northwest. You’re the lucky ones. You’ve got time to study your orders. The last cadets on board will have about ten minutes to go over their orders. I advise you to take advantage of this opportunity.”

  Lisa looked at Alexander and Alexander looked at Lisa. They each turned back to their compads. Alexander paged through his schedule, his list of classes, the dormitory rules and the layout of the station. He realized that he couldn’t absorb it all.

  One miracle at a time, Mom says.

  He went back to the beginning and memorized how to get to the auditorium. Only after he had that down did he begin to look at what happened afterward. First, they scheduled him for briefings in the auditorium, then lunch. He memorized how to get to the mess hall. After lunch, they had their first class, Space Physiology in lecture hall AP Port Deck 5 23. After a bit of looking, Alexander figured that meant the Academic Pod, Port quarter, deck five and hall 23. He looked up where that was on the station map and worked out how to get there from the mess hall; thirty minutes for lunch and it looked like a long walk, he’d have to eat fast.

  “We will be docking in five minutes.”

  Alexander looked up in surprise. The cabin was somehow full of cadets. He didn’t remember landing again, not even once, but here they were. All he’d succeeded in doing was finding his first class. Dejected, he sighed and looked through the window. They were in space. The view didn’t give him the same visceral reaction as his first flight gave him; in fact, the sight was one of surprise not wonder. Then he saw the Academy. It was an amazing sight. Terran engineers built the Academy on the enormous hull of a captured Methuselan ship. The gray-green torpedo shaped mass formed the backbone of ringed structures, towers and rotating blaster turrets. As impressive as was the station it paled in comparison to the majesty of the Iowa.

  Forever docked on Starboard Station India, the U.S.S. Iowa remained as she was on the climactic day Alexander and the Seventh Fleet fought off the Galactic invasion force led by the Golkos. Scars from that battle scored the Iowa, but some parts of the planet remained that way as well. Preserved as International Parks, vast areas of gray and black slag ensured that Humankind would never forget what it was like to be brought so close to extinction.

  Alexander pressed his face so close to the window Lisa had to tell him to pull back so that she could see. The Iowa was a World War II era blue water navy battleship. Yet here it was in space. The idea itself was so preposterous that if Alexander wasn’t looking at it with his own eyes he’d never have believed it.

  Lisa looked over his shoulder and said, “The Scythians had all the components for a fleet of warships: engines, blasters, navigation systems—everything. They didn’t have any ships to put them in though. They hadn’t manufactured the military hardware; they salvaged it from wrecks. It was the Australian, Admiral Augesburcke, who figured they could seal up the navy ships and use the hulls for spaceships. The Galactics never expected us to have a fleet, but we did.”

  “You’re right, and this transport is one of the survivors of that era. It used to be an airplane, but with new engines, avionics and a tritanium energy bath it could handle the stresses of space flight. We did that to virtually every jet and ship on the planet,” Alexander said, and he looked at her with a quizzical expression in his green eyes. “How do you know so much about the early military?”

  “It’s not only boys who read about battles,” she smiled. “I heard that the Academy has the actual holographic battle footage from the bridge of the Iowa; I hope so, that would be awesome.”

  “That would be awesome,” Alexander agreed.

  The ship came to a gentle stop. The clang of the docking clamps shivered along the hull; he put his hand against the metal and felt it. The loudspeaker said, “Please retrieve your bag and proceed down the gangway to the terminal.”

  Alexander waited for Lisa to get her bag and then he took his own down. They stood in line and shuffled down the aisle, moving like a long white centipede toward the exit. The gangway was shorter than he anticipated with long narrow windows that revealed nothing unless you put your face right next to them. It was only wide enough for two people, so cadets and duffle bags filled it up completely. If you had claustrophobia this is as far as you’d get; maybe that’s what they had in mind. He shook his head at the thought. Considering the time, money and resources the Academy took to bring a single cadet up here for a year, booting them out wasn’t realistic.

  The media touted the need to take money from the military and put it toward social programs. Alexander could understand that. There
were still large areas of the planet without basic services. Some areas were still uninhabitable because of radiation levels or because blaster bombardment turned the soil into fused slag twenty to thirty meters deep. Those people had a point, but the military kept the peace and Humankind simply could not afford another war—not now. Still, the new Administration didn’t seem to be listening. He’d heard his Dad complain that the military wasn’t getting the budget it needed to keep the planet safe, but the government was making sure the unioneers were happy and even talked of giving the unioneers the vote.

  The cadets spilled out into the terminal. From the cramped gangway they came into a wide rotunda with a twenty meter roof. The air was fresher here, especially after the full transport and the gangway. It was a good thing the rotunda was big. Transports disgorged cadets from a dozen other gangways. The place was noisy, busy and confusing. Alexander looked around, wondering if the Lieutenant was going to come out and give them directions—the excitement of the moment drove the schedule he’d memorized only a few minutes ago right out of his head.

  Fortunately, a balcony overlooked the rotunda. It ran around the entire loop of the terminal, curving away from him and disappearing from sight to either side. Along the balcony rail were large visiplates. Each one repeated a message for the cadets. The message read,

  “Welcome cadets! Drop your duffel bags under the seat in the terminal corresponding to the designated number on your orders. You will then proceed down the terminal hall toward the center rotunda for a lie detector test and indoctrination. Welcome aboard!”

  “I thought we did all that already,” he said aloud.

  “So did I,” Lisa said as she checked her compad. Alexander did likewise, as did every cadet in the terminal. He found his designation and looked around for his seat, but he quickly discovered it wasn’t as easy as all that, nor apparently was it meant to be.

  “I’m assigned to Stern Alpha-23,” he said, looking around at the seats nearby. They were all designated as “Bow Golf-XX” locations. He looked up at the docking designation over the gangway and sure enough it read “Bow Golf.” He scratched his head, thinking something must be wrong. “I’m on the wrong side of the terminal or something’s messed up.”

  “I’m assigned to Stern Alpha-17,” Lisa said, looking around.

  James was next to him and he checked his compad. His brows rose, and he announced, “We’re all in the same place. I’m Stern Alpha-12. Does that mean we’re in the same squad?”

  “I think we’re in flights during our time up here,” Lisa said, but she didn’t sound very certain of it. They looked around, seeing a lot of shoulder shrugs and scratching of heads. “It’s a test. I guess they want to see how we handle this; we are on probation this year.”

  “I suppose we better get going then,” Alexander said a bit sheepishly.

  “Let’s go,” she smiled.

  Alexander slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and they headed in the shortest direction to where he guessed the Stern Terminal would be. That should be through the corridors emanating radially outward from the central rotunda. Guessing from the general flow of cadets he wasn’t the first to have the idea, but he, like everyone else was disappointed. The pressure doors for the corridor were closed. That meant he had to go around the entire tube of the terminal. He checked his station map. The quickest way was to the left, clockwise around the terminal tube. Strangely enough, all the cadets around him turned that way as well.

  Shouldn’t half of us be going one way and half going the other way? This doesn’t look right. There must be something more to this.

  He joined the sea of cadets as they marched clockwise around the terminal. Everyone was shaking their heads, thinking and saying the same thing. After passing Bow Uniform there was something of a stir going on ahead. One cadet, a tall dark haired, olive hued girl wasn’t following the crowd. She was not human. Her eyes were a luminescent blue with no pupil. Although she was tall, she was willowy, maybe weighing half what a human girl would weigh. What’s more, she was going the wrong way. Other cadets were asking her where she was going, but she only smiled and continued on her way, like a singular salmon swimming downstream instead of upstream. She said nothing to anyone; she didn’t make eye contact. She just went about her own way.

  “I wonder how the Academy will see that?” he asked Lisa. She shrugged. Alexander admired her for her conviction, and he questioned his own. He knew this was a set up, but there was no logical reason to question the obvious outside of distrust for the Academy. He’d seen what that lead to, and there was no way he was going to follow that course. So, set up or not Alexander was going to do what he thought was logical.

  That still didn’t stop him from wondering why, but a few minutes later he thought he realized the reason. The cadets ahead stopped. The terminal blast doors were sealed. It was a dead end. Like a big grumpy snake everyone turned around and headed back in the direction they came from. There was nothing else to do, so on they went. It took ten minutes to get back to a point where some cadets started to drop out and stow their gear. Alexander and Lisa went on, but after a few minutes there was a bottleneck again. This time, though it wasn’t because the corridor was blocked. Instead all the cadets were bunched up on the outer bulkhead of the terminal. They gathered at the windows, their young faces pressed up against the transparent aluminum. More cadets were gathering. Many were taller than Alexander, so he climbed up on a seat to get a better view. Then he saw why everyone stopped.

  There it was—the Iowa. The blaster scarred derelict was only thirty yards away. Blaster holes were everywhere. The thick tritanium steel plates of the aft superstructure and engine room were twisted into fantastically grotesque shapes. The left superluminal pod was gone as was the aft main blaster turret. The forward superstructure and bridge were relatively intact, but everywhere on the silver-white metal of the superstructure were small mottled spherical shapes. It looked like the Iowa had been attacked by parasites. It wasn’t parasites, of course, but they were the signature of a brutal attack—boarding pods. Alexander knew that each boarding pods carried ten Galactic warriors. There were hundreds of them.

  Despite her damage the Iowa was an imposing, awe inspiring sight. He could stay there all day, but a voice came from the loudspeaker. “Cadets are to report on the double to the central rotunda—enough rubber necking, hop to it!”

  It was like stirring an anthill with a stick. Those who’d set their bags down scrambled for them along with everyone else nearby. Since the bags all looked alike this wasn’t as easy as it looked and there was momentary confusion. Fortunately Alexander had his bag between his legs. Snatching it up, he tried to step down into the boiling sea of cadets but he landed on someone’s foot.

  “Ouch!” They pulled their foot out from under his and Alexander tripped, falling over his bag. Someone fell over him and there was instant bedlam. He tried to get up but someone bowled him over. He cursed, trying even harder this time, but he stumbled forward and would have fallen if someone hadn’t reached out and caught him.

  CHAPTER 7: Indoc

  “Steady there cadet,” exclaimed a girl’s voice. Alexander regained his balance and looked up to see the tall alien girl from earlier. “Thanks,” he gasped.

  “Come on, you’re going to the same place I am,” she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the windows. “Everyone is heading back to the terminal corridor; there will be fewer people here by the windows.”

  She was right. “Thanks again,” he said, trying to remember to be gracious where pretty girls were concerned, another lesson from his Dad. “I’m Alexander by the way.”

  “I’m Treya, I’m from Chem,” she smiled.

  He followed her along the windows. They made much better time than the majority of cadets. After they were in the clear, he asked, “Sorry, but how do you know I’m going to the same place?”

  She laughed, “We’re all going to the rotunda aren’t we?”

  “Well yes,” he adm
itted.

  “I’m dropping my duffle bag off at Stern Alpha-09, where are you?”

  “I’m on the way at Stern Alpha-23,” he said.

  “Great, then we can go to the rotunda together,” she smiled. “You don’t mind do you?”

  “No, not at all,” he said, but he forgot he wasn’t alone.

  Lisa stepped up, a frown on her face. “I see you already making friends Alexander. I’m Lisa, Alexander and I grew up on the same island.”

  “I’m Treya,” she smiled, but Alexander couldn’t tell whether it was a pleasant smile or not. “Are you promised to Alexander?”

  Alexander jumped with surprise.