Lisa’s eyes grew large and round, stammering, “No, of course not!”
“It’s always hard to tell with other cultures, and I didn’t want to be stepping on any toes on my first day.”
Lisa tried to change the subject which was fine with Alexander. “You’re in Stern Alpha too, so I guess we’ll all be in the same,” she stopped, and Alexander got the impression she didn’t want to sound ignorant in front of Treya.
“We’re all in Kilo flight,” Treya said, pointing out the designation at the bottom of the set of orders. Lisa blushed, but Treya graciously smiled and explained, “My Dad’s a diplomat and the rest of my family are Fleet so I’ve seen these government forms before. They’re dry as a Golkos desert but once you know where to look everything is always done the same way.”
Lisa shrugged, admitting, “I’ve never seen a government form of any kind, even at school.”
“Don’t worry, by the end of the day we’ll all have filled out so many you’ll see them in your sleep!”
They all laughed, and then James stepped up.
“Are we going in the right direction,” he asked, not shy about being lost in this new place. “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen or imagined. I think they goofed.”
“Who?”
“Whoever sent me here,” he laughed.
Alexander introduced James to Treya, adding, “We’re all from Vashon Island, North America.”
“All of you are from the same place; it must be a big island. I’m Treya, and I’m from Chem City. I’m the only one from my planet in this class.”
“Chem,” James exclaimed. “You’re really from Chem?”
The Chem were allies of the Terrans. It wasn’t always so, but the Chem and Terrans discovered they had far more in common than they realized. After a short time of rough relations, Terra and Chem became fast friends. It was the Chem who rescued Alexander from the Methuselans. It was in repayment for the Terran First Fleet, the Flagship Fleet, which emerged out of superluminal at the last possible moment, outnumbered and unafraid to defend the Chem Homeworld against the Methuselan invasion armada.
“Yes, but I’m part human; my parents and grandparents served in the Fleet, all the way back to my great grandfather and great grandmother. It’s in my blood, so to speak. We better get going, we’ve only got a few more minutes.” As they walked Treya asked if any of them had relatives in the Fleet or Legions.
James simply laughed, and Lisa told her about her own parents, who were Citizens after serving in the Peace Corps. Then they reached the Stern section of the terminal. The Alpha section was first. Alexander found Alpha-23 and slung his duffle bag onto the seat. “My Dad served in the Fleet as an Officer, and now he has his own ship. It’s just a freighter though.” He was kind of embarrassed now. His family didn’t have anything like that kind of history. His father served for thirty years as a Watch Commander. He served with distinction, but he retired early—for the first time Alexander wondered why—because instead of finishing his Service his Dad now trundled out to asteroid mines and drove hay across the island. He had a sudden chill settle in his stomach. To try and salvage the situation, he added, “His last post was fifteen years on the Enterprise. He went to the core of the galaxy. It sounds pretty cool, but all he ever said about it was there were a lot of old, old stars.”
“I’m sure my father knows him. He was the Chem Liaison Officer for that cruise,” she said with a feral smile, showing her sharper than human teeth.
“Maybe,” he said, not wanting to delve into it any further.
“I’ll check with my Dad, he told me to be on the lookout for cadets of his shipmates.”
Alexander wasn’t so sure he wanted her to find out how anonymous his Dad was, but what could he say? He heard his name. He looked back and saw Lisa. She was standing there looking at him, then at Treya and then back at him.
“Are you sure I’m not in the way of anything Alexander,” Treya asked.
“No,” he said more quickly and more forcefully than he intended.
“Shouldn’t we get to the rotunda,” Lisa reminded them both. “We can check out each other’s families later.”
“Are you sure Alexander is allowed to have other friends?” Treya asked, and a hint of purple colored her eyes.
Lisa scowled, “Of course he is; why should I care?”
“Shouldn’t we get going?” Alexander interjected, wondering if he could actually be the cause of this uncomfortable situation.
The girls looked at each other, and laughed together, “He’s blushing.”
Alexander felt his face flush and tried to stifle a grin, but that only made them giggle. Fortunately, a strident voice accosted them over the loudspeakers. “Cadets, assembly is in ten minutes!”
That settled it. They dashed to the rotunda via the radial corridor, following everyone else. Passing through the large entrance revealed a curved amphitheater. “Cadets take your seats; we haven’t got all day.” Alexander, Lisa, James and Treya sat together, finding a group of seats as quickly as they possibly could amidst the confusion. Alexander felt patently uncomfortable between the girls. James gave him a grin and a thumbs-up, but Treya told him not to worry.
“It’s because you’re such a nice boy that we wanted to be around you. You’re not like those boys who are all full of themselves. You’re a good guy.”
“Usually that means I’m only good at getting beat up during lacrosse games,” he muttered. As if to make the point, someone took a swipe at the back of his head.
“Ouch!” Alexander turned angrily around. It was a large red headed boy. He leaned over the back of Alexander’ seat and nodded at Lisa. “Hey what’s the big idea?”
The boy knocked his hat off. “Why don’t you come back and sit with us. You can bring your friend here,” he nodded at Treya. “Just leave the little guy. He’s going to be a Fleet scientist locked up in his laboratory—I can tell.”
Alexander bolted to his feet, fists balled up; ready for a fight.
“Lay off,” James said, standing up next to Alexander. He’d had his share of fights because of his brother and was well able to take care of himself. “He’s a friend; leave him alone.”
“He needs your protection, is that it?” The boy smiled.
“Cadets, Atten-tion!”
Alexander automatically spun around and sprang to attention. Everyone else did the same in one mass rush of sound. A nervous silence followed. He looked down to the center of the rotunda where there was a podium. A party of three officers marched to the podium, two men and a woman. The woman stepped up to the podium, and said, “At ease cadets; I am Rear Admiral Hinohosa, and I will be your Academic Director. Everything having to do with academics goes through me. You will not graduate from the Academy, or even from a single class without my concurrence. Do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am!”
“Welcome to Indoc; that is, Indoctrination. You are about to embark on a rigorous six years of academic work,” she continued. “For some of you, the work will progress on this station through college and graduate school before moving you on to your specific mission training. Others will transfer to West Point for their legionary education.”
The large cadet gave Alexander a poke from behind. Alexander refused the desire to turn and glare at him.
“Cadet’s take your seats please,” she ordered, and they did so. As soon as they were seated a visiplate popped out of the seat in front of them and scanned their identity. The Admiral watched her compad, and when everyone had passed the identity scans, she announced, “You will now be asked a series of questions. A lie detector will gauge the veracity of your statements. I must impress on you that the truth is more important at this stage than being politically correct. Even if you were to say you were a Marxist you would not necessarily be kicked out of the Academy today—we’d most likely wait until tomorrow so that our Legionary Interrogators could pump as much information as possible out of you first!”
She laughed.<
br />
The cadets tried to laugh, but the thought of a hard-bitten legionary grilling them was not something a twelve year old wanted to consider—even in jest.
The visiplate brightened, but before any question appeared one of the three, a silver haired mustachioed Fleet Admiral, probably the Commandant, spoke in hushed tones to Admiral Hinohosa. She looked surprised and displeased. He nodded sympathetically and shrugged his shoulders.
“Cadets, apparently we are not to use the lie detector anymore. By an Executive Order the President has decreed that use of a lie detector in non-judicial matters is an invasion of privacy.” She stopped, as if considering what she could say and what she couldn’t. At length, she told them to take the test. “It is not the same test you’ve taken previously. This test will gauge what you want to get out of the Academy. When you graduate you will take the same test. The comparisons are interesting and quite useful for all concerned. You may commence.”
As the first question appeared on the visiplate, Alexander noticed that a stasis field surrounded him so that he couldn’t hear any of the cadets around him and they couldn’t hear him.
“Good morning cadet Wolfe. Tell me, why did you want to go to the Academy?”
“To serve and become a Citizen,” he said.
“What frightens you the most about the Academy?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be do so well at sports, no it’s not so much that,” he said, trying as best he could to tell the truth of it even if the lie detector was off—which he didn’t quite believe. “I think I’m afraid of failure.”
There were more questions like that, some personal and some general. It took about fifteen minutes and the stasis field dissolved. When everyone had taken the test Admiral Hinohosa passed the podium to Centurion Fjallheim, a tall red headed man with a large mustache and an impossibly square jaw. He wore the scarlet and gold of the Legions.
He looked as if he could tear a man in two, and Alexander wouldn’t be surprised if he had done it for real. “I am Centurion Fjallheim, and I will referee the competition between the flights. There are twenty-six flights of forty cadets each, Alpha through Zulu.” He stepped off the podium and began to pace around it, his large hands clasped behind his back. “You will compete in academics, in leadership drills, in combat drills, in disciplinary statistics and in sports. In other words, you will compete at everything. You will drive each other to be better than you could ever be by yourselves. That’s the point to all this, and history tells us that it works. So don’t think we’re doing this because we enjoy watching you suffer just like we did when we were cadets!”
He smiled and allowed a moment for the nervous laughter to dissipate.
“At the end of the year the first place flight will get their names inscribed on the Academy Station itself—for all to see for as long as our civilization lasts.” He paused, and it felt like he looked at every single cadet. “The flight that finishes last will have the honor of repeating the year. If they finish last again every member of the flight is expelled. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir!”
“Look at yourselves, look within yourselves,” he told them forcefully. “Forty of you will be standing at the pinnacle of glory at the end of the year; however, forty of you will be cowering in shame. Think of which way you want to apply yourself!” He stepped aside, and his voice boomed forth. “Cadets of class 2207, I present the Commandant of the Space Academy, Fleet Admiral Sten Augesburcke IV, Atten-tion!”
Admiral Augesburcke wore the sable and silver of the Fleet. The trim of his uniform was silver and he wore four slashes of silver on the left sleeve of his tunic. He stepped forward and after surveying the group of cadets for a moment, like a farmer surveying a field of young wheat, he started to climb the stairs between the rows of seats.
His eyes were fixed on Alexander.
CHAPTER 8: Academia in Space
Admiral Augesburcke stopped opposite Alexander, looking down on him with sparkling blue eyes that barely peeked out from beneath his bushy white brows. He clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head to the side.
“Cadet Alexander Wolfe!”
Alexander leapt to attention as if bitten by a spider. “Sir, yes sir!” Alexander said instinctively, as if blocking a punch; why him out of a thousand cadets? He tried desperately not to tremble or to pass out.
“Cadet Alexander Wolfe, in the terminal you observed Cadet Treya proceeding in the opposite direction as the rest of the Cadet Corps. There is no right or wrong answer, cadet, but give me your opinion: why did she do so?”
Alexander thought furiously. Originally, he thought Treya realized they were being set up, but that meant she didn’t trust the Academy. He remembered Katrina—that was bad. Still, he couldn’t say he didn’t know without looking like a fool. Why else would she go the way she did? Then he remembered what happened when they all turned around and marched back the other way.
“Well cadet?”
“I can’t say for certain sir,” he replied quickly, trying to sound as calm as possible. “I think she wanted to walk by the Iowa.”
“Do you think that was a worthwhile walk?”
“Yes sir, I do—it was amazing.”
“At ease cadet,” he said with a smile. In a lower voice, he told Alexander. “It’s good to see you here; you’re dad is the best shot in the system. He got me and some of my best friends out of some seriously sticky jams!” He turned to Treya and smiled. “You’ve grown in the last few months. How are your folks?”
She shot to attention next to Alexander. “Fine sir!”
“Excellent, I’ve been waiting a long time for you to be here!” He turned to the rest of the assembled cadets and his gruff voice filled the rotunda. “You have been chosen from among millions of applicants. It doesn’t matter where you came from, whether your parents were Citizens, laborers, Ambassadors or anything else. You are here—you! So it’s up to you as to what you are going to do with this opportunity.”
He walked down the stair and looked up again when he reached the center of the space. “The Officers and faculty will do everything in their power to ensure you have the opportunity to succeed, but only you can make that happen. Keep your eyes open, keep your ears open and take advantage of every moment. I wish you the best of luck, Godspeed to you all!”
General Stewart shouted, “Atten-tion!”
“You have them Centurion, let’s start whipping them into shape!” waved Admiral Augesburcke as he exited.
“Yes sir!” Fjallheim glowered at the cadets, looking like he took the Admiral literally. Alexander got the idea he’d like nothing better than to start the day off with a few lashes from a cat-of-nine-tails followed by a twenty mile hike with full packs—he’d heard that sort of thing about the Legions. “Take my advice. Be five minutes early to everything; do not be late! You may proceed to your next scheduled activities, dismissed!”
A thousand pairs of eyes looked down at their compads. Alexander read the orders aloud, and by the growling buzz that filled the rotunda, so did everyone else. “We’ve got lunch and then Space Physiology.”
A hand touched him from behind; Alexander turned and saw the red headed boy. “Sorry about giving you a hard time,” he said nervously. “It was all in good fun—right?”
“Yeah sure,” Alexander said, and the boy hurried off, leaving him mystified. “What was that all about?”
“Contacts Alexander,” James said, shaking his head. He brushed a lock of his black hair from his eyes. “You can’t have any better contact here than to know the Commandant. Your dad seems pretty tight with the Commandant there; how’d that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander insisted.
“It’s obvious they served together in combat duty, Alexander,” Lisa said. “He said your dad was the best shot in the system; that he saved Augesburcke’s life several times.”
“Dad flies a freighter when he’s not selling hay,” Alexander said, at once ashamed that he was making
light of his father’s vocation. “He did serve in the Fleet as an officer, but he never says anything about it. I figured he never did anything interesting.”
“Sounds like he was a Spook,” James smiled, giving Alexander a dig in the ribs.
“He was not!” Alexander said vehemently. The Spooks, or Space Rangers as they were unofficially officially known—there was no official recognition that they existed but everyone knew they really did—they were almost mythical figures in Service lore belonging to both the Fleet and the Legions. Supposedly they were assassins, spies, lawmen—whatever the powers that be needed them to be. They kept the peace in nasty places, but they kept it violently. The military would neither confirm nor deny their existence, but the mere rumor of a Spook or a Ranger on a frontier world or even in a backwater town on Terra was enough to make the bad people melt right back into the shadows.
The Methuselan Circuit Page 6