They saw to their business, and Alexander, to take his mind off his embarrassment, mused, “It wasn’t just our guys but the Golkos as well. They can be ghosts too; I’d never really thought about that before.”
“It’s just a hologram,” one of the other boys said sourly. “You guys are gullible, falling for that. They’re just doing that to freak you out.”
“If they were then they got Khandar too,” Alexander insisted. His expression turned resentful. “I can’t see a Golkos and rival acting the way he did in front of me unless it was for real.”
“He wouldn’t have,” James said with surety. “A Golkos never shows fear, especially in front of any enemy. I was talking with his Flight buddy while we were waiting for you.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Alexander said unhappily. He meant it. The Academy was tough enough without that to worry him. He brushed his teeth and headed back to the locker. In a few moments he’d hung his pajamas on the same hanger his uniform was on and he was dressed and ready to go. He scooped up his compad and joined the rest of the flight, including Treya and Lisa, as they made their way to the mess hall.
Breakfast at the Academy was a noisy affair more than anything else. Alexander looked forward to breakfast, but this morning he hardly had a chance to eat. Everyone wanted to hear about his night watch on the Iowa and about Khandar. He was on his third telling of the story and by this point he’d addressed the Golkos sufficiently to convince himself it was a great deal of fuss about nothing, when the Golkos cadet showed up at the table along with a couple of his class mates.
“Hello Khandar,” said Alexander, trying to be polite. “I was just telling everyone about our adventure last night.”
The Golkos cadet glared at Alexander, his eyes turning red with obvious anger. “Don’t be so smug, Wolfe! Just because we stood watch together doesn’t mean I’ll forget or forgive a blood debt.”
“Blood debt, what do you mean?” Alexander stammered.
“Don’t insult me with your ignorance!” the Golkos spat. “You know what I mean; if you don’t, you’ll know soon enough.”
“Is there a problem here Khandar?” It was another cadet, a tawny haired girl about fifteen or sixteen years old. Her large almond eyes were hard, staring at the Golkos cadet. Her button nose flared out and her full lips turned down in an angry way. She approached the Golkos followed by two rather brawny cadets and she planted herself right in front of him. He glared back, but she was equally as tall and because she was a Terran, she was bigger than he was. Thrusting her chin forward and planting her fists on her hips, she demanded, “Khandar, are you bothering one of our Kilo classmates for a reason or is this just another example of Golkos charm?”
“Don’t interfere, I’ve a blood debt with this Terran—this goes beyond the Academy!” Khandar was obviously not pleased at the interruption, and the three boys next to him took up positions facing the other cadets. The situation looked tense, but the upper classman just laughed.
“Beyond the Academy; you’ve got to be kidding!” She stopped laughing and glared at the Golkos. “If you want to mess with one of our newbies then you’ll have all of Kilo flight after you, just consider that.”
Khandar didn’t back down, but smiled in a feral manner. “So much the better, the little whelp is hardly worth my time. If you’re going to make it a challenge then that just adds spice to the hunt!” He grinned at Alexander, revealing his long vampire-like fangs. “Watch your back Wolfe, because I surely will be there!”
Khandar left with his classmates.
“Thanks!” Alexander told the girl and her friends.
“I’m Hawker, Jenny Hawker, Kilo class of 2203.” She held out her hand. “I heard you were on station. Welcome to Kilo flight!” She pointed her thumb at Khandar. “You sure know how to pick your friends. The Golkos are sneaky. Do as he says: watch your back. They have long memories and if they feel slighted or have a blood debt, even if it’s between relatives, they don’t care much about the rules. Let us know if he gives you any more grief.”
“Thanks again,” Alexander said, glad that some of the older cadets took an interest in him, but wondering about it just the same.
Hawker turned to go, but stopped short. “Do you think your dad is going to visit the station?”
“I don’t know why he would; he’s retired now and I don’t think they’ll let him dock his freighter here,” he replied reflexively. He had no idea what prompted her to ask.
“Just wondering,” she said, as if mulling something over in her head. “It’s cool with me; I don’t have a beef with it. If he does stop by will you tell me? My dad knew your dad, and I’d like to say hi and thank you, that’s all.”
“Thank you, why,” Alexander asked, mystified.
“Your dad is the reason I’m here. He saved my dad on Tantalus IV. He was a settler and well, you’ve probably heard the story a bunch of times, so I won’t bore you.” She smiled and patted him on the back. “Let me know if you need anything, see you around!”
“How do you know her?” asked Lisa and Treya together, not too happy about the older girl and her familiarity with Alexander.
“I don’t,” he insisted, “but this is getting weird. Everyone seems to know something about my dad but me.”
“Well we better find out about it,” Lisa told him. She took out her compad and looked at their schedule for the day. “We have Study Hall in the library between Space Physiology and Space Physics. I think we better try and find out what all this is about.”
Study Hall couldn’t come soon enough for Alexander. He had trouble paying attention to Professor Cantor in Space Physiology, but then so did everyone else. The professor’s academic manner was dry and monotonous, excepting the occasions where he had particularly gruesome or exciting subject matter. He appeared to enjoy lulling them to the point of sleep and then waking them up with something juicy. Today it was the self-sealing properties of their uniforms when penetrated by various blasters and debris. It would have been boring if the professor used test suits and the like, but the Academy had more than enough combat video to make the impression he was after.
The Academy library looked like anything but a library. There were no books, no trestle tables with uncomfortable chairs—nothing like what he grew up with. It was row upon row of cubicles and computer screens. There were half a dozen holographic projectors where large star maps or videos could be shown to groups of cadets. Otherwise, there wasn’t much else to see. There were no windows, no pictures, nothing—only silence strictly enforced by one of the academic officers. Seating himself in a cubicle next to his friends, Alexander typed in his father’s name. A picture of his father from about twenty years ago appeared on the screen. Alexander couldn’t help but smile. His dad looked very serious back then, amusingly so, but there wasn’t much more information. The general file supplied his service dates, his ships, he served on the Enterprise and the Lincoln, his decorations, there were many, and the summation: Honorably discharged to active reserve after twenty-two years of service. That was strange. The standard tour of duty was fifty years thanks to Galactic regeneration techniques. What could have prompted an early discharge? A flash of fear hit Alexander in the gut. Had his father truly done something, something that could have gotten him kicked out of the Service? He checked again. No, it said quite specifically Honorable Discharge. Was it perhaps medical? At the bottom of the page there was an icon that read, Service Record.
Alexander touched the icon, but the screen flashed red. Classified, Access Restricted.
He backed out of the page and tried a general search under his father’s name. There was nothing. He went back to the service record and cross referenced the decorations with the ships. There was a pause, and then, much to his satisfaction, a list of files appeared on the screen. Alexander smiled at his own cleverness and touched the first file.
Classified, Access Restricted.
He touched the second.
Classified, Access Restricted.
The third, fourth and fifth were all the same. He went down the list. Then he thought, “What about the incident with Cadet Hawker’s dad?” He typed in “Tantalus IV” and finally got a short paragraph. It wasn’t much.
Terran Destroyer John Paul Jones disabled near Tantalus IV. The crew was marooned on the planet and attacked by the inhabitants, a Terran colony that had severed ties with the Terran Empire during the Caliphate Wars. Apparently the majority of inhabitants had Fanatic ties and had subjugated all other Terran settlers. The crew of the John Paul Jones was taken into custody and suffered several casualties before being rescued. The Fanatic problem was dealt with. The enslaved settlers took over administration of the planet and returned to full membership in the Terran Empire.
There was a link at the bottom of the paragraph, but like everything else it read, Classified, Access Restricted as soon as he touched it. Everything, it appeared, related to his father was classified. Alexander sat back, frustrated, wondering what to do next. To his surprise, the lists disappeared and a face appeared on the screen. His first thought was that he was in trouble, big trouble, and he sprang bolt upright. It was only then that realized the face didn’t belong to an officer of the Fleet or the Legions. In fact, it was the face of a girl and he knew her.
CHAPTER 13: Taking Things Apart
“Hello Alexander,” said Katrina. Alexander almost fainted with surprise and then relief. Oops, he wasn’t supposed to have contact with anyone from Terra outside the allowed visitation calls on Sundays.
“Katrina,” he whispered, “I can’t be found talking to you. It’s against regulations!”
She looked crestfallen, “Sorry, I didn’t know. I just wanted to call and say hi, and see how things are going; but I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
Alexander felt badly about that, knowing how disappointed Katrina was after her assignment was cancelled. Then it struck him, “Hey, how did you find me anyway?”
She shrugged, “It wasn’t that hard. My dad is a military historian. He has the uplink codes for the Academy because he teaches some classes there; he also has access to the library. All I had to do was use his uplink code and wait for you to log in.”
“So you have access to the library from Terra?”
“Whenever I want.”
The thought occurred to him, he was just a student, “Do you think your dad could do some research for me?”
“I don’t know, but I know I could,” she said. “What do you need? Are they giving you projects already? It must be something strange if you can’t access the information by yourself.”
“It’s about my dad.”
“What about him?”
“Everything I ask is classified; I can’t get anything at all except his picture and his basic service record.”
“Why do you need to know; is something wrong?”
Alexander took a deep breath and told her what happened with Khandar.
Katrina listened intently. When he finished she was frowning. He could see her accessing something on her screen, but it only caused her to shake her head. “All the official files that have anything to do with Khandar’s father are classified as well. We could try the Golkos ethernet records, after all he was the Grand Admiral, and infamous for his attack on Terra,” she did some more off screen work, but this didn’t seem to satisfy her either. “There’s too much stuff. This is going to take some time, Alexander. All the ethernet reports say he was killed in a hunting accident on the Homeworld of the Seer-koh, but there are no other details. You’d think for someone of Khandar’s notoriety we’d have film or something. I’m going to have to do some more digging. I’ll try and get back with you tomorrow.”
“O.k. my Study Hall period is from 0900-1000 Monday through Friday, thanks Katrina,” he said. He smiled and added, “It’s good to see you again. Thanks for calling.”
She smiled back. “Watch yourself up there, bye!”
The connection with Terra ended, and just in time. Centurion Fjallheim walked up to him, and asked, “Cadet Wolfe, who were you talking to just now?”
“No one sir, I was just talking to myself,” he replied nervously.
“Really, talking to yourself?” He asked doubtfully. His bushy brows drew together into a single orange line across his forehead. “What are you studying? It appears to be agitating you. You can’t have any serious assignments—not yet. What’s all this about?”
Alexander swallowed hard. The truth wouldn’t do, at least not all of it. Still, he couldn’t lie; any lie detector would find that out, besides, Centurion Fjallheim could easily access his computer search. “I was looking for records of my dad,” he said truthfully. “Cadet Khandar has it in for me because of my father. I was trying to find out why.”
Fjallheim leaned over his computer terminal and scanned his searches, nodding. His voice was gruff, but not angry, and he said, “We all have to live with our past one way or another. Just know that we are going to evaluate you on your merit, cadet, not the merit of your father.”
Alexander couldn’t tell whether that should concern him or not. “Sir, did my father do something that should concern me?”
The centurion stood up and straightened his uniform. “I didn’t know your father, cadet,” he said stiffly. “From this point on I suggest you concentrate on your Academy dictated studies, not on personal research,” his face softened just slightly, as if he were about to add something, but it stiffened again. He looked around the Study Hall for someone else to bother, and said, “As you were cadet!”
“Yes sir,” Alexander replied, and the centurion turned on his heel and left, leaving him more mystified than ever.
#
Z-Crosse was one of those games that the Academy pushed very hard on its young cadets. Not everyone chose to play on the team, but everyone had to pick a sport. Not surprisingly, all the sports were so designed to train the cadets in zero-G maneuvering. Z-Crosse was the most brutal of the sports, so the instructors liked it the most and took it very seriously. Their reasoning was simple: if one could play Z-Crosse with any level of confidence then zero-G combat was going to be a snap. They were right, but Alexander suspected the real reason was because it was loads of fun.
Unlike Terran based Lacrosse, a Z-Crosse match took place in a spherical bubble of space with a rotating goal in the center. Like the Terran based game the object was to put the ball into the net. The net itself was smart in that it always turned to face the location of the ball wherever it happened to be. This made it doubly difficult for the goalie, who had a tough enough job already. To make things even tougher, there was only one goal but of course there were two goalies, one for each team. The goalie turned into an attacker when his team had possession of the ball, but that meant that he had to retreat beyond the “red zone” of the goal, a bubble designated by a spherical laser shell ten meters in diameter. The goalies therefore shuffled back and forth, in and out of the goalie bubble throughout the match, but there was no rule that said they had to be polite about it.
Similar shells designated the attack zones and the midfield or “middie” zones. Middies could only jet around in the middie zone, and Attackers could only jet around in the attack zone, unless, of course, there was a change of possession and the attackers became defenders. Middies had the most ground to cover and had to be to best at “zooting.” Centurion Fjallheim handed out the assignments, but his logic was somewhat suspect, at least towards Alexander.
“After watching your zooting round last night Cadet Wolfe, I’d say you’re a natural Middie,” he smiled. Yet instead of handing Alexander the standard stick, he gave him the big net. Alexander stared at it, wondering what it meant. “You need to work on your coordination and your toughness; you’re a goalie.”
“A goalie,” Alexander repeated, mechanically taking the stick.
“Yeah, you and Sampson can fight over the net. You’re pads are over there; better get them on, you’ll need them.” Centurion Fjallheim handed the other go
alie stick to Cadet Sampson, who smiled. He was a foot taller than Alexander and twice his size.
“Sorry Alexander,” Sampson smiled. “I’m not supposed to cream the guys from my own flight, but you know how it is.”
“Right,” Alexander said with very little excitement.
Z-Crosse was as much an exercise in Newton’s laws of motion as it was a game, or survival for Alexander. Alexander found that out when he tried to transition from playing attack to goalie. His team already scored twice on Sampson, who wasn’t especially quick or coordinated, but easily frustrated. The bigger boy was eager to take his frustrations out on someone, anyone, and Alexander was in the way.
The ball whizzed by Samson’s head. He missed it so badly; he whirled around and got caught in the net. As he frantically tried to disengage himself, Sampson’s teammates intercepted the errant ball, passing it out to the middies as the rules dictated, and then back on the attack. Treya, who was an outstanding zooter already, dodged several of Alexander’s teammates and got ready for a shot, only she couldn’t take it because Sampson was still lodged in the net.
The Methuselan Circuit Page 12