“What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
“I haven’t understood a word he’s said since the first day of class.”
There was more of the same from every corner of the classroom. Alexander wondered how the Professor ever got on with the Academy. It wasn’t simply that he was incoherent much of the time, but he didn’t seem to like much of anything that was going on. He hated the current political system. He thought the lower classes were downtrodden and served as virtual slaves to whatever the upper class was. Alexander didn’t know who these people might be other than anyone who fell into the category of “rich industrialists,” “establishment imperialists” and to his horror, “the feudal system of mercenary aristocracy that is the Officer Corps of the Fleet and the Legions.”
Things had gotten progressively worse as the term went on. It was so bad, that students actually got up the nerve to address the problem to their officer representatives. In Kilo flight that was Lieutenant Mortimer. This caused some difficulty of course, as every member of the flight was either too intimidated by the Lieutenant or was hopelessly in love with her. It fell to Alexander, who was elected against his will as the only one who already had, and could, communicate with her.
Alexander reluctantly requested the meeting by filing the appropriate form. In due time his form came back to him with directions on how to put the previous request in the correct Fleet format. Another request was made followed by another request for clarification, and at last, after two weeks of electronic paperwork, the meeting was granted. After so much effort, Alexander felt the meeting was anti-climactic. After returning his salute, Lieutenant Mortimer hardly looked away from her screen. He couldn’t even be sure she was listening to him, but after he finished she responded.
“When faced with a problem in the field, the first thing we do is scout it out—find out what or who you’re up against. Only then do we formulate a plan of response.”
When Alexander simply sat there dumbstruck, Lieutenant Mortimer finally graced him with her alternating shades of beautiful and hard set eyes. Her perfectly arched brows rose as if to say, “Well, I’ve answered your query; what are you still doing here?”
He sprang upright and saluted. He couldn’t leave fast enough. The rest of the flight eagerly awaited his report, but they were crestfallen when he returned with so little. Despondent, they resigned themselves to a grueling semester. Alexander felt he’d let them all down, which only made him more determined to figure out just what the Lieutenant meant. He went to the library and contacted Katrina. Together they downloaded every file they could on Professor Nussbaum. Strangely, many files were recently declassified; recently as in the day of his meeting with the Lieutenant. Katrina got her father to help her on some of the sticky stuff, and armed with this information, Alexander planned his assault. The next Monday, after the Professor’s obligatory first of the week bombardment, Alexander returned fire.
He raised his hand.
Professor Nussbaum blinked in surprise.
The class stared at him in disbelief.
Professor Nussbaum shrugged, “Cadet Wolfe do you have a question?”
“Yes Professor,” he said, plucking up his courage and doing his best to recite the paragraph he memorized. “You have been teaching Harvard social dogma from the days before contact with the Galactic empires. The class structure and political structures of that time no longer exist. Political theorists discredited the Harvard school of social thought over one hundred years ago as impractical and arrogant elitism. What’s changed?”
Professor Nussbaum stared at Alexander, dumbfounded. It was the same expression from three weeks ago when he surprised the Professor Strauss in the Tube. Could it be they were all somehow clones? He sputtered and blinked, repeating the words, “Discredited?” and “Impractical?” over and over again.
The class sat back with a silent sigh of victory, and Alexander reveled in the assenting nods and virtual roar of approval. He couldn’t let his momentary victory get the best of him, however. With every attack came the inevitable counter-attack. Professor Nussbaum cleaned his glasses, a sure sign he was organizing his thoughts.
“I had no idea you were so well versed in socio-economic study, Cadet Wolfe,” he said gravely and the class fell into a deep silent hush. “Over five hundred years of learning dictate the theories of Harvard, one of the most prestigious institutions on Terra. Believe me when I say their theories are never discredited or impractical.” He paused and walked over to Alexander’s desk, planting himself in front of it. Glaring down at the student he asked with biting sarcasm, “Clearly we have a twelve year old prodigy on hand. What school of thought would you follow in our present course of expansion and integration into the galaxy?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander shrugged, and Professor Nussbaum beamed at the prospect of victory. Then Alexander said, very firmly, “I always thought the Constitution worked pretty well for the United States—Alexander himself implemented it as the basis for the Terran Empire,” he smiled and shook his head like an old college professor. “That’s a pretty good recommendation as far as I’m concerned. Of course, there were radicals who spoke against that a long time ago. They favored failed systems like communism, socialism and anarchy; I’ve read that some even stooped to terrorism, planting bombs and stuff like that. They were all exposed as nut jobs and psychos.”
The Professor’s watery eyes almost popped from his head. His lips turned red, twisting and mouthing unheard words. He strained against some unseen harness, wanting to say something, but eventually he passed his hand over his eyes and laughed weakly. “Nut jobs and psychos are hardly academic terms, Cadet Wolfe—you betray your youth.” He turned around and walked back to his desk, but he paused there without sitting down. The Professor stood there looking at nothing, and then he abruptly straightened up and left the room.
After the door slid shut the class burst out in approval for Alexander. He gladly took the accolades, but he felt guilty about it as well. It wasn’t until he slipped off with James, Lisa and Treya that he could admit, “I owe a lot of that stuff to Katrina. She found some stuff in the Island Library about the student terrorists and communist groups that popped up after the Caliphate Wars. They allied with the greeners, the environmental terrorists, and formed what they called the Gaians. Apparently the Professor Strauss and Professor Nussbaum belonged to the Gaians. It makes you wonder how they ever got here!”
“Why on Terra would two radical Professors be teaching Underclassmen at the Academy of all places, I mean the first thing they hate is the military?”
Treya shook her head, and said, “On Chem we ship such dregs to Pantrixnia, and we feel sorry for the beasts that consume them!”
The afternoon tactics class was a departure from the norm. “The Tube is restricted today, so there’s no Z-Crosse for anybody,” Centurion Fjallheim told them. There was a general groan from the class. He held up his hands, saying, “I know, I’m disappointed too, however, there are always options. We could spend extra time on the firing range, but I thought we’d shake things up a bit and give you a taste of what’s to come. We’re going to take a detour from our Zero-G acclimatization and introduce you to fractional-G training. So mount up cadets; we’re going to the Moon!”
They made their way out of the classroom and toward the Tube. They still had to transit the Tube to get to the terminal, and Alexander was very curious to see what was so important that their training was interrupted. When they reached the entrance it was obvious that something was going on. Floating not a hundred yards from the entrance to the Tube was the enormity that was the dreadnought Enterprise. The largest of the Terran super-battleships, the dreadnought class was built from the hulls of old Terran blue-water aircraft carriers. Now they sprouted five rotating turrets of Level fifty-seven blaster projectors, the largest in the galaxy. The dreadnought was so large and so impressive that Alexander had to remind himself that the dreadnought was inside the Methuselan ship.
That was sobering enough, but what was the Enterprise doing here? What was she guarding? Alexander and every other cadet looked in the direction the dreadnoughts guns were pointing; only there was nothing to see. An opaque security screen blocked the entire aft end of the Tube.
“What’s that all about?” was the often asked question. They stepped into the zero-G of the Tube but there they stopped. Everyone looked at the security screen. They couldn’t help it. Try as they might there was nothing to be seen. Then, much to their astonishment, three figures zooted out of the screen and headed their way. They weren’t Fleet or Legion though; two wore dark suits like the two strangers and one was a Seer’koh. The Ambassador carried a small silver brief case in one hand. It was chained to his wrist.
“Those are the same government agents I saw with Professor Strauss and the Methuselan Circuit!” Alexander breathed.
“Are you sure,” Lisa asked.
“Absolutely, they’re coming from the Transmitter section where I saw them before. I wonder what they have in the case?”
“Maybe they removed the Methuselan Circuit.”
“No, it’s way too small,” Alexander said. “The Methuselan Circuit was a meter square; it has to be something else—I wouldn’t be surprised if it related though.”
The three passed them, but one of them, the woman stopped and looked in their direction. Alexander thought she was staring at him but then she lifted her glasses as if to get a better look at him. She wasn’t staring at him; she was staring at James. The boy stiffened, and Alexander heard the sharp intake of his breath. Then, just as quickly and unexpectedly as it all happened, she lowered her glasses and was gone.
“Do you know her James?”
He seemed flustered, and said, “I don’t think so, but there’s something very familiar about her. Maybe she’s a relative, but Dad never said we had any government relatives.”
“Well whoever she is, she knows something about the Circuit.”
“Well we know they’re not carrying it.”
“The Circuit may be a meter square, but the control box could fit in a briefcase,” Treya said, but then she shrugged. “That’s assuming the Methuselans did things the same way Galactics do. If it were a Galactic unit the control box and the power box would simply plug in and plug out of the Circuit—you could disable it relatively easy.”
“In Galactic technology that wouldn’t matter,” Lisa replied. “All control boxes operate on the same principals. You’d simply replace it with another.”
Treya nodded, but James said, “Who knows what they have in there. They’re government agents and it’s none of our business.”
They watched the three agents enter a small vehicle. The vehicle was shiny white with only a serial number on the side and like most vehicles it was a refurbished twentieth century machine. Alexander tried to remember what it was once called. He knew it was an air vehicle, but not a plane, this was one of the transport vehicles designed to hover—a helicopter, that was it. It could hold perhaps six or eight people, but it was strictly and inter-system shuttle. Small twin impulse engines replaced the rotating rotor.
“I wonder where they’re going,” Alexander asked out loud.
As if to answer his question, the vehicle jumped forward, weaving through the docked ships and transports in the Tube and disappeared out of the forward end, heading for the silver-gray crescent of the Moon.
“I’d give a lot to know what they’re up to,” Alexander said, shaking his head, “but there’s no way to know what’s going on behind that screen.”
“Just stick to our classes Alexander,” James chided him. “We’re supposed to be curious, but not that curious.”
Treya wasn’t so sure, and she crossed her long arms with a scowl. “James this doesn’t bode well for any of us. When the Terran government messes around with the Fleet and the Legions we’re all in trouble. They’re the only thing standing between the re-growth of civilization and chaos. We on Chem remember our Civil War; we don’t want times like that again!”
“Either do I, but we’re cadets; what are we supposed to do about it?” James was adamant, and he gave Alexander a dig in the ribs. “If there’s something strange going on let the Spooks take care of it—that’s what they’re there for!”
“Very funny James.”
“I’m not so sure that James isn’t right—look!” Lisa pointed to someone coming through the security screen on a zike. He wore a spacesuit with a helmet, like someone would wear who intended on re-entering the atmosphere and ziking down to Terra, but he had the electronic visor turned on. That effectively rendered to the helmet opaque to an outside observer. The zike rider glanced their way as he passed, and as if he recognized them, he gunned the zike. That almost caused him to crash into one of the waiting transports. He recovered control of the zike and zoomed out of the Tube, following the government agents toward the Moon.
“That was weird,” they said together with a laugh. “If Spooks ride that badly we’re really in trouble!”
Other flights began arriving at the Tube, all of them with the same idea of heading toward the Terminal. The strangeness of the security screen and the mystery behind it had everyone jamming up in the space just outside the entrance. No one seemed willing to move until Centurion Fjallheim took charge. He barked at them to get going, and after a few demerits and the threat of extra time spent on breathing exercises—an especially boring drill necessary for basic sniper training—the cadets actually moved away from the security screen. When they finally got to the terminal they saw that the Enterprise wasn’t the only ship standing guard over the Academy. The full strength of the dreadnought squadron hovered in space around the station. Alexander and the cadets gasped at other famous ships from the Galactic Wars and the Methuselan War: the battleship Bismarck, the destroyer John Paul Jones and Captain Konstantinov’s famous alpha class sub the Gagarin.
“What in the world is going on?”
“Into the transports, come on look alive there cadets, we haven’t got all day!” The sudden turn of events hadn’t affected Centurion Fjallheim’s humor any. In short order, they were filing down the gangways to the transports. Once inside the transports the next surprise of the day hit them. The only transports they’d seen as cadets were the spare but relatively comfortable passenger transports. These were legionary transports, and they were a completely different animal. Built from the massive hulls of twentieth century atmospheric military transports, airplanes to use the archaic term, these machines were not engineered for comfort. The first thing that struck the cadets was the smell: oil, grease, blaster residue and legionaries. Even the decontamination scans couldn’t get rid of it. The girls held their noses.
“Terrans, oh my God, sweaty Terrans!” the Chem girl exclaimed. Her civilized sensory system recoiled in shock. “No offense Alexander but you Terrans smell like a zoo!”
“It is pretty ripe,” Alexander admitted.
“Ah, it’s the Legion for me!” James laughed, drawing in a deep breath through his nose.
Lisa turned green, and said, “I’ll stay with the Fleet; this is just, just horrible!”
They shuffled into the fetid atmosphere, but curiosity overcame their initial reaction. This wasn’t the Academy. This was a ship of the line; this was the real world. It was fascinating and sobering. The interior of the transport was strictly functional. It was a hollow cylinder divided by Plasteel grates into a central core where on an operational mission two to ten zanks berthed depending on their size. Around the zanks were long canvas covered benches running the entire length of the ship on three levels. For a strike mission or forward area deployment the transport could carry ten centuries, a full battalion or 1000 legionaries in relative discomfort with their full complement of zanks.
Centurion Fjallheim directed the flight leaders to get their flights to their designated jumpseats and get them ready for departure—that meant everyone had to don their suit. Alexander was the designated flight leader for the day. A
momentary thrill of panic coursed through his breast. Where are we supposed to go? He had to figure it out and fast. Fortunately the Fleet and Legions had no time for anything but simple logic. The benches were arranged clockwise and the designations for Flights/Platoons began at the top or twelve O’clock position. Alpha sat on the first row with Bravo on the port side back-to-back with Charlie and Delta sitting on the starboard side bench. At the one O’clock position Echo and Foxtrot sat back-to-back Golf and Kilo, and so on.
“This way Kilo flight!” he said, leading the way up the metal stairs to the one O’clock rows designated Golf and Kilo. The racket inside the transport was deafening. Between the general hubbub, the tramping of boots on metal grates and the shouted orders it seemed like mass confusion, but somehow, in remarkably short order everyone got to their stations. Waiting for them was a white survival suit with bright red arm and leg bands. Above it was a helmet. Alexander and the other cadets all looked around at each other. As soon as one cadet took the plunge and started to put the suit on they all did it. Alexander had never worn a suit like this before, and he guessed that few if any of the cadets had either. He discovered that everything was fairly self explanatory. There was a zipper in the front. He unzipped the suit and stepped in. His zoots fit through the legs without difficulty and to his surprise as soon as he pulled the cuff of the leg over his calf it sealed on the top of the zoot. The same was true when he pulled his gloves over the cuff of the sleeves; the material on the outside of the cuff formed a seal with the inside of his glove. This made perfect sense. His gloves and zoots were still functional. He took down the helmet.
The Methuselan Circuit Page 16