Valor's Calling

by Kal Spriggs

  I found myself holding my breath and let it out in a gasp. I wasn't the only one. The very idea of some kind of civil war terrified me. Especially with what I'd read about how nasty those could be.

  “Now, let's talk a bit about why we have some of the things in the Colonial Charter,” Commander Bonnadonna went on. “First off, we'll get this out of the way right now, it is not a perfect document. It was drafted in a very different time. That said, there are processes to amend it. We'll get into those later. But first, let's talk about the circumstances of our Colonial Charter... Cadet Drien, perhaps you could speak to it.”

  I looked over at Sashi. Her dark skin flushed as she realized why she'd been selected. Most of the rest of the class realized it too, which meant we all paid a lot more attention to her words. “There were two initial waves of colonists to Century,” Sashi said. She cleared her throat, “What we call Firsts and Seconds. The Firsts all came from North America and Europe on Old Earth. They'd purchased the rights to Century and they intended to set it up as a sort of religious enclave.” I felt uncomfortable when she said it that way. The Firsts had been very homogenous, Elder Duncan Michaels, the main backer of the colony, had centered it on religious grounds, yes, but it wasn't like they were religious fanatics.

  “The Seconds were deportees from parts of Asia and India,” Sashi went on. “They were a mix of political prisoners, convicts, and other undesirables. A few months after the Firsts arrived at Century, the Seconds showed up in a UN Colonization ship, with a military escort to ensure that the Firsts would take the additional colonists.”

  “Yes, it was quite the shock, I'd imagine,” Commander Bonnadonna nodded. “Go on.”

  “There was a lot of conflict between Firsts and Seconds,” Sashi said. “Firsts had claimed most of the arable land, most of the areas with fresh water. They had all the best equipment and they had supplies for themselves. The Seconds didn't have anywhere to go. There were some clashes, some violence...”

  “Riots and murders,” someone muttered.

  “There was talk of war, until Lawrence Snow called a council. He met with Lorenzo Phan and Li-Ang Chen from the Seconds and they drafted the Colonial Charter together,” Sashi said.

  “Very good,” Commander Bonnadonna nodded. “And it's a little-known bit of history that Brigham Drien was one of the Charter signatories, a First who married a Second. Miss Drien can trace her lineage right back to one of our major historical figures.”

  My eyes widened a bit at that. Sashi, though, just sort of hunched on herself as we looked at her. Apparently she didn't think that was a good thing.

  “So what did the Colonial Charter do?” Commander Bonnadonna asked. “First off, it established limits on land ownership. Land was the main point of contention. Firsts had claimed the majority of the farmable and inhabitable land. The Colonial Charter established that you could only own land that you put to use. What that meant was that many Firsts had to either give up vast tracts of land or they had to allow Seconds to come and help them work that land, often with some kinds of incentives such as parcels of that land for themselves and their families.”

  I remembered that, now. Technically, my father was a Second. His grandfather had been one of those workers, though he'd turned around and sold the land to pay for an education and he'd eventually gone into archeology. He'd been one of the first xeno-archeology professors at Nelson’s University.

  “It also established the government structure that holds to this day. The Firsts were outnumbered by the Seconds, so they didn't want to lose control over their world. They established a representative government where land-ownership equated to votes... and where the twelve men and women who owned the most land, or had the votes of the majority of land-owners, were the law-makers.” He looked around the room. “Does anyone see any issues with this?”

  “It kept the Seconds out of government for a long time,” Kyle noted from next to me.

  “They saw that as something of a benefit,” Commander Bonnadonna noted. “More of a feature than a bug, you might say. Miss Martinez, what do you think?”

  “It meant the wealthy families with the money and the land made the laws,” Martinez said after a moment. When Commander Bonnadonna gave her a nod, she went on, “So, wouldn't they make laws that kept them in power?”

  “Indeed,” Commander Bonnadoona nodded, “Just that, Miss Martinez. That led to the Landowner Crisis. Which we will cover later on in this class. The intent was that the executive branch would counter that power. Our popularly elected president has veto power... but often that president has come from the same families as the Charter Council.”

  I hadn't really thought about it that way. I couldn't help but think of Charterer Beckman, and the way she'd seemed to think that rules didn't apply to her.

  “There have been some changes in more recent times. Sometimes minor upsets, such as when Mister Champion of Champion Enterprises managed to temporarily gain a seat at the Charter Council. But these types of events tend to be rather rare. By and large, our government has been rather static. That's been a boon to stability, but we'll dive into some of the pros and cons in our later classes. Now, then, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about this week's research paper...”

  ***

  Commander Pannja stared around at the gathered class. We stood on a section of pavement. In front of us, there was a row of skimmers, ranging from a sleek, two-seater civilian racing skimmer to a pudgy-looking utility skimmer to the predatory form of a combat skimmer.

  “Who here has flown a skimmer?” He asked. “I'm not talking about in a simulator. We've all done that plenty to this point, I'm talking a real skimmer.”

  I hesitantly raised my hand, along with a few others.

  “Armstrong, put your hand down, you got shot down; that doesn't count.”

  I sheepishly lowered my hand. A few of my classmates laughed at that. Kyle clapped me on the shoulder and grinned.

  “Alright,” Commander Pannja said. “Three of you. Martinez, I know you've got your civilian license, so that gives you some marginal ability to help out. We've done the simulator training for the past month. I've taught you all the theory. Today I'm going to take you up. You'll get some stick time. Hopefully you won't smash us into the ground and wreck one of my aircraft.”

  We chuckled at the joke. I was nervous. My one foray into flying had hardly been what anyone would term successful. At least I should have the opportunity to watch some of the others take their turns. I was halfway back in the group.

  “Now, I'll take you up, one by one. When you're not in a skimmer with me, I want you in the seats running the simulation programs. Today is just a familiarization flight, so you can get the feel of real flying and see the differences from it and simulators.”

  He pulled up his datapad, “Armstrong, you're up first.” Of course, I thought, today we do things in alphabetical order...

  I hurried forward and followed him to the little red racing skimmer. He guided me through an exterior inspection and then he waited for me to climb up the ladder and then watched me as I strapped myself in. He quirked a smile as I double-checked the seat restraints. “I suppose I don't need to give you the lecture about safety devices, do I, Armstrong?”

  I flushed, “No, sir.”

  He took the other seat and strapped himself in. “Go ahead and go through the preflight checks.

  I did as I was told, cycling through the checks and then starting the skimmer up. The whine of the turbines sent a bit of a jolt through me. I'd been through two crashes... was I ready for this?

  “Take her up, Biohazard, nice and easy,” Commander Pannja said. I rolled my eyes at the nickname, but I did as I was told.

  My nervousness vanished as I brought the turbines up and the light craft seemed to leap into the air. My hands went across the controls and I stabilized it, but it had so much power that I felt like the thing wanted to blast straight up into the sky... and part of me really wanted to let it.

  “Nice
and easy,” Commander Pannja said again. “Slow loop around the landing area.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. It startled me how easy it felt after the simulators. The racer really wanted to surge ahead, but I kept the speed down and did a slow, steady loop around the landing strip.

  “Good job, Armstrong,” Commander Pannja said as we came back to where I'd lifted off from. “I've got the stick.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” I replied, just as my controls went dead. I had a moment of panic, but then I realized that he'd just shut my controls off as he took over.

  He settled us towards the landing spot. “I think you could have landed it, but you're not certified yet, and I don't want to ruin a perfectly good day for flying if you manage to prove me wrong,” Commander Pannja said. “I was a bit worried that you'd be skittish at the controls after what you've been through, but well done. Go ahead and do the post-flight and then tell Cadet Do to head over.”

  I did as I was told, and as I jogged away from the skimmer, I found my hands itching a bit. It was odd. Flying the little red racing skimmer shouldn't have felt different from the ones in the simulators. But there had been something alive about it. Something free and exciting and pure.

  I hadn't expected to like flying. My one earlier experience in actual flight had started with me trying to escape from people trying to kill me and ended with me crashing after those same people had shot my skimmer up. Plus I crashed into their skimmer in the process...

  But I had liked it. In fact, I really hoped I'd get a second chance to go up again today. And while before I'd viewed the idea of getting my skimmer license as just another hurdle, now I wondered if that meant I'd get to fly some of the Academy's skimmers more often. I thought I remembered something about a skimmer racing team...

  I'd have to look into it.

  ***

  Cadet Commander Mackenzie cornered me on the day I got my clearance from physical therapy to have the full use of my leg.

  “Armstrong,” He gave me a brisk nod, “you're going to be at grav-shell practice tomorrow.”

  He'd caught me by surprise and I started a bit. “Sir!” It took me a moment to form words. Before I could respond more than that, he was gone. I didn't know if he was angry with me for avoiding practice, or for the whole kissing him thing, or if he was angry at all. But I guess I was going to find out.

  I showed up the next morning and before I really knew what was going on, I was back in the seat of a grav-shell and we were going through a practice race. I didn't have time to worry about what Mackenzie thought about me. I didn't have time to do much more than shout commands and steer. The familiar rush of the speed and the ground speeding past banished all my worries and fears and I just enjoyed the moment.

  We coasted back to the shed just as the sun rose over the horizon. Mackenzie gave me a hand in climbing out while Stroud shelved the Daisy. I was suddenly aware of how close I stood to Mackenzie and I took an awkward step back. He looked over at me, his expression odd.

  “I should head back, I suppose,” I said. He held up a hand, then waved at Stroud as he headed off to get changed. Quite suddenly, we were alone in the grav-shell shed. I swallowed nervously.

  “You've been avoiding me,” Mackenzie said.

  I wasn't really sure how to answer that.

  “I'd like to know why,” he said.

  “I could have gotten us both in a lot of trouble last time I saw you,” I said. The words came out in a rush. “It was stupid of me and...”

  He waved a hand, “Ah, that.” He shook his head, “Look, Armstrong, you're a nice enough girl... but you're a little young for me. It's flattering, but...”

  I flushed as I realized he was trying to let me down easy. “It's fine,” I interrupted him. “I'm seeing someone, Kyle Regan from Dust Company.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “I'm glad that worked itself out then.” His expression went serious. “I thought you were avoiding me because of this business with Webster. I thought you didn't trust me. I thought you suspected I was working with him or something.”

  “No!” I protested. “That's ridiculous. I mean, all the evidence the investigators found suggested he worked alone. Besides, you've helped me out... it's not like you tried to kill me.”

  “If I wanted to, I'm sure I could have done it,” Mackenzie snorted. His expression went solemn, “I still find it hard to believe, honestly. Webster was one of my Cadet Instructors when I was a candidate. He was a friend of mine... last year when I heard he got set-back it was a shock. Then this...” His blue eyes were clouded as he looked out at the sunrise. “I wish there was something I could have done for him. I wish I could have helped him, you know?”

  I nodded. People threw out lines about tragedy, but this was what that felt like. Everyone said that Webster had been a promising young man... where had he gone wrong? His death left everyone with more questions and for all that he’d nearly killed me several times, I couldn’t find it in me to be glad that he was dead.

  “Well, anyway, I hope you'll stick with the grav-shell team,” Mackenzie said. “We've got a lot of races coming up soon and this is my last season.”

  “Of course, sir,” I replied. “I'm in.”

  “Good,” he said, “because you've got a lot of catching up to do. We need to shave a good thirty seconds off our start times if we're going to place in these next few races.” He closed his eyes. “I just forwarded you race footage from some of our competition, I want you to study it, get to know their tactics...”

  He started laying out strategy and I realized that maybe this was going to be a bit more involved than I'd hoped.

  ***

  “The important thing to remember while you calculate the strength of the warp field generated, is power versus cost,” Commander Scarpitti said. “Most people generally correlate the strength with the size of the ship, which is true to a point. The main limitations are power and cost. Building a powerful warp drive smaller requires a massive expenditure of molecular circuitry and a great deal of engineering to attain decent efficiency, and a sufficiently powerful antimatter plant to operate it. That's why larger ships, which have more space for bigger drives and larger powerplants, typically have stronger warp fields.”

  I the first few weeks of Fall Semester had flown past and now classes were going full swing. All of the classes had grown much harder and I almost felt like I was trying to dig sand with a dinner fork. There was just so much to learn… and I wasn’t the only one wondering why we were tackling some extremely hard subjects in our first full year on campus.

  “Ma'am,” Duchan asked, “why are we designing a warp field? I mean, most of this stuff is off the shelf, we don't exactly have shipyards, after all.”

  “We don't have military shipyards,” Commander Scarpitti nodded. “We do, however, have several civilian shipyards in the system. True, they aren't exactly able to build ships to military standards, but we do have military engineers on liaison with them. During war-time, they could be converted to production of smaller warships.”

  That didn't seem like a great idea to me. The two shipyards she spoke of, Secundis Station and Century Station, were tiny things. Secundis built mining ships, which didn't even have an FTL warp drive, just in-system drives. Century Station was bigger, it was owned by Champion Enterprises, but it built small freighters and transports. The size of vessel they could produce probably wouldn't be much use in a real war.

  “There's also an element of knowledge here that you need to learn in order to repair these systems,” Commander Scarpitti went on with a friendly smile. To me, she seemed condescending, like she was talking down to us. “If you know how to design a warp field, you'll know how to repair it.”

  “Before we go into the deeper math, let's refresh on the importance of a deeper warp drive, shall we?” She looked around the class expectantly. Her harsh accent made her otherwise innocuous words somehow seem almost threatening.

  “Ma'am, the deeper or stronger the warp drive, the higher overa
ll relative velocity that a ship can produce,” I said, not really understanding why we were discussing something so basic so far along in the class. So far, we'd already gone through designing the antimatter containment fields on reactors, radiation shielding, and a variety of other complicated things, comparatively, this was child's play.

  “And?” she asked.

  I considered it for a moment, wondering what else she wanted me to say. We are talking about military ships, and stronger drives mean they take more damage... “The deeper the drive, the more damage it can take.”

  “Ah, there's a key point... and it's totally wrong,” Commander Scarpitti turned to her display and started sketching a simplified diagram of a warp drive, the curvature of space looking like a wave. “That's a common misconception and that's why we're bringing it back to the basics. You can have a deeper drive that isn't resistant to damage.” She turned and smiled at me, as if to suggest there was no insult meant. Still, it irritated me that she'd set me up that way. I’d known the answer wasn’t exactly right, but she’d prompted me to say it anyway.

  “It's normal for most people to correlate a deeper drive with a stronger drive. Most engineering programs teach it that way. But that's wrong. In fact, there's a geometry of the warp field that comes into play. Until relatively recently, most warp drives were built to project a gradual curve, like this,” she said, gesturing at the display. The long, smooth curve looked like a normal warp field to me.

  “Merchant vessels typically use a compressed curve because you can get one with lower power requirements.” She brought up a second warp field curve, this one just as deep, but with less length. “What observation showed, however, is that a compressed curve drive can produce equal relative velocities, but with far less capability to take damage.”

  Next to both images, she created an explosion. That represented antimatter and matter combining, releasing a massive burst of radiation and particles. On both diagrams, the waves were squeezed by the detonation, the curve bowing. On the military drive, it resumed its previous shape, on the civilian one, the two edges bowed together until they touched and the warp field collapsed.