by Lance Berry
Suddenly, screams filled the room, and he darted his head about, looking for the source. His classmates and Professor Ivanston were fine. He turned the other way, seeing a simulated crewman in the distance frantically waving him off. Confused, he turned forward once more, and threw his arms up in surprise as the portside wall of the launch bay loomed before his ship, which shuddered as it simulated a crash into the wall. The holograms disappeared immediately as the forward and starboard screens went blank a moment, and then the words “Simulation Ended” flashed repeatedly on the forward screen.
Travis lowered his arms and stared numbly at the words a moment. Then the sound of slow, deliberate clapping came to him…dimly at first, but then clearer as the canopy automatically rose again.
“Very good, Cadet Rand,” Ivanston said dryly as he clapped. The rest of the class cheered, clapped and guffawed right along as Travis climbed out of the simulator, his face darkened with embarrassment. “Let’s look at your scores, shall we?” Ivanston remarked, and pointed to the aft monitor.
Travis didn’t want to look, but he did anyway. On the screen, final test data displayed itself:
Time from “launch clear” to liftoff: 0.5 seconds.
Time to clearing bay: 0.0 seconds.
Takeoff rating: 0.0%
Assessment: Pre-flight check incomplete.
Pre-flight visibility standing incomplete.
Visual/computer assessment of clearance ratio incomplete.
DFC destroyed, two personnel injured, two killed due to critical pilot failure.
The class fell silent during the readout, and Travis hung his head in defeat as he turned to Ivanston. “Do you know what you did wrong, Cadet?” the professor asked him.
“Yes, sir,” Travis said quietly. “The first thing I–“
Ivanston waved him off. “Tonight, you will write a one thousand word essay detailing exactly what you did wrong, every single step of the way. I challenge you to think long and carefully upon it, because if you leave out anything, you will not be back in the simulator for two weeks. Now, please move to the rear. If your peers can at least manage to get the ship out of the launch bay, perhaps their example will help you in your writing exercise tonight.”
After his failure in the simulator, Travis and his cadre headed to lunch. He underwent some teasing from them, but it ended by the time they reached the mess hall, and Hugo Guzman even offered to help him get used to the flight controls by using study aids in the library. Travis accepted gratefully, and no more mention was made of the incident the rest of that day.
As they took their seats, Travis was unsurprised but not at all pleased to see Tony Drake approaching their table. This feeling caught him offguard, as he thought he had moved past whatever emotions he might have possibly had for Danielle.
“Mind if I join you?” Tony said to Danielle as he sidled up beside her. “Not at all, sir,” she said with a wide smile. Travis did his best to focus on his food, but realized it would be impossible, since Danielle was so insistent on making introductions. “…and Christina King. This is Travis.”
Travis set his fork down, wiped his mouth with a napkin and forced a smile as he accepted Tony’s outstretched hand. He couldn’t help noticing that Tony had a firm grip, and that he was actually a very handsome young man; dark hair, cobalt blue eyes and an aquiline nose. Travis did his best not to upchuck.
“Hi, Tony Drake.”
“Travis Rand.”
“I saw your speech on the pressnets last year, before first semester started,” Tony said as he withdrew his hand. “Sort of ironic now, huh?”
“I don’t see how. I still mean every word I said.”
“Well, I just meant–“
“So where are you from?”
Tony Drake chuckled, as if he found it amusing that Travis might be the only human being in the world who might not know who he was and where he came from. “Well, I’m actually from Los Angeles. I was going to be assigned to the Florida district for training for some odd reason, but my father talked to one of the administrators here and got me transferred. My father’s–“
“Carter Thomas Drake, formerly captain of the H.C. Vanguard, now Major Drake, commander of the Mars Alpha Base. Nice. I keep up with current events.”
Before Tony could say anything else, Travis turned to his cadre. “We need a new name for Tony II here, folks. Otherwise, we won’t be able to keep our Tony’s straight. Any ideas?”
After introductions, none of the other cadre members had been paying particularly close attention to Tony and Travis’ conversation, but now they all perked up. “How about Asian Tony and White Tony?” Theo offered, not altogether jokingly.
“That’s not funny,” Christina chided as she love-tapped him in the arm.
“Tony of Earth One and Tony of Earth Two?” Hugo said hopefully. Everyone stared at him in puzzlement.
“Get real,” Travis said, and looked over at Anthony Chen. “What do you think, T.C.? You were here first.”
“Travis–“
He waved Danielle off and waited for Chen’s reply. Chen shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t care. I know who I am.”
“Just ‘Drake’,” Pietro chimed in. “It’s short and to the point.”
Travis smiled at Tony Drake. “’Drake’ it is. All in favor?”
“HUAH!” came the accepted cry from all except Danielle and Drake. Travis impaled a piece of pork chop on his fork and smiled again. “Nice to meet you, Drake,” he said, and happily downed his food.
Training in Jeet Kune Do with Sensei Ling went very well that afternoon. Travis was immersing himself more in the philosophy behind the art, and felt that soon enough, he would be intimate with the style itself. Afterward, he had scheduled free time, so he headed to the gym at Meade Hall for a workout. He had made more acquaintances on campus, and received pleasant greetings from more than a few people as he entered the large recreation area.
He changed into sweats and found an unoccupied weight bench. He limbered up a bit, adjusted the weights to what he felt comfortable lifting, and was preparing to lie down to bench-press, when someone tapped his shoulder.
It was Drake.
“Tell me something. Is there a problem between us I should know about?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Travis said casually, and grabbed a towel off a nearby rack. “Should there be?”
“Danielle told me that you had a thing for her–“
“What?”
Drake waved dismissively. “But that’s all in the past, as far as I’m concerned. Look, I care about her a lot and she cares for me. There’s no reason for you to be jealous, it just happens that way, is all.”
“I’m not jealous,” Travis said as he got to his feet and took a step toward Drake. Christ, how he wanted to knock those pearly whites out of his face–!
Drake took note of Travis’ movement and held both hands up in deference. “Look, I think you need to relax, Travis.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do, Drake. You need to be gettin’ out of my face, about now.”
Drake’s hands lowered, but Travis knew where to look: if a punch was going to come, the shoulders would indicate it. “I don’t want to fight you, Travis. Not just because I know Danielle wouldn’t approve, but because it would be too embarrassing for me to kick your ass so handily.”
Travis’ teeth grinded together. He couldn’t hit Drake first, or he’d face automatic separation. But a crowd was starting to gather, and if he could prompt him to swing–
The room’s lights dimmed to almost half, and a synthesized female voice spoke over the ODC: “All students, please pay attention to the viewscreen. All students, to your nearest viewscreen.” As the voice intoned, the vids-creen mounted on the far wall activated, displaying the UEF standard. Travis and Drake’s argument was forgotten as the two of them and everyone else in the room crowded around the screen. The Allied News Network’s logo appeared, followed by a shot of an anchorman in the central newsroom.
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“Good afternoon. I’m Tyler Jameson, and we interrupt your regular broadcast to bring you news of a stunning victory for United Earth Force over enemy forces! Here now, from the Heavy Cruiser Victory, our correspondent Sharon Morgan.”
The image changed to that of an attractive woman with reddishblonde hair and light blue eyes. All around her, troops were cheering, hugging and slapping hands. The woman was obviously in the ship’s launch bay, as Travis spotted a couple of Class Six Predator DFCs and troop transports behind her. He was briefly reminded of his simulation disaster, but pushed the thought aside as the woman addressed the viewers. “Good afternoon, I’m Sharon Morgan and I’m aboard the aptly named Victory. We came here today not seeking much of a story, as this ship was on training maneuvers with her brand-new captain. But we got far more than we bargained for, when a distress call was received earlier. We have playback footage ready for you now.”
The image changed once more, this time to a shot of the Heavy Cruiser’s bridge, and Travis couldn’t help but smile. He had heard about what these bridges looked like, but he had never seen any live footage of one, only pictures. The captain sat in the center seat, his back to the camera, his face hidden. All about him sat command deck personnel: the helmsman and navigator, the communications officer, the first officer and others. The bridge was sparkling clean, and all the officers carried out their duties with a calm assuredness. There was a swirling, myopic mess on the ship’s main viewscreen, which Travis surmised could only be hyperspace. The fourth-dimensional realm couldn’t be properly interpreted by ship’s sensors, and since no Earth vessel could hold position within it, no one knew what hyperspace actually looked like. The bridge lights were dimmed to a deep red, and an alert klaxon clanged repeatedly. Morgan turned to the camera as a readout below her displayed “recorded earlier today”.
“We’re on the bridge of the Heavy Cruiser Victory. Only moments ago, as we were on a tour of the ship, a distress call from a Heavy Cruiser convoy came in. The line was garbled due to transpace interference, but what we do know is that they have been ambushed by a superior number of enemy forces. Captain David Christenson, in command of this ship, sent out a call to UEF Command in advance, then decided to take his ship onward to the transmission’s origin point. Neither he nor his crew has said it openly, but I can only guess what they must all be thinking: Can one single ship make any more of a difference, outnumbered as this convoy already is? We’ll soon find out…and for all our sakes, I’m hoping so.”
“Captain, we’re coming up on target site,” the navigator, an appealing Hispanic woman, reported.
“Drop out of light speed, directly on top of the nearest enemy ship,” Christenson said in a light English accent. “Captain to Tactical.”
“Tactical here.” The voice was unseen, transmitted via the ship’s ODC from a separate tactical command post.
“Ready all forward laser emitters and standby on antimatter torpedoes.”
“At your command, sir!”
On the ship’s central viewer, the mass of swirling light and color coalesced to a single point–a warp exit for the artificial wormhole the ship had been generating all along. The Victory shook slightly as the ship made its entrance back into normal third-dimensional space, amidst a scene straight out of hell: five UEF ships being set upon by about ten Calvorian battlecruisers. The engines of one of the enemy ships loomed large on the view screen, and Christenson gave the order to fire the laser emitters.
The tactical officer obeyed, and dozens of beams of forced coherent light rained down upon the enemy ship’s engines, making two of the engine ports explode into a glorious mushroom of swiftly dying flame in the vacuum of space.
Everyone in the room cheered, drowning out Christenson’s next order. There were several fervent shushes in the room, and everyone settled down to watch. David Christenson gave order after order, delivered in a tone that was almost unnervingly calm. Each command was executed flawlessly by the Victory’s crew, and soon enough, Christenson had managed to reassemble the convoy into a tightly knit fighting force once again. They destroyed eight out of the ten ships, leaving the last two, although both heavily damaged, to escape in warp entrances. The battle done, everyone in the room cheered the Victory’s crew, and almost in acknowledgement, the captain stood and nodded to his officers. He made the rounds, congratulating each of them, and now Travis could finally get a good look at him.
“That is someone I want to serve with someday,” Drake wished aloud. Travis nodded. “Me too.”
The newscast went on, detailing facts about the distance from Earth to Pollux–where the conflict took place–what this victory meant for UEF and other things. Travis didn’t pay attention to it. Instead, he turned to Drake. “Can you spot me on those weights?”
Drake considered it a moment. “Yeah, sure.”
“Promise not to let ‘em drop on me and kill me, though?”
Drake laughed as they headed over to the bench. “I’ll think about it, Travis. I’ll think about it.”
Travis timed his workout so that he would have a chance to head back to barracks to change to a cleaner uniform. He shook hands with Drake, thanked him for his help on the bench, and the two parted amicably. As he entered Brigand and made his way up the flights of stairs toward the fourth floor, Travis was amazed at how easy the jog up had become, as opposed to first year. He believed that even if he had a couple of bags in hand, he could make the climb with little difficulty…perhaps he’d try it sometime. As he rounded the corner of the third landing, he spotted Danielle coming down the stairs. She smiled slyly as she gave his sweat-stained workout clothes a once-over. “Going casual today?”
He stopped on the stair she was at, eyeing her coldly. “Why did you tell your boyfriend that I had a ‘thing’ for you?” He spoke this quietly, so no passersby could hear.
Danielle blinked, somewhat surprised and embarrassed, but quickly covered it up with a harsh whisper back. “You did have a thing for me! Maybe you still do.”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“What is this, the fourth grade?” Travis shot back. “Besides, I do not! As I recall, you leaned in to kiss me!”
“It was a friendly kiss, and you know it! You’re the one who let it blow out of proportion!”
From the looks a couple of passing cadets gave them, Danielle realized her voice was rising. She glared at them harshly, and the cadets–a couple of plebes–hurried along their way.
“I did not blow anything out of proportion,” Travis replied softly. “Or is it my imagination that as soon as I rejected you, you became an ice queen?”
Danielle’s lower lip trembled, and she looked down at her shoes a moment. “Can we not talk about this right now? I have to go meet Tony–“
“YOU FUCKING TRAITOR!”
Danielle and Travis looked to one another in amazement, then craned their necks upwards to the fourth floor. The voice was unmistakably Theo’s, and it echoed through the hallways like a crack of thunder. The two of them raced upstairs, to find a crowd of plebes blocking the entrance to Travis’ room, all gazing in.
“Upperclassmen coming through! Out of the damn way,” Danielle bellowed. The plebes instantly moved aside, a couple of them even coming to attention as Danielle and Travis made their way to the entrance. The duo went inside and found Theo, Francis and Chen, the second trying to keep the other two boys apart.
“Theo, calm down, man–“
“Shut up, Francis! This is between me and this slope bastard!”
“You call me that again, Theo, and I’ll–“
“You’ll what, traitor?”
Danielle was about to try and intervene, but Travis grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “Get these plebes out of here!”
She nodded and headed back to the once-again crowded entrance. “All of you, back the hell out of the doorway and come with me. NOW!”
The sta
rtled freshmen did as they were told, parting so she could step into the hallway. She closed the door behind her, and they obediently followed her to a far end of the corridor. “I’m Danielle Keys, sophomore year. So as far as you little ducks are concerned, I’m both an upperclassman and a senior officer to you. Got me?”
They nodded, but Danielle wasn’t satisfied. If she was going to have them do what she wanted, it would be necessary for her to assert full authority over them. “I’m not hearing you, Cadets! Do you understand me?”
“HUAH!” They yelled as one, all snapping to attention. Danielle nodded, more pleased with this response. “What just happened in that room, and what is going on there now, did not happen, and is not going on, as far as you’re all concerned. You will not breathe a word about this incident to anyone, whether plebe or officer or any upperclassman other than myself. Now, the good old days of hazing plebes might be over, but I still have enough authority over you to make your first year here one shithole of an experience if you cross me. Or would any of you like to be on call 24-7 to clean the latrine each and every time one of us yuks takes a dump?”
The plebes frantically shook their heads “no”.
“Then you’d better not breathe a word of this, wunderkind–or each one of you is going to take turns balancing a food tray on your head as you make your way up four flights to deliver me breakfast in bed every morning from now on. Dismissed!”
The plebes all but ran away from Danielle. She raced back to the room, where raised voices could still be heard from behind the closed door. She opened it, and now found both Travis and Francis standing between Chen and Theo. For the first time, she noticed books and dsp’s scattered all over the floor. One of the vid-coms was on, and for some reason Chen’s photo and personal information was on it. It was Travis’ voice that brought her back to the issue at hand: