Devastation Class

by Glen Zipper

  The tension between students and cadets had been palpable from the moment we arrived at Penbrook for launch prep. Initially I could identify no root cause, but over time I came to understand how our separation itself contributed to breeding resentment, jealousy, and suspicion.

  Students prepped for launch according to one curriculum, and we cadets, who were charged with additional extracurricular responsibilities aboard the California, prepped according to another. The bifurcation of our preparations made practical sense but operated to create a distance between us—its vacuum too often filled with misunderstanding and misappropriated malintent. The students, not fully appreciating the demands of cadet enlistment, prejudged us as elitist and unfairly privileged, whereas we fairly could have been accused of viewing students as lacking sufficient investment in the Explorers Program to be deserving of the opportunity. It took only twelve weeks at Penbrook for this vicious cycle of misapprehension to escalate rivalry to acrimony and ultimately graduate to outright contempt.

  Jagdish Patel pushed down on the back of Bixby’s neck, while Cooper Lynch knelt down to meet him at eye level. Lynch and Patel had distinguished themselves as the ringleaders of the students’ antipathy for the cadets, taking every opportunity to aggravate hostilities. Of late they had taken to getting in the ear of Ensign Gentry, calling attention to even the smallest of technical code-of-conduct infractions by cadets. Unsurprisingly, this antagonized JD and Vivien, and in the final days leading up to launch, there had been increasingly frequent petty aggressions from both factions. I presumed Bixby’s predicament was likely retribution for yet another.

  “What did you do to our test scores, Moon Boy?” Lynch demanded.

  It seemed I had presumed correctly.

  His face pressed hard against the table, Bixby’s mouth struggled to form words.

  “Nugthin,” he mumbled, his response accompanied by a fair amount of drool leaking out onto the table’s surface.

  Lynch pulled Bixby up by the neck, freeing his mouth to speak more coherently.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I said nothing.”

  Lynch released his grip and nodded to Patel. Patel took his cue and flipped Bixby onto his back to face them.

  “You were the last person to log in to the mainframe, and suddenly the bottom drops out of our scores. Do you expect me to believe you had nothing to do with that?”

  Bixby straightened his uniform and considered his response.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you trying to be cute?”

  “No, I’m trying to be literal. You cheated. So, in a manner of speaking, I did nothing to your scores other than return them to their typical underwhelming mean.”

  The scrum tightened around Bixby.

  Lynch’s temples throbbed.

  “You’re going to go back into the mainframe right now and put everything back. Exactly the way it was. Exactly.”

  Bixby pursed his lips. It seemed as though he was resisting the urge to speak while engaging in some further internal deliberation.

  “Mmmm . . . don’t think so,” he finally answered.

  “You don’t think so?” Lynch shot back, his body language spiking toward apoplectic.

  A wide grin grew across Bixby’s face. “Yep. Can’t do it. Sorry.”

  “You’re about to be on the receiving end of one of the great beatings of your young life. I can’t imagine why you’re smiling.”

  Bixby pointed over Lynch’s shoulder.

  “That’s why.”

  Standing behind Lynch were JD, Vivien, Iara, and Anatoly. I had been so focused on the scrum I had not noticed them enter the canteen.

  “Anatoly,” JD said softly.

  Anatoly pushed through, a mere nudge of his forearm nearly knocking Patel to the canteen’s floor.

  “Come now, Bix,” he said, effortlessly lifting Bixby to his feet.

  Lynch and Patel stepped in front of them, blocking their path back toward the other cadets.

  Anatoly looked to JD.

  JD held up his hand. “Not yet.”

  “We’re two days from launch, Lynch,” Vivien said, making no attempt to mask her indignation. “Do you really want to do this?”

  “Your little mascot tanked our scores.”

  “You cheated. We made a correction.”

  “We? You told him to do this?”

  “Yes, we did. We’re going to be on the California together for a long time, and letting you get away with something like that would set a very bad precedent for how things are going to go up there.”

  “You’ve got no authority over us or anything else.”

  Vivien smirked. It seemed an unnecessary inflection, its result only likely to further instigate Lynch’s ire.

  “You’re all in for a very rude awakening once we ship off,” she cautioned. “Who do you think the captain is going to look to, to keep you and your friends in line? Ensign Gentry? Ensign Lewis? The NCOs?”

  “If you think we’re going to take orders from cadets—”

  “We’re not going to give anyone orders,” JD cut him off. “The captain and his officers give the orders. We just carry them out. And if their orders are to keep you in line, you better believe we’re going to keep you in line.”

  Lynch got directly in JD’s face.

  Iara’s tattoos peeked out from her sleeves. I could see them shifting into sharp, angular shapes, their colors intensifying toward different shades of deep red. I had learned through observation this was an indication of severe agitation.

  “I don’t care if you’re the captain’s son. There’s not a single thing about you that scares me. Not a single thing.”

  “Do you have a point, or is this just more bluster?”

  It was evident the situation had reached a tipping point. Despite my reticence to intervene, inserting myself appeared to be the only remaining option to avoid a larger, more consequential physical altercation.

  “Everyone please calm down,” I said, stepping forward.

  There was no reaction.

  Sensing imminent danger, Anatoly shoved Bix a safe distance from the scrum.

  “Please, I urge all of you to disperse,” I said, this time louder.

  Still no reaction. It was as though no one could hear me.

  Lynch stabbed a finger into JD’s sternum and held it there.

  “My point is, if you’re not going to fix our scores . . . we’re going to go right here, right now.”

  JD slowly dropped his head to inspect Lynch’s finger in his chest.

  “You touched the uniform. Never touch the uniform.”

  Before I could take another step, I saw Lynch’s head snap back from a sharp right-fisted jab to the mouth. A moment later, the entire canteen erupted into a full-on melee. JD eluded a series of desperate swings from Lynch, countering each missed punch with efficient blows to Lynch’s ribs. Starting with Patel, Vivien worked her way down a line of charging students, knocking them over like dominoes with a series of impressively dexterous kicks and punches. Five students jumped Anatoly from his blind side. It required only moderate exertion for him to repel them as though they had been launched backward by a high-tension spring. Six students circled Iara. She removed her uniform jacket, revealing her tattoos in full angry bloom.

  “Who’s first?” she taunted them.

  All six charged her at the same time, unleashing a fury of vicious kicks and punches. I quickly lost sight of her behind her assailants.

  Then, suddenly, just as had happened so many times before, the same song began to swell in my ears.

  A place where nobody dared to go. The love that we came to know. They call it Xanadu . . .

  I rushed to Iara’s aid. As I approached, the students ceased their attack on her and turned to face me. They smiled eerily and allowed me passage.

  I saw a body on the floor. But it was not Iara’s.

  It was mine.

  . . . And now open your eyes and see. What we have made is real.
We are in Xanadu . . .

  This version of me looked up into my eyes with a warm, soothing familiarity.

  “Everything in its right place, Nicholas. Everything where it is supposed to be,” it said.

  The room began to spin. So fast that my entire environment blended into a centrifuge of streaming light and color.

  . . . A million lights are dancing and there you are, a shooting star . . . an everlasting world and you’re here with me eternally . . . Xanadu . . .

  And when it all finally slowed, I emerged someplace different.

  In front of me stood Safi Diome. I was in the quarters she shared with Vivien.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  Safi leaned forward and gently kissed my lips.

  “Everything in its right place. Everything where it’s supposed to be.”

  Her kiss was something I had long desired, but the enigma of her words deprived the moment of the pleasure it deserved.

  “What does that mean? ‘Everything in its right place’?”

  She turned her back on me and entered a code on her quarters’ control console. The console emitted a confirmation tone. A moment later, a hidden panel on the bulkhead pushed out slightly.

  Safi ran her fingers beneath the panel’s edges and pulled it off. Whatever waited inside the bulkhead glowed bright, silhouetting her in a golden halo.

  . . . Xanadu, your neon lights will shine for you, Xanadu . . .

  “Safi,” I called out to her. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

  When she turned, I saw someone I did not recognize. It was still her, but she appeared older. Her uniform had changed. Replaced with black, form-fitting tactical armor. Muscles bulged from its contours. I observed four perfectly symmetrical scars on her neck, two on either lateral side, perfectly aligned. In her hands, a weapon similar to a pulse rifle, but with design elements I had not before encountered.

  “We need you, Nicholas,” she said. “You have the power to save us.”

  “Save you from what, Safi?”

  She raised the weapon and took aim at me.

  . . . The love, the echoes of long ago . . . You needed the world to know . . . they are in Xanadu . . .

  “You already know,” she replied. “You can feel it coming.”

  Her finger squeezed the trigger, and a pulse blast consumed me into an infinite, empty white. There was no pain. No fear. Only my mind alone, wandering through a vacuous abyss until the never-ending white surrendered to a soft blue.

  I gained my bearings, realizing I was on my back, surrounded by thick jungle foliage, staring up at a perfect, cloudless sky. I stood and observed a clearing in the distance, in it a crashed Alliance escape pod. JD stood before it, captured by a contingent of alien soldiers whose appearance did not comport to any known humanoid life-form. He struggled mightily to escape their grip.

  I walked closer. I could see the escape pod’s ship of origin emblazoned on its side: Tripoli.

  JD noticed me and shouted out, “Everything in its right place. Everything where it’s supposed to be.”

  I ran toward him.

  “I don’t understand!”

  . . . The dream that came through a million years . . . That lived on through all the tears . . . It came to Xanadu . . .

  With another step the earth disappeared beneath me, sending me falling through a horizonless star field. There was no bottom I could sense. No place to fall to.

  . . . An everlasting world and you’re here with me eternally . . . Xanadu . . . Xanadu . . .

  Everything was weightless and forever. It felt safe. Like a womb.

  . . . Now we are here in Xanadu . . .

  I wondered if I had always been in this place. That perhaps this was my reality, and the life I had thought I lived was actually a dream.

  The song grew louder in my ears.

  . . . Xanadu . . . Xanadu . . .

  Abruptly, I sensed my descent accelerating. Beneath me appeared the scorched wreckage of a decimated Earth city.

  . . . Now we are here in Xanadu . . .

  A deadly collision with the ground was imminent, yet still I felt no fear.

  Instantly upon impact, I shot up, awake in my familiar reality. Lying in my bed, only the dim light of the stars illuminated my quarters—but I knew I was not alone.

  . . . Xanadu, your neon lights will shine for you, Xanadu . . . Now that I’m here, now that you’re near, in Xanadu . . .

  I reached for the nearest control panel, activating the lights.

  He sat in a chair opposite my bed. Beside him an antique turntable from Earth’s late twentieth century spun a black acetate disk. He lifted the turntable’s needle off the disk, ceasing the music.

  Everything about him was the same despite how long it had been since we last visited. His long black hair. His well-manicured beard. The jagged scar by his right eye.

  “I love that song,” he said.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Sadly, I can’t tell you. That would defeat the purpose. All I can do is ever-so-slightly nudge you in the right direction.”

  Despite all the many thoughts racing through my mind, all I thought to ask was the one question that frightened me.

  “Are you real or a figment of my imagination?”

  He smiled. “What’s the difference?”

  Suddenly, again, I shot up in my bed as though waking from an intense dream. Once more, only the dim light of the stars illuminated my quarters. I quickly activated the lights, but this time there was no one with me.

  I was alone, but things were not the same.

  Safi, or whatever she represented, was right.

  I could feel them coming.

  CHAPTER 15

  JD

  I STOOD ALONE, WAITING INSIDE THE SEMICIRCLE of Iso-Pods. Two pods sat dead center in front of me, their hatches open. On either side of center were two more pods each, all occupied. Bix, Ohno, Anatoly, and Lorde were already sealed inside, their central nervous systems merged with the sensory fluid their bodies floated upon.

  Amid the faint purring of the Iso-Pod pumps, my mind spun in a dizzying vortex of uncertainty. Everything had happened so fast. And now there were only nine hours left for me to do something to avoid going past the point of no return. It would have been so easy to do nothing. I had survived the inevitable reckoning with my father. My discharge papers were already signed. I could just let it happen and finally be free of all my fear.

  But then what? An ordinary life? Would I be a doctor or a lawyer or a politician, growing old, staring up at the stars and dreaming of the life I was supposed to have led? Would the weight of all that be any less crushing?

  Trying to pull myself out of my head, I fiddled with my pod’s intake valve, adjusting its sensory fluid buoyancy ratio one final time. This was Viv’s special night, and I couldn’t do anything to let on something was wrong. That could come in the morning. Or maybe not at all. I thought of just disembarking the California without saying a word.

  “This party is out of hand. Somebody turn down the music,” Viv wisecracked from behind me.

  I hadn’t heard her walk in and turned to see her eyes beaming with excited anticipation. I did my best imitation of my happier self, hoping to avoid her sensing anything was amiss.

  “You actually missed the party. You want to help me clean up?”

  “You know, I think the older I become, the less funny you get.”

  “That hurts. It really does. Where were you, anyway?”

  “I fell asleep waiting.”

  “So much for excited anticipation.”

  “Oh, stop. Has everyone already dropped?”

  “Indeed they have.”

  “Okay. Can I guess?”

  “Sure.”

  “Suborbital free diving?”

  “Cold.”

  “Dune buggy desert rally?”

  “Colder.”

  “What about—”

  “No more guesses. Everybody’s waiting on you
. Go suit up.”

  Viv rolled her eyes at me and skipped off toward the locker room. A heavy wave of nausea nearly buckled me at the knees as I waited for her return. If I was going to quit, of course I had to tell her. But how? What could I say to make her understand? I wouldn’t just be leaving the program—I’d be leaving her. Nothing would ever be the same between us again.

  “Let’s get wet,” Viv trumpeted as she jogged back into Iso-Rec.

  The last fastener of her Iso-Suit was still open. I reached out and tightly clasped it just beneath her neck. She looked into my eyes, searching for something. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I lied while holding her gaze. “You just look . . . pretty.”

  “Now I know something’s wrong,” she laughed.

  “Get in the pod already, before you make this whole thing anticlimactic.”

  With a smile and a wink, she hurtled herself on top of her pod and lowered herself inside. The hatch automatically closed behind her, and the pod released a long hiss as it sealed and pressurized.

  Alone once again, I didn’t feel like a cadet anymore. I felt like a passenger. Or, perhaps even worse, a trespasser.

  I climbed up onto the last remaining pod and eased myself into its womb. I let my body rest upon the tranquil buoyancy of its warm sensory fluid. Inside, the quiet respite invited me. Almost as soon as the hatch closed, the reaction began, my central nervous system absorbing multiple zettabytes of electrochemical data.

  The usual brilliant flashes of color invaded the darkness. Like infinite varieties of starbursts filling an empty black sky, they accumulated and overexposed until there was nothing but a seemingly endless horizon of white. Slowly, the emptiness filled with a thick soup of overlapping sounds and disembodied voices. They grew louder and louder until the Drop. That’s what we called the sudden, somewhat indescribable sinking feeling that always came next. And after that, once again, there was nothing. The Empty.