Flight of the Outcast (8 page)

   "Yes?" they answered simultaneously.

   The same artificial voice came from both communicators: "You are to report to Central Medical for your physical at 1350. That is twenty-three minutes from now."

   "Physical," said Asteria. Her eyes flashed to her belt.

   Dai glanced at her. "You sound worried. You sick?"

   "Not exactly," she replied.

An hour later, wearing just her underwear, Asteria perched on the edge of an examination table as the medical Cybot brought in a human doctor, a Vallerian woman with the peculiar greenish complexion of her people. "You'll have to remove the belt," she said.

   "I can't," Asteria told her.

   Frowning, the doctor touched the metallic belt—and yelped.

   She shook her hand. "Did you feel that?" she asked sharply.

   "No," Asteria said. "The same thing happened when the Cybot touched it."

   The Cybot said mildly, "It delivered an electrical charge of more than five thousand volts. Fortunately, the amperage was—"

   "Not high enough to cause damage, just discomfort," the doctor interrupted. "That's not Empyrean technology."

   "I don't know what it is," Asteria confessed. "It belonged to my father."

   "Doesn't it have a release?"

   "No." Asteria tugged at it, showing the doctor how the plates had interlocked. "If I try to push it off, it tightens," she said.

   "We can cut it off—"

   "Negative," the Cybot said. "The material is at least fifteen times more resistant than synsteel, and the circuitry performs in ways I cannot analyze. Attempting to destroy or cut it is too dangerous."

   "You're not supposed to wear anything like that," the doctor grumbled.

   "I can't help it!"

   "Wait here."

   Asteria wrapped her arms around herself—the room felt chilly—and waited for a long half hour. Then the door opened again, and Vice Admiral Chen came in together with the greenskinned doctor. "At ease," she said as Asteria hopped off the examination table and brought herself to attention. "Causing trouble already, Cadet Locke?"

   "No, Commandant. At least—I'm not trying to, Commandant!"

   "Leave us," Chen said to the doctor. She glanced at the Cybot. "You too."

   As soon as they were alone, the vice admiral said, "Tell me about that thing. The truth, please."

   Asteria told her how she had found the belt, how she had tried it on, and how it had apparently decided not to leave her.

   Chen nodded. "It may be alien tech," she said. "In the fighting aboard the
Adastra,
several of the Tetra spiders were disabled and later examined. I've never heard of anything like this—but of course Empyrean policy is not to copy alien tech. Perhaps your father kept this as a souvenir."

   "I don't know about that."

   For some moments, Chen stood in thought. Then she opened the door and called the doctor and the Cybot back in. "Rate this as a third-class medical device," she said to the doctor. "Those are permitted."

   "But—"

   "I'll take responsibility," Chen said. "As you were."

   "Aye, Admiral."

   Once the doctor was alone with Asteria, she shook her head. "I hope we won't get into trouble for this. Cybot, record the belt as a third-class medical device to—oh, say to aid posture."

   The rest of the examination proved nothing except that Asteria was in excellent health. Finally, she was permitted to dress. Next came the records work: forms to complete, surveys to fill out, and even some requests to make. She had "no preference" for permanent barracks assignment, "none" for next of kin, and "remain on campus" for the between-terms leave periods. Finally, with no hesitation at all, she checked that she would "accept" the offer of a third-term experience in space, if her grades permitted. She logged her forms in and was sent back to her barracks—on the double.

   She jogged across the campus, feeling a little disoriented. Dromia spun a little more slowly on its axis than Theron, and its day came to about 26.1 Standard hours, as opposed to 23.4 on her homeworld. She had the feeling that the sun should be lower in the sky.

   The days at the Academy were going to be very long.

O
f the 125 girls in Bronze 1, 102 were Aristos. In a way, this

      didn't matter. To upperclassmen, all first-term Midshipmen, whether Aristo or Common, were serfs to be ordered around, belittled, and ridiculed. And they were supposed to take it. Silently.

    Asteria felt like an outsider among all those Aristos, but even so, it wasn't as bad as she had feared. She could almost hide in the crowd, because the school had nearly equal numbers of boys and girls. At least the other girls in her barracks didn't hang an annoying nickname on her. They called her "Aster," which she now claimed as her name.

    That was a relief, because to all the upperclass students who bothered to notice her at all, she was "Disaster." Dai hadn't thought of that variant when he had suggested that she shorten her name. Nor had he thought it necessary to change his own name—so to all the upperclass students who pushed him around, he was now "Die, Scum!"

    Lots of fun.

    "Serf!" an upperclassman might call to her suddenly. "How many rules do you have to obey?"

    "Twelve hundred and twenty-one!" she had to respond immediately.

   With an evil grin, the questioner might then demand, "And what is Rule 1013, subclause A?"

   If Asteria were slow in reciting it—"An off-duty cadet must always maintain an active personal communicator in case of emergency transmissions"—then the upperclassman might give her a demerit, order her to perform some personal service like cleaning his or her boots, or command her to drop and execute twenty-five push-ups. But she could handle it. She could handle anything. She had to—for her father, for what she had lost. All she had to do was think of the charred cinders and smoky rubble the Raiders had left of her farm.

   Beginning on the first day of classes, Asteria had to get up early, 0500 hours. She and the other girls in her dorm crowded into the showers, hastily soaped up and rinsed, and then dried and dressed. By 0545, they had to be in formation outside the barracks and jog to the dining hall. On the double.

   "Everything is on the double," grunted black-haired Bala Takeen, one of her dorm mates, the first day. The upperclassman conducting them heard the remark and issued Bala a demerit for talking in ranks.

   They were also supposed to maintain silence at the table. They almost had to, because the schedule gave them only twenty minutes to eat. Then they jogged again to physical training class, which began around the time the sun rose at 0615.

   "Hi," Dai said to her on their first day in the gym complex. "I'm glad we have some classes together."

   Asteria nodded.

   Dai smiled. "We can talk here," he said. "As long as we're silent when the proctors—"

   "Class, attention!" said the Cybot. Two hundred and fifty students stood stiffly. The Cybot said, "You will report here for physical training six days a week. Three days a week will be spent in zero-gravity training, alternating with three days in normal or enhanced-gravity training. You are going to be split into ten classes of twenty-five students each. As I call your names, assemble here and then follow your instructor. The Honorable Orlin Avers. Viscount Laslik Azora. Deria Basila—"

   Dai wound up in the same training class as Asteria. Two of the classes followed an instructor to a gym in which the walls, floor, and ceiling were all padded. "Zero G," murmured Dai.

   Sure enough, their instructor, a woman lieutenant named Tasenos, told them, "This is Zero-Gravity Facility Five. You will report here every other day. Today, we have orientation. Form up into five rows of ten. Dress left and right."

   Asteria had never heard the term, but Dai was in the row right ahead of her, and she saw him stretch both arms out to his side. She did the same, and the cadets shuffled until they stood at double arm's length from each other. The instructor nodded, stepped back, and said, "Going to zero gravity now."

   Gravigenerators whined. Asteria realized they were in the walls and ceiling—gravity actually was not being canceled out, but equalized, so that the walls and ceiling tugged on her just as strongly as the floor. She felt a momentary sensation of falling.

   "Kick off from the floor," the instructor said. "Gently."

   Asteria tapped her toe and felt herself rising into the air. Ahead of her, Dai kicked too hard. He soared five meters up and bounced off the ceiling, tumbling back down. A number of others had done the same thing.

   "You will have to learn control," the instructor said sternly. "Good job, Allmon, Chresler, Locke, Thursby. Microgravity of point one."

   The gentle gravity brought them all back to the floor. "We are going to do that again," the instructor said. "And we'll repeat it until you can rise in formation. If you don't want to be bored, catch on quickly."

   The second time, Asteria was a little too timid with her tap, and the instructor said, "Locke, do it the same way you did the first time. Tamlin, you're still trying to jump into orbit. Take it down by half. Microgravity of point one. Do it again…"

   At the end of the period, Dai said, "I think I've got it now."

   "I don't like zero G," Asteria muttered. "It makes me feel clumsy. How do you judge mass and trajectory?"

   "You'll learn," Dai assured her. They had to form up and jog off again to their next class—on the double.

   The routine repeated the next day, except this time they reported for normal-gravity physical training in another wing of the gym complex. The instructor, a warrant officer who was about twenty-five and who looked as though he had been designed by powerbots, teamed the twenty-five yellow-clad cadets up to see what they knew of self-defense. Asteria had sort of hoped to be paired with Dai, because it would be fun to shove him around a little, but instead she found herself facing a rangy young man with a challenging, superior smile: the nametape on his yellow jumpsuit identified him as Kayser, K (MASTRAL, CT).

   The instructor called him "my lord." Three Aristos who seemed to be friends of his called him "Mastral." Properly speaking, Asteria should have referred to him as "my lord" or "Your Lordship." Looking at his arrogant expression, however, she decided she didn't like him enough to call him anything, and so she chose to avoid the problem by not speaking to him.

   "My lord," said the warrant officer, "you shall be the attacker. Locke, defend against him."

   The Aristo grinned savagely as the two of them stepped inside the thirty-meter diameter combat ring etched on the gym floor. "How much shall I hurt her?"

   "Don't try for anything disabling, my lord," the warrant officer told him in a toneless, matter-of-fact way. He stepped back and pointed Asteria into the left zone of the combat circle, Kayser into the right. He raised his hand. "Remain within the boundary. Anyone forced out of the circle loses automatically. Ready? At my signal. Very good, take your positions…go!" He slashed his hand down, starting the sparring round.

   Kayser pressed forward, arms raised as he invaded Asteria's half of the circle. Asteria saw that he was using bladehand, a flashy but not efficient style of fighting art. Andre had taught her a little of it, but he had said dismissively, "Aristo boys use it to impress girls who don't know anything about fighting." Asteria wondered how much Kayser knew. He certainly looked confident as he moved toward her, semi-crouching, his hands flashing, his eyes mocking.

   Asteria circled carefully to the left, keeping her gaze on Kayser's midsection—the abdomen, she had learned from her cousin, was the key to judging an opponent's movement. Eyes could deceive, and legs could feint, but the midsection always told the true story. When she saw Kayser's muscles tense, she readied herself. He waded in, thrusting and slashing with his flattened hands, trying to strike a nerve nexus or open her guard and let him deliver a decisive blow that would knock her out of the circle.

   He probably expected her to backpedal, but instead Asteria stepped forward and met him with Mantis hands, her forearms interrupting his blows, warding them off harmlessly to the side. She saw the look of surprise in his eyes—just before she clipped his chin with the heel of her right hand, snapping his head back and making him stagger. His friends shouted and objected: "Foul!"

   Kayser glared at her, shaking his head, opening and closing his mouth.

   The warrant office coughed in a sort of mild warning. "It is not considered good form for a Commoner to touch an Aristocrat's face, Locke. Even in sparring practice."

   "Sorry," she said without looking at the muscular instructor. "I'll hit him lower from now on."

   "Think so, Disaster?" growled Kayser. He stepped forward, more wary now, with his hands flexing before they assumed the bladehand flatness. He was slower and more deliberate this time, feinting in, trying to judge her reactions. And then, with no visible warning, he swung his leg around in a hard abdominal kick.

   She twisted away from it, causing him to miss, caught his foot, and spun him, and when his back was to her, she delivered her own kick to the small of his back. He fell forward flailing and stumbling, but he was too far off-balance to prevent himself from staggering across the perimeter of the ten-meter circle.