The High Ground (6 page)

“If we last that long. And why are you telling us all this?” Cipriana asked.

The insolence drove the blood into her cheeks, but Mercedes realized she had been babbling and let it go. “Point being we leave our privilege at the airlock.”

“No one is going to forget who
you
are,” Danica said.

“Maybe, but it won’t be spoken of. We’ll be going to class and drilling and eventually flying alongside the men. And we cannot fail. Not any of us. Otherwise…” She didn’t finish. Otherwise her father’s enemies would tear him to pieces for the foolish experiment of putting women in the military and by extension his daughter on the throne.

“Pity your father couldn’t just pass another law and make you an officer and give you a ship.”

There was something in Cipriana’s delivery that raised Mercedes’ hackles. “He probably could have, but it would be nice if I actually knew what I was doing. So I’m going to study. We’re all going to study.”

“Three years,” Danica said mournfully. “I hope we won’t miss out on everything.”

“My understanding is that leave off the station is limited the first three months. After that we’ll be allowed to attend more social events down the gravity-well,” Sumiko spoke up for the first time.

“Point is we must try to fit in,” Mercedes said. “Take part in the traditions of The High Ground.”

“Does that include the dueling societies?” Cipriana drawled.

Mercedes had to work hard not to obviously gulp.

* * *

It had only taken eleven years, but Tracy was finally going to see the stars while aboard a spaceship.
Shuttle
, he corrected himself, and this was just a jump into high orbit. They weren’t going to Fold space and cross light years. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t tamp down his excitement. He had taken an acceleration couch at the front and against the curving side of the shuttle so he had a view to the side and ahead. They were streaking through the thermosphere. It would be only a few seconds before they left all atmosphere behind and were in space.

He wasn’t alone on this flight, but he wasn’t traveling with any of the other cadets. Tracy shared the shuttle with the servants who had collected the luggage of the well-born cadets. At first he had tasted sour resentment, then he’d let it go. He had a feeling there were going to be many more slights and insults to be endured before the three years were over, but he would graduate an officer in the imperial star command, the
Orden de la Estrella
, and that status was many rungs above his previous station. It wasn’t just hyperbole—a man could win a title in war.

The last veil of atmosphere whisked away and they were in the darkness. Only they weren’t. The backdrop was what he had expected, but Tracy found himself squinting as the sun’s rays flared off the hulls of passing shuttles, communication and weather satellites, a freighter, and a large passenger ship. Near orbit was an astoundingly busy place. They slid past a missile battery, its deadly cargo pointed belligerently outward ready to repel any invader.

The shuttle’s maneuvering jets fired again, the pressure pushing him deeper into the acceleration couch. He was feeling cocky that he hadn’t felt any nausea then he realized there had been enough thrust that he hadn’t really experienced true weightlessness yet. The big capital ships were outfitted with gravity units, but the devices were expensive and weren’t mounted on shuttles. Tracy didn’t mind. Weightlessness was part of space travel. It was what the pioneers Glenn and Armstrong had experienced five hundred years before at the dawn of the space age, and one hundred years before the discovery of the Fold technology and gravity units.

Orbital mechanics kicked in, sending the shuttle racing around Ouranos. With a flash of disappointment Tracy realized he was on the wrong side of the shuttle to see the planet. It was something he’d dreamed about. He tried to tell himself that there would be plenty of opportunity when he began fighter craft training, but it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t have been the first time he went into space. The engines shut down, and Tracy’s stomach gave a slow roll then settled.

There was a handhold conveniently placed on the curving wall above his head. Looking across the aisle he saw others dotted along the wall and ceiling. He couldn’t resist; he unhooked the restraints and floated upward out of the couch. He caught the handhold and bounced there. Some of the servants glanced at him curiously, but most kept reading the holographic projections off their tap-pads.

Running the numbers in his head—the orbital speed, his weight—Tracy calculated how to kick off from the wall. His trajectory was fine, but he hadn’t anticipated how little thrust it took to set a body in motion. His forehead connected painfully with the rim of the porthole, and he grabbed for the handhold, missed, and was ricocheted back across the shuttle. Tracy braced for his back to slam against the far wall, but one of the Isanjo servants reached up with his tail, wrapped it around Tracy’s ankle and brought him to a bobbing stop.

Humiliation was a bad taste on the back of his tongue. He prepared to issue a rebuke to the alien, but the servant ducked his head respectfully, and said, “May I assist you, sir, in viewing the planet?”

The humble tone and the
sir
went a long way toward ameliorating Tracy’s bruised feelings. He gave a curt nod. “Yes. Do so.”

The Isanjo unclipped, and using feet, hands and tail he quickly moved them to a port that offered a view of Ouranos. Tracy forgot to be angry. Forgot to be haughty. The world rolled beneath him. Only one of the two great continents was visible, a mix of green and brown. The globe wore its ice caps like silver yarmulkes. A gossamer belt of clouds banded the belly of the globe.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathed.

“Yes, but you should see Cuandru. The trees stretch up to heaven and it glows like an emerald,” the Isanjo lisped.

“I expect I will someday.” Tracy paused then added impulsively, “Thank you.”

There was a flicker of surprise in the alien’s huge eyes, then he ducked his head and murmured, “My pleasure, sir.” A braying klaxon rang out. “That is the signal for boost,” the Isanjo explained. “It would be best if you returned to your couch. Do you need assistance?”

“May I try on my own? Then if I need help you can step in.”

“Of course, sir. As you wish.”

This time Tracy modulated the amount of thrust, and he easily floated to the other side of the shuttle and caught the handhold. Twisting around he caught the arm of the acceleration couch with his right hand, pulled himself down into the form-adjusting foam, and buckled the restraints. He was surprised at the soft ripple of applause from the servants.

“Well done, sir. It’s unusual to see a human take so readily to zero gee. You appear to be a natural, sir,” his new friend said.

Tracy felt a flush of pride heating his cheeks, then he wondered if he’d showed too much familiarity? Aliens would take advantage if a human wasn’t careful. Instead of the pleased smile he instead gave a curt nod as the engines fired again, sending the shuttle hurtling out to the LeGrange point in orbit where the
cosmódromo
was located.

Forty-three minutes later the Apex
cosmódromo
began to grow in the front window. The space station was immense, but also squat and rather ungainly. Tracy had seen pictures and had been reading up on the
cosmódromo
since he’d decided to attend the academy, but the pictures couldn’t capture the wallowing size of the thing. There was a fat central hub that extended above and below the central ring, which looked like a belt on a fat man. Four large spokes attached the bulbous ring to the hub, and eight massive cables stretched from the central ring to the top and bottom of the hub. Two stubby legs jutted out from the base of the hub in a V shape. Each cylinder ended in two round pill-like structures that looked to be about four stories high.

Extending from the top third of the hub were vast solar arrays comprised of interlinking hexagonal panels like glittering blue and gold wings. They gave the illusion that the
cosmódromo
was some kind of exotic spacefaring insect.

Tracy knew that one of those circular structures at the base of the hub held the academy. The other held the
cosmódromo
’s plant facilities—water recycling, oxygen production, waste disposal, and the fields that grew fresh food to help provide oxygen and also recycle the waste as fertilizer. The fresh food grown there also landed on the tables of the restaurants that served travelers, the students and the support staff of the
cosmódromo
.

The ring was basically an upscale spaceport for those making their way from distant worlds to the League capital or transferring onto ships to other worlds. In addition to restaurants and stores there were also hotels, casinos, and joy houses, which were technically illegal on a planet’s surface, but completely legal on a
cosmódromo
or at a military
Estrella Avanzada
or “star port” as the aliens termed them.

They were again in the midst of traffic. Everything from wallowing, fat-bellied freighters to elegant racing pinnaces, luxury space liners and utilitarian shuttles. All were dwarfed by the
cosmódromo
. The ships converged on the Apex
cosmódromo
like silver bees returning from a day’s labor, and vanished into the hive of docking bays. Their shuttle broke away from the pack and headed toward the docking bays that lined the circumference of the module housing The High Ground.

The klaxon sounded, three sharp bleats. Front thrusters fired and the shuttle slowly slipped into a bay and settled with a bump onto the steel floor.

He had made it. Now he just had to
really
make it.

They had been met on the shuttle by an
estrella hombre
who had introduced himself as Farley and told them he would guide them to the quadrangle for muster. He was an older man, in his forties with short-cropped grey hair and skin like cracked leather. He had taken the lead and Mercedes and her ladies trailed after him like desperate ducklings. The bay smelled of hot oil and graphite. The metal decking rang beneath their boot heels, the sound driving like a spike into Mercedes’ temples and making her headache and nausea worse. She had not enjoyed zero gee. Only Sumiko had managed the flight without vomiting.

The sour taste still filled her mouth and burned at the back of her throat. Some wisps of hair had pulled loose from her braid and clung to her sweaty face. She desperately wanted to bathe and then sleep.

They were walking down a curving corridor. At one end were double doors, and Mercedes felt a breeze tickle her face that smelled of growing things and water. She caught the briefest whiff of gardenia and was seized by desperate homesickness. They were led away from those scents of home, through another set of sliding doors and into a flagstoned courtyard with a viewing platform at one end and jet columns all around the sides. It had the look of a parade ground, and it was filled with a seething mass of young men in uniform. Their voices were a rising and falling cadence of bass and tenor sounds with an occasional outbreak of nervous high-pitched laughter. No words could be distinguished and even in the large space the rank smell of male sweat, aftershave and hair pomade was carried to Mercedes. She gagged, turned away and started breathing through her mouth.

That was when she saw him. It was the boy from the beach. His back was against a column as if trying to merge into the stone. His fair hair stood out against the dark surface, and his uniform was a pale blue unlike the midnight blue of the others. He turned his head and looked at her, and Mercedes held her breath, but not by the twitch of an eyelash or the smallest quiver of a muscle did he indicate that he knew her. She felt herself relax and was a bit surprised at his delicacy. Her view of Tracy was cut off by an expanse of chest, the material pulled tight across the pectoral muscles.

“Highness,” the man said, and kissed her hand. The green eyes were dancing with enjoyment as he glanced at her from beneath his lashes.

“Hello, Boho.” Mercedes wasn’t a small woman, but Beauregard Honorius Sinclair Cullen always made her feel so.

“Let me be the first to welcome you.”

“I rather think that duty and honor belongs to the commandant, not a mere cadet,” she said dryly, and was pleased when his cheeks turned a dull red. Boho’s conceit was legendary. As were his appetites. More than a few of Mercedes’ set had had to withdraw to discreet country estates for a number of months after Boho had managed to cajole them into his bed.

Upperclassmen and older men who Mercedes assumed were professors began circulating through the group of new cadets. One of them stopped by her and Boho, and executed a perfect court bow.

“We understand you don’t yet know proper military order, but if you would all stand at your best approximation of attention the commandant will be here soon. And, ladies, if I may escort you to the front.” He indicated the raised platform at one end of the room.

There was a door in the center of the wall behind the dais. To either side were flags. On the right was the flag of the Solar League which was blue/green with tiny globes all around the edges, and a cross of gold in the center. On the left was the flag of the
Orden de la Estrella
. It showed the Milky Way galaxy with a spear thrusting through its center, and over the door was the seal of The High Ground, a spaceship lifting on a plume of fire. Its landing pad was an open book, and on either side were crossed rifles. The bare expanse of the platform was broken only by a single podium.

Mercedes inclined her head. “If you will excuse us, Boho.” She didn’t need to say that, but her father had driven home the idea that courtesy was the privilege of kings and cost them little.

As their guide led them through the milling crowd of males Mercedes looked for the boy from the beach. He was being shoved, none too gently, into place at the very back of the crowd by a young cadet whose stripes indicated he was a second-year student. Tracy’s head was thrown back, chin up, glaring at the upperclassman. Mercedes noticed another young man also dressed in the pale blue uniform who was scuttling into line while an upperclassman paced behind him. This boy’s head was down, shoulders hunched in submission.