The Methuselan Circuit (13 page)

He shimmied groggily out of bed, yawning as he straightened his uniform. Then he headed for the Tube. The huge open space seemed even vaster now that it was empty. There was no one in it, not even research crews, and that made it eerie indeed. The lights were sporadic, creating long dark shadows between levels and in the strange as yet unexplained voids in the Methuselan bulkheads. Holding his breath, Alexander stepped out into the empty space and jetted upwards toward the bow and the Bridge. His flight was unsteady at first but he got more comfortable as he went and his trajectory smoothed out. As he slipped through the cool air of the Tube there was no sound but the soft whisper of his zoots and his own breathing. Despite the knowledge that there were literally thousands of cadets, officers and researchers on the space station he felt entirely alone. It was literally as if he were the last person in the Academy.

After jetting past the Academic Pod, the Science Pod, the hanger bays and the barracks, Alexander reached the Bridge. It was over half a mile from his dormitory. Landing was something he didn’t quite have a handle on, and he came in too fast, tumbling to the deck awkwardly. He was glad no one was around to see. He took the lift to the Bridge because that’s what the sign next to the ladder said to do. He entered the lift and pressed the icon that said “Bridge” next to it. The doors closed with a whoosh! The lift went perceptibly up and the doors opened with the same whoosh!

He stepped out on the Bridge Deck at 2350 with ten minutes to spare!

There were half a dozen Fleet officers at the various stations on deck. They all looked at him. The one in the Command Chair asked, “Who are you cadet and what are you doing here?”

CHAPTER 11: The Iowa

Alexander plucked up his courage. “Cadet Wolfe reporting for detention as ordered sir!”

The Officers exchanged glances and chuckled. “Oh,” smiled the Commander, “you’ve got the Bridge Watch, right?”

“Yes sir,” Alexander said, but his heart was already falling. Had he messed up again? How?

“Right idea Cadet Wolfe but the wrong Bridge,” he told Alexander. “You need to be on the
Iowa’s
Bridge, and I suggest you hurry.”

Gulp! “Yes sir!” Alexander stammered, crushed by the realization that he’d screwed up twice on his very first day at the Academy. He wouldn’t last a week; what would his father think? He fought back a sudden misting of his eyes, saluted and turned toward the lift.

An officer stepped up to him, reading the distress in his face. “Cadet use the emergency exit,” he said, opening a circular hatch next to the lift. “It spits you right out into the Tube. When you get into the Tube use everything you’ve got in your zoots. Remember, the
Iowa
is docked on the Terminal Pod, take the Starboard Corridor right to the gangway. If you press it, you just might make it. Good Luck!”

“Thank you sir!” he exclaimed with renewed hope and he leapt headfirst into the emergency exit. The exit was a tube itself, kind of like a torpedo tube. As soon as he was inside he felt a rush of air and he was expelled out of the little tube into the big dark Tube. He didn’t waste time trying to orient himself. He had over a half a mile to go to get to the Terminal Pod. Alexander pointed his head to the far end of the Tube, curled his toes and rocked his feet down.

Whoosh! He heard the jets of his zoots fire. They accelerated him slowly at first, which was fortunate. He’d never tried full power right off the bat and he zigzagged wildly. Determined, Alexander didn’t let up. He kept his feet pointed and his toes curled they kept firing, using his gloves to stabilize his course as he kept accelerating. The lights of the pods began to whizz by at tremendous speeds but still he kept accelerating. Gauging his position in the Tube Alexander began to cheat over toward the Starboard corridor openings. Now he could hear the openings to the corridors whoosh as he sped by them. He had no idea how fast he was going, but it suddenly occurred to him he was going to have to stop. As he came to that realization he saw the Dormitory Pod speed by. The Terminal was right beneath the Dormitory! Alexander curled up and reversed direction, thrusting his legs out in front and continuing to fire his zoots.

The Terminal Pod came rushing up. He thrust his hands out and fired the thrusters of his gloves. Ever so slowly he began to decelerate. He pointed his feet even more, making sure he got every bit of thrust out of his zoots. He came to a bobbing halt right in front of the Starboard entrance to the Terminal corridor. He fired his zoots one last time and leapt into the corridor. He fell, tumbling to the deck, but it didn’t stop him. He got up and ran straight away, one hundred yards to the airlock for the
Iowa
. He could see it. Alexander didn’t wait, he didn’t think. He was looking for the mechanism to open the airlock fifty yards before he got there. He saw it, a green lighted switch to the right. He hit it with the palm of his hand before he even came to a stop.

The airlock opened with a clang and he rushed down the gangway. The airlock at the far end was similar and he opened that in the same way. Rushing through he found himself on the
Iowa
, but he wasn’t on the Bridge yet. His breath rasping through his clenched teeth, his side aching with exertion, Alexander looked wildly around. There on the walls, the word “Bridge” painted in red next to an arrow that pointed up. The directions were next to a ladder. Alexander flew up the rungs through one deck, two and then onto the open space that was the Bridge of the immortal
Iowa.

Janus Khandar was there before him, smirking at Alexander being out of breath and tardy. Centurion Fjallheim stood with hands clasped behind his back and a frown on his face. He glowered at Alexander.

“Cadet Wolfe reporting for detention as ordered sir!”

Khandar shuddered at the mention of his name.

Centurion Fjallheim looked at Alexander, who was trying his best to regulate his breathing to something more normal. The Captain looked at his watch. “Ten seconds to spare cadet, that’s cutting it close, very close!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Alexander wheezed triumphantly. He made it!

Centurion Fjallheim paced the Bridge, shaking his head, “Do you know what this man’s Fleet runs on, cadet? Regulations, that’s what it runs on. What is the speed limit in the Tube?”

Alexander’ mind whirled. He had no idea. He could guess, but that wasn’t going to work. He paused and took a deep breath. “I have no idea sir!”

Centurion Fjallheim stopped in front of him and said, “Your ignorance is understandable; that information is in tomorrow’s PE class. I think after today we’ll brief it on the first day. After all, there’s a reason for such regulations.” He paused and stroked his mustache. “For your information cadet, the speed limit in the Tube is fifty kilometers an hour. You were flying three times that—pretty nifty flying if you ask me!”

“Thank you sir!” Alexander exclaimed, unable to squelch a smile.

“At ease cadets,” the Captain said, and his visage grew stern again. “You have the watch. For the next two hours you will stand watch on the
Iowa
. You will not leave the Bridge until relieved. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir!” they said.

“I have one piece of advice for you,” he said sternly. Alexander listened intently but what the centurion said made no sense at all. “Don’t call the dead to battle; you won’t realize what you have done!” He nodded as if he’d given them the clearest possible instructions. “Carry on,”

Centurion Fjallheim left down the ladder.

A moment later, the sounds of Fjallheim’s footsteps faded. Alexander looked around. He hadn’t yet had a chance to look at the famous Bridge of the
Iowa
, where Alexander himself directed the defense of Terra and the defeat of the Golkos invasion fleet. He knew the history of the battle well enough, and he’d seen countless pictures and film at the library and on Holo-V, but now he was here on that very Bridge himself!

It wasn’t as large a place as the Holo-V made it to be. It was perhaps twelve meters wide and deep, tapering toward the bow. The original battleship bridge was a low ceilinged room, but the overhead deck was removed to make it a more impressive space; after all, the bridge was where commanders exchanged communications with adversaries and dignitaries, it had to be more than simply functional. It was here, on this bridge, maybe even on this spot, that Alexander at once subjugated the Scythian Empire and brokered the peace with Nazeera of Chem, making Terra an empire onto herself.

In that respect, there wasn’t much left of the bridge to promote grandeur, unless it was that the forward part of the ceiling and much of the forward bulkhead were torn away. Where the main screen once showed tactical displays there was now nothing but space. An emergency sustaining field closed the void to the vacuum of space, but the ten meter long rip in the hull showed the universe vaulting across and over the bridge. The long sharp prow of the Iowa clove through a field of stars, the blaster scarred main guns still pointing threateningly into space—purposefully pointed to the constellation of Taurus where the Golkos invasion fleet emerged from superluminal one hundred and eighty-six Terran years ago.

The starlight was the main illumination for the bridge, causing the shadows to be long and stark. What remained had been cleaned up. There was no debris on the deck. There were no bodies hanging in their harnesses. Even the discarded blasters and boarding knives were long gone. What was left wasn’t the awe inspiring place where courage won Terra a place in the hierarchy of space; no, what remained was a sense of devastation. The place was a shambles. The long curving control board dominating the center of the space was ripped open or ripped apart. The station seats remained bolted to the deck but many were twisted in macabre shapes, making Alexander cringe at the thought of the men and women who’d been sitting there. The stations and displays along the flank bulkheads were likewise damaged, and what made things even more eerie, almost as if the battle had just ended, were the arcs of plasma and electricity still dancing over the control boards after over a century and a half. It made the bridge lighting flash and dim irregularly, lending the place a tense feeling, like a wound that refused to heal. It was as if the
Iowa
was still dying, but it wasn’t quite a dead ship—not yet.

On the upper deck of the bridge, only paces from where Alexander stood, was
the
chair. It leaned somewhat askew now, but that took away none of its majesty. It was a high backed seat, and across the back there was what appeared to be an animal pelt. Alexander realized that’s exactly what it was;
the
Banthror pelt Alexander wore during his trials on Pantrixnia and on to his ascension as Galactic Overlord. On the pelt were the badges of Alexander’s conquests. For some reason, by some trick of the intermittent light, the badge of Golkos stood out brighter than the others.

He heard the sharp intake of Khandar’s breath and remembered he wasn’t alone.

Khandar was looking at the badge as well. He stepped forward, his luminous blue eyes locked on it. They flushed crimson and he reached a hand for the badge as if to pluck it and the dishonor of defeat from the Banthror pelt.

“Stop!”

Khandar froze, looking back at Alexander with a snarl but saying nothing.

“We can’t touch anything, especially that; you know that!” Alexander told him, the danger of the desecration being greater in his reaction than the threat of the hateful Golkos.

Khandar fought for self control, his mouth twisting as if trying to form words, his hand reaching but then closing scant centimeters from the badge. He stepped back and turned away. Breathing hard, he fought for self control. He astonished Alexander by turning to him and saying, “Thank you, I almost forgot myself for a moment. That’s the one thing that could have gotten me kicked out of the Academy.” His eyes burned red for a fleeting moment. “I could kill you and that might be forgiven considering my family ties, but to desecrate something of Alexander himself here at the center of Terran power,” he shook his head, as if he couldn’t finish the sentence. “Even my father would condemn me; I couldn’t live with that.”

“Your father—why?” exclaimed Alexander, mystified by the Golkos’s venomous hatred.

“Because he led the invasion fleet,” Khandar told him. “Don’t you know who I am? Grand Admiral Khandar is my father. He led the invasion fleet to Terra, but he lost to Alexander. Still, it was Alexander who allowed my father to regain his honor and attain everlasting glory against the Methuselans. My father owed his honor to Alexander, as do I. He recalled it often.”

Alexander couldn’t help but say, “If this is the center of Terran power, we’re—all of us—in big trouble.”

Khandar laughed. It was an unpleasant sound. “You’d be right, Terran,” he spat the word out as if it tasted bitter on his thin lips. “You’d be right if things were as they once were. Fortunately, even for the Golkos, Alexander saw to destroying all of our possible enemies before he disappeared on the way back from the galactic core.” He pointed to the impossibly huge hulk of the Methuselan ship that showed in the huge breach. “That’s all that’s left of the Methuselans, and they were the most potent adversary we had in the galaxy. Everyone is trying to catch their breath as you Terrans put it. Indeed, things may not change for quite a while. When the wars started Galactic technology was incredibly old, millions of your years old, but it had been hundreds of thousands of years since we actually had to manufacture anything significant.” He shook his head as if the concept was embarrassing. “We’d been using technology we’d invented but forgot how to build. When the robofactories were bombed we didn’t know how to put them back together.” He turned and looked at Alexander again, his eyes narrowed. “After Alexander led the Galactics to victory over the Methuselans he could have easily absorbed our empires, but he disappeared, and you Terrans, thank goodness, fell back into your old ways.”