The Methuselan Circuit (20 page)

“What can we do,” James asked. “We’re cadets. This Friday we have a quiz in every class. There’s homework in every class every single night. Even if we could do something we wouldn’t have time to do it.”

They were silent, all of them. James was right.

#

Commandant Augesburcke listened to Lieutenant Mortimer’s report, chewing on his mustache. His office doubled as his quarters and was immediately adjacent to the bridge. As the station didn’t move from Terran orbit, the bridge was almost a formality. Therefore, Augesburcke conducted most of the ships business from the austere chamber off his even more austere bedroom. Despite this, it was his office through and through. Behind the ancient oak desk he inherited from his father, and he from his grandfather, the Commandant reclined in a synthi-leather chair. Behind that was a bulkhead that could not be seen through the multitude of awards, medals, paintings of his ancestors and the flags of the Fleet and the Legions. Next to his desk on his right hand was a chest high bookcase. In it were hundreds of military books from all of human history. Crowning the bookcase were metal models of the various ships he commanded. Foremost, and most obviously his favorite was the wreck of the
Iowa
. One of the great honors of being Commandant of the Academy was being the Captain of the
Iowa
, the flagship of the Terran fleet. Although she was never refitted or repaired after the battle for Terra a century and a half past, Alexander, the last and only Overlord of the Terran Empire, refused to allow the ship to be decommissioned. He argued that her main forward battery still had one working gun and she still had nominal impulse power. She could therefore fight. The tradition of the
Iowa
became the foundation upon which the Terran Fleet built her reputation.

If any doubted Augesburcke’s hold on tradition the display on his left put to rest all doubt. There between the standard of the Terran Empire and the Iowa’s battle flag was a dramatic painting of the Battle for Terra. It caught the exact moment when the
Iowa
and the
Bismarck
caught the Golkos flagship
Nived Sheur
between their broadsides.

No one could enter the Commandant’s office without coming away with a deep sense of Fleet tradition in the relatively young Terran Empire. Surrounded by his personal and Fleet history, Augesburcke listened patiently to Lieutenant Mortimer’s report. When she finished, he mused aloud, “I wanted to prompt some reaction from Strauss and his confederates with the memory card. It did what it was supposed to do; that is, it put him on notice. Hopefully they’ll walk more carefully now.”

“Do you plan on letting them know where you stand?”

“What, and give them peace of mind?” he chuckled. “No Lieutenant, I want them wondering, every one of them. There’s a rule in politics and war that my grandfather used to swear by: when dealing with an enemy in your own camp, force them to make the first act of treachery. We need history on our side, because if we succeed there’s going to be someone at the bottom of this mess. If we fail, there’s not going to be any history left—none. The winners will blot out all of human history as some great mistake.” He looked around his office. “This will be where they start, but by God I’m not about to let that happen!”

“Sir, what should we do about Cadet Wolfe? He’s pretty young to be in the middle of this.”

“He is young, very young,” Augesburcke mused, stroking his mustache. “He’ll have to grow up quick. I’m beginning to think he was sent here by his father for just this reason.”

“Then Cadet Wolfe knows what all this is about?”

Augesburcke shook his head, and said harshly, “From what my mole says, young Alexander knows nothing about this and is more concerned with finding out who his father was—or is.” Lieutenant Mortimer looked confused, but the Commandant shook his head emphatically. “No, I’m convinced his father sent him up here ignorant, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a purpose.”

“He threw his son into the middle of a dangerous political intrigue?” She did not look happy. “Pardon my saying this sir, I know how highly you esteem the Commander but that is uncommonly callous.”

“I think he had no choice,” the Commandant said gravely. “Even someone with the Commander’s
skills
cannot fight this war alone. I’m coming to the conclusion that he is relying more on his son’s ability to figure this out and do something about it than his own, and I’m beginning to agree with him.”

“So what do we do?”

Augesburcke laughed gruffly and admitted, “We don’t even know what this circuit does—if the Commander knows then he’s not saying, or he can’t say anything without endangering all of us—remember Lieutenant, the Pro Consul is with the President.” He lit his pipe. The air scrubbers hummed and removed the wafting blue cloud rising from the bowl. “We fly high cover over young Alexander and his friends. I can’t afford to interfere. I need him to do what he was sent here to do.”

CHAPTER 16: Routine Scrums on Luna

“When considering the advent of global representation and the expansion of a fledgling Terran democracy into an empire, we must look at the inherent movement from various forms of governments to what we have now—that is, a work in progress that combines elements of democracy, socialism and authoritarianism left over from the military dictatorship of Alexander.”

To everyone’s relief Professor Nussbaum stopped to take a breath and glance at the class over his glasses. James and Alexander looked at each other. Treya and Lisa looked at each other. Treya and Alexander looked at each other, and so on.

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know.”

“I haven’t understood a word he’s said since the first day of class.”

There was more of the same from every corner of the classroom. Alexander wondered how the Professor ever got on with the Academy. It wasn’t simply that he was incoherent much of the time, but he didn’t seem to like much of anything that was going on. He hated the current political system. He thought the lower classes were downtrodden and served as virtual slaves to whatever the upper class was. Alexander didn’t know who these people might be other than anyone who fell into the category of “rich industrialists,” “establishment imperialists” and to his horror, “the feudal system of mercenary aristocracy that is the Officer Corps of the Fleet and the Legions.”

Things had gotten progressively worse as the term went on. It was so bad, that students actually got up the nerve to address the problem to their officer representatives. In Kilo flight that was Lieutenant Mortimer. This caused some difficulty of course, as every member of the flight was either too intimidated by the Lieutenant or was hopelessly in love with her. It fell to Alexander, who was elected against his will as the only one who already had, and could, communicate with her.

Alexander reluctantly requested the meeting by filing the appropriate form. In due time his form came back to him with directions on how to put the previous request in the correct Fleet format. Another request was made followed by another request for clarification, and at last, after two weeks of electronic paperwork, the meeting was granted. After so much effort, Alexander felt the meeting was anti-climactic. After returning his salute, Lieutenant Mortimer hardly looked away from her screen. He couldn’t even be sure she was listening to him, but after he finished she responded.

“When faced with a problem in the field, the first thing we do is scout it out—find out what or who you’re up against. Only then do we formulate a plan of response.”

When Alexander simply sat there dumbstruck, Lieutenant Mortimer finally graced him with her alternating shades of beautiful and hard set eyes. Her perfectly arched brows rose as if to say, “Well, I’ve answered your query; what are you still doing here?”

He sprang upright and saluted. He couldn’t leave fast enough. The rest of the flight eagerly awaited his report, but they were crestfallen when he returned with so little. Despondent, they resigned themselves to a grueling semester. Alexander felt he’d let them all down, which only made him more determined to figure out just what the Lieutenant meant. He went to the library and contacted Katrina. Together they downloaded every file they could on Professor Nussbaum. Strangely, many files were recently declassified; recently as in the day of his meeting with the Lieutenant. Katrina got her father to help her on some of the sticky stuff, and armed with this information, Alexander planned his assault. The next Monday, after the Professor’s obligatory first of the week bombardment, Alexander returned fire.

He raised his hand.

Professor Nussbaum blinked in surprise.

The class stared at him in disbelief.

Professor Nussbaum shrugged, “Cadet Wolfe do you have a question?”

“Yes Professor,” he said, plucking up his courage and doing his best to recite the paragraph he memorized. “You have been teaching Harvard social dogma from the days before contact with the Galactic empires. The class structure and political structures of that time no longer exist. Political theorists discredited the Harvard school of social thought over one hundred years ago as impractical and arrogant elitism. What’s changed?”

Professor Nussbaum stared at Alexander, dumbfounded. It was the same expression from three weeks ago when he surprised the Professor Strauss in the Tube. Could it be they were all somehow clones? He sputtered and blinked, repeating the words, “Discredited?” and “Impractical?” over and over again.

The class sat back with a silent sigh of victory, and Alexander reveled in the assenting nods and virtual roar of approval. He couldn’t let his momentary victory get the best of him, however. With every attack came the inevitable counter-attack. Professor Nussbaum cleaned his glasses, a sure sign he was organizing his thoughts.

“I had no idea you were so well versed in socio-economic study, Cadet Wolfe,” he said gravely and the class fell into a deep silent hush. “Over five hundred years of learning dictate the theories of Harvard, one of the most prestigious institutions on Terra. Believe me when I say their theories are never discredited or impractical.” He paused and walked over to Alexander’s desk, planting himself in front of it. Glaring down at the student he asked with biting sarcasm, “Clearly we have a twelve year old prodigy on hand. What school of thought would you follow in our present course of expansion and integration into the galaxy?”

“I don’t know,” Alexander shrugged, and Professor Nussbaum beamed at the prospect of victory. Then Alexander said, very firmly, “I always thought the Constitution worked pretty well for the United States—Alexander himself implemented it as the basis for the Terran Empire,” he smiled and shook his head like an old college professor. “That’s a pretty good recommendation as far as I’m concerned. Of course, there were radicals who spoke against that a long time ago. They favored failed systems like communism, socialism and anarchy; I’ve read that some even stooped to terrorism, planting bombs and stuff like that. They were all exposed as nut jobs and psychos.”

The Professor’s watery eyes almost popped from his head. His lips turned red, twisting and mouthing unheard words. He strained against some unseen harness, wanting to say something, but eventually he passed his hand over his eyes and laughed weakly. “Nut jobs and psychos are hardly academic terms, Cadet Wolfe—you betray your youth.” He turned around and walked back to his desk, but he paused there without sitting down. The Professor stood there looking at nothing, and then he abruptly straightened up and left the room.

After the door slid shut the class burst out in approval for Alexander. He gladly took the accolades, but he felt guilty about it as well. It wasn’t until he slipped off with James, Lisa and Treya that he could admit, “I owe a lot of that stuff to Katrina. She found some stuff in the Island Library about the student terrorists and communist groups that popped up after the Caliphate Wars. They allied with the greeners, the environmental terrorists, and formed what they called the Gaians. Apparently the Professor Strauss and Professor Nussbaum belonged to the Gaians. It makes you wonder how they ever got here!”

“Why on Terra would two radical Professors be teaching Underclassmen at the Academy of all places, I mean the first thing they hate is the military?”

Treya shook her head, and said, “On Chem we ship such dregs to Pantrixnia, and we feel sorry for the beasts that consume them!”

The afternoon tactics class was a departure from the norm. “The Tube is restricted today, so there’s no Z-Crosse for anybody,” Centurion Fjallheim told them. There was a general groan from the class. He held up his hands, saying, “I know, I’m disappointed too, however, there are always options. We could spend extra time on the firing range, but I thought we’d shake things up a bit and give you a taste of what’s to come. We’re going to take a detour from our Zero-G acclimatization and introduce you to fractional-G training. So mount up cadets; we’re going to the Moon!”

They made their way out of the classroom and toward the Tube. They still had to transit the Tube to get to the terminal, and Alexander was very curious to see what was so important that their training was interrupted. When they reached the entrance it was obvious that something was going on. Floating not a hundred yards from the entrance to the Tube was the enormity that was the dreadnought
Enterprise
. The largest of the Terran super-battleships, the dreadnought class was built from the hulls of old Terran blue-water aircraft carriers. Now they sprouted five rotating turrets of Level fifty-seven blaster projectors, the largest in the galaxy. The dreadnought was so large and so impressive that Alexander had to remind himself that the dreadnought was
inside
the Methuselan ship. That was sobering enough, but what was the
Enterprise
doing here? What was she guarding? Alexander and every other cadet looked in the direction the dreadnoughts guns were pointing; only there was nothing to see. An opaque security screen blocked the entire aft end of the Tube.