The Methuselan Circuit (6 page)

Dad got out with an umbrella and hustled over to the other side of the truck. He opened Mom’s door and handed her the umbrella. She stood next to the back door as Kathy and Alexander slid out. Dad stood in the rain. The water streamed off the wide brim of his hat. They hurried across the muddy lawn and under the pavilion.

“Hello Alexander!” Sister Mary Katherine greeted him with a big smile. “We’re all very proud of you. I just wanted to wish you good luck this next year and I hope I’ll be doing the same for you Katherine! We have high expectations for the Wolfe children!”

Alexander shook her hand and mumbled something, embarrassed at the attention. The Officer scanned his facial features and his retina. Then he asked, “Are you Brevet Cadet Alexander Thomas Aquinas Wolfe?”

“Yes sir,” Alexander said.

The Officer stared at his compad and nodded. “Everything checks out, welcome aboard Cadet Wolfe. Here are your orders.” He handed Alexander a Government Issue compad and waited.

Alexander took the compad and hesitated, wondering what to do next. His Dad whispered, “Salute the Lieutenant Alexander!” Alexander did so, snapping his arm across his chest and thumping his fist as he clicked his heels together, just as the legionaries did two thousand years ago.

“Excellent!” the Lieutenant smiled, returning the salute. “You are free to board, as long as you’re quick about it. We depart in five minutes!”

Alexander turned to his sister and his parents and his sister. “Well I guess this is it.”

Kathy hugged him first. “Don’t get into trouble up there.”

He grimaced when she kissed him on the cheek.

“Oh my little soldier boy,” Mom said with tears in her eyes. She hugged him close. “We’re so proud of you!”

“Mom!”

“It’s my job to be upset when you leave home!” she told him, wiping her tears away and giving him his rosary, which he’d forgotten in the rush. He blushed and tucked it in his pocket. She kissed him on the brow. “Take care, and take our love with you!”

Dad shook his hand. “This is your first step into manhood son. We’re very proud of you.” He leaned over and whispered into Alexander’s ear, “Thanks for being my son!”

“You’re welcome Dad,” he whispered back.

That was it. He strode up the gangway, stopping at the top to wave one last time. They waved back. Then he stepped inside and left the world of his childhood behind.

CHAPTER 6: The Academy

The interior of the ship was different than he expected. It was a transport. It had row after row of seats and open storage bins above the seats. There was no carpet on the floor or any decorative paneling on the walls or ceiling. Everything was stripped down to the bare necessity of practicality. The ship looked empty, but he presently noticed ten other kids, all in uniform—Cadets, he corrected himself, not kids. Among them were Lisa and James.

He went and sat by Lisa. She was in the aisle seat. He stepped by her and sat by the window, saying, “Hi, where’d all these Cadets come from?”

“You didn’t think they’d send a ship for just the three of us did you?”

“Oh, of course not!” he said quickly.

The Lieutenant closed the hatch and came forward. He reached the cockpit door and took the microphone from the wall. His voice came over the loudspeaker, sounding tinny and echoing through the metal tube. “Strap in Cadets, we’ll be taking off momentarily. Turn your phones off and study your orders. You’ll be expected to hit the ground running as soon as we get to the station. You’ve got a full day of duty ahead of you, and that won’t change for another fifty years!”

Alexander took out his phone with the intention of turning it off. His finger almost touched the power icon on the smooth surface, but then it lit up with a message. He thought it was his folks saying a final goodbye, but to his surprise it read,

Wait, how did she know he was taking off? He looked outside just as the ship’s engines began to whine. There were his parents and Kathy all huddled under the umbrella waving at him. He waved back. There were other families there as well, waving; he hadn’t even noticed them when they got there. He looked through them, and then he noticed a small figure standing alone in the rain. It was Katrina. She didn’t have an umbrella, but she stood there anyway watching the ship depart—the ship she was supposed to be on. As they took off, rising slowly into the gray rain, she saluted and came to attention. Alexander returned the salute.

The last thing he saw before they disappeared in the rain was his family stepping up to her and taking her under the umbrella. Alexander turned back to his phone and typed in, “I expect to see you up there next year!”

He turned the phone off and turned to Lisa, but she was already studying her orders on her compad. Alexander endured a flash of guilt and put his phone away. He picked up the compad. It was a silver pad about ten inches by five and less than a quarter of an inch thick. It was silver on the back and a shiny black on the front with a single cyclopean eye peering at him from the top. He touched the face. The eye glowed red, scanning him.

“Identity confirmed!”

The screen brightened. There was a short welcoming paragraph followed by a schedule for his first day. The first thing he noticed was that every minute of the day was accounted for. This didn’t really surprise him; actually it was rather a relief. This was a new world and he didn’t mind that things were going to be set up for his first days—at least until he got his space legs.

Space legs, the very thought almost made him giddy. He had to clench his teeth hard to keep from whooping with joy. The image of Katrina standing alone in the rain helped. There was nothing happy about that. It showed just how thin the margin of success was, but then again it also showed how strong the human spirit could be. Alexander was afraid that nothing and no one could ever have gotten him to come see Lisa off if he didn’t make it. That said a lot.

The very thought was a big dose of humility.

Lisa started talking in a soft voice.

“Why do the Legions and the Fleet both start in the same Academy—why in space? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the Legionary Academy start at West Point and end at West Point?” She was asking herself, it seemed, as she read the history of the Academy in her orders.

Alexander hadn’t got that far, but he replied automatically, “Because the Legions fight all over the galaxy. They want to impress on the cadets that we’re not just a Terran Service; we serve wherever Humankind requires us to serve. It also gives a good vantage point to show how small and fragile Terra is.”

“Wow, did you read that somewhere?” Lisa exclaimed.

“No, but my Dad might have said something about it,” Alexander said. “We talked a lot about it,” he laughed. “I don’t think we talked of much else over the last month.”

The Lieutenant’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “We’ll be landing multiple times and picking up cadets from all over the Pacific Northwest. You’re the lucky ones. You’ve got time to study your orders. The last cadets on board will have about ten minutes to go over their orders. I advise you to take advantage of this opportunity.”

Lisa looked at Alexander and Alexander looked at Lisa. They each turned back to their compads. Alexander paged through his schedule, his list of classes, the dormitory rules and the layout of the station. He realized that he couldn’t absorb it all.

One miracle at a time, Mom says.

He went back to the beginning and memorized how to get to the auditorium. Only after he had that down did he begin to look at what happened afterward. First, they scheduled him for briefings in the auditorium, then lunch. He memorized how to get to the mess hall. After lunch, they had their first class, Space Physiology in lecture hall AP Port Deck 5 23. After a bit of looking, Alexander figured that meant the Academic Pod, Port quarter, deck five and hall 23. He looked up where that was on the station map and worked out how to get there from the mess hall; thirty minutes for lunch and it looked like a long walk, he’d have to eat fast.

“We will be docking in five minutes.”

Alexander looked up in surprise. The cabin was somehow full of cadets. He didn’t remember landing again, not even once, but here they were. All he’d succeeded in doing was finding his first class. Dejected, he sighed and looked through the window. They were in space. The view didn’t give him the same visceral reaction as his first flight gave him; in fact, the sight was one of surprise not wonder. Then he saw the Academy. It was an amazing sight. Terran engineers built the Academy on the enormous hull of a captured Methuselan ship. The gray-green torpedo shaped mass formed the backbone of ringed structures, towers and rotating blaster turrets. As impressive as was the station it paled in comparison to the majesty of the
Iowa
.

Forever docked on Starboard Station India, the
U.S.S. Iowa
remained as she was on the climactic day Alexander and the Seventh Fleet fought off the Galactic invasion force led by the Golkos. Scars from that battle scored the
Iowa,
but some parts of the planet remained that way as well. Preserved as International Parks, vast areas of gray and black slag ensured that Humankind would never forget what it was like to be brought so close to extinction.

Alexander pressed his face so close to the window Lisa had to tell him to pull back so that she could see. The
Iowa
was a World War II era blue water navy battleship. Yet here it was in space. The idea itself was so preposterous that if Alexander wasn’t looking at it with his own eyes he’d never have believed it.

Lisa looked over his shoulder and said, “The Scythians had all the components for a fleet of warships: engines, blasters, navigation systems—everything. They didn’t have any ships to put them in though. They hadn’t manufactured the military hardware; they salvaged it from wrecks. It was the Australian, Admiral Augesburcke, who figured they could seal up the navy ships and use the hulls for spaceships. The Galactics never expected us to have a fleet, but we did.”

“You’re right, and this transport is one of the survivors of that era. It used to be an airplane, but with new engines, avionics and a tritanium energy bath it could handle the stresses of space flight. We did that to virtually every jet and ship on the planet,” Alexander said, and he looked at her with a quizzical expression in his green eyes. “How do you know so much about the early military?”

“It’s not only boys who read about battles,” she smiled. “I heard that the Academy has the actual holographic battle footage from the bridge of the
Iowa
; I hope so, that would be awesome.”

“That would be awesome,” Alexander agreed.

The ship came to a gentle stop. The clang of the docking clamps shivered along the hull; he put his hand against the metal and felt it. The loudspeaker said, “Please retrieve your bag and proceed down the gangway to the terminal.”

Alexander waited for Lisa to get her bag and then he took his own down. They stood in line and shuffled down the aisle, moving like a long white centipede toward the exit. The gangway was shorter than he anticipated with long narrow windows that revealed nothing unless you put your face right next to them. It was only wide enough for two people, so cadets and duffle bags filled it up completely.
If you had claustrophobia this is as far as you’d get; maybe that’s what they had in mind.
He shook his head at the thought. Considering the time, money and resources the Academy took to bring a single cadet up here for a year, booting them out wasn’t realistic.

The media touted the need to take money from the military and put it toward social programs. Alexander could understand that. There were still large areas of the planet without basic services. Some areas were still uninhabitable because of radiation levels or because blaster bombardment turned the soil into fused slag twenty to thirty meters deep. Those people had a point, but the military kept the peace and Humankind simply could not afford another war—not now. Still, the new Administration didn’t seem to be listening. He’d heard his Dad complain that the military wasn’t getting the budget it needed to keep the planet safe, but the government was making sure the unioneers were happy and even talked of giving the unioneers the vote.

The cadets spilled out into the terminal. From the cramped gangway they came into a wide rotunda with a twenty meter roof. The air was fresher here, especially after the full transport and the gangway. It was a good thing the rotunda was big. Transports disgorged cadets from a dozen other gangways. The place was noisy, busy and confusing. Alexander looked around, wondering if the Lieutenant was going to come out and give them directions—the excitement of the moment drove the schedule he’d memorized only a few minutes ago right out of his head.

Fortunately, a balcony overlooked the rotunda. It ran around the entire loop of the terminal, curving away from him and disappearing from sight to either side. Along the balcony rail were large visiplates. Each one repeated a message for the cadets. The message read,