The Methuselan Circuit (8 page)

“It’s because you’re such a nice boy that we wanted to be around you. You’re not like those boys who are all full of themselves. You’re a good guy.”

“Usually that means I’m only good at getting beat up during lacrosse games,” he muttered. As if to make the point, someone took a swipe at the back of his head.

“Ouch!” Alexander turned angrily around. It was a large red headed boy. He leaned over the back of Alexander’ seat and nodded at Lisa. “Hey what’s the big idea?”

The boy knocked his hat off. “Why don’t you come back and sit with us. You can bring your friend here,” he nodded at Treya. “Just leave the little guy. He’s going to be a Fleet scientist locked up in his laboratory—I can tell.”

Alexander bolted to his feet, fists balled up; ready for a fight.

“Lay off,” James said, standing up next to Alexander. He’d had his share of fights because of his brother and was well able to take care of himself. “He’s a friend; leave him alone.”

“He needs your protection, is that it?” The boy smiled.

“Cadets, Atten-tion!”

Alexander automatically spun around and sprang to attention. Everyone else did the same in one mass rush of sound. A nervous silence followed. He looked down to the center of the rotunda where there was a podium. A party of three officers marched to the podium, two men and a woman. The woman stepped up to the podium, and said, “At ease cadets; I am Rear Admiral Hinohosa, and I will be your Academic Director. Everything having to do with academics goes through me. You will not graduate from the Academy, or even from a single class without my concurrence. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am!”

“Welcome to Indoc; that is, Indoctrination. You are about to embark on a rigorous six years of academic work,” she continued. “For some of you, the work will progress on this station through college and graduate school before moving you on to your specific mission training. Others will transfer to West Point for their legionary education.”

The large cadet gave Alexander a poke from behind. Alexander refused the desire to turn and glare at him.

“Cadet’s take your seats please,” she ordered, and they did so. As soon as they were seated a visiplate popped out of the seat in front of them and scanned their identity. The Admiral watched her compad, and when everyone had passed the identity scans, she announced, “You will now be asked a series of questions. A lie detector will gauge the veracity of your statements. I must impress on you that the truth is more important at this stage than being politically correct. Even if you were to say you were a Marxist you would not necessarily be kicked out of the Academy today—we’d most likely wait until tomorrow so that our Legionary Interrogators could pump as much information as possible out of you first!”

She laughed.

The cadets tried to laugh, but the thought of a hard-bitten legionary grilling them was not something a twelve year old wanted to consider—even in jest.

The visiplate brightened, but before any question appeared one of the three, a silver haired mustachioed Fleet Admiral, probably the Commandant, spoke in hushed tones to Admiral Hinohosa. She looked surprised and displeased. He nodded sympathetically and shrugged his shoulders.

“Cadets, apparently we are not to use the lie detector anymore. By an Executive Order the President has decreed that use of a lie detector in non-judicial matters is an invasion of privacy.” She stopped, as if considering what she could say and what she couldn’t. At length, she told them to take the test. “It is not the same test you’ve taken previously. This test will gauge what you want to get out of the Academy. When you graduate you will take the same test. The comparisons are interesting and quite useful for all concerned. You may commence.”

As the first question appeared on the visiplate, Alexander noticed that a stasis field surrounded him so that he couldn’t hear any of the cadets around him and they couldn’t hear him.

“I’m afraid I won’t be do so well at sports, no it’s not so much that,” he said, trying as best he could to tell the truth of it even if the lie detector was off—which he didn’t quite believe. “I think I’m afraid of failure.”

There were more questions like that, some personal and some general. It took about fifteen minutes and the stasis field dissolved. When everyone had taken the test Admiral Hinohosa passed the podium to Centurion Fjallheim, a tall red headed man with a large mustache and an impossibly square jaw. He wore the scarlet and gold of the Legions.

He looked as if he could tear a man in two, and Alexander wouldn’t be surprised if he had done it for real. “I am Centurion Fjallheim, and I will referee the competition between the flights. There are twenty-six flights of forty cadets each, Alpha through Zulu.” He stepped off the podium and began to pace around it, his large hands clasped behind his back. “You will compete in academics, in leadership drills, in combat drills, in disciplinary statistics and in sports. In other words, you will compete at everything. You will drive each other to be better than you could ever be by yourselves. That’s the point to all this, and history tells us that it works. So don’t think we’re doing this because we enjoy watching you suffer just like we did when we were cadets!”

He smiled and allowed a moment for the nervous laughter to dissipate.

“At the end of the year the first place flight will get their names inscribed on the Academy Station itself—for all to see for as long as our civilization lasts.” He paused, and it felt like he looked at every single cadet. “The flight that finishes last will have the honor of repeating the year. If they finish last again every member of the flight is expelled. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir!”

“Look at yourselves, look within yourselves,” he told them forcefully. “Forty of you will be standing at the pinnacle of glory at the end of the year; however, forty of you will be cowering in shame. Think of which way you want to apply yourself!” He stepped aside, and his voice boomed forth. “Cadets of class 2207, I present the Commandant of the Space Academy, Fleet Admiral Sten Augesburcke IV, Atten-tion!”

Admiral Augesburcke wore the sable and silver of the Fleet. The trim of his uniform was silver and he wore four slashes of silver on the left sleeve of his tunic. He stepped forward and after surveying the group of cadets for a moment, like a farmer surveying a field of young wheat, he started to climb the stairs between the rows of seats.

His eyes were fixed on Alexander.

CHAPTER 8: Academia in Space

Admiral Augesburcke stopped opposite Alexander, looking down on him with sparkling blue eyes that barely peeked out from beneath his bushy white brows. He clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head to the side.

“Cadet Alexander Wolfe!”

Alexander leapt to attention as if bitten by a spider. “Sir, yes sir!” Alexander said instinctively, as if blocking a punch; why him out of a thousand cadets? He tried desperately not to tremble or to pass out.

“Cadet Alexander Wolfe, in the terminal you observed Cadet Treya proceeding in the opposite direction as the rest of the Cadet Corps. There is no right or wrong answer, cadet, but give me your opinion: why did she do so?”

Alexander thought furiously. Originally, he thought Treya realized they were being set up, but that meant she didn’t trust the Academy. He remembered Katrina—that was bad. Still, he couldn’t say he didn’t know without looking like a fool. Why else would she go the way she did? Then he remembered what happened when they all turned around and marched back the other way.

“Well cadet?”

“I can’t say for certain sir,” he replied quickly, trying to sound as calm as possible. “I think she wanted to walk by the
Iowa
.”

“Do you think that was a worthwhile walk?”

“Yes sir, I do—it was amazing.”

“At ease cadet,” he said with a smile. In a lower voice, he told Alexander. “It’s good to see you here; you’re dad is the best shot in the system. He got me and some of my best friends out of some seriously sticky jams!” He turned to Treya and smiled. “You’ve grown in the last few months. How are your folks?”

She shot to attention next to Alexander. “Fine sir!”

“Excellent, I’ve been waiting a long time for you to be here!” He turned to the rest of the assembled cadets and his gruff voice filled the rotunda. “You have been chosen from among millions of applicants. It doesn’t matter where you came from, whether your parents were Citizens, laborers, Ambassadors or anything else. You are here—you! So it’s up to you as to what you are going to do with this opportunity.”

He walked down the stair and looked up again when he reached the center of the space. “The Officers and faculty will do everything in their power to ensure you have the opportunity to succeed, but only you can make that happen. Keep your eyes open, keep your ears open and take advantage of every moment. I wish you the best of luck, Godspeed to you all!”

General Stewart shouted, “Atten-tion!”

“You have them Centurion, let’s start whipping them into shape!” waved Admiral Augesburcke as he exited.

“Yes sir!” Fjallheim glowered at the cadets, looking like he took the Admiral literally. Alexander got the idea he’d like nothing better than to start the day off with a few lashes from a cat-of-nine-tails followed by a twenty mile hike with full packs—he’d heard that sort of thing about the Legions. “Take my advice. Be five minutes early to everything; do not be late! You may proceed to your next scheduled activities, dismissed!”

A thousand pairs of eyes looked down at their compads. Alexander read the orders aloud, and by the growling buzz that filled the rotunda, so did everyone else. “We’ve got lunch and then Space Physiology.”

A hand touched him from behind; Alexander turned and saw the red headed boy. “Sorry about giving you a hard time,” he said nervously. “It was all in good fun—right?”

“Yeah sure,” Alexander said, and the boy hurried off, leaving him mystified. “What was that all about?”

“Contacts Alexander,” James said, shaking his head. He brushed a lock of his black hair from his eyes. “You can’t have any better contact here than to know the Commandant. Your dad seems pretty tight with the Commandant there; how’d that happen?”

“I don’t know,” Alexander insisted.

“It’s obvious they served together in combat duty, Alexander,” Lisa said. “He said your dad was the best shot in the system; that he saved Augesburcke’s life several times.”

“Dad flies a freighter when he’s not selling hay,” Alexander said, at once ashamed that he was making light of his father’s vocation. “He did serve in the Fleet as an officer, but he never says anything about it. I figured he never did anything interesting.”

“Sounds like he was a Spook,” James smiled, giving Alexander a dig in the ribs.

“He was not!” Alexander said vehemently. The Spooks, or Space Rangers as they were unofficially officially known—there was no official recognition that they existed but everyone knew they really did—they were almost mythical figures in Service lore belonging to both the Fleet and the Legions. Supposedly they were assassins, spies, lawmen—whatever the powers that be needed them to be. They kept the peace in nasty places, but they kept it violently. The military would neither confirm nor deny their existence, but the mere rumor of a Spook or a Ranger on a frontier world or even in a backwater town on Terra was enough to make the bad people melt right back into the shadows.

“Alright, sorry Alexander, I was just kidding,” James said and he shrugged. “Thing is, at least you have a Dad that Served. I don’t even know why I’m here. I’m not officer material. I’d be happy just to be a Settler—really. This is for kids like you that have big ideas, or kids like Lisa with big brains. I’m not going to get too comfortable. Pretty soon they’ll realize their mistake and send me packing, but it’s not going to be on Terra! I’ll go anywhere, just not there.”

“Well you’re here now, and you’re in our flight,” Alexander said, pointing to his compad. We’ve got to twenty minutes to eat and forty minutes before we’re due in class, so we better get going.”

Indeed, they were among the last to leave. Realizing this they hurried out of the rotunda and headed for mess hall. On the way out the starboard corridor they passed beneath the watchful eyes of the Commandant, Admiral Hinohosa and Centurion Fjallheim. Out of all the cadets leaving the auditorium the three officers picked them out and followed them with their eyes, muttering under their breath.

#

“What are the odds that three cadets from the same small town would end up in the same class?” Augesburcke asked the question as if talking to himself. His voice was barely above the rumble and the buzz of the exodus of cadets.

“Astronomical,” Centurion Fjallheim said, his perpetual scowl deepening.