"I want to make something clear here and now. I pray to God every day that this crisis shall pass us by; that together we can go forward and explore space." He paused, and he leaned forward as if speaking personally to each cadet.
"But if that should not be, if in the weeks, months and years ahead this crisis should spin out of control and we find ourselves arrayed against each other, I want you to remember what I have said today more clearly than anything else you ever learn here at the Academy."
His voice dropped to a near-whisper and all present strained forward so as not to miss a single word.
"We were comrades, we are comrades, and we shall always remain comrades.
Never forget that never!"
said
Thorsson
, and his voice echoed in the assembly hall. "If on some terrible distant field of conflict you should find yourself facing those with whom you once served if you look across that open stretch of space and on the other side are comrades with whom you once bunked, shared a meal, and knew without hesitation that you'd share your last sip of water, your last gasp of air if that day should ever come, remember what we were here this morning. That we few were once
shipmates,
united in common cause. You will have to do your duty, as your training commands, and as your moral obligation requires, but do it with honor.
"And know that all conflicts end none can go on forever. There will come a day when you will have to bind up the wounds, care for the injured, orphaned, and widowed among your own comrades-in-arms. And then, together, continue the quest to the stars.
"If you live by that pledge, if you temper yourselves to honor, to charity and yes, to love, no conflict will ever divide you. Such things will pass, and I suspect that it will be you who shall make them pass if you remember. For there is a higher calling for all of you and that calling is simple it is a single word, and that is Destiny.
"You, the generations of the 21st century, are destined to save humankind from its follies on Earth, and the follies it contemplates on its path to the stars."
His words drifted away into silence. Justin felt a curious stinging in his eyes, and was embarrassed until he looked around and saw more than one of his classmates on the edge of tears as well.
Thorsson
surveyed his audience, his eyes shining.
"Good luck to all of you, and God bless you."
"Ship's company,
attenshun
!"
Justin came to his feet with the others and stood at rigid attention as
Thorsson
stepped down from the podium to stand with the faculty. Minutes later, to the barked commands of the upperclassmen, Justin filed out of the assembly hall and double-timed down the long corridors towards the first-year plebe barracks. He thought he knew the ship but was soon completely lost as they were led to a distant section that had been off limits during the summer session. Sector F-7, Deck Nine,
with .41 gravity
. For Justin the gravity felt decidedly pleasant, but he could see more than one of the
offworlders
, especially those who had lived on the Moon or in zero-gravity environments, huffing a bit under the strain.
At last he started to recognize some of the side corridors, having passed through them briefly earlier in the day to drop off his gear. Turning into Corridor T, he and Matt came to the door of their room and, stopping on either side, the two snapped to attention.
Several minutes passed before Brian
Seay
appeared and stopped at the end of the corridor. The last of the cadets
came
racing past, looking nervously over at Brian as they stumbled into place by their rooms. Justin brightened as he saw
Pradeep
, their third roommate from the summer, fall into place beside them. Finally a cadet he vaguely recognized as having been with another company during scrub summer came and joined them. Justin gave him a sidelong glance. The cadet was tall and thin, with pale blue eyes and a look he found disquieting. It was a vague,
undefinable
something, a certain way of walking, an air of superior disdain, as if he were already a senior cadet forced to associate with mere plebes. The cadet gave Justin a sidelong glance, not friendly, but not hostile, either.
"All right,
plebes,
listen up and listen good."
Brian now started to walk slowly down the corridor.
"You are now Company
A
, Second Battalion, first-year plebes. Heaven knows how you made it this far just looking at you makes me want to get sick, turn in my stripes and jump ship with the first ore carrier heading out."
Brian started into his harangue about how disgusting, miserable, nauseating, and generally unpleasant they all were. In the distance Justin could hear echoes from other corridors, as company commanders from other units launched into similar tirades. At the beginning of the summer it had left him shaking and darn near in tears more than once; as Brian stopped in front of him, he felt a bit of the gut churn, and braced himself.
Brian fixed him with an icy gaze of disdain, as if he were looking at a loathsome insect. "Ah, the brains of the outfit," Brian snapped.
"Passed Intro to
Astro
-Navigation by one point.
Good heavens,
Bell, if that stretched your pea
brain,
I can promise you that first-year
Astro-Nav
will make sure I don't have to look at your ugly face again come next semester. Boy, you are nothing but a hick from the cornfields of
Indiana
and when I'm done with you, you'll wish you had stayed there."
He continued on, harassing Matt over his accent, and then moved on, attempting to make life miserable for everyone. Half an hour later, after chewing everyone out, he went through the ritual of reading the ship's General Orders "Article Twenty-Three, If any member of the Service while aboard an active-duty ship conspires to commit mutiny, and such offense occurs in a time of war or emergency mobilization, the commanding officer shall have, within his powers, the right and privilege to summarily execute the offender, by agreement of those staff officers on board who are in good standing, if the actions of the offender do jeopardize the safety of the ship or mission of that ship. If a member of the Service under those above listed conditions should strike an officer, the punishment shall be summary execution with the agreement of those staff officers on board who are in good standing.' "
"Article Twenty-four"
Justin had heard the Articles, all twenty-five of them read off at every Sunday service, and he was expected to know all of them by heart. But there was something chilling about the ritual, which he knew dated back hundreds of years to the old sailing days of the British Royal Navy.
The reading completed, Brian waited for several minutes as if hoping that someone had to sneeze, twitch, or move. He was looking for a victim to make an example of. Justin knew that for some of the
offworlders
standing at attention in half-gravity must be agony, and someone finally buckled, leaning forward with a low moan. Justin shot a quick glance down the corridor as Brian closed in on the offender. It was Alice McKay, a cadet from one of the orbital colonies, and
Seay
launched into her so that she was in tears. Justin looked past her and finally saw the girl who had caused him so much troubled thought, Tanya
Leonov
. She was standing next to
Alice, her eyes straight ahead.
"And if you can't take it, plebe, ship out now!"
Seay
shouted, and
Alice finally straightened back up. "That'll be double watch tonight, four hours straight, midnight to four, do you read me?"
"Yes, sir!" and Justin felt a wave of pity. She'd get less than two hours sleep tonight before having to fall out for the first day of classes. A bad first day could set her up for the whole semester.
"All right, you ship's rats. One hour till chow.
Make sure your rooms are shipshape or Weak Knees here will have company on watch. Fall out!"
Brian swept down the corridor; everyone was silent until he finally turned the corner and disappeared.
"Boy, he's even worse than this summer," Matt groaned, leaning forward and letting his knees bend. "And I thought he was
gonna
be OK."
"Never trust an upper."
Justin turned and looked at his new roommate and nodded in half-agreement.
"Well,
lets
get squared away," Matt suggested as he opened the door and led the way into their room. Justin stepped in and looked around. It was slightly bigger than the room he had shared with Matt and
Pradeep
during the summer, with two double bunks lining one wall, four desks and the
holo
field on a second, and the closets occupying the third. Justin and Matt had already flipped for who got top or lower Matt won, a decided plus for him since lower bunks tended to get sat upon by visitors.
"Hey, Uncle, what's been happening?" Matt asked as he headed for his bunk and started to unfold his linens to make his bed. The
holo
computer field on the opposite wall lit up.
"Cadet Everett, good to see you back," Uncle replied. "And I see Cadets Singh,
Bell, and Colson as well."
Justin looked over at his new roommate as the computer announced who he was. Colson nodded. There was something familiar about the name but he couldn't quite place it.
"Now as to your question, Matt, about what is happening? If you are referring to the overall state of the universe, there have been two supernovas sighted in Andromeda. Within our own Milky Way, a most curious change of pulse rate in a quasar was reported yesterday. Within our solar system"
"Relax, Uncle," Matt chortled, "I mean, just with you. You know, the old human greeting, 'what's new'? "
"Ah, with me.
It's been decidedly boring with nearly everyone gone until this morning. My human support team installed ten thousand
tril
new
holo
cubes into my deep-core memory while you were away.
Wonderful feeling, sort of like stretching and finding more room.
I also received an upload of 19th-century photographs, several hundred thousand of them. Fascinating, you humans back in your primitive days. I even uploaded a new archive of early movies from your 1930s and 40s I love Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. That's about all. I take it you enjoyed your trip to Earth?"
Matt launched into a description of his experiences and Justin, smiling, half-listened to the embellishments surrounding their canoe trip down Sugar Creek, the visit to the Purdue Campus, and walks through
Indiana
cornfields.
"Sounds like you really liked Earth," Colson suddenly interrupted.
"Yeah, never been there before," Matt replied.
"Kind of strange to have a steady gravity, and a bit of a closed-in feeling.
But I loved the smells in the air, especially when we had a barbecue, and the sound of the birds singing the hour before dawn.
And dawn I never imagined such colors, the oranges and reds streaking the sky.
The
thun-derstorms
and the rainbow afterwards, it was great."
Colson nodded tolerantly. "So the colonial boy finally gets back to the center of things."
"What do you mean?" Justin asked cautiously.
"Just that.
It's good for
offworlders
to come back to Earth and realize where the center and power of things truly are."
"Say, Colson,"
Pradeep
interrupted. "It's Wendell Colson III, isn't it?"
Golson
nodded.
'Tour father's on the Space Security Council."
"The same."
Matt looked at him closely, his face darkening.
"And your family owns Colson Construction, don't they?"
"What of it?"
Justin looked over at Matt and sensed something building.
"Just that they make the worst damn habitat units and ship pods in the system."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Colson replied coolly.
"Just that," Matt snapped back.
"Substandard construction.
Gasket seals prematurely aging and blowing. You people knew about it, should have issued recalls, but didn't."
"That was all cleared up." Colson answered as if Matt were barely worth talking to. "I don't see why you're getting all upset."
"Upset?" Matt snapped back. "Me upset? Wouldn't you be upset if your pod blew and your parents shoved you into an airlock,
then
stayed on the other side because the three of you couldn't survive in that tiny room, and you were there for weeks watching them float in vacuum?"
Matt's voice went up sharply and he drew closer to Colson. Justin stepped between them.
"Investigations cleared my family of any wrong doing," Colson replied sharply.
Justin could see the rage in Matt's eyes and understand it. Yet he knew it was unfair to blame someone his own age for an incident that happened years ago.
"Cool it down, Matt," Justin said, pushing him back. He looked at Matt, and to his surprise he could see tears forming. "Cool it," Justin whispered, "it's not his fault."