Matt nodded and started to lower his head.
"And besides," Colson offered, "it was most likely their own damn fault anyhow that they got killed."
Matt surged back up again. Justin turned to face Colson, struggling with the desire to simply let Matt go.
"That was uncalled-for,"
Pradeep
now interjected. "So both of
you,
calm down."
"Calm?
Of course I'm calm," Colson replied smoothly. "Just keep that sailor boy away from me.
Offworlders
, they're all alike, always ready to blame their woes on those who do the real work."
"Just what is that crack supposed to mean?" Justin asked,
"Why, it's obviously the truth,
Bell," Colson snapped back.
"Elaborate on this?"
Pradeep
asked softly. "I'm curious."
Justin looked back at Matt, who was staring with cold rage at Colson.
"He isn't worth it," Justin whispered. "Hit him and you're out of here. Now go to the head, cool off and then come back" Justin pushed Matt to the door. Matt started to turn, but to his own surprise Justin actually managed to shove him out into the corridor.
Matt started back for the door, but Justin stopped him.
"Look, you can't blame Mr. Stuck-up, in there for what happened to your parents."
"Yeah, I know. I was off the handle, but what he said about them killing
themselves
. That's what got me."
"I understand. But we've got to live with each other."
"Well, there's more. His old man is one of the guys really stoking this crisis."
"How so?"
"He's on the Security Council Board for Space. He's the guy calling everyone out here ungrateful traitors and pushing for the Service to preemptively intervene at any colony where known separatist leaders might be located."
Surprised, Justin looked back to the room. The door was half-open and
Pradeep
and Colson were obviously in a hot debate.
"That would be war," Justin said.
"Darn straight, and Justin between us, it'd throw me over to their side once and for all."
Justin looked back into the room and thought he saw a flicker of interest from Colson. The cadet half-turned away from
Pradeep
, and then turned back.
"Well, the Service would never buy it," Justin whispered. "That's a straight-out violation of freedom of speech. You can't arrest someone for saying a change of government or in the status of the colonies is needed.
Only if they move to overthrow the government, only then."
"Tell that to Colson the third in there," Matt snapped. "He's a chip off the old block, it seems. Beyond that, his family did kill many a good sailor. The investigation showed that they knew the seals were degrading quicker than the specs said, but they never issued a recall since it would have cost
them
millions. So the seals blew, dozens died, and they managed to cover it up."
"Matt, you can't blame him for that one."
"Yeah, I know, I was out of line."
Justin forced a smile.
"Hit the head, cool off and let's see if we can settle this when you come back."
"Yeah, sure, Justin.
Thanks,
buddy. I might
of
slugged the guy if it hadn't been for you."
Justin smiled and went back into the room.
"You can't lump them all together like that,"
Pradeep
was saying.
"They allow it to be said in their midst. Without our support on Earth the colonies would all die within the year. It's about time they realized that and got off their high horses. I know what I've heard and I think that when you look at an
offworlder
, you're looking at an ungrateful traitor."
"Wait a minute, Wendell," Justin said. "Didn't you hear
Thorsson
? He won't tolerate that kind of talk around here. If we reported this conversation to his office your butt would be in the wringer."
"Are you going to go squealing?" Colson
asked,
a mocking tone in his voice.
"No, of course not."
"And what about you, Uncle?"
Colson asked, looking at the computer.
"You know that would be a violation of the law," Uncle replied, his voice sounding cool and distant. "Computers may not report conversations without a specific court order, which is issued only when a felony is under investigation."
"Well, right there you have it," Colson said. "Everyone's too soft. Those people out there are plotting rebellion. One of my family's construction sites was threatened with seizure by some damn radicals, and we can't even use a stupid computer to help get the evidence!"
Justin looked over at Uncle as if to apologize. Even though Uncle was a machine, somehow Justin felt that he did indeed have feelings, and to call him stupid was an insult to something that could not fight back.
"So is that the real reason here?'
Pradeep
asked. "It's not policy, but rather it's your family's construction sites on Mars? Sites they control from Earth and which are little better than factory towns right out of the 19th century, where they even charge double the going rate for air rations?"
"We have a right to make money and they don't have a right to try and stop us. All this rubbish about 'local control' is nothing but double-talk for theft by traitors. I've yet to meet an
offworlder
you could trust."
"Then, if so," Justin asked, "why are you here?"
Colson sniffed.
"Family tradition.
Do my bit
with the Service, then move up to take over the business, if there's still a business around in ten years."
Matt came into the room and Wendell stiffened.
"It's finished right here,"
Pradeep
announced before Matt could say a word. "
Thorsson
was
right,
we have to treat each other like comrades. There are too many other strikes against us plebes as it is without you two going for each other's throats."
Matt nodded, and ever so slowly extended his hand.
"Look, I'm sorry about accusing you of being responsible for my parent's deaths. OK?"
Golson
smiled, but it wasn't a friendly look. To Justin it seemed as if Wendell fully expected Matt to simply bow down and submit. Colson limply took Mart's hand and then quickly dropped it. Turning his back, he went to work on arranging his bunk.
An icy silence descended on the room. Justin could sense that the basic good-natured aspect within Matt wanted to somehow patch things up, but the way Colson had taken his hand without comment and then turned away had left him confused as to what to do next. The silence was strange to Justin, for usually Matt was a non-stop talker, ready to fill any conversational gap with a funny story or tall tale about solar sailing.
"Gentlemen, ten minutes to chow," Uncle finally interrupted.
Grateful for the opportunity to break off the silent confrontation, Justin looked over at the
holo
screen and nodded an acknowledgment. During the summer session he had come to regard Uncle as a friend, and once more he wondered about the machine. Uncle had heard every word of the conversation the machine heard and knew everything that happened aboard ship. Yet he was programmed with a very selective memory as prescribed by law. No conversation or action observed by him could ever be repeated except in the case of a class-one felony, and even then the programming block could only be lifted by the unanimous decision of a three-judge panel.
Justin wondered again if Uncle had personal likes and dislikes. He felt as if the machine actually did like him and looked out for him whenever possible. He knew that was illogical, for Uncle, after all, was a machine, yet the way he had so casually interrupted them, thus breaking off the confrontation, was interesting.
"Company
A
, fall out for chow!"
Seay's
voiee
echoed down the hall. Justin double-checked his bed and locker to make sure they were ready for room inspection after dinner.
"One final thing," Colson suddenly announced.
Justin looked over at Colson, who had finished stowing his gear in his locker. Colson stepped around Justin and stopped in front of Matt.
"I don't want to hear you spreading stories about my family. I'll try to ignore your less-than-desirable political beliefs and," he hesitated for a moment then smiled, "the support of them that I just heard you announce out in the hallway. But I'll remember what you said, and if you cross me on anything I'll turn you in."
"What kind of threat is that?" Justin snapped.
"A promise.
There are other cadets who still have the guts to stand up to traitors, and when the time comes we'll be ready."
Without another word he stalked out of the room.
Justin looked over at Matt, expecting an explosion. But the old Matt was back. Shaking his head, Matt broke into a grin.
"A jerk, buddy, a class-A jerk, and that's no mistake!"
"A dangerous jerk,"
Pradeep
added quietly.
"Come on now, son, you can do better than that!"
Rubbing his backside, Matt struggled back up to his feet, breathing hard under the stress of nearly one-and-a-half gees. Chief Petty Officer Kevin Malady, their close-in combat instructor, stood balanced on the balls of his feet looking as if he were poised to jump straight up and turn a quick somersault. Malady took the knife he had snatched from Matt's hand and tossed it to the side of the practice circle, motioning for Matt to rejoin the group. .
Malady scanned the group and nodded towards Justin.
"All right, son, you're next."
Justin tried to ignore the snickers of some of his fellow cadets as he stepped up to the edge of the fighting circle.
"So, son, what weapon will it be?"
Justin looked down at the assortment of deadly instruments laid out on the floor. There were several wicked looking knives, a plain old baseball bat with the charming touch of a few spikes driven through it, a fire ax, and a strange-looking device made up of a section of steel pipe topped by a two-foot section of wire with a lead ball tied to the end.
"Care to try the mace, Mr. Bell?" Malady asked.
Justin looked down at the weapon. Maybe in low, even standard gravity, but out here on the exercise pylon, which extended a hundred and fifty meters out from the main hull of the ship, he wasn't sure how well he could handle it.
He shook his head.
"Good decision,
Bell. The mace seems to be popular with certain punks who prowl the tougher sections of the Moon's mining camps. Can be deadly in low gravity, but here you just might wind up wrapping it around your head."
Justin finally settled on the baseball bat. He hefted it up as he stepped into the circle. At least at home he had had a little experience with a bat, though usually when it came to a pickup game the other players tended to relegate him to right field and pray nothing would come his way.
Justin clenched the bat and raised it as if facing a pitcher.
Malady wearily shook his head.
"No, no," he sighed. "I'm not a hard ball, Mr. Bell. Give me that."
Malady bounded forward, moving with the ease of a ballet dancer in spite of his massive bulk. He took the bat and held it up, clenching the weapon a third of the way up from the handle.
"A lot of fools try the way you did, son. They'll only get one good swing in. If your opponent can dodge it, they'll be on you before you can recover. In low gravity you'll just spin around like a top and then catch a knife in the kidneys. Use both ends of it, just like old Robin Hood and his merry men used the quarterstaff like this."
Malady feigned a blow to Justin's head with the spiked end, recovered, and then drove in with the butt of the handle, stopping the blow at the last instant so it was just a light tap under the chin. Justin realized that if it had been for real he'd be ordering a new set of teeth.
"OK, try it again."
Malady tossed the bat back and returned to the middle of the circle. Nervously Justin gripped the bat the way Malady had shown him. He edged into the circle, trying to focus on Malady's eyes as the instructor had told them to, while watching the movement of his hands and feet with peripheral vision.
He tried a blow to his opponent's shoulder with the spiked end, but Malady easily danced out of the way. For Justin the whole ritual was very disconcerting. He liked and admired Malady; during the summer the instructor had taken him aside to share a few stories about Justin's father. Malady's creased features had crinkled with delight when he had talked about "the skipper," and how Justin's dad had once saved his life in a barroom brawl on Mars. Yet now he was supposed to try and beat the life out of him. Of course he knew the attempt was futile, no plebe had ever bested Malady with any weapon let alone with bare hands. He wondered if Malady ever boasted about how he had most likely thrashed every officer in the service at some time during his or her career.
Justin tried again, this time jabbing for Malady's face. Malady stepped past the blow and moved to close in. Justin danced backwards, moving clumsily in the heavy gravity. He reversed his hold on the bat with his left hand and now used it to jab straight at the instructor. He almost connected, but Malady dodged so that the handle of the bat just scraped across his arm.
Malady grabbed the bat just below the spikes and jerked it back, dragging Justin along with it. His foot lashed out, tripping Justin so that he went down hard. Malady then jerked the bat up, trying to wrench it out of Justin's hands, but he refused to let go.
Justin felt the light tap of a knee go into his solar
plexus,
just enough to let him know that if it had been for real his spleen would most likely be wrapped around his backbone.
Justin let go and backed away, holding his stomach.
"All right, son?"
Justin nodded, not willing to admit that the blow hurt.
"Good move there, cadet, coming in with the butt of the handle. Don't go for an arm though unless you hit it square it'll skid off the way it did with me. Go for the ribs, face or stomach."
Justin nodded, wondering how he'd react if this situation were ever for real. These exercise periods with Malady always made him feel clumsy; he wondered if the legendary Marine looked at him and felt he would never match up to the legend of Captain Jason Bell.
Malady casually tossed the bat to the side of the circle.
"All right, kiddies, let's get down to some basics here. Now, the Old Man
talks about the lofty vision of the Corps and all that, but when you cut out all the fancy talk and gold braid it comes
down to guts. It might be nothing more than dealing with a couple of
drunk
miners in a bar who don't like a uniform and decide to express their antisocial behavior on your face. Or it might be a riot on a habitat like we had last year when a rumor spread about
Kelson's
Disease and everyone
was
trying to break quarantine and get out. Or it might be a nest of
Thugees
and you gotta clean 'em out. Your fancy book-learning down below in the classrooms or whether you're the best pilot in the universe won't mean squat.
"And you people make me
wanna
puke. All of you huffing and puffing just because there's a little
pull
on. Hell, you think this is bad wait until we thin the air
outta
here, put you in pressure suits and
have
you fight!"
He blew out noisily.
"All of you, extra exercise detail up here in the one-and-a-
halfer
, an hour each day for the next two weeks you're all as flabby as my big Aunt Sally."
Everyone knew better than to groan or express the slightest dismay. The regulations were clear on personnel hitting each other, but Malady wasn't above a bit of a rough "demo" if he took a dislike to someone.
"We're going back to straight old FT, then to open hand combat; these little toys will
hafta
wait till you've grown up a bit.
"Now give me twenty, then dismissed!"
Justin felt like his arms were turning to jelly as he struggled through the last push up, made worse by Malady kneeling beside him and barking out his dismay over Justin's performance.
Staggering with fatigue, he hurried to shower and change, glad to see that Matt was waiting for him in the corridor.
"Man, was he tough!" Justin groaned.
"Yeah, I got a bruise on my butt to match the bump on my head for the last session. Jeez, you'd think we were trying out for the Shore Patrol units."
"Heard it gets worse," Justin sighed. The dreaded full contact training would start later this year. Even though everyone wore padded protection, it still sent some cadets to the infirmary or worse yet, right out of the program if they backed out of a fight no matter how bad a mismatch Malady might have set up. Justin knew that some of the mismatches were
deliberate,
to see if a smaller or weaker cadet had the guts to go into a fight he knew he would lose. Backing out was not an option if you wanted to stay in the Academy.
"Hey, cheer
up,
we're getting off ship today. Come on, we got to hustle to be on the other end of the ship in ten minutes."
Justin followed Mart's lead as his friend ducked into a down tube. Staying on the steps since they were still in the one-and-a-half-gravity zone, the two followed a rush of cadets heading towards the low and zero-gravity areas in the center of the ship. Matt handled the descent like an old hand, but Justin still found the gravity shift to be slightly disconcerting. As they reached the quarter gravity level Matt was bounding and floating down three and four steps at a time, while Justin hung on to the hand rail. When they finally reached the one-tenth-gravity floor, a number of cadets around them split off down side corridors to head to their next class. Justin recognized some friends from his own platoon, all of them going in his direction.
Matt, still leading the way, stepped into one of the tubes that ran the length of the ship. He touched down on the moving walkway heading to the stern of the ship and called for Justin to follow.
Justin eyed the moving walkways. They were nearly identical to those found in any large airport or shopping district, the only difference being that here hand straps, suspended
frpm
the ceiling, traveled at the same speed and gave nervous cadets something secure to hang on to. Stepping onto one was as easy as walking when done on Earth, but here in the one-tenth gravity near the center of the ship it was an entirely different matter.
"Come on,
Bell, you're holding up the line," someone shouted behind him.
Justin saw an opening between two groups of cadets and took a shuffling step out onto the moving path. He started to lose his footing, and reaching up, he grabbed a handle, which jerked him along. Other cadets piled in around him, the more experienced setting off with leaping bounds down the track.
"Heard Major Davis got you on your
Astro
-Navigation problem this morning."
Startled, Justin saw Tanya standing beside him, holding on to a strap. Ever since their return she had been coolly formal. Perhaps the kiss she had planted on him during the summer was now a cause of embarrassment.
He tried to think of something witty to say. Having become a fan of old Bogart movies during the summer leave he tried a "Bogey" shrug and uttered a non-committal "Yeah, it happens."
The nervous squeak in his voice ruined the Bogart effect and he felt himself reddening.
"Study together tonight?" she asked. "Maybe we can figure out what
Davis has up his sleeve."
"Yeah, sure."
"Great. Come on, we're losing the group."
Tanya bounded ahead on the walkway, taking twenty-foot strides. Justin tried to follow, noticing once again how gracefully she moved. She was, after all, part of the Academy's low- and zero-gravity ballet troupe, and her lithe, easy moves kept diverting Justin's attention as he struggled to keep up. There were times when looking at her made his heart skip a beat, and then there were other times when he wished she'd simply disappear. The way she was moving now definitely did not make Justin wish she would disappear. Watching her, he missed his strap and awkwardly tumbled into a group of upperclassmen. They soundly dressed him down until they jumped off the track into a side corridor.
His own group was now more than a hundred meters away and Justin struggled ahead, breathing a sigh of relief when he reached the end of the track and stepped off into the EVA prep area.
Their instructor, Senior Cadet Barker, was already calling the group to attention as Justin came through the doorway. Barker spared Justin a cold look but said nothing as he fell into line.
"All right you plebes, you got lucky today. Standard EVA has been scrubbed for the afternoon."
Some of the group looked disappointed, wondering if they were going to get stuck with another indoor suit drill, though Justin hoped Barker might opt for a game of falcon flying instead.
"We're in a near-orbital intersect with a Habitat Unit," Barker continued, "and the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, have scheduled you pukes to go over for a look-see. We'd be making the run anyhow since we got some spare parts they need, so there's no sense wasting the tug space. We're taking a standard K-class open rig tug, so suit up."
Justin teamed up with Matt. Drawing two standard EVA suits from the lockers Justin helped Matt step into his
suit,
zip it up and connect his back pack. Matt then helped Justin into his suit. He clipped on his helmet, then finally his gloves. Justin checked the LCD readout inside his helmet and with a touch on the arm pad activated the system and ran a diagnostic. Everything checked out positive. The two then double-checked each other's suits, signaled a thumbs-up to Barker, and lined up by the door.
Following the senior cadet, the plebes filed into the airlock. The door slid shut behind them and Justin felt a momentary tightening in his gut. Since returning
tathe
Academy
his platoon had gone on half a dozen
EVAs
, all of them review-and-checkouts of what they had learned during the summer, but it still made him nervous.