The Methuselan Circuit (16 page)

CHAPTER 13: Taking Things Apart

“Hello Alexander,” said Katrina. Alexander almost fainted with surprise and then relief. Oops, he wasn’t supposed to have contact with anyone from Terra outside the allowed visitation calls on Sundays.

“Katrina,” he whispered, “I can’t be found talking to you. It’s against regulations!”

She looked crestfallen, “Sorry, I didn’t know. I just wanted to call and say hi, and see how things are going; but I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

Alexander felt badly about that, knowing how disappointed Katrina was after her assignment was cancelled. Then it struck him, “Hey, how did you find me anyway?”

She shrugged, “It wasn’t that hard. My dad is a military historian. He has the uplink codes for the Academy because he teaches some classes there; he also has access to the library. All I had to do was use his uplink code and wait for you to log in.”

“So you have access to the library from Terra?”

“Whenever I want.”

The thought occurred to him, he was just a student, “Do you think your dad could do some research for me?”

“I don’t know, but I know I could,” she said. “What do you need? Are they giving you projects already? It must be something strange if you can’t access the information by yourself.”

“It’s about my dad.”

“What about him?”

“Everything I ask is classified; I can’t get anything at all except his picture and his basic service record.”

“Why do you need to know; is something wrong?”

Alexander took a deep breath and told her what happened with Khandar.

Katrina listened intently. When he finished she was frowning. He could see her accessing something on her screen, but it only caused her to shake her head. “All the official files that have anything to do with Khandar’s father are classified as well. We could try the Golkos ethernet records, after all he was the Grand Admiral, and infamous for his attack on Terra,” she did some more off screen work, but this didn’t seem to satisfy her either. “There’s too much stuff. This is going to take some time, Alexander. All the ethernet reports say he was killed in a hunting accident on the Homeworld of the Seer-koh, but there are no other details. You’d think for someone of Khandar’s notoriety we’d have film or something. I’m going to have to do some more digging. I’ll try and get back with you tomorrow.”

“O.k. my Study Hall period is from 0900-1000 Monday through Friday, thanks Katrina,” he said. He smiled and added, “It’s good to see you again. Thanks for calling.”

She smiled back. “Watch yourself up there, bye!”

The connection with Terra ended, and just in time. Centurion Fjallheim walked up to him, and asked, “Cadet Wolfe, who were you talking to just now?”

“No one sir, I was just talking to myself,” he replied nervously.

“Really, talking to yourself?” He asked doubtfully. His bushy brows drew together into a single orange line across his forehead. “What are you studying? It appears to be agitating you. You can’t have any serious assignments—not yet. What’s all this about?”

Alexander swallowed hard. The truth wouldn’t do, at least not all of it. Still, he couldn’t lie; any lie detector would find that out, besides, Centurion Fjallheim could easily access his computer search. “I was looking for records of my dad,” he said truthfully. “Cadet Khandar has it in for me because of my father. I was trying to find out why.”

Fjallheim leaned over his computer terminal and scanned his searches, nodding. His voice was gruff, but not angry, and he said, “We all have to live with our past one way or another. Just know that we are going to evaluate you on your merit, cadet, not the merit of your father.”

Alexander couldn’t tell whether that should concern him or not. “Sir, did my father do something that should concern me?”

The centurion stood up and straightened his uniform. “I didn’t know your father, cadet,” he said stiffly. “From this point on I suggest you concentrate on your Academy dictated studies, not on personal research,” his face softened just slightly, as if he were about to add something, but it stiffened again. He looked around the Study Hall for someone else to bother, and said, “As you were cadet!”

“Yes sir,” Alexander replied, and the centurion turned on his heel and left, leaving him more mystified than ever.

#

Z-Crosse was one of those games that the Academy pushed very hard on its young cadets. Not everyone chose to play on the team, but everyone had to pick a sport. Not surprisingly, all the sports were so designed to train the cadets in zero-G maneuvering. Z-Crosse was the most brutal of the sports, so the instructors liked it the most and took it very seriously. Their reasoning was simple: if one could play Z-Crosse with any level of confidence then zero-G combat was going to be a snap. They were right, but Alexander suspected the real reason was because it was loads of fun.

Unlike Terran based Lacrosse, a Z-Crosse match took place in a spherical bubble of space with a rotating goal in the center. Like the Terran based game the object was to put the ball into the net. The net itself was smart in that it always turned to face the location of the ball wherever it happened to be. This made it doubly difficult for the goalie, who had a tough enough job already. To make things even tougher, there was only one goal but of course there were two goalies, one for each team. The goalie turned into an attacker when his team had possession of the ball, but that meant that he had to retreat beyond the “red zone” of the goal, a bubble designated by a spherical laser shell ten meters in diameter. The goalies therefore shuffled back and forth, in and out of the goalie bubble throughout the match, but there was no rule that said they had to be polite about it.

Similar shells designated the attack zones and the midfield or “middie” zones. Middies could only jet around in the middie zone, and Attackers could only jet around in the attack zone, unless, of course, there was a change of possession and the attackers became defenders. Middies had the most ground to cover and had to be to best at “zooting.” Centurion Fjallheim handed out the assignments, but his logic was somewhat suspect, at least towards Alexander.

“After watching your zooting round last night Cadet Wolfe, I’d say you’re a natural Middie,” he smiled. Yet instead of handing Alexander the standard stick, he gave him the big net. Alexander stared at it, wondering what it meant. “You need to work on your coordination and your toughness; you’re a goalie.”

“A goalie,” Alexander repeated, mechanically taking the stick.

“Yeah, you and Sampson can fight over the net. You’re pads are over there; better get them on, you’ll need them.” Centurion Fjallheim handed the other goalie stick to Cadet Sampson, who smiled. He was a foot taller than Alexander and twice his size.

“Sorry Alexander,” Sampson smiled. “I’m not supposed to cream the guys from my own flight, but you know how it is.”

“Right,” Alexander said with very little excitement.

Z-Crosse was as much an exercise in Newton’s laws of motion as it was a game, or survival for Alexander. Alexander found that out when he tried to transition from playing attack to goalie. His team already scored twice on Sampson, who wasn’t especially quick or coordinated, but easily frustrated. The bigger boy was eager to take his frustrations out on someone, anyone, and Alexander was in the way.

The ball whizzed by Samson’s head. He missed it so badly; he whirled around and got caught in the net. As he frantically tried to disengage himself, Sampson’s teammates intercepted the errant ball, passing it out to the middies as the rules dictated, and then back on the attack. Treya, who was an outstanding zooter already, dodged several of Alexander’s teammates and got ready for a shot, only she couldn’t take it because Sampson was still lodged in the net.

“Hey Sampson, get out of there; what are you doing?”

Samson turned red with embarrassment.

Alexander’s first instinct was to help, but that just made Sampson even angrier. He punched his zoots full bore and the net finally let him go—straight at Alexander. He hit Alexander in the chest with his stick sending him cart-wheeling out of the goalie bubble, through the defense and attack bubble and careening into the middie bubble.

“What are you doing all the way out there Cadet Wolfe?” Centurion Fjallheim shouted.

Now it was Alexander’s turn to be embarrassed. He hit his zoots and sped back to the net. The rest of the period he spent trying as best he could to stop the ball and avoid getting plastered by Sampson, who made it his personal goal to try and smack Alexander all the way out of the game. Fortunately, the larger boy was a poor zooter. More than once he missed Alexander completely and zooted into the other bubble, running over someone else. It was a long and trying hour, and though Alexander couldn’t say he had any fun, he had to admit that he learned more about zooting while trying to preserve his life than he would have doing any number of drills.

After practice they hit the showers, having a full fifteen minutes before they were scheduled to be in math. Sampson searched him out, shrugging an apology. “Sorry if I got you, but man you’re hard to catch. I can’t go easy on you; you know that don’t you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alexander said. “We’ve both got to try as hard as we can.”

Sampson smiled, and punched him in the shoulder, “You’re O.k. Wolfe, but next time, try not to make me look so bad.” Alexander laughed good naturedly, happy to be in one piece and happy that he hadn’t made an enemy. Later that day, at the evening mess, Sampson sat next to him. They ate the computer processed concoction that was supposed to be meatloaf, but which looked and tasted like anything but meatloaf. There was no reason for Sampson to talk to Alexander but he did anyway. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a friend.

The next day went much like the last, as did the following day. By the end of the week, Alexander was getting the routine down. The morning reveille always sounded too early. He always had trouble staying awake in Professor Nussbaum’s class even though it was Galactic History which he loved.

In math, Lt. Mortimer never, ever, repeated herself no matter how they begged. Of course, she realized that half the time real reason was the boys simply wanted to hear her musical voice. Lieutenant Mortimer looked as though her name should be should be Lieutenant Merryweather, or Lieutenant Summerford. She had the fluffy blonde hair, bound by regulation into a ponytail, sparkling blue eyes and a large, easy smile that belongs on a bright sunny day under the shade of a great oak tree. Looks could be deceiving.

“You’ll have ample time to read the lesson again after class,” she would tell them with full knowledge that every boy there was in love with her and for good reason—she was stunningly beautiful and the uniform only made matters worse. Lt. Mortimer seemed coldly impervious to the affect she had on her male pupils. Her concept of “ample time” was a strange one, because neither Alexander nor the rest of his class could find any. Still, Lt. Mortimer had two things going for her as an instructor. Everyone listened to her and she absolutely loved what she was doing—she was obsessed with math. She sensed, however, that there were doubters in her class; students who didn’t share her obsession. James was the obvious one.

“I’m sorry Ma’am; I’m still trying to figure out Algebra,” he explained when she queried him about the confused expression on his face. There was some scattered laughter, if only because most of the students were in the same boat. Alexander couldn’t boast of being much more excited about it either.

Lt. Mortimer’s cold expression broke into a slight, very slight smile. She waved her alabaster hand as if it had magical powers and coolly announced, “That’s because you don’t know about the Frisbee.”

She made it sound as if that should break the code for everyone. It didn’t, but it was a long nerve wracking time before Alexander had the courage to raise his hand and ask, “Excuse me Ma’am, but what does a Frisbee have to do with math?”

“Everything Cadet Wolfe, absolutely everything,” she said with a smile that made every boy jealous because it was directed at Alexander. She walked to her desk and took out a red Frisbee. “This is an opportunity to show you the power of mathematics. For those of you who want to predict the world this is it.” She walked up to James and leaned over his desk. “I was once like you. I didn’t care about a bunch of numbers and symbols. I asked why we needed to use things called variables because I didn’t understand how they broadened the horizons of those terrifying things called equations.” She smiled and tapped his desk with the edge of the Frisbee in rhythm with her perfectly pronounced words. “Then I discovered the Frisbee.”

They all looked at each other, wondering what she was talking about.

Lt. Mortimer held up the Frisbee. “What is the area of this Frisbee—why it’s Pi times the radius squared of course. What is its circumference—two times Pi times the radius. Why is it red?” She went to the board and wrote down an equation, explaining, “Because it reflects light according to this wavelength. How far will the Frisbee fly if I throw it with one kilo of force, two kilos or three kilos? Which leads us to the next step; how many kilos of force do I need to apply to throw the Frisbee across the room to Cadet Coulter in the back?” She threw the Frisbee perfectly, but the surprised cadet muffed the catch. “The point is, I have the power through mathematics to not only describe everything in the world around us but the power to predict how it will behave. If you can master math; you can master the future.” She returned to her desk and sat down. Glancing at them for only a moment, she said coldly, “That’s enough for the day. Class is dismissed!”