“Yeah, they take anyone for intramural basketball, but it’s the least demanding sport timewise that you can sign up for,” Colleen said. “You could use that to concentrate on catching up at the academics. You’ve got potential there.”
“In Physics, maybe,” Katie said. “Math and History even. Languages, English, and my second language, French, I’m sure I’m condemned to suck at those.”
Colleen sighed. “Yeah, I’m pretty good at all of that, but still it hurts me I’m only so-so at team sports. Glad I’m solid, if not great, at soccer. Still, it’s a holding action, really. Fact is, bonding with your classmates via team sports is a big deal here. Sucks to be us given that, but it is what it is.”
“So you see why I’m tempted to take the Coach’s advice?” Katie asked.
“I see the logic,” Colleen said. “Only I’d like us to spend some of our time off together too. You can’t expect the other cadets to be too enthusiastic about someone who won’t spend any time with them, even if they do understand the logic. I will explain, I promise. Still, it’s going to hurt you with them.”
“You figure I’ve decided not to go? That I’m going to tell the Coach I’m going to stay on the biathlon team instead?”
“I think you have. You just know you’re taking a big risk, and it’s going to make the next year a lot harder for you even if it does work out in the end.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, good luck.”
“Because I’m going to need it.”
“Yep.”
* * *
Katie felt like she’d stepped off of the top of a tall cliff and was depending on being able to learn to fly before hitting the jagged rocks of the valley floor at its foot. She was beyond scared, let alone worried. She was right on the edge of panic.
Panic isn’t useful. Katie knew she had to get a grip.
For one, she was supposed to be sleeping.
If there was one thing she was sure of in this whole mess, it was that as short of enough time as she might be, she needed her sleep. Tired people don’t learn. Tired people make mistakes. Tired people tend to be short-tempered and grumpy. That’s no way to make friends.
Colleen had been right.
Seemed like ages ago. It’d been only a couple of hours. It might not be the smartest thing to do, but Katie wanted to be on the biathlon team. She wanted to be good at something again.
As soon as her roommate had made it clear to Katie that that was how she felt, she’d acted on it. She'd messaged the Coach and told him she was in. She wanted to be on the team. She’d be going to the out-of-state biathlon event this weekend. She wouldn’t be going out with the rest of the female cadets.
Katie had dearly wanted to do both. It wasn’t possible. She’d chosen competing in biathlons over getting to know her peers better.
Susan was the only other first year cadet on the team.
A few others had qualified, but then they’d seen the schedule and chosen to do something else.
Probably sensible of them.
Katie was committed now. She’d better start flapping her metaphorical wings. Whether or not she’d chosen the right course of action didn’t matter anymore. She had to figure out how to make it work.
First things first. Katie had sacrificed both doing her best at her studies and getting to know her fellow first year cadets to being on the biathlon team. She’d done that because she’d thought she could excel at the sport. So she’d better do just that.
Looking up at the shadowy ceiling of her and Colleen’s dorm room, she wondered how. Well, focus and giving one hundred percent during practices and events was an obvious starting point. Katie should also devote sometime to studying up on the sport. She knew precious little about the activity, activities really, she’d decided to excel at. There was bound to be a lot of information available publicly. She’d devote a half hour each evening to finding and absorbing such information.
Some things wouldn’t be public. The sort of things that you learned by doing, or that didn’t get into public sources for other reasons. Susan Fritzsen could help there. Katie had never made a habit of buttering people up. Honestly, she had to admit maybe she’d always been self sufficient to a fault. Time to learn new skills. Katie needed to make a good friend out of Susan and mine her for every bit of inside information she could.
They hadn’t had a good start on the Obstacle Course team, but Susan seemed impressed by her navigation and shooting skills, and had offered to help Katie to learn how to ski even. It was a start.
Katie felt somewhat slimy being so deliberate and utilitarian about it. However, learning to be friendly with people couldn’t be a bad thing, could it? She’d try to be helpful to Susan too, even if the help was lop sided in Katie’s favor at first.
Maybe good relations with Susan would help her with the other cadets, too. Katie wondered if it’d be too much explicitly asking for Susan’s help with that?
Katie wasn’t sure. Two, could be three, action points there though. Focus on being the best possible at biathlon. Cultivate Susan’s help with it. Use Susan to get help with reputation with other cadets.
Also, had to concentrate on not letting all the time on the road interfere with her studies more than was avoidable. Meant that socializing with team members other than Susan was going to have to take a back seat.
Thinking of seats, she was going to be spending a lot of time on buses, trains, and planes. The odd sub-orbital flight, but at least those would be short. Katie was going to have to make a point of spending that time heads down in her textbooks, not looking out the window at the scenery. Katie regretted that. She was new to Earth, and it was endlessly fascinating. All the same, good marks were necessary.
Indulging her curiosity was not.
Another action point. Study quotas she’d meet using every spare moment she got while away on travel to events.
A last action point. When on campus, she needed to reverse her priorities. Spending time with her peers when she was able to had to take priority over extra study.
This wasn’t going to be easy. Katie didn’t feel comfortable with it at all.
But it needed to be done.
She had a plan of sorts.
Time to sleep.
* * *
Andrew was surprised.
It was a short shuttle bus ride into the small local town the Academy’s main campus was next to. Most of the new cadets were taking advantage of their first weekend free to visit the place. Not just the bars and restaurants were crowded with first year cadets in shiny new uniforms, so was the little park in the town’s center and the shops off of the pedestrian mall that led to it.
Many cadets had taken the opportunity to visit the Aerospace Museum nearby.
That was where Andrew and his buddies, Stephen, John, and Dave had bumped into a gaggle of female cadets composed of most of the first year girls from their squadron.
Stephen Lee, Andrew knew from being on the Obstacle Course team with him. John Sadler was an old acquaintance from school. Their parents were friends of long standing. Dave Caldwell he knew from the Space Force Junior Scouts. Dave was a crack glider pilot, but his main skill was on the trumpet and keyboard. He was a natural musician. The brass loved their displays, and his talents were in demand.
They’d all been interested in getting to know their fellow cadets of the female persuasion better. They knew most of them by reputation already. Carefully preserved reputations, unfortunately. Being of good character was a requirement for admission to the Academy. For the last few years, that requirement had weighed heavier on female candidates than male ones.
The battle between the sexes continued, and it moved to and fro. Andrew had spent long hours listening to his grandfather tell stories while half in his cups. Apparently neither the Space Force nor society had always been as strait laced as it was currently.
In any event, the young women had declined to be distracted by their male counterparts.
No surpris
e in any of that.
What had somewhat surprised Andrew was that Kincaid was not out with her fellow cadets. He knew they would have invited her along to get a better feel for her, if no other reason.
Colleen McGinnis had volunteered that Kincaid was away at a biathlon event. She played up how good Kincaid was at it. Said she was a crack shot, and a good navigator as well as a good runner.
McGinnis seemed determined to place her roommate in as positive a light as possible.
That wasn’t surprising. Most of the rest of her news was.
Andrew had figured Kincaid was a one-trick pony. A whizz at hard science academics. Mediocre at best at softer topics and anything else. Anything else specifically including sports. There wasn’t much chance to get good at outdoor team sports out in the Belt.
So, yeah, Andrew was surprised.
It was only after they’d parted ways with the female cadets that Stephen confirmed what Colleen had said about Kincaid.
Stephen had seemed a little awed. “Yeah, Susan says she’s magic with a gun,” he’d said. “Seems good at navigation, and okay woods running, but deadly with a rifle. Never misses she said.”
Andrew had nodded. “So could be hope for our girl Katie after all?”
“Could be,” Stephen allowed. “I’m more impressed by her learning to run outdoors myself than the shooting. You can learn to shoot on a range, but you saw how hard she found running on natural terrain. If she’s adjusted after just a few weeks, that’s impressive. I’m kind of rooting for her to tell you the truth. You’ve got to admit the kid’s got guts.”
“Never doubted it,” Andrew replied. “A Belter kid from a family nobody has ever heard of, not only applying to the Academy but getting in. That’s guts right there.”
“You haven’t heard?” John said, joining the conversation.
“Heard what?” Andrew asked.
“Kincaid got a hand written invitation from Admiral Schlossberg in the mail,” John answered. “Supposedly she’s the Admiral’s granddaughter by her estranged daughter. That’s third hand, but can’t see anyone making something like that up.”
“Geeze,” Dave commented.
“That is surprising,” Andrew admitted.
“Might explain why she’s here,” Stephen said. “Odd, she never even hinted at it.”
“Rumor is divided,” John said. “Some are saying she didn’t know herself.”
“Geeze Louise,” Dave commented with fervor.
“Well, she’s quite the odd duckling,” Andrew said. “Be interesting to see what happens with her.”
“Interesting,” John said. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Enough about Kincaid,” Stephen said. “Where are we going to eat?”
While his friends discussed places to eat and they all gawked at somewhere that wasn’t a military base, Andrew thought about what he’d learned.
It was interesting, despite John’s skepticism. It also didn’t change much Andrew decided on reflection.
That Kincaid had her strengths was nothing new. She’d not have made it to the Academy at all if that wasn’t the case. The issue was her weaknesses. Her academic background was not suitable for the Academy despite her natural ability, and socially, whoever her grandmother was, she hadn’t been brought up properly either. The fact she’d found a sport she was good at wouldn’t change either of those two problems. In fact, it’d exacerbate them.
Kincaid was going to lose study time, and she was going to lose opportunities to make headway with getting to know, and be known, by her cadet peers.
Already had, in fact.
Andrew was convinced she didn’t belong at the Academy, but he had no need to act on that conviction.
Andrew would, of course, be skeptical of her chances and suitability, when and if the topic came up, but he had no need to make any special effort or seem to be unfair.
The girl would manage to get squeezed out on her own.
It took teamwork to get through the leadership course they needed to pass. It wasn’t her fault, but she simply wasn’t a team player.
Regrettable, but that was the way it was.
* * *
Colleen was tired and disgusted.
Colleen was studying alone this evening in the room she technically shared with Katie Kincaid. As usual Katie was elsewhere either training for the biathlon, on the road to a biathlon event, or at a biathlon event.
A couple of weeks since the first weekend they’d been allowed off campus had passed. The weekend Katie had proved a no-show for. Colleen was still bitter that she’d gone out on a limb with the other girls to wrangle an invite to their day’s outing, and Katie had turned her nose up at it. She understood the logic. Still, it hurt.
Also, to be practical, it hadn’t helped her standing with the other girls. Like the boys, the girls tended to be jocks and extroverts.
Not Colleen. Colleen was happiest curled up in a corner somewhere with a book reading about something strange and complicated. It was a big world, full of odd and interesting things. Books provided a wonderful, safe, and relatively cheap way of visiting and learning about them. They also generally came with explanations by older, more knowledgeable guides.
By contrast, running around on a field kicking a ball in the company of people her age, who didn’t know more about the world than she did, and didn’t care anyway, wasn’t very attractive.
Somehow Colleen had got a reputation as a nerd. A wallflower who wasn’t that good at sports, and who was risk averse to the point of being timid.
Colleen’s was an old service family, and she’d known most of the other cadets, or at least known of them, from an early age. Colleen was part of the in-group. She was distinctly on its fringe. A handicap she needed to overcome.
It gave her some sympathy for Kincaid’s position as a complete outsider. It also made Kincaid’s outsider status a problem for Colleen.
Usually roommates were a team. They had each other’s backs. They covered each other’s weaknesses.
Colleen had tried to help Kincaid with her outsider status. She’d had it thrown back in her face. Katie didn’t seem to realize what she’d done, but Colleen wasn’t sure that made it better.
Worse, Kincaid was leaving her to struggle forward completely on her own.
Colleen had tried to talk to her about it. Pretty much without success. Girl wasn’t even around to talk to much, she always seemed to be desperately busy with something more important to her when she was.
Colleen wanted to help Katie Kincaid, and she wouldn’t have minded a little help in return. Kincaid had more than enough aggressiveness for the both of them, whereas Colleen had an intuitive feel for the way the wind was blowing in a group. In theory, they ought to complement each other nicely. Same with their studies. Colleen’s grasp of theory was excellent, and she had a well tuned sense of what others found plausible and convincing. Topic didn’t matter. Whether it was Math, History, or even languages, they could have helped each other. Only Kincaid was never around.
Colleen didn’t want to go it alone. Everything she’d ever heard about the Academy suggested teaming up and forming alliances was a key part of doing well there.
Wasn’t her strength though, and Kincaid seemed even worse at it.
Too bad. Time to suck it up and do what she could with the cards life had dealt her.
Colleen wasn’t going to turn her back on Kincaid. She’d be as helpful as she could.
She wasn’t going out on anymore limbs for her though.
Sad and annoying, but simple common sense.
* * *
Captain Karl Svenson, known to his biathlon team as “The Coach”, was something of a scholar. Had a doctorate in Military History, in fact. Svenson’s thesis had been on the military revolution in logistics. The one brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The one that had resulted in the WWI bloodbath.
Logistics had a hard, quantifiable quality he appreciated. A predictability lacking in discussions of
personalities and operations.
Svenson’s studies had made him acutely aware of the dichotomy between peacetime militaries and wartime ones. Peacetime militaries became sunk in tradition, routine, and process. Wartime militaries put a premium on innovation and flexibility in achieving concrete results. Results by whatever means necessary came to dominate. Came to dominate at a great cost in wealth and lives usually.
It worried him, knowing that those who couldn’t adapt died out. Died out like the Habsburgs and the Tzars.
The society he belonged to and its military had been coasting peacefully since the mid-twenty-first century. That was over two hundred years. Almost three hundred. Three to a dozen generations, depending on how you counted. Long enough for almost everyone to have forgotten the bitter lessons of the past, at any rate.
Nobody knew for sure when they’d make full contact with wider galactic civilization.
Svenson didn’t think it could be many more generations. Not from what friends who kept track of what was happening in the hard sciences told him. They said a breakthrough that allowed practical Faster Than Light, FTL, travel could come at any time. Even in their own lifetimes.
It was paradoxically a breakthrough almost nobody wanted to make. No one felt humanity was up to dealing with the wider universe. The Star Rats had been careful to not do much more than reveal their own existence.
That was enough.
Aliens with significantly higher technology existed. They feared other aliens sufficiently as to feel bound by their law. They weren’t being open with humanity.
That that fear strongly suggested the existence of FTL travel was an extrapolation, but a likely one. That was enough to have jump started research into it. The achievement of viable interstellar travel would open up the Solar System to contact with the rest of the galactic community. Full legal contact, at any rate. So said the Star Rats. It was one of the few pieces of information they’d been willing to pass on. Mainly in the context that such contact as they’d already established was only allowed as an emergency measure.
Katie Kincaid Space Cadet Page 8
