by A. C. Ellas
A cadet asked, “What was the elapsed time of that jump, sir? It seemed to take much longer than the simulated jumps we’ve experienced.”
Cai answered without even thinking about it. “Six point three seconds elapsed actual time.”
“But…” the cadet trailed off.
Ortat cleared his throat. “Astrogators slow their perception of time as they enter the jump, expanding those seconds into long, long minutes in order to give themselves enough time to react. So that while only six point three seconds elapsed in real, or actual, time, to the Astrogator, it took much longer. Cai, your subjective time?”
Cai replied, “Trainer, twelve minutes forty-eight point five seconds elapsed subjective time.”
Ortat stood up. “We have laid out refreshments for you in the conference room.” As the cadets stood and filed out of the room, Ortat looked at Cai. “Well done, lad. You’re a credit to your Guild.”
Cai smiled, feeling a bubble of warm happiness within, for Ortat’s praise was rare and almost never unleavened with areas he could improve in. “Thank you, Trainer.”
The captain stepped over, grinning. “Very impressive, Astrogator-elect. I look forward to seeing what you can do with a real ship.”
Cai blinked at him, having forgotten he was in the room. “Ah, thank you, sir.” He slid off the chair, stretching his stiff muscles. At least, he’d avoided a cramp today. He looked at Ortat, inclining his head. “Trainer? What am I to do now?” The schedule had been disrupted, after all, so he wasn’t sure what his trainer wanted to do next.
Ortat shurgged. “Now we go and be polite to the cadets for a little while. You need to eat before you pass out from low blood sugar anyway. That was a difficult simulation, and you used enough energy to put yourself into a sugar deficit.”
Cai inclined his head. “Yes, Trainer.” In other words, the test of his ability to shield continued. He exited the room, followed closely by the two adults. He walked back into the conference room, noting absently how all the cadets stopped talking when he entered. He nodded to them politely as he walked to the refreshments, trying to decide on what he wanted to eat.
Ortat watched him closely as he picked out some food, as if afraid that Cai was in imminent danger of collapse. Cai had to admit that he felt like a limp noodle at the moment, but he didn’t think he was that depleted. It had been months since the last time he’d passed out from low blood sugar. He sat down at the empty end of one of the tables, feeling far too shy to just barge in and sit by the cadets.
He hadn’t been sitting long when the cadet with the grey eyes brought his own plate over. “May I join you, sir?”
Cai tried to control his suddenly rapid heart rate as he looked up into those beautiful, stormy eyes. “Of course, Cadet. Please do. And call me Cai.” He looked down at his plate as the cadet sat down across from him.
“Nick,” replied the cadet, who began to eat again. A few minutes later, more of the cadets drifted over to sit near the young Astrogator.
Cai ate quickly, not having realized exactly how hungry he really was until he’d started eating. The cadets all nodded as if they’d expected that, causing Cai to raise an eyebrow at them.
A blond cadet grinned at him in a friendly manner. “We were taught that you ‘Gators use a lot of energy in the jump. So you have to replace the energy you use by eating. That’s why a ‘Gator fresh from a jump eats like a horse.” He glanced at Cai’s empty plate. “You just proved that theory, I think.”
Cai laughed. “I suppose so. My trainer is always nagging me about blood sugar levels and energy expenditures.” He shrugged. “And then he makes me eat, but I never seem to gain any weight.”
Ortat chuckled and dropped another plate full of food in front of Cai, who sighed. “Eat,” he said gruffly. “Because the cadets are right. You use more energy in a single jump than most humans use in a week. Your metabolism runs faster than normal, too, so you burn sugar at a remarkable rate just sitting there breathing, which is why you never gain weight. You burn it all off long before your body even begins to contemplate the making of fat.”
Cai knew better than to argue, he simply began to eat, more slowly now that the edge was off.
The cadet across from him asked quietly, “Do you enjoy what you do? Do you want to be an Astrogator?”
Cai blinked at the question, it wasn’t something he’d really thought about recently. “Yes, I enjoy it, even though it’s difficult. Maybe I enjoy it because it’s difficult, I’m not entirely sure there. As for wanting to be an Astrogator… do I have a choice, Nick? I am of the Guild, and if I survive the training, I will be an Astrogator. I certainly can’t imagine doing anything else, though, so I suppose that this is what I want as well.”
* * * *
The captain and Ortat were over in the far corner, keeping an eye on things but letting the youngsters be. Captain Tarnak asked quietly, “Is his power as great as rumor has it?”
Ortat nodded slowly. “I’m having a hell of time developing scenarios for him. He’s such a natural, rapid learner that we’re making stuff up for him now, like that singularity where no singularity should be. I could graduate him tomorrow if he weren’t having such difficulty with his psionic training. I wasn’t joking about his shields; he’s always had a problem controlling them because he’s so powerful. His psi tries to reach out and touch everything around it, so he has to double shield.”
“He has to keep everyone else out of his mind, and his mind out of everyone else’s?”
Ortat smiled. “I see you understand the basics.”
Tarnak shrugged. “Only the basics but enough to appreciate the problems he’s having and that you’re having with him.”
Ortat continued. “We can’t put him on a ship until he can hold his own against multiple minds. That’s why I brought him in here; he needs to practice shielding against more than just me.”
“I had wondered. You usually keep your Astrogator-elects under strict isolation, after all.” Tarnak glanced over at where the young ‘Gator was talking quietly to the cadets. “Have you seen the plans for the new class of heavy cruiser?”
“The Star Wolf?” Ortat followed his gaze to where Cai sat. “Yes, we’ve seen them. We’ve already recommended Cai for the program. He’s one of the few we have with the power to run a ship that size. In fact, he’d have power to spare even on a ship that size.”
Tarnak’ eyes widened. “He’s that strong? I knew he was powerful, but that just boggles my mind.”
Ortat smiled grimly. “Cai is, to put it simply, the singularly most powerful telepath in the history of the Guild. Only the old Psion Squad’s Hawk, I think, was stronger, but he was an animal telepath, unable to touch the minds of humans like Cai can. To put the comparison in modern terms, my range is about a hundred feet. Most Astrogators have a range of several hundred feet to a klick or two. His range is about a hundred klicks. We’ve had to put his quarters under a triple layer of shields to protect his sanity. He still can’t shield in his sleep, you see.”
“Oh,” said Tarnak quietly. “Oh, I see. I understand now, thank you.”
Chapter Fifteen: Nick
Touring the Psionics Guild had been one of the last things the cadets did on Earth. Only the first year of the Academy was held planetside, the remainder was held in space. The Space Corps maintained an orbital base in Jupiter’s gravity well, convenient to the asteroid belt, for the remainder of its cadets. Nick had enjoyed the tour, he’d always wondered what the Guild was about, and he hadn’t at all been disappointed, but Cai had been the highlight of the whole affair.
Even now, sitting in the belly of an orbital shuttle en route to El-Five Station, he found himself thinking about the tall, angular man. He was what the doc would have called a waif—tall, thin, without an ounce of spare flesh. He looked like a solid breeze could knock him over. But the tousled platinum hair suited him, and the intense blue eyes…those eyes stayed with Nick. The depth of them called
to him. He felt himself hardening at the memory of those eyes. He wished, with all his heart, that someday he might meet Astrogator Cai again.
From the shuttle and into the station, Nick kept up with his group, designated Cadet Squad Alpha Sixteen to differentiate them from other cadet groups in transit. There were just over one hundred of Nick’s class remaining out of the two hundred that started a year ago, and the word was that they could expect to lose another half of their class before they reached graduation in two years.
Word also was that anyone who’d made it to space-based training would no longer be a grunt marine if he washed out. A gunner or flyer remained possible, of course. But also, some of the non-coms, the sergeants and petty officers, were drawn from the Academy washouts. Ugly rumor had it that the ones who truly cracked in the head were wiped and repatterned as Astrogator adjuncts.
Why not? Nick wondered. They have to get adjuncts from somewhere. And if we’re wiped, we’ll never know it. Mind-wiping didn’t leave anything, not even a trace of the former person who inhabited that body. Whether or not there was a soul was debatable, but if there was, it was solidly linked in the synaptic connections of the brain and it, too, went away when those connections were broken in a mind-wipe, flying off to wherever it was souls went when they died.
El-Five was a popular stopping point and one of the two ports of entry for Earth, the other being El-Four. As a result, the public concourse was full of the wildest offerings of the galaxy. Two tall Q’Kathi were selling their famous vests and wing-capes right next to a Martian selling the red truffles the colonists had been cultivating for centuries. And that was just the start of the bazaar. The cadets fell into a single-file line behind Captain Tarnak, their primary instructor and commanding officer.
The civilians moved to let them pass without being obvious about it. Nick could sense the eyes on them, and with little effort, he could hear the whispered comments. His senses had also been expanded beyond human norm.
“Hot, young meat,” murmured a matron to her fellow grey-haired lady.
“Wouldn’t mind taking one for a spin,” the other cackled back.
Nick kept his face expressionless. The cadets were all fighting fit now after a year of intense training, so he wasn’t the only one with bulging muscles. Still, the image of intense blue eyes was more than enough to ward off any errant thoughts of entertaining middle-aged women. Nick did notice that while most looked on the cadets with amusement, tolerance and respect, some looked on with far less friendly eyes.
There hadn’t been an incident requiring the Space Corps to intervene in Earth space for nearly fifty years. But smugglers knew that the Corps was their enemy and they wouldn’t be opposed to taking out some cadets if they could. Nick was hyperaware of his surroundings, ready to defend himself or the cadets beside him, and he trusted that his classmates were similarly prepared. If they weren’t, Tarnak would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Besides, it was good practice to move through a public concourse in the hyper-alert state. Nick resolved to make a habit of it. There can never be a successful challenge of a Space Corps officer, he recited to himself. Accidents could and did happen. Ambushes could and did happen. But one on one, in a properly issued challenge-duel, no Space Corps officer had ever lost. And, if there was more than one Corpsman involved, ambushes failed more often than not.
Nick relaxed once they were out of the public concourse and moving through the restricted concourse exclusively for Space Corps use. He paused to admire his first sight of a Space Corps ship, a frigate or scout from the size, the slender, central cylinder pointing along the trajectory of its orbit. Space ships were neither feminine nor masculine on their own, but reflective of the gender of their Astrogator, for the Astrogator was the heart and soul of the ship.
Without the Astrogator, FTL was difficult and jumping was impossible. A ship who lost its Astrogator was regarded as nothing more than a pile of scrap. Expensive scrap, but scrap nonetheless, because it cost less to build a new ship than to rewire an old one for a new Astrogator. At least, that was the case in the civilian fleet. In the Space Corps, so long as the ship itself wasn’t damaged, the rewiring could be done for less than the cost of a new ship.
Nick hurried to catch up as the frigate vanished over Earth’s terminator line into darkness. They reached their destination at the far end of the military concourse. A long-range transport shuttle was docked there, waiting to take them, and a good deal of supplies no doubt, out to Ganymede Station. Even at half the speed of light, the fastest a shuttle like this could manage, it would take most of the day to reach Jupiter’s environs.
As he laid back against the cushion of the cradle that would protect his fragile form from the stresses of sublight acceleration, he found himself once more imagining Cai’s waif-like features. He’s like an elf, Nick decided, based on the slight slant to the brilliant blue eyes the exact hue of a perfect tanzanite and the fox-like set to his facial features. Mmm, fox is right. My very own arctic fox.
Thoughts of Cai and dreams of what he wanted to do to Cai occupied him through breakout and initial acceleration, but then, Captain Tarnak announced a class drill, and they went full tilt of a simulation of the shuttle venting to space.
Nick swung from his cradle and reached for the oxygen canisters because he was closer to those than to the patch kit. A quick check showed him that three people were headed for the patch kit, four for the oxygen, and three people, those who’d been in the middle, were testing airflow to pinpoint the leak. The drill was over less than a minute later as the hole was found and patched and everyone had an oxygen canister to hand.
From there, they practiced firing-point solutions using the computer console to take sightings for the position fix. Several space bodies, including Earth’s moon, Luna, were shot with imaginary missiles from the departing shuttle. Tarnak allowed them to rest for a short time before he threw up physics riddles for them to solve, followed by the complex orbital mechanics of Ganymede Station. Each cadet had to lay in their solution to mating the shuttle to the station dock and they only had a half an hour to work it.
By the time they actually got to the station, they were mentally exhausted. Then, things got even better. “Gravity,” announced Tarnak, “is a privilege, cadets. You will be in freefall until you’ve proved yourself ready for advancement.”
Years later, Nick was sure he’d look back on this time as formative, but right now, it was highly frustrating. Even the simplest of tasks were rendered difficult by the lack of gravity. But once he got his bearings—the Space Corps had resurrected a game straight out of science fiction—teams competed against one another in a null-gee form of laser tag with obstacles. The game was exhilarating and all consuming. Even once his class graduated to the artificial gravity barracks, the game, the battle, remained in the null-gee zone at the core of the station.
Like the cadets before him, and like the cadets who will come after him, Nick fell in love with the game. But Nick was more than a skilled shooter or player who could maneuver in null-gee. Nick was able to distance himself and see the patterns. He started bursting advice to his teammates. His team started winning.
In his studies outside of the game, Nick turned his attention to strategy, tactics and understanding the battles of the past and why they’d worked out as they had. He applied what he learned to the game, and in a year’s time, he was the captain of his team, and his team was ranked at the top of the standings. Nick graduated at the top of his class, was promoted to lieutenant and assigned to the Scarlet Dragon, a medium cruiser tasked with patrolling the trade lanes between worlds.
Chapter Sixteen: Cai
Cai walked down the row of displayed bodies slowly, pausing frequently to look whenever one caught his eye. He’d been brought down here, to the Guild Science Laboratory, to select the first two of his eventual six adjuncts. He was told that it was his eighteenth birthday. He didn’t feel any different though. He laughed at himself sof
tly, subliminally, and turned his attention to the task at hand.
The bodies were already prepared and programmed in several different models. Part of his choosing was selecting the models he wanted. Although the bodies looked human, he had been told that they weren’t. They were basically organic computers which were extensively wired with neurologic circuitry, giving them immense computational capacity.
Cai stopped before one body in surprise, taking a second look at the vivid reds and greens on the body’s left arm. “Is that a tattoo?”
Ortat looked at the body himself before replying, “Yes, it is.”
Cai’s gaze shifted to Ortat. “Trainer, if they’re not human, how did this one come to have a tattoo? Where do these bodies come from?”
Ortat grimaced and expanded on his original answer, “It’s more correct to say that they’re no longer human, Cai. We don’t usually discuss the exact truth of the matter, it’s not pretty, or something you really need to know. However, I’ll make an exception in your case, so long as you promise not to repeat this to anyone else, okay?”
Cai blinked at him, astonished to hear his trainer admit that the Astrogator-elects were lied to. Then he inclined his head. “Trainer, you have my word that I will tell no one.”
“They were all criminals, Cai. Each one has been condemned by the Court, fully convicted of terrible crimes and sentenced to death. The Court gives them to the Guild, lower-level telepaths screen each prisoner to make damned sure that they are actually guilty of the crimes for which they’ve been condemned. There have been innocents that we’ve exonerated by this method. The rest, the ones who are truly guilty, are mind wiped. Completely mind wiped…we disconnect every neural junction they have in their brains, down to the brainstem, which controls autonomic functions.
