Flight of the Outcast (5 page)

   Asteria nodded, hanging on his every word. She'd never known any of this—never even guessed at it.

   "They never got that far into the system," Altmon continued. "Something hit them, hard—the first attack wiped out the bridge, killing all the top-ranking officers. They were boarded by those spider warriors—you've seen pictures of them."

   Asteria's throat closed. She had seen the photos of dead ones: horrors that were deceptively small, only a meter high, standing on six flexible, long legs, with four more appendages, shorter than the legs, serving as either arms or weapons, depending on how you looked at them. They were supremely deadly, incredibly fast, and well shielded against beam weapons. Only missiles could kill them.

"What happened?" she asked.

   "About a third of the crew panicked and were abandoning ship. Your father was only a Chief Warrant Officer, but he organized resistance, scoured the command corridors, and killed the boarders, though he got hit with their heat beams. He was badly wounded, but he took control of the ship, dropped her into trans-space, and saved what was left of the
Adastra
—along with

804 lives. He was the acting captain on that strategic retreat."

   Asteria shook her head, baffled. "I thought an ensign took command. That's what the histories say."

   Altmon gave her a savage grin. "The Honorable Ensign Sanson Kalides
did take command—a week
later, back in Empyrion space. He came aboard at Six Stars Station and conned her back to dock at Corona. By then your father was in hospital bay. The ensign got official credit for saving the ship, an immediate promotion to lieutenant, and all the glory that a member of the Ruling Family would wish for. Your father got a set of cybernetic transplants and a grant of land for his services—and his promise never to speak about his true role in saving what was left of the crew. You see, Sanson Kalides was an ambitious politician back then. He wanted a swift promotion, and being the hero of the
Adastra guaranteed that.
Your father agreed because he was thinking of you—though you weren't even born then."

   "He never said a word about that to me."

   "He wouldn't have."

   "How well did you know my father?" Asteria asked him.

   Altmon took a last sip of his cava, set the cup down, and stood up. "We graduated in the same class. Two of my best friends were among the eight hundred aboard the
Adastra
who stuck with him. Kalides cracked down on the survivors. Warned them not to tell the true story to anyone. But you know how it is. Word gets around. And I liked your dad when we were in the Academy—even though he beat me in every test. And he was a good role model for me. Neither of us won an officer's commission. Commoners sometimes find the bar is set a little bit high for them." He smiled sourly and drank the last of his cava. His cup fumed and dissolved in the air.

The
Stinger
docked the next day for an eight-hour layover before resuming her trip to Corona. Asteria could tell she was an old ship, her hull patched in a hundred places, the plates showing microcraters from random impacts. She wasn't huge—the High Docks dwarfed her. A pulsebook had told her that the Defenderclass destroyers typically carried a crew complement of one hundred, to a max of one hundred fifty. They were designed for fast maneuvering and were equipped with only a third of the firepower of more modern destroyers. These days, they were commanded by junior officers, often by senior lieutenants who were given the title "Captain" only as a courtesy.

   Captain Rundell, then, was really Lieutenant First Class Rundell, a twenty-two-year-old man with a close-shaven head and no cheek tattoo. Without showing much interest, he scanned Asteria's admission letter, issued her a travel permit, and said, "We have one other cadet on this trip. I'll quarter you next to him. You'll have to take a warrant officer's berth, though— nothing luxurious. We're cramped."

"That will be fine," she said. "My father was a warrant officer."

   "Keep out from underfoot," Rundell told her, "and we'll get along."

   "Sir?" asked Asteria.

   "What?"

   "I was just wondering—you graduated from the Academy?"

   "I certainly did. Now get along to your quarters. I have things to do." Asteria went. And she realized something: Lieutenant Rundell was an officer. And he was a Commoner like her. So it could be done.

   If a Commoner could become an officer in the Fleet—a Commoner could fight the Raiders.

Asteria had been into space a few times before, into low orbit on planet-skimmers when her father had taken her to Central or to a short vacation on the Crystal Islands. She had never experienced interplanetary travel, though. Theron had no moon, and it was the only habitable planet in the system.

   She knew not to expect much of the
Stinger
. It was a busy ship, with more than a hundred people aboard, pulling three watches. At any given time, a third of the crew members were operating the ship, and two thirds were either resting or off-duty. Still, the
Stinger
was small enough for even thirty-five people to make up a crowd.

   Rundell gave her strict orders: She could visit the duty stations, but the bridge was off-limits unless he specifically invited her. She made the rounds, looking in on the engineering bay, where a dozen of the crew kept the ship's engines and systems running, a hive that smelled of ozone and that hummed with energy. Like all Fleet ships, the
Stinger now had scattered weapons-control bays, eac
h manned by a crew of five, one control officer and four gunners. With the officer's permission, the four bored crewmembers— skinny young men barely out of their teens—showed her the targeting and fire controls. Astronavigation was lonely; it was up to just the two of them to oversee the complex computations of space travel and of calculating a faster-than-light course.

   The
Stinger
, she learned, was a ship of Commoners. It made sense; an Aristo would never be placed in a subordinate position to a Commoner officer. Lieutenant Rundell's position as captain meant that he would have no Aristocrats in his crew.

   
It could be done,
she reminded herself again and again.

The day of the translight jump arrived. Asteria was curious about what faster-than-light drive would feel like. She had read that the effects of what everyone called FTL could be disturbing. Some people became comatose; others panicked. Once identified—and the only way to tell if you were likely to lose control was actually to experience the roll into trans-space and out again—those people who did have a problem with FTL had to be sedated for each translight jump.

   She was the only newcomer aboard, so on Rundell's orders she reported to the sick bay for observation during the maneuver. A medical Cybot strapped her onto a gurney and said, "Try to relax."

   As if she could. "How will I know when it starts?" she asked.

   "You will feel it."

She waited. Nothing. And then—

   She gasped. There was an incredible feeling of being
stretched
, as though her body had become pliable and was being elongated. A feeling of tightness, a blackness behind her eyes, a buzzing in her ears—

   Then it was over. "Are we in trans-space?" she asked in a calm voice.

   "Yes. Let me scan you."

   The instruments twittered. "How am I?"

   "Surprisingly well. I will release you. You have adapted to translight travel in a remarkably efficient manner."

   "Thank you."

   "The words 'Thank you' have no meaning to me."

   Asteria swung off the gurney and opened the door of the sick bay. She turned into the corridor outside and immediately collided with a lanky redheaded boy about her age, slamming hard against him and staggering for balance. "Hey!" he growled in protest.

   "I didn't see you," she said, recovering from the impact and frowning at him. "Anyway,
you
ran into
me
."

   "You the cadet we picked up?" he asked. His red hair was short—not as short as hers—but still close-cropped. She could tell that if it grew out, it would be curly. His face looked pleasantly homely—big nose, green eyes, freckles, split with a jaunty grin.

   She straightened her tunic and said coldly, "Yes, I'm on my way to the Academy."

   He stuck out his hand, and she merely stared at it. Smiling broadly, he said, "Come on, meet a fellow victim. Dai Tamlin, a humble Commoner scholarship cadet."

"I'm Asteria," she said, still not taking his extended hand.

   "What a name!" He smirked. "Better get a nickname before we reach Corona, or the Aristos will call you 'Hysteria.'"

   She stared coldly at him, but her lips felt as if they might curl into a grin.

   He dropped his hand, an uncertain expression flickering on his face. He darted an apprehensive look at her cheek, obviously searching for a tiny flame tattoo. "Uh—you're not an Aristocrat, are you? Because I didn't mean any class insult at all—"

   "I'm no Aristo," she said shortly, pushing past him.

   He hurried down the corridor after her. "Wait, wait. What did I say? I didn't mean anything by it! Hey, listen though, I was serious about a nickname. Don't call yourself Asteria. Shorten it to Aster or something, because those Aristos—"

   "Don't run down Aristos to me," Asteria interrupted over her shoulder. "I've heard that at least they have manners." She reached her quarters, went inside, and solidified the door behind her. The lights came on in the compact room, and she threw herself onto her bunk.

   A strange funk settled over her. She didn't know what kind of cadets she would meet at the Academy. She knew there would be other Commoners there. She only hoped some of them would be more appealing than Dai Tamlin.

      
packed cluster of eight star systems with a total of eleven
habitable planets among them. One of these, Coriam, is exclu
sive to members of the Ruling Family and their servants and
is off-limits to lesser Aristocrats and, of course, Commoners.
Dromia, the second planet from its sun in the same system,
became the operational capital of the Human Empyrion in
E.Y.S. 1811 and is the site of the Royal Military Academy. A
warm-temperate world, Dromia has 1.02 normal gravity, a
day of 26.1 Standard hours duration, a year of 640 local days,
divided into sixteen months of five eight-day weeks. Physical
features include a permanent North Polar ice cap and a total
of six continents, along with many—

    Impatiently, Asteria skimmed through the dull parts of the pulsebook until she found the entry for the Academy.

    
The Royal Military Academy was founded as the Space
Training Center in E.Y.S. 1802, fifty-one years after the
translight breakthrough made deep space colonization and
communication practical. Its original goal—to prepare crews
for exploration, world-seeding, and the transportation of colo
nists to new worlds—was altered several times, first in E.Y.S

   She scanned again. The images of the Academy came into her mind: it was located on a major island of Dromia, subtropical and lush with vegetation. The Academy had several subdivisions: Space Marines, Tech, Fleet Officer School, Surface Forces, Air Forces. Each one had a separate campus, each a sprawling complex of grounds and buildings. She was headed for Fleet Officer School, thanks to her cousin's legacy appointment. Hmm. A first-year student body of twelve thousand, approximately. Ninety percent of them were Aristos. Most Commoners went to either Tech, Space Marines, or Surface Forces. They made up the inventors and maintenance crews, the grunts who fought against the Raiders, the keepers of the Empyrion law on all the planets of the empire, the pilots who provided transportation.

   Of course, Asteria thought, the Fleet didn't always fight against the Raiders. That seemed to happen only when the local ruling Aristo didn't think it was too much trouble to order retaliation. She pushed her resentment down and wondered what it would be like to be an officer.

   Fleet Officers lived their lives in space.

   Asteria felt a flutter of apprehension in the pit of her stomach. They had already reached the Dromia System and had dropped into normal space—another gut-wrenching sensation of being liquefied and distorted—and now were sailing in under normal ion thrust. The problem with trans-space was that in order to fold space-time into a kind of wave, dropping a ship into what amounted to a different universe—"think of it as surfing," a pulsebook had unhelpfully told her—the ship had to be well clear of space lanes and inhabited worlds. Theoretically, if a trans-space engine were engaged on the surface of a normal planet, one of two things might happen: the engine might simply explode, simultaneously evaporating several hundred thousand cubic kilometers of the planet's crust, or the engine might drop into trans-space and create a wormhole that would suck the planet to shreds within minutes.