Hegemony (36 page)

There were two hundred cadets, all told, brought in over the course of a few hundred hours. Zandy shared quarters with three other cadets, two boys, one girl. She learned names and where they came from. She got to know what they had wanted when they accepted a place at the Academy. And she got to know what she had wanted too.

The easiest part of it, Zandy knew, was, paradoxically, that it was so hard. The training was so intense that there was no time for doubts; no second thoughts, no time for worries. The courses and training came in sixteen hour bursts, with eight hours for sleep and free time, much more of the former than the latter. The cycle was deliberately off from the 21 standard hours (plus one shorter compensation hour) of a New Ionian day. It was a match for an Old-Earth day, Zandy learned, and wondered if that was why it had been chosen.

Basic Selection Training ran a full tenkay: ten thousand hours. In that time there would be no leave, no vacations, no deviation from the schedule. Zandy sent messages to her family, to be delivered by mail, on hard copy. For the first time, it struck her as a terribly strange that her family should not own even a single pers-comp or data terminal that could connect to the New Ionian data and communications network. She supposed that her siblings still had their school-issued data readers, but those had only been able to read self-contained data-vid chips and receive short text messages from the school. But, whatever the reason, she never got a reply.

There were a few other cadets from the residence zones as well, but whatever common ground she thought she might have had with them came to nothing, and Zandy found that her closest companions were her roommates.

There was Lydia Sasanar, the other girl, dark haired and with a short but curvy figure that Zandy was vaguely envious of, though Lydia in turn was jealous of Zandy's height. Lydia was from a small town on the far side of New Ionia;
demoi
, but from a rich family. She'd already had an implant, though the Fleet had replaced it with a better one. Then there were the two boys, Philip and Gan. Philip Lee, Phil, was
demoi
, from a colony world one FTL transit from New Ionia, called Second Chance. His family were farmers, and the little bits of his life that Zandy got to hear of sounded unreal: running soil reclamation machines, dealing with crop shipments, hunting down local pack predators that threatened the livestock. It sounded adventurous to Zandy, though maybe not in comparison to what they were going through now. Phil was tall and lanky, and somehow looked like a farmer, with his natural orange-red hair. Not bad looking, though, Zandy thought.

Last was Gan. Ganymede Sandros was from an
aristokratai
lineage. He was, counter to the stereotype of a typical
aristokratai
youth, a frank and open young man. On the other hand, just like the stereotype, he was very handsome, almost pretty, with refined features and dark hair that contrasted intriguingly with pale green eyes. Gan had told them without hedging that he had failed the Examination that all children of the
aristokratai
were allowed to take, to confirm their
aristokratai
status without recourse to the Academies' Basic Selection Training. But he
had
made it into the Fleet Academy, to the relief of his mother, who was a
telestos,
a high rank in the New Ionia government service. Zandy had asked about his father, and Gan had laughed.

"No father. I'm a cross-gender clone of mom."

"Oh."

"It's not that uncommon, you know. A lot of aristos have non-conventional children. I mean, it's non-conventional from the start; it's not like they can have normal children. They all have their genetic material banked, but once you do that, you can get creative really easy. I knew one girl, she was a gene-mix of six women; her primary mother gave 50% of the genome and her mother's five favorite female lovers contributed the rest."

"Oh," Zandy had said again, and decided to let the topic go.

The time went fast at the Academy. Learning to understand and use the data feeds, learning military law, custom and forms of address, basic training in weapons, tactics, learning Hegemonic history, military sociology and psychology... there were courses that Zandy had never even heard the names of. A million things were pushed into her mind through direct interface data feeds.

Not everyone could keep up. By the time five thousand hours had passed, there were only about a hundred cadets left. Some of those who couldn't stay in were transferred to serve in New Ionia's System Defense Force as
demoi
enlisted personnel; those were allowed to keep their implants. Some were rejected entirely, sent back to New Ionia after a quick surgery to strip them of the Fleet-issued direct interface implants. Zandy heard rumors that some of the ones rejected that way wound up suiciding. After five thousand hours at the Academy, it didn't surprise her.

In her moments of free time, Zandy thought that she was not much like the Alekzandra Neel who had arrived at the Academy. It had been thousands of hours since she had worn anything but a cadet's version of the uniform Fleet Blacks. She could now read the gold symbols on a uniform and instantly know the rank, qualification ratings,  operational specialty and commendations of the Fleet member she was looking at. She was as comfortable in free-fall as under acceleration; she didn't even think to call it "gravity," though she could tell how many gees it was by feel, to a decent accuracy. She was comfortable using a data feed, letting her brain accept information that ignored her own senses. She could use a pulse-laser, and field strip it. She had learned the basics of
telestraal
, the Hegemony's gunfighting martial art. She knew the fundamentals of orbital maneuvering and deep space navigation and the basic workings of singularity reactors and plasma drives. She was a long way from the empty life she had dreaded in Residence Zone Garnet, though it amused her just how much her new life
was
pre-fabricated by the Fleet, and how little that mattered to her.

There
were
some free moments. The Academy encouraged athletics among the cadets, and Zandy found an aptitude for free-fall basketball that pleased both her and the instructors. Some cadets found a measure of psychological stability in religious services, though after attending a few sermons, Zandy decided it was not worth her limited free time.

She took some lovers, at first wondering if it was forbidden, and then knowing that the Academy expected it. First there was Gan, who proved to be a sophisticated partner. Gan had been a revelation to her, as far as sex went. But Gan was uninterested in anything lasting. Then there was Phil, who was more of a friend with sex thrown in as a benefit. The casual nature of it, with no privacy in the shared room, wasn't even weird to Zandy anymore. For that matter, she would once have been infuriated that her lovers were also Lydia's lovers, and now that just seemed natural. The ethos of the Fleet was radically different from what she had once known in Residence Zone Garnet.

---

When she had first arrived at the Academy, Zandy had feared the disdain and derision that she might catch for coming from a residence zone, but it turned out that there wasn't much of that. What comments she did hear, mostly to the effect that the Fleet was wasting its time with her and others like her, came from only a few of the other cadets. Still, there had been one incident that had shocked Zandy, more for what she learned from it than from the insults themselves. It had started with another cadet, weighing in on the residence zones and the cadets who came from them.

"The zones are a dumping grounds, a trash-lot for humans... And the humans that come from there are trash," said the dark-haired cadet. His family name was "Stane." Zandy could not, just now, remember his first name.

Stane smiled at her sudden stillness and went on. "Every planet gets a surplus of non-productive proles, parasites. Not good for anything. Can't make any use out of 'em, so they shove 'em into residence zones. But I think it's pretty stupid to let the trash out of the zones and into the Fleet Academy like this. Bad policy... won't end well for the Hegemony."

Zandy could feel her face go stiff with rage. Her legs tensed to throw her at the other cadet; he was a
demoi
like her, but not from the residence zones, and dismissive of a residence-zoner like her. There were four other cadets in the compartment, taking the rare chance of an entire extra hour off from scheduled instruction to wait in line for access to the hydroponic garden on the Academy Station. That was a favorite place for cadets to pass free time, amid lush and colorful free-fall adapted plants. But the garden had a maximum occupancy rule, as well as a twenty minute time limit for those in the garden whenever the occupancy was maxed out.

The cadet who had insulted her was speaking mostly for the benefit of the others, showing off, maybe trying to gain a little status as a sharp wit. Zandy had heard negative comments about the residence zones before, but never directly aimed at her.

Some calculating part of Zandy's mind, still working despite her growing rage, thought she'd probably get the better of a fight. She was one of the better free-fall basketball players among the cadets in this tenkay's class. Her tormentor had free-fall training, all the cadets did, but she didn't think he'd be able to match her free-fall movement skills. Of course, that same calculating part of her was telling her that assaulting another cadet was just the sort of stupid move a residence zoner would be expected to pull, on her way to being kicked out of the Fleet Academy.

"What's the matter, zoner?" he asked, pitching his voice to be heard. "Didn't they teach you how to talk at those animal obedience schools you attended?"

"How does it feel, then?," Zandy managed to grind out, "to be behind a zoner like me in class ranking?"

A couple of the other cadets laughed.

"She's got you there, man," one said.

Stane's face went white. "You fucking bitch!" he shouted, and launched himself at her. His move was fast, but not as fast as what she had coped with before in the free-fall court. Zandy pivoted in place and kicked, spinning herself head over heels with practiced timing, floating just out of the way of the other cadet's ballistic rush and then, as she completed her spin and he bounced with painful force from the wall he had just run into, slamming both her feet into the his back. The force of the second impact sent her flying back into the compartment. The same force slammed him back into the wall a second time. Blood began to seep out from his nose, forming little crimson beads in free-fall.

"Cadet Neel, Cadet Stane." The instructor's voice was calm, forceful, formal. Instruction Officer Calwin Ishida was the very image of a Fleet officer, immaculate in his Formal Fleet Blacks, with a quarter of his tunic covered in gold rank, merit and qualifications glyphs. His face was dark-skinned and rugged, with narrow, slanting green eyes and a buzz-cut of pale blond hair.

"Sir," Stane said, "I was just--"

"No talking, Cadet Stane," the instructor said. "Fighting between cadets is strictly forbidden. Outside of unarmed combat practice, that is. Cadet Neel, next time you want to bloody another cadet's nose, that is the place to do it."

Ishida shifted his gaze away from Zandy, focused on Stane. "Cadet Stane," he said, "spare me your stupid excuses. This is going to be your only warning; first, last and only. Your direct provocation of Cadet Neel is unacceptable. Your losing your temper and trying to attack her is even more unacceptable. Your abject stupidity in thinking that the annex compartment was not being monitored... I mean, I assume you thought that-- or else you're lying about the incident, which is even stupider than I think..." Ishida paused.

"And," the instructor went on, "you started a fight you couldn't win, which is not really impressive either. The only reason you are still at the Academy is that your technical class rankings are quite good. On the other hand, Cadet Neel is correct about your standing in the navigation and tactics courses; you're substantially behind her there.

"You get one more chance, Stane, to show that this was some sort of temporary stupid-virus that your immune system failed to fight off. The next infraction, even if it's just being late by one second, or your uniform out of order, and you are done. Dismissed, Cadet Stane."

Stane held himself at attention, pivoted in place and pulled himself out of the compartment, grabbing the free-fall stanchion and throwing himself into the passway with barely controlled force.

"Now," Ishida said, "Cadet Neel. A pretty good move when he rushed you, but you'd have done better to stick to your free-fall combat training and not get fancy. Tell me, Cadet Neel, does what Cadet Stane said about you bother you?"

"Sir?"

"Does it bother you? Does it bother you that the residence zones are, in actual fact, a parking lot for surplus population that the Hegemony has no real use for?"

"Sir, I..."

"Because that is a fact, Cadet," Ishida said.

"Yes, sir," Zandy said, flat voiced.

"You don't agree, Cadet?"

"N... I'm not sure, sir."

"Let me make a few things clear. We are not going to coddle you just because you came from the residence zones, not even to the degree of a few nice words. If you are the sort who can't take the pressure of being insulted, if you think you need an official apology to sooth your wounded, disadvantaged, residence zone psyche, then you have no place at the Academy." Ishida looked at her as if expecting a reply.