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STORY THREE: FOUR STORIES
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one hundred and seventeen years later, exactly 300 years after first transit
Astrophysical equations covered the academy lightboards as professor Taub entered the third hour of a five-hour lecture. This was the nadir of an academy lesson, over the hump, but with a long way still to go...
At the front, in the small row of students who gave a damn, Ivana Fedotova took notes...hardly notes really, in fact she copied every word the professor said, and while she followed every word exactly, there would doubtless be numerous follow-up questions once the lecture concluded. Fedotova had unmet expectations to fill...the Society of Colonial Explorers (S.C.E.), inventors of ion technology and the seekers-after-a-second-earth, had selected her from an early age for inclusion in the scientific elect. After psychographics and full-spectrum karotying confirmed her considerable intellectual potential, she was taken from her family on Beargrass, and moved to the nearby moon of Siyeh, the headquarters of the protectorate that governed known space. Fedotova was only 18, but already a recognized expert in geophysics and plate tectonics. With three more years of academy training, she might go on to crew a survey shuttle...or head up an entire science division! The entire academy knew Fedotova was bound for greatness...Fedotova knew it most of all.
Beside her sat Lee Yun Jie, another student the Protectorate had moved to Siyeh...but from considerably farther away. "Yun", as he preferred to be called, was from the burgeoning colony of Von Neumann Prime, several systems away. The son of a plasma physicist and a botanist, who headed up one of the science-collectives on Von Neumann, Yun had gone on to excel in his primary education...but unlike Fedotova, the Protectorate had not recruited him for his intelligence. When the Protectorate had requested he board a Cryoshuttle from his home to the distant moon of Siyeh, at the age of 8, they already had plans for a fleet of warships...and they needed excellent individuals like Yun to pilot them. That was a decade ago, and the ships were still under construction...but they would likely be complete by the time Yun graduated. Gupta's lecture was at the edge of his comprehension, but he strained to reach what he could not grasp: this could be important someday. Someday the Protectorate might call on him to execute some rapid burn around an alien moon, or reverse a ship's course and engage an enemy in hiding, just beyond the range of a scanner...he had to be ready. He had to know this stuff.
At the back, in the considerably larger row of conscript-students who could really care less, lurked Everett Sledd, who had one of the lowest marks in the class, and no hope of following along with Gupta's description of long-period comets. His attention was focused on Fedotova herself...not exactly the prettiest girl in the ranks, but what a story it would be. Sledd's conquests were already the stuff of legend around the academy, but this would be the crowning achievement to several years of diligent work...he suspected his advances would work as well. Fedotova needed to loosen up. He resolved to approach her at the next concorse social event and offer her "a ride on the sledd." That never failed. Sledd, like most of the academy, was a conscript from Beargrass colony itself. Service was ostensibly mandatory, but the Protectorate had no luck enforcing its own laws...he stuck around for the paycheck, most of which he sent to his family on one of the polar communities. The protectorate needed a steady supply of conscripts to service ever-increasing demands for parts and mineral deliveries to the outlying colonies, and maintain the fleet of S.C.E. Scoutships in their search for habitable worlds to colonize. Sledd was content to finish out his time in the academy, serve ten years as a ground crew maintenance technician on Hawkweed or Musette, and then...well, he hadn't planned on anything after that. He'd finished his training in servicing shuttles and duranium welding two years ago...the knowledge imparted by the academy after that point would only be useful in the unlikely event that the Big Sky Protectorate got involved in a ground war. In said war, his academy training would obligate him to serve as a captain...or a lieutenant...or something...he forgot. The point was it was unlikely. Fedotova...now *she* was a certainty. He could feel it...
And at the very back of the room, Lara Panin drew spiral designs in a book of unlined paper. She had no interest whatsoever in Gupta's lecture, because her success was assured...unlike the others at the back, she was not a conscript...in fact her family had secured her membership in the Academy through byzantine political maneuverings far beyond Panin's ken. They knew the Governor of Siyeh. They'd cashed in a lifetime of favors to get Panin a seat at the Academy in the hopes that after graduation, she might get deployed to Divaajin...while not exactly a second Earth, it was the closest thing to the old world in charted space. One could even go outside there (for brief periods). While assignments from the Protectorate were in theory based entirely on merit, the Panin family had ways of bending the rules.
finally at the point where I can tell a story over years, rather than centuries...which career should the next several stories follow?
