Space Cadets (7 page)

Perspective

When I was strong enough to hold up my own weight, I was given free reign of the camp. It’s funny, but I’ve lived here for my entire life, and only now do I see it in a different light. Maybe it’s because all the cadets either look up to me or else avoid me like I might detonate. Maybe it’s because there aren’t any teachers or classes going on. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed in fundamental ways.

Stacy Jones was trying to make eye contact with me at lunch time but I ignored her. She’s a sadistic bitch so she probably loves me now that I have blood on my hands. I sat next to Becky Morrison because she’s a nice weirdo. Those people generally repel people like Stacy.

Danny Jackson, the fake badass of my class, turned away every time I came near him. I think I intimidate him now. I think I always did, but now there’s proof that I’m a tough son of a bitch.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to go and look in on Mrs. Salazar. I wanted to know her mindset now that she knew the truth: the Enemy was never a hoax. She’d been duped by the Skeptics.

There was a guard standing outside her door. It was the detention room we get locked in when an instructor had enough of our crap.

I sheepishly asked if I could have a word alone with her.

“Sure kid. Without you, this entire facility would be scorched pieces of metal strewn across the surface of Mars. I hear they might give you the Platinum Shield for that.”

He unlocked the door and said, “I’m gonna take a shit. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

It was only then that I realized he thought I wanted to have sex with Mrs. Salazar. I was about to correct him but he was already leaving.

I went inside, a little on edge that the door was unlocked and the guard was gone.

Samantha Salazar smiled and stood up when I came through the door. “I’ve been asking that dumbass guard to go and get you all day and he refused. I guess he changed his mind.”

“No. I came here on my own.” But now I know why the guard thought we were an item.

She sat back on the mattress and motioned for me to take a seat beside her. I refused and defiantly stood two feet in front of her.

“Would you have killed me if I’d gotten in your way?” I said this with tension in my voice.

“You did get in the way and I spared you. I like you Jack. I’ve always liked you.”

“What were you going to do with that ship anyway?”

She sighed, clearly displeased being off topic. “We were going to use it to destroy as many other ships as possible. It was a suicide mission, really.”

“How do you feel now that you know you killed for a stupid, false ideal?”

“I feel terrible for everything I did. I was misled and coerced by the Skeptics. I’m young and impressionable.”

“I’m not a judge. Save your nonsense for him.”

“I can’t go to court Jack. They’re going to shoot me. And I know you don’t want to be here either.” She paused to see if I had anything to say and then she continued, “We could just leave all of this mess behind, you and I.”

Then she stood up and bent forward. Before I had a chance to move away, she was kissing me greedily. I hate to admit that I kissed her back. I also hate to admit that it led to more serious kissing and then we both fell into bed together.

We were just barely done when the guard returned and tapped on the door to let me know my time was up.

She kissed me again, fat tears welling in her eyes. I got dressed and headed for the door.

She said in an exasperated tone, “Have you thought about what I said?”

I turned on her. “Not for a second lady. You blew the captains brains out all over my visor. You killed the teleportation tech for no reason. You killed that poor guy in charge of the all-stop. You would have used the Conquistador to massacre as many people as possible. You’re a scumbag. I would never run away with someone like you.”

She shrieked, “Then why did you have sex with me?”

“I didn’t. You had sex with me because you thought you could manipulate me. I’m a lot smarter than you think I am.”

“You’re not the same sweet boy I remember from class,” she said sadly, still trying in vain to trick me.

“No I am not,” I agreed, with the knowledge that that was an understatement.

Then she tried a different tactic. “I’ll tell you who is in charge of the Skeptics if you let me go.”

“We’re killing them all as we speak. We’ll get to him eventually.” To soften the blow, I added, “Tell someone important that you will speak with a judge immediately regarding leniency. Let that information dangle in front of them like a carrot on a stick.”

She yelled, “I don’t want leniency, you little punk. I want to be free.”

I’ll admit that I got a bit of a high from it all. I had just banged the hottest teacher in camp and my self righteous side got a nice workout afterwards, but as I left and I heard genuine sobs come from the room, my heart broke for her despite the fact that she was a conniving murderer. I shouldn’t have let her seduce me but I’m young and impressionable.

Call to Arms

Mr. Humboldt called for me when I was fully healed. He said, “Jack, your presence is requested aboard the Conquistador.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you heard? We’re going to war and almost everyone who has combat experience with an A.C.E skin died fighting the Skeptics.”

“But I’m not old enough to serve yet.”

“In your case, they’ve made an exception. Make those Bleeders bleed son.”

I think he thought that made me a lucky boy, but I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like I was being ordered to my death.

ACE 3 copyright Adam Moon 2013

All rights reserved

Jack Peterson

First contact with an alien race didn’t go the way people had hoped. It sucked, really. I wasn’t even born yet when they arrived in earths orbit. Neither were my grandparents.

At first, they did nothing. They just circled and watched.

Then, just as our ancestors started to get really frightened, they opened up dialogue with some world leader. What they had to say was even scarier than when they just observed us silently. They told humanity that it would be evaluated over the course of the next several hundred years. They said that if we weren’t up to their standards, whatever they were, that we would be wiped out. Then somewhere between one and three million people simply vanished from the face of the earth and the alien spaceship disappeared. We’re pretty sure now that those people were abducted. We think the aliens took them to experiment on them but there’s no way to be sure.

That was over two hundred years ago.

Guess what humanity has done in that time: We prepared for their return. We militarized our space program and trained for war.

My name is Jack Peterson. I’m a cadet aboard Deep Camp Eighty Seven that orbits Mars.

A lot has happened to me in the past few weeks.

A terrorist group called Skeptics who don’t believe that aliens visited the earth; that the entire story is a hoax to keep people down, have destroyed most military compounds. They even took over my camp until I liberated it with the help of my rector, Mr. Humboldt.

They tried to take over the warship, the Conquistador, that my class was visiting on a field trip but my hero, Rick Pringle teleported over and kicked the crap out of them.

Skeptics may need to rethink their stance now that we found a real alien spaceship. If that’s not proof of their existence, I don’t know what is. But the truth hasn’t slowed those bastards down one bit. They are still being subdued. They are still taking us apart where we least expect it.

So we have a war at home with the terrorists and we have a flight path to the alien planet we were able to glean from the alien ship’s computer; which means we have a real, interstellar war in our immediate future.

It’s a bad time to be a cadet.

New Mission

I had just fully recovered from a gunshot wound to the hip when my new rector, Mr. Humboldt called for me.

He said, “Jack, your presence is requested aboard the Conquistador.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you heard? We’re going to war and almost everyone who has combat experience with a mech died fighting the Skeptics.”

“But I’m not old enough to serve yet.”

“In your case, they’ve made an exception. Make those Bleeders bleed son.” That was what the aliens called themselves.

I think he thought that made me a lucky boy, but I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like I was being ordered to my death.

He added, “Pick two cadets to join you. Don’t choose based on anything but combat skills. And don’t just choose fellow students you dislike because you want them to die either.”

That was uncalled for. I had seen some combat in recent weeks and even killed, but I was no monster.

Instead of correcting him, I just nodded and asked, “When do I teleport to the warship

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Ok,” I said.

As I was leaving his office he called after me. “They’re probably going to award you the Platinum Shield for your bravery. They speak your name in the same breath they speak Rick Pringle’s. Make our camp proud Jack.”

I smiled the best I could. Platinum Shields don’t mean squat if you’re dead. The same people back on earth who were talking about me like I was some kind of hero didn’t care that I existed before a few weeks ago.

I was an orphan, cast out like a piece of trash; plugged into a military machine without my consent, from birth.

I sighed and shoved my misgivings aside. No one cares.

I felt like a chump for feeling so bad for myself. Most of camp Eighty Seven had been murdered by Skeptics and I had gotten lucky.

Comrades

I already knew I wanted to bring Stacy Jones with me. I don’t like her, but she’s a sadistic bitch who would love the chance to kill Bleeders. Plus she’s cute, so that helps. I just didn’t know who else to bring. Danny Jackson is one of those phony badasses so he’d probably tell me no, in private of course. But he was the obvious choice so I marched into the mess hall and stood up on a vacant table.

To my utter embarrassment, no one saw me there except Becky Morrison, the class weirdo. She put her chin on the table and waited for me to say something. If she hadn’t seen me, I might have just got down and walked away.

After a few seconds ticked by, enough people had turned my way that a general hush came over the crowd.

I said, “I have been chosen to go back to the Conquistador to fight the Bleeders.” We were all calling them that now. “I can select two people to come with me. “Who wants to join me?”

A couple of hands went up. I was surprised that one of them belonged to Danny Jackson. I pointed at him. “Danny, you’re with me. We leave in the morning.”

I ignored the other hand because it belonged to Becky Morrison, and scanned the crowd for Stacy. Maybe she was eating in her dorm?

I finally saw her, and I was surprised that she had her arms crossed, staring back at me insolently. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as she portrayed to the world.

Reluctantly, I pointed at Becky and asked in front of everyone, “Are you sure about this?”

She got to her feet and said to everyone in the hall, “We are all servants. That is our purpose. Without servitude, each and every one of us would have died of starvation as babies. Our parents abandoned us. Our planet shot us out to this hell hole to get rid of us. But the military wants us. The military has invested in our futures. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for not jumping at the opportunity to give back. Of course I’m ready.”

That’s what I meant when I said she was a weirdo. I forced my eyes to not roll and said, “We move out in the morning. Welcome aboard.”

Mission
Abort

I was in my dorm room rubbing my still tender hip when Mr. Humboldt rushed in.

He breathlessly said, “The President wants you to postpone your mission. He wants to personally issue you the Platinum Shield. He says it will be symbolic, in our time of warfare.”

I sat up on my bed and said, “When does he arrive?”

Mr. Humboldt looked at me like I had a turd on my face. “You can’t be serious? He’s not going to come all the way out here for that. You need to go to him.”

I jumped to my feet. “I get to take a trip to Earth?” I had never once been to Earth, besides being born there. But I had no memories of the place.

“Yes, but don’t get too excited. They’re a little worried about Skeptics. They think they might try to assassinate you during the award ceremony. You’ve become a symbol of hope to the administration and an object of hatred to the terrorists.”

“I don’t give a shit if they succeed killing me. I’d do anything to breath in Earth air and drink Earth water.” I didn’t worry too much about swearing around Mr. Humboldt. We’d been through a lot together.

“Well they’re going to give you an armored uniform just in case. Have you ever tried one on?”

He knew I hadn’t. We didn’t get fancy stuff like that up here. An armored uniform isn’t like a mech skin. You actually wear it on your body. But it has similar capabilities to a mech. I was pretty excited to get to wear one.

I pushed my luck, just to see if he’d push back. “I want to keep the armored uniform when I’m done.”

He laughed. “You are a gutsy little fucker. Let me see what I can do. Your transport leaves a little before midnight. I already have a flight path plugged in.”

“How long will it take? Do I dock with a space station or something or does the transport take me down?”

“The transport will put you down in Chicago, Illinois. That’s where the President will be. The trip to Earth will only take about twenty nine hours. Bring a book or something. It gets mighty lonely staring out at the black for that long.”