University [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 6] Read online

  If the two boys hadn't been staggering under the unaccustomed load of the duffel bags in renewed gravity, they would have looked very impressive indeed.

  After they climbed down into the tunnels, the environment tube sealed itself off and a hatch closed. Silvery-blue lights, activated by motion sensors, came on five meters ahead of their group, turning off fifteen seconds after they passed.

  “Welcome, Captain Lin Fieran, Apprentice Chobainian Kern, Cadet Gorgi Cole,” a voice said from a long line of tiny speaker grids in the ceiling of the tunnel. “Quarters have been arranged for Fieran and Kern in the adjudicator's sector on the Council's side of Centralis. Cadet Cole's dormitory room is in green sector, level four. Your keycards will be waiting at the residency desks in your assigned areas."

  “Uh, thanks,” Gorgi said. The voice didn't respond.

  “Captain Fieran and Apprentice Kern, your arrival has been noted and your testimony session is estimated to begin after approximately five days. That is the current waiting length. We apologize for the backlog."

  “That's interesting,” was all Lin said.

  “We didn't need to hurry after all,” Bain mumbled.

  “Yes, we did.” She glanced over her shoulder at them. The clips in her hair gleamed in the silvery-blue light. “If we had arrived two hours later, the wait would have been a day more. I know, by experience.” She shrugged and continued leading the way down the tunnel.

  The tunnel finally angled upward again. A guard in the black-striped crimson uniform of Council Security stood guard over another airlock. He wore a multi-dart at his hip, and his helmet had a computer-focused viewer. Bain had heard about those helmets; the man's weapons were linked into the helmet's computer to guide aiming and firing, and also made records for use in trials. If the criminal being fired upon survived to face trial.

  Lin and Bain's collar links identified them. The guard took their fingerprints and retina scans and put a seal on the latch for their collar links so they couldn't be removed. Security would be able to find Lin and Bain through their collar links, to guard them and find them if they were needed sooner than expected. Gorgi went through the same scanning process, to match up with the records sent by the Rangers when they arranged for his classes. He was given a wristband that did the same thing for security that the collar links did. His wristband also had a computer link, so he could ask for directions and information. The guard contacted Ganfer through the University's computer system and the ship-brain opened up a single channel to the collar links so Lin and Bain could do the same.

  Then, all three were allowed to pass through the airlock. On the other side were the domes of the Commonwealth Council's domain, and the Upper University.

  Chapter Four

  When they came out above ground, the landscape had changed drastically. The air smelled sweet and fresh; natural, not filtered and deodorized and freshened thousands of times. Bain stared when he saw grass and trees growing between tiled pathways in different colors that radiated out from the tunnel entrance in fifteen different directions.

  “Wow,” Bain breathed. “This is just one dome?” He tilted his head back and tried to see the edge of the dome. With the midday light coming through the clear polymer-steel alloy of the dome, heightened with filters and full-spectrum lights, it was hard to tell exactly where the dome stopped and the airless chill of space started.

  “One of forty-eight domes,” Lin said. She stepped aside and turned around, surveying the paths, the vista blocked by tall trees with leaves so dark green they looked black in the shadows. “I hear they're planning three more domes by the end of this Standard year."

  “What happens if they run out of room someday?” Gorgi asked. He turned in a tiny circle, looking upward, until he ran into Bain. Both boys stumbled, then grinned at each other.

  “I suppose they'll have to move either the university or the Council's support system to another asteroid, or a planet, and let the one that remains take over the domes.” She shrugged. “It's what I would do."

  “Yeah, but bureaucrats don't have half the common sense Spacer captains do,” he returned.

  “Bad experience, huh?” Lin patted Gorgi's shoulder. “Thanks for the vote of confidence ... but I'd suggest you keep that sentiment hidden. You're in the land of the bureaucrats, even if you stay on the University side of Centralis."

  They settled Gorgi in his dormitory room, then went in search of Lin and Bain's rooms on the other side of the habitation sector. That trip involved passing through six airlocks between domes. It also meant passing from the University's security system to the Council's—and required another check with their collar links and wristband and the security computer. Bain supposed he would get used to this if he had to keep coming back and forth, but he hoped not.

  His and Lin's guest quarters, all facilities, entertainment and meals paid for by the Council, were huge. Bain stood in the doorway of the sanitary and stared. The bathing tub was bigger than his bed on board Sunsinger. He had a shower stall, a sink, thick towels of every color, scented soaps and scrubbing creams, brushes and lotions all in decorative racks hung on the wall. He had a bed twice the size of his cubicle, and a seating area with an entertainment screen and a three-dimensional projection unit and a kitchen just a little bigger than the galley on Sunsinger. When he checked it, Bain found the cold box and pantry stocked with fresh fruit, pastries, bread and little canisters of tea, coffee and chocolate, and enough dishes to serve six people.

  “I thought my rooms were nice,” Gorgi muttered. He stood in front of the little table set up between the kitchen and the seating area, and just stared. Then he caught Bain's glance and grinned. In a moment, both boys were laughing.

  “Bet you anything Lin isn't bothered one bit by all this,” Bain said. The boys hurried across the hallway to her quarters.

  They found Lin sitting on the edge of the couch, staring at moving images of people on top of the three-dee projector. She glanced up when the boys came in and gestured at the images. They changed every ten seconds, after the people had turned around three times like wind-up dolls.

  “That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. How can you shop by watching something so small?” Lin reached forward and slapped the red button on the edge of the meter-diameter white projector. The images vanished.

  “Shopping? Through that?” Bain sank down on the opposite couch. “How are you supposed to try on anything if you can't touch it?"

  “There has to be a decent marketplace around here,” Lin said. She stood, hands braced on her hips, and took another look around her room. “It's a good thing someone else is paying for this, because I sure wouldn't."

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Gorgi said.

  “Oh, I will. But I can only stand such wasteful luxury for about three days before it starts to make me sick.” She nodded toward the door. “Come on. What do you say to getting our gear sent up here, then go exploring? I want to have dinner at a restaurant that serves food from some planet we've never been."

  “That'll take forever,” Bain grumbled.

  Lin and Gorgi burst out laughing. He joined in a moment later, but Bain hadn't been joking at all.

  * * * *

  They had a pattern by the second day. Gorgi had his orientation classes in the morning, then he met Lin and Bain for lunch. They chose a new dome to explore for a few hours, then Gorgi went back to his rooms to study.

  In the mornings, Bain and Lin worked on Sunsinger, taking care of all the niggling little details they never bothered to fix or attend to while in space, and didn't have time to take care of when on a planet. Lin decreed she and Bain both needed complete, thorough physical exams. Bain had been examined the year before when he broke his leg, but that didn't satisfy Lin. She wanted to be sure they were both in top physical shape. If they weren't, she wanted to know why, and what to do to rectify the problem. The exams took three days, after all the tests and questioning by the different doctors who worked on them.

  Su
nsinger and Ganfer had a complete overhaul. Every system checked, every worn component replaced, every fastener and seal tightened.

  On the third day, they received notice that their testimony schedule had been pushed back by two days. The next morning, they had a message that their first appearance before the Commonwealth Council Science Committee had been pushed back by a week.

  “Well, there's no better chance to rest and relax and indulge in some in-depth research,” Lin said. She smiled at Bain and called up a directory of the libraries on Centralis, and which ones they were permitted to use.

  Bain suspected Lin was a little nervous about the delay and a lot upset at the time they would be grounded on Centralis.

  In the afternoons and evenings after Gorgi left to go back to his studies, Lin and Bain went to the University library. Lin had a research project she had been wanting to follow for years. She wouldn't tell Bain what it was, but it made her grin and hum under her breath when he caught her reading through her research notes in the evenings. There were times Bain would come back to the study station he and Lin shared, and find her staring off into space and the screen-burn prevention function had wiped the screen.

  Bain was set free to study anything he wanted during those afternoons and evenings. Lin encouraged him to follow any course of study that interested him, because when they returned to their normal routine and his study schedule, he wouldn't have the time or freedom. For the first three days, he simply explored the library.

  It filled an entire dome. Six entire floors, each with more square meters of floor space than Sunsinger, were devoted entirely to shelf after shelf of genuine, printed books. Printed on paper or parchment or plastic sheets. Bain had held a printed book or two in his life; his mother had even owned one, but it had burned up in the shuttle crash.

  On each floor there were enough couches for sixty people to sit and read. That didn't amaze Bain, until he realized that people were allowed to take the books off the shelves and actually hold them in their hands and read them. No need for special permission or gloves. Just take them down, open them up, and read, and turn the pages however he wanted.

  Bain didn't take down any books, but he spent enough hours reading the spines to get a stiff neck and back from standing turned in an awkward position.

  There were ten floors where the walls and even the ceilings were covered with paintings, copies of artwork from around the known universe—even from planets in the Conclave. Transparent boxes in the middle of each room held displays of sculpture, pottery, figurines and weaving samples. Each piece of art had a tiny memory playback chip. All Bain had to do was stand in front of the one he wanted to investigate, say the code number into his collar link followed by the word ‘expand', and he received a lecture on the object. He could even ask questions about it and receive detailed answers. It became a game to find questions that would stump the computer.

  Bain amused himself in the art rooms for two days before it got to be too much. It wasn't that he tired of it, but after two days, everything started to blur together. He couldn't remember one tenth of what he had seen and heard, and he knew that wasn't good.

  There were more rooms and floors Bain hadn't explored yet, but he decided by then he was tired of just looking. He wanted to research something in particular; he wanted to do something useful with his time. Lin enjoyed her research, though she still wouldn't tell him what she was looking for. What could he research? What interested him the most?

  That day at lunch, Gorgi made a comment about his lessons that caught Bain's imagination.

  “The Rangers are an offshoot of the Fleet,” Gorgi said. “They were established because the threat of the pirates in space and the Bactalli on the ground was just starting to get too big for the Fleet to handle. The Commonwealth needed a unit that was more mobile and more specialized. Smaller ships full of warriors, instead of big ships made for carrying lots of cargo and passengers, with a crew that only knew how to fly a starship and not use it in battle."

  “So, what you're saying is that the military moved its tradition-bound rear end enough to adapt to circumstances,” Lin said. She pressed her hand over her heart and sagged back into her chair, pretending shock. The sparkle of laughter in her eyes ruined the effect. “Now I've heard everything. Bain, I'm ready to die now."

  “No you're not,” Bain retorted. “You still have forty-eight more resource tapes to look through before the end of the week."

  “True.” She sat forward again and picked up her fork. “You were saying, Gorgi?"

  “I'm saying that if the Commonwealth needed people with different training, for different jobs once the war is over, it wouldn't be that hard to do it. There's a precedent already.” Gorgi looked Bain in the eyes as he spoke. Both boys slowly began to grin. Bain's dream of an independent, fast, specially-trained force to explore and protect suddenly didn't look half as difficult to establish as he had imagined. If the Rangers had broken away and become what was needed, Bain knew his dream could become real too.

  In that moment, he knew what his research project would be. He would research all the special organizations that had arisen with the need—and faded when the need vanished—down through the history of the Commonwealth. He would find out how they were put together and where they got their authority, how they functioned and how they failed. They had to have failed in some way, if they vanished when the crisis that created them ended. That seemed like a waste of time, putting together a specially trained force, when it would be more efficient to have them ready and prepared to spring into action at a moment's notice. Bain decided he had to find out how previous special organizations had failed, to prevent it happening to his people.

  It frightened him a little, to realize he considered this future organization ‘his people’ in his mind. He hadn't even written down the idea in his private journals. But they were his people, his organization, just like Lin and Branda and Chryssa were his family.

  They needed a name, he decided. Something that described what they would do, and reflect on the history of their duties—just like the name ‘Rangers’ said much about the men and women who wore the label.

  Scouts, he decided. Just like the Rangers scout ships that went ahead into unknown, dangerous territory to find out the situation and report back with information that could help win the battle. Scouts led the way and tried to guide people out of danger and into safe territory.

  His people would be called Scouts.

  All right, they had a name. Bain had to find a history to build on now.

  * * * *

  The librarians didn't want to help him. Bain wondered right then if the archaic system of person-to-person, instead of having everything accessed through computer terminals, was really as charming and fun as he had imagined.

  All he wanted was to start his research with information on the warrior division of the Order of Kilvordi.

  “There is no such division,” the skinny, red-haired librarian said. She tucked strands of hair behind her ears and looked over the tall desk at Bain.

  He decided right then he didn't like her or the reference desk at the library. Why did it have to be so high? He wasn't short, and Lin said he was still growing and would soon be a head taller than her. So why did the desk have to be so high he felt like a little boy again?

  “Yes, there is. I heard Sister Marnya talking about it."

  “She was probably telling him a bedtime story,” one of the other librarians muttered. He probably thought Bain couldn't hear him.

  “It was only a few years ago, and she was telling me some of the history of the Order,” Bain retorted. He fought the urge to put his hands on the edge of the desk and hike himself up so he could see the librarians.

  “There is no such branch of the Order,” the redhead said, shaking her head. Her pursed lips and frowning eyes clearly said she thought Bain was stupid. “You probably misunderstood her."

  “I even made notes.” He held up his datapad. The woman stepped back, as if s
he thought Bain was going to make her read his notes.

  “The Order is made up of all scholars and healers. They don't have time to fight,” another librarian said. She stepped up to the desk and leaned over so Bain could see her as she spoke. “You probably heard her say something about the study of history being a battle."

  “I know what I heard."

  Bain paused to take a deep breath and fight the rising anger that tried to choke him and made his face burn. In the momentary silence, he distinctly heard people whispering behind him. He also heard a few giggles.

  Did they think he was stupid? Did they think he was just a silly boy who didn't know the difference between bedtime stories and an intelligent conversation? At least Sister Marnya and Jax had never treated him like a little boy. They had answered all his questions and told him whatever they could.

  “Ganfer,” he said on a lightning bolt of inspiration.

  “Yes, Bain?” the ship-brain asked, speaking through his collar link.

  Bain bit his lip against a smile when he heard a few gasps behind him, and from behind the librarian's reference desk, too.

  “Can you play back that conversation Lin and I had with Sister Marnya and Jax, about the warrior branch of the Order? Do you still have it in records?"

  “Yes,” Ganfer said. “Sister Marnya asked me for a copy before she left, because she thought your questions would be beneficial in organizing a new format of study."

  If Ganfer had a body, Bain knew he would have hugged the ship-brain right then. He could always depend on Ganfer to make him look good, even when he didn't know quite what he wanted.

  “Could you play it back, through the collar link?"

  “Of course, in the beginning, nobody wanted to follow Kilvordi's plan,” Sister Marnya said, her voice coming soft and sweet and touched with a bit of exasperated laughter through the speaker chip in the collar link. “The few scholar enclaves were constantly attacked. Kilvordi was forced to hire warriors to protect us. He then had to teach the warriors the value of reading and writing and historical study, so they understood what they defended.