The Unsound Theory (STAR Academy Book 1) Read online

  “I see your solution is to cut out sleep instead?”

  She shrugged. “Straining my eyes under this fluorescent light a little longer had better pay off with enough information to survive tomorrow.”

  “You should take a break. Maybe try the simulator flight game?” Heidi said, crossing her legs as she sat on the bed. “I gave it a whirl after classes, and I must say it’s not too shabby—you know, for a tactical game. I hear we’ll get to practice in a real spacecraft simulator soon, precise as it gets.”

  “That will have to wait,” Yalena replied without enthusiasm. “I’m dipping a toe here.”

  “Well, if you’re not interested in going after one of the few piloting slots, it doesn’t matter that much. Five multi-player sessions and you will have served your time,” Heidi said. “But I’m going to sit at that simulator every day, even if it kills me.”

  “Should I report this to Dana as potential self-harm?” Yalena lifted her eyes from the tablet, grimacing.

  “Ha-ha, very funny. Just you wait until the Top Ten line-up goes live. It’s going to be projected in the simulator room for everyone to see,” Heidi huffed, then buried her face in her hands. “My shame will be so public if I can’t even crack the top five among the freshmen.”

  Yalena rubbed her tired eyes. “I don’t think I can add another thing to my to-do list.”

  “You need to relax,” Heidi said, coming to grab the device out of Yalena’s hands. “You’re fixating on being in space too much.”

  “That’s because we are in space and talking about it all day.” Yalena’s smile was sarcastic.

  “That’s beside the point.” Heidi didn’t give in. “You’ll have each and every day to gather space knowledge. What you shouldn’t forget is what brought you here.”

  Yalena chewed on the inside of her cheek, avoiding Heidi’s light gray eyes.

  “So?” Her roommate prompted.

  Despite the intros, Yalena couldn’t shake off the doubts. “I’m still not sure why I’m here.”

  Chris had promised there was a good reason for it, although that had sounded as cliché then as it did now.

  “What about the intro?” Heidi sat down on the floor, crossing her legs again. “All the languages you speak?”

  “I don’t see how useful that can be in space.” Yalena bit a lip. “Look at us—everything we do is in English. It must have been something else.” There it was. Every time she went over the past few days, she couldn’t escape the little clues. Chris had hinted at expecting a lot from her, and the commander had outright said he had been right to think she would join, despite the mystery in her past. “I’m tired of people tiptoeing around it,” she said, making Heidi look up.

  “Fine,” her roommate said. “Then I won’t anymore. I think bringing you here must have something to do with your origin.”

  That Martian no-frills attitude really had rubbed off on her.

  “They say they don’t know anything about that,” Yalena said, inwardly begging herself to buy that premise.

  “Then they know something else. Something we don’t yet see.”

  Silenced by the recollection of that hushed conversation between Cooper and the commander, as well as Eric’s determination to keep pretending it was nothing, Yalena sighed.

  “There is one person who knows why I was invited.” She cleared her throat. “He brought all of us in. And he’s not at all difficult to find.”

  Heidi let out a sly smile. “Let’s hope he’s ready to stop tiptoeing around the subject, too.”

  Chapter 8. The Recruiter

  DURING THE NEXT FEW days, Yalena felt her insides pulsing as she spied for an opening with Eric. It could have been the novelty of STAR Academy that distracted their classmates from his space royalty status at first, but they didn’t make that mistake for long. Overnight, the attention skewed so heavily in his direction that even Natalia’s demanding presence could not divert eyes from him.

  Luckily for Yalena, classes provided a solid and continuous flow of new information she worked overtime to retain, and the discussion she had with Heidi that evening was swallowed into the background. Space History was Yalena’s favorite, since it leveled the field with the others. After covering the Quakes, the rising sea levels, and extreme temperatures, the class was now engulfed in a discussion on the political pressures leading up to the migrations.

  “Can anyone recall the main mission in search of habitable exoplanets?” Professor Howards opened the class with a wide question.

  “The Farsight mission, led by Fia Jones,” Jen answered.

  She didn’t even have to raise her hand or ask for attention. The round table invited each of them to participate as well as listen.

  “Certainly, Farsight was well-advertised. Recruitment went on for about four years, and talent curators interviewed, tested, and considered over ten million candidates for a crew of twelve hundred.”

  “That wouldn’t be enough to ensure genetic diversity, would it?” Jen asked.

  “It was one of their main challenges, but screening was also done with diversification in mind,” the teacher explained. “Contrary to what we see on Mars, for example, where three cities were founded by an Australian, a Brazilian, and a Nigerian expedition in turn, each of which had the population of about three thousand people in just the first migration wave, the Farsight crew had to be much smaller due to the nature of their travels. Remember, they were set for a ninety-year trip to Alpha Centauri.”

  “Fia Jones got all the applause for her bravery, while our ancestors got mooshy bones digging for enough Helium-3 to make fuel for her,” Natalia interjected, venom in her tone.

  “If they hadn’t, then you wouldn’t be paid all those penalties that were used to make antimatter fuel production large-scale. All research missions now run on antimatter, as well as most of the flights to Mars. The investment allowed a huge stride forward for mankind,” Alec said.

  “You’re welcome.” Natalia eyed him playfully after his comment.

  “Wonderful insight, Khanna,” the professor thanked Natalia, unimpressed by her attitude. “I shall use this as my second opportunity for today to remind you that these events all took place before the Interplanetary Act of Human Rights was signed. How about a refresher on the main principles of the Act? Anyone?”

  “The Act includes freedoms that weren’t respected during the Quakes and the Migration, which were later classified as basic rights every human being should be granted.” Yalena was silently jubilant to have been quick enough to jump in. “Some examples include the freedom from being experimented on, the freedom to move to another space settlement of one’s own accord only, the freedom from being put in cryostasis, the freedom to own a personal spacecraft, and the freedom to be granted conditions similar to those on Earth in any of the space settlements.”

  “Correct.” Professor Howards then turned back to Natalia. “That last one, Khanna, is how your ancestors got all their money. Now, let’s talk about how some of these laws were broken. Which one catches your attention, Flynn?”

  “The freedom to own a spacecraft?” Nico frowned. “What did that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, at the dawn of the mass destructions that followed the Quakes, the governments resorted to extreme measures to protect policy makers, scientists, and all those fit to operate spacecrafts. No country wanted to see its richest one percent buying spacecrafts like they were yachts and then running out of resources in space because they were not prepared for a real mission. A donation system was created for the affluent, which let them finance projects worthwhile to the general public. It also bought a spot for the sponsor on board.”

  “The rich always win.” Natalia winked left and right.

  “I wouldn’t call the Farsight crew winners,” Alec joked, getting a grimace from her as a reply.

  “True. We don’t know what happened to Fia Jones’ crew after they left our solar system, but at least they left voluntarily,” Eric said. “I feel m
uch worse for those shipped off in cryo, unaware that they were leaving Earth.”

  “The Demonfrost crew,” the professor said. “Every year I teach about it is another year I stuggle for a way to justify that mission. In any case, let us attempt to understand. Who here can tell me anything of why this was done to roughly five thousand people?”

  “When the earthquakes became too frequent, building quake-resistant prisons couldn’t have been high on the agenda,” Eric said. “And the opportunity cost of having criminals roam the Earth freely was destructive for the fragile society.”

  “Fighting the war against nature was easier once crime effectively ceased, as a result of placing all known offenders under cryo,” the professor agreed, as the lines on his forehead deepened. “But then what?”

  “Then, even the bunkers were overpopulated, and there was no safe place to hold all the frozen prisoners. Meanwhile, as people grew desperate for supplies and admission to a bunker, criminal offenses skyrocketed.” Eric spoke in a low hum. “They had to put even more people under.”

  “And as they’d spent so much money on the Farsight mission, resources for a new mission were limited. There had been no long-term studies of the effects of cryostasis on the human body; they couldn’t sell the practice as a solution. The mission sounded like a desperate last move, but the ship devised in preparation for this stood in the middle of the Russian tundra, ready for use, empty, gathering dust, while humans died every day on their home planet.”

  The class fell silent, working their hardest to keep their faces stoic. Yalena rubbed her forearms, certain that she wasn’t the only one feeling a chill.

  “A hush approval was passed after one of the most devastating earthquakes and the tsunami that followed,” the professor continued. “Before the countries reeling from the devastations could react, five thousand cryo-frozen passengers were shipped off onboard the Demonfrost. Contact was maintained with a small crew awake for over thirty years of their flight, after which a malfunction left us listening to a quiet channel.”

  Even Natalia sighed. It was frustrating to think of the desperate measures taken at the time of the Quakes by people who didn’t have the slightest idea that Earth would stabilize again, that it could be called home again.

  “I think that’s enough for today. As homework, please prepare a short essay about one of the provisions of the Interplanetary Act for Human Rights, and discuss why it was a justified addition to the framework based on the events that took place during the Quakes. Now, off you go.”

  DESPITE THE INITIAL hiccup at the welcome event, Eric and Yalena maintained a friendly attitude at the table they shared with Jen and Nico for lunch. Even though seeing him every day reminded her of the overheard conversation, which often made the hairs on her forearms prickle, Yalena tried to keep her focus on catching up, and having experts like Eric and Nico close by helped both her and Jen. After the Migration class, none of the freshmen could avoid continuing the discussion on their own time, not even the Martians that liked to kick back at lunch.

  “Imagine,” Alec said, failing to notice Natalia as she slid into place next to him, “you wake up after forty years and have no idea you aren’t on Earth. That has got to suck like a zanzara.”

  “I don’t know,” Heidi said. “At least you’ve been asleep. What about everyone on Farsight? They were grannies and grandpas when they got to Alpha Centauri. Or they were dead, and their children saw a real world for the first time in a new solar system. Sick.”

  “That’s if they got there at all,” Natalia jumped in. “Agh, the injustice—making us break our backs for the ridiculous odds that there is a habitable planet in one of the nearest solar systems.”

  “Do you think they could still be alive out there?” Dave’s arm closed around Heidi, who glanced over at Yalena, smiling. Yalena had to bite back a giggle. Heidi’s worries about going public with Dave felt like ancient news.

  “They could be, technically,” Eric said. If he had a tie instead of the green Academy freshmen uniform, he’d fit right in to a debate panel.

  “But it’s been, what, like a hundred years since the mission left?” one of the Moonie boys disagreed. “The odds aren’t exactly in their favor.”

  “Even if they didn’t find a habitable planet to colonize, their children’s children could still be alive on that ship.” Eric shot the boy down. “They had everything from water recycling systems to one of those early-days food bio reactors for synthetic food creation.”

  “Ew,” Yalena whispered just to Jen. “Imagine eating that gooey, tasteless protein mush all your life. At least now, we have flavoring options.” She regarded the square, synthetic steak on her plate, turkey-flavored, with some disdain before poking it with her fork.

  “I heard people had higher chances of being approved for the Farsight mission if they were in a committed relationship,” Heidi pointed out the juicy bits, as usual.

  “I don’t know. I’m with Theo here,” Nico said. “If they haven’t been able to contact us for this long, they’re probably dead. My money is on Demonfrost if we’re picking survivors. For all we know, they could still be asleep.”

  Yalena’s neck snapped in Eric’s direction so fast that she drew the eyes of both Jen and Heidi. It took all her effort to cast a soft smile their way before her eyes found the youngest O’Donnell again. He hadn’t missed her reaction, and she knew what that meant. Nico wasn’t the only one hypothesizing on the topic. Cooper and the commander had been arguing about someone out there, someone possibly in need of their help, someone like the mission crews that had been silent for over a century.

  “I’m going to get a head start on the readings for tomorrow,” Yalena said to Jen, whom she had grown accustomed to studying with. Today, however, she needed to do something else. It might even end up being something she’d regret, but she had to retrace everything she could remember from the overheard conversation.

  She stood abruptly amid the continuing discussion on whether the prisoners of Demonfrost would have woken up by now or not and headed for the elevators, following the familiar green flash to the dorms. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eric rise as well, but when he didn’t follow her, she decided to leave confronting him for another day. He, however, clearly had a different idea.

  “You left quickly,” Eric said when Yalena found him waiting for her on the student dorms floor.

  “So did you.”

  They sized each other up for a minute, each evaluating how safe it would be to be upfront.

  “You must have some questions about the conversation we were within earshot of,” he said.

  “That’s a politically correct way of referring to eavesdropping.” Fire burned in her eyes, and she hoped he could feel it.

  “I’d like to know what you thought of it.”

  It wasn’t a question, so she opted not to answer. “Why are you interested in me?”

  “You’re an interesting person.” He recovered well, almost too adeptly. “You’ve traveled, seen places, and learned a lot in the process, no doubt. I hear your opinions in class, and I think you have a lot to say, even if you never lived in space.”

  “No, I mean, why are you interested in someone like me?” she said, showing raw stubbornness. “You said at the intros that you’ve been selecting people for STAR Academy. Why did you bring me here?”

  “I did no such thing.” His calm way was maddening. “I help filter the candidates, but the committee decides.”

  “I believe that as much as I believe you had no idea about the conversation we heard.” The words cut the air like knives. She tilted her head to one side, coming a step closer to him, whispering, “Don’t tell me you never saw a use for someone in a way the committee wasn’t ready to accept?”

  “I’ve chosen too well.” His eyes pierced right through her. He was enjoying this—the accusation everyone would deem outrageous.

  “So, you admit it? You’re recruiting.” Not simply for STAR Academy, she implied.
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br />   “I am, and so is the committee. So is my father.” He was stern. “I did nothing but my job. I helped them.” Just when she thought Eric wouldn’t vocalize her hunch, he added, “I helped them the best I could to solve a problem in a different way, a way they hadn’t yet thought of.”

  “By bringing me in?” It was the most ludicrous notion she’d heard of.

  “I think you are our best chance.” Hands in his pockets, he let her digest it.

  “Best chance to do what?”

  “Well, that’s the real secret,” he said. “But since you’re on board, I’ll tell you.”

  Chapter 9. Allies

  YALENA WOKE UP SUDDENLY the next morning, her brain already operating at full capacity. Curiosity could do that to a person. There was a secret Eric held on to tightly, and Yalena’s insides sizzled when she realized she was it.

  The inability to be patient aside, there was that other thought that would devilishly sneak into Yalena’s mind and catch her off guard during the next few days. When she looked back, she remembered Eric’s expression: focused, broody, almost calculating. And it was then that the feeling of warning would come back to bite her. This was no joke, no child’s business, no game. Something was up. Or—did she even dare think—something was wrong.

  She only made one promise to Adeline before going to space—no looking into the fishy business of her origin. Did that encompass other arguably fishy business as well, though?

  Another two weeks of classes rolled by before Eric and Yalena got the chance to be in private without drawing attention. Yet, in Yalena’s mind, due to the whirl of coursework and the added unease which Eric’s secret caused her, it felt like months.

  “I will need two volunteers to give me a hand,” Dana announced after showing up during the last lesson for the day. “To...do some heavy scrubbing,” she added carefully in front of the very unenthusiastic crowd of freshmen.

  However, as soon as she said, “two volunteers,” Eric and Yalena shot each other a quick look and raised their hands at once. The medical ward wasn’t a busy place, and even Dana would either be at the storage doing inventory with Jen, or at the emergency reception, most likely leaving them alone.