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Molokai Middle School, Molokai, Hawaii, Earth
August 18th, 2036
Terry’s first day at Molokai Middle School wasn’t all that different from the first day in a new grade in elementary school had been, except there were lots of orientation lectures. Unlike elementary school, now he’d have periods with different teachers on various subjects around the large campus, and those periods rotated daily. Some of the kids seemed intimidated by the variability. Terry wasn’t too bothered by it. They were also issued the newest generation tablet computer, which looked sad next to an alien-made slate. Their schedule was loaded into it.
For their first year in middle school, the kids shared the same schedules. He was glad for that, because he got to see all his friends, and of course, Yui. He wasn’t happy to be bombarded with questions, though, when they weren’t being given lectures or instructions.
“Is it true your mom was eaten by a whale?” “Is she a cyborg now like Dale Edwards said?” “Did you really travel to another planet while you were gone?” were a few of the stupidest questions he got just in the three hours before lunch period. Yui had helped by answering many of the worst well before school, during a one-day pre-term meeting Terry hadn’t attended.
“You said there were worse questions?” he asked her, walking between 2nd and 3rd period.
“Oh yeah, lots worse,” she said. Terry was a little curious, though not enough to ask.
Lunch in the larger middle school was a more scattered affair. Everyone in elementary ate at the same time; now they were broken into times by grades. You only saw other age groups in the hallways between classes. The 8th graders were quite a bit bigger, in general, so Terry was fine with that. He settled on tacos from the lunch bar and found Yui.
They chatted and ate their lunches. A couple of mutual friends who also played baseball came by. Terry was afraid still more questions were coming about his mother, but instead it was all about school and baseball. Neither of the others were into diving. He’d always been surprised so few people on Molokai were. Plenty of surfers, not many divers.
After lunch was the first class he’d been excited about. Introduction to MST. When he went into the classroom, he almost didn’t recognize Doc, or Mr. Abercrombie as it said on his desk plaque. He was dressed in a suit at least as nice as Terry had seen him wearing the previous year when they’d first been told about the MST classes.
The entire class took their seats and became quiet quicker than normal. This was the first ever session of the new class, and everyone was excited to find out what they would learn about being a mercenary.
“Good afternoon, Class,” Doc said. “As you’ll remember from last year, my name is Mr. Abercrombie. However, you can call me Doc in class, if you want.” Smiles broke out around the room. “You’ll recall my job is to help guide your instruction in subjects that will help you decide whether you want to become a mercenary or not.
“Institutions around the country, and elsewhere in the Earth Republic, have expressed an interest in adding the VOWs scores to their battery of test data in accepting secondary educational candidates. So even if you don’t want to be a merc, and I can tell many of you may not want to be, getting a good score on those tests will be useful to your educational career. Any questions?” A couple of hands went up, and he pointed to a boy.
“Mr. Abercrombie?”
“Doc is fine.”
The boy smiled. “Doc? Why wouldn’t we want to be a merc?” A dozen others echoed their agreement. “You can get rich!”
“Sure,” Doc agreed. “No doubt about it. Can anyone tell me how rich 96 out of the 100 Alpha Contract merc companies got?” Terry raised his hand, and Doc pointed to him. “Terry?”
“They didn’t get rich. They’re all dead.”
“That is exactly correct. You see, it’s statistically the most dangerous job in history. Thousands of men and women went offworld 10 years ago; only around 200 came back alive. Even in the four companies that returned, there were still higher than acceptable casualties.
“You all know I was a Navy SEAL?” Many nodded; all were listening. “We were the best-trained, best-equipped, hard-as-nails warriors in the US military; some would argue the whole world. A whole bunch of my fellow SEALs took an infiltration and scouting contract. None of them came back alive. None. So you see, it’s not a safe job, regardless of the riches involved.”
“So now that I’ve explained, do some of you still want to be mercenaries some day?” A few heads bobbed up and down, though, Terry noticed, without the enthusiasm he’d seen earlier. “Okay, good. We fully expect some of you to decide later it isn’t for you, and still more to decide it is. That’s your choice. Now, if you’ll open the file I sent out this morning, we’ll look at some classes coming up, and why they’re important.”
“That wasn’t at all what I expected,” Yui said after the class.
“Me either, actually,” Terry admitted. “I thought it would be more stuff about fighting.”
“Yeah, who needs to know about math to be a merc?” another kid asked on the way by.
“Hey, Terry,” Doc said, coming over. “What did you think of my first class?”
“Interesting stuff, Doc,” Terry said.
“Hey, Yui, can I talk to Terry for a sec?”
“Sure thing,” Yui said. “Cool class.”
“Sorry about your mom,” Doc said as soon as they were alone. “I thought about coming by, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do.”
“Thanks,” Terry said. It sounded lame, but it was all he could think of.
“Is she recovering?”
“The doctors are worried about her brain,” Terry explained.
“How long was she without oxygen?”
“Nine minutes.”
Doc winced. “Yeah, that’s bad.” He looked sideways, his brows crinkling up. “You know, I have some friends in the service who are working with some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff that might be able to help your mom.”
“Oh! That would be amazing.”
“Let me make some calls. In the meantime, why don’t you and Yui come by next weekend and we can dive on the Dixie Maru again.”
* * * * *
