For reasons known only to the architects, the main buildings at the Academy had been constructed in a mix of antique styles, great gray blocks of stone that looked like pictures of ancient buildings on Old Earth. Towers, arches, covered walkways, intricate carvings of ships and battles and sea monsters around windows and doorways, enclosed courtyards - paved in smooth slabs of stone. Six of these patriarchal buildings surrounded the Main Quad Parade: Themistocles, Drake, Nelson, Farragut, Velasquez, and the Chapel. Here, where the boldest street urchins could peer through the entrance gates to watch, cadets formed up many times a day to march to class, to mess, to almost every activity. Sass soon learned that the darker gray paving stones, which marked out open squares against a pale background, were slippery in the rain. She learned just where a flash of reflected sunlight from an open window might blind a cadet long enough to blunder into someone else. That meant a mark off, and she wanted no marks off.
Through the great arching salleyport of Velasquez, wide enough for a cadet platoon, were the cadet barracks, these named for the famous dead of Fleet battles. Varrin Hall, Benis, Tarrant, Suige. By the time they had been there a half-year, cadets knew those stories, and many others. Sass, on the third deck of Suige Hall, could recite from memory the entire passage in the history. Other cadets complained (quietly) about their quarters, but Sass had spent years as Abe’s ward. She had never been encouraged to spread her personality around her quarters, “to acquire bad habits” as Abe put it, although he admitted that Fleet officers, once they were up in rank, could and did decorate and personalise their space. But the regulation bunk with its prescribed covers folded just so, the narrow locker for the required uniforms (and nothing else), the single flat box for personal items, the single desk with its computer terminal and straight-backed chair - that was enough for her. She didn’t mind sharing, or taking the top bunk, which made her popular with a series of roomies. She felt the neat, clean little cubicles were perfect for someone whose main interest lay elsewhere, and willingly did her share of the floor-polishing and dusting that daily inspections required.
She had actually expected neutral or monotone interiors, but the passages were tinted to copy the color-code used on all Fleet vessels. By the time the cadets graduated, this system would be natural, and they would never have to wonder which deck, or which end of a deck, they were on. Main or Command Deck, anywhere, had white above gray, for instance, and Troop Deck was always green.
Most classes went on in the “front quad” or in the double row of simpler stone-faced buildings that lay uphill from it. History - from Fleet’s perspective, which included knowing the history of “important” old Earth navies, all the way back to ships rowed or sailed. Sass could not figure out why they needed to know what different ranks had been called a thousand years ago, but she tucked the information away dutifully, in case it was needed for anything but the quarterly exams. She did wonder why “captain” had ever been both a rank and a position, given the confusion that caused, and was glad someone had finally straightened it out logically. Anyone commanding a ship was a captain, and the rank structure didn’t use the term at all. “You think it’s logical,” the instructor pointed out, “but there was almost a mutiny when the first Fleet officer had to use the rank ‘major’ and lieutenant commanders and commanders got pushed up a notch.” Sass enjoyed far more the analysis of the various navies’ tactics, including a tart examination of the effect of politics on warfare, using an ancient text by someone called Tuchman.
Cadets ate together, in a vaulted mess hall that would have been lovely if it hadn’t been for the rows and rows of tables, each seating eight stiff cadets. Looking around - up at the carving on the ceiling, for instance - was another way to get marks taken off. Sassinak, with the others, learned to eat quickly and neatly while sitting on the edge of her chair. Students in their last two years supervised each table, insisting on perfect etiquette from the rockheads. At least, thought Sass, the food was adequate.
The Academy was not quite what she’d expected, even with the supposedly inside information she’d had before. From Abe’s attitude towards Fleet officers, she’d gotten the idea that the Academy was some sort of semi-mystical place which magically imbued the cadets with honor, justice, and tactical brilliance. He had told her about his own Basic Training, which he described succinctly as four months of unmitigated hell, but that was not the same, he’d often said, as officer training. Sass had found, more or less by accident, a worn copy of an etiquette manual, which had prepared her for elaborate formalities and the fine points of military courtesy - but not for the Academy’s approach to freshman cadets.
“We don’t have hazing,” the cadet commander had announced that first day. “But we do have discipline.” The distinction, Sass decided quickly, was a matter of words only. And she quickly realised that she was a likely target for it, whatever it was called: the orphan ward of a retired petty officer, an ex-slave, and far too smart for her own good.
She wished she could consult Abe, but for the first half-year the new cadets were allowed no visitors and no visits home. She had to figure it out for herself. His precepts stood like markers in her mind: never complain, never argue, never start a fight, never boast. Could that be enough?
With the physical and mental discipline he’d taught her, she found, it could. She drew that around her like a tough cloak. Cadet officers who could reduce half the newcomers to red rage or impotent tears found her smooth but unthreatening equanimity boring after a few weeks. There was nothing defiant in that calmness, no challenge to be met, just a quiet, earnest determination to do whatever it was better than anyone else. Pile punishment details on her, and she simply did them, doggedly and well. Scream insults at her, and she stood there listening, able to repeat them on command in a calm voice that made them sound almost as silly as they were.
Abe had been right; they pushed her as hard as the slavers had, and the cadet officers had - she sensed - some of the same capacity for cruelty, but she never lost sight of the goal. This struggle would make her stronger, and once she was a Fleet officer, she could pursue the pirates who had destroyed her family and the colony.
That calm reticence might have made her an outcast among her classmates, except that she found herself warming to them. She would be working with them the rest of her life - and she wanted friends - and before the first half-year was over, she found herself once more the center of a circle.
“You know, Sass, we really ought to do something about Dungar’s lectures.” Pardis, an elegant sprout of the sector aristocracy sprawled inelegantly on the floor of the freshman wardroom, dodged a feinted kick from Genris, another of her friends.
“We have to memorise them; that’s enough.” Sass made a face, and drained her mug of tea. Dungar managed to make the required study of alien legal systems incredibly dull, and his delivery - in a monotone barely above a whisper - made the class even worse. He would not permit recorders, either; they had to strain to hear every boring word.
“They’re so… so predictable. My brother told me about them, you know, and I’ll swear he hasn’t changed a word in the past twenty years.” Pardis finished that sentence in a copy of Dungar’s whisper, and the others chuckled.
“Just what did you have in mind?” Sass grinned down at Pardis. “And you’d better get up, before one of the senior monitors shows up and tags you for unofficerlike posture.”