Flight of the Outcast Read Online Free PDF Page B

commissary bustled, communicators twittered, and men and women hurried along the corridors. Then all became quiet until the next ship arrived.
       Asteria made no attempt to speak to anyone, and she always remained in her tiny room—two and a half meters long, one and a half meters wide, with barely room for a bunk—when the daily shuttle from Sanctal arrived.
       But the Bourse never came looking for her. On the fifth day of her stay aboard the station, while she was waiting out the daily shuttle visit, someone pinged her door. She dissolved it and saw the officer who had first given her the room. "Yes?"
       He said gruffly, "Your ship for Corona's due tomorrow. The Stinger, an old-fashioned Defender-class destroyer. Don't expect much. Space Fleeters call her the Stinker. But she's heading for Corona, so I've booked you onto her."
       "Thanks," Asteria said.
       "Do you think you can get away with that disguise?" the man asked. "It's none of my business, but a candidate cadet shouldn't fool around like that."
       "What do you mean?" Asteria asked, apprehensively.
       "I mean I checked your orders," the officer said. "You're Andre F. Locke. Why are you pretending to be a girl?"
       For a moment Asteria didn't know what to say. "W-well—you see, my—uncle was Carlson Locke—"
       "I know who he was."
       "He had a daughter," she said. "I sort of took her place. Because she had an appointment to the Academy."
       "Really? Let me see your ID chip."
       She unstrapped the transceiver and handed it over. The officer scanned it. "It says you're a boy, all right," he muttered. "But you think the Academy appointment's for your dead cousin? Is that it?"
       Asteria nodded.
       The officer handed her the transceiver again. He was staring hard at her. "Or is it the other way around?" he asked softly. "Are you really a girl?"
       "My ID says—"
       "I know about Carlson Locke," the man said. "I don't want to hear anything about you or your situation. But if you want this transceiver to identify you as a girl, I can arrange that."
       "It's fine," she said.
       "It's a simple thing to do. I'd do it for a nephew of Carlson Locke—or for his daughter."
       Asteria's shoulders slumped. "Is it that obvious?"
       The officer smiled. "My name's Altmon. Kris Altmon. I was a major in the Space Fleet until I retired. I came up the hard way, from the underclasses. Like Carlson Locke. You'll learn that most of the cadets at the Academy are Aristos. They look down on people like us. So we Commoners—we help each other out when we can. You'll have to learn to find people you can trust."
       Asteria found herself heaving a sigh of relief. "Could you change the setting?"
       "Give me the transceiver again." Altmon beckoned her, and she followed him to a maintenance bay. Half a dozen Cybots rested against the wall there, dormant. He tapped one of them, and its eyes lit up. "Unit S-939," Altmon said, "This ID chip has a faulty bit of data on it. Change the designation of gender from M to F."
       "Yes, sir." The Cybot's delicate fingers dissected the transceiver, a hair-thin cable connected to the almost microscopic chip, and in a moment, everything had been reassembled. The Cybot returned the bracelet to Altmon, and he handed it over to Asteria.
       "Don't depend on this too much," he warned her. "As I'm sure you know, the Academy admits both males and females, so there's no problem there. And the student body is so large that you just might hide in the throng. But there are other records that could be checked. Don't put your head up above the crowd at the Academy—don't make them eager to check out your background. You might just get by with it."
       "Believe me, I'm not ungrateful or anything," Asteria said, strapping the wristlet back on. "But why are you helping me?"
       "I told you. Because your uncle—or your father—was Carlson Locke," Altmon said. "Will you