Space cadets go looking for trouble ... and find it!

You don’t need an academy, just put those cadets on ships of their own, give them their lesson plans, and see what they come up with. 

The Solar Patrol cadets on the  Able Countryman find an abandoned military base in an asteroid, left over from the war.
Nanotech was invented on a Tuesday, and on Thursday the war began. The invention of self-replicating and almost self-conscious cog oil brought about the end of the nation-state, wiped out half the Earth’s population, and began a new era of history. But that was decades ago.

What would the cadets find in this dark installation? And what lessons would they learn – about their history … and themselves?

Part of this novel appeared in Analog.