Chương 13: The Long March

San Teodoro, Vidako Imperium Stellarum September 11, 2847 With every step, the four mechs which marched ahead, behind, and to the sides of the cadets shook the ground. Arc could feel it in the soles of his feet, through his boots, and running up his bones. The morning was cool for Vidako, which meant that the day hadn't yet progressed to the point of baking hot beneath twin suns.

A sea breeze ruffled the brown leaves of the trees as they marched down the access road, which took them out through the southern gate of the campus and to the outskirts of San Teodoro. The city fell away quickly. One moment it was all around, and the next the cadets marched through fields of orange-tinged wheat, rippling in great waves before the ocean air off the bay.

There were orchards, as well, growing lemons and limes, apples and peaches, oranges and bananas that had all been altered to not only survive, but thrive in the alien soil of this planet, and beneath the strange light of Vidako's double star. Great metal frames extended above the fields, and they sprayed a mist of water out in every direction to drench the thirsty roots of each crop. Even the evanescent rainbows in the mist looked washed out, lacking the cool end of the color spectrum.

Arc saw no tractors in motion: it must not have quite been harvest time. But there were grav-trucks floating above the fields. On an outworld like Zurah V, grav technology was still too new and expensive to be integrated into all but the most luxurious personal transportation—Cassie's floating suitcase was an example of nearly unfathomable wealth.

But one industry into which the nascent tech had quickly penetrated was agriculture, and from the dinner-table talk between his father and mother back home, Arc knew there had been subsidies from the emperor himself to help farming companies like Katari Silk Corporation become early adopters. Grav-trucks could move far more easily about a farm or an orchard, without any fear of crushing or disturbing the crops. With less need for access roads that could handle wheeled vehicles, even more ground could be planted.

He had a lot of time to think about things like that while they were marching. Placing one foot in front of the other, bearing the weight of that sixteen-kilogram pack on his shoulders and the rifle in his hands, even maintaining his place in ranks—those were all physical things. They didn't occupy his mind, and Arc's mind had always been a restless, impatient thing.

He knew that he was supposed to be watching for danger, and perhaps once they reached the jungle, there would be enough of a tint of fear to the whole operation to keep him focused, but now—well, if it were really so dangerous this close to the city, would the farmers be out here by themselves? The upperclassmen made regular armed patrols for a reason. Anything that got this close to the school would certainly be found and dispatched before it could wreak havoc through the streets and homes of San Teodoro.

Come to think of it, Arc mused, that's smart. It has to be on purpose—I wonder whose idea it was? The local duke maintained his own planetary guard, of course, just like on Zurah V, but that was expensive, and Arc imagined that he'd base those troops out of the capital. With the academy here—an academy fully funded by fleet and the imperial family—the duke wouldn't have to split his troops.

The first- and second-class cadets were essentially a garrison who could be counted on to protect not only the city, but the port and the orbital elevator as well—and so far as the duke was concerned, they consumed absolutely no resources. Best of all, in the event there was some crisis on Vidako, or even elsewhere in the system, the cadets and faculty would come under his command anyway.

It was one of the powers granted to all ducal families by the constitution of the Imperium: In Loco Imperatoris, the right to act in the place of the emperor during an emergency.

A duke who abused their power under that clause would find themselves answering to the throne afterward, so it wasn't something to be done lightly, but the law was clear: if Vidako was attacked, whether by pirates, the Singularity, or even something stranger, the cadets and their mechs would be immediately pressed into service as part of the planetary defense force. Arc whiled away the first hour considering the strategic implications.

By funding academies—not only the one here on Vidako, but also the marine academy on Morena and the fleet academy on Luna—the emperor both assured the quality of his officer corps and reinforced key locations. The only problem was that Arc couldn't decide what made Vidako significant enough to warrant that kind of attention. Luna was an obvious choice. The fleet academy and naval shipyards reinforced the very heart of the Imperium.

Anything that fortified the original home of humanity was probably worth doing at a basic level, before even considering all of the permutations. Morena—well, Arc could see a couple of reasons there. The original research facilities which had developed gates, and the manufactories which still produced them, were just about the most important technology there was to the continued existence of the empire.

Adding several thousand marines in system who would be personally loyal to the emperor went a long way toward making certain that tech would be kept safe—and it also kept the dukes of Morena in line, as a threat to hold in the emperor's back pocket. But Vidako wasn't nearly that important. So far as Arc knew, it was just one more outworld, albeit a bit close to the Singularity border... and he was an idiot for not thinking of that in the first place.

The academy was one more line of defense, one more resource, in the event that conflict started up again. He nodded to himself, satisfied, and when Arc looked around, he was surprised to find that there was only one field running along the side of the road. It was full of corn, which had grown into tall, leafy black stalks higher than the head of even the Alu'kan cadets. If this was only a troop of marching infantry, that would be a good place to set up an ambush, Arc noted.

The presence of the four mechs, however, would make an attempt like that something verging on suicide. Their sensors would tag any soldiers sneaking through the rows, and the crops wouldn't provide even the slightest bit of cover from mech-scale weapons. Still, a tree cat might not think that way, and he kept the possibility in mind until Lieutenant Kekoa called a halt.

The entire troop, over two hundred strong, moved off the road into the brush opposite the cornfield, where they were given half a standard hour to rest and eat. There wouldn't be any fires, but imperial rations didn't need something that primitive. Instead, they came with a plastic bag filled with magnesium, iron powder, and salt. Pouring a bit of water into the chemicals would trigger an exothermic reaction and boil the water to heat whatever food was inside.

It was old technology, predating the exodus from humanity's home planet, but still useful. It was clear to Arc that this stopping point had been used by year after year of past cadets, for the otherwise unremarkable field was filled with rocks. Not a single one was of the same size and shape, but they were all good enough for leaning a bag of boiling water against. Pika set his pack down next to one, claiming it by dint of his great size, and Arc, Cassie, Rain and Vee gathered around.

A very careful bit of arranging things gave them just enough room to lean all five bags against the rock, like the petals of a flower. After sorting through the sealed meals in his pack, Arc had selected Imperial Standard Ration—or ISR—number ten: chili and pasta with artificial meat. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"Number ten, is it?" Cassie asked, peeking over his shoulder.

"There's one thing I never looked forward to about being in the military. The food." She gave an exaggerated shudder.

"That's because you've spent your whole life at state dinners, eating gourmet meals off priceless plates," Vee teased. As Arc watched, the Torean girl tipped enough water into her pouch to reach the printed line and kept going.

"I think that's enough..." he said, hesitantly.

"Better more than you need than be a bit short!" Vee exclaimed, adding a final drip of water, and then sat back, using her pack as a cushion.

"I'm not certain that's true," Pika said, with a frown.

"Chemical reactions require very precise measurement."

"It'll be fine!" Vee said. A moment later, her bag boiled over, slopping steaming water onto the ground and sending Vee scrambling backward, amidst a flurry of curses, to get out of the way. 𝝮 Hot food and the chance to rest their legs was enough to carry the cadets through the first hour of the afternoon march, but after that the distance they'd travelled began to set in. Arc could feel it in his calves and his back, and he noticed that a few of his classmates had begun to favor one foot or the other.

The hover-transports and the mechs, of course, could go on forever; but he hadn't really appreciated just what a feat of endurance a day's march was until he had to do it himself. The legionnaires of ancient Rome had been famous for their ability to cover over twenty-five kilometers in a day, carrying their full kit, and then make camp at the end, including a ditched palisade, tents and latrines.

They'd done it without any of the genetic retroviruses that had enhanced so many of his classmates, with inferior footwear, and gear that was less advanced in every way. He could hardly imagine how, because by the time the twin suns of Vidako began to descend, it was all Arc could do to keep on placing one foot in front of the other. The first waypoint, where Lieutenant Kekoa had declared they would make camp for the night, was just on the edge of the jungle.

The transition between land that had been cleared and the indigenous, thickly packed rainforest was sharp and immediate. On one side, the final stretch of road was made of packed dirt; they'd moved off the paving an hour before. It was rutted and muddy, which had slowed the cadets down. There were stumps where native trees had been clear-cut; Arc presumed the timber had been hauled away by loggers. He realized, looking around, that he didn't have the slightest idea what native Vidakan wood might be good for.

For all he knew, it had been used in the construction of the academy buildings. The mechs were placed as four points of a square, delineating the edges of the camp, all facing outward, with the grav-trucks forming sides. It was similar to the way ancient earth settlers had used their wagons when making the trip across the North American continent. The idea was that, in the event of an attack, the machinery would provide at least some cover.

Once the upperclassmen were out of their cockpits, Lieutenant Kekoa assigned each to oversee one particular task in the organized chaos termed 'making camp.' Cadet First Class Ọlatẹru oversaw the erecting of tents and tarps, in neat rows. Vijay Iyer was given command of the sentries, while the man that Arc hadn't recognized worked with Chief Jastrow to oversee the diagnostic teams checking over all four mechs and the grav-trucks which carried the group's supplies.

Arc would have liked to stay and watch the solid-state batteries which powered the mechs get changed out, but to his sharp disappointment, he was detailed to go with Cadet Van Camp and a dozen other cadets to dig latrines. Arc would have thought that Van Camp would be angry at being assigned oversight of the least glamorous duty, but if that was the case, he hid it beneath a stony expression and instead took his anger out on the cadets doing the work.

Each of them was given a folding entrenching tool or, as Arc might have called it, a short-handled, collapsible shovel. They walked off to the opposite end of the camp from the mess area, where food was being unloaded from the grav-trucks. There would be, it seemed, something better than rations in a bag for their evening meal. But Arc would have to sweat even more before he'd earned that.

Van Camp directed them to dig ten of what were called 'straddle trenches,' each thirty centimeters wide, seventy-five deep, and 1. 5 meters long. The collapsible shovels were helpfully marked, to make it easy to measure. The excavated dirt was piled at the end of each trench, so that every soldier who used the latrine could use it to bury their own waste. Wooden planks, hauled over from the grav-trucks, were set along each side, for better footing while a cadet was squatting.

Finally, a single rod, which forked up in a wide 'v' shape, was driven between each pair of trenches, onto both ends of which was set a roll of toilet paper inside a hard plastic shell. It would have been hard work no matter what, but Van Camp was both exacting about the dimensions of each trench, and downright abusive at the slightest error. He didn't actually hit anyone, but Arc watched him step right up in the face of a cadet named McCarthy who wasn't digging deep enough.

Van Camp backed the boy up, screaming the entire while, until McCarthy's foot slipped off the edge of the trench behind him, and he fell in. Of course, after that, they all had to help fix the damage. The entire process made them the last group to get over to the mess area, and the only consolation was that Arc's friends saved him a place and a plate of food, so that he didn't have to wait in line with the rest of his work detail. Even so, when he grasped his fork and knife, Arc couldn't help but wince.

He'd be lucky if he didn't end up with blisters from the digging.

"You got the worst of it," Vee confirmed, in between stuffing her face with heaping forkfuls of a sort of rice and fish, tossed with sauce and vegetables.

"Rain and I helped set up tents—we put you boys next to us, so you can thank us for that."

"They had me help unload supplies from the grav-trucks," Pika admitted, after devouring his own meal.

"No surprise there," Arc said. The Alu'kan had to be the absolute largest cadet in the entire expedition.

"How about you, Cassie?"

"Cadet Xiao-Solaris grabbed me to help with maintenance," she said, without looking up from her plate.

"Xiao-Solaris? Is that —""He's my cousin," Cassie said, gave a sigh, and finally lifted her head.

"My uncle Caelum's son."

"Oh." Arc looked over to Vee and Rain for some sort of clue. Vee shrugged, setting her blue crest to bobbing, while Rain simply shook her head.

"Um. Are you close?" he asked Cassie, turning back to her.

"No." She shook her head.

"He's my father's older brother." Arc nodded his head and then stopped. In any other family, that would have been little more than a piece of trivia—but in her case, it meant so much more. His classes in imperial history had been more concerned with the founding of the Imperium than with the recent past, and it had happened before he'd been born, but that didn't mean he was utterly clueless. The current emperor, Altair Janus Solaris, had been one of several siblings.

Most of them hadn't even put themselves forward for election, but—"Is he the one who gave your father a run for the throne? Your uncle?" Arc asked.

"Yes." Cassie nodded.

"And the election was closer than anyone expected, to hear my father tell it. There hasn't really been a close relationship between the branches of the family since. I think I've met Uncle Caelum maybe three times."

"What did he want?" Vee asked. Cassie raised both hands, leaving her cleared plate in her lap, and used her fingers to make quotation marks in the air.

"He said he wanted to be sure 'I don't bring shame to the family," she said, even lowering her voice to mimic a man's.

"Went on about how I needed to be the best of our year and not get involved with anyone who was beneath me. I had to stand there and take it, because for the rest of this year he's a superior." She let out a huff of breath, clearly exasperated.

"He'd never have dared if mom or dad were here, or even Orion."

"This," Pika said, waving his fork about for emphasis, "is why males should not lead pods. I know you humans think otherwise, but warriors are too full of aggression to make good decisions. You should complain to your cousin's mother. She will sort him out." Arc was only half listening, though. He leaned back, set aside his plate, and couldn't help but hear the words again. An imperial prince had warned Cassie not to get involved with anyone beneath her.

He was certain that he and every one of their friends would, in the eyes of Cadet Xiao-Solaris, fall into that category. The message couldn't have been any clearer, even if Cassie didn't want to hear it.