Chương 2: Vidako

Space Elevator, Vidako Imperium Stellarum August 12, 2847 The framework of the space elevator which descended from Pinnacle Station to the surface of Vidako was hexagonal in shape, so that six elevator cars could move up and down the tracks on each of the sides, forming an arrangement roughly modelled after that of a beehive.

As the car in which the cadets rode descended, having passed the point where motors were needed to propel it downward, a rising car shot past them to one side on its way from San Teodoro to the station. The sky changed from black to blue as they entered the atmosphere to the clap of a sonic boom, and Arc knew that dozens of systems were at work to prevent the car, and the people inside it, from dying in just as many horrible ways.

Simply falling to the ground at this speed would have seen all of them consumed in fire, gasping and suffocating from a lack of oxygen, or broken and smashed into little more than a wet, sticky paste upon impact. The same technology which produced an artificial gravity field above their heads, on Pinnacle Station, gentled the g-forces which would have crushed them into their seats.

A heat shield at the bottom of the car protected them from the friction of atmospheric reentry, though Arc could see beads of moisture fogging the windows. Still, he knew that before the Alu'ka had joined the Imperium, nearly a century ago, it wouldn't have been possible. The first space elevators had taken days to climb out of a world's gravity well, or to descend from orbit.

The materials science expertise the Alu'kan mega-engineers had brought with them had revolutionized everything, and most human colonies were still catching up. They plunged through white fog, and he only realized once they'd left it behind that they must have passed through a cloud. The land below was closer, now, and Arc could make out the shape of the coast: the deep blue of the ocean on the one hand, and the strange, muddy hues of the native foliage marking the land, on the other.

Unlike Arc's home world of Zurah V, this system revolved around a pair of binary stars, one red and one orange. The familiar olive-green shade of Zuran mulberry trees would have seen foliage starved of the light they needed to survive here. Instead, Arc knew from reading the academy's student handbook, both the native flora and the genetically modified Terran stock relied on leaves of brown, red, and even, in some cases, color so deep it was nearly black.

As they drew closer, Arc could pick out the city of San Teodoro itself, a splotch of brighter gray that spread across a single peninsula jutting north and east into a twice-sheltered inner bay. Traces of urban development could be just made out along the edges of that bay, connected to the city itself by thin, bright lines that Arc realized were bridges.

The elevator itself fell directly toward an island just off the coast, but even the size of the space port couldn't distract Arc from the realization of just how much wilderness there was outside of San Teodoro. Beyond the city, the dark jungle stretched out and out, broken only by the thin ribbons of sparkling rivers or lakes, and the upthrust peaks of mountains. It was as if humanity had reached out with a single finger to mark a city, a single smudge on the glass of a wide window and then walked away.

"There really is nothing around it," Arc muttered. He hadn't forgotten Cassie was at his side—not precisely. In fact, he was intensely aware of her presence in a way that kept him constantly on edge, lest he move in a way that upset her by some accidental intrusion into her space. But he also hadn't exactly been seeking a response.

"The academy likes it that way," she said.

"They use the jungle for training. There's supposed to be indigenous predators that can rip a Tyro in half. Look." Cassie pointed a finger at the window, and Arc leaned over once again to search the vast forest. He thought he saw movement of some kind, a shaking in the trees. Were they really low enough to see something like that? He glanced back to the city and saw that, yes, they were.

Out in the bay, lines of white traced the movement of ships through the water, while he could make out individual streets and buildings in the city, complete with grav-trucks and cars snaking their way through the urban canyons in the intricate patterns of daily traffic. The city grew until it, and the bay, encompassed everything that could be seen out of the window. Arc sat back into his seat again now that there wasn't anything to see.

Warning lights flashed above every seat, and a moment later the elevator car began to brake, hard. Even with the help of an artificial gravity field to modulate what they were feeling, he was pressed down into his seat forcefully, and now that they were surrounded by air, rather than vacuum, he could hear a rushing and roaring from outside. Arc couldn't help it: he clutched at the armrests to either side of his seat and concentrated on taking deep breaths to still the squirming feeling in his stomach.

Something about the sensation was much worse than taking off in the shuttle from the surface of Zurah V had been, and the only comfort he had was the knowledge that it couldn't possibly go on for very long.

"Are you alright?" Cassie asked, from the seat next to him. If the bright tone of her voice was anything to go by, she wasn't bothered by the descent in the slightest. Rather than trust himself to speak, Arc carefully nodded his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of the seat just in front of him. Even that motion made the nausea in his stomach worse.

"It's almost over," Cassie said, and reached over to give his hand an awkward pat with hers, the gesture made heavier by the great weight pressing down upon their bodies. Arc nodded again and then, mercifully, the pressure eased all at once as they came to a halt. He exhaled in relief, surprised to find that he was trembling. The curdled feeling in his belly hadn't gone completely quite yet, but the urge to vomit which had been rising within him began at last to fade.

The same uniformed elevator operator who'd urged Arc to find a seat when he'd arrived stepped out to address them all, and he was glad for the distraction.

"It's my honor to welcome you all to Vidako, and specifically to the city of San Teodoro," the man said, in a smooth, even voice which came at once from small speakers next to every seat.

"It's been a pleasure to have you travel with us. Every passenger on this car is an academy cadet, which makes things quite a bit easier. In just a moment, when we open the doors, please retrieve your luggage and proceed out to the terminal in an orderly fashion. There will be a representative of the Imperial Mech Academy there to retrieve you, and to direct you on where to go next. Again, thank you for travelling through Pinnacle Station, and we wish you all the best of luck at the academy."

Arc saw that some of the passengers were already rising, having unbuckled themselves from their seats, and were in the process of unlocking the overhead storage compartments. Almost uniformly, those who'd gotten a jump on the crowd had short-clipped hair, even the women, and something about the practiced way they moved gave him the impression they were old hands at elevator travel.

"Upperclassmen—third class cadets," Cassie said, nodding her head at a pair of young women two rows up, who were helping each other get down one suitcase at a time.

"You can tell by the short hair." Arc shook himself, unbuckled his restraint belt, and stood. For a moment, he wavered on his feet, feeling too heavy and clumsy. Once he'd had a moment to adjust to Vidako's slightly higher than standard gravity - 1. 03 times that of earth - he slid out into the aisle, where he quickly found the correct latch and opened the compartment in which their luggage was stowed.

He got his own battered suitcase out first, and set it on the floor at his feet, and then, with a grunt, wrestled Cassie's down next, resting it on the seat he'd just been sitting in. Everything felt just a bit heavier than he was used to in the local gravity. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! She grinned.

"You know there's an onboard hover function?" she asked.

"I figured when I didn't see the wheels," Arc admitted.

"But I wasn't certain how to turn it on, and I didn't want to mess anything up."

"It's right here." She showed him a cunningly concealed button, built right into the hard shell of the suitcase by the seam, which Arc would never in a million years have found on his own. An auburn-haired young woman moved up from the row of seats behind them, her own suitcase already set on its wheels behind her and made as if to wait for them to move.

"Oh, you can go on past us," Cassie said, waving the other cadet on.

"We'll take up the rear." Arc shifted to let the woman pass and then stepped out with his suitcase to make room for Cassie.

"I suppose we're all going to the same place anyway, so there isn't much point in rushing now."

"Exactly." Cassie stepped out into the aisle, flicked the switch on her suitcase, and took it in hand. Rather than trundle along the floor as Arc's did, he saw that it floated about a handspan off the ground entirely, moving after her easily at a simple tug.

"How long do the batteries last?" he asked, as they shuffled their way, slowly, up the aisle to the exit. The front seats were already empty, but everyone else was forced to wait while their fellow passengers wrestled their luggage down and got into line. Arc didn't see anyone else with a floating suitcase like Cassie had, but that didn't surprise him: the thing had to be incredibly expensive.

"Not long," she admitted, sticking close at his back while they inched forward.

"Only about two hours, and it's a weak grav-field. I'll shut it off again as soon as we're sitting down, so I don't use the charge up." It took more than a little tug to get the wheels of Arc's suitcase over the lip of the inner airlock, and then again past the outer and into the terminal itself. There was a brief moment of disorientation, during which he looked around, nearly overwhelmed by the crowd and the lights of half a dozen shops, restaurants, and gate signs.

Then, he hurried out of the way so that Cassie could get by.

"Cadets, with me!" It was a deep voice, pitched to carry over the bustle of the spaceport, and Arc saw with great relief that it came from an Alu'kan officer in the white uniform of fleet. He wore the gold bars of a lieutenant and towered over the human and Torean youths who were already clustering around him. The only cadets who came near to equaling the lieutenant in size were the other Alu'kans, but none of them moved with the officer's brusque confidence.

"Gather round, gather round," he demanded, using his height to look out over the crowd. Arc and Cassie had been nearly the last to leave the elevator car, and once the Alu'kan had collected the last of his charges, he continued.

"I am Lieutenant Kekoa. I am in charge of physical fitness testing and training for cadets, and for some incomprehensible reason, the commandant has decided that herding all of you along to Academy Hill is the best use of my time today," Kekoa declared. From the man's tone, Arc got the impression that the lieutenant did not agree with the commandant on that particular point.

"We will proceed together to Terminal L, Gate L4, where an academy Saker VTOL is waiting for us. That's L for 'local," Kekoa explained, his voice never falling in volume.

"You will not turn aside. You will not fall behind. You will stay with the group, and by the Progenitors, if I have to come back looking for you because you've gotten lost, you will be the very first cadet of your class to show me what a miserable excuse for a pushup you think you can get away with. Is that understood, cadets?" The older students—the ones that Cassie had pointed out before, with the short hair—responded immediately with a shouted chorus: "Sir, yes sir!"

As soon as he realized what they were doing, Arc joined in, but many of the arriving first years settled for nodding their heads or merely blinked in confusion.

"I said, is that understood, cadets?" Lieutenant Kekoa roared, and the passing throngs seemed to slow, dozens of faces turning toward the knot of students with their luggage, all clustered around the very large, and very loud, Alu'kan.

"Sir, yes sir!" At the second prompt, everyone joined in the chorus, and the lieutenant nodded.

"Very good. Follow me, cadets." Kekoa turned and headed off through the terminal like a cargo ship plunging through storm-swept waves, and everyone and everything in his way promptly found somewhere else to be. Once again, the older cadets set off after him with no hesitation, leaving the new arrivals to bring up the rear, trailing back in a ragged line. Cassie was off like a shot, weaving through groups of students who weren't as quick on their feet, or who struggled with their suitcases.

Arc hurried after her: he knew the name of only a single person in this entire mob, and he didn't intend on losing her. If he'd been travelling through the spaceport on his own, Arc might have stopped to use a restroom, or even gotten something to eat—his dash through Pinnacle Station, and the elevator descent which had followed, hadn't left him time for either, and he was beginning to feel the lack of lunch. Lieutenant Kekoa, however, neither slowed, nor turned aside.

In fact, save for the occasional glance back and shout to 'keep up,' he showed no concern for anything but cutting a path directly to their gate. Arc wasn't certain what he'd been expecting, but he found, as he hurried along at Cassie's heels, that what was waiting for them wasn't a plane, but a portable stair leading from the gate itself out into the hot midday of Vidako.

Both suns beat down upon the tarmac, where a stout military VTOL waited, with a rotor on each of two wings, outstretched to either side of the cabin. The entire thing was painted in a camouflage pattern which must have been meant for the local jungle—abstract swatches of brown, black and the occasional red. When a breeze hit him, it carried the salt-scent of the ocean.

Kekoa stood at the foot of the open bay doors, and Arc had the sense that, despite his supposed lack of concern, the lieutenant was counting each head that passed him. For his part, Arc had all he could do to yank his suitcase up after him and drag it over to one of the seats along the sides of the aircraft. They were far less comfortable than the elevator had been, and rather than a lap belt there was a five-point harness.

The suitcase itself went beneath his seat, inside a webbing of black mesh which would, presumably, hold everyone's luggage in place. The moment all the cadets were inside, seated and accounted for, the bay door shut and the roar of the rotors rose up around them, making any conversation impossible. With a lurch, Arc felt the helicopter lift into the air. Everything rattled and vibrated, and Arc selfishly wished compact artificial gravity was less expensive. It would have been quieter.

Instead, he sat next to Cassie while the Saker rattled their bones and shook their teeth, until they finally touched down. No sooner were the doors open than Kekoa yelled at them again, the massive lieutenant chasing the cadets out onto the academy's airfield. Arc jumped down, yanked his suitcase after him, and then left it for a moment, reaching up a hand to help Cassie down.

Her luggage, of course, just floated there waiting for her to grab the handle, but then they were off again, hurrying after the Alu'kan's long strides. The Academy campus rose around them: in the distance, the dormitory halls and academic buildings, nestled among groves of trees sporting that same, odd foliage which was adapted to the planet's twin stars. Closer, all around the landing field, hangars, some with open bays that revealed mechs or drop ships, others closed off completely.

A long, flatbed grav-truck drove by to their left, and whatever it carried was wrapped in layers of plastic for shipping. Arc thought that he detected the shape of a mech's feet at one end, pointing up to the sky, but he couldn't for the life of him have guessed the model of the chassis. Lieutenant Kekoa gathered them at the exit from the airfield, where the gate of a metal fence was currently rolled open, portable traffic barriers had been set out, and two older cadets watched them from a guard station.

Kekoa simply waved as he passed, and the cadets nodded to him. Waiting just outside the airfield, at the foot of a paved path which led further into the campus, were another two upperclassmen, and it was next to them that the lieutenant finally came to a halt.

"Third, second and first-class cadets are dismissed to their dorms," the Alu'kan called out, and then waited until only Arc, Cassie, and their fellow first years were left. Even the clothes they were wearing stood out from the returning cadets: rather than gray academy issued tunics, many of Arc's classmates wore civilian clothes in shades of blue or green that were washed out and muddied by the orange light of the binary star overhead.

For his part, Arc was already sweating enough to soak his clothes, and he couldn't get out of the sun quickly enough.

"The class of 2851 has been assigned to Tycho Hall," Kekoa announced.

"Men are on the second floor, and women on the third. Cadets Ọlatẹru and Van Camp, here, will escort you to your RA, who has your room assignments. Every one of these cadets, and your RA, is your superior, and you will follow their orders without question. If I hear otherwise, I will personally smoke you so hard that you will wish whatever one celled organism spawned your family line in the depths of prehistory had died before reproducing. Is that clear?"

"Sir, yes sir!" Arc shouted along with the rest of the cadets.

"I leave them in your hands," Kekoa stated, with a severe nod to the young man and woman who Arc assumed were Ọlatẹru and Van Camp, then turned neatly on his heel and strode away. There was a long moment of silence, and then the male cadet stepped forward.

"Welcome to the Imperial Mech Academy at Vidako," he said, and for some reason, Arc noticed that his eyes fastened directly on Cassie.

"And let me be the first to personally welcome you, Your Imperial Highness."