Chương 22: Professor DeVault

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum September 27, 2847 By the morning of the first day of academic classes, Arc only half regretted joining the group chat. True, Vee was rather enthusiastic, but her excited messages helped to distract him from a sudden and unexpected wave of nerves. As torturous as Hard Burn had been, he hadn't really ever been asked to do anything other than follow directions and, figuratively, be stubborn enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Now, the academy professors were going to actually expect him to think. Even though that was what he'd always been good at, the sudden change was uncomfortable. The time of audible alarms echoing through the dorm room were over. Instead, Arc and his two roommates were each roused by their AI.

Iceni was already flashing Arc's class schedule for the day; a reminder to take his morning dose of the steroids, antibiotics, and painkillers they'd all been assigned during recovery; and his current merit total— one hundred and thirty-two, which was more than ten percent of what he needed to earn his first genetic modification. I am far more efficient than the tablet you were using before, Iceni preened as Arc carefully folded his sheets.

Now that Hard Burn was over, they'd received notice that room inspections would be at random intervals, rather than a daily occurrence. In some ways, it was too bad—forty-two of Arc's merits had come from making his bed each morning. Cal Madine's attitude might be hard to take, but he'd gotten all three of them off to a good start.

In fact, Iceni asked, as Arc went about the business of taking a morning shower, I have a hard time understanding why an assistive intelligence such as I is not issued to every citizen of the Imperium from birth. That would be even more efficient, would it not? Arc sighed. He was glad that he'd picked up the trick of responding silently, because that wasn't a conversation he wanted to have out loud while he stood in the showers with a dozen other men. Across the way, Pika luxuriated under a blast of ice-cold water.

Arc knew it was ice cold, because he'd made the mistake of getting too close when he walked by, once, and nearly frozen his balls off. He averted his eyes from his naked Alu'kan friend, very carefully kept his bandaged head out of the spray from his own shower head and set to work with soap. One reason is the cost, he explained to Iceni. The Imperium picks up the tab for all of the cadets here, but only after they weed out the non-hackers with Hard Burn. That works out to something like fifty-surgeries each year.

You think they'd only do that many if it was cheap? Iceni considered for a moment. Forty-nine cadets remain in the class of 2851, she corrected, before getting to his main point. According to a quick search run through the academy systems, each procedure costs in excess of fifty-thousand Imperial credits. That means your class already represents an investment of 2.

45 million credits, not counting food and housing, waived tuition, expected medical care over the course of four years of training, not to mention the cost of sufficient T-3 Tyro training mechs, estimated at - Arc couldn't help but laugh. He very much wanted to duck his head under the water; it would be a relief when the bandages finally came off. You can cut it off there, Iceni, he thought. Cost isn't the only reason, though yes, trained mech pilots are pretty expensive to field.

That's why there's less than a thousand of them—of us—in fleet. The other reason is the Singularity. Iceni seemed to consider that for a long moment. Ah. I see. There appears to be substantial and irrational prejudice against both cybernetic implants and artificial intelligence in the Imperium. It isn't exactly irrational. Arc gave himself one last rinse, turned off the shower, and grabbed his towel from the hook to begin drying off. The war wasn't really that long ago—only about sixty years.

I mean, it's still within living memory, and they basically started using their AIs for war the moment they declared independence. The only reason the Imperium's even willing to give mech pilots neural lace is because you can't handle a mech without it. He padded back down the hall, past other cadets in various states of dress and undress, while Iceni seemed to dwell silently on what he'd told her.

It wasn't until he'd gotten back to his room, dressed in his uniform, and was pulling on his shoes that she spoke again. Prejudice is illogical. I would have thought the decision-making apparatus of an empire spanning more than two dozen worlds would be based less on emotion, and more on analysis.

"Welcome to working with humanity," Arc told her, straightened his tunic in the mirror, and headed downstairs for breakfast. 𝝮"It is bizarre not to be going on a dawn run," Pika said, in between crunching some sort of smoked fish breakfast sandwich.

"After being pushed, and pushed, and pushed, to think that now I will spend my morning sitting in a physics lecture."

"That's the difference between an officer and a grunt," Arc told him. He looked down at the crumbs left on his plate from fried potatoes, the smears of yellow egg yolk.

"Which reminds me, I need to get going. The history building is on the other side of campus." He rose from his seat, and scooped his things up, but before he could leave his table, Cassie stood as well.

"I'll walk with you part way," she said, and together they stacked their dishes for cleaning. Cassie was silent while they walked past the few cadets who'd taken their meals out to the sofas and armchairs in the lounge which connected the dining hall to the foyer of Tycho Hall, and when they reached the door, Arc stepped forward to hold it open for her.

"I hope that wasn't because I'm a princess," Cassie grumbled, pausing at the top of the steps for him to catch up. Arc shook his head.

"It's because my father taught me to always hold the door for a woman. So, what's up?" They set off down the path together, away from the dorm and toward the central part of campus. Vidako's twin suns were still making their way up toward the zenith of the sky, and the two light sources caused Arc and Cassie's bodies to cast dual shadows at slightly different angles. It was a bizarre sight, and one he didn't think he would ever quite get used to.

"Duke Alvarez Montalban has apparently leaned on the commandant," Cassie explained.

"He wants me to come to dinner in New Toledo, presumably so that he can show me off and try to get something out of my father. Captain Marlowe has made it clear to me that this is not optional. She promised to put him off until after Hard Burn, but now we're through that, and we've had our surgery, she's going to be running out of excuses." Arc blinked. This was not at all what he'd thought she wanted to talk about. Classes, maybe, or—well, not this. He winced in genuine sympathy.

"He's going to make you go out in public, with all sorts of fancy people, while you've got your head wrapped in bandages? That sounds horrible. It's the last thing I'd want to do."

"I hope it isn't," Cassie said, throwing a glance sideways at him.

"Because I can't go alone. Marlowe's approved me for a plus one. We both get leave to go to New Toledo, as well as a pass to go into the city here ahead of time to get clothes. I also made her agree to compensate us for our time with merits."

"Me?" Arc actually stumbled, feeling thoroughly conflicted. On the one hand, the fact that she was inviting him sent a splash of hot excitement through his belly. He was certain that there were more politically appropriate people at the school for a princess imperial to be seen with—her cousin, for instance, or even Cal Madine, who was the son of an admiral.

There were almost certainly other nobles among the upperclassmen who would have been comfortable and familiar with this kind of event—people she'd know wouldn't embarrass her. But she hadn't asked any of them: she'd asked Arc. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. On the other hand, the thought of escorting a princess to a dinner hosted by the Duke of Vidako was terrifying. He wouldn't know a single person there beside Cassie, and he wouldn't have a clue what to talk about.

He wouldn't know the right forks or spoons to use, and what if there was dancing? He'd never come closer to the Duke of Zurah than walking past a gated off estate in the capital. But that was the wrong way to think about it, Arc decided. A princess imperial wasn't asking him— Cassie was. And Cassie was, at the very least, one of his friends. Did he want to be the sort of person who said 'no' when his friends needed something, or did he want to be someone they could rely on?

If Pika had needed him to go to one of the ring worlds, would he have hesitated, or would he be excited? And if he ever wanted Cassie to be more than his friend... Arc tore himself out of his own thoughts, looked Cassie in the eyes, and was absolutely certain that she was afraid he would say no. He could see it in the set of her eyes: hopeful but bracing to be crushed.

"Of course," he said.

"Of course I'll go with you. I'd love to."

"Thank you!" Cassie gave a sigh of relief, and grinned.

"I'll tell Marlowe so she can do the paperwork, and then maybe this weekend we can go into the city and get something to wear." She bounced on her heels and looked down the path.

"OK, I've got to run now. The history building isn't even close to the athletics training center. Thank you again!" She gave a wave and darted away. Arc paused his steps and watched her go. I am detecting elevated levels of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, Iceni observed. These are consistent with medical studies analyzing the physical effects of sexual attraction in humans.

"Shut up!" Arc hissed out loud, then flinched when passing cadets shot him looks.

"Keep it in your head, mole rat," an upperclassman with her white-blonde hair in a pixie cut warned him. Was that an inappropriate comment to make? Iceni asked, as Arc set off down the path again. I am still trying to determine when I should employ polite euphemisms, or what I should pretend to ignore. Would you like me to analyze Cadet Sabran-Solaris's body language to attempt to determine whether your interest is reciprocated? I could also reach out to her AI and simply inquire. That would remove all doubt. No.

Don't do any of that. Just—just let it be, Arc said, as sternly as he could. Just show me the route to Nakagami Hall. Iceni put a map of the campus in the upper right-hand corner of his vision, a shining dot to indicate his position, and then traced the path he needed to take. Even better, she dropped the topic. Nakagami Hall, named for the admiral himself, was the center of the academy's History and War Studies program. Given his declared major, Arc assumed that he would be spending a lot of time there.

To his surprise, the hall wasn't a simple four or five story quadrilateral; in fact, he hesitated when it came into sight because for a moment he thought he'd gotten the wrong place. An enormous half-sphere swelled out of one side of the building, and out of the ground beneath, like an alien tumor. It took a moment for Arc to realize what it reminded him of: the planetarium at the Avataran Shahar Museum of Science, back home on Zurah V.

Academy records indicate that is the holo-tank used for war games and strategic analysis, Iceni told him. Apparently, she'd once again decided to be helpful, and now that her efforts didn't have anything to do with Arc's love life, he actually appreciated it. It's enormous, he replied, as he slipped in through the doors and followed the AI's marked path to his lecture hall. Do they really need something that big? If it was not required, I do not believe the academy would have invested in having it built.

It was a rhetorical question, Iceni. Arc opened the door to the lecture hall, then headed for the first open seat in the front row. It turned out that he was spoiled for choice, because the only other person who didn't head back a way was Cal Madine. Arc's roommate had beat him to the hall and was already sitting front and center with his tablet on the swiveling half-desk attached to his chair.

Arc left two empty seats as a buffer, pulled his own tablet out of his tunic pocket, and settled in to wait for the professor to arrive. The class was small: only half a dozen students entered the lecture hall, every one of them with a bandaged head. It made sense, when Arc thought about it: six weeks of Hard Burn, surgery, and recovery meant that the 4th class cadets were joining academic classes quite a long time after the upper classmen.

There was no way they'd be able to catch up if they were put in the same courses this term. No sooner had the last student taken a seat than an exceptionally tall, dark-skinned man with close cropped, graying hair and a neatly trimmed beard, walked through the door and up to the podium. He fished a remote control out of the pocket of his jacket, aimed it at the smart screen at the front of the lecture hall, and set it on top of the podium while the machine warmed up.

The most notable thing about him, in Arc's opinion, was that he wasn't wearing a fleet uniform.

"Good morning, class," the professor said, and his deep voice swelled out to fill the lecture hall easily, without any need for a microphone and speaker.

"I am Professor DeVault, and no, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Imperial Fleet. I am a military historian and theorist, and in addition to teaching several courses, I serve as head of the History and War Studies department here at the academy. Welcome to War and its Theorists. If you are not majoring in War Studies, you are in the wrong lecture hall, and you should be on your way."

The professor paused for a moment, but when he saw that no one moved, he simply nodded and turned to regard the slide now displayed on the smart screen behind him. In that sonorous, deep voice, DeVault read the quote aloud.

"The war for which the generals prepare is always the last war.' Novelist Ford Madox Ford, supposedly in March of 1930 C. E," DeVault said.

"Though there is some doubt about that provenance. Early sentiments to this effect can be traced to at least Robert Blatchford, eleven years before, in the Clarion, a London-based newspaper of the time. But what does it mean, and how is it relevant to us, here at the academy, today? Introduce yourself when you speak, please, cadets." Arc nearly raised his hand and then thought better of it. He was thankful that he hadn't when DeVault nodded to someone behind him. A woman's voice came from several rows back.

"Sloane Emonstone-Granville, sir. It's a warning—to always be pushing ahead with military technology and tactics, so that we don't get caught with our pants down," the woman declared.

"It's why we have a fleet R&D department, and programs like this—because we've learned from the past." Arc stirred in his seat but remained silent. That motion, apparently, was enough, because like some sort of predatory bird, Professor Devault immediately focused on him.

"You have something to say in response to that, cadet? Speak up." Arc shifted in place, uncomfortable with the attention.

"Just that, it's by definition impossible to do otherwise, if we take the observation as valid, sir." The lecture hall was silent, uncomfortably so, and he felt the need to fill it.

"I mean, no one expected mechs to be the deciding factor of the Singularity War until it happened. We have a mech program now because the fleet wants pilots ready for the next war, but we don't know what new technology our enemies have been developing, or even for certain who our enemies will be. So, all our planning relies, by definition, on what has come before. What comes next is a mystery, a sealed box that you can't open ahead of time.

Once we actually get into the next war, we have to be ready to adapt, because at least some of what we've been assuming is going to turn out wrong." DeVault watched Arc for a long moment.

"Good. Your name, cadet?"

"Arc Sandhurst, sir."

"You're correct, Sandhurst, and it's arrogance to believe otherwise. The same sort of arrogance which led to the disaster at Wolf 1069. The emperor has pushed mech development and pilot training for domestic reasons, as much as strategic ones," Devault went on, and when he looked away, Arc slumped in relief.

"Legalizing mech duels gives our dukes and duchesses a release valve—a way to resolve tensions within the empire before they turn into full blown conflicts," DeVault went on.

"It also forces the dukes to integrate mechs into their planetary guard, if they want to have champions the next time someone insults their favorite nephew. In this way, the Imperial Fleet does not bear the financial burden of developing this new kind of combat expertise alone. Quite clever on the part of the emperor, but it still rests on the fundamental assumption that the machines which turned the tide of the last war will once again carry us to victory in the next.

It is a fundamental assumption which I do not accept—and neither should you."

"Rather, we must look for new ways to use the technology we have available," DeVault declared.

"Let us ensure that, in the next war, it is the enemies of the Imperium Stellarum who are caught unprepared for us. And that begins right here."