Chương 24: Pods

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum September 27, 2847 For an interminable moment, Arc felt distant from his own body, as if connected by only the most tenuous string. He heard the noises of the other cadets and the corpsmen moving around the training pods, the hushed murmur of conversation and the scuff of boots against stairs, but none of it touched him. It was as if those things were happening to someone else, perhaps an actor in a holo-drama.

He had the surreal sensation that, with the slightest tug, that string would give and he would simply float away, untethered to anything physical. Connection established, Iceni said, and all at once sensation came flooding in. Rather than the darkened simulation pod, with the flat-screen mounted just in front of him which Hospital Corpsman Third Class Varnell had used to authorize the simulation, Arc found himself looking out on a wide, flat field of tall grass and wildflowers.

Everything seemed terribly small—as if the world was little more than a model or diorama in a museum, built in miniature. Or as if he were looking down from a height of approximately sixteen meters. Arc lifted his left hand, looked down at it, and saw the articulated, mechanical fingers of a T-3 Tyro training mech flex at his mental control.

The action of raising the hand, however, moved several tons of arm: RSiNC armor plating, graphene-based fiber type artificial muscles, power cables, and more components than Arc could name. That movement shifted the center of balance of the mech in a way that was just different enough from how a real, flesh and blood human body moved that Arc swayed, suddenly out of control. Out of instinct, he lifted a foot to take a step and catch his balance—but there, again, everything was different.

The feet of a Tyro were wide, built sturdy enough to support thirty-five tons of weight. Compared to Arc's own body, it was like trying to take a step with cement boots on. One movement led to the next in a series of desperate, half-conscious adjustments, and then he was falling. The simulated Tyro hit the meadow like a cannonball, digging furrows through the soft earth and sending sprays of dirt up in every direction.

Arc let the mech lay there for a moment, because it was the first time since lifting that hand that he'd managed to keep the mech still. Six percent of right arm RSiNC plating was practically destroyed, Iceni reported. Much of it is actually still there, but crumpled and broken from the force of the impact. Three percent effective armor loss on our torso, and four on our right leg. Visual display updating. A wireframe of the mech's shape appeared to the lower left of Arc's field of vision.

Most of the image was drawn in green, but the right arm, leg, and side of the torso blinked between green and yellow, with armor percentages listed beside each. Beneath the wireframe, a horizontal, stylized image of a battery was also painted in green, with the words: 'Battery Charge: 99%' written beneath. They haven't given us any weapons at all, Iceni grumbled, her voice laced with a very human approximation of human frustration. Even the guns that should be attached to the shoulder hardpoints are missing.

"That's fine," Arc said, and he felt the phantom sensation of his lips moving, somewhere back in the real world where his physical body remained. The dual sensations made his stomach clench, and he resolved not to speak any further. We need to worry about getting back up on our feet before we worry about shooting anything, he added, silently, knowing that the AI would understand him clearly. The training program is advising you to roll onto your hands and knees, Iceni relayed. I'm muting it.

We don't need three people talking here, and I can relay what it wants just as easily. I'm not certain that's exactly what the lieutenant commander has in mind, Arc grumbled, and then set about, very slowly and carefully, following those instructions. At the beginning of the simulation, he'd moved without thinking, as if he'd still been maneuvering the body he'd spent his entire life growing into. Now, he resolved to make each motion deliberate, careful. Left hand, palm down, fingers open, onto the ground first.

It was the undamaged arm, and so, Arc judged, more likely to support the mech's weight without buckling. He pushed against the earth, mechanical fingers digging into the grass and crushing wildflowers, until he'd levered the Tyro's torso up off the dirt. Then, he brought the right arm around and got that under him. He paused there a moment, on the mech's hands and knees. Once again, he started with the left side, the undamaged side, which he trusted more.

Iceni and the simulation both claimed that only armor had been damaged, but Arc didn't entirely trust that. An impact could cause all sorts of damage beneath the surface, even problems that might not be visible at first glance. His father had once told him about how one of the old wheeled trucks used to get around the groves of mulberry trees outside the city had careened off the road when one of the other workers, an old drunk named Ray, hadn't bothered to secure his safety belt.

When he'd taken a turn faster than he should have, the weight of his body being jammed up against the driver's door of the truck had popped the door open, and he'd gone tumbling out, while the truck continued into the trunk of a mulberry tree. Camden Sandhurst had been one of the workers who'd run over to help. He'd told Arc and Phoebe, that evening, that at first they'd thought they might be able to drive the truck back to the garage, because the damage didn't look so bad.

But once they'd opened the hood and actually looked, they'd found that the engine itself had cracked, and that oil was leaking everywhere. In the end, the company had decided it was less expensive to buy an entirely new replacement truck, rather than try to repair the old one. Arc wasn't a tech student; he didn't have much of an idea of what could go wrong beneath the surface on a mech.

If he'd been piloting a real Tyro, instead of a simulation, he would have asked his repair crew to pull the armor off both the damaged arm and leg and go over all the internal workings with a fine-toothed comb. Instead, with one foot under him and both hands firmly planted on the torn-up sod, Arc pushed the mech upright. Once again, his point of view moved higher than it had any right to, the sensors installed in the Tyro's head giving him a view all around the meadow.

Carefully, he brought the mech's other foot, attached to the damaged leg, under him and got it planted, as well. Then, he just stood for a moment, without moving, letting the mech settle while he got a better sense of how it felt to just exist in a shell of metal. Now that you're upright, Iceni said, we're supposed to make our way across the meadow to that waypoint. A white marker appeared in Arc's vision, digitally painted on top of the image from his sensor feeds.

The training program wants me to urge you to walk slowly and not attempt to run. No worries about that, Arc sent back. Walking's going to be hard enough. Slowly and carefully, he lifted one foot, pushing off with the other, and made his first attempt. 𝝮 That first attempt ended in failure, as did the third. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

By that point, the training program reset the simulation, because Arc had torn up the mech's armor enough with repeated falls that the right leg was no longer moving properly. Once he had a fresh mech, and a meadow that wasn't pitted and scarred from his failed attempts, he did finally manage to make it to the first marker—but that was only the beginning of the program. As the session wore on, Arc was made to move uphill, and then downhill, rather than on flat ground.

He was forced to maneuver around boulders, and to walk along the sandy shore of a lake, which gave way beneath the Tyro's foot and sucked at the machine whenever Arc tried to lift a leg. By the time the afternoon training session was over, though his physical body had done nothing more than sit, strapped into a chair, Arc was utterly exhausted. He'd never even tried to run. The sensation of disconnecting from the mech was just as jarring as connecting in the first place.

Arc couldn't help but feel overly aware of his own breathing, his own heartbeat. The Arc who had been a mech didn't need to do either of those things. He felt too small, as if he'd been crammed down into a tight space. Being inside of the simulation pod felt claustrophobic, and he couldn't get unbuckled and out into open air soon enough.

"Sit down right here," Corpsman Varnell told him.

"I need to check a few things before you can go. Here, follow this light with your eyes." After waving a small flashlight back and forth, she disconnected the sensors she'd placed beneath his shirt, and once again took his blood pressure and pulse.

"Do you have a headache? Are you nauseous? Dizzy?"

"No," Arc said.

"Just—weird. It feels like I'm too small. And I can't stop paying attention to how I breathe."

"That's fairly normal for a first time," Varnell assured him.

"It'll get easier and easier the more you do this, until eventually you hardly even notice the transition."

"I'm ok, then?" Arc asked.

"I can stay in the pilot program?"

"I don't see any medical reason to be concerned about how your body handled the connection," she said.

"And my report to Doctor Seung will reflect that. Of course, I don't actually make any of those decisions. But yes, you seem fine. Head on up the stairs, the lieutenant commander's waiting for you all. And use the railing." She didn't need to tell Arc twice; in fact, he clung onto the side railing with one hand even after he'd made it back up onto the catwalk. He was doing better than Pika, at least, who was sitting on the floor two pods down, rather than stand up.

Past his friend, Arc could see two older cadets, standing between the pods which had been occupied when they'd all arrived, in quiet conversation.

"You gonna be alright, buddy?" Arc called over. Pika groaned.

"Once the room stops spinning." He raised his hands and put them over his eyes, as if to blot out the light. Cassie, on the other hand, came up the stairs from her pod without even bothering to hold the railing at all. She walked over to Arc just as easily as if she'd done this every day of her life, casually leaned against the railing, and flashed him a grin.

"How'd you do?"

"I got to the lakeshore before we ran out of time," he said.

"I'm not sure how that measures up to anyone else in the class."

"There was a lake shore?" Pika groaned, as Vee scampered up the set of stairs in between them.

"It's not quite as good as flying yet," Vee declared.

"But once they let us have a Kestrel, I think I'm really going to like this. I didn't get to the lake, either. I kept falling down every time I tried to run. The program reset my mech something like half a dozen times."

"That's why you weren't supposed to try running everywhere," Rain said, from the furthest end of their group, on the far side of Pika. She walked closer, looked down at the big Alu'kan for a moment, and then stepped directly behind him.

"Here. Try to relax," she said, and reached down to press her thumbs into the muscles of his neck. Arc shared an exchange of glances with first Cassie, and then Vee. None of them said anything out loud, but he imagined they were thinking the same thing he was: that other than unarmed combat training, it was the first time they'd ever seen her voluntarily touch a man.

"Anyway, you haven't said how you did, Cassie," Arc said, deliberately choosing to not call any more attention to what was happening.

"Did you get to the lake?"

"Actually, I –" Cassie began, but she was interrupted by Lieutenant Commander Libby.

"This is not the worst showing I've ever seen," their instructor announced, his voice echoing off the catwalks, the walls and the ceiling.

"Most of you managed a bit of walking before your session was over, which was our goal for today. No reactions strong enough to send anyone down to the infirmary for testing. And, to my immense shock and surprise, one of you actually did manage to run your mech without taking a digger. Cadet Sabran-Solaris, ten merits, as promised."

"Thank you, sir!" Cassie exclaimed, snapping to attention.

"Don't let it go to your head," Libby cautioned her.

"Still, I'm pleased for a first day. You'll all be here each afternoon, once your morning classes are done, while we work you through the basics of moving a mech. I will caution you once again to take your time—it's better to master a skill than rush ahead. I want all my pilots to have a solid foundation. And once again, if any of you begin to experience symptoms of dysmorphia, I must emphasize that you need to report to the infirmary immediately. It is not the sort of thing you want to play around with.

All that aside, however, you are dismissed. I expect to see you all here on time and ready at your pod Monday afternoon." The cadets began to break up and head for the stairs, but Arc was surprised to see one of the two upperclassmen who'd been listening cut his way through the crowd, making directly for where he and Cassie stood. He was tall, easily taller than Cassie and perhaps just a hair above Arc, with broad, athletic shoulders, and something about him immediately set Arc's teeth on edge.

"At ease, cadets," he said, before they could even snap to attention.

"Cadet Radecki," Cassie said.

"It's a surprise to see you again here."

"A pleasant surprise, I hope," Radecki said, with a confident smile.

"I'm glad to see you survived Hard Burn. We watched the tail end of your simulation, and the lieutenant commander is right—it's impressive to run without falling during your first time in the pod."

"Thank you," Cassie said, "but I have the advantage of a lot of pod time before ever coming here. I don't know that anyone else can say that."

"Still, it isn't the same," Radecki said.

"Not until you've got your neural lace put in. Anyway, where are my manners? Cadet Second Class Radecki." He turned and offered his hand to Arc.

"I met Cadet Sabran-Solaris the day you were all going through testing and vaccination at the infirmary." Arc had already reached out to clasp Radecki's hand in his own by the time he processed the words, but he might not have if the upperclassman had spoken a little bit faster. He met her when we were all in the infirmary, dressed in our underwear? Your system is flooding with testosterone, cortisol, and oxytocin, Iceni declared. This generally indicates a response of jealousy.

Are you feeling threatened in your unspoken role as a potential mating partner? Not helping, Arc told the AI, while he forced himself to meet Radecki's gaze. For a moment, both of them remained frozen like that, hands locked, each of them squeezing just a bit too hard.

"Arcturus Sandhurst," he said. Radecki simply nodded, then released Arc's hand and reached for Vee.

"Pleasure to meet you all," he said.

"Fletcher helped me out when the corpsmen wouldn't listen to me about some of my genetics," Cassie explained, as he went from Vee to Pika, who remained seated and only reached a hand up, and then finally Rain.

"He's a good person to know down in the infirmary, in case you have a problem." Arc tried not to dwell on the fact that she was using the older cadet's first name.

"Anyway," Radecki said, once he'd greeted them in turn, and turned back to Cassie, "You should come by the officers' club for a meal sometime. We could give you a few tips on the simulations, and piloting in general." Arc felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he watched Cassie blink in surprise.

"Really?" she said.

"I didn't think underclassmen were allowed to visit other dining halls."

"Not without an invitation," Radecki said, his smile never wavering.

"But I, personally, think it's part of our job as upperclassmen to spot talented up and coming pilots and give them a bit of support when we can. I'll send a message to your AI, and we'll find a day." Cassie nodded, and Radecki turned to head out. He gave a wave when he reached the door, which might have looked like it was to the entire group—but Arc was absolutely certain it was meant for Cassie, and for her alone.

"Come on, let's get Pika someplace he can lie down," Cassie suggested, and between her and Rain, they got the Alu'kan on his feet and shepherded him toward the door. Arc lingered behind for just a moment, until Vee came up on one side of him.

"You see it too, don't you?" she asked, her voice low.

"I don't like that guy," Arc said. Vee reached out to pat him on the back, and then they both hurried to catch up with their friends. But even once they'd gotten Pika back to the dorm and off his feet, Arc couldn't stop thinking about how Radecki had looked at Cassie.