Chương 28: Jessica Morrow

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum September 29, 2847 Now that Arc had seen Jessica for what she was, he found it almost impossible to think of her as anything else. She managed to lurk unobtrusively over the remains of her own breakfast, then somehow slipped out of the dining hall just behind them when Arc, Cassie, and their friends left.

He kept an eye out for Flopsy, the shadow-rabbit, as they headed out past the sofas and love-seats where small groups of cadets gathered, on their way back to the foyer, but the little furball wasn't anywhere to be seen. Neither was C'rise Bian. Arc saw that the windows set into the outside hall of the corridor were running with streaks of water; when the wind outside shifted, the rain was sometimes driven almost sideways, and it slapped against the glass like bullets.

"Looks like the rainy season is here," Vee grumbled.

"I'm not looking forward to walking over to the infirmary in this. What feathers I've got left are going to be soaked."

"I have to go before you do," Rain said. Arc walked over to the windows, squinted at them, and realized that he couldn't see the campus outside Tycho Hall at all.

"Well, I guess we aren't going outside today," he said.

"We could grab a couple of couches down here."

"It's better than trying to cram five people into one dorm room," Cassie agreed. She made an immediate beeline for a group of two love seats and a couch, arranged haphazardly around a low coffee table, and settled down on one half of the love seat that faced the foyer. Before Arc could join her, Rain hurried over and took a seat at Cassie's side, which left Vee and Arc to share the other love seat while Pika spread out to somehow take up the entire couch.

It was a slow morning—in between skimming through the selections Professor DeVault had chosen from On War, Arc sipped a mug of hot chocolate from the dining hall and picked Cassie's brain about piloting. She and Vee were the only ones with anything approaching experience, but while Vee's advice might be invaluable once he was getting ready to fly in zero-g, it wasn't much good when it came to making a simulated Tyro walk without falling over.

"The center of gravity's already designed to be low," Cassie explained, pulling a schematic of the academy training mech up on her tablet and holding it so they all could see.

"It has to be, so that you can carry around a handheld weapon later on. So as long as you don't throw yourself in some sort of crazy maneuver, you should be able to keep your balance with a little bit of practice."

"I don't want weapons," Rain commented.

"I'm best at hand-to-hand fighting, anyway." Cassie grinned, pulled her tablet back to her lap, and stabbed at it with her fingers.

"I know what you need. Here. Kotetsu Sonics, out of Nightside City on Mikaboshi, makes a set of ultrasonic cutting claws that can be swapped in for the last joint of a mech's fingers. If you get a grip on their armor, these things will sink right in." She passed her tablet to Rain, and the Alu'kan girl leaned toward it until her nose almost touched the screen.

It was during that long, lazy morning and afternoon—interrupted only by a lunch of hot tomato soup and grilled sandwiches from the dining hall—that Arc came to understand just how much of a mech-head Cassie was. He'd known that she could have chosen to go to basically any other military academy, or even the old ivy-league schools on Terra, if she'd wanted to: that it had been her choice to come to Vidako, and that she'd been practicing in stripped-down simulators long before coming.

She was good enough that no one could doubt it. But it turned out, to his slight surprise and immense satisfaction, that when it came to mechs, Imperial Princess Cascada Vega Sabran-Solaris was an absolute geek. She could chatter on for ten minutes about the differences between the RSiNC ceramic plates that a Janissary, Culverin, or Tyro fielded, and the ablative tiles loaded onto a Kestrel.

She had very definitive opinions about the CrCoNi Alloy War-Club Vijay Iyer had used to beat the juvenile spiked terror into a fine pulp, and why it was less effective in almost every circumstance than an IMT Plasma Blade. He couldn't help but find it absolutely adorable. Arc didn't even realize that he was grinning like an idiot, as he listened to her go on about the difference between loading armor piercing or high explosive rounds in an autocannon, until Vee elbowed him in the gut.

The air whuffed out of his lungs, and he nearly dropped his tablet on the floor.

"—you alright, Arc?" Cassie asked, looking over at him with a frown.

"Yeah, fine," he said, after shooting Vee a dirty look.

"Alright, Cassie. If you could take any load-out you wanted, what would you use to go pirate hunting?" Part of him just wanted to listen to her talk, but he also wanted to hear what she thought. Take notes, Iceni, he told the AI. After all, when he finally managed to corner the Black Queen, he wanted to be certain he was ready.

"Just pirates on a ship—or do they have mechs?" she asked. Rain stood up from where she'd been sitting next to Cassie, and gave a small wave with her hand, holding it close in to her chest.

"I'll see you all later," she said.

"I'm due at the infirmary." They all waved as she left and then Arc answered Cassie's question.

"Figure they've got at least one mech to make it interesting," he said, though he was certain he wasn't fooling her in the slightest.

"Something meant for zero-g, but probably not a modern model. An old Black Harrier, maybe."

"What's that?" Pika asked, and to no one's surprise, Cassie had an immediate answer.

"Second generation imperial model," she explained.

"Got replaced by the Kestrel. Alright, so what you really need to do is lure the pirates in without them suspecting anything. You want to be right up on them so they can't get away, and that's tough to do in space. What I'd do?" Cassie thought for a moment, gently tapping the tips of her fingers on the screen of her tablet and biting her lip.

"I'd swap Outrider armor onto a Kestrel," Cassie decided.

"If we're assuming I have an unlimited budget and a crew of techs to do whatever I want. All those upgraded ECMs and sensors, too. I'd set it up to look like I was a piece of debris, just floating along next to a wrecked cargo hauler or something. Maybe tear out the anti-missile turret to make room for some of it, because if they get missiles off, you've already done something wrong. Otherwise, weapons loadout like a Kestrel A —as many short range missiles as I could cram into the launchers.

And I'd love to find a way to get a plasma accelerator in there, somehow, maybe instead of one of those heavy lasers." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Once they come in nice and close, to see what kind of salvage they can take out of the hulk, that's when I'd open up with absolutely everything," Cassie concluded.

"It's a second gen mech, so the EMP shielding is out of date. If we get lucky, that means the plasma accelerator fries something critical right away. There's no room to dodge all those missiles at that range. Blow them away before they ever even know something's wrong." She shrugged, and grinned.

"Of course, then you've got to survive whatever ship hauled the mech there." I have recorded a transcript of Cadet Sabran-Solaris's insights, Iceni promised. As requested.

"Do me next!" Vee shouted, bouncing on the cushion next to Arc.

"I want the fastest zero-g mech there is. I want to be dogfighting around asteroids and blowing up destroyers." Arc wasn't certain that he actually agreed with Cassie's idea, and he also wasn't confident that he'd ever be able to be in the right place, at the right time, with a Kestrel that had been so extensively modified. Still, there was a reason that ambushing an enemy had been a consistently effective tactic for thousands of years—essentially, as long as humans had been making war on each other.

That basic concept was a good beginning. Vee drifted off next; she'd squirrelled away a disposable plastic poncho from the supplies they'd taken out to the lake, during Hard Burn, and shrouded herself in it with a satisfied grin before she went out into the rain. Pika, who left just a short while after, didn't bother: like most of his species, a little water was the absolute last thing that bothered him.

That left Arc and Cassie alone, as the afternoon wore on toward dinner, and when the rain slowed to a light drizzle, they took the opportunity to make their way over to the infirmary together.

"You've got the appointment right after me, again," Cassie teased him, as they stepped around puddles on the paved paths which round their way through campus.

"I think I've acquired a stalker. I'll have to tell my father."

"Maybe I should change my name," Arc joked back. The clouds were thinning just enough to let a few rays of sunlight through, but thunder still rumbled north of the city, and he didn't expect it to remain calm for very long.

"My mother was a Pirotte, before she and dad got married." Cassie wrinkled her nose as if she'd stepped into a pile of garbage.

"Arcturus Pirotte? No. No, I don't like that at all. I guess you'll have to stay as my stalker for a bit." Her good mood faded quite obviously when they stepped into the infirmary, and he reached out to give her hand a squeeze before he could think better of it.

"You alright?" Arc asked.

"Yes. Or, at least, I will be," Cassie declared.

"Hair grows back, after all. I just hope it isn't too ugly. I should have brought my cap, so that no one would see."

"I don't think there's any world in which you could ever be described as ugly," Arc told her, and was pleased to see that got a little smile.

"We'll see if you still think that when my scalp's all red and swollen," she complained.

"Probably bleeding pus."

"If there's pus, you've already done something wrong," Fletcher Radecki said, stepping out into the infirmary waiting room with a tablet tucked under his arm.

"Because that means you've got an infection, and instead of telling us you have a fever, you decided to tough it out. Good afternoon, Cadet Sabran-Solaris. Doctor Seung is expecting you." I am still somewhat mystified by human social interactions, Iceni said, within Arc's head. Do you think he simply forgot to address you by name, as well? Or did he do that on purpose? I'm thinking he did it on purpose, Arc thought back to her.

"I'll be waiting right here when you come out, Cassie," he said. She nodded and stepped over to where Radecki was holding the door for her. She turned back just long enough to give a little wave and then followed the older cadet deeper into the infirmary, leaving Arc to sit alone in the waiting room and stew in his own thoughts. Still, he wasn't at all surprised when the door out into the drizzle opened, and Jessica Morrow slipped through.

Cassie's bodyguard had apparently already had her bandages removed, and she was wearing her cadet's uniform cap, which meant Arc didn't get a look at the healing incisions. She sat down in a chair directly across from him, jaw set and eyes utterly devoid of humor.

"When did you slip out to get it done?" Arc asked her.

"While you were all palling around in the lounge," Jessica said.

"Just before your friend Vee, actually."

"I'm surprised you stepped away from her for that long," Arc admitted.

"It isn't avoidable, not without a larger detail," Jessica explained.

"To really do this right, I'd want at least four people in the squad. But the princess put her foot down, and her father gave in. She didn't even want me here. I'm the compromise."

"Her father, the emperor," Arc said. Jessica nodded.

"Altair Janus Solaris, Emperor of the Imperium Stellarum." Arc leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh.

"Well, I'm glad you were with us yesterday in the city, even if I didn't realize you were there. I assume you tailed along after us most of the day."

"That's the job."

"I'm surprised you're not sleeping in her dorm," Arc said.

"I bet she put her foot down about that too, didn't she?"

"Something like that." Jessica's eyes flicked around the room, then returned to him.

"I am here to make certain that nothing hurts her."

"I understand that –""No, I don't think you do," Jessica snapped, and in that moment Arc believed that she was older than the rest of them. She didn't look it, most of the time—had a youthful face—but when she let the imperial guard out, there was no illusion that he was looking at anything but a soldier.

"I would die for her in a heartbeat," Jessica went on.

"And I knew, when I took this assignment, that I might very well have to. While the two of you wandered around like carefree little lovebirds, I had drones in the air to check for snipers on the surrounding rooftops. I had feeds from the San Teodoro police department dispatch line, who I can assure you do not appreciate being forced to work with me.

It is my job, Sandhurst, to think about every way that someone could kill her, every minute of every day, and I have to do it in a manner that she won't notice, or she'll throw a fit. So instead of having someone in the kitchen running a precision scanner over her food before it comes out, I've got to settle for a hidden camera and a toxin scanner mounted on the wall for the entire kitchen, and hope that I don't miss anything. And the last thing I need you to do is to make my job more difficult."

Arc had been feeling somewhat sympathetic, because it didn't sound like Cassie was giving her bodyguard an easy time of it. But at that last, he felt a flare of anger ignite somewhere deep in his chest.

"First of all, I'm not trying to ruin your day," he snapped.

"Second, if I'd known who you were ahead of time, before we went into the city, I could have maybe even worked with you a bit."

"I don't need you to work with me," Jessica said.

"You think I don't have a complete file on you already? I flagged you for Imperial Intelligence the moment you sat next to her on the elevator, just like I do any potential threat."

"I'm a threat?" Arc couldn't help but laugh.

"I'm just a kid from some outworld. We make silk—that's it. Until yesterday, I don't think I'd ever been in a real fight in my entire life. Whatever you think I'm going to do to her, you're wrong."

"I don't think I am," Jessica said.

"You're not here for the good of the Imperium, cadet. You're here because your sister got herself killed by pirates. I'm sorry, I really am—it's a shitty thing to have happened, but it does happen, and it happens to thousands of people across the universe every day. But it's not the right reason to join fleet, and I'd bet a thousand credits you're going to crack from everything you're keeping bottled up inside before your time at the academy is out.

And if not then, you're going to get yourself killed the first chance you get to throw yourself at those pirates." Arc didn't even realize he was squeezing his hands into fists until he felt his nails, clipped short as they were, biting into the skin of his palms.

"Why I'm here isn't any business of yours," he said.

"I'm not going to hurt Cassie."

"Because you have feelings for her?" Jessica said.

"You don't have to answer that. Let's say she does fall in love with you, cadet. You want her to be the one who has to scrape up the pieces when you finally have to deal with that vendetta you're holding onto? Or the one who has to cry over your casket when the Black Queen shoots down your mech, in five or six years?"

"But let's say none of that happens," Jessica went on.

"Let's say you get your head on straight. You graduate, you get your officer's commission and head off to serve on a carrier somewhere. You understand the two of you won't be together? Fleet's an eight-year commitment, and you do not get to choose where you're stationed. You really want a relationship that mostly consists of sending video messages from one end of the Imperium to the other?"

"And I wouldn't count on her to be done after one term of service," Jessica continued.

"This is a girl who's had mechs on the brain since she was ten, Sandhurst. She's not going to retire to that backwater planet you come from and settle in as the wife of a silk-mill worker. You know she needs her father's approval to get married to anyone? It's written into the constitution. You're not a duke's son, kid. You're not going to cut it."

"Is there a point to all this?" Arc practically growled.

"The point is this," Jessica said.

"Settle for being her friend. You'll both end up happier for it in the long run."