Chương 44: War Room

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum November 3, 2847 Outside of Montalban Hall, the grass at the edges of the paths was wet, and there was the feeling of steam in the air—like stepping into a bathroom where a hot shower had been running. Cassie paused for just a moment, at the top of the steps, to look around for Fletcher Radecki. If he was lingering about waiting for them, she decided that she couldn't be blamed for breaking his nose.

Instead, she found Jessica Morrow leaning against the outside of the building, just to one side of the double doors. The moment Arc and Cassie started down the steps, the imperial guard slipped into place at their backs, perhaps half a dozen steps behind.

"I wish you'd been this close yesterday," Cassie grumbled, not bothering to lower her voice.

"My job is to protect your life," Jessica said, from behind them.

"Not your boyfriend. If you'd been in any actual danger, I would have stepped in." As they moved down the path, Cassie felt the eyes of the passing students on them more heavily than she had at any point since her first days at the academy, after Van Camp had outed her publicly. Only, this time, she was fairly certain that their classmates were looking at Arc just as much as they were at her. She caught fragments of voices, of conversations, as they passed, and the word 'duel' more than once.

"It's alright," Arc said, and from the tone of his voice Cassie could tell that he was uncomfortable—which only made her feel worse.

"I don't expect Jessica to step in to help me." There was a moment of awkward silence, which Cassie found perversely satisfying. She wasn't at all upset if her bodyguard had to stew in that feeling for a moment.

"It's nothing personal," Jessica said, coming up closer behind them.

"You seem like a good kid, Sandhurst. But I don't have a full detail, here, and it isn't like the two of you are engaged. And remember, Your Imperial Highness, this is what you wanted. The minimum security the emperor would allow, as far out of sight as possible. If that isn't what you want anymore –""I want to live my life!" Cassie exclaimed.

"Without idiots like Radecki harassing my friends, if it's at all possible. Apparently it isn't." They were only halfway back to Tycho Hall, and just less than halfway dusted with lingering drops of rain shaken out of the leaves that rustled overhead, when Cassie caught sight of a small group of upperclassmen bearing down on them. Ireti Ọlatẹru led the way, with Vijay Iyer and, to Cassie's dread, her cousin Bhaskar flanking her.

"Here it comes," she whispered to Arc, and reached out to take his hand in hers.

"I'm sorry." The two groups slowed and came to a halt facing each other, but Prince Bhaskar began talking before Cassie had even stopped moving. Whatever she'd been expecting her cousin to say, however, it wasn't what she got.

"Name me as your champion," Bhaskar Nova Xiao-Solaris demanded. Cassie blinked.

"What?"

"This is utterly unacceptable," Bhaskar said, his dark eyes flashing with anger.

"Upperclassmen shouldn't be throwing their weight around on first years to begin with, but to pick a fight with the imperial family? I don't care about this idiot's senator father. He needs to be taught a sharp lesson." The prince turned to regard Arc.

"We don't know each other well," he admitted.

"Iyer tells me you did well on your first patrol, and I don't want to take that away from you. But there's no shame in this—he has two full years of experience on you. I'm surprised the commandant is allowing this at all, but since she is, let me step in. I'll deal with the problem." Cassie snuck a glance at Arc, and noticed that he'd had his AI send a private message to her through Lyra. This is not at all what I expected, Arc's message went. Me either, Cassie admitted. She considered her words for a moment.

Her mother would have told her to be polite, but at the moment Cassie simply didn't have the patience for it.

"I didn't think you approved of Arc," she said.

"I don't," Bhaskar confirmed, without even trying to soften the statement.

"He's beneath you, and I don't think your father will ever approve a marriage. But that's not what this is about. This is about the respect due our family. A jumped up senator's son has the audacity to throw an insult like this in our faces? Fine. I'll kill him myself."

"Let's slow down a moment," Ireti Ọlatẹru said, placing a hand on Bhaskar's shoulder as if to calm him.

"First of all, Cassie, Cadet Sandhurst, are you both alright? Word's gotten around campus pretty quickly since yesterday, and Fletcher Radecki was crowing to anyone who'd listen, after he left the commandant's office, that he had no intention of accepting an apology."

"Practically bragging about it," Vijay Iyer said.

"That she couldn't stop him. Arc, you can't fight him. Did you convince Marlowe to put a stop to it?"

"I'm fine," Cassie assured Ọlatẹru.

"Angry, but fine. Physically, we both are."

"But the duel is going to go forward," Arc said, at her side.

"One patrol doesn't make you a pilot," Vijay insisted. If Cassie hadn't been able to tell at a glance how worried the older cadet was for Arc, his words might have come off as an insult. At her side, Arc glanced around, and Cassie caught what he was looking at—clumps of students walking by along the paths, sometimes singly or in pairs. But they didn't have anything like privacy, standing as they were right out in the open.

"We can't have this conversation out here," he said.

"We need someplace private."

"There's study rooms at Tycho Hall," Cassie said.

"I'm certain Karisa would open one up for us, if we told her what was happening." Arc nodded.

"Alright. That's good, because I need Pika, Rain and Vee with us. Actually, I want Natalie Ramírez, too."

"You sound like you have a plan," Ireti Ọlatẹru said. Arc, however, simply shook his head.

"Not here. Let's get back to Tycho Hall and find Karisa." He stepped forward, and Cassie followed, forcing Vijay and Ireti to step aside.

"I'm not accustomed to taking demands from underclassmen," Bhaskar growled.

"It's not a demand," Arc called back.

"You can stay or go. But if you want me to answer your questions, it won't be here." Cassie glanced back, and to her surprise watched her cousin scowl and then step forward to follow them, along with the other two upperclassmen and, lurking just behind the entire group, Jessica. The fact that Bhaskar had effectively backed down to Arc was – She tried to find the words for what she was feeling.

From the moment she'd realized, on the elevator, that Arc didn't know who she was, somehow, Cassie had liked the fact that he wanted to be her friend anyway. And even after he found out, when she'd been afraid Van Camp's big mouth would ruin everything, he hadn't treated her any differently. He was nice, he could be funny, he clearly cared about her, he'd been willing to jump in and throw a punch when she needed him to back her up on the streets of San Teodoro.

There was a sadness in him, from the loss of his sister, that made her want to wrap him up in her arms and kiss him to sleep at night and make him forget about his pain. And she did enjoy kissing him. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. But she'd never before seen Arc be quite this assertive. That ill-fated water run during Hard Burn, he'd been put in charge by Lieutenant Kekoa, and even then someone like John Rixey had pushed back on his orders.

But now, the way he'd just put the choice out there, take it or leave it, to her older cousin—to an imperial prince! One that Arc knew didn't approve of him—the sheer confidence it had taken to just do that, and walk away, sure that everyone else would follow—it was… Cassie allowed herself a small, private smile, and felt a shiver run down her body. This is odd, Lyra said, tucked safely away in the private recesses of her mind.

I don't see any reason that these particular hormones should be flooding your system right now. Is there something – Shut up, Cassie told her. Let me enjoy this. 𝝮 It took perhaps half a standard hour to gather everyone that Arc wanted. Having the group chat with the rest of their friends helped, and Cassie took care of that while Arc explained to Karisa Lynstan-Hanigata what they needed.

Flopsy, the Mikaboshan shadow-rabbit, rubbed furiously up against Cassie's leg the entire time, and then thumped one of his rear feet loudly against the floor of the RA's room until she finally gave in and picked the brat up in her arms. He immediately began to purr, of course, and then she couldn't very well put him down.

"Yes, there are study rooms," Karisa said, with a sigh. She must have been done with classes for the day, Cassie guessed, because she was wearing soft pajama bottoms, an academy t-shirt, and slippers.

"We're usually not supposed to sign them out for more than a few hours at a time, unless there's some sort of ongoing group project from an instructor."

"Just do it," Bhaskar commanded.

"Give him the room for as long as he needs it. I've already walked all the way over here, and I don't have all day to deal with this." That got them a study room. Jessica insisted on going in first, and she produced a small, handheld device with an antenna, frequency dial, LED lights, and connection cords from—well, Cassie wasn't entirely certain where her bodyguard hid things.

She watched as the other woman made a few adjustments, and then began running the device over every part of the room, from walls to floor to furniture.

"What is that?" Vee asked, thrusting her body halfway through the door before Cassie could catch hold of her belt and pull her back out. That sent Flopsy down to the floor, unfortunately, and the shadow-rabbit took off down the corridor, presumably to ensconce himself once again in his owner's bed-sheets.

"It's a few different things," Jessica said, clearly only half paying attention to the question.

"A magnetic field detector, for one, which will catch any kind of GPS tracker. It also scans radio frequencies for transmissions, infrared wavelengths for hidden cameras… we're clean." She straightened, turned off her scanner, and tucked it into a back pocket. Cassie knew because she watched.

"Pika, can you close the door behind the last one in?" Arc asked. The Alu'kan nodded, and Cassie noted that would put him in position to be the first thing anyone trying to enter walked into. For her part, she grabbed a seat around the study table, ending up with Bhaskar to one side of her, somehow, and an empty chair for Arc on the other. By the time all ten people had filed in, the room was cramped, and Cassie actually heard the moment the air conditioning kicked on.

Rather than take a seat with his friends, Arc remained standing, and felt along the bottom edge of the table until he found the power switch for the room's holo-projector.

"Alright," Arc began.

"Here's the objective. At the end of the second term, I'm going to fight Fletcher Radecki somewhere on the surface of Chel, Vidako's artificial moon. He pilots a Kestrel, and I'm only qualified on a Tyro. We have six months to get ready for the duel."

"Appoint me to fight it for you, as champion," Bhaskar broke in.

"That solves the problem." But Arc was already shaking his head.

"No offense intended, Your Imperial Highness, but I don't know you. You're Cassie's cousin, and that gets you in the door, but that's about it. Anyway, don't you pilot a Janissary?" Bhaskar shifted next to Cassie.

"I do," he admitted.

"So you'd have exactly the same problem I do," Arc said.

"Radecki's going to keep his Kestrel at range and pound you with missiles. His Kestrel's going to be flying a kilometer above the surface of Chel, while you're stuck ducking behind whatever rocks you can find." He shook his head.

"If I take your offer, the moment you climb into that cockpit, everything's completely out of my hands. I give up any ability to outthink this guy, and I can't do that."

"What is your plan, then?" Vijay demanded.

"And it better not be 'die gloriously." Arc took a deep breath. Cassie wanted to squeeze his hand, but instead she simply had Lyra send him a message: You can do this. She wasn't certain she completely believed it herself, but in that moment, she knew it was what he needed to hear.

"There are things we can control and things we can't," Arc said.

"We've already got more time to prepare than Radecki would have been expecting, thanks to the commandant. We get to choose the location for the duel, which means we can cut into his advantages. The plan is to use one of the mining facilities or quarries on the moon." He considered that a moment, and then reached out for the hologram which hovered just in front of one long wall of the room.

Iceni must have been helping him, because labels of glowing text sprang into existence, and Arc moved them about with his hands as he talked.

"Pika, a lot of that mining is done by Alu'kan engineering companies," Arc said.

"Can you get a list of locations with me? I want places that I can hide, force him to come in close."

"Of course," Pika promised.

"We need a list of every loadout he could possibly come with," Arc continued.

"If I were him, once I found out the location, I'd bring some mix of bunker-buster missiles, and then a bunch of short range rockets for fighting in close if his first volley doesn't work. That means the location needs tunnels that go deep enough he can't just pulverize me from low orbit. I also need to know every weak point a Kestrels got. Natalie, Cassie, that's you two."

"I can already tell you a couple," Natalie said.

"Those fuel tanks they carry around, for instance. Hit one of those with a laser and you get a pretty big boom."

"The fact that they're utter shit if you get into melee range," Cassie added.

"I know you might not want to hear it, Arc, but they don't have beam sabres, and he can't even choose to bring one without having a tech crew replace one of his arms all together."

"It's actually even worse for him than that," Vijay broke in." Kestrel pilots don't bother learning how to use melee weapons, because they know they won't need them. Chromium clubs, sonic claws, plasma blades—if you can actually get close enough to use any of that, you'll rip him to pieces." Cassie could actually see the moment Arc decided to go along with them, and add it to the list he was rapidly assembling.

"Sounds like I need to practice my swordsmanship, then," he grumbled.

"Second semester," she teased him.

"You and me in fencing club."

"I need sim time in general," Arc went on.

"The commandant's going to approve it. But it isn't going to do me a whole lot of good unless I can find someone to go up against who uses a Kestrel."

"That's going to be tough," Vijay said, exchanging glances with Bhaskar.

"The three of us mostly know cadets in the ground track," Cassie's cousin agreed.

"Once you get separated, the Kestrel and Leviathan pilots spend a lot of time in orbit, or on the moon. And it's going to be even worse during the second semester, because that's when the Honorius takes a run around the system."

"Actually," Ireti Ọlatẹru said, "I think I might know someone. Let me handle that part. Work on the assumption that you'll have someone to spar against in the sims, Sandhurst." Arc nodded.

"The next thing we need is intelligence. I need recordings of his sims, if we can get them. Someone other than me needs to talk to people who've flown with him –""I can take care of that," Vee volunteered.

"Everyone expects me to go into the zero-g track, anyway. I can play it off like I'm just a stupid mole rat pestering the upperclassmen."

"And I'll get you those recordings," Jessica said. The fact that she spoke up at all surprised Cassie, and she apparently wasn't the only one, because the entire room went silent.

"You're going to help?" Cassie asked, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the long desk that took up the center of the study room. She realized only after she'd spoken just how much her doubt shaded the tone of her words.

"I thought that wasn't your job."

"It's not." Jessica said.

"But I have more access to the academy systems than any of you ever would as only students. More access than most of the faculty, I'd imagine."

"... is she not a student?" Vee whispered, leaning across the table toward Cassie. Jessica winced.

"I suppose this is all going to be out in the open, now," she grumbled.

"I'm the princess's bodyguard."

"Obviously," Bhaskar grumbled.

"I'll send my man to meet up with you and help out. So far as I am concerned, this entire fiasco threatens to undermine the authority and reputation of the imperial family, and thus it cannot be allowed." He looked back to Arc.

"Alright, Sandhurst," the imperial prince said.

"You appear to have your team. Let's see what you can do with us."