Chương 57: Clipped Wings

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum January 13, 2848 Arc sent Natalie a message – not to an AI, of course, because the tech students didn't get neural lace, but to her tablet, asking her to meet him at Bachman Training Center for twenty-hundred hours. Then, he reconsidered and sent a second message inviting her to have dinner at Tycho Hall and walk over together afterward.

When he got back to the dorm room he shared with Pika and Cal, he found the two of them watching a news clip on a tablet that they'd propped up on one of the two desks. Cal had clearly gotten back before Arc – of course, he hadn't stayed behind to talk to anyone after the class was out. They gave Arc no more than a glance when he came through the door, before turning back to the screen.

"News on the war?" Arc asked, coming up behind them.

"There's fighting in every system in LeShaii space now," Cal answered.

"On top of Tau Ceti." Arc remembered how Cal had looked, sitting there alone in the dark room before break, watching the recorded message from his father.

"Any word from the second fleet?" he asked. He quite deliberately did not use Vice Admiral Farragut Madine's name.

"Here," Pika said, stabbing a finger at the screen. A new video popped up and began to play. Arc immediately recognized the red sun and dark sky of Ha'veth; there was not a single trace of the color blue in the video, and the uniforms of both Admiral Wai and Admiral Madine gave the appearance of being made from stark black cloth. Both men were standing on the surface of the world, with a field hospital in the background.

Lines of LeShaii refugees, most of them injured and bandaged, shuffled between hospital tents and food lines as the two officers spoke for the camera." – wouldn't it be easier to simply drop a few nuclear warheads on the hive?" a reporter wearing a field helmet asked.

"Or use naval railguns from orbit."

"It's also easier to crack an egg with a hammer," Wai the Shipbreaker shot back.

"But then you couldn't cook with it. Look, this is an imperial world, and these are our people. We're not going to shrug our shoulders, blast away until it's nothing but an irradiated rock, and then move on." Farragut Madine coughed.

"What my esteemed colleague is trying to say is that the operation to retake Ha'veth is well underway and proceeding as planned." There was not an ounce of good humour or warmth in either his face, or his voice.

"In order to retake the archipelago with minimum loss of civilian life, and to reduce further damage to the ecosystem, this is going to be a deliberate, methodical offensive. We will free this world, and we will do it in due course, in keeping with the honor of the imperial fleet." Cal touched the screen again, freezing the image.

"They're going to have to go island by island," he grumbled.

"But it's pointless trying to get any real idea of what's happening from news-casts like this. They're just trying to keep the media from panicking." Arc thought back to how he'd spent his afternoon.

"We may not know what's going on, specifically," he said.

"But Professor DeVault did get that massive intelligence package from somewhere. We're going to spend the entire semester fighting the Na'xir in his course. Our first simulation let us get a look at the hive, actually."

"You actually saw it?" Pika asked.

"That means they must have landed troops on whatever island it's on, at some point. But they didn't actually take it…"

"How about this," Arc said.

"I'll tell you all about it at dinner." He only hesitated for a moment.

"You can sit with us if you like, Cal. I'm sure you tried different things in the sims than I did, and I'd love to hear about it." Before break, Arc wouldn't have noticed the moment of hesitation in Cal's face; or, if he had, he would have taken it for something other than what it was. Disdain, perhaps. He'd never have considered that the other cadet might actually be lonely.

"I'll mention it to John and Sloane," he said, finally.

"Maybe."

"Well, I want to hear about it," Pika rumbled.

"Let's get the girls and head down to the dining hall." Downstairs, Arc loaded his tray up with vat-grown chicken dumplings, rice, and some sort of local shellfish mixed with cream cheese and baked into a shell of dough. The academy medical staff must have decided that he'd put on enough weight during the first semester, because he was no longer on double rations. When he got to the end of the table that he and his friends sat at, he was surprised to see that C'rise was there, sitting next to Rain.

Arc slid onto the bench next to Cassie and counted seats.

"We may need to make room," he observed.

"I invited Natalie to meet us here, and Pika and I were talking with Cal Madine a few minutes ago. He may come by with a couple of his crew."

"Or he may not," Pika said, settling into his accustomed place at the very end of the table.

"He is a tough one to get close to, I think."

"What's Natalie coming for?" Cassie asked.

"Ireti's supposedly come through on finding me a Kestrel pilot to spar with," Arc explained.

"Once we're done here, I need to walk over to the training center and meet them. She said I should bring Natalie, and that anyone else who wanted to could come watch. I really hope it works out – she's going to be out on the Honor soon, and I don't know who else might be able to set something up." Cassie took a drink, then set her cup down.

"If she says she'll do something, I have faith she will."

"Oh! There's Natalie!" Vee exclaimed, and stood up from her seat to wave both hands in the air, above her head.

"Over here!" When she sat down again, Vee scooted over to make room for the tech. Natalie hesitated at the end of the food line for a moment, until she caught sight of the Torean girl, and then walked over, carrying a tray of food with both hands. Arc looked for any trace of a limp, or a hitch in her step, from the wound she'd taken during Hard Burn, but he couldn't see anything. Doctor Seung and her people had clearly done good work.

"I feel like a stranger in a strange land," Natalie said, with a grin.

"Not often tech students like me get to eat in officer country."

"We're cadets," Rain pointed out.

"None of us are officers yet. Not really." Natalie speared a dumpling with her fork, and waved it in the general direction of Rain's face.

"When you graduate, you'll be an Ensign. That's O-1. I'll be an E-3 on a maintenance crew. That means this is officer country, and I stick out like a sore thumb." She laughed. The sound of a man clearing his throat caught everyone's attention, and Arc looked up to see that Cal Madine, Sloane Emonstone-Granville, and John Rixey had approached, holding their own trays of food.

"Sandhurst," Rixey said.

"Sabran-Solaris. Ramírez. Good to see you all again. We won't be interrupted by a rampaging xeno-beast this time, I hope." Pika laughed out loud.

"Not much chance of that!"

"Cal and Sloane tell me the three of you got to dive into Na'xir intelligence," Rixey continued.

"I'd like to hear about it, if that's alright." At his side, Cal, who should probably have been the one talking, looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Yeah, we'll make room," Arc said.

"Grab a seat." They shuffled around, made space, and squeezed together, though Arc made certain that he ended up still sitting next to Cassie by the time everything was arranged.

"The simulation started with a probing attack on the Na'xir nest on Ha'veth," Arc began, and C'rise immediately perked up. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"You actually saw footage?" she asked.

"We saw simulations based on combat data," Sloane answered.

"Which, presumably included footage, yeah. I never actually got to the nest, though."

"It was planted right in the middle of a city on this weirdly shaped island," Arc explained, in between bites of rice.

"The thing must have been fifty, sixty stories tall…" 𝝮"That was nice," Arc said, as he and Cassie walked, arm-in-arm, toward the training center. Natalie and, to his surprise, Vee, had fallen back a few steps behind them, and were, so far as he could tell, comparing tastes in music.

"It felt like a whole bunch of people at once were giving each other a chance to start over," he went on.

"Not just Cal. But Vee seemed off, before break, and – did you make peace with C'rise?"

"We did," Cassie confirmed.

"Or, at least, we started to. Rain got everyone together, believe it or not. It was the day you and Pika went into the city to buy me a present." Arc laughed.

"I guess I shouldn't have expected it to stay a secret."

"It's not as if you were very subtle," Cassie teased him, bumping into him with her hip so that he stumbled a bit.

"Anyway. There's Ireti – and that must be her mysterious pilot." Only the second of Vidako's two suns remained visible, as a burning half-circle half-consumed by the treeline to the west, but the floodlights mounted on the Bachman Training Center had come on automatically, and they picked out two older cadets in their uniforms, waiting just at the foot of the stairs. Ireti Ọlatẹru was speaking with the other cadet, but both of them ended their conversation and turned to greet the arriving group.

"Cadet Sandhurst," Ọlatẹru called out, raising her voice.

"Cadet Sabran-Solaris. Thank you for being on time. I'd like to introduce you to Cadet Second Class Abioye Taiwo." Taiwo was tall – taller than Ireti was – and he stood with a sort of casual confidence that Arc immediately envied. He looked, Arc thought, as if he'd just walked out onto a stage to a round of applause, and as if that were a perfectly normal and every-day occurrence. His black hair was clipped tight to his head, just long enough to hide the silver of his neural lace, but the sides were shaved.

He was the only cadet Arc had ever seen who sported a neatly trimmed beard. When he spoke, his voice was deep, clear and resonant.

"Good evening, cadets," Taiwo said, and his voice carried, echoing off the stone steps. They came to a stop facing the two older cadets, Arc, Cassie, Natalie and Vee forming a semi-circle so that the entire group stood in a rough ring, at easy distance for conversation. It was Cassie who spoke first.

"Taiwo," she said.

"Any relation to the dukes of Volans?"

"I told you she'd recognize you," Ireti said, with a grin. When she turned her face toward Abioye Taiwo, there was a light in her eyes that Arc had never seen before. She likes him, he realized. Statistical analysis of body language supports this supposition, Iceni supplied, an instant later. Also, Cassie and Lyra have come to the same conclusion. It makes her look very different from our other encounters with her.

"I am the third son of Duke Sijuade," Abioye admitted.

"Ireti and I come from the same planet, actually, and we were somewhat in competition for recommendations that year." Arc frowned.

"You were the same year? But –""And now we come to the reason that I am able to help you," Abioye said.

"Toward the end of my second year at the academy, I was diagnosed with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy. Doctor Seung says that, in retrospect, the symptoms were appearing during my first year, if not before I came to the academy. A rather late onset. If it had come a few years earlier, I don't think that even my father would have given me a recommendation."

"Abioye had already qualified to pilot a Kestrel by the time he was diagnosed," Ireti explained.

"But even with the anti-seizure medication, Doctor Seung pulled his clearance for the zero-g track. He essentially had to go back and start his second year over."

"The g-forces," Abioye said, shaking his head.

"They are a trigger for the seizures. It is, apparently, medically unsafe." His face twisted into a scowl for a moment, but then he shook himself and wiped it away, forcing a smile instead.

"So. It is not to my advantage, but perhaps I can do you a bit of good, my friends. I am qualified to pilot a Kestrel, and in fact I like to think that I am quite good at it. But I am a year behind the cadets I arrived with, and I will not be leaving on the Honorius with Ireti and the rest. I will be here for the entirety of the second semester, absent a patrol or two, and can make myself available to train you for your duel."

"Thank you," Arc said, exchanging a glance with Cassie.

"And for what it's worth, I'm sorry that happened to you."

"We cannot help what troubles the universe throws at us," Abioye said.

"All we can control is how we respond to them. A truth that, I believe, you have already discovered. A challenge was made. All you could do was accept, and begin to prepare."

"I still feel like an idiot for getting suckered into it," Arc admitted.

"Perhaps you were," Abioye said.

"But you have also been man enough not to back down, or to flee. There is something noble in that. Now, let us go inside. We should have just enough time to walk downstairs by the time the pods empty."

"I will leave you here," Ireti said, giving the collective group a nod and setting off up the path toward the dorms.

"Do not forget, Irie," Abioye called after her.

"Friday evening." She waved a hand without turning around." – what, exactly, did she offer to get you to do this?" Vee asked, narrowing her eyes.

"A treasure beyond price. She agreed that I could take her to dinner in the city, and that she would wear a dress." Abioye flashed a grin, and turned to lead the group up the stairs into the training facility. I knew it! Cassie declared, in her private chat with Arc. When he glanced to the side, he could see the triumph sparkling in her eyes, and it made him chuckle. Down in the simulation room, the previous group of cadets were unstrapping and piling out of their pods.

It was all upperclassmen, Arc saw: fourth-years getting a bit of sim time in before they left on the Honorius, or third years practicing in their mechs of choice. He, Cassie, Vee and Natalie made their way along the catwalk, following Abioye Taiwo as he cut a path against the flow of the crowd to the first two open pods.

"I'll set you up for the lunar surface," Cassie volunteered, moving away from Arc to take control of one of the flat-screens fixed to the spaces between the pods. Vee and Natalie crowded in at her shoulders, to either side.

"Do you want me to put you in a Tyro, or –""Just the Tyro," Arc told her.

"Until the Honorius leaves." He pounded down the stairs to his own pod, slipped into the seat, which was still warm from the previous occupant, and buckled his harness. There was no way he was going to risk Fletcher Radecki learning about Cassie's offer, which meant he wanted the other man out of orbit and cruising around the system before he practiced in anything but a Tyro. Connecting to the simulator, Iceni told him.

A moment later, the world shivered, and Arc once again found himself clad in an artificial body of metal, graphene muscles, and ceramic armor. His Tyro stood on a gray plain, covered in dust and tumbled rock, with the entrance to a canyon off to one side. Above the horizon was only the vast black of space, and a scattering of stars. Off in the distance, one of Vidako's two suns was visible, bathing the surface of Chel in light. Preferred loadout?

"As close to what I'm actually going to use as we can get," he decided.

"Use Natalie's thruster modification for the back, and replace the autocannons with anti-missile turrets, just like we planned. Give me a plasma blade on the right hip. The laser rifle is fine." As soon as his weapons, armor, and fuel readouts came up, Arc settled the mech's rifle in his right hand, and used the left to cross-draw the hilt of his simulated plasma blade.

"The moment Cassie starts the match," he told Iceni, "I want you to light those thrusters off and take us into the canyon. You can do it quicker than I can."

"Are you ready, Sandhurst?" Abioye's voice crackled over the comm between the two pods.

"Ready," Arc confirmed.

"Counting you down," Cassie's voice came next.

"Three. Two. One. Go!" Iceni hit the thrusters as soon as the word was spoken, rocketing the Tyro sideways into the canyon. If this was in a real mech, I would have just hit you with four g's of acceleration, she warned him. The thrusters rotated, and lit off again, keeping Arc and his mech from slamming into the side of the canyon. Eight targets incoming. Anti-missile turrets activating. This was where Arc had died on every previous simulation.

He'd never once managed to get to the canyon – but that was before he and Iceni had spent all of winter breaking learning how to use vectoring thrusters from Lieutenant Estrada. Arc's shoulder mounted anti-missile turrets began to spit lead. Something hit the top of the cliff just above him, and this time he was the one to light off the thrusters, pushing the mech forward and out of the range of falling debris. For just a moment, after the Tyro's feet touched down, he kept bracing for impact.

Two missiles hit the canyon walls, Iceni told him. The rest are confirmed down by our turrets. Arc exhaled a shaky breath.

"It worked. Now, we make him come in close." He couldn't help but grin as he set off deeper into the canyons.