Chương 62: Fire Support

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum January 21, 2848 Cassie's mind swirled with a mess of thoughts and feelings while Arc walked Lady Ren around the tarmac. Everything she'd told him was true, of course—given the choice between losing him in the duel, and having her mech wrecked, it didn't even take a moment's consideration to know which she'd prefer. But at the same time, she'd been waiting for months to finally test her mech out, and the first time it left the hangar, she wasn't even the one piloting.

That hurt. She wasn't going to make it Arc's problem, but just thinking about it brought back her frustration with Lieutenant Commander Libby. If he hadn't been deliberately putting her off, she might not have been so upset. Arc made a circle around the tarmac much more cautiously than Cassie would have in his place. If it had been her first time out in this machine, she wouldn't have been able to resist lightning off the thrusters, or drawing a plasma blade.

"You can loosen up a little," she murmured, adjusting herself in his lap.

"When we get it out to an actual testing field," Arc told her. His eyes were unfocused, less present with her than merged with the sensor suite of the mech.

"I don't want to melt the pavement or anything. Anyway, tonight's just about the neural lace connection, and that's working fine." Chief Jastrow's voice crackled over the comm system.

"Alright, back her into the hangar," he said.

"Give us a day to get the tanks filled and make sure the fuel lines are cleared. We'll load some dummy missiles to test the targeting systems. I'll let you both know once I've got a time slot for weapons and thruster testing. It might take a bit to get everything cleared."

"Understood," Arc said, turning the mech back toward the hangar.

"Thank you, Chief," Cassie said, leaning toward the microphone pickup to make certain that she'd be heard clearly.

"For everything you're doing." Only once Lady Ren was backed into the hangar and powered down did Cassie slip off of Arc. They climbed down the ladder, one after the other, to where Jessica, Chief Jastrow, and the crew of techs were waiting. No sooner had both of them hit the ground than Natalie and the others rushed the mech.

"Get on back to the dorms," Jastrow said, with a wave of his hand.

"We'll be here for hours checking things over. After the first full start-up and connection, it's best to run a full diagnostic. You never know if the factory overlooked some kind of problem. The next week or so will serve as a shakedown." A shakedown that I should have been piloting her for, Cassie couldn't help think. Are you regretting your choice? Lyra asked her. No. Cassie gave a slight shake of her head before realizing that her AI didn't need that kind of body language. No, I want Arc to win, and to be safe.

But it's made me even more determined not to put up with Libby's garbage. During the walk north to the residential section of the academy campus, she tried her best to put it out of her mind, and just enjoy the cool evening air, and the feel of Arc's hand in hers.

"How are you doing?" he asked her, once Jessica had dropped back to shadow them from a distance.

"I'm ok," Cassie said.

"Is it bad that I'm feeling a little jealous?"

"No." Arc stopped walking, and tugged her hand gently so that she halted, as well.

"How long have you been looking forward to piloting that mech?"

"Months," Cassie admitted.

"Almost a year since we started planning her out, I think."

"I'm sorry," Arc said.

"This should have been special for you. You shouldn't have to watch while I'm piloting your mech around."

"You know I'm not angry at you, don't you?" Cassie asked him. Arc nodded.

"I'm angry at Libby," she growled.

"Listen. I'm going to be logging a lot of sim time, starting tomorrow. If I don't have as much time for you -""I understand," Arc said.

"Do what you need to do, Cassie. I'll be here. Anyway, I've got some of my own nonsense to deal with. And I'm not looking forward to it." Cassie cocked her head to one side, trying to think of what he was talking about, but she drew a blank.

"Apparently they've finally hit the point they need by testimony for Sareth Khan's court martial," Arc explained.

"I kept waiting for someone to contact me, and I'd started to think maybe I wouldn't be involved after all, but I've got an appointment for tomorrow."

"Oh." Cassie thought for a moment, and then nodded.

"That makes sense, actually. They'd need to set him up with a judge advocate, and figure out who's going to sit on the panel. Give time for them to prepare a defense—there's a lot that goes into it."

"I'm a bit nervous about it," Arc admitted.

"You don't have to be," she assured him.

"You're not the one who did anything wrong. All you need to do is show up and tell them what happened. Then it's out of your hands." He nodded, but still looked a bit unsure, so she leaned in and gave him a kiss. By the time Cassie made it back to her dorm-room, it was quite late—just at the very edge of curfew, in fact. She slipped in as quietly as she could, moving carefully in the darkness so as not to wake any of her friends, and retrieved her things so that she could take a quick shower.

While she stood beneath the steaming hot water, she planned out just how she was going to approach the Libby problem. 𝝮 The absolute last pilot candidate in the class of 2851 was Ana Va'ai, who'd been recommended by the junior senator from Proxima. When grades had posted, she'd earned only ten merits for the Introductory Pilot Evaluation course, which meant that she'd scraped by with a C-.

Cassie didn't know her well; at most, they'd exchanged nods or smiles in the dining hall, or held the door to the showers open for each other. Wednesday afternoon, she waited until Lieutenant Commander Libby released everyone to their sim pods, then dashed across the catwalk to catch Ana before she could get strapped in. With the second semester now in full swing, Libby had started to shift their sim time away from teaching the basics, such as how to walk or run over rough terrain, to more complicated exercises.

Pairs or teams of cadets were set against simulated opponents, or even against each other. And that gave Cassie the perfect excuse.

"Ana!" she called out, scrambling halfway down the steps toward the other girl, who turned back with one foot already inside her pod.

"How would you feel about a match today?" Cassie asked. Va'ai frowned, looking genuinely confused.

"Pri -" she caught herself.

"You're at the top of the class. You wouldn't get much of anything out of facing off against me. I mean—shouldn't you be facing off against someone who's actually doing well? I'm just here trying not to fail the course."

"Tell you what," Cassie said, after thinking for a moment.

"If you give me a match right away, I'll spend the rest of today's class helping you. I'm not an instructor, or anything, but I bet I could give you a few pointers."

"You'd do that? Really?" It just about broke Cassie's heart to see how much the other woman's eyes lit up at the offer, and the sight made her wonder just how close to washing out of the program Ana actually was.

"I would," she promised. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Alright," Ana said.

"It's going to be a massacre, but—I'll do my best."

"Thank you," Cassie said, and ran back up the steps, then dashed across the catwalk. It felt strange not to have Arc in the pod next to her, and she spared a moment to hope that he wasn't making himself too anxious testifying at the court martial. Then, she shoved that thought aside and ducked into her pod, strapping herself in with easy familiarity and then giving Lyra permission to connect her to the computer. Setting up the simulation now, Lyra said.

Mafuiʻe has requested something relatively simple; he says that his cadet still has difficulty maneuvering over rough terrain. Mafui'e is her AI. I figured that out, Cassie sent back, with a smile. And whatever terrain she wants is fine with me. She spent a moment making selections on the pod's flat screen. A plasma blade at each hip, no rifle, and a low altitude drop backpack which threw off the training mech's center of gravity but gave her momentary access to thrusters.

The environment ended up being a wide, flat lava field of black rock. The stone beneath her Tyro's feet was textured in whorls and ripples, but nothing that stuck out so much a mech's foot would ever trip over it. Here and there, she saw that the stone fell away to reveal glowing openings into the active lava flows beneath the rock. Plumes of gas—steam or smoke, perhaps? —stretched out their fingers from those places, providing the barest wisp of cover.

Three hundred meters away, Ana Va'ai's Tyro stood, with a laser rifle cradled against its chest. Cassie shifted her mech's feet, making certain of her balance. All of her readouts were clear: 99% battery, no armor damage, full ammunition for the autocannons on her shoulders. She nodded to herself, and opened a comm line to the other pod.

"Are you ready?" Cassie asked.

"I am," Anna said.

"Let's have the AI's count us down, then," Cassie suggested.

"Lyra? Mafui'e?" The voice of an unfamiliar man came through the simulation.

"Three."

"Two," Lyra counted.

"One." And then, both AIs at once: "Begin!" Cassie kicked her thrusters off at once, using them to throw herself to the left while she lit off her autocannons, sending lines of tracer fire across the lava flows toward the other cadet's Tyro. A snap-shot from Anna's laser rifle passed through the space where she would have been, if Cassie hadn't immediately moved her mech.

She touched down with her left foot just long enough to break her Tyro's momentum, crushing black rock and sending debris flying as she swivelled the thrust-vectoring nozzles mounted to the backpack, then rocketed back to the right, at an angle that kept her closing on her opponent. You're using fuel at an incredible rate, Lyra pointed out. Those low-altitude drop packs aren't meant for this kind of maneuvering.

"I don't intend to need it for long," Cassie said. She could feel her body automatically bracing against g-forces that weren't there, and it was all wrong. Working with Pilar Estrada had given her a taste of fighting like this for real, and the sim just didn't do justice to an actual mech. Ana Va'ai backed up slowly, taking a moment to aim each one of her shots before firing.

She didn't try to make any sudden movements, and it occurred to Cassie that even on such a flat surface, she was worried about losing her balance and falling. But because the other woman was firing so deliberately, every shot was telegraphed. Once a laser had been fired, no one could actually dodge it: light moved faster, after all, than any other weapon a mech could mount. But what Cassie could do was to change direction in that moment between Ana lining up her shot, and pulling the trigger.

Time after time, a line of brilliant cerulean light shot past to either side of her mech without connecting, while Cassie zig-zagged closer and closer, moving in short, unpredictable bursts, while she lit off her own autocannons just enough to keep her opponent off balance. At fifty meters, she drew a plasma blade in each hand and ignited them into two lengths of brilliant, eye-searing purple light.

Then, Cassie used the last of her thruster fuel to throw her Tyro directly at the other woman's mech, hitting the release to drop the low-altitude drop backpack the moment the thruster nozzles guttered and died. That dropped three tons of weight all at once—nearly ten percent of a Tyro's total mass—and the difference in how the simulated machine moved was immediately obvious.

Cassie landed low, bending the mech's legs so that a burst of light laser and autocannon fire went high over her Tyro's shoulders as Ana recoiled instinctually. The other woman's mech overbalanced, stumbling backward in a clear panic as she tried to get herself away. The Tyro's blades swept out from either side, burning an afterimage into Cassie's eyes in the shape of a squished, broad 'x.'

The ceramic armor of Ana's mech melted in an instant, and the twin swords cut through graphene-fiber artificial muscle, and then through the cockpit itself. Ana's mech fell back onto the black field of cooled lava in two separate pieces, and Cassie stood her own Tyro upright, extinguishing her plasma blades.

"Wow," Ana gasped, through their comms.

"I didn't get a single hit in. And you didn't even use a rifle! How do you move like that?"

"Practice," Cassie said, and almost left it there. But she wanted to give credit where it was due.

"I also had a good teacher. One of Duke Montalban's guards worked with Arc and I over the break, and we spent pretty much all of our time learning how to use thrusters."

"I don't think I could ever do that," Ana admitted. The simulation shimmered, and Ana's Tyro stood once before Cassie once again, completely undamaged. The balance of her own mech altered, and a single glance at her displays showed Cassie that she had been reset to her initial loadout, complete with the extra weight of a thruster pack full of fuel.

"I don't think you should even go in that direction," Cassie said.

"Are you willing to try something out with me? I have an idea."

"Sure," Ana said.

"Whatever you want. I mean, anything you can show me -" The other woman was practically gushing, but at least for once it wasn't about the family Cassie had been born into—it was about what she could do in the cockpit of a mech. And that was something she'd earned.

"There's nothing necessarily wrong with wanting to plant yourself in one place and choose your targets," Cassie explained.

"It's not my style, but that's basically what someone in a Culverin or a Mangonel does all the time. The big difference is that they have scout mechs to feed them targeting data, long range weapons, and a screening force to keep enemies from getting right up on them. I want you to change your loadout. I don't think there's any way to fit long range missile racks on a Tyro -" There isn't, Lyra confirmed.

"—but most Culverins mount three short-range missiles on one shoulder," Cassie continued.

"See if the computer will let you do that, instead of the autocannon and laser." A moment later, the image of the other mech flickered, and then Ana made a hissing sound of frustration.

"It throws my balance all off," she admitted.

"The mech's a full two tons heavier on the other side, now."

"Don't worry about that for the moment," Cassie told her.

"You're not going to be moving anyway. Alright, what I want is a simulation against an enemy that's over some hills, or rock formations, or something. Lyra, can you take care of that?"

"I believe the two of us can put something together," her AI said out loud.

"One Myrmidon, to begin with," Mafui'e added. Around them, the terrain changed, until there were sharp outcroppings of volcanic rock, eroded pillars, steaming vents, and ridgelines to break up line of sight. Cassie grinned.

"Yeah, this is perfect," she said.

"OK, Ana, here's what we're going to do. I'm no Outrider and you're no Culverin, but we're going to make this work. I'll go find the Myrmidon, and then I'll feed you its location. You stay back here and take the shot. Sound good?"

"I'm willing to try it, at least," Ana promised.

"Begin," the two AIs said, in a sort of chorus. Cassie dug the feat of her Tyro into the black rock of the lava field and set off for the nearest ridgeline, aiming to get herself onto the high ground so that she could get a better view of what was around them—and, hopefully, a location on the Myrmidon. The moment she stuck her head up over the ridge, a bolt of brilliant laser light caught Cassie's Tyro in the shoulder, sending her reeling backwards, desperate not to tumble end over end back down the slope.

Lyra, she thought. Send its location! Done, the AI said. Cassie dropped her mech down to its knees.

"Hit it, Ana!" she shouted over the comms. Three missiles launched, Lyra told her. At this range, even moving in an arc to clear the ridge, they'll - Three blasts in quick succession kicked a cloud of black dust and fragments of stone over the top of the ridge. Cassie stood her mech up, lit her thrusters, and sent the machine barrelling down the opposite slope toward the enemy mech.

She needn't have bothered—not every missile had been a direct hit, but the overlapping blasts had torn the Myrmidon limb from limb, leaving little still functional in the wreckage.

"You got it, Ana," Cassie said.

"I did?" The other woman's voice was half-full of doubt, and half of excitement.

"Really?"

"You did." Cassie couldn't help but grin.

"Honestly, Ana, if we put you in a fire support mech, I'd be glad to have you watch my back any day. Let's reset and try it again, but with two enemies this time." When their time in the sims was done, and Cassie had climbed up the stairs to be greeted by an enthusiastic hug from Ana Va'ai, she made absolutely certain to meet Lieutenant Commander Libby's eyes. See? Cassie thought, as if the instructor was a LeShaii, and might actually hear.

Not only am I going to prove I'm better than all of them, I can actually help all of my classmates at the same time.