Chương 20: Chapter 19

The pod hissed open and spat me back into the real world coughing and wheezing, while my mind rebelled against the carnage it had seen for the last ten minutes. Deep breaths. Deeeeeep breaths. The smell of smoke and churned earth clung to the inside of my skull even as the training bay's clean, recycled air replaced it. Just a sim. They were never real. I'd told myself that after the valley too, and it had felt like a lie then as well.

A different dead face overlayed them in my memories, but I quickly shook it off and stood. Three other pods opened around mine, hissing softly as the hydraulics disengaged.

"Well," muttered Lysara, climbing out and stretching like a cat, "that was a disaster of historic proportions."

"It was just the third run," Charlotte stated, already on her feet, smoothing her training greys with clipped movements I now recognized as anxiety.

"Nobody coordinates well right away anyways."

"We didn't coordinate well during the second run either," Mira said quietly, from the fourth pod. She hadn't raised her voice once all session, which just made her words sting harder.

"Or in the warm-up." I took a moment to loosen my legs a little, feeling the tiny zaps of electricity in my muscles as everything got back into working order. We were currently in a smaller, slightly more private sim bay than the one where Maren had decided to traumatize us in, holding only about eight black pods. That individually cost more credits than my entire home sector saw in a year. Yeah. I still couldn't fully believe that math, though after that last harrowing sim… Aaanyways.

The four of us had the place all to ourselves at noon, the rest of the program off doing whatever the rest of the program did at this hour. But also due to Mira booking it before any of us were awake. Kudos to her for that. Five days until the exam. Eight, give or take, until the competition. And we had just been wiped off the ridgeline faster than you could say 'kabloom', by an enemy force a more senior cadet could have handled solo. I dragged a hand down my face as I massaged my brow.

"Alright... Let's see the replay." The table at the center of the room lit up at Lysara's gesture, the whole sorry affair playing out above it in miniature; four little icons, each of us in charge of one cluster of troops, all of us advancing onto the same hill from four directions, with little organization or inter-team tactics. Which was also the, quite literally, glowing problem in the air.

"We fought four separate battles in the same valley, while acting as if our own was the only one that mattered," I stated.

"That's a touch dramatic," Lysara started.

"Nope." I pointed.

"Charlotte pushed her eight onto high ground, which was individually the right call. Mira took the flank, also a correct move, technically. Lysara held her twelve back to bait their advance. Also correct. Meanwhile, I screened the approach with my four." I let my hand drop.

"Every single one of those is a good move. BUT. We executed all of them without proper communication between us, following our own plans, and the enemy, predictably, walked all over us and cut us into pieces. Again." The table was quiet for a second.

"So we're all individually competent and collectively useless," Lysara said.

"Yippeee…." I told the unhelpful and pessimistic voice in my head to be quiet. We would get through this. One way or the other.

"We're not 'useless'." Charlotte focused on the screen again, tapping her finger absent-mindedly.

"We're a group of people who've each been the smartest one in every room we've walked into. Well, most of us.", she smirked at me, "None of us has ever had to follow anyone." My protest was bulldozed over by my teammates' betraying indifference. Truly, such a cruel world…

"You've followed Vera," Mira pointed out.

"Vera could kill us with a strike pad. I wouldn't call it 'following', more… survival." Charlotte almost smiled.

"This is different. We're all equals here, in this room. But we need one of us to call the shots, and for the other three to actually listen, even when our own plan looks better." Three sets of eyes drifted, with varying degrees of subtlety, to me.

"Don't eve-""You're the tactics lead." Lysara propped her chin on her hand, green eyes glinting.

"We voted. There was a whole speech about it. You looked very handsome and reluctant. And obviously, the alternative hasn't worked."

"I command four units." I gestured at the pathetic little cluster of my icons on the replay.

"Lysara, you command twelve. You have three times my Spirit. By every measure that matters in here, you should be the one giving orders." This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it"Sure, but, as much as it hurts me to admit it, in the heat of the moment you have a much better understanding of the overall macro play, while my own thoughts keep getting tangled in the fight in front of me." Her words were light, but she looked genuinely annoyed with herself.

"I can tell you the optimal play for any given position. If given preparation. You can tell me which position we'll be in three moves from now, while in the heat of battle and having to compute all those variables on the fly. It unfortunately isn't same skill, and only one keeps people alive." She shrugged, the glint in her eyes coming back.

"Also you're prettier than Mira when you concentrate. She scowls."

"I scowled because you interrupted me during the planning phase," Mira grumbled under her breath. I looked at the three of them, at the dead little army frozen above the table, and sighed. I really was a sucker for particular types of situations… Sigh. Alright.

"Fine," I said.

"But if I'm calling it, then in here, I'm not your friend and I'm not the guy who's 'bad at running'. I'm your commander, and when I give an order you move first and feel insulted about it later. All of you. Especially you." I pointed at Charlotte, who raised an eyebrow at me with such pure, regal challenge that I had to look away before I did something that would undoubtedly tell Lysara everything she'd been fishing for all morning.

Because Lysara had been throwing line after voidsdamned line, practically smelling the juicy info we were hiding. All morning.

"Speaking of moving first and feeling things later," she said, far too innocently, pulling her own units back into formation on the replay, "you two both went dark on the group thread last night. At the same time. For the same number of hours. Fuunny coincidence."

"I was asleep," I instantly replied, my face carved out of marble and perfectly poker-ready.

"I was reading," Charlotte huffed, absentmindedly checking her nails for cracks.

"Mhm." Lysara leaned onto both of her elbows and grinned.

"Suuuure. Both of you. In your separate rooms. Two floors apart. Of course~""Mhm," Charlotte said, her face still as calm as a lake. With a kraken hiding underneath. Mira, who I noticed had said almost nothing this entire time, chose that moment to look at me. Just for a briiief second. Dark eyes, slowly, steadily, moving across the room, landing on my collar, cataloguing the bruise that Charlotte's lips had left there, and then sliding away again without missing a beat. She didn't say a word.

And yet I suddenly had the uncomfortable certainty that Mira Sorren missed absolutely nothing and simply chose, most of the time, not to mention it. Can't let my guard down around anyone in here, can I…

"Can we please," I steered us back on tack, "go lose to the easy-level bots once again."

"Gladly." Lysara was grinning now, victory of some private sort already acquired.

"Reset the sim. This time we do it the commoner's way. Jax, when it inevitably goes wrong, we blame you! Sounds good? Perfect!" She jumped into her pod still laughing to herself, and the rest of us followed shortly after. Once again, the lid sealed over me like the coffin it was, darkness enveloped me, and then I was standing on a ridge under an overcast sky, my four soldiers looking at me with faces that felt uncannily real. The same enemy once again fortifying itself on the mountain (large hill?) in the center.

Funny thing was, I didn't really have a plan. Well, not an original one at least. After all, three brilliant women had already done almost all the legwork for me. Heh.

"Charlotte, this time, don't rush the hill. Threaten them, slow and loud, so they commit at least a little to pushing you back. Hopefully they reposition themselves and create an opening. Lysara, the second they're committed, hit their flank with everything you've got and try to break their formation. Our goal should be to separate them as much as possible and then gang up on them. My four will be the bait, cosplaying as a covert attack.

Mira, you're staying close to me, but not too close, and when I get ambushed, you counter ambush them in a pincer attack." I felt that old electric tingle climb up my spine.

"Nobody 'improves' on the plan. No changes. We follow it to the letter. We win ugly or we lose together. Understood?" Scattered acknowledgements came back through the link, and for the first time all day I didn't hear bickering. Truly divine. It still wasn't pretty. Charlotte's distraction nearly got her eliminated when the enemy pushed harder than I'd guessed, and I spent my four units to save her instead of the planned bait. So much for no changes…

Still, Mira managed to capitalize on the free for all to target some forces before my troops and I evaporated. Overall, what mattered was that we fought all together this time, and when the dust cleared there were a lot less enemy icons scattered a lot more chaotically across the valley. Although, only three of us were still standing. So, everyone except me. My four had died valiantly holding the line that let the rest of them live. I only even screamed a little.

Acceptable losses, I thought, and hated how easy the words came to me now. They still ended up dying once I couldn't give commands, but it was a lot closer this time. The pod opened, and I returned back to the recycled air and fluorescent light. Nobody whooped. We just lay there in our open pods for a moment, catching our breath, four people who had finally, barely, on the sixth try, managed to work as one whole instead of four very awkward limbs.

"Huh," Lysara said softly, to the ceiling.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"We're still going to lose the graded sim," Mira said.

"Almost certainly," Charlotte said.

"It's individual, not team. Today doesn't help us there at all."

"Sure." I sat up, every muscle filing its usual complaint.

"But the competition's the one that gets us noticed, and there all of this, does matter." I looked at the dead army still glowing above the table, and at the three of them, and felt the clock gripping my anxiety tighter and tighter. Five days. Eight.

"We just learned we can do it. Now we only have to figure out how to do it well enough that a noble in the stands would prefer to ally with us instead of bury us." Lysara hummed, pulling up the bay's schedule in the air.

"I'll book this room then every day this week. Same time?"

"Mornings are Vera's," I sighed, shuddering slightly, "No can do on that one."

"After Vera, then… If there's anything left of you that is." She winked at me, her grin bright and her eyes sharp and a little too interested, lingering half a second more than socially appropriate. They flicked, very briefly, to Charlotte, and then back to me, and could almost feel the gears in her mind calculating something I probably wouldn't understand. I had the distinct feeling I'd just become a much more interesting problem to the most dangerous analyst in our year. Wonderful, the voice in my head sighed.

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