Chương 15: The Lake

Jungle southeast of San Teodoro, Vidako Imperium Stellarum September 12, 2847 By the time they'd cleared the camp site by the lake, there was plenty of freshly chopped wood and cleared brush to burn, and soon half a dozen large campfires lit the jungle evening. The cadets who weren't occupied standing guard as sentries, maintaining the vehicles, or cooking gathered around the fires to eat. Arc had never been camping before.

The mulberry groves on Zurah V weren't meant for recreation; they were for the moths that produced silk for the mills. No one was going to let a few teenagers go out and hack down branches, and the fear of forest fires was pounded into the head of every child who grew up in Avataran Shahar. As a result, he had, at first, felt distinctly uneasy with the idea of deliberately burning wood, right in the middle of a jungle.

But when Arc saw how much work it took to get the green wood to catch—and how, even once the alien branches were burning well, they popped and sizzled as moisture ran out of the wood into the fire—he realized that there was about as much chance of accidentally starting a forest fire here as there was of him knocking a Tyro over by bumping into it. Once he accepted that, Arc was able to enjoy the experience.

There was something about the flickering light, the way it cast the faces of his friends with a warm orange glow, picking out the shapes turned toward the fire pit, while casting everything outside that circle into even darker shadow, that made him feel closer to them. Cassie sat on one side of him, Vee on the other, with Rain and Pika across the flames, as they ate their evening meal. Rations were good enough for a quick lunch. They filled your belly, and if you weren't too picky some almost tasted good.

But Arc was grateful that the grav-trucks had brought actual food, as well. There might come a day when he was forced to live for two weeks on fleet rations alone, but he hoped to put it off as long as possible. Surrounded by his friends, he bent over a bowl of stew and tried to decide what animal the meat came from.

"It's definitely not fish," Vee said, and Pika nodded. The Torean was sitting close enough on Arc's right side that their hips touched, and the delicate feathers of her head crest occasionally brushed against his ear, tickling his skin.

"What's the name of those big herbivores?" Arc asked.

"The ones the spiked terrors eat?" Doctor Vogel hadn't spent long lecturing them about indigenous fauna that she didn't consider a threat.

"Leatherbacks," Cassie answered, scraping her spoon around the inside of her bowl to get at the last of her stew.

"But this isn't it. I had some with the commandant, and it tastes different."

"It's vat grown," Cadet Second Class Vijay Iyer said, walking out of the night with a bowl of his own and taking a seat on the other half of the log that Rain had claimed.

"Sir!" Arc scrambled to his feet, along with his friends. Pika fumbled his bowl, which looked comically small in his enormous hands, and nearly dumped what was left of his stew into the fire.

"At ease," Iyer said, waving at them to sit back down.

"It's vat-grown meat. You can tell; there's a particular taste to it. Lab meat's always almost right, but just a little off."

"I like it," Vee said, and everyone, including Arc, looked at her. The Torean girl cradled her bowl in one hand.

"It feels familiar." Of course, he realized. She would have been raised on vat-grown food on the Torean ark-ships.

"Any word from the mechs in the jungle, sir?" Arc asked. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since he'd watched the Janissary and the Culverin disappear into the trees at the edge of the lake. Iyer's mouth was full of stew, so he simply nodded.

"Ireti says they've chased off a spiked terror," he explained, once he'd had a moment to swallow.

"They're going to push it as far away as they can before coming back, but Lieutenant Kekoa doesn't think it's worth the damage to the mechs to try to kill it. Nothing to worry about here."

"Thank you for letting us know," Cassie said, from Arc's other side. She wasn't pressed up against him the way that Vee was, but for some reason Arc was even more aware of her presence. Whenever either of them moved in such a way as to accidentally brush the other, he couldn't help thinking back to when he'd leaned over her on the shuttle, or when they'd wrestled on the ground during training. Iyer's eyes flicked between Arc and the women to either side of him, and the light of the fire seemed to set them dancing.

Was that a smile on his face, or was Arc imagining things?

"Anyway, starting tomorrow, we're going to work you hard, so I recommend you all turn in early and get a good rest," the older cadet said.

"Especially if you've drawn a shift on guard duty." At that comment, Pika sighed. He'd been assigned second watch.

"And Sandhurst," Iyer continued, lowering his voice.

"Stay away from Van Camp, if you can. That goes for all of you. Hopefully he'll be too busy to bother anyone, but if he doesn't see you, you'll be out of sight, out of mind." Cassie stirred at Arc's side.

"What is a man like that doing at the academy, anyway?" she asked.

"He always seems to be looking for trouble. Fleet is supposed to be better than this. The psych tests—""You may have a slightly inaccurate view of fleet, Your Imperial Highness," Iyer interrupted.

"I'm not saying that to put you on the spot. I just want to remind you that your life has been very different than the rest of us. I imagine you've met half a dozen admirals?"

"More," Cassie admitted. She squirmed on the log they were using as a seat, as if Iyer's words made her uncomfortable.

"Right. So, you've seen the very highest ranks. But I'd guess you've never really spent time with marines, with non-commissioned officers, with the ratings who cook in the galley or crawl into the access tunnels to fix the electric systems on a carrier when some circuit breaks." Iyer looked down at his bowl, as if surprised to find that it was empty.

"I have," Rain said, her voice quiet in the night. She was barely audible over the sounds of the camp: the crackle of the fire, the murmur of conversation from hundreds of other cadets scattered among the fires, or scrubbing dishes, or walking the perimeter.

"It was marines who rescued me. Taught me to fight."

"And were they all nice guys?" Iyer asked. Rain shook her head.

"Some of them weren't nice at all." Iyer nodded.

"I'm sorry to break it to you princess, but not everyone who makes it into fleet is a good person. Van Camp's clever. He's only a year ahead of me, so I've run into him before. He's a bully, but he knows how to kiss the requisite amount of ass when it comes to the next person up the chain of command, and he knows how to cover himself. If you give him an excuse, he'll come down on you as hard as he can, right up to the very limit of what's allowed. But he won't take it far enough to risk his own skin."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"It's my fault," Cassie said.

"I embarrassed him on the first day. I wasn't thinking, or I'd have handled it differently. It just made me so angry that he didn't even let me have a day—an hour! —of being just like everyone else. Now it's like he's got something to prove." Arc turned toward her. There was a part of him that wanted to reach out a hand, to offer her some kind of comfort, but he hadn't earned that right, had he?

"It wasn't your fault," he said.

"You didn't know what kind of guy he was. None of us did."

"Well, I'm probably going on about nothing," Iyer said, standing up.

"They're going to keep you all so busy you won't have time to get into any trouble, anyway." 𝝮 Iyer's words proved true the next morning. After leading the cadets on a morning run along the shore of the lake, Lieutenant Kekoa ordered them all to strip down to their underwear and get in. Van Camp and Iyer helped the lieutenant sort out which of the cadets knew how to swim and which didn't and then split them into groups.

Those who'd grown up on a world where there was enough water for recreation, like Arc, ended up in a group to practice basic survival and rescue skills. He, Cassie, and about thirty other cadets learned to tie their standard issue pants into makeshift flotation devices, how to drag a drowning comrade to shore without getting themselves killed in the process, and how to tread water without using their hands.

They practiced dead man floats, and dove to the bottom of the lake, nearly thirty feet down, to retrieve glowing plastic targets instead of bodies. Cal Madine was with them, of course; Arc would have been shocked to find any aspect of academy life with which the admiral's son didn't have at least basic competency. Milla Cieszyński, who Arc was tasked with dragging out of the lake, was only a competent swimmer, but was the quickest of all of them when it came to practicing how to get water out of someone's lungs.

For that, model torsos with attached heads but no limbs had been hauled in by the grav-trucks. Pika and Rain were tapped to help teach the cadets who'd never been in the water before. It was the first time that Arc had ever seen an Alu'kan in the water, and the experience was like finally finding where a piece fit in a jigsaw puzzle. The two of them moved with a speed, ease, and grace that put every human cadet to shame, sliding through the lake as if, after more than four weeks, they'd finally come home.

Vee was in the lowest group of swimmers, and every time Arc caught sight of her, the Torean looked thoroughly miserable, with wet, bedraggled feathers that she kept trying to shake dry whenever she was allowed to get out of the water. Swimming was, apparently, not something Toreans did—which, Arc realized upon reflection, made sense. They hadn't had a home world to call their own since before they'd joined the Imperium, and people who lived on ark-ships wouldn't waste their drinking water by thrashing around in it.

Not everyone was able to participate. The tech cadet who'd taken a zombie fly ovipositor to her thigh, Natalie Ramírez, was tasked with sitting on the shore, her bandaged leg elevated on a rock, and given a whistle. Lieutenant Kekoa ordered her to blow it if she saw any cadet's head go beneath the water for more than a count of thirty—other than the Alu'kans, who were assumed to be able to handle themselves.

Being able to hold your breath for fifteen minutes at a time would, Arc decided, radically change one's comfort with being underwater. When the cadets weren't practicing swimming or water rescue, Lieutenant Kekoa sent them to scout the area. Linking to orbital satellites for positioning was strictly disallowed, and they weren't even permitted to take their tablets along. Instead, each group was given a compass and a plastic-encased map of the area.

They were expected to orient themselves the old-fashioned way, by finding magnetic north and orienteering.

"Science has given us technology, and it is a wonderful thing," Kekoa thundered, as Arc's group stood at attention.

"It helps us to do what our ancestors never could. It has brought us across the emptiness between stars. But you cannot count on it. What will you do if your systems are damaged by a crash landing? If an EMP knocks out your computers? If the strange weather of some unexplored alien world interferes with our communications? You must learn to do without, so that when the time comes, you will survive."

In that case, Arc knew the compass might not do them any good either, but he decided silence was the better part of wisdom. Ten of them had been gathered up, based on nothing, so far as Arc could tell, but their surnames. Cassie was with him, as happened anytime they were sorted like this, as well as John Rixey, one of the cohort of military brats who'd assembled around Cal. He had the same straight-backed bearing, which so many cadets still struggled with, and close-clipped hair.

A Morenan girl named Maja Seidl was there, and Cassie seemed to know her; their rooms were apparently across the hall from each other. To his surprise, Natalie Ramírez was there as well, using a walking stick to compensate for her injured leg. It looked like someone had used a utility knife to scrape the bark off with more enthusiasm than skill. The rest, Arc didn't know by name, though by this point he recognized faces from the march and around camp.

He suspected that most of them were technical students: they outnumbered the pilot cadets by somewhere around three or four to one.

"Your task," Lieutenant Kekoa continued, "is to take these twenty-liter water canisters to the waterfall above the western end of the lake. There, you will fill the canisters from a fast-moving water source and drop a purification tablet into each. You will then haul the water back here and take it over to the mess. You will navigate the entire distance using a compass and map, and nothing else. You will maintain trigger discipline at all times, and situational awareness.

Ramírez has already been stung once, and I imagine she can tell the rest of you just how unpleasant it was to have those eggs taken out. Is that right, cadet?"

"Sir, yes sir!" Ramírez responded.

"It fucking hurt, sir!" Kekoa nodded.

"Most large predators should stay away from the lake at this point, with all the noise we're making, our lights, and the smell of the smoke. But there was death root growing along this route last year, and I don't expect it's gone anywhere since then. If I find any of you have the bright idea to come back with flowers, I will punish not only that cadet, but also your squad leader. Sandhurst."

"Sir!" Arc called back, doing his best to stand as straight as possible.

"You have command," Lieutenant Kekoa declared.

"Move out. Here's your purification tabs, and your comm. Your temporary unit designation is Water Buffalo." He thrust a plastic bottle against Arc's chest, along with a compact black earbud attached to a projecting microphone about three centimeters long and then walked away. Arc looked down at the canisters. Each was a dull, muted green, and shaped roughly like an upright rectangle, save that a handle and a spout had been molded into the top side of the container.

There were exactly enough for each of the cadets to take one in each hand—but that wouldn't leave any way to hold their rifles.

"Hold up," he said, even as Rixey and a few other cadets reached for the empty canisters.

"There's a better way to do this. John, you and Maja go run and get some utility cord and a knife, will you?" Rixey hesitated for just a moment, and Arc had enough time to wonder if there was going to be a problem before Maja Seidl set off across the camp, and the other cadet was forced to follow. Once they were gone, Arc turned and looked over the rest of his squad and made a few decisions in quick succession.

"Ramírez, you're in charge of navigation." Arc handed her the map and compass.

"Cassie, you and I are keeping our rifles ready. You take point and I'll bring up the rear. Everyone else is on canister duty, but you can switch off on the way to our target. If you aren't carrying, you're holding your rifle ready and on the lookout for threats." Once Rixey and Seidl were back, they strung cord through the handles of the empty canisters, so that one cadet could carry half a dozen slung over their back. Then, with Cassie leading the way, they headed out of camp.

At first, it was easy to keep everyone quiet and alert; none of them were comfortable being in the Vidakan jungle without the support of mechs or more experienced officers. Arc knew because he felt it himself: the sensation of eyes on his back, the fear of some predator lurking behind that mass of vines, or in the boughs of the trees overhead. As Lieutenant Kekoa predicted, there were vast swathes of death root, which choked out anything else which tried to grow around it.

It fell toward the banks of the lake like a hundred clawed fingers, or bunches of intestines that had tumbled out of a sliced-open stomach. The flowers, sharp-edged and vibrant, were the brightest red that Arc had ever seen. But when nothing attacked them after the first hour, he could see that the other cadets had begun to feel comfortable and confident. Perhaps, they were thinking, everyone had exaggerated just how dangerous Vidako was. Maybe it really wasn't a death world, after all.

Arc didn't believe it for a moment. When they reached the waterfall—a long, tumbling thing, spread out over four or five distinct, rocky cascades—he insisted that two of them remain on watch while the canisters were filled. He delegated almost everything else, but Arc put one purifying tablet into each full canister himself. If there was going to be a mistake, if some poor cadet was going to be infected by parasites for drinking bad water, at least this way he would know exactly who to blame.

That was why Arc's flechette rifle was slung across his back when the tree cat leapt out of the jungle onto Cadet Seidl's back.