Chương 26: The Pylons

The Valley, San Teodoro, Vidako Imperium Stellarum September 28, 2847 Before Arc had entirely realized what was happening, the princess imperial had crashed into one of the gangers. Cassie went low, ramming her shoulder into the man's torso while he had his leg drawn back to kick the downed cadet. She came up from beneath, taking him off balance and off his feet, and he fell backward. For just a moment, the rest of the gangers froze in pure shock.

It gave Cassie time to get into a fighting stance, raising her arms like a boxer, just as they'd been taught during Hard Burn. When the first man threw a punch—sloppy, untrained, and easy to read—Cassie ducked her head, took it on her forearms, and then lashed out with a short jab that rocked him back. But there were three of the Infernos, or whatever they might call themselves, and the one that Cassie had dropped with her first charge was already scrambling up from the wet pavement of the rain-slicked street.

His hair was soaked and slicked back from his head, and he was already cursing in Spanish. Arc couldn't understand the words, but the tone was clear—and violent. He realized that he was afraid. Afraid, first of all, of being hurt or killed there on the street; that one of the gangers would pull a knife, or a gun, or just that they'd slam his head into the street and break his still-healing skull open. But he was even more afraid of what they might do to Cassie.

They might hurt her, or kill her, and the thought of that terrified him. Almost as frightening was the thought of seeing the disappointment in her eyes when the fight was over, if he didn't jump in to help her, and left her to face the three gangers alone. Arc dashed forward and threw the garment bag that contained his freshly-tailored dress uniform ahead of him, right into the face of the man who'd just risen. The ganger raised his arms to shield his face, and Arc closed, shooting low for his legs.

His knees scraped across the wet pavement in a flash of pain, and the man tumbled down around him. Arc reached for the man's wrist, looking to lock in an arm bar, or at least to keep him from drawing a weapon, and they rolled over and over each other while the fight went on above them.

He got a glimpse of Cassie unleashing a four-punch combination: a jab to open her opponent's guard, followed by right cross, an uppercut with her left that nearly lifted the ganger off his feet, and then a final cross as he was coming down that dropped him like, as the saying went, a sack of potatoes. He also saw, just behind her, the third ganger pulling something out of the seat of his pants—behind Cassie and out of her view.

"Behind you!" Arc shouted, as he finally got a choke locked in from behind the man he was grappling with. He took an elbow to the gut, and fingernails scratched his face. Arc knew he could hold on until the ganger passed out, but it wasn't going to happen quick enough to help her, and for the space of an instant, he was absolutely convinced that she was about to be shot. It happened so fast he could hardly track it. A woman came out from—somewhere—behind the ganger who was drawing a weapon.

She slammed something into his back, right above the kidney, and the man's body jerked, stiffened, and fell to the ground. He wanted to collapse in relief, but he kept his forearm tight against his opponent's neck until the man's body went slack. Then, finally, Arc pushed the man's body off him and rolled it aside to lay on the wet street. He rolled onto one knee, gasping for breath. It didn't seem possible, but the only people still moving on the street were academy cadets.

The tech student, whose name Arc didn't even know, was up onto his hands and knees. Cassie probably didn't realize that she was rubbing the knuckles of her left hand with her right as she looked around, scanning the area for more enemies. It occurred to him that she had something he didn't—some kind of fighter's instinct. That she'd likely had it before she'd ever come to the academy. Cassie met his eyes for just a moment.

"You alright?" Arc nodded, still catching his breath.

"Good." She turned to the fourth cadet, the woman who'd come to help them, and Arc was nearly overwhelmed with relief. Neither one of them was hurt badly, and most important of all, he hadn't disappointed her.

"Thanks for the assist, Jessica." Jessica—the name was familiar, now that Cassie had said it out loud. She was one of the other piloting candidates, but not part of his group of friends. She was in uniform, like them, though her cap had fallen off and rolled across the pavement. The bandages on her head were soaked, but he had a dim memory of her having auburn hair before they'd all gone in for surgery.

"I shouldn't have had to," she said, rounding on Cassie with the tone of a furious parent lecturing their child.

"You're not supposed to be looking for trouble, Cascada. I'm not here to back you up when you pick a fight –" Jessica bit off whatever she had been about to say next, and turned to fix Arc with a glare, in turn, before narrowing her eyes and addressing the tech student they'd saved.

"What are you doing?" At her words, Arc turned and found that the other cadet had crawled over to one of the moaning gangers and was going through his pockets. He pulled out a plastic bag, which, Arc saw, was filled with some kind of vibrant red powder.

"Is that spike?" Jessica asked, her voice raising again.

"N-no," the half-beaten cadet stammered, making to shove the bag into his tunic pocket. Before he could, Jessica had stormed across the intervening space and ripped it out of his hands. He gave a panicked cry, reaching for what she'd taken, but she shoved him off.

"Sure looks like spike to me," Jessica said.

"What a mess. You!" She pointed directly at Arc.

"You're going to get her back to the academy campus, and you're going to go directly to Commandant Marlowe's office. If anything—and I mean anything at all—happens to the princess, I am holding you personally responsible." Arc frowned. She certainly wasn't acting like a cadet—in fact, Jessica was acting like she outranked him. But that didn't make any sense. He'd seen her around the dining hall and clearing brush when they'd all camped beside the lake off in the Vidakan jungle.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Just show him," Cassie said. She walked over to the first of the bags they'd dropped and leaned over to pick it up.

"At this point, he's going to find out anyway, Jessica." With a noise of pure exasperation, Jessica pulled a badge out of her tunic—one that Arc had never before seen in person.

"Jessica Morrow, Imperial Guard," he read out loud. All of a sudden, everything made a great deal more sense. That is legitimate, Iceni confirmed. I didn't see a way of helping you during the fight, and I didn't want to distract you, but I can verify this. Arc sent her a nearly wordless feeling of gratitude.

"My bodyguard," Cassie explained. She walked over to Arc and shoved the garment bag he'd used as a distraction into his chest.

"Come on. She'll deal with the city police. We don't want to be here for that." Arc nodded, got to his feet, and looked down at the cadet they'd rescued. He was just as soaked as they were, but somehow, kneeling on the street, he looked even more a picture of abject misery.

"What about him?"

"Given that he was obviously here to purchase illegal narcotics from local dealers," Jessica growled, "he's going to be arrested. Now get out of here, both of you—and remember, straight to the commandant's office. No stops, not for anything. I'll follow once I've handled this." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Arc and Cassie hurried back to the main street.

As they trudged back up the Camino del Soldado, beneath the soaked boughs of the live oaks and into campus, he couldn't help but shiver—not from the rain, but from everything that had just happened. 𝝮"The two of you," Commandant Amelia Marlowe observed, "look like a pair of half-drowned mole rats. Here. Dry yourselves off before you sit down in my chairs." She threw a towel each to both Arc and Cassie; Arc caught his, and used it to wipe his face, first of all.

"My secretary will be by in a few minutes with something hot to drink." The commandant rounded her desk, then collapsed back into her chair. She watched them as they stripped off their tunics. Cassie's shirt was so wet that it was almost transparent, and he had to glance down at his shoes to avoid looking at her. Arc almost began wringing his shirt out and then realized that would involve pouring rainwater out onto the very nice carpets of the head of the entire student body. It was better, he decided, to be wet.

Instead, he wrapped the towel she'd given him around his shoulders and back, then gingerly sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. Cassie sat in the other a moment later.

"Guardswoman Morrow has informed me that she is currently liaising with the city police," Marlowe said, once they were no longer standing.

"Cadet Third Class Lodge will be remanded to the custody of this academy, thankfully, rather than simply dragged off to a cell. This will be the end of his career in fleet, but at least he isn't dead. In the meantime, they've taken him down to Our Lady of Mercy, to run a test for toxins in his system. I'll be copied on that, and from what I've heard so far it's likely he's going to show traces of spike in his blood. What a stupid reason to throw your life away." She shook her head.

"I didn't know his name," Cassie admitted.

"Of course you didn't," Marlowe grumbled.

"Why would that matter before you went charging in. Alright, you two, tell me what happened. From the beginning." Arc sighed and began.

"We were coming back from shopping in The Valley and Uptown when the sky opened up," he said.

"We got caught out in the rain, and since we were already soaked there didn't seem to be a reason to do anything but just keep on toward campus. The sidewalks cleared out quick, but we caught sight of trouble down one of the side streets." He hesitated, because he wasn't the one who'd made the decision to interfere.

"We saw a cadet getting beaten up," Cassie declared.

"So, you jumped in," Marlowe supplied.

"And won, which is something. I expect the two of you to thank Lieutenant Kekoa for his training at the next available opportunity."

"Yes, sir," they both responded. The door to the office opened, and Marlowe's secretary, a junior grade lieutenant with close cropped dark hair, stepped in just long enough to hand each of them a mug of hot chocolate. Marlowe waited until the door was closed again and then drummed her fingers against her desk.

"Fighting is a violation of the academy code of conduct," she stated. With punishments ranging from the application of anywhere between fifty and four hundred demerits, all the way up to expulsion from the academy, Iceni supplied. Arc knew that she was trying to be helpful, but all it did was make him even more anxious.

"With respect, sir, I wouldn't exactly call this fighting," Cassie said.

"We saw a fellow cadet being assaulted on the street and intervened to protect them."

"And I fear that by doing that, you've both exposed yourself to more danger," Marlowe went on.

"I presume that neither of you are particularly well-briefed on the local criminal elements, but it is my business to know what's happening on Vidako, and in San Teodoro in particular. The police have identified Cadet Lodge's assailants as members of Calle Infierno, an up and coming gang out of The Pylons."

"I saw that on one of the jackets," Arc admitted.

"Wasn't certain what it meant." He blew into his mug and then took a sip. The chocolate was thick, smooth, and rich. Better than he'd ever had back home, and it warmed his hands. Marlowe tapped on one of her screens, then spun it around so that Arc and Cassie could see the map she'd pulled up. A particular section of San Teodoro, on the east end of The Valley, between Academy Hill and Uptown, had been marked with a bright red border.

It delineated a rough strip of blocks along the edge of the river, marked by two bridges: one at the north end, and the other at the south.

"This is The Pylons," Commandant Marlowe explained.

"It's the poorest section of San Teodoro, the only part of the city that I would call a slum. You won't find it marked on any official map, because no one in the city government wants to admit it exists. It's an urban wasteland created by poor city planning—the shadow of the bridges, the support structures, and the river cut it off from all but one direction, heading west into The Valley."

"It's a rat's nest of crumbling apartment complexes, abandoned buildings, shanty-housing, and outright camps set up in empty lots. The city police have stopped even trying to patrol there, and it's run by—you guessed it— Calle Infierno. Their primary industry is, it turns out, selling spike." Marlowe swiped her finger, pulling up an image of the same red powder that Arc and Cassie had seen in the plastic bag Jessica Morrow had kept. Cassie leaned forward.

"Why hasn't Duke Montalban done anything about this?"

"Such as?" Marlowe asked.

"Send in the police? I'm not sure they have the manpower or the equipment, not to mention the political will, to dig the gangers out."

"Crushing one gang won't fix anything unless the fundamental causes for crime change," Cassie shot back.

"They need schools, medical care, legitimate career paths. Safe places to live that aren't falling down derelicts. Arrest the dealers, yes, but then what they need is help."

"The Tyros could be set up with rubber bullets," Arc mused, and both women turned to look at him.

"If the police don't have what it takes to go after the gangs on their own, I mean." Gas, as well, Iceni mused. There's a riot-control variant that replaces the nozzles of the same arm-mounted flamethrower that Janissaries use with a gas-dispersal mechanism.

"I am not sending students at this academy in to crush a gang," Marlow said.

"And I'm not presenting this as something for either of you to solve. This is Duke Montalban's problem, and the mayor, and the chief of police. You are students. What I was trying to make clear to you is that if word of your scuffle gets out, you may have made enemies in The Pylons. They won't try to come here, so you will be safe on campus, but if you go into the city you need to be careful, and you, your Imperial Highness, need to always have security with you." The commandant sighed.

"Very well. As it appears I can't punish you for this—once the rumors start going around, I'm certain you'll be made out as heroes—I will have to reward you."

"Julius Caesar," Arc broke in.

"Probably apocryphal, as we can't date the quote back any further than a twenty-first century dramatization." Marlowe's eye twitched.

"I would have thought you'd been taught better than to interrupt a superior officer."

"Apologies, sir," he muttered, and looked down into his mug so that he wouldn't have to meet her eyes.

"Fifty merits for each of you," the commandant declared, though she looked, when Arc chanced raising his gaze, rather annoyed.

"I presume this is the one you're taking to New Toledo, your Imperial Highness? Given that you were out getting fitted for the occasion?"

"Yes," Cassie said, her voice firmer and more confident than Arc thought he could have managed.

"Arc's agreed to go with me to attend Duke Montalban's dinner." Marlowe sighed.

"Very well. I would ask you both to use your discretion regarding what you share about this incident, but I'm not sure, based on your reckless behavior, whether you have any. Have you gotten everything you need in the city?"

"My evening dress is being adjusted," Cassie said.

"Other than that, yes."

"You may make arrangements to have it delivered, or send your bodyguard to get it," Marlowe declared.

"But neither of you will be leaving campus until next weekend. Don't even bother requesting a pass. With any luck, this will be forgotten about in a month or so. Until then, and with the exception of the duke's invitation, you both remain here, at the academy. Now get out of here, you're dismissed." The commandant waved a hand.

"And go to the infirmary to get checked over." Arc and Cassie exchanged a glance. Together, they rose from their chairs, placed their mugs on Marlowe's desk, and gathered up both their soaked tunics and the garment bags they'd carried all the way up from the city. Arc had the feeling that they'd narrowly escaped disaster, several times over.

"And cadets," Marlowe called out, as they reached the door.

"We don't leave our comrades behind, and we don't lose. Good job." By the time they'd gotten outside, the clouds had cleared up and the rain had passed.