Chương 31: Shells and Batteries

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum October 4, 2847 Your loadout is a fire-linked twenty-millimeter Broadleaf Arms autocannon mounted on each shoulder, with a pair of Centauran Optics L-27 light lasers just beneath, Iceni explained. Populating battery display and ammo count icons now. Arc kept the simulated Tyro still while the damage readout—a green wireframe icon of the mech—appeared in the lower left of his vision.

The green battery icon, reading 99%, settled just beneath it, and then 'Autocannon Rounds: 1, 200' under that. After a week of walking and running the mech through every kind of terrain imaginable, from desert cliffs to marshy bogs, to thick jungle like that just outside the city of San Teodoro, Lieutenant Commander Libby had seen fit to give his cadets the Friday afternoon reward of weapons training.

It brought Arc back to their target practice with the BA-50 rifles during Hard Burn, though in this case no one expected the piloting cadets to understand how to strip, clean, or reload the half-ton, six barreled, revolving autocannons fixed to the Tyro's shoulders—never mind the weapons-grade lenses inside those light lasers.

All of that was the job of a tech crew—and, Arc presumed, that meant that in one of the hangar bays at the south end of Academy Hill, Natalie Ramírez and her classmates were elbow-deep in grease, learning how to do just that. Proceed to the range, Iceni told him, relaying the instructions of the training program. Whoever had created this simulation for the academy had, wisely in Arc's opinion, kept things simple to begin with.

Iceni marked the waypoint for him, and he set out along a low, flat, dry kind of badlands. Arc could see dry stream beds and the occasional withered tree, deformed and twisted under the cruel heat of a desert sun. There were high cliffs and rocky ridges in the distance, but nothing close enough to cause the mech's feet any difficulty. The sensors in the Tyro's head picked up the movement of snakes and small lizards, which scampered off away from the thunderous tread of the great machine.

With a thought, Arc was able to zoom in on the fleeing creatures. He imagined that enemy infantry would be detected just as easily. The waypoint saw Arc perched atop a low rise, with a river curving along one side beneath a great cliff. To either side of the river, vibrant green underbrush stuck out in vivid contrast to the red-brown dust, sand, and packed clay which made up nearly everything else in sight.

Arc set his back to the river and the cliff, and the simulation populated his first target: an old, F-1 Myrmidon from the Singularity War, sixty years before. Iceni tagged it, but Arc would have recognized the chassis, anyway: he'd certainly played against enough of them during his war-gaming days, before the academy. During the Singularity War, the sixty-ton Myrmidons had served roughly the same function that the Imperium's third generation Janissaries fulfilled now—a close assault mech made to break enemy lines.

The shapes were less graceful, more primitive and somewhat boxy, with thick plates of older composite armor, and Arc could see that the mech was not only unarmed, but apparently not even powered or piloted. It simply stood there, dead and still, like some sort of decaying monument to a long-ago battle. Probably good that the first one isn't moving, Arc admitted. It isn't like you're going to be targeting it with some ancient iron sight, his AI teased him. Hooking you up to the mech's targeting computer, now.

A red targeting reticule appeared at the very center of Arc's vision, overlaying his sensor-fed view of the desert and the enemy mech. The Myrmidon stood off-center, so that the reticule didn't even touch it at first. Focus on the mech, Iceni told him. Intend to move the targeting reticule onto it. A flicker of focus, and the reticule moved, settled onto the Myrmidon's torso, and changed color to green. Just above it, a label appeared in the same color, which read '100 meters.' Couldn't you do this for me?

Arc asked. Just tag targets as we detect them? I theoretically could, Iceni agreed. However, I am not permitted to by Imperial law. An AI cannot make the decision to fire a weapon, or to take a life. There must always be a human in the loop, so to speak. Therefore, you must deliberately choose your targets, and you must give the command to fire. You will find the triggers on the control-sticks in the simulator pod. The left trigger will be your autocannons, and the right your lasers.

If necessary, you can also turn off the targeting computer and aim manually using those control sticks, though I wouldn't recommend it. It was a bizarre feeling, to focus on the control sticks rather than the hands of the mech itself, but Arc found the triggers and slipped a finger over each. Then, he squeezed the right-hand trigger. Twin pulses of green light stabbed out from his peripheral vision, momentarily linking the shoulders of the Tyro with the chest of the Myrmidon.

They were so bright that they left an afterimage of two dark lines across Arc's vision, along with a cloud of steam billowing up from the Myrmidon's armor plates, where metal and ceramic had melted away. That afterimage is psychosomatic, Iceni told him. I'll see what I can do to scrub it on the next shot, but your brain is convinced that it should be there. Try the autocannons.

"Alright," Arc muttered to himself. The very experience of using the control sticks and triggers made him more focused on his physical body, as opposed to the rest of the week when he'd fallen almost completely into the simulation. He checked the reticule to make certain it was still green and then pulled the left-trigger. This time, the mech jerked at the recoil of the autocannons. A thunderous roar filled Arc's ears, and he could see the tracer rounds streaking through the air to slam into the enemy mech.

He leaned forward against the recoil out of instinct, then eased up on the trigger. He wasn't certain how long he'd been shooting for, but once the barrels stopped rotating, Arc glanced down to see that his ammo display now read only '1, 129.' He'd blown through over seventy rounds in a single squeeze of the trigger. You can set those for burst fire, by the way, Iceni said. It's recommended to make certain that you don't waste your ammo, given that otherwise you can empty your entire supply in only six seconds.

"Six seconds?" Arc exclaimed.

"That's absolutely crazy. Yes, set it to a three-round burst from each cannon." He glanced at the battery readout just above his ammo count and saw that it now read 97%. I presume that's the energy drain from firing those lasers? Now that he was no longer so shocked by just how quickly the autocannons ripped through bullets, and the visceral, pounding feel of actually firing them, he focused on thinking at Iceni again, rather than murmuring like a crazy person inside his simulation pod.

Burst fire mode engaged, Iceni confirmed. Would you like to try a few moving targets? Arc nodded. Let's give it a shot. Ahead of him, the Myrmidon suddenly lurched into motion, lumbering sideways to circle around on Arc's left-hand side. The motion took it out of his targeting reticule immediately, and the color changed back from green to red.

In response, Arc sent his own mech barreling forward and to the left, trusting to his own instincts and sense of balance to take him across the rough, dry terrain of the badlands. The lasers, he decided. With the lasers, he wouldn't have to figure out how to lead the thing's movement. That problem could come later. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. His finger tightened on the right trigger, and once again beams of green light stabbed across the space between the two mechs.

𝝮 When the cadets boiled out of the training hall that day, it was with clear and exuberant excitement. After a week of learning how to walk without falling, it seemed the experience of getting to fire weapons—even simulated ones—was exactly what they all needed. Amidst the crowd, which broke up into knots as they poured out onto the paved paths of the campus, Cassie walked next to him, tablet in hand and unfolded.

"Commandant Marlowe agreed to fly us to New Toledo," she explained, "which was really the least she could do. I would have preferred she booked us seats on a passenger plane out of the spaceport, but one of the academy helicopters will work. I wouldn't recommend getting dressed until after we arrive, for obvious reasons. Three hours in a five-point harness isn't likely to leave your dress whites looking very sharp."

"Three hours." Arc frowned.

"Are we going to be able to get there in time?"

"We're shifting a time zone on our way west, so we're going to gain an hour," Cassie explained.

"But that also means there's absolutely no point in trying to come back tonight. Duke Alvarez has agreed to put us up with guest rooms at his palace." She rolled her eyes.

"Not that we had to force it on him; he's practically giddy over the prospect. I'm certain he'll be boasting about this for years to come."

"Is it actually a palace?" Arc asked.

"On Zurah, it's really more of a mansion…"

"From what I understand, Alvarez Velasco Montalban is all about ostentatious appearances," Cassie remarked.

"Have I ever seen it myself? No. Do I believe it's a palace? Yes, I do." Rather than join their friends in the dining hall, they each raced up to their respective rooms, Jessica dogging Cassie's heels. Arc had laid his dress uniform out during the lunch break, before the day's session in the simulation pods, and now all he had to do was grab the garment bag, sling it over his shoulder, and turn right back around.

He made it back down to the foyer before Cassie, and when the two women did step out of the elevator, Arc saw that they were carrying substantially more than him, as well. Both women had garment bags slung over their shoulders, but Arc also counted at least one shoe box, a makeup case, and a satchel each, within which he presumed Cassie would have packed the wig she'd picked out during their shopping trip in The Valley.

Jessica, he presumed, would have drones and weapons packed in hers, and Arc wouldn't have bet even a single credit against the odds she had not a cadet's uniform packed, but an Imperial Guard's. The commandant had also arranged, apparently, for a Pronghorn IMV—infantry mobility vehicl e— to pick them up at the step of Tycho Hall. It was something like a heavily armored car with an autocannon on the roof, designed to protect just as well against mines as snipers, and painted in jungle camo.

To Arc's surprise—and pleasure—Vijay Iyer was driving.

"Get your bags loaded and use the safety straps," he called back, from the driver's seat.

"Your Saker is fueled and waiting, but if I don't get you there safely and in one piece, it'll be the end of my career in fleet."

"So much for being treated like any other cadet," Cassie grumbled, as she settled in next to Arc and felt around the seat for the other end of her restraint belt.

"Tonight," Iyer said, "you get treated like the princess imperial. You're going to have to live with it, Sabran-Solaris. No one else on this campus, not even your cousin, is going to get flown across the continent with their date and their bodyguard just to go to dinner with the duke." They couldn't go too quickly, because they needed to wait for other cadets to clear the paved paths and make way.

It hadn't occurred to Arc that everything was just wide enough for a single vehicle to drive through the center of campus, if not for two to pass each other. Soon enough, however, they had reached the south end of Academy Hill. After a brief conversation with the sentry on duty, through an open window, Iyer was waved through. To Arc's surprise, four mechs were out of the hangars and on the tarmac: two Outriders, a Tyro, and a Janissary.

As they drove past toward the airfield, Arc could see that both Blake Van Camp and Karisa Lynstan-Hanigata were among the cadets wearing flight suits clustered around the feet of the mechs. He wondered who was watching the RA's shadow-rabbit back at Tycho Hall.

"What's going on?" Cassie called over the rumbling of the IMV's wheels along the tarmac. The seats were about the farthest thing from comfortable that Arc thought anyone could design, and the suspension had clearly been calibrated for safety, rather than out of consideration for the passengers.

"Commandant's stepping up patrols," Vijay explained, as he pulled the wheel around and turned them toward the landing pad where a Saker VTOL waited, rotors already gently spinning.

"Just about all the upperclassmen are going out on a rotating schedule. Apparently, San Teodoro law enforcement is sick of all the spike coming into the city, but they don't have the kind of vehicles to send into the jungle. I'm amazed the gangs are getting people out alive and in one piece, never mind with death root flowers, honestly. I would have thought the zombie flies would get whatever the spiked terrors don't eat."

He pulled the Pronghorn around in front of the open doors which led into the Saker's interior.

"Let me help you kids get loaded up," Iyer said, and climbed out of the driver's seat. Once the door was open, the girls began handing bags over to him, and the older cadet began throwing them up into the VTOL. Another man—not a cadet, he was wearing the insignia of a lieutenant—caught each piece of luggage in turn and began to stuff them into the cargo webbing which would hold them in place over the next three hours.

"Pleasure to be your ride, Your Imperial Highness," he shouted, over the sound of the rotors.

"We'll be about three hours to New Toledo, and we'll be over jungle the entire time, so there won't be much to look at. I'd recommend you all settle and try to get comfortable, and either take a nap or get some work done on your tablets."

"Thank you—?" Cassie accepted the man's hand up into the VTOL.

"Patel," he supplied.

"Lieutenant Junior Grade Patel. I'm your copilot today, and Lieutenant Conway's up in the cabin, she'll be your pilot. Let me know if there's anything you all need, but we're not very fancy here."

"That's fine," Arc said, accepting a hand up.

"We've got plenty of reading to do for our classes." It was true: between War and its Theorists, Astronautics, Introduction to Xenobiology, and Imperial Naval History, Arc had more to read than he could keep up with. It was bad enough that he'd already asked Iceni to summarize the Xenobiology texts for him, because he felt like he had to prioritize, and Arc had no intention of going into any kind of biology, even as a minor.

He was perfectly happy to pass that course with the minimum grade and never touch the subject again—even if losing out on merits hurt. Not for the first time, he felt frustration boiling up inside him at the difference between cadets with genetic modifications, and those without.

If he'd needed less sleep, he would have more time in the evenings to get his work done; and if he'd had wealthy parents to see to it his NMDA receptors were modified before he'd ever started his schooling, he wouldn't need to be reviewing the material so often. It was hard not to be jealous of people like Cal Madine, or even Delvan Beck—who'd washed out not because he couldn't do the work, but because he'd given up. For whatever reason, though, Arc didn't feel jealous of Cassie.

He'd never asked her for a list of all the ways her DNA must have been augmented before she was ever born, but the extent must have been truly astounding. Still, as she leaned against his shoulder from the next seat over, scrolling through what looked like a truly mind-numbing article on the Imperial Constitution for one of the political science courses he was grateful not to be enduring himself, he just couldn't feel it. Part of it was that she worked hard, of course, and that he saw it.

Part of it was that she didn't want to be treated like a princess: eight weeks to get to know Cassie had taught him that she would have been perfectly happy as a nameless cadet, so long as she got to pilot a mech. And of course, if Arc was being honest with himself, part of it was that he liked her. That was why, when she fell asleep with her cheek on his arm, he didn't move her, even at the rather withering glare he received from Jessica Morrow from across the aisle.

Instead, he just turned his own tablet off and enjoyed the moment, until finally the Saker came in for a landing over the sparkling city lights of New Toledo, capital of Vidako.

"We're here," Arc told Cassie, and gave her just the slightest shake. She came up blinking and a bit bleary but shook herself off.

"Alright," she said, once she had her bearings.

"When we land, you get changed in here, while Jessica and I get ready in the cockpit." Arc looked around the very spare interior of the military aircraft which had brought them from one side of the continent to the other.

"In here? Are you sure you don't want to change at the duke's palace?" Cassie shook her head and reached out to pat his cheek.

"We can't. The moment we step out onto the tarmac, you can bet there will be a mob of reporters, every one of them with a camera crew and drones. I hate to dump you right into it, Arc, but I'm afraid this is what it means to be seen with me in public." Arc swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. It occurred to him that perhaps he hadn't adequately appreciated just what he was getting into when he agreed to come—but he supposed it was too late to back out now, even if he could stand disappointing her.