Chương 4: Convocation

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum August 12, 2847 Arc very carefully unwrapped the taped bundle of packing foam and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the five-centimeter FS-3R Kestrel 'Blood Hawk,' lovingly painted and based with a bit of green flocking, had come through the trip unscathed. He set it on the windowsill in front of the right-hand desk in his dorm room—the same side of the room his upper bunk was on.

By all rights he should have been stuck with one of the bottom mattresses, but no one was willing to trust Pika's weight to a top bunk.

"I can't believe you brought a toy to the academy," Cal Madine scoffed, from the left-hand bottom bunk, where he was seated and already polishing his regulation, high gloss black low quarter shoes. Arc couldn't see what point there possibly was in trying to shine up shoes which had just been issued and had never been worn before, but he kept his mouth shut, stuffed the handful of tape and packing foam into the trash bin between the two desks, and moved back over to his open suitcase.

"That's no toy," Pika rumbled. The Alu'kan cadet's voice was so low that bass didn't even begin to describe it, and Arc half-suspected that if the big man ever got mad enough to shout, they'd all feel it in their bones.

"That's Beecher Red Crest's mech, isn't it?" Arc nodded. For just a moment, the sight of his half-emptied luggage, the tablet charging dock lying on top of an eye mask and box of disposable earplugs his mother had insisted he bring— You never know if your roommates will snore, dear— was replaced by the memory of Lieutenant Red Crest at the funeral, his dress whites perfectly creased, medals gleaming. The feel of the ace's hand enfolding his own.

Then, Arc shook his head, blinked the memory away, and set back to unpacking, tossing his things up onto his mattress one at a time.

"It is," he answered Pika. There really wasn't all that much to unpack—just about everything a cadet needed at the academy was issued when they arrived, from their socks to their sheets and pillows.

"I remember reading the guy who won the imperial tournament this year used a Blood Hawk," Pika pressed.

"Got it right in behind the other guy's line and took out his flagship. Rolled half the army up with failed morale checks."

"Yeah," Arc agreed, fishing the last thing he'd brought out of his suitcase. Once it was empty, he closed it up, lifted it off the desk, and carried it over to the closet that he and Pika would be sharing, where he stowed it away.

"Bullshit," Cal exclaimed, the motion of his hand, rubbing a cloth over the toe of his shoe, finally ceasing.

"Utter bullshit. Do not even tell me I'm stuck rooming with a kid who only got here by playing games."

"Wait," Delvan Beck exclaimed, tossing a mop of dark hair back from his eyes with one hand as he leaned out from the top bunk over Cal's head.

"Are you serious? You won the Imperial Tacticalis tournament?" Arc took advantage of the fact he had to turn his back on the other boys to climb into his bunk, but once he was on the mattress, he was out of excuses. He sighed, then nodded.

"Yeah. By the time I decided I wanted to come here, it was too late to make it any other way, and I've been playing for years, so—""What a farce." Cal Madine dropped his half-polished shoe on top of his mattress, sprang to his feet, and stormed over to Pika and Arc's bunk.

"You know, some of us actually worked to be here, Sandhurst. I was top of my class at Proxima. I've been training every weekend for as long as I can remember. I was in the junior officer corps, I put in hundreds of hours of community service—and you think you deserve to be here because you moved a couple of little plastic men around on a table, and got lucky? Bullshit."

"I mean, it isn't really luck," Delvan spoke up.

"There's a reason the imperial family sponsors those things."

"Shut up, Beck," Madine snarled, turning away from Arc and jabbing a finger at his bunkmate's face.

"Let me guess. Your family bought you a senator's letter."

"Sure," Delvan said.

"And I'm not ashamed of it. Don't tell me you think the fact that you're an admiral's son had nothing to do with you being here?"

"I worked for this!" Cal exclaimed.

"Unlike some people." With that, he strode over to the door, yanked it open, and stormed out into the hall, leaving the rest of them alone in silence.

"Well, this is off to a great start," Delvan grumbled, and collapsed back onto his mattress.

"Don't let that guy bother you, Sandhurst," Pika said, from below.

"Doesn't matter how you got here. Only sixty-one pilot cadets in our class, from out of the entire Imperium, and everyone had to earn it one way or another."

"Sixty-two," Delvan said.

"The princess reached her majority this year. That's one more recommendation." The princess. With Cal gone, Arc felt safe enough to turn his body, then lay back on his mattress, resting his head on the thin, fleet-issue pillow. Princess Imperial Cascada Vega Sabran-Solaris. I'm such an idiot. It made sense, now, what she'd said to him on the elevator car. Don't stare. I hate it when people stare —the very first words out of her mouth.

The fact that the only seat left in the entire car was the one right next to her; he imagined that everyone else—everyone who wasn't a clueless idiot—had been afraid to just walk over and sit themselves right down next to a princess imperial. She'd even asked him, do you really not know? But no, he hadn't. Arc had never been the sort of person who followed the tabloid coverage of the imperial family. Oh, he was aware of them, of course, in a sort of vague and distant way, but they didn't touch his world.

Emperor Altair was just about as far away from Arc's daily life as the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, and as long as the two of those entities kept on doing their jobs, Arc didn't have to worry about either. He knew that some people cared a lot more, of course. Arc and Teo had rolled their eyes every time Rashmi went on about how handsome the prince was, and she could definitely go on for hours.

She'd even tried to sucker the two of them into going to a watch party for the announcement of Prince Orion's engagement, from which they'd fled with all the urgency due an incoming natural disaster. And that's Cassie's brother. The emperor's her father. And you sat there chattering away at her like she was any other girl! Arc remembered how he'd leaned over her lap to get a look out the elevator window at that passing Kestrel and felt his heart drop into his belly like an ice-cold rock.

She could probably have him arrested for even touching her! There was no help for it; he was going to have to find her and apologize, Arc resolved. He doubted the RAs would look kindly on him poking around the girls' floor of the dormitory on the first day, and he didn't actually know what room she was in, but he could catch her at dinner. There was only a single dining hall, so he knew that she'd be there.

The prospect of approaching a princess imperial, in front of his entire class of cadets, and making a public apology for how he'd treated her was just about the most terrifying thing he could think of. But facing down the Black Queen of Nepenthe will be about a thousand times worse. With a sigh, Arc grabbed his tablet, unfolded it, and turned the camera on. His mother would cross half the empire to murder him herself if he didn't send a message back with the first data packet to leave Vidako.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. 𝝮 Convocation was held at 1500, in the auditorium at Vance Hall. It was a good thing, Arc thought, that the RAs had led the new cadets over in a group, because he didn't have the slightest clue where anything was on campus. He'd have been walking with his nose buried in his tablet, trying to navigate by GPS without crashing into anyone else.

His shoes weren't broken in yet, and the fabric of his new uniform felt stiff, itchy, and hot. Worse, Arc was certain he wasn't wearing everything quite right—though when Cal Madine had finally stormed back into their room, the admiral's son had gone from one cadet to the next, yanking their gray tunics into place, fixing the angles of their caps, and otherwise straightening them up.

He hadn't seemed very happy to be doing it, but Arc assumed that Madine would have been embarrassed to appear next to them, otherwise. Arc had tried to find a way to sit next to Cassie, but the RAs had herded them into their rows without giving any room for picking and choosing seats, which left him pressed up against Pika. The Alu'kan barely fit into his seat, and the only way he was able to wedge his legs into place was by spreading both immense thighs outward and bending nearly double at the knee.

That meant that Arc was forced to skew his own body away from his bunkmate, which in turn pushed him up against Beck. He did manage to catch sight of Cassie, two rows below, between a Torean and an Alu'kan to either side of her, but there was no way for Arc to get a word without leaning over the entire intervening row and shouting. There would, it seemed, be no salvation from the more public approach he'd planned at dinner.

The four classes of pilot cadets sat in sections at the center of the auditorium, with the cadets from the technical program spread out on the wings. Arc knew they were housed in separate dormitories, and at a glance he guessed there were three or even four times as many of them as pilots. It made sense, he supposed; each pilot needed an entire team of techs to handle the maintenance and repair of a single mech.

Gazing over at the first- and second-class cadet upperclassmen, Arc couldn't help but feel the vast gulf between them. The older students at once gave off an air of confidence, the comfort of familiarity, and a sharp, military precision that the new arrivals hadn't even begun to approach. Their uniforms looked perfect, and next to them Arc felt like a slob. While a low murmur of chatter swelled back and forth among the rows of first year cadets, their seniors waited, patient and composed.

At the back of the stage, an enormous imperial flag hung: the stylized image of a pulsar which had, centuries before, formed part of a star-map sent out into the black on Voyager 1, Terra's first interstellar probe. All at once, a dozen staff, most in fleet dress uniforms, though Arc saw that a few wore civilian suits, walked out across the stage in a line and settled into a row of chairs which had been left for them.

At the appearance of the faculty, all the older cadets rose as one and stood to attention, without, so far as Arc could tell, a single order being given. Madine, he saw, was up with them, but the rest of the first years straggled into position haphazardly. For his part, Arc was nearly knocked off his feet by the force of Pika's movements. Finally, a woman in dress whites and gold epaulets walked out to the podium at the center of the stage, removed her cap, and spoke.

"Be seated, cadets." She waited while the older students sat, and Arc's class followed suit. There must have been an audio pickup built into the podium, for Arc could hear her voice clearly projected from speakers fixed to the walls all around the room.

"As many of you know, I am Captain Amelia Marlowe, Commandant of the Imperial Mech Academy here at San Teodoro, and I have the very great pleasure of welcoming you to the fifty-eighth year of this school's operation." The commandant paused, and Arc saw by the older students' example that it was permissible, if not expected, to applaud, so he joined in.

"For those who have been here a few years, what I'm about to say will be nothing new," Marlowe continued, once the clapping had died down.

"For our mole rats—and if you first years don't know why you're called that yet, don't worry, you will shortly—it might be instructive to briefly review how we got here. Before the Singularity War, no one viewed mechs as viable combat units." Arc nodded along; he couldn't imagine that any of his fellow cadets didn't know such recent history, but then, he'd often been surprised by just how willfully ignorant his secondary school classmates were of the conflicts which had shaped the Imperium.

"We spent the first part of the war on the back foot while Singularity mechs tore our ships apart," the commandant explained.

"It's an oft repeated proverb, and we're not entirely certain who first coined the phrase, but there's often a truth to such things: we are always preparing for the last war. After the armistice, Emperor Caelum determined that our fleet would train a generation of mech pilots prepared to go toe to toe with anyone foolish enough to pick a fight, and here we are now."

"In nearly sixty years, this academy has graduated over twenty-five hundred pilots," the commandant declared.

"There are nearly eight hundred pilots who've walked through the doors of this building actively serving in the Imperial Fleet at this very moment."

"I want you to remember that," Marlowe said, "because there will be times that you doubt whether you are capable of joining them. There will be days that you are on the verge of giving up, and nights that you are certain you cannot possibly survive what we will do to you. But every one of those pilots flying for the Imperium right now is proof that if you have the strength of purpose, the will, and the raw fortitude, you can and will leave this academy an officer in the Imperial Fleet."

"It is not my job to coddle you or to hold your hand." The commandant's gaze swept the crowd, and for just a moment, Arc was surprised to find himself meeting her eyes.

"It is my job, and the task of every member of our faculty, to break you down and build you into something better. We will push you beyond any limits you thought that you had. You will do things that would seem impossible to you right now."

"We do not expect you to survive this alone," Marlowe said, and raised her arm to sweep it out across the rows of seats, and the crowd of cadets in the auditorium.

"Every cadet here is your brother or your sister. When you cannot walk on your own feet, your fellows will carry you. When your brother falls, I expect you to lift him up. If you are to succeed, if you are to leave this planet as one of us, you will do so by learning to operate as a unit. We are infinitely stronger together than we are apart—a fact which the Imperium proves every day." Commandant Marlow straightened, and a bit of the fire which had infused her voice as she spoke to the cadets faded.

"Tomorrow morning, third, second, and first-class cadets will begin their academic schedules and report to their classes. For you mole rats, however, I regret to inform you that academic classes shall not commence immediately. Instead, you begin what we here at the academy call 'Hard Burn." At that, the upperclassmen let out a raucous cheer. It was so different from the restrained applause that had come up to this point that Arc couldn't help but flinch at the sound.

The faculty on stage shared grins with each other, and though he couldn't hear what they were saying, Arc could see mouths moving. He felt like everyone else in the auditorium was in on some particular joke, which had gone entirely over his head. When the noise of the crowd finally subsided, the commandant spoke again.

"What precisely that means, I will allow Lieutenant Kekoa to explain to you." Marlowe stepped back, then waited for the Alu'kan officer who'd fetched Arc and his fellow cadets from the spaceport to rise. The two shook hands and spoke briefly, and then Kekoa took his place at the podium while the commandant sat.

"I am Lieutenant Kekoa, and it is my unfortunate and thankless task to somehow turn all of you mole rats into soldiers," he roared, and the speakers crackled at the sudden increase in volume.

"At 0430 you will report to the academy medical facilities, where Doctor Seung and her team will evaluate your physical fitness. If she doesn't clear you, you'll be on the first ship back to your home system. She's also going to stick your bottoms with enough hypos that you won't be able to sit comfortably for a week. You can look forward to the full course of fleet vaccinations, and yes, every one of those shots is mandatory.

I expect half a dozen of you, at least, to be green and puking your guts out before the morning is done. There's a reason we do this before chow, and not after." Kekoa glanced back to Commandant Marlowe, who nodded.

"That's all for now," the lieutenant said.

"Dinner is waiting for you in your dining halls and will be served until 1915 hours. Lights out at 23: 30. Dismissed." Arc rose with the rest of the cadets, and they slowly shuffled their way out of their rows, down the steps, and then out of the auditorium. Finally, he made his way out into the open air. Vidako's two stars were sinking toward the horizon, but here along the planet's equator night was slow to come on.

Still, the air was somewhat cooler now, and he thought he caught a hint of sea-salt on the breeze, carried all the way over from the bay. Best of all, he caught sight of Cassie—rather, Princess Cascada, he corrected himself—with one arm on the shoulder of the small Alu'kan girl she'd been sitting next to.

"I'll catch up with you at the dining hall," Arc told Pika, and wove his way between pairs and groups of cadets so that he could get to her. He nearly lost sight of her in the sea of gray tunics, but he found her again by the cerulean crest of the Torean on her other side.

"Pardon me," Arc muttered, ducking around two upperclassmen, and then he was there. She must have heard his voice, because she turned, and for a moment their eyes met. Then, something hit Arc's back and sent him stumbling, nearly falling to the ground.

"Out of the way, mole rat," Cadet Van Camp growled, turning away from Arc to face the princess.