Chương 61: Lady Ren

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum January 21, 2848"I've sent a message to Chief Jastrow," Cassie said, as the electronic lock on the door of hangar 417 flicked from a red light to green.

"And to Natalie. Jessica, can you make certain that no one else tries to follow us in here?" Arc wasn't at all surprised that the imperial guard stepped out of the shadows cast by the next building over. At this point, he'd decided that it was safer to just assume that she was always around, wherever Cassie might be.

"I'm glad you're letting him know this time," Jessica grumbled.

"Maybe he won't yell at you quite so much."

"Maybe." Cassie flashed them both a grin and pulled the door open. The inside of the hangar was dark, save for the occasional warning light in amber, red or green, like stars in the night. Dim, indistinct shadows hinted at the shapes of catwalks, gantries, and other maintenance equipment. Above them all, however, was the hulking silhouette of a mech.

"This was part of the agreement with my parents, once my mother realised that she couldn't stop me from coming here," Cassie explained, as she led Arc into the hangar. The fall of their boots echoed around the enormous room.

"It was Orion's suggestion, actually."

"Your brother?" Arc knew that—though he still had difficulty thinking of Orion Rigel Sabran-Solaris as anything other than a distant figure, a celebrity whose picture graced the locker doors of Rashmi's friends, back when they were all in school together on Zurah.

"Mmm-hmmm," Cassie hummed in answer.

"Yeah, he really talked Mom down from a cliff. Told her that if I was going to come anyway, she should make certain I had a mech that would really keep me safe, instead of whatever 'old piece of junk' the academy would give me." She raised her hands to make quotation marks around the words as she spoke.

"Unit seventeen isn't a piece of junk," Arc protested. It was his mech, after all, and he felt obligated to defend it in the same way that he might speak up to defend a friend.

"No, it isn't," Cassie agreed, reaching over to take his hand and give it a squeeze.

"I think my brother played it up to her as much as he could. To hear him tell it, I'd be clearing out cobwebs and getting rust in my hair every time I got in the cockpit. So, this was the solution. A custom Janissary, built from the ground up. Are you ready?" She'd already shown him the specifications, while they were spending the winter break in New Toledo, but Arc could tell that Cassie had been looking forward to making a big reveal of things, and he didn't want to ruin that.

"Ready," he agreed.

"Lyra," Cassie said.

"Lights, please." One after another, the overhead lights and spotlights clicked on, flooding the bay and driving away the shadows. If Arc had thought that a file on Cassie's tablet had prepared him for what was waiting, he couldn't have been more wrong. His Tyro —unit seventeen—was a perfectly serviceable training mech, and it had carried him through his first patrol in the jungles admirably. But one thing it wasn't, was new.

Arc couldn't be quite certain just how many cadets had piloted the mech over the years since the third generation line of imperial chassis went into service, and he supposed that there had probably been additional orders of Tyros over the years, to replace units which had been thoroughly destroyed. Natalie could probably check the maintenance records and get him an exact number, if he cared to ask, but Arc couldn't imagine that the mech was less than ten years old.

And after a decade of hard use, just about every part of unit seventeen had been repaired, replaced, or refurbished at least once. It all worked—the mech wouldn't have been allowed out into the field otherwise—but it was about the farthest thing from new possible. Cassie's Janissary was brand new, in the way that made Arc feel like someone had just unwrapped it or taken it out of a package.

More than that, it had the look and feel of the sort of luxury grav-car that dealers put on display not because they actually thought anyone would make a purchase, but because they wanted to draw eyes. Like any other Janissary, the mech stood twenty-two meters, though Arc suspected the missile pods jutting up vertically from the shoulders bought it perhaps another meter or two of height, from toe to pod-tip.

He knew that it would be roughly fifty-five tons; again, perhaps a bit more with the missiles attached, and a bit less once it had dropped the fire-and-forget pods. The general shape was mostly the same, also, with hulking shoulders, a thin waist, and wide feet meant to help the pilot keep their balance.

Rather than being painted in any sort of camouflage pattern, the RSiNC ceramic armor plates were mostly a bright, clean white, so spotless that Arc could tell at a glance they'd never even been dusted with dirt in a training field. The two slanted plates which angled down to protect the sides of the torso, a few key pieces on the lower legs, and the plate that covered the bottom of the front torso, between the legs, had all been painted a metallic gold that gleamed under the spotlights of the hangar.

At the head, where the sensors were mounted to feed into the pilot's neural lace, a stylized eye-slit sparkled a brilliant blue, giving the appearance of a helmet or vestigial face. Rather than a brace of four light lasers, mounted two at each shoulder, Cassie's mech carried two additional missile pods, one attached to each hardpoint. Arc could pick out additional thrust-vectoring nozzles, some attached to the lower legs, others to the rear of the torso.

There was no anti-missile turret, but there was an assembly on the right arm where a normal Janissary would have mounted a flamethrower which he knew was meant to compensate for that. The handle of a plasma blade was magnetically locked to the side of either thigh, and a nearby weapons rack held a standard laser rifle.

"I named her Lady Ren," Cassie said, and taking Arc by the hand, she pulled him over to the rope ladder which hung down from the open cockpit.

"Come on." She set her foot into the lowest rung of the ladder and began to haul herself up. Arc waited until she'd gotten over his head, set his own foot, and started to follow. The moment he glanced up, however, he got an eyeful of just how good his girlfriend looked in her exercise clothes. The leggings she'd worn to go fencing didn't leave much to the imagination—at least not while Cassie was climbing the rope ladder.

Arc had to give himself a bit of a shake before he was ready to follow, and then he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the rungs in front of him. How embarrassing would it be to break his neck falling off before ever getting to the duel? The cockpit itself was open, though it was of a different make than Arc was used to.

The white ceramic plates of armor which protected Lady Ren's chest were already extended outward, irised open to reveal a full emergency escape pod, built for zero-g conditions and surrounded with radiation shielding. Cassie scrambled inside just ahead of him, then turned around, reached back, and took one of Arc's arms as he reached up from the last rung of the ladder, hauling back to help him in. Lady Ren's cockpit was most definitely not designed for two, but he got himself inside it, ayway.

Without the need for an ejection seat, the pilot's chair was more firmly attached, and upholstered in ergonomic padding designed to cradle Cassie's body and hold her firm against whatever g-forces those thrusters could put out. Even the leather was in shades of white and gold, to match the armor. Arc had a feeling that the empress's contribution to the mech had been an entirely aesthetic one. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Here, sit," Cassie urged, tugging him into the chair. It was a good thing that he wasn't so much bigger than her, or it would have been uncomfortably cramped; as it was, Arc could tell that he wasn't the person the chair had been fitted to, but nothing was actively uncomfortable. Before he could move or say anything, Cassie sat herself down right on his lap, and reached out to swing over the flat screen mounted on an extendable arm to the right interior wall of the cockpit.

Arc tucked his chin into her shoulder, putting them practically cheek to cheek. Her clothes were still damp from all the exercise they'd gotten at fencing club, and her body was warm against his.

"What did you name her after?" he asked.

"Sun Shangxiang was the daughter of a Chinese warlord, around the second century," Cassie said, as she tapped at the screen.

"Even after she was married off to another warlord, she kept a bodyguard of a hundred women, all armed with swords, and it was said that he was as frightened of what she would do as he was of any of his rivals. She has a few names in different sources—Lady Sun, Sun Ren—and she's even in an ancient opera." Arc couldn't help but smile.

"I can see how she'd appeal to you," he admitted.

"Were you worried about your father choosing a duke's son for you, when you picked the name?"

"Not really," Cassie prevaricated.

"He only has the right to tell me 'no,' not to pick a husband out. And he wouldn't do that anyway. Mother might," she grumbled. In the meanwhile, the flat screen had come to life, and Cassie flicked through a variety of warnings before leaning over to let an attached scanner have a good look at her eye.

"We can't actually start her up until Natalie drops a few solid state batteries in," she said.

"And I don't think there's ever been anything in the thruster tanks, so they're probably going to want to flush all the fuel lines before firing those up. But I can load your biometrics into the computer, at least."

"Cassie," Arc said, putting one hand on her hip to get her attention.

"Are you absolutely certain you want to do this? I think Natalie and I have a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do to a Tyro, and if I took unit seventeen, you wouldn't have to worry about anything happening to your mech. You've never even got to pilot this machine. I'd feel pretty bad if I wrecked her before you could."

"Arc." Cassie pushed the flat screen away and shifted in his lap, until she was turned sideways and could look him right in the eye.

"Listen to me. Which do you think is more important to me—you, or a mech?"

"I certainly hope me," he said.

"But your parents had this made for you—""And if she gets totaled, they'll make me another," Cassie interrupted him.

"But if you get killed, they can't bring you back. And I've gotten to really enjoy having you around." She grinned.

"You're going to take the mech, because that's how I can help make sure you come back."

"Alright." He nodded.

"Thank you."

"Thank me by beating Radecki into the ground," Cassie said, and then leaned in to press her lips to his. There in the cockpit, alone in the empty hangar, Arc wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back. The feel of Cassie's body in his lap and in his arms brought him back to the nights they'd had together at the Palacio de las Orquídeas, and suddenly he was much less interested in the mech's weapons loadout than he was in stealing a moment alone with his girlfriend.

When they both came up for air, Cassie's cheeks were flushed and she was breathing nearly as heavily as after a round of fencing the commandant.

"Cassie," he began, but then the door to the hangar banged open.

"What've you got hidden away in this place, princesa?" Natalie Ramírez shouted, her voice echoing throughout the enormous structure. Then, there was a pause, and Arc could almost picture her face as she got a good look at the Lady Ren.

"Oh. Oh, wow. This is..." Cassie laughed, slipped out of Arc's lap, and walked over to the edge of the cockpit, where she put one hand on a ceramic armor plate and leaned out. The sight got Arc out of the piloting chair just so that he could slip an arm around her waist and make certain that she wouldn't fall. Down below, Natalie, Dan Moore, Billy Tremblay, Jessica, and Chief Dimitri Jastrow had clustered in a group around the feet of the enormous mech.

The three techs were gazing upwards, wide-eyed, like children who'd just unwrapped a present and found their dearest wish inside.

"What's the deal here, cadet?" Chief Jastrow said.

"Last I checked, you haven't checked out on a Tyro yet, nevermind this thing."

"Something I'll be dealing with shortly," Cassie grumbled, and Arc was certain that he was the only one who could hear her. Then, she raised her voice to call down.

"Arc's got a duel at the end of the semester. He's going to pilot my mech for it."

"Cassie, I love you," Natalie shouted back up.

"Ditch the boyfriend and take me instead!"

"Is that alright, Chief?" Arc shouted down.

"We're going to have to get her loaded up and take her out so I can actually get a feel for how she moves." Jastrow hesitated for a moment.

"It's the princess's personal mech," he said.

"It isn't owned by the academy. If she wants to let you bang it up, she can do that. But this is no Tyro, Sandhurst. This is a lot of mech, right here."

"That's why we need Natalie and the rest of the crew," Arc said.

"But this is your hangar, chief, and we're going to be asking you for batteries, missiles, and fuel."

"If you don't let me work on this mech, I will never forgive you," Natalie hissed, turning to glare at the chief.

"Letting you lot fuck around with a mess like this is like giving a toddler a brush and letting him at the Mona Lisa," Jastrow shot back.

"This beauty isn't off an assembly line, Ramírez. You need to be more than a gorilla with a wrench to take care of her right." He placed a hand on each hip, and then shook his head sorrowfully.

"I can't see any other way to do it. I'm gonna have to take lead here myself and teach you cadets how to handle a real mech." Cassie snorted and buried her face in Arc's arm to keep from laughing. When she glanced back at him, her eyes twinkled.

"Twist his arm, why don't you," she whispered. Arc couldn't help grinning in return.

"Thanks, Chief!" he shouted down.

"It means alot. Where do we start?"

"We'll drop the batteries in," Jastrow said, after not even a moment's consideration.

"Ammo and fuel can wait, but the batteries will let you link your AI up and walk her out of the hangar. That should tell us if there's any problems with the connection. You've never actually piloted this thing, have you, Sabran-Solaris?"

"Never," Cassie admitted.

"Alright." The Chief nodded.

"Let's make sure it doesn't accidentally fry his brain, then. You three, go over to warehouse A-01 and get... call it ten solid state batteries. Six for today, and four to keep here in the hangar."

"Can we take the forklift?" Tremblay asked.

"Unless you want to carry the damned things, you're going to have to," Jastrow grumbled. He reached into his pocket, took an electronic key out, and threw it to the group of techs. Tremblay snatched it out of the air, and all three of them took off at a run. The chief, in the meanwhile, began to make a circuit of the hangar, turning the power on at each station in turn until the space was filled with humming maintenance machinery.

"Alright, let's finish getting you set up," Cassie said. She slipped out of Arc's arm, grabbed the flat screen again, and tapped at it rapidly until she'd arrived at the screen she wanted.

"Add user: Arcturus Sandhurst," she said, enunciating clearly.

"Access level: pilot."

"Scan thumbprint," an artificial voice sounded, from the screen. Cassie stepped out of the way, and Arc squeezed in to press his right thumb to the screen. After a moment, a digitized image of the loops and whirls on his thumb flashed across the screen.

"Present right eye," the computer continued. Arc leaned his face in close to the screen, and did his best not to blink. An inset laser, mounted just along the edge of the device, lit up and filled his vision with a bright green light. By the time it was done, he felt like it had been stabbed directly into his brain.

"New user added," the computer declared.

"Batteries required for neural lace linkage." It took half an hour for Natalie and the others to get back, riding a forklift loaded with solid state batteries in through the hangar door. They left it open to the evening air, then used the gantries and cranes mounted on the walls and ceiling of the bay to slot the batteries in through open ports in the mech's armor at the rear of the torso. Arc and Cassie could tell the moment the batteries were in, because the lights inside the cockpit all came on at once.

"Alright, link up!" Chief Jastrow called from below.

"You think we should have grabbed a corpsman?" Natalie asked him, her voice echoing around the hangar. Arc ignored them, strapped himself in using the five point harness, and sat back in the pilot's seat. To his surprise, Cassie once again settled into his lap.

"If you think I'm letting you take my mech out for the first time without even being in the cockpit, you're crazy," she told him, making herself comfortable. She reached over to stab a button, and the rope-ladder rolled up with a whir, before ceramic armor plates closed around them and the inner wall of the escape pod sealed shut.

"Fair enough." Arc laughed. Iceni, connect us. His awareness bloomed outward to encompass the Lady Ren, and Arc walked the mech out of hangar 417 onto the tarmac, where the light of Chel, high above the dark horizon, shone down onto them.