Chương 80: Up the Gravity Well

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum May 15, 2848 The week of the eleventh through the fifteenth, by the Imperial Standard Calendar, was the week of exams. Out of all his courses, Arc was least worried about Naval History of the Imperium Stellarum; he'd practically skated through the entire spring semester paying only half attention to the lectures. Most of the reading he'd done years before, during his free time for pure enjoyment.

When the time came to sit for the exam, he finished a full twenty minutes before anyone else—a fact that he only learned later, when Sloane let him know. Apparently, she'd set a timer for her own personal amusement.

The Political and Military History of the Singularity was something he was less familiar with, and what knowledge he did have going into the class was spotty—confined mostly to the histories he'd read of the Singularity war, and the fact that his friend Teo liked to abuse the faction's rules during games of Tacticalis. Still, it was a history course, and those were Arc's bread and butter.

Much more concerning was Space Physics, with Professor LeMay—not only because of the math involved, but also due to the subject matter's fundamentally essential nature as a building block for Arc's planned entrance into the zero-g track during his upcoming second year at the academy. If he bombed the class, all his plans to get into the cockpit of a Kestrel might as well be crumpled up and thrown out like a scrap of used paper.

As a result, that was the exam he spent every spare hour studying for, right up until the very morning he walked into the lecture hall and took his seat—in fact, until the moment that Professor LeMay engaged the academy controls which locked student tablets out of any function but the test itself. This is ridiculous, Arc complained silently as he worked. If I need to predict when a ship coming from L2 is going to intercept a force coming from orbit, that's what we have ship computers for.

That's what I have you for. I am explicitly forbidden from offering you any aid during your examinations, Iceni informed him, quite cheerfully. Save for moral support! I am confident that you can pass this test. While your talents are not explicitly inclined toward high level mathematics, your raw neural processing power is at the top of your class, even before the addition of neural lace. That alone should be enough to make up for any lack of motivation or interest on your part.

You're horrible at moral support, Arc thought back in her direction. That exam took him right up until the end of the time provided, and by the time he was finished, his undershirt was soaked with sweat and his head felt as if two Spiked Terrors had taken turns stomping on his skull for the past hour. Compared to the written exams, his Introductory Pilot Evaluation and Applied Tactics and Simulations finals were downright fun.

He hadn't actually been able to hop into unit seventeen's cockpit since his disciplinary hearing, and as a result it practically felt like a vacation to simulate a drop into a hostile territory. His Tyro was carried off Academy Hill by a Saker, then dropped in the mountains west of the city from a height of a hundred and fifty meters.

It was Arc's task to use the vectoring thrusters on unit seventeen's drop pack to land the mech without damage, eject the pack itself, and then make his way thirty kilometers to the designated waypoint while second year cadets peppered his mech with paintballs and low-intensity tracking lasers.

In this, Lieutenant Estrada's training over winter break gave him an advantage: Arc used the absolute minimum fuel during his low-altitude drop, kept the thruster pack, and took advantage of the attached jets to help him evade contact with the cadets who were hunting him. By the time he reached the target waypoint, he was almost disappointed to be finished.

And then, of course, there was Professor DeVault's course, where he and Skuld appeared to have taken a particular glee in fashioning an absolutely brutal scenario for Arc and the other students to play out. Arc could actually see the excitement in his instructor's eyes as he described the simulation.

"A Na'xir invasion of Vidako," DeVault explained.

"We will be assuming complete surprise, due to the swarm's use of alternative faster-than-light propulsion, rather than the gate at L2. The first anyone is aware of their presence is when they hit Chel and Pinnacle Station, simultaneously, while the Honor is out of position on patrol. Two separate forces land, at San Teodoro and New Toledo, respectively, targeting the planet's major population centers."

"While the academy cadets are occupied defending San Teodoro, only Duke Montalban's guard is left to hold of the Na'xir so that the capital can be evacuated," Skuld went on, the holographic projection of the AI swimming through the air above the cadets' heads like some siren out of ancient marine mythology.

"You will be evaluated on the number of survivors who make it out of the city to safety. The percentage of the city's total population will be directly converted to your score." Kievit Red Crest tapped at her tablet and then raised her hand.

"Out of six-hundred and seventy thousand people? Which means for every sixty-seven hundred, we earn one percent of our exam grade. Do I have that correct?"

"You do," DeVault confirmed, with a grin.

"Evacuating four-hundred and thirty-five thousand, five hundred, will earn you the lowest possible passing grade."

"With what," Sloane Emonstone-Granville complained, "a battalion? What mechs does the duke even have?"

"Two Tagmas, a Skiritai, and a Mangonel," Arc answered. When half the class looked at him, he shrugged.

"I spent some time with the duke's guard over winter break."

"You will run the simulation once, and once only," DeVault declared.

"The score earned in your single attempt will stand. To your simulation rooms, cadets." Arc actually felt that the professor's choice of location and unit had given him something of an advantage over the rest of the class, though he wasn't certain whether that was on purpose or not. He suspected that he was the only one present who'd spent time in New Toledo, and he knew for a fact that none of the rest of them had ever had the chance to train with the pilots in the duke's guard.

It was a surreal feeling to order Marcus Ajewọle's Skiritai forward so that he could get targeting data on the approaching Na'xir swarm. It was only a holographic simulation, after all—but Arc couldn't escape the knowledge that he'd sat down to dinner with the man, had met his sons. It was the tactically correct decision; the data provided by the scouting mech gave Esteban Montalban's Mangonel free reign to shower the approaching Na'xir warriors with missiles.

When the explosions began, forming a line across the Na'xir vanguard, Arc could almost hear Esteban's voice: I pounded him into rubble from over thirty kilometers away... I just kept launching until there wasn't anything else moving.

"I want two dedicated crews of techs re-loading that mech," Arc ordered, trusting Iceni to communicate his commands to the simulation.

"Move the two Tagmas up to the southwest edge of the city, here. What do we have for explosive charges?" Not as much as you might like, Iceni admitted. You're planning to lay a trap?

"We've got an entire city full of buildings to drop on them," Arc explained.

"And sewers to sink them into. You heard the professor—we're only evaluated on how many people we evacuate. No points earned for preserving the city infrastructure. We're going to bring it all down behind our people as they leave, right on top of the enemy's heads." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

In the end, he lost every single unit under his command, down to the last man, including all four mechs and their pilots, as well as a mix of twenty APCs and IMVs, a pair of grav-tanks, and four VTOLs. All in all, over two hundred and fifty soldiers fought to the death in a brutal urban gunfight that devastated the city.

But just like there were no points to be scored for preserving the beautiful architecture of the Palacio de las Orquídeas or the cathedral where he and Cassie had accompanied the Montalbans for Christmas mass, there was also no grade to be earned in keeping his units alive. At the end of the simulation, Skuld appeared in the simulation room with them; it was the only exam for which Arc received a score immediately.

"Civilians evacuated: six-hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seventeen," Skuld told them, in a flat voice.

"Defending force casualties: total. Damage to the city: catastrophic. Exam grade: ninety-two percent." Arc exhaled in relief. 𝝮 By Friday afternoon, both he and Cassie were done with exams, and many of the upperclassmen had already begun to leave campus. Final grades would be transmitted with the data-packages of every ship that left the system, along with the regular communication packages, so there was no reason to stay—unless a cadet was intending to take part in a summer program.

"Milla Cieszyński's going on that archaeological expedition," Vee explained, as Arc and his friends dragged their luggage across the tarmac toward a pair of waiting Sakers. Cassie, of course, only had to tug her own suitcase behind her, where it floated on its own compact grav-generator.

"Huh." Arc considered that for a moment.

"I guess that surprises me a bit. I knew some people would go, but I didn't really expect any first years to be on the list. I figured it would be all upperclassmen."

"She's a really good hunter, and there's supposed to be plenty of indigenous life," Rain pointed out.

"It's not at all a bad idea to have a survival expert with the crew. I'm sure she'll earn a lot of merits." Arc couldn't help but grimace at that; his own balance had been almost entirely wiped out by the results of his disciplinary hearing. From six-hundred and fifty-seven, he'd lost a total of five-hundred merits over two charges. On top of that, he'd spent all of Thursday afternoon marching off the last of his punishment, in full uniform, on the green at the center of campus.

His plans to get a genetic retrovirus treatment had been pushed back to winter break of his second year, at the absolute earliest. As they approached the Sakers, Arc saw a knot of waiting people, and beyond, attached to the VTOLs themselves, two mechs ready for transport to the space elevator. One, of course, was Cassie's Lady Ren, the white and gold painted ceramic armor plates gleaming under Vidako's two suns. Just looking at the mech was almost enough to make his eyes hurt.

The second mech, however, was one that Arc had never seen before. Like C'rise's Pulsar, it had digitigrade legs, which Imperial designers usually avoided, because the further a design got from the human body, the more likely it was to cause dysmorphia in a pilot.

The legs and back were equipped with integrated vectoring thrusters and wings that seemed at odds with the legs, as if someone had tried to create a mech equally at home on the ground, and in zero-g—or at least low gravity environments, such as moons like Chel. Both the articulated fingers, and the feet of the mech, which had been designed with actual toes, were capped by ultrasonic claws designed to rend the armor of other mechs at close range.

Two plasma blade handles hung from the hips, where they were magnetically attached. Finally, two integrated laser barrels emerged from the torso, to either side of the cockpit. From what Arc could tell, they were closer to the rifles carried by most Tyros and Outriders than the smaller, shoulder-mounted light lasers often mounted on hardpoints. All the armor had been painted in shades of light gray, save for a single marking on the upper left torso: a black ace of spades.

It was the same symbol that appeared on the miniature of Beecher Red Crest's Blood Hawk, carefully packed into Arc's suitcase.

"Do you recognize it?" Cassie asked, elbowing Arc to get him walking again.

"Of course I do," Arc said.

"It's the Revenant Wolf. Sixty-tons, and entirely custom built, from the ground up. That thing is an absolute beast—I've played against it a few times. And Commander Raab is one of the only living aces in the imperial fleet. But -""Raab was my name before I married," Commandant Marlowe called across the tarmac, from where she stood waiting with Monica Yarborough, Chief Jastrow, Doctor Seung, and Professor DeVault.

"And accepting the position as commandant here came with a promotion to full captain." Arc blinked, finding himself utterly speechless for a moment, while Cassie laughed at his side.

"I was waiting for you to realize," she said, and reached up with her left hand to ruffle his hair. Then, Cassie reached for his hand and tugged him forward so that they were all within conversational distance of the faculty—and the spy.

"I told you that I'd be the one overseeing this duel," Marlowe went on.

"That does mean that I'm going to need to be in a cockpit." The older woman, it seemed, couldn't help her own smile at Arc's obvious surprise.

"I guess I just figured you'd take up one of the academy Kestrels," Arc admitted.

"And I—uh, I didn't know you were married, Commandant."

"Catalina's a delightful woman, and a wonderful painter," Professor DeVault observed.

"She has a show in New Toledo this coming September, I believe. You might consider making the trip, cadets." Marlowe shook her head.

"There's no reason you should have realized; I keep my work and my personal life separate. I will admit that one of the reasons I took Lina's name was to draw a line between my time as a pilot, and my duty here as a teacher. If you didn't realize exactly who I was, Cadet Sandhurst, that means things worked out the way I wanted them to. In any event, we have a short flight to the spaceport, where both mechs will be loaded for the trip up out of the gravity well.

Once we're all on Pinnacle Station, we'll take a shuttle over to Chel, where you'll all be given temporary quarters. At that point, Sandhurst, you'll have forty-eight standard hours to get used to piloting in low gravity. Your techs and support team can use that same time to get settled into your hangar bay. Any questions?" Arc didn't miss the commandant's eyes roaming over not only Natalie, Dan and Bill, but Vee, Rain, Pika, and C'rise, as well.

He almost expected her to call them out; their four friends really had no purpose to serve other than as moral support. If she'd objected to their presence, Arc really wouldn't have been able to say much about it. Jessica, lurking just behind Cassie, was another matter entirely—Arc doubted anything short of a squad of imperial marines would be able to drag the bodyguard away, and it would have been foolish to try. When none of the cadets spoke up, Marlowe nodded.

"In that case, load up! Let's move!" Arc and his friends heaved their suitcases over to the VTOL that had been rigged to carry Lady Ren, where Arc climbed up first and accepted their luggage, one case after the next, from Pika. Once all their things were secured in the webbing meant to hold cargo in place, all of them settled into their seats and adjusted their harnesses.

"Just like when we got here," Pika observed, from his place on Arc's left. They had to shout over the noise of the rotors, which was only marginally improved when the bay doors were closed. Then, the Saker was airborne, and they were headed up and away from Academy Hill and north across the city of San Teodoro. Fleet VTOLs weren't designed for sightseeing, and it wasn't until they were down at the spaceport and unloading that Arc got a good glimpse of the space elevator.

It dropped down out of the sky into the port building itself, and if it weren't for the sunlight, he might never have been able to pick it out. Two elevator cars, descending from Pinnacle Station, were more visible, with the passenger sections looking something like windowed caps atop the cargo modules below.

As soon as they were out, both VTOLs lifted off again, to transfer the mechs themselves; Arc had half expected to be told to climb into the cockpit and walk Lady Ren into a cargo container, but apparently that wouldn't be necessary. Instead, he and his friends followed Commandant Marlowe, who led the way into the spaceport. Chief Jastrow dropped back to walk with Natalie and the other techs, while Professor DeVault paced Arc and Cassie, giving off something of the attitude of a mother hen or a guard dog.

They took a side entrance, where San Teodoro police opened the doors without being asked, clearly expecting the group. From there, Commandant Marlowe set a fast pace, but it wasn't enough to evade the cameras and reporters who'd been lying in wait for their arrival. Thankfully, none of the media were being allowed past the security checkpoints, and their drones hadn't been allowed inside.

Other than a few shouted questions from behind the barricades, which Arc and Cassie ignored, they weren't able to do much more than take pictures and record footage. After that, it was a clear shot to the passenger car, where Arc, Cassie, and their friends stowed their suitcases and tumbled into their seats.

"Feel familiar?" Cassie asked, as she once again sat by the window, and Arc settled beside her.

"You're about the only part of this that does," he admitted. The reality of what was happening hit Arc all at once, and he had to clamp his hands against the armrests to stop them from shaking.

"Don't worry," Cassie whispered, tucking her head against his shoulder.

"It'll be over soon. A few minutes to teach Fletcher Radecki a lesson, and then we'll be on our way." The elevator began to move, carrying them up into the sky.