Chương 4: Episode 4 - First Evaluation

The grade-D frames were in Bay 7-Echo, which was the training bay allocated to low-ranking squads and shared with two others on a rotating schedule that meant Squad 7-Delta had it from 0800 to 1000 every third day and 1400 to 1600 on alternating afternoons, which worked out to slightly less bay time than the academy's own handbook described as the minimum effective training allotment. Cassian had noted this discrepancy and added it to the infrastructure file. The infrastructure file now had twenty-three entries.

Bay 7-Echo was forty meters by sixty. The ceiling was twelve meters at center and lower at the edges where the support struts came in. The floor was dark composite — non-slip, scuffed from years of frame traffic, the magnetic grid nodes visible as slightly raised panels every two meters. Two of the overhead fluorescent strips flickered at the far end. The smell was hydraulic fluid and metal and the faint chemical bite of charge emitter residue baked into every surface over a long enough operational history.

Not a bad smell. A working smell. The frames themselves were lined up against the back wall, each in a power cradle with a designation plate above the access hatch. ECHO-LANCE. TIDECALLER. IRONJAW. HEARTHBREAKER. RAZORWIND. SHADOWRUN. The names, he supposed, were meant to sound impressive. Someone had decided the frames deserved names even if they didn't deserve maintenance budgets, and he could respect the principle even while questioning the execution. He looked at the row again.

SHADOWRUN: ultra-light interceptor, angular chassis, built for speed. Assigned to the Seraphi Umbrathi interceptor pilot. IRONJAW: heavy brawler, jaw-configuration hull, built to absorb punishment. Assigned to the exiled Vaskarr warrior. HEARTHBREAKER: siege frame, anchor pylons, ground stability optimized. Assigned to the Dravak Fire-Seer engineer. TIDECALLER: sensor coverage distributed across the entire hull, no effective blind spots. Assigned to the Thal'kesh with psionic environmental awareness.

RAZORWIND: air superiority, precision configuration. Assigned to the Avarin Kyrr-caste precision striker. ECHO-LANCE: command configuration, sensor crown elevated, Formation Mesh capability. Assigned to the squad leader. He wrote in the file: frame assignments — each unit matches its pilot's species interface and combat role exactly. Either this is standard academy assignment practice for mixed-species squads or someone reviewed our profiles before cutting the allocation request. Determine which.

Note: both answers are interesting for different reasons. He closed the file and looked at the frames. *"They're smaller than I expected," Nyx'ara said.

"They're grade-D," Cirus said.

"I know what grade they are. I said they're smaller than I expected."

"The grade-D classification covers a range of frame sizes and capabilities. Within that range, these units are" — he consulted his slate — "at the lower quartile of the size distribution, and at the second-lowest percentile for power output." Nyx'ara looked at SHADOWRUN. Lean and angular, built for speed over everything else. It looked like something designed by someone who considered structural padding an aesthetic failure.

"I like it," she said.

"It has a documented actuator lag of 0. 3 seconds on lateral thrust vectors," Cirus said.

"I'll adapt."

"0. 3 seconds is significant at—""Cirus," Cassian said.

"What."

"Let her like the frame." A pause.

"Fine," Cirus said, and made a note on his slate that was almost certainly about the actuator lag. Krell'va had already crossed to IRONJAW without commentary. The heavy assault frame was the largest unit in the row by a meaningful margin — five meters plus, the jaw-like lower hull configuration giving it a silhouette that managed to look both industrial and deliberate, the stabilizer fins angled outward like the frame was bracing for something it expected to hit it.

It looked like a thing that had been built to not be moved. He opened the access hatch, checked the cockpit dimensions with the specific assessment of someone who had done this before and was accustomed to the answer being marginal, and then closed the hatch. His battle-braid was secured. His face communicated nothing in particular.

"Functional," he said.

"High praise," Nyx'ara said.

"It is functional. I said what I meant." Nyx'ara looked at Cassian. Cassian looked back. The look said: we are going to be here for a while with this one. The look said: yes, and this is going to be useful in ways neither of us can fully articulate yet. Korrath had moved to HEARTHBREAKER — broad and low-slung, built for ground stability, the anchor pylons on the lower legs folded but clearly substantial. He ran his hand along the hull plating the way you checked something you were about to trust with your life.

Slow. Methodical. He checked the same panel twice. Then he nodded once, to himself or to the frame, and moved to the cockpit access. Ren-Thalen stood in front of TIDECALLER and looked at it for a long moment with her head tilted slightly. She wasn't looking at the frame. She was looking at the bay through the frame — using it as a fixed point while her electrosensory ridges did their actual work on the room around it. Cassian looked at ECHO-LANCE.

Medium class, command configuration, the sensor crown on the upper hull elevated above the cockpit line. Not the most impressive frame in the row. The one that could see everything happening around it. He opened the hatch and climbed in. * The cockpit was smaller than he had expected and larger than it looked from outside. The canopy sealed with a pressure change he felt in his sinuses.

The Sol Neural Helm settled over his skull and the displays came up: monochrome overlay, grade-D processing lag visible as a slight stuttering in the sensor refresh, peripheral coverage arc narrow enough to leave meaningful blind spots on both flanks. The Formation Mesh was live but empty — five connection points waiting, no green contacts yet. He was looking at a framework with nothing in it. He noted the grid-state update lag at 0. 4 seconds.

He would have to lead his calls by that much or his reactions would always be slightly late. He filed it and ran the startup sequence. Across the bay, IRONJAW powered up with a low resonant hum he felt in his chest through ECHO-LANCE's chassis. In IRONJAW's cockpit, Krell'va's Howl-Node interface came online and the frame stopped being a machine. The pack-biological chemistry of the neural mesh didn't read motor signals; it read territorial instinct, threat assessment, pack-position awareness.

IRONJAW registered in his nervous system the same way a packmate registered — a presence with a location, a weight in the neural map. Across the bay, five other frames were powering up. He felt each of them resolve into the Howl-Node's read as potential pack. Not pack. Potential. He exhaled through his nose. He would see about that. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

SHADOWRUN's Photon-Will Interface came online at the speed of light, which was approximately how fast Nyx'ara's resonance state shifted when it did. The photodermis patterns that ran involuntary and visible in the mess hall and the barracks went still — not suppressed, not effortful, just absent, the way they always went absent here. The frame's sensor data arrived as sensation rather than readout. She ran a brief lateral thrust test and felt the 0.

3-second actuator lag as exactly what it was: a constraint with a specific geometry. She had already started mapping the angles where it wouldn't matter. In HEARTHBREAKER's cockpit, Korrath ran the startup sequence the way the ritual required: systems in order, no steps skipped, each confirmation received before the next initiated. The Forge-Bond interface brought the frame online as an extension of operational will rather than mechanical operation. The anchor pylons were folded.

He noted their deployment mechanism. He would learn the threshold at which they should be deployed and he would deploy them at the correct threshold. Not early. Not late. TIDECALLER's Psionic Weave brought Ren-Thalen into contact with the bay's full environmental read — not just the five green contacts resolving in the Formation Mesh but the specific quality of attention each pilot was directing at their own controls, the particular texture of five different species interfacing with their frames for the first time.

She catalogued it without comment. She would say something when something needed to be said. RAZORWIND's Choir Link read Cirus's biofield and translated it into frame-motor signal with the specific elegance of a system designed for collective resonance being operated, as always, alone. He was already running the bay's spatial geometry through the targeting array's passive mode. Five positions, six counting himself. The convex hull of their current positions. The distances from each to the far beacon.

He had three approach paths calculated before the comms channel opened. The comms channel opened. Five green indicators in Cassian's overlay. The Formation Mesh populated.

"Systems nominal," Cirus said. He sounded exactly the same in the cockpit as he did out of it, which was somehow both unsurprising and slightly unnerving.

"Same," Cassian confirmed.

"Brief in two minutes. Stay in the cradles until I call it." * He ran the brief. Coordination drill, single objective, formation perimeter constraint, real-time adaptive grid.

"Define formation perimeter," Cirus said immediately.

"Convex hull of our six positions. If any one of us drifts more than ten meters outside that hull, we take a penalty to the final score." Cirus made a note. Through the overlay, his frame was very still while he ran the geometry. Cassian recognized the quality of that stillness — calculation in progress, commitment suspended. He gave the position assignments. Korrath anchoring center. Krell'va left flank with the specific instruction to match pace to the formation, not his instinct.

Ren-Thalen right flank: call anything that feels wrong before it shows in the data. Nyx'ara forward scout, inside the hull. Cirus right-rear coverage for path reads on grid shifts. Cassian at left-rear command.

"Inside the hull," Nyx'ara said. Not repeating it back for clarification. Testing whether it was negotiable.

"Inside the hull," Cassian confirmed. A pause.

"How inside."

"Inside enough that the hull knows where you are." Another pause. She was deciding whether this constituted an answer.

"Fine," she said, in the tone of someone filing an objection without formally registering it.

"Then let's go." * The first thirty seconds went well. He would think about that later. The first thirty seconds went well, which meant the plan was functional, which meant what happened after was not a plan problem. The grid shifted at the forty-second mark. His overlay caught it with its 0. 4-second lag. Clean call, adequate timing.

Krell'va didn't redirect — the Howl-Node had already committed the corridor as territory in the half-second between the shift and the call, and the frame moved on that processing before the redirect arrived in language. IRONJAW pushed through at full advance. The proximity warnings ran sustained. IRONJAW didn't slow down. Penalty flag. First one. The grid shifted again at ninety seconds.

SHADOWRUN was already gone — through a gap the repositioned obstacle had created on the far side, faster by six seconds if you were willing to make the collision-avoidance sensors file a formal complaint. Nyx'ara was willing. Penalty flag. Second one.

"Nyx'ara—""I'm inside the hull," she said.

"You are eleven meters outside the hull."

"The hull recenters."

"The hull recenters around the group's current center of mass. If you move far enough ahead, the center moves toward you. That is not the same as being inside the hull." Another pause, shorter.

"That's a semantic argument."

"It's a geometric argument and we just took our second penalty." SHADOWRUN's pace moderated. Not slowing, exactly, but containing itself. The grid shifted a third time at two minutes. The right corridor closed entirely. Then, in the same sequence, a secondary junction repositioned in the center — both obstacles moving simultaneously, producing a configuration Cirus's three pre-calculated paths hadn't accounted for. Two of the three paths dead-ended.

The third was viable but required threading a gap that had shifted position. He called to Cirus. RAZORWIND stopped. Not paused. Stopped — full arrest, the frame holding position while every other frame was still moving. Through ECHO-LANCE's overlay the green contact for RAZORWIND was stationary. The targeting array on RAZORWIND's right forearm was cycling. Cirus was working. The frame wasn't. One second. Two. Three. He did not call a second time. He held the rest of the formation and waited. Four seconds.

RAZORWIND moved. Not the fastest path. The second-best one, the angle that accounted for the shifted junction without threading it as tightly. Clean and deliberate. Cassian let the formation follow. He wrote nothing yet. The drill was still running. Korrath held center and waited for the explicit release call. Krell'va was on the wrong trajectory.

Nyx'ara identified a third option, took it, hit a dead-end thirty meters ahead, and responded with the grace of someone who was deeply annoyed to have been right about something while simultaneously being wrong. They reached the beacon. Three minutes and fifty-one seconds. Inside the window. Four penalty flags. * They were quiet on the walk back. Nyx'ara broke it first.

"Four minutes was the window. We made four minutes."

"Three fifty-one," Cirus said. He was reviewing the post-session data on his slate, which meant he'd started the analysis while they were still walking. He said it without looking up.

"Inside the window."

"With four penalty flags."

"The penalty flags affected the score, not the time."

"The penalty flags are the score," Cassian said.

"Formation integrity is worth more than time." A pause.

"Nobody told me that."

"It's in the evaluation rubric."

"I read the rubric."

"Then we'll talk about the rubric later." From behind them, Krell'va said: "I broke formation." Not an apology. A statement — flat, as information, no inflection. This is what happened.

"Twice," Cassian said.

"Twice," Krell'va agreed.

"Do you know why?" A longer pause. The kind that meant something was being looked at directly rather than described.

"The Howl-Node committed the approach before the call arrived. The corridor was already territory by the time the redirect came." He said it the way you described a mechanical process.

"The instinct runs through the interface. The interface is faster than the call."

"Okay," Cassian said.

"We'll work on the timing." Krell'va's ear tilted forward by a few degrees. Cassian filed it. Cirus looked up from his slate briefly.

"The freeze window at the third grid shift," he said, to no one in particular, "was four seconds. That's the relevant data point." Then he looked back down. Cassian wrote in the file: Cirus acknowledges the freeze window and quantifies it unprompted. He is watching himself. Note: this is different from not knowing. This is knowing and not yet knowing how to fix it. * Instructor Harren was waiting outside Bay 7-Echo when they emerged. She reviewed the score on her slate. She looked at them. She walked away.

Not twelve words, not three, not one. The six of them stood in the wake of her departure and said nothing for a moment.

"Well," Nyx'ara said.

"Yes," Cassian said.

"That's either very good or very bad."

"Yes."

"You don't know which."

"No." She looked at Korrath.

"Do you have thoughts?" Korrath considered the question with his full unhurried attention.

"The forge tests what it is given," he said.

"If what was given passed the test, it will be clear in time." Another silence. This one had a different quality from the previous one.

"Okay," Nyx'ara said.

"That's— yes. Okay." Cassian updated the infrastructure file when he got back to B-7. Entry twenty-four: Harren — evaluates without comment. Determine whether this is standard practice or specific to this squad. Then he opened the drill plan for the next session and started rebuilding the protocol from entry one. The work continued. That was fine. That was always fine.