Chương 45: Episode 45 - Years, Not Weeks

He was at the coaching block when she told him. The session had already run — Bay 1-Echo, a joint evaluation against Squad 2-Psi, a clean seven-point win that had required two mid-exercise adjustments and produced one standing-order revision. Standard Tuesday. Harren was reviewing the overlay data, the squad had dispersed, and he was annotating the adjustment notes when she said it.

"The MOB inquiry. What is your timeline assumption?" He looked up.

"Weeks. The preliminary determination is a procedural step — once it clears, the formal review moves to evidence assessment, which—""Months," she said.

"At minimum. More likely years." He stopped writing.

"The preliminary determination triggers the formal review. The formal review requires the MOB's internal audit division to independently verify the evidence chain before the inquiry officer can proceed to witness interviews. That verification process has a statutory timeline of sixty to ninety days."

"Then witness interviews."

"Then witness interviews, which in a case involving seven years and six postings will likely be extensive. Then the inquiry officer's preliminary findings. Then Aldric's legal team files responses. Then the inquiry officer revises." She set down her slate.

"From submission to determination: eighteen months is fast. Three years is typical." He sat with that for a moment. Three years. He would be a third-year cadet when this closed. He had been building toward a resolution that arrived before graduation. He had not — he realized now — actually verified that assumption against the MOB's procedural timeline.

"I should have asked this earlier," he said.

"Yes." No softening.

"The submission was correct. The timing assumption was not. Correct the assumption and keep moving." He corrected it. He opened the threat assessment and updated the inquiry timeline entry. Three years. He looked at what that meant for everything else he had been building toward and recalibrated each piece. It took eleven minutes. When he was done the shape was different but the structure still held.

"The platform," he said.

"First rank," she said.

"The platform requires first rank and first rank requires holding it. That timeline has not changed." She picked up her slate again.

"The inquiry runs its course. Your job is to still be here when it does."

"Understood."

"Good." She made a note.

"Tomorrow's session. I've approved a joint evaluation request from Squad 6-Gamma. They asked specifically for you."

"6-Gamma. Twelfth in the composite."

"They've been preparing for two weeks." She did not elaborate. He would find out tomorrow. * 6-Gamma came in running something he had not seen before. Not a new formation — a new quality and prescence. Their pilots moved through pre-drill setup with a specific interior focus that was different from the normal pre-drill mental state. Focused inward rather than outward. Eyes tracking their own instruments rather than the opposing squad. Ren-Thalen noticed before he did.

"Something has shifted," she said, quietly, while they were still on the mounting pad.

"What kind of something?"

"They're very still inside." She tilted her head.

"Not calm-still. Controlled-still. The way you control an emotion you know you cannot release. Should never be released." He took note of this and got into his cockpit. ECHO-LANCE sealed, the sensor crown swept its arc, the overlay populated. 6-Gamma's formation in amber — six frames, standard configuration, nothing unusual in the positioning. Whatever they were doing was not visible in the formation data. The drill started.

"Their right screen is—" Ren-Thalen stopped.

"Ren."

"I don't know." A pause that was unusual for her.

"The read is — unclear. Their emotional state is consistent in a way that real emotional states are not." He processed this. They were masking their emotions in a way that even Ren-Thalen was having trouble. This was going to be a problem. 6-Gamma had studied Ren-Thalen's session logs, identified the advance read as the formation's primary intelligence advantage, and had spent two weeks drilling their pilots to control their emotional state during combat. They had clearly put in the work to counter Ren.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. This was the right counter, and was even partially working.

'The frame movement,' Cassian thought to himself. Aloud, he said, "Ren, can you try and read the frame movements instead of the pilots?" Ren-Thalen hesitated.

"That is something completely different."

"Can you do it?"

".... yes, but it will be slower."

"How much slower."

"3? Maybe 5 seconds?" Cassian thought about this. That kind of delay could cost them dearly, but it was still quicker than not having the advanced read at all.

"Use it," he said.

"Everyone — the advance read is degraded. We're running on frame movement reads and overlay. Tighten the call structure, shorter confirmation windows, move on my call not Ren's." The squad adapted. Not perfectly — the first thirty seconds were rougher than anything since week four… 6-Gamma pushed the advantage hard. With the advance read degraded they were running faster than their session history suggested — the suppression protocol freeing up processing capacity. CRACK — first shot hit ECHO-LANCE's left flank.

Hull integrity: 94%. The sensor suite flickered for two seconds. IRONJAW caught two hits holding the left approach. CRACK, CRACK — 88%, 81%. Krell'va held the corridor. The instinct that said hold territory ran faster than the compromised information feed, and the instinct was right. The overlay was slower than usual. Frame-movement read giving him positions a full second late. Two adjustments arrived slightly late.

The formation compensated — Korrath reading HEARTHBREAKER's data and adjusting without the call, Cirus moving to secondary geometry when primary arrived late. They were holding. Not cleanly. Holding. Then SHADOWRUN did something. The two 6-Gamma frames were suppressing their own emotional state with everything they had — the protocol running at full load, their pilots' cognitive resources split between managing the internal signal and tracking the engagement…

SHADOWRUN closed to eight meters and then threaded the gap between them at full speed. The burst acceleration produced a localized electromagnetic discharge — the drive pushing from zero to full output in under a second… In their cockpits: every display spiked with static at the same moment their suppression protocol was consuming the most cognitive load it had ever demanded… The suppression required active attention to sustain. The EM wake demanded that attention redirect.

Two processes competing for the same finite resource. Something had to give. The suppression broke in both of them for two seconds. * The rest of their formation was holding. Not cleanly, but still holding. Cirus had been quiet on the comms for twenty-seven seconds. In the overlay RAZORWIND was barely moving — positioned at right-rear, the targeting array on the right forearm cycling in its constant way. Not idle.

The array was pulling angles and ranges from every contact in the bay, building a geometric picture that required no emotional signal. The advance read was degraded. The targeting array was not. While the formation ran on slower information, Cirus had been building. Every second of the thirty rough seconds added data. The suppression protocol had changed 6-Gamma's movement patterns — faster, more committed.

The targeting array catalogued the deviation: specifically, the fractional hesitations in the left anchor's position data, the micro-delays that corresponded to moments when the suppression consumed more cognitive load than the engagement did. RAZORWIND had not been waiting for a position to open. It had been solving for one. Then after the EM wake breaks the suppression:"Left anchor hesitated," Ren-Thalen said. Back. Fully back.

"Cirus." The targeting array had been running the left anchor's suppression state as a measurable variable for eleven seconds — tracking the micro-hesitations, building toward the moment when the hesitation would spike past the model's predicted threshold. When the EM wake hit both frames simultaneously, it spiked. RAZORWIND was already moving. Not toward a gap that had opened but toward the firing position the geometry had been solving for before the opportunity existed.

Standing still, then already somewhere else, the right forearm locked on target before the frame stopped moving. 0. 7 seconds from the moment Ren-Thalen called the hesitation to the firing solution. CRACK. The left anchor went amber. 6-Gamma's protocol had been designed to suppress the signal they produced. It had not been designed to handle additional electromagnetic load on top of the suppression effort. They had found the limit of it. 7-Delta by eight points. After, 6-Gamma's squad leader came to him.

She was not defeated — she was calculating.

"The EM wake was deliberate."

"Yes."

"We suppressed the read and you switched to a different attack vector."

"You found the right counter," he said.

"Even still, you relied on it too heavily." She nodded slowly.

"I, we, still need to hone our other skills instead of believing one shift will solve everything."

"That's the problem in front of you," he agreed. She went back to her squad. He watched her go and thought: she will find it. Give her a month. * Back in B-7 at 2100. He had the timeline updated, the session data filed, the standing orders revised to include the frame-movement read as a secondary protocol when the advance read was degraded. He had three years of inquiry timeline and a formation that had just been hit with a suppression protocol and had adapted in real time. He told the squad about the timeline.

Nyx'ara said: "Years."

"Yes."

"Not weeks."

"No." She absorbed this.

"But the platform still requires first."

"Yes."

"Then nothing changes."

"The timeline changes. The work doesn't." She looked at the ceiling.

"Okay." The word she used when something large turned out to be true and she was filing it correctly. Cirus had already updated his models. He didn't announce this. He simply closed the slate when the conversation was over, which meant the models were done. Ren-Thalen, from her corner: "The frame-movement read. I want to develop it as a formal secondary protocol. Not a fallback — a capability."

"Agreed. Start tomorrow." She nodded. She went back to whatever she was reading. Korrath's tea was on the shelf. The lights went out early. The work continued. Three years. The platform still requires first. Nothing else changes. The work continues.