by Kal Spriggs
I didn’t know what to say about that.
“The other one came in a hole in you backplate, but at a different angle and instead of being a nice armor penetrating round, it was an expanding round. It mushroomed out and shredded your liver.” That didn’t sound so good.
“Am I dying?” I asked.
“They got the quick heal in you to fix muscle and bone damage. The organ damage, especially the stuff to your lungs and your kidney, they had to cut you open and do some clone grafts. The first ones didn’t take very well. So, they had to do another one with viable cells.”
“Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?” It hurt to say that much.
“They turned our whole bay into a hospital,” she told me. She held up her hand and I blinked as I realized she had something strapped on over her hand. “They shot the fingers off my hand. They grafted them back in and the nerve regeneration seems to be working. I should regain a hundred percent of my capabilities.”
“Sorry,” I winced. “Did we…”
“We didn’t lose anyone. Nadzeha was the next worst off, after you, with broken legs and pelvis, but those responded to quick-heal and he’s actually up and around. Everyone was wounded to one extent or another, but no one was killed.”
I felt shock at that. We hadn’t lost anyone. We had survived. I’d got them all out. I felt tears well up in my eyes. “Thanks,” I croaked.
“No, thank you,” Jonna told me. She leaned over and squeezed my shoulder gently with her good hand. “Heal up, get better.”
I didn’t try to answer. A wave of exhaustion rolled over me and I passed out.
***
The next few days were fuzzy. I’d wake up. I might drink something. Someone, normally either Osmund or Jonna or sometimes Sanjaya, would be nearby and they might tell me something, but the words often didn’t make a lot of sense.
At some point, they did move me to the hospital. I knew that was a bad sign. But I didn’t know why. Words seemed distant, vague. I didn’t recognize people. At one point, I thought my dad was there and I babbled at him for a moment, telling him I was sorry.
There weren’t many visitors after that.
Then one morning, I woke up and my head felt clear, for the first time in a while. I blinked, feeling weak but actually feeling like myself. I tried to set up and while it hurt, it wasn’t the stabbing agony I’d felt before. To my side was a window and it actually had a good view of the Heart. The tall spires of the city stood above the clouds in a fashion that was remarkably beautiful.
Shadow? I asked.
Will, you have no idea how happy I am that you’re awake, her voice was actually near breaking. It was really close there for a couple of days and—
The door opened. I straightened as I saw Institor Mikhail Dyer. I almost tried to jump out of bed but realized that would probably not be a good idea.
“Entrant Vars,” Mikhail Dyer smiled at me. It was not reassuring. “Well, well, well… quite the legend you’re building around yourself. First you foil an assassination attempt on a member of the Imperial Family, and then you lead quite the coup of a Second Sweep. No one has seen anything quite like it before. Nor, I think, will they again.” He shook his head, “I’m told the organizer of your final phase received official censure for the… unfortunate structure of the event.”
“Official censure?” I croaked.
“That’s official language for saying he was executed, for failing to ensure that Jade Flight didn’t survive.” He went to the windows, looking out on the city. “Well, officially, of course, the censure was for improper design of such a difficult final phase scenario and wasting and mismanagement of resources.” The Imperial Intelligence agent sighed. “Unfortunate, that. He was one of my periodic informants on the dealings of the senior Houses. Corrupt to the core, but manageable.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“Officially?” Dyer turned to look at me, his smile all teeth. “You’ve survived Second Screening and you’ll go on to Third Screening. You’ve earned your place at the Drakkus Imperial Military Institute. Third Screening is a far less bloody affair, it’s focused on earning your ranking and positioning to increase your chance of getting a better alignment. With your showing at Second Screening, I’ve no doubt you’ll be given the opportunities to excel.”
“Unofficially?” I asked.
“Prince Ladon and his father want you dead. You embarrassed the Prince when you pinned Jerral as a traitor. By surviving the trap set for you by the Crown Prince, well, you’ve doubled down. Not only that, but you’ve made Princess Kiyu look very impressive and capable, which elevates her as a threat to the both of them.” He clicked his tongue in disapproval, “You’ll be their primary target, but they’re going to have to either disgrace or destroy her, else people will start talking about how she may be an alternative heir.”
“What do I do?”
“Oh, that’s not my purpose, here,” Dyer grinned. He came over to the bed and poked at one of the bags of fluid dangling over me. “Quite the near-miss you had, Vars. Very close to death. At one point you were babbling to one of the doctors, thinking he was your father. Telling him how very sorry you were.”
My throat closed up and I couldn’t breathe.
“Very poignant. I didn’t know you had a sentimental side, Vars,” Dyer went on. “For that matter, can you believe that they tried three clone grafts on you? They were based off of normal genetic stock here on Drakkus, of course, which meant they should have worked with no issues to anyone from around here… like you and your father.”
“I take it there were issues?” I asked as calmly as I could manage.
“Yes, tissue rejection. They had to draw viable cells from you, and run systems to keep you alive while they grew replacement clone grafts. A very expensive process, I might add. The doctors will be most upset if you go and get yourself killed. They can be rather attached when they put so much effort into saving someone. In the meantime, I understand that you obtained blood poisoning from necrotic tissue. They were able to combat that as well, and the new grafts worked.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“I just found it curious that the original ones didn’t. I looked into some things. Vars, you were in a shuttle accident at the spaceport, five years ago, do you remember?”
Is that true? I asked.
Yes, Shadow told me. She fed me information on it even as I drew breath to answer.
“I do, it was pretty rough,” I told him, “a thruster failed and we hit pretty hard.”
“Yes, I’m told that one of your ribs broke and perforated your lung. You had to get a clone graft then,” Dyer noted. “How curious that you didn’t suffer tissue rejection in that experience.”
“That’s strange,” I answered. “I’m not a doctor, but maybe my body just had too much damage this time?”
“Perhaps,” Dyer turned away. “Well, Vars. I shall be watching you. It is ever so interesting.”
He left and closed the door. I flopped back on the bed, too wrung out to ease myself back. He knows, I thought in horror. He knows I’m not who I say I am.
He suspects, Shadow told me, and if he wanted you dead, all he had to do was tell the doctors to stop saving your life. He wants something from you or he has some plan for you.
That wasn’t all that reassuring. Especially since he hadn’t seemed all that concerned with the possibility of Prince Ladon having me killed.
Survive, Shadow told me, heal up. Worry about the rest when it comes.
In the end, what other choice did I have?
***
I went back to Jade Flight the next morning. Things were much different. The enlisted instructors were gone. We weren’t doing drills or pure combat scenarios anymore.
I had a lot of catching up to do, but it was odd how much it felt like coming back home. Everyone clapped as I limped into the bay, still feeling weak and winded from the walk over from the Institute’s hospital. Osmund and Sanjaya brought me
up to speed on what classes we had going on.
“Warp fighter tactics is the hardest one at the moment, right after warp drive theory,” Osmund noted. “Jade Flight, we’re slotted for ship and fighter command, if we stay here, anyway.”
“People leave their flights?” I asked in surprise.
“No one from Jade,” Sanjaya scoffed. “But some of the other flights, yeah. You haven’t been around, but a few flights that barely survived Second Screening, they’ve split them up.”
Osmund nodded, “Over in Iron Flight, they thought they were going to do very well. They were one of the last flights to go through Second Screening. They went in shorthanded,” she didn’t overtly mention that Jerral had been arrested, “but they were expected to finish strong. They fell apart in the middle of it, about half their flight died. The survivors dragged the fallen to the doors. They’re disbanding the flight.”
I shivered a bit at that. Was I responsible for that?
“There’s a few where individuals take themselves out of selection, too,” Sanjaya went on.
“Why?” I asked in shock.
They both got quiet. It was Jonna, who was a few meters away, who answered. “A few want to be doctors or engineers. They don’t want to command. Or they realize they don’t want to kill anymore. So they select out for officer flights that align with that.”
“I didn’t realize those were options,” I looked over at her.
“They’re not good options,” Osmund said in a low voice. “Anyone who does that is going to look pretty shaky. Most of the time, Imperial Intelligence will interview them. Some of them don’t come back.”
Hock. Any kind of failure, even perceived failure, was likely to get me killed here. “Well, I’m perfectly happy here in Jade Flight,” I gave a laugh. “I mean, we’re going to command starships one day, right?”
“Not all of us will,” Sanjaya cautioned. “I mean, we’re low-born.” He glanced over at Jonna, who shrugged as if to say she didn’t care if he said it. “We’ll be tactical officers, department heads, maybe command smaller ships like corvettes or destroyers, or warp fighter squadrons.” He nodded his head at Jonna, then over at Isagani, and lastly at Kiyu, “The well-born, from the Houses, they’re the ones who will command ships.”
Of course, I realized. They wouldn’t trust just anyone with their most powerful ships or with the command of their fleets. They had to be capable and trustworthy, with a stake in the system so that they didn’t betray it.
I kept my expression neutral. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Yeah,” Osmund nodded, though I thought his response came a little too quickly. Maybe he wasn’t quite so satisfied with his relative lot in life. I filed that knowledge away for later.
***
“You eat with the left fork,” Richardson snapped at us. We were seated around a dining table in one of the rooms on the spire that we’d never before entered. There was a polished tile floor. We wore our dress uniforms. Light music played in the background.
Sanjaya made a face, “I don’t understand—”
“Silence,” Richardson snapped. “You are training to be officers in the Drakkus Imperial Space Korps. Your enlisted men have the luxury of appearing like apes. You must set an example of civility so you do not embarrass yourselves and by extension, the Emperor!”
We all straightened and he walked down to the end of the table. “You eat with the left fork,” he repeated, taking a seat. We mimicked his actions, using the smallest fork on the left to eat the small fish off our plates “Use the knife to cut it into tiny pieces.”
Sanjaya reached across the table for a pitcher of water.
One of the instructors caught him by the back of his uniform and pulled hard enough to tip his chair back and slam him into the floor.
Richardson looked down the table at us, “If you need something that is out of your reach, request it politely. For drinks, servants will top off your glass. Water is what peasants and inferiors drink. Right yourself, Entrant Sanjaya.”
He did so, looking around nervously. The rest of us went back to slicing the small fish into tiny pieces and eating those. I had to fight the urge not to gag at the taste. Fish had never really been much of a food source back on Century. The north pole had the Polar Sea, but the high saline content meant it didn’t have much that was edible by humans. Most of the native fish were inedible and nothing from Earth had really succeeded.
Vat grown foods were what I’d eaten the most of, and vat-grown fish wasn’t all that popular for a variety of reasons. This had been charred on the outside while the inside was still kind of goopy. The fish taste on top of that made me want to gag.
I didn’t dare spit it out, though.
“If you get a bone, use your napkin to collect it from your mouth,” Richardson went on. “Do not spit. Do not slice your bread,” he snapped at Gowri. “Tear small pieces off.”
This was far more complicated than I had ever imagined eating would be. A pair of enlisted men came down the row, pouring wine into our glasses. “A gentleman drinks white wine with fish. With the main course, you will have red wine. You are not expected to know the difference between good and bad wine at this point.”
I’d never had a sip of alcohol in my life. I looked around, noting people taking small sips. I mimicked that and the sour taste was enough that I almost spit it out. It was so dry that I felt my mouth trying to pucker.
I hadn’t finished my fish but an enlisted man came through and took my plate. Another one put salad down in front of me. I started to use my fork on it, but Richardson snapped, “use the rightmost fork on the salad, Vars.”
I set my fork down and took up the other one.
The salad tasted terrible, the greens, whatever they were, tasted like dirt and the other stuff in it was either so bitter that I could barely choke it down or so fibrous that I couldn’t even chew it.
I would have killed for a simple ration pack. Thankfully, before I had to choke down any more salad, someone came through and stole away my plate.
“You are expected to make light conversation,” Richardson went on. “But nothing too boring. Weather is too mundane. Politics is boorish. Fashion is effete.”
I didn’t know what that left. “Light” conversation probably didn’t include military stuff.
Jonna looked over at me, “What do you think of the skimmer races? I hear that the Kobari are favored to win over Chi-Lung.”
“Yeah right,” Sanjaya scoffed, “The Kobari race skimmers are just souped up—”
Bang. Sanjaya’s chair slammed backwards again and Richardson sighed. “Do not speak as gutter trash would. Use a measured tone. Rid yourself of your accent. Culture is everything, and if you do not show that you are cultured, you will not be taken seriously. If you speak with a harsh accent, I will have them put rocks in your mouth and you will speak like that until you can speak in a civilized tone.”
I kept my mouth shut. If I’d had anything to talk about earlier, I certainly didn’t now.
We struggled through the rest of the formal dinner. It was moderately tortuous. I knew that we had some formal dining instruction at the Academy on Century, but nothing like this. By the end of it, I was almost pathetically grateful for when Richardson signaled us to rise and dismissed us.
“That sucked,” Osmund muttered to me as we filed out.
“Yeah,” I answered. “At least it’s over, for now.”
“It’s how we will eat dinner every night until we complete Third Screening,” Jonna said from behind us. I blanched as I considered that. “And then, once we are formally accepted as Initiates, it will be the way we eat all meals until graduation, outside of field conditions.”
Wow, Shadow spoke up, sucks to be you.
I had thought that fighting tooth and nail for rations had been hard. The more I learned about this place, the less I wanted to stay.
***
“We’ll begin selecting Third Phase teams,” Richardson told us just as we line
d up for the night. There was no medic to give us quick heal. It was something that I noticed, especially with how tired and weak I felt.
“Your team for Third Phase is a self-selection. Most often it is a patronage selection,” he went on. “Those with political and military connections can select lower-caste members from among you.” He was talking about Jonna and Kiyu, and Isagani, as the higher nobility, I figured. Shadow confirmed that for me as he went on. “The team leaders will be ranked based upon your performance at Tangun Gate, where each of the remaining flights will send teams against one another until only one team remains victorious.”
I couldn’t help but raise my hand, “What happens if they pit Jade Flight against one another?”
His expression hardened. “Flights will not fight internally unless there is no one left. Even then,” he made a frown of distaste, “most often, what they do is bring in the champions from the previous year. You would go against them until only one team remained.”
Interesting, I thought.
“Tangun’s Gate,” Richardson added, “does not judge how you win victory, only that you emerge victorious. Last year, teams from Jade Flight won third and fifth place. First place is a worthy goal.”
The teams were three-man, which meant we had twelve teams. I could see the problem right away. “You mentioned patronage, sir, what about those of us who aren’t selected by someone from the flight with connections?”
The entire bay went still. I had the feeling that it would have been less rude to have passed gas loudly at the formal dinner we’d just finished.
“Not everyone is destined for greatness, Vars,” Richardson spoke into that silence. “Some of you will seek out patronage from classes senior to you. The teams are the nuclei for future growth. By the end of your time here, those destined for command will have assembled command staffs and squadrons. When you move onto your first assignments, those officers will stay together. Those who are not selected at any stage in the process… they will go to whatever assignment that the Drakkus Imperial Space Korps sees fit to assign to them.”
