Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1)

by Bryce O'Connor

  There was the clatter of chairs, and behind him Rei heard Leron, Kay, and their bald friend start to head back to their seats.

  “DID I SAY FEEL FREE TO WALK AROUND THE ROOM?” the woman barked, staring at the three of them with wide eyes. “NO! I SAID SIT. DOWN!”

  Rei didn’t think he would ever hear rears planted into the nearest available chairs so fast again.

  “My name—” the woman started, even her normal voice carrying an angry sort of pitch “—is Lieutenant Candice Voss! My job—” she began walking up the row again “—is to work some manners into you lot! About half your number look to know what you’re doing, with a scattered few hopefuls who might just make the cut by the time we’re done. The rest of you—” Rei swore the woman’s glare could have broken glass “—will likely learn the hard way! I have one week to instill into you the basics of military etiquette! After that, those of you who haven’t grasped the very simple concepts we are going to be reviewing will probably be finding yourselves spending a lot of time in the Institute brig making friends with four cement walls! Now… Let’s try this again… OFFICER PRESENT!”

  The response, this time, was much faster.

  For the next 4 hours class 1-A was drilled in the minutia of military decorum, from proper salutes to correct marching to appropriate addressing of higher officers. Before the first hour had gone by, Rei was tired of the tedium, and by the time Lieutenant Voss dismissed them for their lunch leisure hour he was sure those among them who’d already been familiar with everything she’d had to teach were likely to have been falling asleep standing up. This was confirmed 10 minutes later by Catcher when they met him at the mess hall again, the boy somehow having developed bags under his eyes in the short period since they’d last seen him.

  “That bad for every class all around, huh?” Viv asked drearily, kicking a chair out to sit down next to Catcher with her tray of food, collected from the automatically distributing buffet line in the middle of the hall.

  “I think I have more of the chief warrant officer’s spit in my mouth than my own,” the boy confirmed with a groan. “And it was bullshit, too. There was nothing wrong with my salute. The asshole just didn’t like that he couldn’t find something about me to correct.”

  “You guys from the ISCM preps are about to have a dull first week,” Rei agreed, taking a seat on his other side. “I was almost glad for Voss’ volume by the end. Kept me awake, at least.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” Viv muttered, cutting into her roasted chicken half-heartedly. “I get the feeling she didn’t like the fact we were preoccupied when she got there. What the hell was up with that guy, getting in your face like that?”

  Catcher’s brow furrowed over his salad, and he looked around at Rei. “Someone got in your face?”

  “Kinda,” Rei acknowledged with an unenthusiastic shrug. “Guy who didn’t like that I couldn’t explain what someone with my Rank—”

  “Or height,” Viv added with muttered venom.

  “—is doing here.” Rei finished.

  “Yeah… I actually got the same,” Catcher sighed, sounding exhausted as he gave up on the food, dropping the fork with a clink to lean back in his chair.

  The other two exchanged a look, then frowned at him.

  “You did?” Viv asked. “Didn’t you say you’re a D5? Why would someone take issue with an above-average rank?”

  “I don’t mean about me,” Catcher corrected with a dark laugh, eyes on the sky through the curved, clear ceiling of the arboretum they could see through the palm trees, a massive dome comprised of what had to have been several hundred large, triangular glass panels. “I mean about Rei.”

  “Oh,” Rei caught on. “Shit… I’m sorry, man.”

  Another thing he’d failed to consider. There was no way people hadn’t noticed where he’d been sitting during the Commencement, and others had seen the three of them returning to Kanes together after the festivities had ended.

  “Eh. Don’t sweat it. I wasn’t ostracized or whatever.” Catcher smirked, sitting forward again to look at Rei. “If anything you made me more popular. Had three different girls come up to me and ask me if I knew what was going on with your rank. All really pretty, too.”

  Viv rolled her eyes, not waiting to finish chewing her bite of chicken to speak. “Smooth. You’re officially famous enough to get your friends dates, Rei.”

  Rei managed a bare smile at that, but kept pressing Catcher. “What did they want to know?”

  Catcher made a face, picking up his fork again to attempt another go at the salad. “Probably nothing more than you’d expect. ‘Who is he?’ ‘What’s his deal?’ ‘Is he really an E-Ranker?’ For someone who said yesterday you’re not keen on attention, you sure porked that pig wrong, man.”

  “Ugh,” Rei groaned, shoving a potato into his mouth more to have something to do than anything else. “And this afternoon sure as hell isn’t gonna help that,” he grumbled after he’d swallowed, spearing another roasted spud.

  Still, despite the over-interest of his classmates, he couldn’t help but feel his usual eagerness spark in his gut again, snuffed out until then between Leron’s badgering and 4 hours stuck in a room learning how to stand properly.

  Parameter testing was next.

  Rei had no idea what to expect, and even the feeds had been sparse on information when he, Viv, and Catcher had spent a good hour scouring them the night before. Apparently there were three tests, and each cadet would have multiple chances to attempt them, but as to the specific nature of the exams… Nothing. Zilch. Their schedules told them they would all be heading to one of the several subbasements Rei hadn’t realized were beneath the Arena—he and Viv immediately after lunch, with Catcher 3 hours later—and that alone spoke in some sense to what they could expect, but offered nothing specific.

  “I don’t know…” Viv answered Rei’s anxiety hopefully. “Maybe you’re just a flash in the pan. We’ve got Aria Laurent and Logan Grant both in our class. I’ll bet a lot of eyes are gonna be on them after the excitement dies down over your new knuckle-duster toothpicks.”

  Ignoring her amicable jab, Rei considered her point as Catcher spoke up.

  “Whoa. Laurent and Grant? That’s a powerhouse class… Benaly is in mine, as well as another guy—Aadhik Khatri—who was pretty loud about also having been invited to the summer training course. I thought they might be friendly already, given they spent the last 2 months together, but they actually didn’t really seem keen on each other…”

  “Huh.” Viv sounded like she’d realized something. “Laurent and Grant were the same, actually. Sat pretty far from one another.” She grimaced. “Then again, not sure who would want to be friends with a waste of good looks like that dick.”

  “Quite a few people, apparently.”

  Rei wasn’t looking at either of them as he spoke, instead having tossed one arm over the back of his chair to turn his attention on something nearer the center of the mess. Following his eyes, Catcher and Viv both grimaced when they caught sight of Logan Grant sitting with his feet up on the table, smirking as a group of no less than half a dozen other cadets sat and stood around him, talking animatedly. On a whim Rei glanced around the massive room for Aria Laurent, but no flash of red hair was visible in the crowded tables he could make out through the trees.

  “Whatever,” Viv grumbled, turning back to her lunch. “My point is you shouldn’t worry as much, Rei. I’ll bet anything Grant will be happy to hoard the attention, and Laurent may not have any choice.”

  Silently, Rei nodded, hoping against hope she was right.

  Once they’d finished and handed their trays to a passing service bot, the three of them parted ways again. Catcher wished them good luck, saying he was headed back to the dorm to review an Instrasystem pro fight of some Saber he’d apparently set his NOED to record. When he was gone, Rei and Viv made for the center of campus, theorizing what the parameter testing could consist of as
they made for the great black shape of the Arena. By the time they reached the entrance—where more projected signs had them taking the stairs up into the stands beside several other members of their class—Viv was convinced they were going to be doing timed sprints and miles, along with counted pushups, pull-ups, and the like. Rei was less sure of that, arguing that those sorts of measurements could hardly offer them anything more than their CAD specs already did, but Viv stuck to her guns.

  “It’s logical,” she insisted as they crested the landing. “They want to be able to see where we start at and how much we improve over the years, right? Baseline testing is the easiest way to do that.”

  “I will bet you a hundred credits the Galens Institute will not be testing us in the same way Coach Kat used to baseline the combat team,” Rei chuckled, pointing to the right, where an indicator in his frame told him they should be headed. “It’s got to be more comprehensive than that.”

  “What’s more comprehensive?!” Viv argued, trailing behind.

  Rei shrugged, noting a couple cadets ahead turning down one of the smaller entrances that led into the underworks. “I don’t know… Combat ability? Or the like? And there’s supposed to be only three tests, right? Would pushups, pull-ups, and a mile run be enough?”

  “Oh…” Viv muttered, following his point. “Right. Maybe…”

  They kept theorizing as they descended into the Arena underbelly, following a growing group of the other 1-A first years ahead of them. Eventually they reached a small chamber that must have sat under the southern loop of the stands, joining a dozen other cadets to watch the clean glass doors of the elevators set into each wall. Huddling in with three or four of their classmates in the second car to arrive, Rei ignored the sidelong glances he was getting, instead watching a thin girl with orange-yellow hair select the symbol “SB2” from a projection in the surface of the right wall. A few seconds later they were spilling out into another lobby identical to the one they’d just left.

  “Pick up your suits here. Locker room is down the hall.”

  On their right, a pair of officers in sleeveless red-on-white skin-tight combat suits were greeting the students as they arrived, checking identifications and handing out vacuum-sealed bags. Rei and Viv joined the lines, reaching the staffers together.

  “Ward… Reidon,” the rightmost of the two—a young woman with short-cropped, ping hair—handled Rei while the other addressed Viv. “Confirmed. Here’s your suit. It has some minimal automatic adjustment, but if you need any major changes done over the course of the year you’ll have to take it to the Quartermaster.” The officer handed the black airtight bag to Rei. “Locker room is around the bend behind me. Lockers will tune to your NOED. Next!”

  As the next person in line was waved forward, Rei waited briefly for Viv before they set off quickly down the hall together. They found the locker room as directed—a set of double-doors that opened for them as they approached, and stepped into a wide, clean chamber with rows of rectangular steel storage compartments extending from the white floor to black ceiling. Rei saw privacy stalls in the back of the space for those who desired them—not much more than two plasteel barriers and a heavy curtain—but most of the cadets already getting ready were stripping down in the aisles, putting their uniforms and belongings away before pulling their new combat suits over their undergarments.

  Viv nudged Rei, motioning towards the far end the room, and the two found a mostly empty aisle along the north wall, occupied only by a single boy and girl neither of them recognized. Nodding politely to the pair, they chose their lockers with a command of their frames, Rei tossing his cap inside and kicking off his boots before unsealing the black bag.

  The uniform was exactly as he’d expected, the same solid shade of gray as their armbands, with the red griffin of the academy standing in its square across their chest. More red trailed in lines down the uniform’s shoulders, torso, and legs, ending at the armless seams and the cut-offs just above the knee. Pulling off his jacket and slacks, Rei hung them carefully in the locker, noting gratefully a slight reduction in gravity inside the storage space that would help reduce creasing. This done, he pulled off his shirt and did the same.

  Almost on cue, there was a gasp from behind him.

  Rei didn’t turn around, letting the two cadets sharing the aisle with him and Viv make what they wanted of his scars. He knew what he looked like, knew how he must have appeared with the countless laser burns and the longer markings of the more involved surgeries that traced his spine, shoulders, knees, and peeked above the lining of his underwear. He didn’t say a word, stepping into the open back of the combat suit and sliding his arms through the holes provided for them, pulling the uniform up all at once. The moment it was comfortably adjusted, Rei felt fabric close itself up automatically at his back.

  Neat.

  “Show’s over. Keep gawking and I’m gonna charge you for tickets.”

  Viv’s voice was steady as she spoke, but Rei could imagine her glaring daggers down the aisle. There was a squawk of surprise and the sounds of a couple quiet apologies being hastily made, then the closing of two lockers before the patter of bare feet over the white flooring told Rei he and Viv were alone.

  “Those whispers will be fun to hear later,” he said as nonchalantly as he could, still not turning around.

  Viv only muttered in answer, her annoyance lost to the chatter and slamming doors all around them.

  It didn’t take them long to figure out where they were supposed to be headed after leaving the locker room. They needed no signs to follow the hall north, away from the elevators, and before long a massive opening in the left wall could be made out, reaching clear to the ceiling some 20 or 30 yards overhead. Stepping through, Rei could absolutely understand Viv’s awed hiss, as well as the gaping expressions hanging from the faces of the other students.

  He didn’t imagine he looked any more composed.

  There, undoubtedly directly underneath the true Arena floor above their heads, a second Wargames field covered the massive, oblong chamber. 15 feet separated the shear wall for the 150-by-70-yard match space, outlined in its silver perimeter against the black projection plating. Whereas a traditional Wargames area was further subdivided into two Team Battle zones and four Dueling rings, this floor had clearly been specially designed, because in the absence of the former, no fewer than six 30-yard circles formed three lines of two in the wider field.

  “There,” Viv was the first to speak, pointing across the way from them. About half the class was already gathered around the far middle Dueling circle, most standing around talking, a few looking to be warming up in anticipation of whatever ordeal they were about to face. Among this second group, Rei didn’t miss Aria Laurent bending side to side, her hair back up in the bun he’d seen yesterday in their match. They didn’t meet eyes this time—the girl seemed attentively focused on something inside the perimeter of the field she was standing by—and as Rei and Viv approached with some other scattered stragglers he saw exactly what had her attention.

  Near the middle of the ring, Valera Dent was talking intently with a group of six men and women who stood in front of her in a half-circle. While the captain wore regulars, the other staffers were in the red-on-white combat suits, and among them, Rei recognized the two who’d greeted them at the elevator, having obviously finished meeting the incoming 1-A students. Joining the other cadets around the ring, Rei tried to catch a word of what was being exchanged between Dent and what had to be her sub-instructors, but they were too far away to make out anything.

  “At least they’re leaving you alone this time.”

  Glancing around, Rei found Viv glaring in the direction of a small group, noticing the grey-orange hair of Leron, as well as the girl named Kay and their other, bald friend. This last boy actually saw the pair of them watching, and Rei was surprised when he got a brief nod of acknowledgment, which Leron or the others fortunately didn’t take note of.

 
; “Well… Looks like not everyone’s a bad apple in the class, at least,” Viv grunted, clearly having seen the gesture as well. Looking around, she studied the others somewhat apathetically. “So much color. Did no one’s parents question whether yellow crimps with purple bleaching might even remotely be a bad idea, or do you think they just went with whatever the geneticists told them was going to be ‘in’ by the time their kids grew up?”

  “Speak for yourself, blue-eyes-for-days.” Rei gave her a sidelong look. “And you might have your natural shade, but don’t tell me you believe your curls just stay perpetually perfect like that by magic.”

  Viv sniggered. Her hair was in a tail behind her head, and she still managed to look like a model in her two-tone outfit. “Talking to the kettle much, pot? I guess you think human eyes are just naturally slate-grey then, huh?”

  Rei looked away pointedly. “You can’t prove anything.”

  “Oh bull. We’ve had this fight before. You’re as much a designer product as the rest of us freak shows.”

  Rei reached up to run a scarred hand through his white locks, thumbing the shaved sides of his head as he did. “I don’t know about that. If that were the case, I feel like my sperm and egg donors would have wanted to give me some cool grey stripes or something. Even when my hair was black.”

  Viv looked at him blankly. “Would have made you look like an old man.”

  “The term you’re looking for is ‘silver fox’, I believe.”

  “Are you seventy? No. So don’t go getting ideas about dyeing your hair or—” Viv paused, frowning. After a moment, she spoke again in a low voice. “Can you give me any good reason why our class C-Ranker would be staring at the back of your head?”

  Immediately Rei started to turn, and Viv only just barely caught him by the shoulder to stop him.