He turned in a circle, using the gravitational manipulators on his back.
"It's a good thing," he said, "that you have plenty of time to practice. Let's get to it. You will be battling against simulated enemies today. Holograms. Keep in mind that the danger is minimal, but it still exists. Don't make the mistake of assuming you are safe. Pilots who do that don't usually make it very far."
What he didn't tell them was that there would be a single real enemy mixed in with the holograms. It would be the Lady Stanford herself, temporarily retired from active duty following an injury but too young and too full of energy to just rest on her laurels. The students would, of course, recognize Galgaran immediately. The Demon Mech was famous. But they would assume it was a hologram. That mistake would be costly.
A translucent wall suddenly bisected the battlefield, closing off their section of the ring. An army of enemies charged through it, and the wall turned red; to cross through it now would be to have your Starframe deactivated for the duration of the battle. It was important to drill into the heads of these students that fleeing was not an option.
The enemies consisted of the ghosts of past master pilots. All the venerable ones were there. There was Banshee, and Imnoron, and Volke. And others. They charged forward, fearless and ridiculously intimidating.
The holograms were, to the naked eye, just as solid and weighty as the real thing. Right about now, the students would be swallowing their fear. Or at least trying to. Some of them might be considering throwing in the towel, admitting they weren't cut out for this. But Caldwell felt certain they'd make it through. The washouts would come later, during more difficult classes.
Galgaran pulled up the rear. Staying mostly out of sight, for now.
"Um, professor," someone said. "I have a question."
"You'd better ask it fast," said Caldwell. "They're almost on you."
"W-why are we fighting Starframes? We won't be fighting them in real war, will we?"
"No. But Starframes are the single most fearful opponent in the galaxy. They're unbeatable. Perfect fighting machines. If you can so much as hold your own against one, if you even last longer than a few minutes, I'll know you have what it takes to one day become a pilot."
They probably had more questions, but there was no time to ask them.
The enemy Starframes arrived. The students scattered. They moved out of the way quickly. Their escape was, if not graceful, then at least effective. In that moment of terror, they had stopped overthinking things and reacted organically. It was a good thing to see.
What wasn't good to see was that two of them had attempted to dodge into the exact same space and were now spinning out of control, their legs locked together. Unless they could extricate themselves, which Caldwell doubted, they were out of the fight.
Banshee lashed out with his sonic disruptors. They were not real, of course; they were mere pulses sent out by the educational computers inside the university. The effect was not nearly as bad as Banshee's real disruptors, but the students didn't know that. They reached up instinctively to cover their ears, smacking their Starframes in the head.
Two of them, a young man and woman, quickly removed their hands from their ears and elected to move out of the cone-shaped spray of the disruptors instead. A smart move. Unfortunately, Imnoron was there to meet them. With a single swipe of his sword, he sliced through the two students. They were "cut in half" by an invisible, immaterial knife, and they floated away, their Starframes temporarily disabled. The gravity stabilizers would keep them from bashing into the University.
That left twelve students still standing. Banshee shut off his disruptors. All at once, the radio chatter from his students reached Caldwell's ear. There were panicked shouts, questions, demands to know what they were supposed to do. The professor just stayed back and watched, laughing silently to himself. This was good fun.
Volke flanked the students. None of them saw him coming. Four of them fell victim to his signature EMP blasts. Another was taken out by a second swing from Imnoron.
Seven remaining students. One of them seemed to be taking charge, leading them away from the fighting. They regrouped about a mile from the enemy forces, huddling to try and figure out a plan.
Apart from Banshee, Imnoron, Volke and Galgaran, there were two others. They were Leonel, the only one still in active duty, and a very old Starframe called Haunt. He was an early model, a huge and bulky brute who relied on the simple weapons of fist and projectile. What made him effective, even today, was his pilot. The late, great Captain Inusha, a master even by today's standards. That would help to drill in the lesson that a pilot's skill and speed were the most important thing about the function of a Starframe. The hardware had been perfected; only the human factor remained.
It was a lesson the students would have to learn fast. The enemy was closing in on them again. Caldwell was happy to hear that they were planning, rather than fawning over the famous Starframes whose posters they probably had on the walls of their dorm rooms. It meant they were afraid.
There was a very good reason for that. Though the blows and injuries their Starframes sustained were artificial, their Vitality Replicators didn't know the difference. They would feel everything as if it was real.
In Skyway University, no punches were pulled. There was no softness, no gentle incline to climb up. There was only all-out attack.
"Be afraid," Caldwell finally spoke. "Be terrified. But do not give your terror a voice. Give it an outlet in the expression of your body. Allow it to become aggression and decisive action. Who do these monsters think they are, to frighten you? Do they really think they have such power? How audacious! Crush them; do not let yourself be weak. Don't give in. You are Starframe pilots!"
The onslaught began. The experienced Starframes, even as phantoms, tore through the green students like they were made of paper. They scattered, drifting motionlessly away, silent, essentially dead. For the time being.
But they did fight. They didn't turn and run. That was good. But their actions were defensive, rather than offensive. An inevitability. They were able to keep their fear from completely petrifying them, but they were still slaves to it. They had not yet been broken under the yoke of combat.
One of the students impressed Caldwell, though. She lashed out, moving toward the enemy rather than letting them back her up. She plunged between two of them, getting behind. Caldwell suspected that she would keep going, to get far enough away to make a new plan, but she instead turned around immediately and attempted to strike Imnoron with the closed fist of her Starframe.
The blow did not land. A moment later, she was just as dead as the rest of them. But she had something. A special factor.
In the aftermath of the slaughter, Caldwell looked around and realized that he could no longer see Galgaran. He then felt a familiar sensation, a slight disturbance in his gravity stabilizers. A juddering sensation, which made his teeth vibrate against each other. Someone was behind him. Far too close for comfort.
Chapter 11: Fight or Flight
He spun around, lunging away. The Demon Mech was there, breathing down his neck.
"Switch to a private channel," she said, in the silence of the battle's aftermath.
"Why?" asked Caldwell.
Lady Stanford lifted a hand and sneakily pointed to her left.
Caldwell looked. At the edge of the group of holograms, one stood apart. It was Leonel. He was spinning a slow circle; the way a lot of pilots did when they were trying to think. It was defensive; it enabled them to see immediately if someone was trying to sneak up on them.
Caldwell switched to channel two, holding up two fingers to indicate this. As soon as he heard the crackle of someone joining his channel, he said, "Are you telling me Leonel isn't a hologram?"
"He sure isn't," said Sheya Stanford. "He arrived at Skyway last night. Really sneaky, like. You know I look up to Commander Zhang, which is why this is so difficult. He's not a traitor - he's following orders - but he has be
trayed me. So I have to betray him in return. Otherwise all will not be right in the universe."
Caldwell thought back to those confusing days when he was first recovering from his amnesia. He had disliked Sheya then, and he felt like a fool for it now.
"What's happening?" he asked.
"The government has come to a decision. They want the Green Seed, you already know that, but you should also know that their patience has finally run out. They're going to take it by force. Zhang arrived here to do just that. He enlisted my help, since I was already here, and I agreed. But it was just deception. I don't want them to hurt you."
"What are my options?"
"You can let them take it. You will lose your arm but keep your life. Or you can resist."
Caldwell turned to watch Leonel. The Starframe was still spinning, still contemplating. But the hologram enemies would only remain for another minute or two, to rub their victory in the faces of the drifting students. Leonel would have to act soon, or give away the element of surprise that he still assumed he had.
"Will you help me?" Caldwell asked.
"No," the pilot of the Demon Mech replied. "No more than I already have. I'll pull my punches as much as possible, but I won't do anything overt. I won't let myself be revealed as a traitor. The rest of this is up to you. Now, I suggest you use the head start I've given to you. Use it up. Don't pull any punches of your own, you hear?"
"I hear."
"Right about now, he thinks I'm just distracting you. Talking to you about... whatever two work colleagues talk about. He believes our private talk is just to keep the students in the dark. He's going to try and disable your Starframe so that he can drag you back into Skyway himself and capture you. I'm going back to the previous channel now."
Caldwell flicked back to channel one and caught the tail end of her statement.
"...and I expect better next time. We're going to leave you out here a while. Give you some time for reflection."
The students drifted away in every direction, wheeling helplessly through the arena. If they weren't stupid, they would now be removing themselves from their Vitality Replicators. There was no reason to stay locked in, now that they could no longer control their Starframes. There would be witnesses to what came next, but they were limited to people inside the university, who just happened to look out the window at the right time. Too far removed from the situation to give any proper account of it.
Caldwell was on his own.
Leonel stopped spinning. Beside him, the hologram enemies began to wink out of existence, collapsing into themselves, folding over like dominoes. Caldwell turned away, but kept Leonel just at the edge of his vision. When Zhang lunged forward, spearing silently through space without so much as a crackle from his radio, Caldwell saw it.
He dodged at the last second, directly into Galgaran. The Demon Mech made a move, just slow and telegraphed enough for a pilot as skilled as Caldwell to see it coming. She had told him not to pull his punches, so he didn't. He drove the fist of his Starframe into Galgaran's chest, shearing metal and shattering electronics. Lady Stanford screamed in pain, her voice breathless. Caldwell felt bad, but only a little. He was doing her a favor. Lending authenticity to her performance.
The force of the punch overrode her stabilizers and sent her sailing off. She would recover in a few seconds, longer if she wanted to give him more time to get away. That left Leonel to contend with. The next several moments were crucial.
Zhang was a pilot who thrived on the avoidance of damage and quick movements. He would be almost impossible to hit. But he also would hit less often than others. Despite everything he told his students, Caldwell decided that fleeing was the best option.
He turned and drove his Starframe forward, toward the red wall of the arena. The class session was over - the wall should have come down - but it was still there. If he passed through while it was red, it would be game over.
Switching to channel three, he spoke directly to the arena engineers inside the university.
"What's happening in there?" he asked. "Why hasn't the wall come down?"
"I'm sorry, sir," an anxious voice replied. "It seems our operations have been overridden."
"By who? Who authorized this?"
"President Tao, sir."
Caldwell's blood ran cold.
The president of humankind wanted his arm. The most powerful being in the galaxy. There was no hope at all of escaping. Not permanently.
Caldwell brought the scope of his thoughts back to the immediate future. He had a problem to solve right now. And that problem came in the form of two Starframes, one full of purpose and the other doing its best to seem that way.
Leonel was fast. Galgaran limped along in his wake, damaged but still operable. Still very much a threat. Everything in Caldwell's nature told him to run. But there was nowhere to go.
Perhaps it was best, in this situation, to act against his nature.
To do something surprising, unpredictable.
He fled toward the red wall. When he reached it, he turned to face his enemy. They would think they had him cornered. That he was entirely hopeless.
At the last second, he charged forward, straight into Leonel. Zhang put out both hands of his Starframe to act as a blockade, but Caldwell slipped under them. He wrapped his arms around Leonel's waist, locking the mighty fingers of his Starframe around the enemy's back. Then he sent out a thought impulse, a direct communication with his gravity stabilizers. They did as he asked, launching him toward the red wall.
Both Starframes went through. Both Starframes "died"; only their radios worked now.
"All engineers," Caldwell said, watching Galgaran over Leonel's lifeless shoulder. Wondering what she would do now. "There's an unauthorized Starframe in the arena. He attacked me. I took him through the red wall. We need to be retrieved. And Commander Zhang must be restrained; he's a danger."
There was silence from the other end. No one knew what to do. On one hand, they had a distant override from President Tao. On the other hand, one of their professors, who they had sworn to obey, was giving them a direct and immediate order.
Either way, they would have to come out and haul the dead Starframes in.
Caldwell switched back to channel one.
"...much else you can do," Zhang was saying. "The bastard got me, but he's dead in the water now. Just wait for the wall to go down. They'll have to come in there to get the students out."
"Roger," Lady Stanford said. "Looks like a stalemate. That Caldwell guy's pretty good, huh?"
"I guess he is," Zhang grunted.
Caldwell didn't feel very good right now. He felt like a dead man walking.
Perhaps it was better to just give up. Let them take his arm. He could get another one. Human medicine was incredible; they could grow a new arm in a tank, identical to his non-bionic one.
Giving up would be a perfectly sensible option. There seemed to be no drawback. All they wanted was the Seed; they didn't care about him. They'd just take it and leave him be.
But there was something... some shadow at the back of his mind, a ghost of the past, a lost dream. For some reason that he didn't understand, he knew he had to keep the Green Seed. He knew that Tao was the enemy. Caldwell had some forgotten purpose that he still needed to fulfill.
What was it? Did it have to do with the strange dreams he kept having, of falling into a hole in space and being spit back out, lost, adrift, alone...?
The face of his wife swam to the front of his mind. She smiled at him, mouthed the words he was so familiar with; you're not alone.
There was a crackle on the radio as someone joined the channel.
"Edwin?" a voice whispered. It was her. It was Lynn.
"This channel is no good," he told her. "Go to our private channel now."
They both flipped over. The private channel only allowed two people to participate in it. It was impossible for anyone to eavesdrop.
"Edwin," Lynn said, still whispering. "What's
going on?"
"They're after me," he told her. "Well, they're after the Green Seed, anyway."
"I still don't know what it even is."
"Me neither. But I'll try and find out."
"Who are they, Edwin? Who's after you?"
"I don't know if I should tell you. Are you safe? Where are you?"
"In our bathroom. In the shower. Some men came to the door but I didn't open it. I think they're trying to pick the lock, or something. I saw them through the peephole. They looked... dangerous."
If she was already in danger, she deserved to know who the men were.
"They're government," he told her. "Listen, Lynn... They're thugs, but they're employed by Tao. They don't want to hurt you; they just want me. I want you to answer all their questions. Tell them everything they want to know. I can take care of myself. You won't be putting me in danger, trust me."
"I trust you," she replied. "But, Edwin..."
Silence followed. It said everything she wanted to say but couldn't.
"I don't know," he told her. "I don't know if I'll see you again. But you had better believe I'll try. I'll try harder than I've ever tried before... I love you."
"I love you," she said. "Maybe you should just let them have it, Edwin."
He said nothing. He didn't know how to tell her what he was feeling, because he barely understood it himself. It was as though his mind had secretly been spinning up a pearl, somewhere in its deepest recesses, and now that pearl was trying to rise to the surface.
It was like an inner voice, a hidden twin. And it was keeping him on a need-to-know basis. Right now, all he needed to know was that he couldn't let Zhang get his hands on the Seed.
Chapter 12: The Way of Life
By now, Zhang and Caldwell, still tangled up on each other, had just about reached the other side of Skyway's huge ring. They glanced off an invisible field, a gravity buffer generated by their stabilizers, and went drifting back toward the middle of the arena.
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