by Eva Brandt
“This is kind of odd,” Pollux said with a scowl. “Why would Commander Trevor make a specific announcement about that? We check our back-link communicators on a regular basis.”
Brendan pursed his lips, suddenly looking troubled. “It would have been easy to have teachers convey this information to us while in class. This isn’t just a regular exam.”
I abandoned my soup, already suspecting where this was going. Ninety-nine percent of the time, any anomaly that happened at the academy had something to do with me.
“Every student will receive a special assignment and an individual supervisor,” Commander Trevor continued. “You will report to the person in question tomorrow.”
I felt tempted to break something or worse, burst into tears. I had a bad feeling about this too, and problems with the staff were the last thing I needed.
But I didn’t get a say and I wouldn’t be able to find out more either, at least not for now. The announcement ended and everyone in the mess hall was left to speculate over what little information Commander Trevor had given us.
“This won’t end well,” I said with a sigh. “Whatever is going on, it has to be connected with my mother’s class.” Things had changed since King Philip had suddenly decided to introduce Terran Sociology in the curriculum and not everyone was thrilled about it.
“It might be, yes,” Pollux replied, “but we can’t really judge until we know more. Either way, it’s going to be all right. We’re going to help you study.”
“I’ve taken exams before,” I replied. “I know how they work. That’s not our main concern and you know it.”
“Well, yes, but it doesn’t hurt to have some extra preparation. For anything or everything.”
“I can’t argue with you there. What do you suppose this new assignment will be? Did the school have anything similar before?”
“A few times, although not in the past couple of years,” August offered. “Selene… As far as I’ve heard, they’re pretty physically taxing. I think we should be considering secondary options.”
He didn’t elaborate on what he meant by that, but Sphinx explained in his stead. “You should postpone the exams until next year. They’re not conducive to healthy pregnancies.”
I frowned. In a way, they were right. A lot of classes at Chimera Academy were physically demanding, and exams were no different. Leaving aside regular effort, tachyon manipulation took a lot of energy and caused hormonal imbalances in the body. That sort of thing could definitely affect a pregnancy.
It was part of the reason why women from Chimera nobility didn’t conceive a lot. Compared to Terran women, their fertility ratio was very low. The latent Tartarus energies in their bloodstream made it harder for them to have children.
But my baby was not human, and the Great Mother had assured me that I’d be perfectly safe using my more unusual skills. The problem was that The Grand Judiciary would surely notice and realize something wasn’t quite right about Brendan’s supposed heir.
I’d made the tentative decision to keep Jared’s baby, but some days, I was still uncertain about it. I was simply not prepared to be a mother and there were still so many things we needed to do, so many battles we had to fight. And now, we had this crazy exam to worry about.
“I don’t think we have too much of a choice,” I said, answering both Sphinx and my lovers. “The way Commander Trevor phrased it, it sounds to me like it’s going to be compulsory. So I’ll have to do it, whether we want to or not”
“There are always choices, Selene,” Brendan murmured. “All you have to do is keep an open mind to it. We don’t have the best history, but we can always change that.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he meant. He likely wished he’d taken into consideration other options before he’d attacked Gaia’s Haven. Maybe if he had, we wouldn’t have gotten in such trouble.
But some things were unavoidable and if we focused on our past regrets, the blood my lovers had shed would be for nothing.
And there had been so much blood, so many people dead. There had been children in that settlement, and my lovers had killed them too—innocents, just like my baby.
All of a sudden, the idea of taking another bite repulsed me. I’d already made a decision to move forward, but some things weren’t so easy to discard.
My change in mood must have been pretty obvious, because Pollux reached for my hand. “Selene? Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I surreptitiously removed my hand from his reach and abandoned my tray. “Look, I’ll keep trying and learning. It’s the only thing I can promise.”
Taking advantage of the fact that the other squads were now busy debating the new announcement, I got up and slid my tray into the cleaning drone. “I have Astronomy now. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
Technically speaking, I still had a few minutes left until I needed to go to class, but my emotions were all over the place. Maybe if I was lucky, I could steal a moment in private before I had to face the rest of the students and teachers again.
Feeling like I was about to explode, I left the mess hall without looking back. I took refuge in the bathroom, stumbled into a stall, and dropped down to the floor.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw up. I just sat there, curled around my own knees, my mind swirling and my body buzzing with anxiety.
I didn’t have a lot of friends at the academy and those I did have, I couldn’t completely trust.
I’d thrown my doubts out the window once and it hadn’t worked out very well for me. I’d promised I’d do it again. But could I fulfill my promise, or would I end up breaking the agreement my lovers and I had made?
****
Brendan
Selene had left. After losing her the way we had, just a couple of days ago, watching her walk away shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. But even now, I had yet to grow accustomed to this new, horrible distance between us.
I tried to not let it get to me and suppressed my desire to immediately go after her. I had to respect our agreement. Ignoring Selene’s desire for privacy would be a recipe for disaster and could shatter the delicate truce we’d established in Eos.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—for me, I had plenty of things to focus on. The other members of my unit were taking Selene’s departure even worse than I had.
I’d noticed the increasing deterioration of Knox’s condition, of course. I would’ve had to be blind to miss it, and I was anything but that. August’s abilities seemed more and more unstable and Pollux would sometimes randomly stop mid-sentence and stare at nothing, oblivious to what was going on around him. It was a serious medical problem and if things had been different, I’d have already shuffled them into the med bay.
But I had no idea how I could explain the source of the damage we’d received. If there was any kind of lingering radiation in our bloodstream—which was very likely considering what we’d exposed ourselves to—Doctor Bell would sniff it out. The first thing he’d do would be to notify The Grand Judiciary, which wouldn’t end well.
My own helplessness made my already aching head throb even harder. I rubbed my temples and grimaced when the gesture did nothing but make matters worse. Typhon’s soothing touch drifted to the back of my mind, a shield between the pain and my consciousness.
“It’s all right, hatchling. I’m here.”
“Thank you, Typhon. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
What I didn’t tell him was that I was genuinely considering the possibility that I’d have to face something like that in the near future. My migraines were becoming worse and worse. For the moment, they hadn’t kept me from connecting to Typhon. If anything, my bond with my chimera seemed to help. But we were hovering on the edge of something disastrous. I could feel it.
Typhon couldn’t have missed my apprehension, but he didn’t try to offer empty promises. Instead, he remained silent, simply making sure my body healed from the pain I’d put it through.
&nbs
p; If not for Typhon’s advanced healing skills, I’d have probably been in a situation worse than Knox’s. Once again, I’d gotten lucky. It was a shame I couldn’t really enjoy it.
To make matters worse, we still had classes to go to, and it wasn’t anything pleasant. I did not look forward to a hand-to-hand combat class when we were all in this condition. But like Selene had said, we didn’t have a choice.
We took our trays to the cleaning drones and left the mess hall. The other units were already making their way through the academy, to their respective classrooms. It was probably for the best that Selene had left sooner, since she’d managed to avoid the crowd.
“What do you think this assignment will be about?” another student asked in front of us. I recognized him as a member of the Shuttle Piloting unit, although we didn’t really socialize.
“It could be anything,” one of his companions said. “I heard that a few years ago, they asked people to make another asteroid.”
“Seriously? And how did they manage to do that?”
“With their shuttles, of course.”
Actually, if I remembered well, no one had passed that particular test. It had been before my time, but my father had occasionally made jokes about it. It wasn’t unusual for The Grand Judiciary to throw impossible tasks at us, since in their opinion, sharpening our skills against undefeatable foes would help us.
In theory, it was not a bad strategy. In practice, I couldn’t have hated it more.
By the time we reached the gym, I was in an even fouler mood than before. My headache had significantly worsened, to the point that not even Typhon could completely suppress it. I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to skip the class altogether. If I saw Paul Welton today, I wouldn’t react well, and the chances of Knox doing something very crazy would increase.
Tartarus smiled on us, as Paul Welton was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the teacher waiting for us was Commander Trevor.
“Professor Welton had a family emergency. I’ll be taking over the class until he returns. I hope you know I won’t be going easy on you because I’m no longer your full time teacher.”
I respected Commander Trevor, although in some ways, I still didn’t understand him. He’d been a pilot in the Harpy Squad when he’d been younger, before he’d lost several of his limbs. The files from Penelope suggested he’d been involved in The Grand Judiciary’s experiments in some way, but if that was the case, he’d never seemed to begrudge them.
There was just one problem. Something about Commander Trevor was different today.
He’d been my teacher for years, ever since I’d first come to the academy. I’d known him even before, because it hadn’t been unusual for him to visit the palace when I’d been younger. His body language was completely off. Was it my impression, or was he giving us long looks?
Remembering the announcement from the mess hall, I made a mental note to be more careful around him. Paul Welton’s departure could only mean one thing. He’d noticed his daughter was gone and that she’d found the tablet. He would probably be looking for Penelope now. Was Commander Trevor in league with Welton? It seemed unlikely, but not an option I could discard.
As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have any allies at the academy except the members of my unit. Danger could come from anywhere, especially now that Selene was pregnant, and Commander Trevor was among the teachers with most access to Selene.
If he had a connection with my father and Paul Welton, he might know about August’s part-apsid background, and that was a ticking time bomb too. It was only a matter of time until someone tried to use that against him. So far, they hadn’t done so, but I was pretty sure they were watching August pretty closely.
I didn’t let any of my apprehension show. When the others shouted, “Sir, Yes, Sir,” I echoed them.
The strange emotion on Commander Trevor’s face melted away into a familiar determination. “Today, we’ll be doing something a little different. I will be pairing you up in groups. It’s all well and good to know how to fight individually, but in the end, on the battlefield, team work is essential.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Without teamwork, we might have never survived our incursion in the Apsid Quasar. And by the same token, if we’d worked better with Selene, we might not have had to go save her in the first place. But had something happened that had triggered this change? Was Commander Trevor uneasy for some reason?
I waited for him to elaborate and I was not disappointed. “We’ll mix things up a bit,” he said after a brief pause. “Instead of sticking to teams made up of your own units, you will work with people from other squads and fight your previous teammates.”
My mind went blank. For a few seconds, I thought I’d heard wrong. I had no problem cooperating with other squads and I’d sparred plenty of times with my lovers. But mixing the two didn’t seem like the best idea, since we’d have to join forces with people who didn’t like us, while fighting our friends.
“Maybe that’s the whole point, hatchling,” Typhon offered. “It’s a challenge. You never know what happens on the front. You might not always have backup from the Grand Chimera Unit and you have to at least be civil with other groups to survive.”
I’d have liked to say that the various units at Chimera Academy were perfectly civil, but that would’ve been false. There had always been an underlining tension between us and the rest of the school, stemming from both jealousy and historical background. Selene’s addition to our team had fanned the flames of that blaze, and everything had been made even worse by Jared’s supposed death.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to solve our problems with a sparring session, but I guess everyone needs to start somewhere.”
As promised, Commander Trevor divided us in teams. I ended up sharing a group with the worst person possible, Jared’s cousin, Vincent. Like the other members of the Harpy Squad, he still resented us for what had happened to Jared.
A tiny part of me marveled at the irony and was almost glad for being able to practice this way. Maybe it would make it easier for me to control myself when I saw Jared again. Still, I didn’t feel too optimistic about the end result of this exercise.
We had a third teammate, Ernest Boyle. He belonged to a non-chimera unit, and before Selene’s arrival, we’d more or less worked well together. But like most men of Tartarus Base, Boyle was very disrespectful of women. He’d even called Selene’s mother a whore to her own face when the Terran Sociology class had first started. These days, he and other people like him gave us a wide berth, because they knew we wouldn’t react well to their regular behavior. That didn’t mean we’d cooperate well on a mission, even if it was only for sparring purposes.
Knox ended up in a team with Scott Argyle, which sucked just as much. August and Pollux were a little luckier, in that they were paired up with less hostile individuals, most of them from the specialized star fleet units. The remaining people formed larger teams, which I assumed was meant to compensate for our presence.
Once everyone had their partners, we were shuffled out of the gym and into the scorching heat of the training grounds outside. “I won’t police you in any way. You’re free to use whatever means you see fit to incapacitate your opponents. There’s only one condition. I want to see teamwork. No matter how good of a fighter you are individually, it’s not enough to ensure your safety on the front. And your unit will sometimes need aid too. Rely on your partners. Trust them to have your back.”
“Like that’s about to happen,” Vincent muttered. “Jared trusted everyone here and it got him killed.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that Jared’s death was The Grand Judiciary’s responsibility. His blood was on my father’s hands. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t staged the whole thing as a way to escape the academy unseen. In the end, Vincent’s fixations had nothing to do with me. He wouldn’t listen to me if I did try to change his mind, so I wouldn’t waste my time trying to make him see sense.
“I’m
afraid you don’t have a choice,” I told him instead. “Orders are orders. If you can’t follow them, you don’t belong at the academy. Feel free to remove yourself. But before you go, do mention your reasoning to Commander Trevor. I’m sure he’ll be ecstatic to learn one of his students is willing to drop his duties just because of a private vendetta.”
“My cousin is dead, you asshole,” Vincent hissed. “You can’t expect me to just forget it.”
“No, I can’t. But that’s your problem, not mine, or anyone else’s. So you either fall in line or you’re a liability and you leave.”
Vincent didn’t say anything after that. Maybe he realized I was right and protesting wouldn’t help him. He and Ernest shared a look, and then nodded. “We’re with you, Your Highness,” Ernest offered. “It’ll be an honor to fight by your side.”
I didn’t really believe him, but whatever. I had bigger problems, such as the fact that Commander Trevor had decided to sic Knox on me. “Let me handle Knox,” I told my teammates. “You’re no match for him.”
If they were offended by my blunt statement, they didn’t show it. I was actually pretty sure Ernest was relieved. Even Vincent looked a little wary. And how could he not be? When we faced Knox and his team, he grinned, and I could’ve sworn I caught a glimpse of sharp fangs. His eyes glinted with a feral, dark light, and his rational side was drifting away more and more.
This class had been a bad idea in every possible way. But it would be fine. I trusted Knox and he trusted me. We’d succeed.
To our right, August and Pollux were lined up with their respective partners. They would be fighting one another. It made sense, but I still wondered what had determined Commander Trevor to choose this approach.
A drone provided us with the countdown for the sparring session. “Three, two, one… Fight!”
Knox lunged forward, throwing all caution to the wind. I met him half-way. This would clearly not be a very strategic fight, since Knox wasn’t in any condition to be logical. My real goal was to control him and keep him from harming himself and others.
