Blake’s eyebrows twitched up. “Class I?”
“Yes, yes, I know, child's play for you, but just humour me. I can't find another tutor, and I really don't want to cancel the class. I'm late as it is.”
As Sharpe marched him forward, Blake quickly realised they were headed to Training Centre Alpha-2.
With a soft chuckle, he smiled.
Cadet Harper was in there, and if Sharpe was late, the class hadn't started yet, which meant she wouldn’t get in trouble.
Lucky for her.
And the poor cadet really looked as though she could use some luck right now.
Once Sharpe marched him through the doors, Blake's presence was met with instant and excited muttering.
This training centre was an enormous complex. A room of about 200 meters by 200 meters, it had enough space to allow budding cadets to learn the intricacies of TI weapons. It also had enough defensive parameters in place to stop them from doing harm to themselves or anybody else.
Because TI weapons, in untrained hands, were dangerous things.
“All right, listen up,” Sharpe announced as he walked into the centre of his class, “today we are lucky enough to have a true master with us,” he gestured towards Blake.
Carson forced himself to lift a hand and wave to the class, but he winced as he did. Why did people always refer to him as a master? He was just a guy, for god's sake.
The class practically gave a collective cry of joy. Well, almost everybody did.
Carson found himself focusing on one cadet standing a little way from the group, shuffling her feet and staring at her left hand.
Cadet Harper.
She had such a confused expression on her face, and again it seemed that she was staring at her palm as if it didn't belong to her.
“Alright, class, spread out, you know the drill,” Sharpe snapped. “Everybody pick up their class I weapons. Harper, you're with me,” Sharpe added tersely at the end.
Harper looked up, her expression crumpling with obvious disappointment.
As her shoulders slumped, she walked past Carson without another look, heading towards Sharpe.
Carson turned on his foot to watch Harper and Sharpe head over to a different section of the training hall, where the far simpler TI objects were kept. The stuff they used for the first-year cadets, the kids who had only recently received their TI implants.
Was Sharpe simply reprimanding her by not allowing her to use the weapons, or had she never progressed?
Considering that question briefly, he came up with the answer all too readily.
She'd never progressed.
Though she seemed friendly and sweet, she really didn't come across as a competent cadet.
All too soon Carson found himself demonstrating class I weapons, and the students around him did their best to follow his example.
He was admittedly distracted though.
He kept staring over at Sharpe as he tersely snapped at Harper to try harder. She was barely capable of shifting a small TI block off the floor. Though her face was deeply furrowed with concentration, no matter how hard she appeared to try, she just couldn't do it.
Sharpe looked practically apoplectic, and kept telling her she was worse than she usually was.
Though Carson kept half an eye on her, he knew he couldn't allow himself to become completely distracted. Even though he was only dealing with class I weapons, he had to watch the rest of the students in case they had any accidents.
That being said, they all appeared to be quite talented, and one in particular was a cut above the rest.
Cadet J’Etem.
He recognised her from the Remus 12 mission. She was a friend of Cadet Harper, and had already been selected as a potential recruit for the Force.
Her command of class I weapons was astounding.
Without any tutelage from him, she managed to pick up three blocks, and spin them around herself with impressive speed. Though he could easily thrust out a hand to catch one, with practice, she’d be able to propel the blocks so fast they’d be able to crash through walls.
The blocks were about 30 centimetres square, and made of completely smooth gunmetal-grey stone. Well, he said stone—in reality, they were pure telekinetic magnetised material. The very stuff TI implants operated on.
Still, even though they were only class I weapons, Cadet J’Etem had a good handle over them.
“That's great,” Carson managed as he smiled at her.
Demurely, she offered a shy smile of her own. “Thank you; I’ve been practising hard.”
“That's great to hear,” he said, realising he’d said great twice, as if he didn’t have the brain cells to think of another word.
Someone sniggered at his side, and he turned to see it was Sharpe.
“How's it going, tutor?” Sharpe asked with a pointed look.
“Fine,” Blake said.
“Cadet J’Etem here is one of our finest TI specialists,” Sharpe pointed out needlessly.
Carson already knew that, though he liked the polite smile J’Etem gave at the compliment.
“It's nothing, really,” she managed, “I'm nowhere as good as I should be.”
“Don't be humble, Cadet; you've put in the hard yards, and it has paid off. Unlike some,” Sharpe said as he shot Cadet Harper a stern look over his shoulder.
Harper, for her part, looked as if she'd given up. Several training blocks were strewn at her feet, but she didn't appear to have the ability to shift even one of them.
“You know, I could try to give her a hand,” Carson offered as he nodded Harper's way.
Sharpe gave out a laugh like a bullet blast, “don't waste your time,” he said simply.
Though Carson already knew Sharpe had a temper and a personality like a bulldog, he bristled at that. Yes, Harper appeared to be particularly incapable, but she didn't deserve everybody's ire. She wasn’t incompetent on purpose. She simply appeared to be flaky. Yet before Carson could point this out, he watched as Cadet J’Etem reached down and managed to activate four blocks by her feet all at once.
He was impressed, and he offered her a smile that conveyed that.
Then, with perfect timing, she managed to make them spin around her.
She really was good, and he realised that before too long, she would undoubtedly make her way into the Force.
He could use good TI practitioners like her.
Yet, just as soon as those four blocks began to spin, one of them darted off.
Quickly.
In fact, blindingly fast.
He had time to stumble forward as surprise slackened his brow, before the block shot across the room with the speed of a bullet.
It slammed into Harper.
She turned briefly and he saw her eyes widen as the block smacked into the centre of her chest, sending her flying as it did.
There was a crack, and it most definitely sounded like bone.
The block didn’t just knock her off her feet. It pinned her to the ground.
Sharpe was the first to react. The Commander sprinted towards her, then reached forward with his hand, spreading his fingers and activating his implant. A faint yellow energy played across his fingers as he used as much power as he could muster to pull the block off Harper.
It should have been an easy task for somebody like Sharpe. For all the times he claimed Blake was a master, Sharpe was one of the best TI practitioners at the Academy. Yet as he reached Harper, it was clear he was having trouble pulling the training block off her chest.
It still pinned her to the ground, pushing down with all its weight against her chest.
“Come on,” Sharpe hissed under his breath.
Then, with a snap, the training block finally released, and Sharpe managed to yank it off the cadet.
Carson now sprinted to his side.
“Oh god, Harper,” Sharpe said under his breath. His anger was obvious, but so was his compassion. With one look at the man, you could see his features were pale
and drawn. He immediately used his wrist device to check her vitals, then made a quick call to the medical bay.
Harper was unconscious.
Her head lolled to one side, her hair a mess over her shoulder as the clip that had fixed it lay broken beside her.
With a powerful kick of fear, Carson noticed a trickle of blood trailing down the side of her parted lips.
She'd just been struck by a speeding training block.
She was lucky to be alive.
“Blake, you deal with my students,” Sharpe snapped as he stood over Harper protectively, waiting for the medical team to arrive. “And figure out what just happened,” he growled under his breath.
Carson wanted to point out he could take Harper to the medical bay, but he soon realised Sharpe had no intention of letting him. For all Sharpe's apparent hatred of Harper, he clearly felt responsible for her too, and right now, he looked exactly like a protective father. So, silently Carson stood back, watching as the medical team rushed in, placed Harper on a hovering stretcher, and took her away.
For far too long Carson stood there staring at the doors as they closed behind Sharpe.
Then he shook his head and forced himself to turn.
“Oh no, what did I do?” Cadet J’Etem croaked as she clapped her hands over her lips. Her eyes were wide and trembling with tears.
He turned to her and slowly glanced out at the rest of the cadets.
Everyone looked surprised.
And fair enough, though you often did have training accidents, that had been . . . terrible. That block had shot off towards Harper with unfathomable speed.
It could have killed her.
If Sharpe hadn’t managed to disengage the block and pull it from her chest, it would have.
“What did I do?” J’Etem whimpered again.
Even though Cadet J’Etem was a particularly skilled TI practitioner, Carson knew she hadn’t caused the accident. She didn’t have the power or the skill.
“It's fine,” he tried, giving J’Etem what he hoped was a commiserating nod, “she’ll be fine,” he added under his breath.
“What happened?” one of the other cadets asked, walking over to the offending training block. It still lay exactly where Sharpe had dumped it after pulling it off Harper's chest.
Frowning, Carson walked up to it and looked down. He lifted it up and turned it around in his hands.
It looked and felt normal, and as he quickly scanned it with his wrist device, he realised there wasn't anything overtly wrong with it. “It'll have to be tested. It's probably just . . . an imbalance in the magnetised material,” he tried, realising his explanation sounded implausible. Right now, he couldn’t come up with anything better though.
“I'm so sorry,” Cadet J’Etem said, her hands still gripped over her mouth as her stunning eyes widened further.
“It wasn't your fault. This was an accident,” Carson told her with a firm nod. “Now, I’m cancelling this class. Return to your rooms, and head to your next class when it's time.” With that, he nodded at Cadet J’Etem once more, hooked the training block under his arm, and headed for the doors. He’d take the block to one of the labs, to see if it really was malfunctioning in some way. Then he'd head up to the medical bay to see how Harper was.
Unfortunately something came up, and by the time he reached the medical facility later that afternoon, Harper had already been discharged. Though the training block had broken several of her ribs and given her extensive internal bleeding, the wonders of modern medical technology had fixed her up immediately.
Apparently, she’d already been sent home.
Feeling disappointed that he hadn't been able to see her, Carson promised himself that at the next opportunity he would get, he would drop in to see how she was.
And yes, this time he would find the time to ask exactly what had happened down on that planet and what exactly she had been dreaming of.
Chapter 7
Cadet Nida Harper
She sat on the edge of her bed, pressing her fingers into her ribs.
They'd been fixed, but they still tingled.
Unpleasantly.
In fact, her whole body vibrated with pins and needles.
Pressing her lips together, she indulged in a groan.
Wow, hadn't today been one for the books.
She was usually unlucky, but this was extreme, even for her.
Not only had she overslept again, only to fall asleep under a tree rather than getting to class, she'd been knocked out in the training centre.
At least that hadn't been her fault though.
It had been an accident. One that no one was able to explain to her. Nobody had made that block go scooting across the training centre to wallop her on the chest, so the prevailing theory was that the block itself had malfunctioned.
She'd never heard of TI blocks malfunctioning, but she wasn't exactly the most knowledgeable cadet out there.
Pushing herself up, she let out a breath, being careful not to extend her chest out too much as she did.
Though her muscles didn't ache, it felt weird to move them.
Because every damn thing felt weird.
Again, for about the millionth time, she brought up her left hand and stared at it.
She was still dimly aware of the terrible dream she'd had under the oak tree that morning. But it was fading.
She could recall that writhing blue energy biting its way into her palm and fingers though, and it made her shudder.
“Come on,” she told herself through gritted teeth, “you have to do your assignments.”
She couldn't put them off any longer. She was getting further and further behind. What was worse, she'd missed all afternoon due to her injury.
She slowly slouched over to her desk, neatened what she could, then stuck her tongue out as she considered the display on the hovering holographic computer screen. It sat about several centimetres above her desk, tipped at an angle so she could see it properly. Right now it displayed an enormous list of stuff she had to catch up on.
She tried closing her eyes, but when she opened them, the assignments hadn't disappeared.
The last thing she wanted to do right now was work. She would prefer to make herself an enormous bowl of ramen and fold up on the couch watching holo movies. She couldn't though. She had to catch up.
So she sucked in a breath, stiffened her back, forced her chin to jut out, and got to work.
She did what she could, keeping the boring tasks until last.
And the boring tasks were always the same for her.
TI practice.
Ah, she hated it.
No matter how hard she tried, she never progressed. Everyone—including Sharpe—believed that with just enough sweat and tears, anyone could master their implant. Well she had sweated and she had cried, but she was still at the bottom of the pile.
She stood up, marching over to her bedside table and picking up the tiny, itty-bitty TI cube she was meant to use for practice.
Fresh new cadets learnt to master the use of this itty-bitty cube in their first week.
She still had trouble lifting it out of its case.
Sitting roughly on her bed, she shot the cube a merciless glare as it sat there, offending her by its mere existence.
Contrary to popular belief, Nida was not lazy. She tried her hardest. It just so happened that her hardest was never good enough.
She hadn't given up yet. And that was something. But it was still seriously demoralising every time she had to face her utter incompetence with the use of her TI.
“Okay,” she breathed dramatically, tipping her head back and rolling her eyes at the ceiling, as if it agreed with her that all TI blocks were lame. “Come on,” she reached forward and pressed the button that would disengage the TI block from its pedestal.
There was a slight beep and a flash of yellow light.
Yellow light.
She knew it was yellow.
Yet for a heart pounding
instant, she thought it was blue.
She blinked, even pressing her fingers into her closed eyelids. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she muttered, winking one eye open to confirm the light was most certainly yellow.
“You're tired, you're stressed, and you spent the afternoon being coaxed back from death,” she answered her own question. And it was a pretty good answer. There was nothing wrong with her, other than that which she had already stated.
Feeling relieved at that conclusion, she leaned forward and spread the fingers of her right palm over the top of the TI block. Her hand hovered several centimetres above the block, and with a commanding thought, she tried to force the block to jump up into her grip.
It didn't work.
It never worked.
But before she could give up and flop back down, something incredible happened.
The block began to spin.
Fast.
Blindingly fast.
In fact, the force of it rattled the bedside table.
“What the . . . ?” she began, pushing herself back on her bed.
Then the block shot towards her.
She had just enough time to push her hand out to grab it before it slammed into her chest.
Then she held it.
Surprise slackened her jaw.
Had she just . . . moved the block on her own?
She slowly brought her palm out, opened the fingers, and stared at the little cube.
With a gulp, she set it back on her bedside table, then she pushed her hand out again. With a silent command, she imagined the block jumping up and flying into her grip.
It did.
Fast.
In fact, the speed of it threw her backwards until she banged against the wall behind her bed.
“What?” she gasped, staring at the block tightly clasped in her fist.
Then she offered a quick, nervous laugh.
She tried it again.
She set the block down, she commanded it to come to her, then it came.
And the more she tried it, the quicker it came to her, until she had to stop. Pain stabbed through her arm and hand from catching the speeding block, but she paid no attention to it.
Instead, she jumped to her feet and she laughed.
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