by Kal Spriggs
“Two?” the waitress asked. We nodded and she waved at the empty tables, “Pick a spot.”
Most of the walls were hung with historic military memorabilia. There were brass plaques with weapons, bits of hull, and other strange items. There were pictures and holograms of men and women in uniform.
Kyle picked a table back from the door, next to a large section of hull plate. As I took my seat, I found myself reading the text on it. Fragment of Culmor Dreadnought armor plate from the Battle of Rowan III. After I placed my order, I rapped my knuckles on the armor and it was dense enough that it didn't even make noise.
“Impressive, huh?” Kyle said. “They opened the place up during Parent's Weekend, my dad and I sat here. I guess his granddad was at the Battle of Rowan III, he wanted to show me this.”
“Wow,” I said. Apparently he came from a military family. I was a bit flattered that he'd shared it with me. “You hear a lot of military stories from your family?”
He grinned, “Oh yeah. My dad and mom met in the military. She got out to raise us kids, but my dad has stayed in. My granddad retired ten years back, lots of health issues, he, uh, got some of the first generation of life extension treatments.”
“Oh,” I winced. There were stories about bad batches of those, when quality control had been an issue and a lot of the expensive drugs had been either diluted or falsely labeled. I'd heard rumors about first generation treatments, about some people suffering from organ failure or other issues, while outwardly they looked healthy. “Sorry.”
“It's life, you know?” He looked away. “Anyway, my mom and dad both have the second generation treatment, and we'll be getting that too, here at the Academy in only a few more months. It's a lot more time than most people used to get... a lot more than some people get even now, you know?”
I nodded. On core worlds in Guard Space, the life extension treatments were commonplace. They weren't cheap, but there were plenty of options to get them. Out here at Century, the process was far more expensive and there was far less support. There were loans for it, but most of those had very long pay-offs... and lots of people didn't like the idea of living longer just to be in debt for the rest of their lives.
On the other hand, to live a few extra centuries? I'd planned on joining Champion Enterprises for that reason. It was a perk of joining the Century Planetary Militia. Yeah, both came with a set of costs, but I'd thought the ten year contract with Champion Enterprises would have been worth it.
And it's a five years of active service, twenty years of reserve service with the Militia, I reminded myself.
Our food came, the waitress gave us smiles but she didn't stick around. Kyle and I both ate quickly, habit, I suppose. Afterward we sat in silence for a while. I wanted to thank him for asking me to lunch. I wanted to say something nice, but I didn't really know what to say. Finally, I asked the question that had been bugging me since earlier.
“So,” I said, “what do you think of what Webster said?”
He shrugged, “You mean about him being a set-back?” I nodded in reply. “Well, there's a lot more of them than you'd realize. Did they do the whole line-up and count-off thing for you as a plebe?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that's not as much of a scare tactic as you'd think... or at least, it's not just a scare tactic. I've already heard from a couple of my section-mates in Dust, they're not coming back to school in the fall.”
“What?” I asked in surprise.
“Yeah, some of them got to their summer assignments and they just didn't want to come back. One of them, he said he had a panic attack just thinking about coming back. He sent in his resignation the next day.” Kyle Regan sighed, “I can understand it, I mean, this is all way harder than I thought it would be, but the thought of quitting...”
“Yeah,” I said. “It would be like throwing away all this effort. It would be for nothing.”
Kyle nodded. “Anyway, from what I get, about twenty percent fail out or quit in the plebe year. Another ten percent or so fail or quit after that.”
“I thought we were under our obligation after that, right?” I asked
“Yeah,” he nodded, “from what I understand, those that fail out during that time go in front of a board. If they're viewed as having potential, they offer them enlisted assignments. I wouldn't want that, personally. I mean, could you imagine running into a former classmate and having to take orders from them?”
I shrugged. It didn't sound all that strange... right up until I considered it being Sashi Drien or Bolander from Ogre. No way. “That doesn't sound fun.”
“Yeah,” Kyle nodded. “Those that don't, they end up having to pay back the Militia for their training, their implants, and their life extension treatments. I guess there's a pretty good market for them, though, either as mercenaries or in industry. I haven't heard of anyone not being able to pay it all back within a decent amount of time.”
“How would they accept a resignation after the first full year?” I asked. “I thought we were locked in.”
“There's family emergencies and such,” Kyle replied. “There was a cadet first class earlier this year in Dust who resigned. Her parents were killed in a ground-vehicle accident and she went home to take care of her siblings.”
I blanched a bit at that. I couldn't imagine that happening to my parents. Especially not when I'd joined to protect them. “And set-backs?” I prompted.
“Generally when you get to your second or first class years,” Kyle said. “At that point, the Academy has spent enough time and effort that they don't want to let you go, not unless you totally crack or there's something seriously wrong with you.”
“Wrong?” I asked.
“Honor code or ethics violations are the only thing I've heard of,” Kyle answered. “But my dad told me that he had a classmate who just stopped talking, stopped eating, just sort of broke down. Couldn't take the stress, I guess.”
I shivered at that.
“But anyway, if you fail one of the higher level exams or you get a bad review, or you do something you shouldn't have, they generally send you home for the rest of the year with a bunch of assignments and a chance to come back the next year in the next graduating class.”
“What do you think Webster did?” I asked.
He shrugged, “Who knows? Maybe he started drinking. Maybe he failed a class. He seems to be doing a good job, now. I mean, he's in a key leadership position and he's in charge of the candidate's summer exercise. That seems like he's on the fast track to graduate. Whatever he did, it doesn't matter to us, right?”
“I suppose you're right,” I replied.
“Anyway,” he said, “enough talking about me, I feel sort of like I haven't given you a chance to talk. How're you handling things? I mean, you nearly got killed out there!”
I snorted, “It's hardly the first time.”
Kyle blinked at me, “Jiden, you were nearly shot. You're awfully calm about that.”
I licked my lips as I wondered just how much it was safe to tell him. Probably best to keep it to what was generally known. “It's not the first time. There was the business at Champion Enterprises. There was the grav-shell crash. No one was seriously injured, that's enough for me.”
He shook his head, “Wow, I hope I can be as mellow about it if and when that happens to me.”
“I'm sure you'll do fine,” I replied.
“Have you told your parents about it?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” I snorted. “My mom would flip. My dad wouldn't understand, either. No, I just told them there was an accident and we came back early. I didn't go into details.”
“Parents,” he shook his head. “My mom always worries about me, too. And then she found out that my sister wants to come here next year...”
“My brother too,” I nodded. “I thought my mom was going to lose it.”
“Parents,” we both shook our heads.
His datapad chimed. He looked at it and I saw his expres
sion fall. “Dang, my duty time is coming up, I've got to go...”
“Sorry,” I said, “I had a really good time.”
“Lunch tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, “it's a date.” I flushed as I realized what I'd said. Kyle gave me a broad smile, though, as he stood up. “I'll see you later, lunch tomorrow, I'm holding you to it!”
After he left, I sat there, wondering about what I was doing here. I liked Kyle Regan. He was nice. He seemed to have a good sense of humor, he made me smile. I felt good for the first time in a long time. You're putting him in danger, a part of my mind whispered at me, you should tell him what he's getting into...
I shut that part of me up. It might be selfish of me, but I was going to enjoy what time I could. And if it looked like Kyle might get caught in the crossfire, I'd let him know. Besides, if Webster had to tell us to take some time, then I wasn't going to argue with him.
***
The candidates were playing games and I was off duty.
I grinned as I logged into one of their practice games as Biohazard. It was one of the simple strategy games that I'd played last year and it surprised me at how... basic it felt. Most of these games were focused on a small number of units. They were to teach tactics at a small level, to hone the basics. I realized that now.
All of us Cadet Instructors took our turns beating up on them in practice matches. It was good for them, it made them try to get better. Plus, it was fun to hear them howling about it, especially because they didn't know who we were.
We could see their actual names, next to their avatars. Those of them that didn't use their regular names for their logins, of course.
I grinned as I logged into a match with Beckman. The past few games I'd played against her, I'd gone a bit easy on her, letting her nearly beat me. I wondered if she realized that or if she was just overconfident as she started off the game in full-on attack mode.
She's not quite as clever as she thinks, I smiled to myself as I let her get all the way to my base... and then I closed off the trap behind her. I detonated the structures of my base in a cascading series of overlapping explosions that cut down her digital team. Down the corridor, I heard her start to yell.
Got you.
“Jiden, are you beating up on the candidates again?” Kyle asked from the doorway.
“Got to keep them on their toes,” I replied. “Lunch?”
“Yeah, but I thought we might go for a run, first? Just a short one.”
I still hated running, but I didn't want to say that. “Sure,” I said, “let me get changed.”
“Cool, I'll meet you at the stairs,” he said.
We'd been meeting for lunch for the past couple of weeks, talking about all kinds of things. I closed the door and changed quickly, then did a quick walk-through the candidate barracks. Most of them were either studying or gaming. Beckman was angrily jabbing commands on her datapad's holographic screen. She needs to learn to control that temper of hers.
I met Kyle at the stairs and we jogged up. Normally, most of the runs I went on, I'd go out to the parade ground and then either take one of the underground tracks or go up a ramp to the surface. I didn't relish the idea of running in the heat of the day, so I was glad when Kyle led the way down one of the running tunnels. We didn't go far, though, until we were jogging up a spiral ramp. The slope was steep enough that I was really panting when we finally popped out at the top.
Kyle moved to the side and stopped and I followed him. I was startled, then, by the view. We were on some kind of covered track, near the top of one of the bigger Academy structures. We were high enough up that a cool breeze blew through and it felt surprisingly good. “Wow,” I said, “where are we?”
“On top of Bunker Seven,” Kyle grinned. I realized then why we were so high up. Bunker Seven housed the Academy's largest hangar, it was where the Academy's corvettes launched from. “It's one of the schools hidden secrets. Awesome view, right?”
I nodded in reply. I could see the entire Academy laid out below us. Concrete bunkers and roadways stretching off into the distance. “It's huge,” I said. I'd seen maps, of course, but I hadn't really thought of how big it all was.
“Pretty view,” he said off-handedly. I realized he wasn't looking at the Academy grounds, he was looking at me.
My breath caught as I realized that we were all alone and he stood very close to me. Kyle started to lean in and I met him halfway, our lips touching in my first real kiss. I couldn't help but compare it to my horrible attempt to kiss Mackenzie. This was far different. There were sensations and feelings that were almost overwhelming. My whole body seemed to tingle. It was too much for me to take in, too complicated for my brain to catalog... yet as Kyle stepped back, I was sad that it was over. I realized I was clutching at his shirt collar and I wasn't really sure if it was to hold him close or if I had started to do one of Commander Pannja's self-defense moves.
“I, uh, wanted to do that for a while,” Kyle said.
“What took you so long?” I asked, smiling back. We both stood there, grinning goofily at each other.
“What do we do now?” He asked.
“I'm sort of new at this, how about we enjoy the view?” I suggested. He came over and stood next to me. I leaned against him. It felt good. Kyle felt solid. I liked him. I didn't want to lose him. So of course, I opened my stupid mouth and ruined everything
“Kyle,” I said after a moment, “there's something you should know.”
“What, do you have an older brother who's going to threaten to break my legs?” He joked.
I ignored his comment and spoke quickly, “The skimmer crash I was in, the grav-shell crash, too... and then the live rounds that candidate had, they weren't accidents,” I regretted the words as I said them.
“What?” He pulled away and looked at me, his expression dubious. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“I'm not joking,” I said. “Someone is trying to kill me. It ties back to the thing at Champion Enterprises, last year.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Are you sure? I mean, you've been through a lot...”
“Trust me,” I snapped, “the Admiral confirmed it, there was also a bombing attempt and the grav-shell I crashed was sabotaged.”
“You're not joking... jeez, Jiden, you're serious...” I expected him to do the smart thing. I expected him to say he needed some time to think about all this. Instead, he did what I never would have expected. He stepped forward and embraced me in a hug.
I stiffened in surprise. “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice muffled in his chest.
“I thought you were under a lot of pressure before, but you've been going through that and keeping it a secret. Don't worry, Jiden, I'm not going anywhere.”
The words and the secure feeling of his arms around me made me fell all warm and tingly. I felt good. For the first time, I felt safe. It was irrational. I knew that Kyle wasn't any better able to protect me than I was. But just then, feeling his arms wrapped around me, knowing that he cared about me... that meant far more to me than anything else.
***
Chapter Twenty: History Repeats Itself
The rest of the summer seemed to fly by. Kyle and I spent as much time as we could together. He seemed to know all kinds of cool places on the Academy grounds. We spent hours together walking and talking. It was the first real relationship I'd ever been in and I took things slow. It was hard to open up to him, especially after how Tony Champion had lied to me. I ended up telling him the whole story with that, and to my surprise, he was pretty understanding.
Training the cadet candidates went on. We lost a few more to grades and it made me sad every time we had to give one of them the news. Some of them we saw it coming, they'd start falling behind in one of the prep classes and then, normally within a week, the instructors would make the call.
We had a lot of work to do prepping for their final exercise, too. Cadet Lieutenant Webster's course design used huge ba
salt blocks, and while those of us who were going to run it first weren't allowed inside, we still ended up helping to coordinate deliveries and move crates of training ammo, traps, and other supplies to the staging area. The sheer amount of supplies needed stunned me as I watched the piles get bigger and bigger. Around eight hundred candidates were going to tackle the course, each of them with a full combat load of three hundred rounds of ammunition. That was almost a quarter million rounds of ammunition just for them. Then the defenders had to have ammunition. Then there needed to be enough traps to reset the entire maze for all the iterations.
It was a massive expenditure. I overheard Cadet Lieutenant Webster and Cadet Commander An’Jirrad, the Regimental Training Officer, going over budgets, arguing details, and trying to get the most out of the money they'd been allotted. “These pillars weigh seventy tons, and you don't want to anchor them?” the RTO asked. The tone of his voice suggested he thought Webster was crazy. It was an interesting enough comment that I stopped in the hallway and listened, feeling a bit guilty.
“They're two meters across and made of solid basalt. Once we get them in place, they're not going to move,” Webster said. “Not without a lot of leverage in the right place, anyway, and I don’t see anyone climbing one of them to try to pull it down. The mass of these things will keep them in position. And the cost savings will let us save almost five thousand dollars per pillar. That's almost two hundred thousand dollars in savings.”
That we were dealing with that level of money as cadets boggled my mind. I mentioned it to Salter, a few days before the final course. She snorted. “Yeah, it's a lot of money. You think it's crazy they have that kind of responsibility?”
I shrugged. I wasn't really sure.
“Think about it this way,” she said. “A Mark V Firebolt costs over ten million dollars. The antimatter core on it costs almost four million to replace after it wears down. Assuming Cadet Lieutenant Webster graduates on time and gets a posting to a Firebolt squadron, he's going to command four of them and three pilots. That's forty million dollars of responsibility, not including other equipment.”
