Tina did her best not to giggle at the act, but couldn’t contain herself.
John’s frown deepened as concern washed over his face. “I’m serious, Tina. One snippet of information in the wrong hands could bring down everything we’re trying to build out here. Do you want that? ‘Loose lips sink ships.’ Not good when your ship is in space.”
“I’m sorry, John,” Tina said, chastened. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
His face softened at her apology. “You weren’t, Tina. Just remember that information is as good as hard currency out here and you’ll be fine.” John reassured her with a pat on the shoulder. “Now, where are my students?” Five kids raised their hands. “Follow me, then.” John strode out of the cafeteria, followed by Maxim, Craig, Halli, and twin girls with whom Tina was unfamiliar.
“We should watch this,” Yana said quietly. “Come, we will go to the bleachers. We have an hour before we have to be anywhere.
Academy Grounds, PET Annex
The newly-built physical education and training department, informally known as “the PET,” had been commissioned by Bethany Anne to make the training program the Academy administrators had put in place possible. It was a state-of-the-art sports complex with all amenities, including a stadium which was accessed from the rear of the Academy. Tina wasn’t one for unnecessary physical exertion beyond what it took to stay healthy and in shape, but she could appreciate the care that had gone into the creation of the new annex.
She was amused to see that her team were not alone in hoping to look in on her uncle’s class. Most of the student body was making their way to the stadium—along with the resident staff. She waved to Diane and Dorene, the Academy administrators, as she passed them at the bottom of the steps to the entrance.
As always, Tina stopped to read the quote above the door. The quotes were one of her favorite things about the school’s buildings.
“You dream. You plan. You reach. There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits.” The tiny script beneath showed the quote was from an Olympic swimming champion.
Good advice, she thought, hurrying to catch up with the others. She dashed to the spot in the front of the bleachers where they were just getting comfortable, which was within hearing distance of the dugout where John had settled in to wait for his students to join him after changing into their workout clothes. She waved at her uncle, who answered with a miniscule nod.
“I wonder if they’ll be doing real fighting?” Ron speculated. “I mean, this is the advanced class. We go at it pretty hard in our regular training, and the obstacle course couldn’t get any harder than it already is. What else could they be learning?”
“You just don’t like to get physical, Ron. That’s okay, but I would give my arm to be taking this class with Maxim. I bet they’ll be fighting with weapons!” Nestor was practically drooling as he looked out across the stadium, imagining epic battles playing out on the sandy arena below.
John’s class exited the changing rooms a moment later, clearly perturbed by the unexpected audience. They scanned the crowd, fidgeting and making last-minute adjustments to the new activewear they’d all been issued as they nervously approached the dugout where their mentor waited.
“Eyes on me, class.” John didn’t raise his voice…but then he never had to. The students obeyed instantly, lining up in front of John in silence.
He smiled at the five Wechselbalg kids to put them at ease. “Over the next six weeks I’ll be teaching you some advanced combat techniques. We will also look at discipline, tactics and strategy, command structure, and begin your weapons training.”
The class oohed and aahed as he ran through the list.
“This is just a taste of what awaits when you graduate,” John continued. “You are the future of the Empire’s security services. You may end up in the Guardians, or be more suited to another role. That might mean action, or something like diplomatic security—whatever the Empire requires of you.” His tone became serious. “Wherever you go there will be people watching, so composure under scrutiny is vital to the job. The discipline to maintain that composure is your first line of defense against any attack.”
Craig raised a hand, and John nodded to allow the boisterous Wechselbalg to speak. “Don’t the Guardians just go in, kick ass, and haul out of there?” He turned to his classmates, and his face dropped when they just stared at him, horrified by his disrespectful question.
“Dude, this is exactly what he’s talking about!” Halli hissed, hiding her face in her hand. “Just shut up and listen!”
John gave Craig the hairy eyeball. “Your friend is smart, Craig. Listen to her and you’ll go far.”
Craig had the decency to blush. “Sorry, sir.”
John nodded. “I understand that military life looks like an action movie from the outside. There are times when the shock-and-awe approach is necessary, but that is not all we do. First and foremost, we are protectors. Reflect on why it’s a bad idea to open your mouth without thinking while you’re giving me fifty push-ups.” He clapped his hands to get them moving. “All of you—come on, we haven’t got all day!”
The kids glared at Craig as they hit the deck. The five Wechselbalg were fit and strong, and they pumped the push-ups out quickly. John nodded when they were all on their feet again. “Why do you think I made all of you do the push-ups?”
Maxim raised his hand. “Because a mistake by one is a mistake by all of us.”
“Exactly. Each of your decisions leads to consequences for the other people on your team. Choose wisely. Maxim, you are team leader for today. Right, class. Warm up. How quickly do you think you can do this assault course?”
CHAPTER FOUR
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Medical Wing
Yana leant over Bai Hu, gently stroking the young boy’s head to soothe his nightmare. She had come to look in on him on her way to her first day of shadowing Cheryl Lynn.
He was so small, definitely younger than Tina’s brother, Todd. However old he was, he’d been through too much, she thought sadly.
He woke briefly, his eyes wide with fear until he saw it was Yana. He relaxed then, falling back into a fractured sleep while his nanocytes worked with the nutrients and medicines in his IV drip to heal him from his ordeal.
He had been this way since they came back from Mongolia. Bai Hu awoke for brief periods in terror, and only the sight of Yana or Peter Silvers could calm him. She had only just learned his name yesterday, as she had coaxed him to eat some of the clear broth Chef Van had made especially for him after she had told the chef the malnourished werecat wasn’t keeping food down.
She kissed his forehead lightly and tucked him in again, then tiptoed out of his room. She was surprised to see the Queen approaching from the other end of the corridor with her dog, but she had no time to pet Ashur today. As she exited the Medical Wing she broke into a jog, anxious to be on time for her first day of class.
—
Yana arrived outside the large meeting room at the same time as a girl from Delta she vaguely recognized, and a boy she didn’t know at all. The three looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. She realized that she didn’t know either of them as well as she should; the bond she had forged with her team didn’t leave much room for close friendships with the other kids. That would have to change.
She held out a hand. “I’m Yana, Alpha Class. Good to meet you both.”
The boy took her hand with a smile. “Jayden and Ksenia. We’re both from Delta.”
The girl curtseyed. “I remember you from the journey. It is an honor to meet you, Your Highness.”
Yana cut her off with a wave and an embarrassed smile. “Please, Ksenia, I’m just Yana. I want no part of being royalty. I swore my allegiance to the Queen just like you. Claiming titles you haven’t earned is Earth-think, and we are beyond that now.”
K
senia nodded, still slightly starstruck.
Yana was relieved when Cheryl Lynn arrived, ending the exchange.
“Good morning class,” she said, swiping the tablet she held. “Congratulations on showing an aptitude for leadership. I know I don't need to ask if you read through the packet I sent. Have you all met?”
They nodded, awed by the aura of competence their mentor radiated. “Good. I’ve just forwarded our schedule for the day to your tablets. Open them now, please.”
Yana’s eyes bulged when she saw the endless to-do list scrolling down the screen of her tablet. “Ms. Grimes?”
Cheryl Lynn smiled. “Yes, Yana?”
“How do you do all this in a day plus look after Tina and Todd…and still look this good?”
Her teacher’s smile deepened. “That’s the secret of good time management, Yana. It’s one of the things we’ll cover during the course of this term.” She pointed at the tablet. “The first thing to learn is that your schedule is your friend. What’s the first item on today’s agenda? Oh, s…poop. We’re going to be late. Quickly! We need to go inside and find seats.” Her heels clicked impatiently on the hard floor as she ushered the three of them toward the door.
When they entered, the meeting room was filling up with people Yana had heard stories about but never met. Guardian Commander Silvers was deep in conversation with another Guardian in the front row, and she wondered how Bai Hu was doing. He was never far from her mind.
“What happened to good time management?” Jayden panted as they followed Cheryl Lynn on her power-climb to an empty row on the second tier.
Cheryl Lynn laughed merrily as she took a seat and waved to the students to do the same. “That’s the second thing you need to know. Your schedule is your friend—until it isn't. Make a plan, but be prepared to adapt if it goes sideways.”
Ksenia spoke up. “What is this class, Ms. Grimes?”
Cheryl Lynn put her tablet on the desk in front of her and began rummaging around in her oversize bag. “Good question. This class is on Yollin culture.”
“What does that have to do with what we’re learning?” Jayden asked, head tilted to the side.
“Good question again!” Cheryl Lynn smiled, placing the pad and pen she’d pulled out of her bag on the desk beside the tablet. “I’m the one taking this class, Jayden. It’s only for upper management—the people who will have direct contact with the Yollins at this time. You just get to sit in with me today. It’s important to remember that you can’t know everything, but you can do your best to keep learning and improving no matter what your age. It’s doubly important for people who have responsibility for others on a large scale to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s happening. If I don’t keep up to date on developments, it could be detrimental to the whole Empire.” Her attention was drawn to the stage, where a Yollin stood at the lectern ready to begin talking. “Shhh, now. Class is starting.”
CHAPTER FIVE
QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Jean Dukes’ R&D Labs
The escort deposited Tina and Ron in an office and told them to wait. They went to join the thin, pale boy at the refreshment stand behind the conference table.
Ron paused to take a closer look at the schematics pinned to the walls as he passed. “Hey, look at this,” he marveled. “These must be the armor designs for Project Gauntlet. I heard my dad talking about it while I was on a call to my mom a couple of weeks ago.”
The unfamiliar boy’s shyness melted at the mention of armor. He approached and held a hand out in their direction. “I’m Aleksi Nikolayev, Bravo Class. What do you know about the new armor?”
Tina and Ron introduced themselves with a handshake. Ron was almost too happy to have an ear to bend about his latest obsession.
“It’s a whole new way of looking at protection. The new composites they’re coming up with are going to change things.” His eyes shone with glee at Aleksi’s interest in the subject. “The Yollin scientist, Roylee, has shared her people’s secrets with BMW, who are farming everything out to the appropriate departments. It’s like a level-up for the plastics specialists. It’s an exciting time to be a chemist!”
“Easy there, fanboy,” Tina teased gently. “So the armor is made of Yollin plastic?”
Ron shook his head, his cheeks turning pink. “Not exactly. The techniques are Yollin, but for the moment we’re still using Earth materials. The plastics are only one constituent, anyway. The rest is made up of various minerals from down on the mudball. There’s a group of scientists in Europe who’ve developed a new isostatic pressing technique that makes the resulting composite almost indestructible. It’s slow going right now, but my dad is working with Marcus to streamline the manufacturing process. When I asked him about it he said they were making armor for everyone, even for Wechselbalg when they change form—or at least that’s the plan.”
When Tina looked away from the schematics, the line between her eyes that appeared whenever she was thinking hard was there. Ron loved that line.
“How are the parts being made at the moment?” she asked.
Ron shrugged. “I have no idea. Factory robots, I suppose? Maybe partly automated, but they’re more likely to be manned.”
She opened her tablet with her stylus and started scribbling calculations. As the boys watched, the line between her eyes became more pronounced. A few minutes later she frowned again and turned her tablet around to show them her calculations.
“Look, this isn’t sustainable. The Wechselbalg will need two, maybe three sets of armor, and after we go through the gate resources will not be readily available. The mudball governments are already doing their best to stop us from taking resources off-planet.”
Ron looked nonplussed.
Aleksi was getting it. “That’s not all,” he said. “I’ve been gaming this, and there’s going to come a point where there’s a bottleneck in the growth of the Empire. That will be the true tipping point.”
It was Tina’s turn to be puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Aleksi opened his tablet and brought up a time-lapse simulation. It showed the Meredith Reynolds surrounded by a few tiny dots. “This is the fleet at the moment,” he told them. “All of our ships, as far as I know. Watch what happens if I extrapolate the future outcome using the Empire’s current growth rate as a baseline.”
The tiny dots multiplied as the clock sped up and the Meredith Reynolds ventured deeper and deeper into space. They were joined by an array of larger dots, clearly ships.
“Empires expand,” Aleksi said as the first planet appeared. “We have already made contact with the Yollins, so it is logical to surmise that contact with more species will follow as we venture into deep space. The new species will join the Empire in large numbers, because nobody makes friends like a human. They will join our business communities, live on our stations, and contribute to the economy—but most importantly, they will enlist in our military. Do you see where I am going with this?”
“Oh, I do see,” Tina answered. “The military will be the biggest drain on our resources as it grows. Production for the military will have to be expanded to include new armor and weapons to accommodate the new species.”
Ron chipped in, “Like the early empires of Earth. The Romans were a fine example of what you’re both afraid will happen. They spread their armies, conquest to conquest, ever-expanding until it got too big to sustain itself and collapsed. What’s the specific problem here?”
Tina scrolled to the appropriate equation. “It’s a bottleneck. If the Empire grows too quickly, there will come a point where the availability of materials, the man-hours, or the capacity for production will be compromised to a point where it will endanger the Empire,” Tina answered absentmindedly, having gone back to her calculations. “It’s a shame 3-D printing hasn’t developed well enough to be used for more than the basics. I mean, it’s great that what they do now takes a load off engineering, but imagine if we could print calories. No more food substitutes!”
Ron r
an with the idea. “The ‘basics’ aren’t too shabby these days, Tina. 3-D printing has come a long way from where it was a few years ago. The future possibilities are astounding! What if we could print the armor with reliable circuitry embedded? That would solve the problem for Gauntlet, and production could be pushed ahead of schedule. Heck, it could even have nanotech running it. Imagine if we could create armor that shifts with the Wechselbalg?”
“I think we’re a long way from that, Ron.” Tina smiled. “Is that what you want to do when you graduate? Armor tech?”
Ron shrugged. “I don’t know…maybe. Hey, shall we go look for Jean? This is starting to feel like our first day with BMW.”
They left the office and found her almost immediately. She held up a hand to tell them to wait while she finished the conversation she was having with a young woman in a white lab coat. They did their best not to be obvious in their eavesdropping, but Jean was paying no attention to them anyway.
“It’s definitely not just been misplaced?”
The tech shook her head. “No, ma’am, it’s been stolen. No trace of it in the systems whatsoever, and no trail to follow to find out who did it. I don’t know how it could have happened! And it doesn’t stop there. The facility is having recurring blackouts, and some of the equipment has been malfunctioning due to power surges. ADAM says the local power grid is fine. The problem is inside the castle somewhere.”
Jean scowled. “Then you’re going to have to go to the facility and move things along. We’re on a tight schedule, and the Queen waits for no one. We need all that equipment disassembled and moved up here before it gets too dangerous to be down there.”
The tech looked horrified. “But, ma’am, I can’t go. Well, I could, but it would be pointless. Only you, Marcus, and Doctor Llewellyn understand the equipment well enough to get the breakdown back on schedule.”
Alpha Class - Discovery: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Etheric Academy Book 3) Page 2
