30. The Officer’s Club

Academy Hill, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum
September 30, 2847

“You don’t have to worry what he’s going to think,” C’rise of Bian said, from the other side of the dorm room. It was rare for the LeShaii to speak to Cassie. During the six weeks of Hard Burn, it had been easy to pretend that was because they were all so busy. Now that classes were in session, and the other three women in the room spent so much time together, alongside Arc and Pika, that pretense had become more difficult.

“I hate when you do that,” Cassie said. She didn’t turn away from the mirror, instead adjusting her cadet’s cap minutely in an attempt to conceal the scars on her scalp. She’d thought about putting on the wig that she’d purchased in The Valley, during her day out with Arc, but every cadet on campus who saw her would know instantly what she was doing, no matter how careful she was.

“Then stop thinking so loudly,” C’rise said. “It would certainly make my life easier if you weren’t constantly shouting your infatuation to everyone with ears to hear. He likes you too, and a shaved head isn’t going to change that.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” Vee grumbled.

Cassie didn’t turn to see her friend go, but she certainly heard the door slam. There wasn’t anything else she could do to make the cap look any better, she decided, so she turned away from the mirror and faced the psycher, meeting the alien woman’s vibrant pink eyes. “I notice you don’t have any healing scars on your head.”

“No,” C’rise said. “No one is certain how implanting neural lace into my brain would affect me. It’s never been attempted on any of my people before. I expect it will be years of medical studies before anyone tries.”

“How are you going to pilot a mech, then?” Cassie demanded. She tried to think back and recall whether she’d seen the other cadet get into a simulator pod, during their first lesson with Lieutenant Commander Libby. She must have.

“LeShaii mechs use a psionic interface, rather than an electronic one,” C’rise explained. “My father saw to it that what I needed was shipped to the academy.”

“You’re not going to be piloting a Tyro,” Cassie guessed.

“No.” C’rise shook her head. “When we are cleared to move from simulators to piloting, I will be permitted to use a…” She paused, for a moment. “I don’t know the word, in Imperial Standard. What is the name of a rotating star that emits radiation from its poles?”

Pulsar, Lyra answered, before Cassie could even think about it. She’s talking about a pulsar.

Cassie sighed. “We call it a pulsar.”

“That is the name of the model, then,” C’rise declared, with one of the only smiles that Cassie had ever seen cross her face. “You will see it, in time.” She turned and walked to the door, then hesitated with the handle in her grasp. “Would it make you more comfortable with my presence if you learned to shield your thoughts?” she asked.

“If I knew you couldn’t read my mind—like if there was some sort of implant, or genetic modification, that made it impossible –” Cassie hesitated. “Yes. I think it would.”

“I don’t know about any of those things,” C’rise said, without turning away from the door. “But I could teach you to discipline your mind, if you wish it.”

“Why?” Cassie asked. “I haven’t exactly been welcoming to you.”

“No. But I can feel that you are afraid of me,” C’rise said. “And the boy you like—he is kind. He came to speak to me when he saw that I was upset. If Cadet Sandhurst can see something in you worth caring about, I will choose to believe him.” She slipped out into the corridor, and closed the door behind her, leaving Cassie alone with her thoughts.

𝝮

The first class of Monday morning was Astronautics, and as Arc had guessed when the two of them were sitting next to each other during the space elevator’s descent, all those weeks ago, it was held in a packed lecture hall. So far as Cassie could tell, every one of the forty-nine remaining first year pilot cadets was there, as well as all of the technical students.

She sat between Arc and Rain, and it did not escape Cassie’s notice that Vee sat on Arc’s other side. They took the second to last row, so that Pika could spread himself out in the last just behind them without having to worry whether anyone would be able to see over his head. To Cassie’s surprise, three of the tech students joined them, filling in at the edges of the group: Moore, Tremblay, and Natalie Ramírez, who’d all been with her and Arc on the ill-fated water gathering expedition.

“How’s that leg doing?” Cassie asked her, once they’d all settled in.

“Better every day,” Ramírez said, from the last row, where she’d sunk into a seat next to Pika. “Though it hurts like a puta after I’ve crossed the whole campus six times to get from one class to another.”

Cassie tried not to be jealous of the fact that Ramírez still had all her hair. It wasn’t her fault, after all, that the techs didn’t get neural lace. The other girl must have caught her glance, however, for she leaned forward. “How bad is it?” she asked.

With a wince, Cassie removed her cap.

“Ouch.” Ramírez returned the wince in sympathy. “Looks like it’s healing up good, though. I bet your head is in better shape than my leg, in a week or so.”

Cassie pulled her cap back on, but before she could respond, Professor Void Skimmer walked in, took her place at the lectern, and gave out a high-pitched, warbling trill that silenced the room. Unlike Vee, the Torean professor had hardly any color at all: her feathers were black and white, and she wore a skirt suit to match. If Cassie hadn’t already known that she held no rank in fleet, that alone would have told her.

“Some of you may be wondering why you’re here,” Void Skimmer said, as she stepped out from behind the lectern and began to pace back and forth at the bottom of the hall. “You might be thinking, ‘I’ve already decided I’m going to pilot an Outrider, or a Culverin. Why do I need an introduction to astronautics if I’m not going to be flying a Kestrel or a Leviathan? Or you’re one of our tech students, and you figure that you’re going to be hot-swapping cannons for lasers on a mech’s hardpoints in between sorties. This crazy feathered lady down here talking to you certainly doesn’t know anything about that. And you’re right.” She grinned.

“But here’s the truth,” the professor went on. “Chances are that at some point you’re going to do a deployment on a carrier, or at the top of an orbital elevator. Maybe you’ll be hunting pirates in some asteroid belt. Or maybe, you’ll be part of the carrier battle group chasing the Na’xir Swarm back to whatever hunk of rock they came from. We’re going to need to land mechs when we find them, you can bet on that.”

“If it hasn’t occurred to you yet that any member of fleet—no matter what their role—benefits from a basic understanding of how to navigate in zero gravity, you haven’t been using your head the way it’s meant to be used,” Void Skimmer went on. “Even if you’re never going to be a pilot, you may find it useful to get qualified on a shuttle. If you want to understand tactics well enough to be a competent officer, I hate to break it to you, but you’re going to need to be able to solve a two body problem.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“That,” she declared, “is why you’re here. We’re going to talk about satellites; about orbital mechanics; communications, sensors, propulsion systems, how to deal with heat, what kind of power we need, attitude and control systems. This course is a prerequisite to literally anything that’s going to take you further along our zero-g track, from astrodynamics to propulsion and astrophysics. You start here, and if you don’t pass my course, you don’t get any further.”

Void Skimmer grinned. “Now, let’s begin.”

𝝮

In the mornings, they went to academic courses. After lunch, they threw themselves into training under Lieutenant Commander Libby in the simulator pods. This time, Cassie paid attention to where C’rise went, when they all made for their own individual pods. The LeShaii girl went to the very last pod-space on the left, where a rope had been placed to bar the stairs down, and a sign read ‘authorized personnel only.’

Cassie tried to get a glimpse of what might make that pod different from all the others, but she must have lingered for too long, because Libby glared at her and made a shooing motion toward her own pod. Rather than risk the instructor’s ire, Cassie hurried down the metal stairs and got herself hooked in, leaving her own curiosity for later.

On Tuesday evening, rather than getting dinner with her friends, Cassie nervously waited in front of Tycho Hall. Jessica, she knew, would be somewhere nearby, her silent shadow, and that thought was comforting.

She almost didn’t do it.