36. October Days

Academy Hill, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum
October 6, 2847

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cassie’s voice came through the speakers in the simulator pod with the slightest bit of crackle. “I’ve been running simulations for years, Arc.”

“I’m certain,” he said, as he looked over the icons which displayed the status of his Tyro’s systems. The wireframe was green, the batteries read 99% charge, and his shoulder-mounted autocannons had six-hundred rounds each. The CO-4 Mech Grade Laser Rifle was a solid, comforting weight in the Tyro’s hands, but he frowned when he noticed one final weapon system, one he hadn’t ever used before, displayed.

“IMT Plasma Blade,” he muttered.

Vijay Iyer’s voice crackled over the speakers. “Cadet Sabran-Solaris requested one of those for each of you, and I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to approve,” he explained. “Though if you want to learn how to use one, Sandhurst, you should really join the fencing club. Anyway, I didn’t wake up early on a Sunday to sit here while the two of you waste time. We’ve only got a two-hour block before someone else has the next time slot, so get moving. I’m setting you both up in the jungle, since that’s where we’re going to be patrolling. Show me what you can do, kids.”

Around the Tyro, the simulation shimmered. Wide, sweeping plains of waving grass faded out of existence, to be replaced by the thick trunks of native Vidakan trees, growing up out of the soil and spreading their boughs overhead into a tight canopy. The ground to Arc’s left fell away into a ravine, through which a river tumbled. A choking mass of deathroot, its red, bladed flowers the brightest thing in the jungle, spilled down over the edge of the ravine, dangling its roots into the water. All the sounds of the jungle surrounded him: the buzzing of zombie-flies, the cry of native birds, the rushing of the water over stones, all the thousand noises of a vast tapestry of life.

“I’m starting you two-hundred meters apart,” Iyer said. “I’ve thrown in a few tree-cats, but no spiked terrors yet. I’ll save those for the third or fourth run. Begin.”

Sensors, Arc thought to Iceni. Find her for me, while I get us moving.

I’ll see what I can do, the AI replied. I have audio, visual, infrared, and radar, though the foliage will interfere with that. If Cadet Iyer had given us a larger playing field, this would be very difficult.

Arc turned the Tyro away from the ravine: he didn’t want to risk a fall while climbing down, even if it might be used to give him cover. It might have been different if he had thrusters—and if he’d any training or experience in using them—but he didn’t. Instead, he kept the barrel of the CO-4 Laser Rifle up, cradled in both of the mech’s hands, while he slowly advanced through the thick jungle growth, bearing slightly to the right.

I’ve got something, Iceni said. Coming in fast from ten-o-clock.

Arc began the turn back to his left just in time to eat a spray of autocannon rounds, marked by bright tracer fire, straight into his mech’s chest. The impact rocked his Tyro backward, throwing his balance off, and it was all he could do to keep from falling by releasing the barrel of his rifle with the mech’s left hand, and grabbing onto the trunk of a nearby tree, which splintered beneath the mechanical, grasping fingers.

While he was occupied with not falling, two brilliant green lasers snapped out of the jungle, flickering into existence for only a single, frozen moment of time. One scoured a line of melted ceramic along his left arm, but the other missed entirely, burning through twenty-meters of thick jungle at once.

Iceni painted Cassie’s mech in bright, vibrant red, but she was nearly entirely concealed by the jungle, and already moving. Arc brought his rifle around and snapped a shot off without even waiting for his targeting reticule to change color. The higher powered beam was half a shade between blue and green, the sort of brilliant cerulean one saw in advertisements for tropical resorts on old Terra. He couldn’t even tell whether he’d hit or not, and Cassie was already gone.

Arc let go of the broken tree trunk and slowly turned the mech, trying to keep her from getting around behind him as he backed up. The wire-frame damage indicator pulsed between green and yellow at his mech’s left arm and torso. “Where is she?” he asked Iceni, and with a thought toggled to infrared sensors, hoping to catch the hot barrels of her autocannons.

I don’t know, his AI said, clearly frustrated. It’s like she dropped off my radar entirely. But that can’t –

“The ravine,” Arc realized.

He had just enough time to formulate the thought before a beam of cerulean light lashed out, perhaps two meters above the ground, from where Cassie was using the river as a sort of impromptu trench and firing position. The heavier laser rifle, more powerful than any of their shoulder mounted guns, melted through the ceramic plates which protected his mech’s ankle, and then the graphene-fiber artificial muscles which allowed the foot to both move, and to support the Tyro’s weight.

This time, Arc wasn’t able to keep his mech upright. It crashed onto the jungle floor, tearing through half a dozen low-hanging branches and vines as it went down. In the wireframe damage readout, the white leg of his mech pulsed yellow. If he could roll the mech over, onto its hands and knees, Arc realized that he might still be able to get it up again. He’d lost the rifle in the fall, but with both hands still functional there was a chance.

Then, a shadow fell over his sensor feed, revealing Cassie’s Tyro, looming over Arc’s fallen mech with an ignited plasma blade.

“My win. One to zero,” Cassie said, and plunged the glowing blade down directly into his simulated cockpit.

𝝮

The rest of the morning went by in much the same way, with Cassie ripping Arc’s mech to pieces in a variety of brutal and inventive assaults. The problem wasn’t so much that he couldn’t see what she was doing, or that her tactics were particularly impressive, but that she was just so much better at moving her mech than he was. Those years of practice before ever coming to the academy were showing. It was as if she’d been running with weights on for years, and now that she’d been given her neural lace, those weights had finally come off.

Arc, on the other hand, continued to be awkward and hesitant as a pilot. He wasn’t a bad shot, when he had time to aim, even without the targeting computers. He felt like he had a good eye for terrain, and how it might be used—in any event, he always understood how Cassie was using it to beat him, even when he couldn’t keep up. In fact, if he’d been quicker, more natural at moving the mech, he’d seen several opportunities over the course of the morning to turn things around on her.

Because Cassie had, Arc came to realize, a pattern. A style might be a better way of putting it. She liked to get in close. She wanted to finish things with a plasma blade, and so she was always trying to create an opportunity to catch him off guard, so that she could close distance without losing her mech in the process. Once she did get in close, it was all over. She’d carved off his mech’s arm, leg, or head enough times over the course of one morning to make that particularly clear.

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But in spite of how utterly aggravating it was to fight her, he was learning. It was hard to see in the moment, when she could run rings around him without any apparent difficulty, but when Monday afternoon came, Lieutenant Commander Libby noticed.

“Someone approve you to put in extra simulator time, Sandhurst?” Libby asked. He was waiting for Arc just outside the simulator pod at the end of the class.

“Cadet Iyer, sir,” Arc explained, as he unbuckled himself from the pilot’s chair. “He wants to take me on his patrol at the end of the month, sir. I spent two hours down here with Cadet Sabran-Solaris over the weekend.”

Libby considered him for a long moment, and then nodded. “Good work, cadet. I hope you appreciate that Cadet Iyer is giving you an opportunity, and I hope that you take full advantage of it.”

“I will, sir,” Arc assured him.

As an upperclassman who’d tested out to pilot both the Tyro and a Janissary, Vijay Iyer was approved to sign up for simulator time without needing an instructor’s permission—and there was no regulation against him extending the privilege to underclassmen. Open simulators weren’t often available, so they took the times they could get—which meant early mornings, and late in the evening.