4: Convocation

Academy Hill, Vidako
Imperium Stellarum
August 12, 2847

Arc very carefully unwrapped the taped bundle of packing foam, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the five centimeter FS-3R Kestrel ‘Blood Hawk,’ lovingly painted and based with a bit of green flocking, had come through the trip unscathed. He set it on the windowsill in front of the right hand desk in his dorm room—the same side of the room his upper bunk was on. By all rights he should have been stuck with one of the bottom mattresses, but no one was willing to trust Pika’s weight to a top bunk.

“I can’t believe you brought a toy to the academy,” Cal Madine scoffed, from the left hand bottom bunk, where he was seated and already polishing his regulation, high gloss black low quarter shoes. Arc couldn’t see what point there possibly was in trying to shine up shoes which had just been issued and had never been worn before, but he kept his mouth shut, stuffed the handful of tape and packing foam into the trash bin between the two desks, and moved back over to his open suitcase.

“That’s no toy,” Pika rumbled. The Alu’kan cadet’s voice was so low that bass didn’t even begin to describe it, and Arc half-suspected that if the big man ever got mad enough to shout, they’d all feel it in their bones. “That’s Beecher Red Crest’s mech, isn’t it?”

Arc nodded. For just a moment, the sight of his half-emptied luggage, the tablet charging dock lying on top of an eye mask and box of disposable earplugs his mother had insisted he bring—You never know if your roommates will snore, dear—was replaced by the memory of Lieutenant Red Crest at the funeral, his dress whites perfectly creased, medals gleaming. The feel of the ace’s hand enfolding his own. Then, Arc shook his head, blinked the memory away, and set back to unpacking, tossing his things up onto his mattress one at a time.

“It is,” he answered Pika. There really wasn’t all that much to unpack—just about everything a cadet needed at the academy was issued when they arrived, from their socks to their sheets and pillows.

“I remember reading the guy who won the imperial tournament this year used a Blood Hawk,” Pika pressed. “Got it right in behind the other guy’s line and took out his flagship. Rolled half the army up with failed morale checks.”

“Yeah,” Arc agreed, fishing the last thing he’d brought out of his suitcase. Once it was empty, he closed it up, lifted it off the desk, and carried it over to the closet that he and Pika would be sharing, where he stowed it away.

“Bullshit,” Cal exclaimed, the motion of his hand, rubbing a cloth over the toe of his shoe, finally ceasing. “Utter bullshit. Do not even tell me I’m stuck rooming with a kid who only got here by playing games.”

“Wait,” Delvan Beck exclaimed, tossing a mop of dark hair back from his eyes with one hand as he leaned out from the top bunk over Cal’s head. “Are you serious? You won the Imperial Tacticalis tournament?”

Arc took advantage of the fact he had to turn his back to the other boys to climb into his bunk, but once he was on the mattress, he was out of excuses. He sighed, then nodded. “Yeah. By the time I decided I wanted to come here, it was too late to make it any other way, and I’ve been playing for years, so—”

“What a farce.” Cal Madine dropped his half-polished shoe on top of his mattress, sprang to his feet, and stormed over to Pika and Arc’s bunk. “You know, some of us actually worked to be here, Sandhurst. I was top of my class at Proxima. I’ve been training every weekend for as long as I can remember. I was in the junior officer corps, I put in hundreds of hours of community service—and you think you deserve to be here because you moved a couple of little plastic men around on a table, and got lucky? Bullshit.”

“I mean, it isn’t really luck,” Delvan spoke up. “There’s a reason the imperial family sponsors those things.”

“Shut up, Beck,” Madine snarled, turning away from Arc and jabbing a finger at his bunkmate’s face. “Let me guess. Your family bought you a senator’s letter.”

“Sure,” Delvan said. “And I’m not ashamed of it. Don’t tell me you think the fact that you’re an admiral’s son had nothing to do with you being here?”

“I worked for this!” Cal exclaimed. “Unlike some people.” With that, he strode over to the door, yanked it open, and stormed out into the hall, leaving the rest of them alone in silence.

“Well, this is off to a great start,” Delvan grumbled, and collapsed back onto his mattress.

“Don’t let that guy bother you, Sandhurst,” Pika said, from below. “Doesn’t matter how you got here. Only sixty-one pilot cadets in our class, from out of the entire Imperium, and everyone had to earn it one way or another.”

“Sixty-two,” Delvan said. “The princess reached her majority this year. That’s one more recommendation.”

The princess. Now that Cal was gone, Arc felt safe enough to turn himself about, then lie back on his mattress, resting his head on the thin, fleet-issue pillow. Princess Cascada Vega Sabran-Solaris. I’m such an idiot.

It made sense, now, what she’d said to him on the elevator car. Don’t stare. I hate it when people stare—the very first words out of her mouth. The fact that the only seat left in the entire car was the one right next to her; he imagined that everyone else—everyone who wasn’t a clueless idiot—had been afraid to just walk over and sit themselves right down next to a princess imperial. She’d even asked him, do you really not know?

But no, he hadn’t. Arc had never really been the sort of person who followed the tabloid coverage of the imperial family. Oh, he was aware of them, of course, in a sort of vague and distant way, but they didn’t touch his world. Emperor Altair was just about as far away from Arc’s daily life as the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, and as long as the two of those entities kept on doing their jobs, Arc didn’t have to worry about either.

He knew that some people cared a lot more, of course. Arc and Teo had rolled their eyes every time Rashmi went on about how handsome the prince was, and she could definitely go on for hours. She’d even tried to sucker the two of them into going to a watch party for the announcement of Prince Orion’s engagement, from which they’d fled with all the urgency due an incoming natural disaster.

And that’s Cassie’s brother. The emperor’s her father. And you sat there chattering away at her like she was any other girl! Arc remembered how he’d leaned over her lap to get a look out the elevator window at that passing Kestrel, and felt his heart drop into his belly like an ice-cold rock. She could probably have him arrested for even touching her!

There was no help for it; he was going to have to find her and apologize, Arc resolved. He doubted the RAs would look kindly on him poking around the girls’ floor of the dormitory on the first day, and he didn’t actually know what room she was in, but he could catch her at dinner. There was only a single dining hall, so he knew that she’d be there. The prospect of approaching a princess imperial, in front of his entire class of cadets, and making a public apology for how he’d treated her was just about the most terrifying thing he could think of.

But facing down the Black Queen of Nepenthe will be about a thousand times worse.

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With a sigh, Arc grabbed his tablet, unfolded it, and turned the camera on. His mother would cross half the empire to murder him herself if he didn’t send a message back with the first data packet to leave Vidako.