48. End of Semester

Academy Hill, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum

December 20, 2847

As Arc’s first semester courses barrelled toward a conclusion, he became increasingly frustrated at the fact that, despite her promise, Ireti Ọlatẹru hadn’t yet managed to get him a Kestrel pilot to practice against in the simulator pods.

With Doctor Seung’s approval, he reported for regular sessions of centrifuge training on the second floor of the athletic building. The first time he waited while a corpsman fastened him in at the end of a seven meter arm, he wondered out loud why the academy hadn’t switched to using artificial gravity fields yet.

“Rumor is there’s a grant application out,” Corpsman Miller explained, without making eye contact. “But grav-tech is still kind of new, and things like this aren’t a priority. Plus, can you imagine how many credits it’s going to take to tear this machinery out and refit the entire room?”

“Millions of credits,” Arc ventured.

Miller laughed. “This old thing here cost over thirty million credits when it was installed, and they don’t ever let us forget. I can’t even imagine how much trouble someone would be in if we ever managed to actually break it. Anyway, here’s what you’re going to do first: you’re going to work on breathing techniques. Deep breaths in, and then push the air out through your lips like you’re breathing through a straw. Got it?”

Arc nodded. “Got it.”

Miller slapped him on the shoulder. “You don’t got it. Get ready to have a leatherback stand on your chest.”

In the evenings, they watched whatever footage Jessica could get in what Arc and his friends had all come to refer to as ‘the war room.’ All of the academy mechs, from the Tyros on up to the Kestrels, record everything that happened while they were in operation. Usually, that was used by piloting instructors to help their students focus on what they could do to improve their weak points. As a result, there were potentially hundreds of hours of cockpit time stored in the academy databanks over the course of the past two years, only some of which would actually be useful.

“I started by excluding everything recorded before he tested out on a Kestrel,” Jessica explained during the first study session, while she keyed up a recording on the study room’s holo-projector. “That still leaves most of last year and all of this year to date. Then, I tried to filter out anything that was just a routine patrol, anything that didn’t have weapons being fired.”

Vee raised her hand. “I still want to know how exactly you got all this.”

Jessica glared at her. “The imperial guard has backdoor access into the academy systems,” she shot back.

“As they do most imperial computers,” Cassie’s cousin Bhaskar pointed out. “Moving on. Let us get a look at how he uses his weapons.”

With the first clip, Arc thought he noticed something. By the third, he was certain of it.

“He’s not as good with his missiles as he is with the lasers,” Arc said, the moment Jessica had stopped the recording and turned the study room’s overhead lights back up.

“Indeed,” Iceni confirmed. All of the pilot’s AIs had agreed to hook into the speakers attached to the holoprojector, so that they could be part of the conversation. “We have cross-checked our analysis. Cadet Radecki, accounting for all other factors, has a hit ratio eight percent lower with his missiles, as compared to his direct fire weapons.”

“He’s relying on his targeting systems completely,” Bhaskar observed. “He isn’t making any manual adjustments, or even allowing his AI to nudge the maneuvering. I can only assume it’s a lack of confidence.”

Arc made a note on his tablet. “It might be enough for two good anti-missile turrets to keep his missiles off of me,” he mused. “Natalie, they’re only half a ton each. Do you think you could bolt them onto unit seventeen’s shoulders, or something?”

“I thought the plan was to lure him in so he couldn’t use the missiles at all?” Natalie asked.

“It is,” Arc said. “But the plan’s going to be modified as we learn more. And I want to stack every advantage we can possibly come up with before going up against him.”

“Rip the autocannons out,” Cassie suggested. “Actually, no, they’re better against that ablative armor. Take the light lasers instead, and use those hardpoints. They aren’t much good for against a Kestrel, anyway.”

“They won’t be oriented right,” Natalie pointed out. “We might need to rig up some kind of ball and socket mechanism to give them as close to a three hundred and sixty degree firing arc as we can get. But we can use the existing ammo feeds, at least…” She pulled a stylus out from behind her ear, and began sketching on her own tablet.

“Alright,” Arc said, looking back to Jessica. “What have you got that can show us how he maneuvers in tight spaces?”

Since they didn’t have a Kestrel pilot yet, Ireti Ọlatẹru made time to join Arc in the simulation pods herself. She programmed in an unorthodox Culverin variant that carried the same missile loadout as a Kestrel A: chiefly, thirty-two short range missiles, and twin Centauran Optics heavy lasers, in place of the normal railguns. It took a bit of playing with the simulation rules, because a Culverin simply didn’t have room for the same amount of missile racks as the larger Kestrel, but in the end she simply fudged things by instructing a custom simulation program to assume that she had unlimited ammunition.

“That wasn’t the only thing I had to mess with,” Ọlatẹru grumbled, over the comm systems which linked the two simulator pods. “The good news is that, while it’s useful for a simulation to obey the laws of physics, it isn’t strictly speaking necessary.”

“Surface of Chel loaded,” Cassie cut in. “Starting the simulation now. Just under one sixth of a g.” She’d insisted on coordinating their match herself, which made Arc a bit self-conscious. He suspected that he was about to look like a bit of an idiot.

The simulation cut in around him, and the feel of his Tyro pushed away Arc’s awareness of his own, physical body. Ammo and battery counts, the colored wireframe damage display, his targeting reticule, and an overhead map spawned at the edges of his vision. He glanced down at his weapons readout, to confirm the changes had been made according to Natalie’s specifications.

It was a lot less time consuming to test out a different weapons loadout in a sim, of course, before ever picking a wrench up in the actual hangar bay. Rather than his normal light lasers, Arc saw that two Broadleaf Arms automated anti-missile turrets, each with six-hundred rounds of ammunition, were listed as online and ready to fire.

“For today, we’re starting at a range of thirty-six klicks,” Cassie told them. “Those missiles actually have a longer range on a low gravity moon like Chel, but we won’t worry about that quite yet. This is already going to be hard enough for you, Arc. Weapons free in three, two… one!”

Arc moved immediately.

The surface of Chel was rocky and irregular, and they’d selected a series of canyons and ravines, where the rock and stone extracted from Vidako had left rugged cliffs and embankments that he could, theoretically, use for cover. Above the horizon was only the vast, star-strewn black of space, though one of the system’s two stars was visible to provide light.

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Things started to go wrong with the very first jump. Arc pushed off the ground to get his Tyro headed for a long slope that would take him down into the nearest canyon, but was immediately thrown off by the much lower gravity. Instead of the low, fast run that he was used to, the mech bounded up above the surface of Chel, rising a full ten meters up above the surface.

Incoming missiles detected, Iceni told him, at the apex of their arc. Eight contacts.

The Tyro seemed to descend very slowly.

“I need thrusters,” Arc grumbled. “And chaff. I need chaff launchers.”

He was halfway back down to the ground when both anti-missile turrets lit off, spraying dozens of rounds of ammunition at the incoming missiles. Arc caught a glimpse of explosions where the shells connected with their targets.

Two contacts eliminated, Iceni counted. Three.