7. They Also Serve

Academy Hill, Vidako
Imperium Stellarum
August 13, 2847

“Come on, Rain, you can do it,” Cassie urged her bunkmate. She wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about stripping down to the plain gray underwear the academy had provided them herself, but the Alu’kan girl was actually trembling.

“Maybe we can ask for an exception,” Vee said. She was standing at the front of their little group of three, while Cassie brought up the back, so that Rain was sandwiched between them.

“We’ve already seen how much they care about making exceptions for anyone,” Cassie grumbled. She was still nursing a grudge over the fact that Cadet Lynstan-Hanigata had flat out refused to even consider moving the LeShaii, C’rise, to a different room. To be fair, the psycher had been just as upset, if for her own reasons.

“The Alu’kans thoughts are like spikes driven through my eyes,” C’rise had railed, without much apparent concern for how the girl in question might feel. “You can’t expect me to sleep, or study, or live with a mind like hers!”

It had all seemed rather hysterical, Cassie thought. Her own reasoning, on the other hand, had been utterly practical, and not based on her own personal feelings at all. “As a member of the Imperial Family, I have security clearances and access to sensitive information that she isn’t cleared for,” Cassie had explained. “It’s my responsibility to safeguard that information. I could be legally culpable if it is leaked. And I have no way of knowing what a psycher is pulling from my mind.”

And yet, faced with both entreaties, the RA had done little more than roll her eyes—while petting Flopsy with one hand. “You can try to go above my head to the commandant,” Karisa Lynstan-Hanigata had said, while they all stood in front of her in her room. Her single occupancy RA room, where she didn’t have to put up with anyone sharing her space at all, except for a shadow-rabbit.

“But I can already tell you what Captain Marlowe is going to say,” the older woman had continued. “It’s going to be the same thing she says to everyone who thinks they’ve got some special reason they need to change roommates. ‘Personal conflicts are your responsibility to work out. As a part of fleet, you need to be able to work and live with anyone you are assigned to. Figure it out.’ And then she’ll issue you demerits for wasting her time.”

Which was utter junk, because Cassie was willing to bet that neither the commandant, nor Karisa Lynstan-Hanigata had ever been forced to sleep in the same room as someone who could read their mind. None of which helped them convince Rain to get ready for her examinations, and none of which made Cassie feel any less angry.

“I’ll snag the RA,” Vee said, leaning out of line. “She’s right over there.” The Torean girl waved her hands energetically. Unlike Cassie and the other women in line, she was bare-chested. It was a bit jarring, but Torean women weren’t mammals, and so they didn’t have breasts, or even nipples—though a few had been known to get implants, for cosmetic purposes. There really wasn’t any reason for her to wear anything, and she certainly didn’t seem at all self conscious.

“Well, if it isn’t the three musketeers again,” Karisa Lynstan-Hanigata grumbled, making her way over. “Where’s D’Artagnon?” Her shadow-rabbit hopped along at her feet, its nose bent to occasionally snuffle along the ground.

“Rain isn’t comfortable undressing until she’s in private,” Cassie explained.

Cadet Lynstan-Hanigata looked over the Alu’kan girl, and sighed. “Cadet Makani, I understand why you’d have a hard time with this, but you need to get over it right now. There’s a reason we do this. Your body is imperial property as of the moment you stepped onto this campus, and we will do with it what the Emperor demands. Part of that is breaking you of whatever body-image hang-ups or self-consciousness you have. You don’t get to wait for a female doctor when your leg gets torn off by a bad ejection seat launch. No one cares what kind of plumbing you’ve got in your pants.”

Rain, however, simply hunched her shoulders and curled further in on herself.

“If you can’t do this,” Lynstan-Hanigata continued, “you wash out. And trust me, there’s a lot worse coming. Look.” Her voice softened. “If you get your clothes off and into the tray, I’ll let you hold Flopsy while you go through the line. How does that sound?”

The shadow-rabbit’s ears perked up, and he lifted his nose, then hopped over to press himself up against Rain’s leg. Carefully, he rose up on his hind legs until he could reach her dangling hand with his head, and pressed his nose into her hand. Then, to Cassie’s surprise, he began to purr.

Rain’s head gave more of a jerk than a nod, and she bent over just long enough to scoop the shadow-rabbit up into her arms and clutch him to her chest. Between Cassie and Vee, they helped her out of her boots and pants, and then transferred the rabbit just long enough to get the top of Rain’s uniform off before handing the creature back.

Cassie had a pretty good idea of what the problem was, even if she didn’t know the specifics—and she wouldn’t ask, not until Rain opened up on her own. But it was clear the girl had been through something that left her thoroughly traumatized, and the fact that Senator Catalina was the one who’d sent her pretty much spelled it out—because Dorotea Catalina’s pet issue was helping victims of trafficking.

Her eyes drifted over to the other line, where the boys shuffled forward in their shorts. Pika, Arc’s massive roommate, was easy to find, a little bit ahead. Just as she’d thought, Arc was in line right behind him. Next to the boys who’d trained their bodies for years before they came to the academy, he was skinny and pale, and Cassie could tell that he was self-conscious. He kept his head fixed straight ahead as if afraid to look at the girls’ line, and because she was behind him, he wouldn’t have seen her even if he had glanced over.

At least, she thought, he was doing better than Rain.

𝝮

“Everyone gets the Morenan Pox vaccine,” the orderly insisted, hypodermic needle clutched in her grasp as if she were only two seconds away from stabbing Cassie with it like she was using some primitive sacrificial dagger.

“You need to check your records.” Cassie sighed. She was covered in dried sweat from all the physical tests they made her take, and it was all she could do not to rub her left arm and her rear from the vaccinations she’d already had. “I have a Type IV toxin-neutralizing protein modification, direct from Morena, because that’s where my family is from. Your vaccine won’t help me, it’ll only screw things up.”

The orderly frowned, and grabbed the file packet that Cassie had been forced to lug from one station to the next. “What was your name again, cadet?” she asked.

Cassie hated doing it, but she simply didn’t see any choice. “Cascada Vega Sabran-Solaris,” she said, letting a bit of her frustration leak out. “I’ve probably got the most heavily modified DNA you’re going to see all day, and I know what’s in me better than you do. Clearly. So I’m not going to let you mess me up.”

“Is there a problem here?” a man’s voice broke in, and Cassie turned to see a cadet with second class insignia on his lapel walk into the room, wearing a white coat over his gray academy-issued shirt. He was tall—taller than Cassie, with broad shoulders and piercing eyes.

“The problem is that taking that shot will mess with my genetics,” Cassie said, turning to face him head on. She’d have preferred to be wearing something other than her underwear while doing it, but the RA had told them to get over themselves, so she was determined to do just that.

“Let me see her paperwork,” the young man said, and leafed through half a dozen pages before nodding. “She’s right. No vaccine for this one—I’ll sign off on it myself.”

“If you say so,” the orderly grumbled. “If Doctor Seung hears about this -”

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“I’ll tell her myself, and if she has a problem, it will be with me,” the cadet said. “Move along, Cadet Solaris.”

“Yes, sir,” Cassie said. She accepted her paperwork back, threw it on top of her clothes and her tray, and stepped through the door into the next station. To her surprise, the older cadet moved along after her.

“My apologies for that,” he said. “You’ve got the kind of genetics we’ve only ever seen here once or twice before.”