9. Merits and Demerits

Academy Hill, Vidako
Imperium Stellarum
August, 2847

Over the days that followed, Arc began to get a very good idea of how Academy Hill, and the campus which stretched across it, were laid out. Lieutenant Kekoa and a constantly rotating cast of upperclassmen assistants—each of whom was only too happy to ‘smoke’ any cadet who made the slightest mistake—drove them to and fro across the paths, the greens, the training fields, and the obstacle courses with delirious fury.

At the center of the campus were the administrative buildings, such as the infirmary and Montalban Hall, the commissary and the officers’ club, as well as a wide lawn surrounded by genetically engineered variations of Terran trees. Moving north from there were the academic buildings, the athletic facilities, and the student dormitories, followed by housing for the officers and professors who made up the academy’s faculty. Continuing downhill led to The Valley, though lowly first-year cadets trying to survive Hard Burn weren’t permitted to leave campus.

The southern portion of the hill, nearest to the farmlands which surrounded San Teodoro, and to the thick, equatorial jungles of native life that flourished beyond, was taken up not only by the small airfield to which Arc and his classmates had been delivered on that first day, but also by all of the industrial apparatus that went along with the school’s function. Mech hangars, repair bays, warehouses full of orderly row upon row of ammo crates, cranes, gantries, forklifts, industrial exoskeletons, shooting ranges and practice fields all together took up more than half the campus, but the largest single structure was the grounded bulk of the ISS Olybrius, a decommissioned frigate used for training.

Saker VTOLs buzzed overhead, grav-trucks came and went along the access road which led to the warehouse loading docks, and Arc ran along the edge of the fences, in line with the other cadets, sweating until his clothes were soaked through beneath the twin suns of Vidako. They ran past T-3 Tyros, the thirty-five ton training mechs of the Imperium Stellarum, singly or in pairs. The 3rd class cadets, just a year ahead of Arc and his friends, still moved their machines awkwardly, and the massive feet of the mechs shook the ground with every step.

“Get a good look,” Lieutenant Kekoa told them, as he marched them past. “Because the only way you get to ride in those mechs is through me—and my job is to weed out those of you who are too weak to hack it. I would rather leave you sobbing on the ground than let you into a cockpit if you haven’t earned it. I would rather you collapse right here, right now, with a burst heart, and die in the dirt, than see one of you maggots get all the way to fleet, crack under the pressure, and get a wingmate killed.”

Arc did look: everyone did. Those mechs were what was ahead of them, if they managed to survive the torture which currently encompassed their days. The Tyros were not fancy, or complicated. They had one job alone, and it was a function for which they had been carefully designed: to teach cadets the very basics of how to pilot. Secondarily, the engineers had put some thought into how to make certain those cadets survived the inevitable accidents they would have.

In many ways, the shape of the Tyro was a much closer analogue to the human body than the Kestrel that Arc and Cassie had seen in space. There were no wings or thrusters, and both forearms ended in carefully articulated, five finger hands which could mimic the motions of a human, Alu’kan, or Torean. The lower legs and feet were disproportionately thick and wide, the better to provide a new pilot with stability and a lower center of gravity.

While there was armor plating on those lower legs, along with the tops of the hips, the outsides of the forearms, and the shoulders, the Tyros were obviously not meant to survive a battlefield. The silicon nitride ceramic plates were kept light and out of the way, to provide a maximum range of motion; only the cockpit itself, in the mech’s chest, was heavily protected. There, the armor plating was thick and projected out from the mech’s torso in the rough shape of a curved ‘x,’ which extended up over the top of the head.

Four hardpoints, a pair on the outside of each shoulder, mounted a relatively light set of weapons. Arc spent more time than he should have squinting, each time they marched or ran past, and got called out on it once, which resulted in so many sit-ups that his stomach cramped. As far as he could tell, the training mechs were usually equipped with lasers. They probably don’t want to waste ammo on new pilots.

Occasionally, they were given a glimpse of the upperclassmen, as well.

During the second year at the academy, each cadet was expected to specialize in a specific model, and to qualify in its operation. While the Kestrels and Leviathans were in orbit, that still left three different Imperial ground mechs to train on Academy Hill, and out in the jungles.

Out of those, the A-3 Culverins were the most impressive, and Arc caught quite a few of the other cadets watching them. At seventy-tons, they were also the largest mechs at the academy, with not only hardpoints on the shoulders, but an extended and ejectable rear firing platform that projected off the back of the mech and carried four missile racks, as well as an anti-missile gun. The Culverin’s clawed feet were meant to dig into the earth and brace against the enormous recoil of their rail guns. They could carry a frankly preposterous amount of firepower, but that lack of mobility worried Arc. He didn’t ever want to be caught in a position where he couldn’t maneuver.

Nearly the polar opposite, in terms of function on the battlefield, were the R-3 Outriders. At only five tons heavier than a Tyro—most of that in armor—they were clearly meant for violence. Their lines weren’t so different, but the sleek curves at the shoulders and the sharp angles of the chest and leg armor gave the impression of a stalking predator. They were also equipped with thrusters mounted on the back of the chassis, though Arc hadn’t yet been fortunate enough to actually witness a pilot lighting them off. He would also have given quite a bit to see the scout mech’s adaptive camouflage armor in action, but he supposed they saved that for expeditions into the jungles.

It was the F-3 Janissary that Arc caught Cassie watching, during one of their rare breaks to rest. Bottles of water had been passed around, once they’d all collapsed onto the black grass, soaked in sweat. One of the front-line mechs had made its way by, moving between a hanger and one of the firing ranges. If the Outrider was meant to find a hostile force, and the Culverin to bombard, the Janissary was clearly built for breaking enemy lines, like a cavalry charge of old. Faster than the fire-support mechs and more durable than the scouts, Janissaries were also the most likely to be equipped with close range weapons—which Cassie had pointed out.

“There—you see that handle magnetically hooked to the back, just behind the shoulder?” she’d said, leaning in toward him and pointing with one hand. “That’s a plasma blade.”

Arc had squinted, then nodded. “The Blood Hawk had two of those built into the tips of its wings,” he pointed out. “Most Kestrel pilots don’t bother to get that close.” But before they’d been able to continue the conversation, Lieutenant Kekoa had gotten the cadets moving again, off to an obstacle course that left most of them absolutely soaked in cold, dark mud.

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And so it went.

What rest they were given was only enough to catch their breath before being pushed into the next grueling exercise. Arc forgot what it was like to have a body that didn’t hurt, that wasn’t covered in bruises, scrapes, and a constant layer of sweat. At mess, he ate what he was given, hungrier than he could ever recall being in his life, because of how many calories the cadets were burning each day. The best part of each day was shovelling down food in the evening, followed by a hot shower in the dormitories, and then collapsing into his bunk.

There was never enough time to sleep, and he never felt fully rested. Each morning he dragged himself out of his bunk at Cal Madine’s alarm. Arc couldn’t quite muster the will to be grateful for how the other cadet managed their time, even though he could see how useful it was. The most he could do was tamp down his own resentment and force himself not to scream for one more hour in bed.

Everything they did was tested or evaluated. They were timed when they ran two kilometers, or as they scurried over the obstacle course. When they lined up at the pull-up bars in the athletic building, upperclassmen stood ready with tablets to keep count. Failure was punished with demerits, and success with merits, which the older cadets had the power to hand out. Lieutenant Kekoa explained the system on which the academy operated on the fourth day of Hard Burn.

“We are not here to coddle you,” the imposing Alu’kan officer declared. “Some of you have come here from powerful and wealthy families, and some of you from dirt. It would be a lie to say that you are equal now. Cadet Beck, how many genetic modifications were coded into your DNA while you were an embryo?”

“Seven, sir!” Delvan answered, shouting the response out fast. He’d made enough mistakes—mostly, Arc thought, caused by anxiety or exhaustion—that the upperclassmen, such as Cadet Van Camp, had singled him out.

“List them,” Kekoa continued.

“Enhanced NMDA Receptors,” Beck began. “Boosted Adrenal Gland. Hyper Efficient Brain Flush. Boosted reflexes, hand eye coordination, cardiovascular system, and musculature.”

“You hear that?” Lieutenant Kekoa roared. “You may not know what all those fancy terms mean, so I’ll tell you. Cadet Beck learns more quickly than most of you do. He needs less sleep. He can stand up to more g-forces, because he’s got a ticker that’s better than yours. Put a gun in his hand, and I bet he hits a bullseye in his first clip, whether he’s got any training or not. Does that sound fair to you?”

The cadets looked uncomfortably at each other, or down at the ground.