It was silly how serious some people took themselves, Vo decided as he exited the taxi and looked at the men. Assembled like pretty peacocks in that grassy quad, surrounded on three sides by low, red-brick buildings. A wrought iron gate with ivy growing through it on the street side separated him from the group, but allowed him to watch without being noticed.
Two soldiers stood at something like parade guard duty, wearing cloaks against the threatening drizzle and carrying pulse rifles, but they were there as decoration, rather than security. What fool would launch an attack on the Imperial Forces Institute, the Army’s Headquarters and school, in the middle of the Empire’s capital city?
Vo scowled at the taxi driver as the man waved cheerfully and drove away. Not being able to do something as simple as pay a fare was going to grate, eventually. Hopefully, the locals would tire of the celebrity game of recognizing him in public. As it was, the only place he could get any peace was if he went down to the docks and had dinner at The Maltese Cross. Foster, the publican, wouldn’t allow any shenanigans in his bar, nor would the locals.
And fools and shenanigans were especially what the day ahead promised.
Vo checked the sky, but the heavy, gray clouds were behaving. He settled his black cloak a little tighter and held it closed with his left hand as he approached one of the guards and flashed his brand new identification card.
The guard had no idea who this visitor was until this moment. Vo watched the whites of his eyes suddenly appear and then disappear as the man got his shock under control.
“Welcome, sir,” the man rapped out in a low, terse voice, then reached back and pressed some unseen button to trigger the entry on silent hinges.
The gates of hell opened like a hungry maw. Vo waited a beat for them to fully clear, and then strode forward, turned right, and approached the thirty-five men standing around and trying to impress each other with whatever social games men like that used.
Peacocks.
One of them happened to be looking his way. Vo watched the sneer slowly form on the man’s face as he sized up the new arrival as big, dumb, and ugly. Two for three wasn’t bad, if you were grading on a curve.
The watcher himself was tall and thin. The picture Vo had studied earlier didn’t really convey that aspect of the man.
Aquiline face dominated by an overly-sharp nose and a receding widow’s peak that showed a trace of the natural gray, hiding under the most recent dye job. Vo would have said aristocratic, but he had met the current emperor and the Grand Admiral, both naval men, either of whom had at least ten kilos of muscle on this dandy.
The eyes were gray. Probably impressed the hell out of the ladies with that bright, rare color. Here it just made his face look washed out.
His piercing, sneering gaze found its way to Vo’s boots. Those heavy, ugly, battered, lace-up monstrosities in scuffed brown leather. Worn shiny on the sides from rubbing on Shevi’s stirrups. Brand new soles because he had walked the old ones off twice now. Vo demanded a good gripping tread under his feet if he had to move suddenly.
Pretty boy’s feet were in light boots made of polished, black leather. The almost-slip-on escapees from a pirate vid, similar to what Vo wore in his full dress uniform, but not as rugged.
Could you call a man’s boots dainty? Without triggering a duel, anyways?
Vo didn’t have to look around. The others wore something similar in style, if not overall cost. Expensive cloth pants, well-fitted, bloused picture-perfect into boots. Moirrey had called the gray-green color sage, and he was willing to trust her judgment. Tailored jackets with three buttons and an array of pretty, shiny medals and pins on the chest, braids wrapped around shoulders, epaulettes with every decoration under the sun. Front-and-rear garrison caps with more pins on them. Most with the hollow black circle of a Commander on their collar. A few wore the white star of a colonel.
The other man could only see Vo’s boots and his uncovered head, the rest of his bulk having been swallowed up by the immense space of black cloth that Moirrey had sewn for him, the thing that she called a cloak. She could have sailed a nice boat with it.
Pretty Boy looked to a few of the others for social reinforcement as Vo moved a few steps closer. A bubble opened up around him, like he might be contagious.
Maybe, considering.
Peacocks.
“Are you in the wrong place?” Pretty Boy asked leadingly.
Vo guessed the man really wanted to address him as Sergeant or perhaps Corporal, so he could establish a terribly high promontory from which he could piss on some stranger he didn’t know. Best way to establish pack hierarchy: pick out someone that didn’t fit with the rest of the group and ostracize him. Navin the Black would have just laughed in the man’s face. But he was like that.
Vo had his own way to deal with petty people like this. He decided to play dumb. It usually worked on punks, and Pretty Boy had all the right hallmarks.
“My orders were to report for Field School,” Vo replied in a soft, diffident tone. “Ground Forces Institute, Werder. We’re all in the right place, yes?”
“I don’t know you,” Pretty Boy’s voice got icy and sharp. “Do you think you belong here?”
Internally, Vo grinned. He supposed that the Imperial Land Forces were a pretty closed group, when you got to this rank. People who knew each other from Academy, and usually boarding schools before that, since commoners like him rarely made it this far. If you really wanted to get ahead in the military, you joined the navy. They were far more open to skill and expertise.
Outwardly, Vo fixed Pretty Boy with a hard stare. Playground games. Vo was on Navin’s dojo floor now. His scowl deepened.
“Tell me, Commander van Gorzen,” Vo let his voice drop down to an earthquake rumble. “What makes you think you deserve to be here?”
It was rather fun watching the man’s face crinkle in disdain and loathing. The way the nose flared. The slight flush to the otherwise pale cheeks. The bunching of the jaw and pursing of the lips, as though he had just sucked the soul out of a lemon.
“I am the nephew of the Duke of Shaposhnikov, you peon,” he snarled. “I’ve called on seconds for less.”
Vo nodded. He wasn’t surprised. Money and connections tended to insulate fools from the cost of their pettiness.
Vo finally let go of the edges of his black cloak and flicked the hem-weighted right wing backwards over his shoulder. The movement cleared half his body, if he needed to move quickly, while keeping his left hand, the blocker, obscured behind cloth. Never let them see all of you in close combat, if you can.
It also revealed the black sword emblem on the side of his collar, and the small, maroon-and-white enameled medal pinned to the left side of his chest, where he would have worn his regular awards if he was back home in a Centurion’s uniform. He had left the green-and-blacks aboard Auberon when he departed.
Today, a speckled tan and brown pattern to all the cloth. Heavy pants with thigh pockets and a reinforced seat. Baggy. Loose. Still strange after his usual uniform, where everything had to be planned to fit under an emergency lifesuit in a hurry.
Button-up shirt instead of a tunic, with a button-up, rain-proof jacket over that. At least he didn’t have to wear the heavy, armoured vest over the jacket, the one that had saved his ass at least twice on Thuringwell, by stopping fragments and beams. And he had left the 12mm revolver back in his room, too. But he had it with him on this planet. He did wear the Divisional Patch for the 189th on his right shoulder, on the opposite side from where Auberon’s thistle had been on his left, when he was ship-board.
And those damned boots. Fleet Centurion had known better than to try to get him out of his expensive, custom footwear. Grand Admiral hadn’t even asked.
Vo doubted this punk had ever actually stepped onto a dueling field. The money and threat was probably enough to make anyone else back down.
Fool had a lot to learn about being a soldier. So did the rest of them.
“Seconds?” Vo ruminated. “Tell me, how many planets have you conquered, Commander?”
Vo paused just long enough to make his next words a threat, rather than just a challenge.
“How many emperors have you killed?”
A few men smiled, but they were facing Vo where van Gorzen couldn’t see them. Vo marked the faces and updated the files he had memorized of everyone on the quad today. Best lesson the Fleet Centurion had ever taught him.
“General Arlo?” Pretty Boy gasped, paling as if Vo had already sliced open his femoral artery.
“General zu Arlo,” Vo corrected the man. “I’ll leave my address for your man to find me.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” van Gorzen stammered. “I had no idea.”
“That makes it worse, Commander,” Vo answered harshly. “Not better. You are expected to lead men, not merely command them. They must respect the man wearing the uniform, not the insignia on the collar. Without that, you have nothing.”
And now I sound like Navin the Black breaking in a batch of new Cornets and Centurions, still wet behind the ears and full of themselves.
Not the worst place to start.
“Problems, gentlemen?” a rich, hard voice rang across the field.
Vo turned and snapped to. He wasn’t worried about Pretty Boy doing anything at this point, except annoying him with fawning apologies over and above the current situation’s requirements.
The new arrival commanded the field, in more ways than one.
Flag General Anders Tsibin. Commander, Land Forces Institute. The man responsible for taking in a group of thirty-some mid-career officers with promise, and either polishing them down to steel, or revealing them for frauds who should be washed out quickly, before they got into the sort of position where they could do damage.
Grand Admiral Wachturm didn’t like many Army men, and respected fewer as warriors. This man made both grades. Good man to listen to.
“Sir, no sir,” Vo snapped, back into cadet voice. “Introducing myself to my new classmates, sir.”
“Yes,” Tsibin observed dryly. “I see that.”
The General studied the group for a few moments, like a farmer preparing for fall cull. He pointed both forefingers at Vo and motioned sideways with them, drawing invisible lines.
“Fall in,” he ordered with a snap. “Form on zu Arlo.”
Vo came to attention and waited, feeling and listening to the rest of the group drop into line as fast as they could. He could tell how few of them had been on this side of the line from how long it took. A few did it quickly, but Vo already had them marked as professional soldiers, rather than aristocratic poseurs trading on family connections and wealth for their place.
Imperial Land Forces today were even worse than the Republic of Aquitaine Navy had been, back when he first got enlisted, before the Fleet Centurion and the old First Lord, Nils Kasum, had broken the Noble Lords for good.
There were probably half-a-dozen on this field who would have made the grade with Navin. Vo wondered how many would wash out here. Even before things got interesting.
The Emperor himself had given Vo orders to make the Army a different place. He didn’t have Fourth Saxon or Ninth Pohang with him today, but he carried all their scars with him. And would, for the rest of his life.
These boys were going to get tough quickly, or they would be looking for new jobs.
Vo was done fooling around.