Part Four: Looking to the Future

Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery, Shinden, Clan Worlds Alliance, 236/11/27.

There had been explosions. More were coming. Maybe explosions was the wrong word. Eruptions? That sounded terrible. Maybe, Nava figured, she should stop thinking about that and focus on experiencing the… whatever. Except she wanted what she was feeling to go on and so was displacing.

What was going on was Mitsuko, between Nava’s legs, very busy with her tongue. They had been at it for almost two hours. The almost was very important under the circumstances. Toys had been used, extensively. Now it was Mitsuko’s mouth which was driving Nava steadily toward the release she both craved and wanted to postpone for as long as possible.

Wave upon wave of intense pleasure washed up from the tip of Mitsuko’s tongue, and Nava knew that the end would come soon enough. Nava’s toes curled. Her fingers gripped the sheet like talons. Her back arched up and off the bed in a display of flexibility which would have put a contortionist to shame. The world vanished into pleasure and white light…

‘Well,’ Mitsuko said, ‘happy birthday.’

‘Is it midnight?’

‘Just turned. I wish we had twenty-four-hour days, but we don’t.’

‘An extra hour would’ve been nice. I suppose I’d better go to my room.’

‘You’re far too tempting, lying there like some wanton, uh, something sexy.’ Mitsuko grinned. It was easy enough to grin now. Nava suspected that tonight would be another matter.

Rolling off the bed, Nava padded to the door of Mitsuko’s room. ‘Goodnight, Suki.’

‘Goodnight, Nava.’

~~~

‘You are not exactly behaving like someone at a birthday party,’ Courtney said.

‘Well, I’m trying,’ Mitsuko replied, ‘but I’m the only one here who isn’t an adult.’

‘So untrue,’ Carina said.

‘Oh, sorry, Carina. I forgot. It just feels like I’m the only one who can’t drink and won’t get to sleep with her partner tonight.’

‘The latter being entirely inaccurate,’ Nava said. She sipped her wine – and Mitsuko considered the idea that Nava might be torturing her – and then waved the glass around the gathering at a table in Le Jardin Magique. ‘Courtney and Mel will be alone tonight. As will Cari. As will I. The only people here who’ll be in bed with someone later are Chess and Hoshi.’

‘At least you get to drink alcohol.’

‘A glass to say I have. Now, stop moping. It’s only until January.’

‘That’s next year.’

‘While accurate, I think you’re exaggerating the situation.’

Mitsuko flashed a glare at her girlfriend. ‘It’s okay for you, you have self-control.’

‘I assure you that I will be crying myself to sleep tonight.’

‘Even I don’t believe that, Nava,’ Melissa said. ‘If I ever see you crying, I’ll know something really terrible has happened. I’ll probably want to check Suki’s pulse.’

‘You don’t really show emotions, Nava,’ Hoshi agreed.

‘Well, perhaps not,’ Nava conceded. ‘However, I will be crying on the inside.’

236/11/31.

Being called to the principal’s office was one of those things most students worried over. Nava was not the kind to worry, however, and since Mitsuko was going with her and the meeting was taking place over lunch, she was pretty sure it was not due to anything she had done. Unless Auberon Ewart wanted to discuss the duel, but Nava would have expected that to happen sooner after the event.

Lunch was sandwiches and coffee, but they were good sandwiches, and the coffee was excellent. Auberon seemed to be in a good mood, so the duel was probably not on the table. Joslyn Harris was more taciturn, but then she always was. It was difficult to find someone as outwardly cheerful as the principal; Nava was not sure she had ever seen him looking serious. Maybe during the terrorist incident the year before, but she had a feeling he had been wearing a vague smile even then.

‘I suppose we should get to why I asked for this meeting,’ Auberon said after ten minutes of pleasantries and eating. ‘Are you aware of the Sorcery Futures Conference?’

‘I believe we were notified of that,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Melissa would be able to tell us for sure, but in her absence, I think we were notified as a courtesy. There was, as I recall, nothing the student council needed to do about it.’

‘The first week of the winter holiday,’ Nava said. ‘It sounded like the Sorcery in Society Symposium. Except smaller and taking place here.’

‘We’re using the senior teaching buildings for the seminars,’ Joslyn said. ‘We have sufficient space in the student accommodation blocks near there to handle the visitors.’

‘It’s a symposium on the future of sorcery, of course,’ Auberon said. He was in winter colours today, a white suit with a pale-blue pinstripe. The fabric of his waistcoat sparkled a little like freshly fallen snow. ‘There will be people here from the magical technology industry, entertainment, government, and various other areas with an interest in sorcery. Obviously, one of our aims is to show the school in the best light, but we decided that the administration would handle that rather than involving the student council. It is your winter break, after all.’

‘Then, if you’ll pardon me getting to the point,’ Nava said, ‘why are we here?’

Auberon did not answer instantly, which probably meant he was not happy with the answer. ‘We arranged a private security contract for the conference since we couldn’t expect the SSF to cover it.’

‘And it fell through.’

‘They had to pay quite a stiff penalty to break the contract, so I’m quite sure their “operational considerations” were real, but now we don’t have security and we only have three weeks to make a new arrangement.’

‘We would like the SSF to handle it,’ Joslyn said flatly.

‘No,’ Nava replied, just as flatly.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ Nava repeated. ‘I have operational considerations too. I’m currently understaffed until the new students start and are evaluated. Several of my people will have plans already laid out for that week and it is likely to cost them money to break them. I can’t order any of them to spend a week of their holiday looking after delegates to a conference they were not invited to attend. Over all of that is the fact that the SSF was never designed to provide security for something like this. We have no training and we have insufficient numbers. Having students policing adults who are not used to such an arrangement is fraught with problems as well.’

‘I’m sure you could ask for volunteers,’ Auberon said.

‘Of course, but how do I provide security with four untrained staff. Besides, I am losing two weeks of the holiday to my family and the ASF, what makes you think I would volunteer to lose a third week to something which gains me absolutely nothing?’

Auberon looked at Mitsuko, perhaps hoping for the student council president to provide some support. ‘I agree with Nava,’ Mitsuko said. ‘You’re asking people to perform the job of a professional security company with insufficient resources and without pay. You want unpaid labour to get you out of a hole. If there are government delegates at this conference, ask the ASF to handle security.’

‘There are going to be people from the Diplomatic Protection Unit here,’ Joslyn said. ‘There was no way we could get around that considering some of the people attending. However, calling in the ASF would create a precedent we wish to avoid. The ASF does not police SAS-squared.’

‘And the SSF provides only a skeleton security force outside term times,’ Nava said. ‘I’ve actually instituted better coverage than usual already by bringing in support students to monitor the cameras. We have more staff on-site at one time than in previous years, but that is nowhere near sufficient to perform the role you’re asking us to.’

‘What,’ Auberon said, ‘if we paid you? Paid the SSF, that is.’

‘Principal?’ Joslyn asked, looking mildly shocked.

‘We have a budget for security and the penalty Steadfast Security paid. We can at least put some of that into recompensing our students for what is, after all, a considerable imposition.’

‘Auberon, we can’t do that. Some of them aren’t even adults. We cannot pay them to be our security team for this.’

‘But you can ask them to volunteer?’ Mitsuko asked.

Auberon waved a hand dismissively. ‘A fixed payment made to the SSF which its captain could disburse in order to improve school security. If it so happens that members of the SSF receive payments to compensate them for, let me see, an unexpected change in circumstances, that would be down to the SSF’s captain who is now an adult, I believe.’

‘Yes,’ Mitsuko said, ‘she is.’ There was still a degree of bitterness there. Nava could not wait for Mitsuko’s birthday for several reasons.

‘That would be… probably not illegal,’ Joslyn conceded.

‘How much money are we talking about?’ Nava asked.

‘How much do you think would be required?’ Auberon responded.

‘Well, let’s start with the same contract Steadfast Security was on, and we can negotiate from there.’

~~~

‘Let’s get started,’ Nava said, and SSF HQ became quiet. ‘I have some good news, and I have some bad news.’

‘That sounds bad,’ Vance Shepherd said.

‘Then let’s get the bad out of the way first. I had lunch with the principal today, and he requested that the SSF cover a conference which is happening during the first week of the holiday.’

There were mutterings of discontent. Some were louder. ‘I’m supposed to be going home for the holiday,’ Theodore Garver said. ‘The flights are booked. They can’t make–’

‘They can’t,’ Nava said, ‘and I can only ask you to join me looking after a bunch of old people. I can’t order you to do this. However, this is where we get to the good part. I can’t order you to do it, but I can bribe you. Except for Six who looks like he’ll do it for free anyway.’

‘Hey!’ Sixte responded, much as expected.

‘Basically, the school hired a company called Steadfast Security to do the job. They backed out for operational reasons. The school has a budget and I got most of it allocated to the SSF to do this. It is still conditional on enough of you taking the bait to make it viable. I want to use some of the money to get us some new equipment. Some of that I want here before the holiday so that we can use it to do the job. The rest is available for me to pay you to police this conference. Except you won’t be being paid, you’ll be receiving a grant to cover a week-long training exercise I’ve sprung on you at the last moment.’ Nava looked directly at Theodore. ‘The administration has agreed to handle rescheduling flights or hotel bookings, and pay any costs involved. You’ll lose a week at home, but you won’t be out of pocket and you won’t have to spend hours trying to get a transport company to play ball.’

‘How much money are we talking?’ Vance asked.

‘I based it roughly on the standard pay for a second lieutenant in the ASF, so it works out at three hundred thousand solars for the week.’

‘That’s like, uh, thirty-six thousand dollars back home.’

‘You’ve got a weakass currency,’ Moritz Evered said, grinning, ‘but it’s still thirty thousand dollars on Garavain Prime. It’s nothing to sneeze at for a week babysitting conference delegates.’

‘It’s going to be hard work,’ Nava said. ‘We’re going to have to be professional. We’re going to have to be polite. We’re likely to have to put up with politicians and businesspeople who think they’re a divine gift descending upon our lowly school. They won’t accept our authority, and we still have to be polite to them. If any of you think you can’t handle that… Actually, if you think you can’t handle it, don’t go into policing when you graduate.’

‘Huh, even I can manage to keep my head around people like that for a week.’

‘I can’t wait to see that, Moritz. In case the support team think they’re not required, I’m actually going to try to get a few extras on-board. We need a visible presence, but we’re also going to need to make extensive use of the school’s surveillance system. I know it’s boring, but I need people checking camera feeds for anyone going where they shouldn’t.’

‘Well, I wasn’t going home anyway,’ Lydia Bonfils said. ‘If I can get paid to stay, that’s just fine by me.’ There were nods from several others in the room who were basically in the SSF for forensics and other support duties.

‘Okay,’ Nava said. ‘I’m arranging at least a little training. We’re to be working with the Diplomatic Protection Unit, so I’m trying to get someone from them to come brief us and advise us on handling this kind of work. Finals start next week with progression tests starting the week after, so I’ve arranged for us to get some time free to go over tactics. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right and learn something while we do it. If anyone wants to back out, come see me before the end of today. Now, let’s get on with the job we’re supposed to do, and I’ll get back to planning.’

~~~

‘Do you think Auberon planned to make that offer from the start?’ Mitsuko asked over dinner that evening.

‘Obviously,’ Nava said without a second’s thought. ‘The entire notion of the SSF doing this is ridiculous.’

‘Insane,’ Courtney agreed. ‘The school doesn’t give the kind of training needed for a security job like this. It’s more diplomacy than anything else.’

‘And asking us to do unpaid work a professional organisation should be doing, on three weeks’ notice, just adds to the stupidity.’

‘So, he did an end-run around Joslyn,’ Mitsuko said.

‘Yes. I would not like to go up against that man in a battle of wits. He might not be a politician, but I bet he can run circles around ninety percent of the Clan Council members.’

‘But not Misaki.’

‘Not Misaki. Politicians are one thing. Career bureaucrats are an entirely different class of monster.’

‘Would the Council Secretary really like being called a monster?’ Melissa asked.

‘You’ve met her. What do you think?’

‘Oh. Well. No, she probably would.’

236/12/1.

Nava watched as a team of six SSF members stormed the administration building. It was not actually the administration building, it was a simulation of that building in the only free combat training room in the school. It was finals week, and just about every available space was being used to assess the skills of the sixth years. Next week the fourth and first years would be getting their assessments, leaving only the last week before the conference for more practical training. Luckily, most of the students needing this kind of training were combat students anyway. They had been trained in small-unit tactics. Nava was just making sure they understood what those tactics meant in a hostage-rescue situation.

Not that she ever wanted to find out that they could handle that kind of situation. The probability of an attack on the conference was low. In her book, that made it really important to be ready for anything. So, she had secured permission for her staff to use at least some of their time for training for the conference. The last three weeks of term were usually mostly self-study anyway since a lot of the teachers were busy with tests and exams. Having Nava give that self-study some direction had been seen as a good thing by the faculty.

And Nava was learning too. She had begun to realise what was happening only recently, but she had noticed it. She had been trained to be Death’s Handmaiden, basically an assassin, a solo operative. She had never been taught to lead other operatives. Her collaboration with Melissa and Rochester had worked because they trusted her to know what she was doing, not because she was great at giving orders. Lately that had changed. She was learning to command troops thanks to her time with the SSF. Maybe she was even becoming less of a loner. Maybe. She did still need her alone time…

Reaching out, she pressed a button on the control desk for the room. ‘Don’t forget to check your verticals,’ she said, her voice relayed through the helmets her troops were wearing. ‘Someone with Flight or Spider Walk could be hiding near the ceiling.’ Maybe she was doing more teaching than she thought too. Their instructors had mentioned awareness of the vertical in combat situations, but it clearly had not sunk in yet.

Practically, a few days of drills was not going to make her people that much better at this kind of operation than they already were. But if something did happen during the conference, Nava wanted to know she had done her absolute best to have her people ready for it.

236/12/4.

‘I’d like to introduce Captain Kyoko Sasaki Sonkei,’ Naomi said. ‘She’s one of our instructors at the DPU.’

Nava executed a short bow. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain. I am Nava Greyling Sonkei.’

‘Oh, I know who you are,’ Kyoko said. Like Naomi and Kyle – who had accompanied their teacher – she was dressed in ASF uniform, which meant she looked like she was a SAS² student, but someone had dyed her uniform black. She was a short woman with a cap of dark-brown hair and black eyes. She was typically attractive and as fit as one might expect of an ASF officer. ‘The entire clan knows who you are, I’d imagine.’

‘Perhaps,’ Nava replied. ‘I suppose I still have a degree of celebrity as the latest addition to the Greylings. Thank you for doing this for us.’

Kyoko waved a hand. ‘The DPU is happy that the SSF is taking this seriously. We’re going to have to work together at this conference, and you reached out to find out how we could best do that. My superiors breathed a collective sigh of relief when I told them Naomi had asked if we could send someone here to give a briefing. Especially considering the special guest on the last day.’

Nava’s face retained its usual dispassionate expression, but her heart skipped a beat. ‘I haven’t received a list of delegates yet. I need to press our administration about that. I wasn’t aware of any special guest.’

‘You weren’t? Well, that’s… That makes this visit doubly fortunate. The Secretary General is attending on the last day.’

‘Misaki Himura? Secretary General Misaki Himura is going to be here?’

‘And no one mentioned it,’ Kyle said. ‘Sounds about right.’

‘The principal will be walking with a limp tomorrow,’ Naomi predicted.

‘I would never cause visible injury to the principal,’ Nava said. ‘I was aware that members of the Clan Council were coming. Otherwise the DPU wouldn’t be involved. No one told me about the Secretary General. I’ll review my plans in that light.’

‘Well, the DPU will be handling her personal security, of course,’ Kyoko said, ‘but we can’t do that if your people are getting in the way. Plus, to be honest, if something did happen… Well, I read the report on that incident on Beherbergen, and the hostage situation in Alliance City last year. If there’s trouble, it would be a comfort to know that you’re around to help resolve it.’

‘We have a number of talented students who can help resolve situations. Let’s just hope we don’t need to. And let’s go get this lecture started assuming we will need to.’

Kyoko flashed a smile. ‘That’s how we always operate in the DPU.’

~~~

‘You two just did this so you could spend Saturday night with your respective partners, right?’ Mitsuko said.

‘That,’ Naomi replied, ‘is a foul slur upon the character of a fellow clansman, Mitsuko Trenton.’

‘It’s true though.’

‘That’s not the only reason we agreed to ask,’ Kyle said. ‘It’s a really major fringe benefit.’ He was sitting on the sofa in the lounge and Courtney was actually sitting in his lap. Naomi and Melissa were being a little more restrained.

‘Well, I’m going to bed early,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Watching you four be lovey-dovey while I’m stuck in celibate purgatory is depressing.’

‘You’ve been remarkably good about it,’ Nava said. ‘It’s been a little under two weeks and you haven’t shown signs of breaking. After the way you were when we first started seeing each other, I was expecting it to be much worse. Perhaps you’re getting bored of me.’

‘Just wait until my birthday. You’ll discover that I am not in any way bored with you. I don’t plan to let you out of bed until–’

‘Ten in the morning,’ Courtney said. ‘The graduation ceremony is that day. They aren’t going to let you stay in bed all day, even if you’re sex-starved.’

‘Well, that… sucks.’

‘Be thankful my week with the ASF finishes the day before,’ Nava said. ‘Otherwise I might not even have been here. Courtney, how are you feeling about your tests?’

Courtney gave a small shrug. ‘Right now, sitting here, I’ve forgotten about the week of hell I just went through. However, I’m quietly confident. I doubt I’ll be setting records, but I don’t believe I’ll have problems doing what I want after graduation.’

‘I think we’re lucky we don’t have assessments this year,’ Melissa said. ‘Not real ones. We still get a capacity test to check progression, but that’s nothing.’

‘The question,’ Kyle said, ‘is what fake score is Nava going to give them this year? I don’t think people are going to believe it if you don’t go a lot higher than last year. I think you went too low. You’re going to have to jump it up some to maintain credibility.’

‘Probably true,’ Nava admitted. ‘If I’d known Taryn Borchardt was coming to school here, I might have gone closer to two hundred. I believe her score is around that mark. Or was, she may have improved since the start of the year. I think I’ll go for two-ten this year and say I had a growth spurt or something.’

‘Taryn might beat you,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I think she’s exceeded two hundred now.’

‘If she has, I won’t be particularly worried. She’ll think she’s beaten me over something. It’ll make her feel good.’

‘You mean it’ll make her feel complacent.’

‘And that. Besides, I don’t need to be known as the best in the year. It’s not a priority for me.’

‘You don’t need to be known to be, so long as you actually are.’

‘Something like that.’

236/12/11.

‘Oh,’ Melissa said, her eyes on her ketcom, ‘that doesn’t look good.’

‘What?’ Mitsuko asked. ‘Is this something to do with the list you just sent us?’

‘The list of delegates confirmed for the conference, yes. Veit Wruck Malkin is listed.’

It was Saturday afternoon and Nava had decided to give her troops some time off. Of course, that also meant she was getting a break, until now. ‘Who is Veit Wruck Malkin, aside from a Malkin?’

‘He’s the clan representative for the Malkins,’ Melissa replied. ‘I suppose they are a magic-heavy clan, so they would be interested in the future of sorcery. It’s not that strange to see him on the list.’

‘But?’

‘Except that the list is in the order of confirmation and the dates are given. He confirmed his place two days after your duel with Felix Adair.’

‘So,’ Mitsuko said, ‘a little time for communication with Grimalkin, and he gets orders to find a way to come to the school and pester Cari. Possibly to pester you too, Nava.’

Nava gave a shrug. ‘He’s a delegate. He gets the same treatment as all the other delegates. Which means he’ll get kicked out if he makes too much of a nuisance of himself. I’ll do some research on the man and see what he’s like.’

‘Well, I’ve never heard of him. Or his family. If I had to guess, he’s the clan representative because no one else wanted the job. He’ll either be the kind who does what he’s told to the minimum necessary, or he actually thinks being the rep for a minor clan on the edge of Alliance space makes him important. If it’s the latter–’

‘Which it will be,’ Nava said. ‘Because how could it be otherwise?’

‘Well, perhaps. If it is, then he could be a problem. However, you should remember that you are a Greyling. Even as a clan rep, his status is only going to be equal to yours.’

‘If he has rank in his clan…’ Courtney countered.

‘It won’t be high,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Not enough to make a difference. They wouldn’t send someone important to Shinden. The Malkins are isolationist. He likely has little influence back home because they don’t really care what the rest of the clans think. He’s here to make sure they aren’t disadvantaged.’

‘Would having one of their rising stars humiliated and executed count as being disadvantaged?’ Nava asked, though it was mostly rhetorical.

‘Probably.’

‘Oh well, I can always kill him in a duel.’

‘Don’t joke about that.’

Nava looked at her girlfriend briefly. ‘I am required by law to say, “What makes you think I was joking?”’

‘Yes. I rather asked for that.’

236/12/14.

Carina was not pleased. She had been told about her distant relative attending the conference a couple of days ago and had confirmed that he was basically a political stooge. She had seemed more irritated than afraid or angry. Now she was definitely angry, but it was nothing Representative Veit Wruck had done.

‘It’s terrible,’ she said over lunch. ‘It’s absolutely terrible.’

‘Most students don’t complain when their sorcerous capacity increases,’ Rochester pointed out. The first-year results had come out that morning. Carina’s had been adequate with a modest increase in capacity.

‘You barely made it into the school as it is,’ Mitsuko added. ‘If you hadn’t got better, they’d have put you through remedial training at the very least. Given your relationship with your family, it might have been worse.’

‘Well, yes, I know that,’ Carina replied morosely, ‘but my power is supposed to be sealed away by ancient magics and this is just another sign that the seals are weakening.’

‘That’s one explanation,’ Nava said.

‘You have another, Champion of Light?’

‘I love the way she says that with a straight face,’ Melissa commented, grinning.

Nava gave her a look before answering Carina. ‘You’re outgrowing them. The seals were put in place when you had X amount of capacity. Since then, your capacity has increased, and the seals have not expanded to encompass your greater power. Part of the curriculum is intended to expand your capacity, primarily through improvising high-complexity spells. It’s only natural that you would expand your available capacity beyond whatever keeps the bulk of your power from being expressed.’

‘Yes, but–’ Carina began.

‘It’s actually interesting that someone of your talent didn’t gain more,’ Hoshi said. ‘The capacity training assumes that it’s stretching you, making you work to improvise spells. But Trudy said that you find it easier to improvise spells near your obvious limit. It’s as though your “sealed” capacity is still there, acting as a sort of buffer.’

‘Ah, yes!’ Rochester exclaimed. ‘Hence the exercises aren’t stretching you, which means that you aren’t growing as fast as you normally would. Intriguing.’

‘That’s great,’ Carina said. ‘I’m happy for your intriguedness.’

‘That is not a word,’ Melissa said.

‘But the Key to Darkness will–’

Melissa waved a hand, bringing Carina to a halt. ‘If the Key to Darkness is actually real, and they actually get their hands on you, and they actually free an ancient deity trapped beyond reality, what do you think is going to happen?’

‘Nava will kick its butt.’ It was Mitsuko who started it, but Courtney, Rochester, and Hoshi joined in quickly enough that it was almost synchronised.

‘Somehow,’ Nava said, ‘I feel that you’re asking a little much of me.’

‘We’d obviously help,’ Melissa said. She had such an innocent smile.

‘Thank you. I’m sure that would make all the difference.’

236/12/15.

Nava spotted Taryn making a beeline across the refectory toward her and knew what was coming.

‘I heard you got two hundred and ten in your capacity test,’ Taryn said as she arrived at the table Nava and her friends were sitting at.

‘And good afternoon to you, Taryn Borchardt,’ Nava replied.

‘Right. Good afternoon. I heard you got–’

‘And I heard you managed two hundred and twenty. Congratulations. I think that puts you ahead of most of the graduating sixth years.’

‘It does.’

‘Of course,’ Mitsuko said, ‘so is Nava. Personally, I’m happy with my modest one-ten. I’d like to see a greater gain next year, but twenty points is not bad.’

‘I only went up ten,’ Rochester said.

‘Same here,’ Melissa said happily, ‘but that extra ten let me use rank four Flight and class two Force Wall.’

‘I’m still waiting for my final results,’ Courtney said, ‘but I got one-seventy on the capacity test. That’s good enough for what I want to do.’

Taryn looked a little as though everyone else’s general happiness was raining on her parade. ‘I’m glad you’re all happy.’

‘Everyone has to know their limitations, Taryn Borchardt,’ Nava said. ‘Enjoy your time in the spotlight. Just as I am enjoying the opposite.’

‘Huh?’

‘This time last year,’ Mitsuko said, ‘Nava was preparing to be the lead in the Drama Club’s yearly production. She was not enjoying literally being in the spotlight.’

Taryn’s eyebrows rose. ‘You were the lead in a play?’

‘The Ice Queen,’ Nava replied.

‘Oh. Yeah. I’ve seen that on vid.’ Pause. ‘Wasn’t that kind of typecasting?’

236/12/17.

Nava stalked through the theatre in a most un-Nava-like outfit. That was assuming that you had only ever seen her at school and that you had not been there the year before. Anyone who had seen her as Yuki in The Ice Queen knew that her dress was not atypical. So, first years. The first years might have been surprised by a dress which showed off almost her entire back and legs and hung across her breasts to reveal as much cleavage as possible, and even had a translucent panel over her stomach. Nava herself was more annoyed that she had misjudged it slightly: the front panel of the skirt just touched the floor, but the back was longer and likely to be stepped on. Still, she liked the dark fabric with appliquéd pink fronds framing her torso and crossing her bust; she would live with the dangerous skirt. She was not planning to fight in it anyway.

It was the night of the Winter Ball. The difference between this year and last was that Nava had to supervise security rather than just being able to enjoy the evening. There was nowhere to hook a ketcom to her outfit, but she had an earpiece in her right ear allowing her to listen to comms traffic and issue orders if required. The discreet communications gear had arrived in plenty of time for the conference, so this was technically a dress rehearsal for that, even if Nava’s costume was nothing like what she would be wearing next week.

Mitsuko and Melissa were positioned near the food once again. The already-tall student council president was wearing platform pumps which made the height difference even more pronounced. Nava would have punished her for that later if they had been allowed to have sex at the moment. On the other hand, you could see Mitsuko from across the room; she was taller than more or less everyone else. She made for a great landmark in the sea of students.

Mitsuko’s dress was fairly staid for her. It was long and asymmetric. It had only a right arm and her left leg was exposed to the hip, but it was entirely opaque, showing a sort of abstract pattern of grey shades which somehow managed to look blue in places. Nava had been amused by the optical illusion, and more annoyed than she had thought she would be that she would not be taking the dress’s wearer to bed after the ball. Mitsuko looked elegant and sexy, a pale goddess. Nava wanted to lick every square centimetre of her. Tonight was going to be difficult.

‘Anything up?’ Melissa asked as Nava joined them. Melissa was in red. Her outfit was fairly simple, technically not that revealing, and showed off her best assets perfectly. The skirt was short at the front and long at the back, and the back shaded to translucency as it fell toward her ankles, but that was just a detail since it did not show anything you could not see better from the front. The dress had a halter neckline which plunged between her breasts, showing her substantial bust off to perfection. Melissa was, of course, annoyed that her boyfriend was not here to appreciate it, but the ball was students only and Naomi was no longer a student.

‘Not a thing,’ Nava replied. ‘Thus far, everything is going smoothly. Of course, we only opened the doors thirty minutes ago.’

‘We didn’t have any major issues last year,’ Mitsuko pointed out. ‘There’s no alcohol, which helps.’

‘Agreed. Just so long as it stays that way.’

~~~

Carina looked very different and also very Carina. She always had a Goth vibe about her, even when dressed in school uniform. She frequently wore dark makeup, and her hair was usually piled into an elaborate updo with purple bands dyed into the jet black. Being possessed of violet eyes seemed to help the look.

Tonight, however, she had gone all-out. The thought of seeing her in a ball gown had been intriguing, but she had denied everyone that sight. Instead, she had come to the ball in a heavily stylised military outfit which was both entirely in keeping with the event and also not. For one thing, she had eschewed heels for a pair of what looked like army boots. Since it was cold outside, she had chosen to wear fishnet hose which at least provided some degree of heat retention. Then there was the uniform. It was of no military organisation Nava had ever heard of, though she somehow felt that it should have been. There was quite a wide skirt in red with gold trim which looked like it had to have some sort of petticoat under it from the way it hung. Over that was a tunic in blue-grey with more gold trim, plus wide red cuffs, gold piping, gold buttons on a broad panel over the chest, a red rose affixed to Carina’s shoulder, and a red cravat fixed with a golden broach. She looked, in fact, like she should be leading a Gothic marching band.

‘That,’ Melissa said as Carina approached them, ‘is quite an outfit.’

‘Thank you,’ Carina replied, ‘I think.’

‘Somehow, it seems to go with the theme this year,’ Mitsuko said.

Nava looked up and around. ‘It does?’ The theme was, officially, that of a fairy grotto. To Nava, it appeared that they were in a forest. She had to admit that it was a rather stylised forest and there did appear to be glowing somethings flitting among the branches. ‘I don’t really get the whole concept anyway.’

‘Fairy tales and stuff, right?’ Carina asked.

Melissa nodded. ‘Later on, when the fairies have got used to us being here, they’re supposed to come out and play among us. They’re hiding at the moment. I’ve seen all the concept art.’

‘Then they have the stealth characteristics of a searchlight,’ Nava said.

‘It is all an illusion,’ Mitsuko pointed out. ‘I’m sure real fairies would be better at secreting themselves.’

‘If there were any real fairies.’

‘That would obviously be a requirement.’

‘Though given that Harbingers exist, why not fairies. Trudy is around here somewhere.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Carina said. ‘She’s been looking forward to this more than I have. She thought the dance in summer was great. She got to watch “young adults’ mating rituals in great profusion.” I asked her not to tell me about any of them.’

‘She should have plenty to watch tonight,’ Nava said. ‘You’d be amazed at how many one-night stands happen on the last night of term, especially among the sixth years. Melissa was determined to get laid last time.’

Melissa blushed, which was to be expected. ‘I was. And it happened. Just not the way I’d intended.’

‘I don’t think I want to know,’ Carina said.

‘Good, because I’m not going to tell you.’

‘But…’

~~~

‘Somehow,’ Nava said to Taryn, ‘I was expecting you to be wearing more.’

Taryn frowned. ‘I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult.’ She had walked over to the buffet to gather some food and Nava had spoken to her.

‘Neither. Merely an observation.’ Taryn was in a red gown with golden flowers printed in a descending band around the skirt. The halter top was built to cup her breasts and show them off even though they were well covered. The skirt was ankle length, but only on one side; the right side was more or less missing, exposing Taryn’s right leg to the hip and her left leg below the knee. The dress was a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. ‘I’m not really sure whether I expected a more formal gown or some sort of military outfit.’

‘Like that weird friend of yours is wearing? Not really my thing.’ There was a slight pause and then, ‘She pulls it off, I must admit. It’s a weird outfit for a ball, but it works with her personality. As for a formal gown… Well, I don’t have the body to pull off what you’re wearing. I figure I have good legs and boobs, so I’ll do my best to show them off.’

‘You look good.’ Actually, Nava thought Taryn looked like she wanted a quickie really badly and had dressed for it, but she was diplomatic enough not to say that.

Taryn grinned. ‘You look better. Some things I know not to compete in.’

That was interesting: it appeared that Taryn was not overconfident about her appearance. She was an objectively beautiful woman. Also objectively, she was somewhere on a par with Nava and Mitsuko. They were all differently beautiful, but who anyone would prefer depended entirely on individual concepts of beauty. But Taryn clearly felt at least a little inferior.

Still, it was not Nava’s place to provide the woman with an ego boost. ‘Are you returning to Bosquet for the holiday?’

‘Yes, but not for a week or so. I want to get all my homework out of the way where I won’t get disturbed and I have access to any research materials I might need.’

‘That sounds like a good plan. I may have to rush mine since I’ll be busy for much of the holiday.’

‘Right. You have that conference to secure next week.’

‘Please don’t remind me.’

Taryn grinned. ‘Should’ve let me win the captaincy. Then you could run off and ignore all that stuff.’

‘Would you want to have this event to take care of?’

‘Huh. Now you mention it, I’m glad I didn’t win.’

~~~

‘So, you’re away for the weekend and then back on Monday?’ Mitsuko asked.

Courtney nodded. ‘I’m going to celebrate my victory with Kyle. Then I’ll come back, pack, and get out of your hair.’

‘There’s no hurry.’

‘I know.’ Courtney took a sip of her fruit juice, looking pensive. It was difficult to look pensive in a black dress which left her right leg, most of her right side, and part of her right breast exposed, but pensive was how she looked. ‘It’s going to be difficult. This place has been my home for six years. I’ve been back to Garavain Prime… twice.’

‘Well,’ Melissa said, ‘I doubt I’ll get back to Avorna that often.’

‘You’re away for the weekend too, right?’ Nava asked.

‘Yes. I won’t be celebrating with Naomi. We’ll be, um…’

‘Banging like a barn door in a hurricane,’ Nava suggested.

Melissa blushed. ‘I wouldn’t exactly put it–’

‘Rutting like beasts until you die of exhaustion.’

‘That seems pretty–’

‘Having a pleasant weekend with your boyfriend.’

‘Now you’re just being– Wait! That is what we’ll be doing. I suppose we’ll do a bit of celebrating with Courtney and Kyle.’

‘Kinky,’ Mitsuko said, deadpan.

‘No way,’ Courtney said. ‘There is no way that is happening.’

‘I think I’d be insulted if I wasn’t so embarrassed,’ Melissa said.

‘It’s not you,’ Courtney replied. ‘I’m not that into girls, but if you add drink and the right atmosphere. Yeah, sure. I’d even let Kyle because it’s only right to share. But then I’d have to do it with Naomi. I saw him in the sento. There is no way. No way that doesn’t involve surgery, anyway.’

Mitsuko frowned at the ex-captain. ‘You’re bigger than Mel. If she can–’

‘She uses magic of some kind.’

‘Wha?’ Melissa got out.

‘That’s a spell schema I’d enjoy reading,’ Nava said. ‘Did you craft it yourself, Mel?’

‘There’s no spell!’

‘It’s the only reasonable explanation,’ Courtney countered. ‘Something involving opening a gate into another dimension, maybe.’

‘You’re all mean,’ Melissa said. ‘No foursome for you, Courtney.’

‘But I was saying I wouldn’t… Now you won’t let me, it sounds like a good idea.’

‘Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest,’ Mitsuko said. ‘That’s why I can’t wait for my birthday.’

‘But then I won’t be forbidden any more,’ Nava pointed out.

‘True, and yet I don’t care.’

236/12/18.

‘This is hard,’ Mitsuko said. She was standing in the doorway to her bedroom.

Across the hallway, hand on her own door, Nava looked back. ‘I’m aware,’ she said.

‘I just want to crawl under that dress and find out whether you’re wearing panties.’

‘I’m aware of that too. For the record, I am.’

Mitsuko grinned. ‘I’m sort of disappointed.’

‘Hm.’ Nava regarded her girlfriend for a moment. ‘You do know that I find this difficult too, don’t you? That’s why your requests to “just cuddle for a bit” have been denied. I wouldn’t stop at cuddling.’

The grin became a smile. ‘I knew, but it’s nice to hear you say it. Goodnight, Nava.’

Nava pushed her door open and stepped into her room. ‘Goodnight, Suki. Sweet dreams.’

‘After spending the evening looking at you in that dress, I think torrid dreams are more likely. But the same to you anyway.’

236/12/19.

The first of the conference delegates arrived at two in the afternoon on Sunday, the day before the conference. The company the school had hired to handle logistics for the event had everything organised as far as meeting the delegates and guiding them to their rooms for the week. Along with the staff they had brought in, they had hired several of the students staying on-site over the holiday to act as guides. The theory was that the students knew the campus best, and they looked suitably official in their uniforms.

The first to arrive was a group from an off-world magitech company who flew in on a tiltrotor. Nava watched them disembarking from the comfort of her desk in SSF HQ. She had access to the entire security camera network as well as links to the flight-control office and the control system for the rail station. Around the room, all the other workstations were occupied by SSF staffers monitoring the security system. They had had little to do up until now, but things were about to get busy.

‘Here we go, ladies and gentlemen,’ Nava said. ‘We have outsiders on the grounds. Let’s make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible. That’s what we’re getting paid for.’

‘Huh,’ Lydia Bonfils said. ‘We are actually getting paid this time. That’s a nice change.’

‘I do what I can.’ On-screen, she could see one of the incoming people arguing with one of the organisers. Good start. ‘This week is probably going to be hell. I think we deserve all the money we can suck out of the school for this one.’

‘I’m not arguing,’ Lydia replied. ‘I’m not planning to complain either. I am not rich enough to complain about getting spare cash.’

‘Good. Technically, I am rich enough, but it seems like the more money you have, the more it wants to run off and find its friends.’

~~~

It was fairly late in the afternoon and Nava was just considering leaving to find some food when she spotted some new arrivals at the school’s helipad. According to the data she had from flight control, the tiltrotor was carrying a couple of clan representatives along with part of the group from the DPU. It was a little difficult to tell because DPU personnel did not usually appear in uniform. Regular uniform anyway; they wore combat gear, or they wore suits to blend in with their charges.

Naomi and Kyle looked like they belonged to some sort of criminal cartel in their smart black suits. Naomi, of course, looked imposing. The man would look imposing dressed in pink frills. Thinking about it, Nava decided never to mention that thought to Melissa, and concluded that Naomi in a pink, frilly dress would be more scary. His suit was immaculately cut to emphasise his broad shoulders and narrow waist while hiding both his sheer bulk and the sidearm he was carrying in a shoulder rig. Kyle looked just as good. His suit had to hide less muscle, but it was tailored to fit him perfectly.

Nava had been expecting neither of them. They were supposed to be in the final weeks of their DPU training. So, what were they doing at SAS², apparently on a live DPU operation?

~~~

‘It’s part of our training,’ Kyle said. He had just managed to peel Courtney off him. Even though she had just come home after spending most of the weekend with him, she had been very enthusiastic about greeting him.

‘We would normally be shadowing active DPU officers at this point,’ Naomi continued. ‘It was decided that this event was a perfect exercise.’ Melissa’s greeting of her boyfriend had not been quite so demonstrative, as usual. Melissa saved her enthusiasm for when she was somewhere private.

‘We said we could handle accommodation,’ Kyle said, ‘so I hope you don’t mind us staying here.’

‘I’d have liked to have known you were coming before you got here,’ Nava said. ‘I have no objection to either of you staying here, however.’

‘Our fault,’ Melissa said. ‘We knew, but we didn’t get the chance to tell you since you’ve been out all afternoon.’

‘DPU’s fault,’ Naomi countered. ‘They only informed us that this was happening on Friday evening.’

‘Hm,’ Nava said. ‘I hope they planned their general operation better. This entire event has an issue with rushed security.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it. My impression was that they viewed this as an easy job. What could possibly go wrong with a small conference at SAS-squared?’ You often could not tell when Naomi was being sarcastic. This time, you could.

‘I’m sure they said that about the one last year in Alliance City.’

‘Then let us hope that they are correct this time.’

236/12/20.

Once again, Carina sat in one of the visitor rooms with someone from her home planet. This time, however, it was someone she had never met before. Veit Wruck was the representative on the Clan Council for the Malkin clan and, as their representative, he might have taken an interest in one of the few Malkins to have semi-permanent residence on Shinden, but he had paid Carina no attention whatsoever since her arrival. Until now, anyway.

He was a thin man thickening at the waist due to a relatively sedentary lifestyle and too many good meals. His dark-blue suit did not quite hide his swelling middle, but it was not too bad. He was a blonde, his hair cut neatly and very seriously, with blue eyes shading green toward the pupils. He had something of a long nose, down which he was regarding Carina, and thin lips. The most imposing thing about him was his air of puffed-up self-importance.

‘I summoned you here to inform you of a change in your circumstances,’ Veit said when he had finished staring Carina into what he thought was a suitable frame of mind.

‘I don’t understand,’ Carina said. ‘Has something happened to my family?’

‘Your family, in concert with the clan leaders, has decided that you can make do with a reduced allowance. Effective from next term, you will be on the minimum allowable grant.’

Carina stared at the man briefly, her mind working through the circumstances and the statement. ‘I’m being punished because Felix Adair was stupid enough to get caught trying to kidnap me and then, even more stupidly, challenged Nava Greyling to a death duel and lost.’

Veit coughed. ‘The loss of Felix Adair was unfortunate. He was a promising sorcerer.’

‘He was beaten by a minor. A schoolgirl.’

‘His death has nothing to do with the change in your circumstances. Your family simply does not believe they should commit greater resources to your off-world education.’

‘You mean that the Adairs pressured the Schwartzs after Felix Adair’s obsession with controlling everything in his life got him killed.’

‘You would do well to learn some manners, girl. That’s all I have to say. You are dismissed.’

Carina got to her feet and turned toward the door. ‘Thank you for passing on the message, Representative.’ Inwardly, she was fuming, but there was little she could do about the matter. She would just have to move into a smaller apartment and cut her expenditure. Not that she had much in the way of expenditure, but still…

~~~

Nava stood at one of the rear doors of the main theatre, staving off boredom by going over the evacuation plans for the building in her head. Up on stage, the opening ceremony for the conference was underway. Ceremony was possibly a bit of an exaggeration for what was happening. There were speeches being made about the intentions for the event. So far as Nava could tell, the goals were only vaguely defined.

‘Welcome to the Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery.’ The principal was up, dressed relatively conservatively for him. His suit was dark blue with a pinstripe Nava suspected was pink. His waistcoat was neither iridescent nor reflective; it was unlikely he would be blinding anyone today. ‘I am Auberon Ewart Orlando, principal of the school, and it is my great pleasure to welcome such august representatives of the world of sorcery into my domain.’

That, Nava thought, was a good opening. You are all my guests here, I respect you and find you worthy of being here, but this is my place and I do not want you to forget it. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but that was how it sounded to her and, from the look of some of the thousand or so delegates in the theatre, at least some of them got the same message.

‘Here at SAS-squared, we strive to give the best education we can to those who represent the future of sorcery, our students. Our students also strive to be the best magicians they can be, to make the most of the education we provide, and to become productive citizens of the Clan Worlds. You’ll find some of them around campus even now, acting as guides and providing security for this conference. They are a dedicated bunch who bring me great pride.’

Suck-up. Nava checked and he was not actually looking at her, but she got the feeling he was addressing her as much as the delegates.

‘When we discuss the future of sorcery over the coming week, I feel it’s important to consider the people our words will actually affect. They are the ones who fill this school every term and have no opportunity to tell us what they think about their future. They will, however, pass judgement upon our words. We have various representatives of the media here to report upon our deliberations, and that group includes members of the school’s News Club who will be reporting at length about this event. The future of sorcery will be listening as we speak, ladies and gentlemen. Future employees. Future members of the armed forces. Future citizens you will represent. Future leaders of the world of sorcery. Keep that in mind this week, and please enjoy your time here.’

~~~

‘They’re cutting you off?’ Courtney asked upon hearing Carina’s news. It was time for the evening meal and there had been an agreement to meet in one of the open refectories. Naomi and Kyle had been unable to get away for it and Nava had limited time, but the usual group of friends were getting together for at least a short time.

‘Well, not entirely,’ Carina replied. ‘Not like your family did to you.’

‘It still sucks.’

‘Well, yes. But, uh, these are the kind of hardships sent to harden me for the coming battle with Darkness.’

Courtney looked around at Mitsuko. ‘I don’t think that’s entirely necessary. There is a solution with less hardship involved.’

Mitsuko looked back for a second and then nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, we could make the same arrangement.’

‘I think we should,’ Melissa said. ‘Courtney’s moving out this week. We’ll have a spare room.’

‘What?’ Carina said, blinking rapidly.

‘Not that I consider this a bad idea,’ Nava said, ‘but I think we should consider that we would be inviting two people into the house.’

‘We would?’ Melissa asked. Then she answered her own question. ‘Oh! Oh, yes. Still, we wouldn’t know about the second one most of the time.’

‘I would.’

‘Oh, true.’

‘Wait,’ Carina said, ‘are you saying I could move into your house?’

‘As Melissa said,’ Mitsuko said, ‘we will have a spare bedroom as of next week. With Courtney leaving, we would all need to put a little more money into rent, but if you took her place, we wouldn’t. It provides you with a better standard of living than the capsule apartments, and from our point of view it makes fiscal sense. And we know that we can get on with you reasonably well, which is important.’

‘Well, uh, while I would obviously not flinch from facing the hardships sent to test me, I’d be an idiot not to avoid them if there’s a way to.’

‘So, that just leaves the matter of her outfit,’ Courtney said.

‘Outfit?’

‘Yes. Your maid outfit. It’s part of the deal. Obviously, mine won’t fit you, so Suki will have to get a new one for you. You do the dusting and stuff. Don’t worry, Mel’s in the same boat.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Carina pressed her lips together in thought, apparently considering the matter. Mitsuko was just about to tell her it was all a joke when she spoke again. ‘Well, I did say I’d face trials and tests if I had to, so that’s fine. But, um, could you make it like a Gothic maid costume?’

236/12/22.

Nava had basically ignored the conference’s various panels through Monday and Tuesday. She had been busy watching security cameras in HQ, doing the occasional patrol, and making sure everything went according to plan. Her plan was that no one really had to do anything, which had worked so far, though she had been required to locate seven lost ketcoms. How adults could lose ketcoms with that frequency was beyond her, but they had all been located and returned to their owners. Whatever, the panels had not been of particular interest, so she had ignored them.

So, the fact that she was sitting at the front of a lecture theatre taking part in one was a little perplexing. On the surface, the theme of the discussion fitted with her role as SSF captain: The Future of Policing and Sorcery. She was there because one of the intended panellists had dropped out due to some family emergency, and the principal had requested that Nava fill in. Well, okay. She had had no time to prepare, so she knew nothing about the other panellists or the agenda of the panel, but she could wing it. She had her own thoughts on progressing policing through sorcery and had implemented some of those thoughts with her programme of education for the SSF. She could talk about that, given the opportunity. She was not getting the opportunity.

Someone had set up the panel to discuss policing magicians rather than the use of sorcery in policework. The someone was not entirely clear, but Nava was fairly sure it was either Howard Barrett Bishop or Veronica Daniel Garavain. He was one of the representatives for the Bishop clan; she worked in the administration as an advocate for education. They both seemed to consider that sorcery was generally bad for society, and that magicians were mass murder events waiting to happen. The ASF had sent a PR officer, First Lieutenant Yūto Ishikawa Sonkei, to take part in this kind of panel, but he was constantly on the back foot since the panel seemed to have been stacked in favour of Howard’s and Veronica’s positions. Nava had decided to roast the principal over hot coals for getting her involved.

Howard’s position was easiest to discount. He was a religious man. It was a trait a lot of the Bishops shared, though some were more assertive about it than others. He basically seemed to think that magicians were demons and should not be allowed to walk the streets. He was not going to get excessively far with his opinions since the majority of people did not consider themselves religious these days. Organised religions were few and far between. Religious organisations were subject to the same laws and taxes as any other social or business entity. Spouting religious rhetoric did not get you far with the general populace of the Clan Worlds, though it might have made headway on New Canaan, the Bishop clan’s home system.

Veronica was a little more reasoned and, as far as Nava could see, more dangerous. ‘We have already had one near disaster on Shinden due to the actions of magicians,’ she said during her opening statements. ‘Last year, Alliance City was held to ransom by an artificially generated hurricane. A hurricane created by magic. Prior to that, a symposium concerned with sorcery was attacked by terrorists from Beherbergen, causing considerable disruption to the operation of the Clan Worlds government. We are seeing more and more terrorism and criminal activity perpetrated using sorcery, by magicians. People want to see this kind of thing controlled. The citizens of the Alliance do not feel safe with walking weapons on the streets.’ It was fearmongering, but it was the kind of thing that tended to work as far as propaganda went.

Yūto did at least have data to counter Veronica’s statistics. Which was to say, he had some statistics and she had none. ‘Magicians are already more tightly controlled than non-magicians,’ he said. ‘We actually see less crime committed by magicians than others, as a proportion of the two populations. In addition, the proportion of crime which involves magic is relatively steady, and low, even seeing a slight decrease over the past decade.’

‘That’s not the perception the citizenry has, Lieutenant,’ Veronica countered.

‘That’s because news media organisations sensationalise crimes utilising magic. Such crimes are reported with greater frequency and the part magic plays in them is over-emphasised.’

‘Like the Free Beherbergen assault on last year’s conference,’ Nava said. ‘You didn’t actually say magic was involved in that, Veronica Daniel, but you implied that it was by connecting it to the blackmail later in the year and to the subject of the symposium. In reality, there was one magician among the terrorists. Free Beherbergen, as an entity, are generally opposed to sorcery and don’t make much use of it. The one magician they had was there to counter magicians in the building and start a scrying blocker.’

‘You say that, Nava Greyling,’ Veronica replied, ‘but details of the attack are not generally known so how can we be sure of what happened?’

‘I was there. I’m quite sure of the sequence of events and the composition of the terrorist force. That event had nothing to do with sorcery. It was perpetrated by people who, given a seat on this panel, would have agreed with everything you’ve said.’

Veronica had no answer to that, so she backed up. ‘The perception people have of magical crime is that–’

‘Perception is a bad topic to bring up to a sorceress, Veronica Daniel,’ Nava interjected. ‘Perceptions can be and are manipulated. You don’t even require sorcery to do it, but magicians are keenly aware that what we perceive is not reality. We see what we want to see more often than what is really there. The senses can be tricked. Our interpretation of what our senses tell us is just that: interpretation. We all filter our world through the lens of what we believe, and what we believe is a construct of our minds and what we are told. You have been shown statistics which prove that magical crime is rare compared to mundane crime, but you have filtered it out because it doesn’t fit your narrative. You want magicians to be more prone to crime, so you ignore evidence to the contrary. There are bad magicians. That is because there are bad humans and, no matter how much Representative Howard Barrett might wish it otherwise, magicians are human.’

‘But don’t you think magic deserves greater control due to its inherent danger?’

‘Sorcery is already subject to licensing and permit control,’ Yūto said. ‘The use of magic in a crime is an aggravating factor which results in a greater penalty for those convicted of crimes utilising it. In most worlds in the Alliance, there are fewer controls on the availability of firearms than there are on the use of sorcery.’

‘And yet we have someone using power reserved for God to threaten the lives of thousands of Alliance citizens,’ Howard Barrett said. ‘Where were your licences and permits then?!’

‘The same place as gun controls when Free Beherbergen attacked the symposium,’ Nava replied. ‘The terrorists were able to get their hands on military weaponry. They had a walking tank. And anyone can use that kind of equipment, magician or not. The blackmail situation is another case of the use of sorcery making headlines because the media like to sensationalise it. To make that happen required the use of a lot of technology which would be practically impossible to replicate. On the other hand, you could have threatened all those people just as surely using a nuclear warhead, and there are a lot more people who know how to make those. You seem to think sorcery is in some way special. It’s no different from any technology humans have created to slaughter each other. Except that’s making the mistake of lumping all the possible uses of sorcery into one basket. You appear to wish that all magicians be removed from society, Representative. If that happened, you would be out of a job. The Clan Worlds Alliance could not exist without faster-than-light communications and spacecraft. Your life would be shorter without magical treatments. The art world would be deprived of many talented illusionists. Sports would be deprived of MagiTag and battleball. Like it or not, Clan Worlds society relies on sorcery to function. You can’t go back and, frankly, the human race would be almost extinct, still living on a half-dead planet, if metaphysics had never been invented.’

In the end, no one really got what they wanted from the panel. Howard and Veronica seemed less than pleased that the audience seemed less than convinced by their arguments. Yūto looked like he had not been expecting things to go as well as they had, but he still found the whole experience a waste of time. As for Nava…

‘I was asked to fill in for the original panellist,’ Nava said in her closing statement. ‘I had hoped to discuss the use of sorcery in policing and how we are attempting to push that forward here at SAS-squared. Instead, I’ll be leaving here with a sense of fear. I fear what the ideas expressed here might result in. The more this kind of idea propagates, the more people are told they should be fearful of what magicians might do, the easier it is to dehumanise us. Personally, I’m more fearful of what the citizens of the Clan Worlds will do to magicians than of what we might do to them. Already, magicians are a vital component in the Alliance’s communication system. A component. Nothing more than a cog in a machine. The weather-control system used to threaten Alliance City last year literally wired a magician into its core. The power that granted is very attractive to many, and I have no doubt that research is underway to replicate that device. When the perception of magicians has been manipulated such that we are thought of as something less than human, it becomes easier to ignore inhuman acts perpetrated on us.’

Nava looked across at the two anti-sorcery advocates. ‘You wish to push a narrative of fear. You want people to think of magicians as dangerous, threatening, loose cannons. The reality is that we have much more to fear from you and, unless a proper framework of legal protection is created, you are setting up a future in which magicians are nothing more than slaves.’

236/12/24.

Nava glanced at her ketcom and then turned to face the south. The incoming vertol jet carrying Misaki Himura was visible if you knew where to look for it, and Nava did because her ketcom was showing the data from flight control.

‘Oh, there she is,’ Mitsuko said, which caused various other heads to turn in that direction. The principal and vice principal were there. A contingent of DPU officers were standing by, including Naomi. There were also a couple of senior representatives waiting to greet the Secretary General because, while she was technically a public servant, she held easily as much power as the Clan Council’s president.

Nava switched her ketcom over to the security display one of the support team had cooked up. It gave a simple, three-colour status indication – which was showing green to indicate no reports of problems – and a text feed of the reports coming in from the surveillance and field teams. If anything worth mentioning happened, Nava would see it in the feed. The last log entry was still there: yet another request to find a missing ketcom.

The jet shifted into vertical flight mode around eight hundred metres from the pad and drifted into a smooth landing, its engines beginning to wind down immediately. A minute after its wheels hit the concrete, one of its doors opened and a flight of extending stairs was deployed. More DPU officers exited the vehicle, descending the stairs and positioning themselves at the bottom. Then the lady herself emerged, pausing in the doorway and looking quickly over the party waiting for her. Nava thought she looked a little harassed. Then Misaki was walking down the stairs, smiling a political smile. She was dressed in a grey skirt-suit which looked expensive. Her hair was in its more usual bun which, to Nava’s eyes, had to involve some sort of magic to pack all of her hair into such a small space.

Escorted by her two bodyguards, Misaki crossed the concrete to Auberon Ewart, Joslyn Harris, and the two representatives. Then she greeted the leader of the DPU contingent on-site, Captain Rowena Leavitt Orlando, and Naomi, who had likely been included since he was one of Misaki’s relatives.

Nava paid little attention, instead watching the vertol. A few more DPU agents emerged, some carrying equipment. They were followed by a familiar face: Fawn Tyrell. Nava had not been expecting the first lieutenant, though it was not entirely odd to see her there. It was a little more odd that she was flying in on Misaki’s transport. No doubt there would be an explanation forthcoming. Besides, Nava had more immediate greetings to take care of.

‘Good morning, Madam Secretary,’ Mitsuko said as Misaki approached.

Misaki affected a mildly exaggerated sigh. ‘I suppose we have to be formal. Good morning, Student Council President. I’d kiss your cheek, but some of my security detail are a little jumpy today.’

‘Oh? Well, that’s more Nava’s zone of interest than mine. It’s a pleasure to see you here, Madam Secretary. I’m looking forward to your speech.’

‘Don’t. It’ll be mostly political. Captain Nava Greyling, I hope you’re keeping things safe and secure?’

‘As safe and secure as I can, Madam Secretary,’ Nava replied. ‘I hope someone will be briefing me on why your security people are jumpy.’

‘I’m sure they will. I saw the vid of the panel you were drafted onto. Do you really have worries about the future treatment of magicians?’

‘Yes,’ Nava said flatly.

‘Hm. We may need to do something to assuage your fears. Now, I understand that you’re to escort me to the theatre.’

‘I was told it was “good optics” to have students escorting you rather than politicians and security guards, though there are plenty of all of those here.’

Misaki gave a slight grimace, maybe an apology. ‘They probably should have let you work that out for yourself. They definitely shouldn’t have just told you.’

Nava gave a shrug. ‘I appreciated the directness. Please, Madam Secretary, if you would step this way…’

~~~

‘Are you going to tell me why the DPU are on edge?’ Nava asked. Up on stage, Misaki was addressing not just the delegates at the conference, but also a selection of the students who were still on-campus for the holiday. It was almost as though she was addressing the students in preference, actually. Still, the speech was largely political, and Nava was not that interested.

Fawn held up her ketcom, displaying a picture which appeared to be from a security camera somewhere, possibly at a spaceport. ‘Do you know her?’ Fawn asked. Nava looked closer.

The subject of the image was a blonde, fairly young-looking girl. Maybe early teens, or maybe a lot older and trying to look young. She was dressed in a plaid skirt, cropped T-shirt, and bomber jacket. There were Mary Jane pumps on her feet. Her hair was short and a little untidy. It was difficult to be sure with the low-quality image, but her eyes looked blue or green and her face tended toward cute. She had a small, perky nose and her lips looked like they had a pronounced bow to them. She had basically no bust, but her legs were quite long. She looked like someone Nava felt she should know…

Fawn waited a few seconds while Nava scanned the image. She had known Nava as long as anyone in the Clan Worlds. Longer than Melissa. Longer than Mitsuko. She could tell when Nava was pretending to think about something and when she was actually putting in the effort. ‘You do know her, right?’

‘The image quality is poor, and I haven’t seen her for a significant number of years, but that looks like Jenna. DH-ten. She’s supposed to be dead. Where was this taken?’

‘Alliance City groundside spaceport. Two weeks ago.’

‘And it took this long to bring this to me?’

‘Irregularities in the fake ID she used to get onto the planet only showed up three days ago. We put her face through facial recognition, and that was when she was identified as a possible Redwing Faction operative. We weren’t sure she was part of the Death’s Handmaiden project, however. What was wrong with her?’

‘Nothing,’ Nava replied. ‘She failed to meet expectations. Jenna was designed to handle multiple spells at once. She processes information faster than I do. The problem was that she ended up having insufficient sorcerous capacity for their needs and she was retired. Or so I was told. Perhaps I should have realised they were lying with this one. Jenna proved to have a useful talent, just not with sorcery.’

Fawn frowned. ‘Explain, please.’

‘Effectively, she’s a precog. She can see the future.’

‘Divination.’

‘No. Though what she does relates to divination magic in a way. She absorbs information like a sponge. She has perfect retention. She’s able to take all that information and, for want of a better term, model it in her head. She does it constantly, always updating her predictions or determining the results as they pertain to a different subject. So long as she has enough information, she’s able to predict the outcome of events more or less as they happen. I assume she had vanished when officers were sent to detain her. She would likely have known to the minute how long her cover identity would hold up. Jenna is, essentially, the perfect planning tool. If trained, she would be the ultimate field commander. If she’s on Shinden, there’s probably a Redwing operation in play. Something major.’

‘Yeah… And she’s vanished. We can’t find her anywhere. We detected a couple of other known Redwing agents around the same time, and they’ve vanished too. That’s why the DPU are on high alert.’

‘It would have been nice if they’d mentioned it to me.’

‘To be fair, they only got the information this morning.’

‘You believe this conference may be the target?’

‘Frankly, the target could be anything, but it’s certainly possible that they’d attack here. The school itself is a prestigious target, and now the Secretary General is here. Plus, not to denigrate the SSF, but this place can’t possibly have the security the administrative buildings in Alliance City have.’

‘Probably true. I’ll put our meagre forces on amber alert, and then I suggest we brief Captain Rowena Leavitt on Jenna. Jenna’s plans have a habit of working perfectly given sufficient time to refine her predictions. She’s had two weeks. That’s plenty of time. Whatever she has planned, countering it will be difficult.’

~~~

After the speech, there was lunch. The senior refectory had been converted into a dining venue for the event. It sat between the two senior-year buildings and was large enough to handle two years of students, so it could handle a thousand delegates easily enough. It was a buffet-style affair, as had been the case all through the week. At Misaki’s request, there were also students at the luncheon, and Nava had some of her people at the beverages area to make sure the younger students did not ‘accidentally’ pick up a glass of wine. Carina, for one, was not trying to.

‘Alcohol disrupts your thoughts and makes it harder to maintain the level of awareness you need to have to keep the Darkness at bay,’ she explained to Nava while Nava watched the refectory.

‘I certainly don’t need the added distraction,’ Nava agreed. ‘What did you think of the Secretary General’s speech?’

‘It was… I’m not really used to analysing political speeches. I guess it sounded uplifting and encouraging. Some of the stuff she said about magicians in society and improving the conditions some of them work under sounded good.’

‘Yes, it did. If we all get plunged into eternal night, I don’t suppose it will matter, but until then, it’s important to ensure that we don’t all end up as slaves to the needs of the magitech industry and its users.’

‘Oh, well, I guess I can get behind that. Until we all become slaves to the Elder Gods.’

‘Hm. Perhaps the magitech execs are actually the Elder Gods.’

Carina gasped. ‘They could have infiltrated our reality already. Perhaps they’re behind the Key to Darkness.’

‘Well, several of them are here. They don’t look like ancient evils of any sort, but then, how would you tell?’

Carina looked around, worry in her eyes. Then she frowned. ‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you? That’s mean.’

‘I’ve been called worse.’ Nava lifted her head, turning slightly. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘Are you still teasing me?’

‘No, this was something else…’

~~~

In SSF HQ, things had been proceeding for much of the day as they had for the entire week so far: nothing much was happening. There had been the missing ketcoms, located via the school’s network, to deal with, and there had been one or two delegates who needed guiding back to their rooms after overindulging in the evenings, so the night shift was a little more exciting. Everyone was generally well behaved during the day.

Lydia Bonfils had been handling the day shift, along with a couple of others. It was boring work, but she was being paid for it. Plus, how often did you get to spend your time spying on people without the possibility of being arrested? The delegates were behaving themselves, sure, but watching them when they thought they were out of sight could be amusing, and occasionally embarrassing.

The one thing Lydia had avoided doing, even in the silence of her own thoughts, was wishing for something exciting to happen. That was asking for it. A nice, quiet, boring week at the end of which she would get a nice paycheque was exactly what Lydia wanted. With that money, she could upgrade the hotel room she had booked for the new year in a resort on the Ishikawa islands. She might not be going home this year, but she could have a good time on Shinden anyway. So, no excitement. A nice, easy, boring…

So, of course, she happened to be looking at the display from a camera watching the heliport when the Secretary General’s vertol exploded. She stared at the burning wreckage for about two seconds before the analytical part of her brain – which was the reason Nava had scouted her for the SSF in the first place – kicked in and her fingers shifted rapidly over her keyboard. She spoke as she typed. ‘The Secretary General’s jet just blew up. Someone make sure the administration knows and there’s an emergency response happening.’

‘On it,’ Aston Parkinson Morgan said. ‘It just blew up?’

A secondary window appeared on Lydia’s console. It showed the vertol prior to its fiery detonation and proceeded to replay the scene at one-tenth normal speed. ‘That’s what I’m checking. I could’ve sworn I saw…’ She trailed off as something appeared in the frame, moving very fast. It was there for maybe two individual images, little more than a blur in both of them, but it appeared to hit the vertol, and it appeared that the impact point was where the explosion originated. So much for boring. ‘I think it was hit with a missile, Aston. I think we’re under attack.’

~~~

Nava looked up from her ketcom to see both Naomi and Kyle approaching. They both had serious expressions on their faces. Nava would have been wearing a similar expression if she ever showed her emotions.

‘We were asked to come over and check on the situation,’ Kyle said.

‘Did you hear an explosion a minute or so ago?’ Naomi asked. ‘We appear to have lost communications with Misaki’s vertol.’

‘Yes, I heard an explosion,’ Nava replied. ‘Wireless communications seem to be down. I can’t reach HQ or any of my people.’

‘Jamming?’ Kyle asked.

‘A possibility. I’m going to–’

With a clattering, rumbling sound, heavy shutters dropped into place over all the windows of the refectory. They were riot shields and it was almost surprising that they worked since they had never been used in the lifetime of the school. They were, according to the document Nava had read, fairly solid but not designed to stand up to a concerted military assault. The idea was to secure the main school buildings in the event of unrest among the students, though given that many of the students could throw around magic equal to a concerted military assault, Nava was dubious about the effectiveness of the shields. Right now it presented another problem.

‘I was going to run over to HQ and check on the situation,’ Nava said, ‘but I guess I’ll have to do this the flashy way. Kyle, please talk to Suki. Naomi, you go to Misaki. I’ll be back as soon as I understand the situation. Suki and Misaki need to keep things calm until I do.’ Then she vanished.

‘I did not know she could teleport,’ Naomi said. ‘I suppose I should have, but I didn’t.’

Carina was standing nearby. ‘She’s the Champion of the Light, destined to fight in the war against the coming Darkness. Of course she knows Teleport.’

Naomi stared at her for a second. ‘I have no idea what you just said, young lady, and yet I can’t really say that you’re wrong.’

~~~

Nava reappeared at her desk in the SSF HQ room to find it occupied by two tech specialists whose quiet watch duty had suddenly turned into frantic activity. Whatever was going on, Lydia and Aston were working hard to resolve it. Or trying to.

‘Situation report, please,’ Nava said. Lydia let out a shriek and almost launched herself into the ceiling tiles. Aston did a little better, but he still jumped.

‘Shit, boss,’ Aston said. ‘Don’t do things like that.’

‘Especially not when we’ve got an army invading,’ Lydia added.

‘An army?’ Nava asked.

‘Well, maybe not an army, but there are people armed with assault rifles and some heavier stuff on the campus. And something blew up the Secretary General’s jet.’

‘And wireless comms is down,’ Aston added. ‘I’ve confirmed a jamming field but not the source.’

‘Show me these invading troops,’ Nava said. ‘Then I want to see the vid of the vertol exploding.’

‘It was a missile or a rocket,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s a blur, but it was some sort of rocket-propelled projectile. And we can’t talk to anyone outside this room. This is bad, Nava. This is really–’

‘Time to panic later, Lydia. Good work on identifying the weapon used on the jet. That means we can probably take out the jamming quickly.’

‘We can?’

‘I can. Show me the terrorists.’

Aston’s screen began showing video of the parking area beside the station. ‘I think there are about two hundred of them,’ he said. ‘It looks like they’re organised into fireteams. They arrived on ground vehicles and they’re spreading out in four-person units.’ The video switched to a live feed. ‘It looks like they’re heading for the senior blocks.’

‘They know where our VIPs are located,’ Nava said, ‘and they’re heading there. The image I sent earlier, the one of the blonde woman, have you seen her among them?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Me neither,’ Lydia said, ‘but there are a couple of vehicles that look like they’re being used as a command post. She could be in one of those and we wouldn’t have seen her. What do we do, Nava?’

Nava turned, heading for a cabinet mounted securely to the wall near her desk. ‘You two keep watching and wait for comms to return.’ A six-digit code and her thumbprint opened the cabinet and she pulled open the doors. ‘I’ll take care of whatever is jamming our signals, and then we’ll see about kicking these intruders out.’

‘They don’t look like they’ll kick easily,’ Lydia said.

Nava pulled a large rifle out of the cabinet, followed by a belt with a power cell mounted on it. ‘I’m not planning to ask nicely and hope they agree.’

~~~

Nava appeared on the roof of the sixth-year building, rifle in hand, and began scanning the sky. Given the missile attack on the jet and the spread of the jamming signal, she was fairly sure that there was an unmanned drone somewhere close by, likely orbiting the school. There was an outside chance that it was a manned aircraft, but she was going to blow the thing to scrap either way. All she had to do was locate it.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

Nava did not look around to see whether Trudy had materialised or was projecting. It did not really matter either way. ‘Actually, there is. Recon. You can gather information on the command centre they have set up at the station without them detecting you. Actually…’ She stopped her search long enough to get her ketcom out and locate the image of Jenna. ‘I need to know whether this woman is here, maybe in the command truck. Her name is Jenna. You may hear her name being used, or the designation DH-ten. If she is with them, your recon is likely to be even more important.’

‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ Trudy said.

When Nava looked, she saw the blonde girl in the rainbow outfit. ‘Stay out of sight. It’s vital that Jenna doesn’t know about you. The less information she has about what we can do, the less effective her predictions are.’

‘Oh, she’s that kind of precog.’

‘Hm, now where’s that… There it is. A drone, just like I thought.’ Nava lifted her rifle and trained it on the object flying out near the boundary fence of the campus. Through the magnifying scope, she could see the drone properly. It was a long-range design with long wings and a push-propeller. There were two missile pylons under the wings with another three missiles available for use. Below the fuselage was a hemispherical pod which presumably contained the jamming system, but possibly also contained some sort of laser comms equipment to provide the intruders with unjammed communications. She vaguely hoped they did not have radio backup but doubted that was the case.

‘What are you going to do to it?’ Trudy asked.

‘I worked out a schema for a homing Magic Burst variant. I haven’t actually tested it. Now seems like a good time to try it.’

‘A homing spell? Interesting. That’s quite impressive.’

‘Coming from a Harbinger, I feel honoured.’ The spell felt ready in her mind. Nava directed it through the rifle to take advantage of the range-extension feature. The weapon was a sniper variant, able to multiply the range of a spell by a factor of ten. That was unnecessary under the circumstances, but the targeting assistance was useful. Practically, the homing aspect would barely get any use since she had increased the velocity of the penetrator spell by a lot along with the basic range. Still, it was a test. She pulled the trigger.

In the distance, a sphere of white light expanded where the drone was flying. When that was gone, the machine was visible again, though now it was falling out of the sky. A second later it dropped out of sight behind the buildings and an explosion rose into the air above the crash site. Nava fervently hoped that the site was outside the fence.

‘That worked then,’ Trudy said. ‘I’ll go check out the station.’

‘Thanks,’ Nava said as she once again took out her ketcom. A couple of taps connected her to the SSF’s emergency contact system and so to everyone on her team. ‘This is Nava. In case you haven’t noticed, we are under attack by an unknown terrorist group. There are a lot of them. Do not engage unless forced to. Priority is to defend the delegates and VIPs in the refectory. I’ll be in touch with a strategy as soon as I’ve talked to the DPU agents on-site. Nava out.’

Then she slung her rifle over one shoulder and pulled the Teleport spell into place in her mind.

~~~

In the parking area beside the station, two trucks sat surrounded by a four-fireteam guard unit. It was not expected that the command position would come under attack, so the guards had been kept to a minimum; most of the invading force was being deployed to take the refectory and the people within it.

Inside one of the trucks, Jenna frowned, added some data to her collection, and began a new prediction calculation. That all happened in the background. Her mind was far faster than a typical human’s and she had learned to compartmentalise to considerable effect. She was almost constantly running simulations in the back of her mind while she dealt with the real world at the front. In this case, the aspect of the real world she had to deal with was an irritating normal who should never have been sent on this mission.

‘Your model indicated only a forty percent chance of them taking out the drone at all,’ Simon Beringer whined. ‘If they did, it was not supposed to happen this soon.’

‘Imperfect information leads to imperfect prediction, Lieutenant,’ Jenna replied. ‘If I’m provided with insufficient information, I can’t make accurate predictions. If I’m provided with incorrect data, my predictions will be invalid.’

‘We should–’

‘So far, almost everything is happening as expected. I’m adjusting my model now to take into account their easier communication. We should continue the operation. I’d like to remind you that failure is not an option.’ Technically, Simon was in charge of the operation. He outranked Jenna, a fact she found annoying. Practically, he was overly cautious, and he did not have her capacity for tactical analysis. Even his troops had worked out that Jenna was the de facto commander, and Simon would not go against her.

‘Very well,’ Simon said. He turned to one of the other Redwing agents in the truck. ‘Has comms been switched over to radio?’

‘Yes, Lieutenant.’

‘Are we ready to begin the assault?’

‘All units assigned to the courtyard are reporting ready. There are still a couple of satellite units not in position yet.’

Simon nodded. ‘Report when they’re all in position and we’ll begin.’ He glanced at Jenna. ‘That should give you time to finish your current prediction, right?’

‘About a hundred seconds more,’ Jenna replied. ‘I’m not expecting a need to change our deployment.’

‘Well, I hope you’re right this time.’

~~~

In the refectory, people were busy talking on ketcoms, looking at ketcoms, and variously looking worried, panicked, and calmly determined. The latter category was reserved for relatively few, though Nava noted with a little pride that the students in the room seemed to be calmer than many of the adults.

Misaki had joined the collection of people who occupied the calm centre of the storm, wanting her information direct rather than filtered through the DPU. No one was going to argue with her, but the DPU had formed a protective ring around her and the other VIPs. Nava appearing in the middle of that ring did nothing for their composure.

‘Captain Nava,’ Misaki said before anyone else could speak, ‘I assume you have further detail on the situation?’

‘Madam Secretary,’ Nava said, bowing her head. She glanced at Auberon and Joslyn who were also there. ‘The situation is that we have about two hundred intruders in combat armour and equipped with assault rifles and some heavier ordnance. They are organised into fireteams. It’s likely that they have at least a few magicians among them, but that hasn’t been confirmed.’

‘I can confirm that,’ Rochester said from the side of the ring. ‘I tried scouting and ran into a scrying barrier out near the station. They must have at least one magician to start up a device like that.’

‘Thanks, Chess. Well done. Could you keep an eye on the people massing out in the courtyard? I want to know when they start moving.’

‘On it,’ Rochester said, and his eyes glazed over as his senses migrated to outside the building.

‘You seem to have some very competent people in the SSF,’ Misaki commented.

‘Agreed,’ Nava replied, ‘but Chess isn’t one of them. He’s on my fireteam for tactical classes and he has some combat experience from Beherbergen. Now, it looks like the main force is setting up to attack this building, primarily from the front. They’ve deployed smaller units throughout the central part of the school. I think that’s to maintain their retreat path. Their command centre is located at the station.’

‘There’s an emergency response unit prepping in Alliance City,’ Fawn said, stepping forward as she lowered her ketcom, ‘but it’s going to be an hour or so before they can get here.’

‘Holding this position for an hour wouldn’t be easy,’ Nava replied. ‘Besides, I have no intention of letting the ASF step in when I’ve been tasked with securing the school. Under the circumstances, I think the best defence is a good offence. They can’t hurt us if they’re dead.’

Fawn quickly suppressed a smirk. It was Misaki who spoke, however. ‘What are you planning, Captain?’

‘I’d like the DPU to do what they’re here for and hold this room. My SSF officers will defend the rear door. I’ll take a small force and wipe out the people at the front.’

‘Just you and a few students?’ Rowena Leavitt asked. ‘That’s insane. You should–’

‘If Captain Nava Greyling says she can do it, Captain Rowena Leavitt,’ Misaki said, ‘then she can do it. I suggest you organise your people in the defence of the people you are actually charged with defending and allow Captain Nava to defend the school.’

Rowena frowned. ‘You’re sure, Madam Secretary?’

‘Perhaps you haven’t seen the reports on her activities on Beherbergen. Please proceed, Captain Nava.’

Nava bowed again to Misaki and turned. ‘Mel! Where are you? I need some of those class two Force Walls you’re so proud of.’

~~~

Advice to stay in your room was being displayed on every screen in the school, but Taryn was not the kind of girl to listen to advice. She wanted to know what was going on, and she was not going to get that kind of information hiding in her apartment. She was, however, bright enough and cautious enough to go out in her combat uniform and to cast Armour on herself. There was vaguely reckless and there was stupid; Taryn was not stupid.

The campus was unusually quiet, considering that it seemed to be under attack. She assumed the majority of the SSF were focused around the teaching buildings since that was where the conference was taking place. Taryn had not been interested in hearing Misaki Himura make another speech, so she had not gone to hear it. She was now sort of regretting that, though it seemed likely that she would have been denied the opportunity to be part of the response and, this way, she could act on her own without asking Nava. Though, on second thoughts, Nava seemed like the kind of person who used whatever resource she had available. While she had rejected Taryn for the SSF – or Taryn had assumed she would be rejected anyway – there was every possibility that Nava would make use of Taryn’s firepower in a situation like this. No point in speculating. Nava was not here.

When Taryn turned a corner and found herself looking at a four-man team of armoured soldiers, she did not panic, and she did not immediately react. She wanted to take in what she was seeing and see how they reacted to her. They were in full, non-magician, military gear: ballistic suit, helmet, hardened clamshell torso protection, military boots. Armament came in the form of Belgique BAR-705s and none of them was the variant with the integrated spell-assistance device. Taryn inferred that she was dealing with normal soldiers, not an integrated fireteam with magical support. She also determined that they were a little trigger-happy when two three-round bursts flew her way as soon as they spotted her. Five bullets hit her Armour spell’s field and stopped dead.

Taryn’s counterattack came in the form of a rank twenty Fire Blast spell. She dropped the centre of it right in the middle of the group, not aiming at a specific individual, but it mattered very little under the circumstances. A ball of flame expanded out from the centre point, enveloping Taryn twenty metres away, and entirely engulfing the squad. When the flash of flame vanished as quickly as it had appeared, only one of the men was left standing. A little further from the detonation point than his compatriots, his armour had managed to provide enough protection to save his life. He was clearly in pain, however, from the burns. He raised his rifle to fire at her, probably knowing it was no use, and Taryn shifted her aim for a second blast.

~~~

‘Cari, you know Apportation, right?’ Nava asked.

‘Yes,’ Carina replied.

‘Can you teleport a person?’

Carina frowned. ‘Well, no and yes.’ When Nava just stared at her, she added, ‘If I break my seals, I can move a person. Even myself. A-and I can use rank twenty-six Fire Blast instead of rank nine. But I have to break my seals to do it.’

Nava was silent for a second. ‘Cari, I think the imminent threat of a heavily armed force about to storm the building we’re in and kill or capture everyone, including yourself, counts as an emergency situation. It’s time to show your champion what you can do with the gloves off.’

‘When you put it that way…’ Quite suddenly, Carina raised her right hand, fingers spread. She looked out at Nava through her fingers and began to speak. ‘Imminent threat identified. Commencing the Protector invocation.’ A circle of runes, drawn in light, appeared on the ground around her feet and began to spin slowly. ‘Recognition of superior threat verified. Lifting restrictions on power. Suppression of ability restrictions confirmed. Full power will be available until the situation has been resolved.’ The rune circle exploded into a column of bright light which lasted only a second, but when it was gone Carina seemed to be just a little taller and more confident. ‘Now, Champion, what do you need of me?’

‘You have to do that every time you want to release those seal things?’ Melissa asked.

‘Yes,’ Carina replied, ‘but I’ve never actually done it before.’

‘And you don’t think that’s embarrassing?’

‘No. Not until you mentioned it anyway.’ Carina looked around. They were standing near the door they were about to bypass and not everyone had seen the display, but there were a lot of surprised looks among the onlookers.

‘We’ll worry about that later,’ Nava said. ‘Mel, I want a Force Wall over this door on this side. Once that’s done… Wait, Cari, what rank Armour do you know?’

‘Only rank four.’

‘Improve that. Still, Mel only knows rank six, Courtney knows rank ten, and Suki knows rank five.’

‘How do you remember this stuff?’

Nava ignored the question and raised her arm toward Melissa. ‘I’ll cast Armour and Active Recovery on everyone before we go.’

‘Uh, what rank Armour do you know?’

‘Fifteen,’ Melissa answered in Nava’s stead. ‘Unless they have armour-piercing bullets, we’ll be pretty safe.’

‘Correct,’ Nava said. ‘Now, when I’m finished, Mel will reinforce the door while I teleport outside. Cari, I want you to jump Mel outside as soon as possible after me. Then you wait for five seconds and send Courtney, Suki, and yourself out. All of you, crouch down before making the jump.’

‘Crouch?’ Mitsuko asked.

‘Yes. Mel, as soon as you’re outside, I want you to create a Force Wall one metre in height and as wide as you can make it.’

‘About six metres,’ Melissa said. ‘So, you want something we can shoot over. Hence the crouching thing.’

‘Exactly. Once outside, everyone is to hide behind Mel’s barrier and shoot spells at the terrorists. Mel, I want you to back up the first barrier with two more stacked at two-metre intervals. You only poke your head up to renew that configuration if one of them goes down.’

‘Don’t need to tell me twice.’

‘You do know I can only fire rank ten Fire Blast, Nava?’ Mitsuko asked. ‘It’s not going to be that effective against armoured opponents.’

‘Use direct attacks as much as possible, Suki, but I want you to concentrate on watching our flanks in case they get smart.’ Mitsuko nodded in reply. ‘Okay, everyone’s covered.’

‘And so is the door,’ Melissa said. The door was indeed now covered by a translucent shield of magic with around twice the protection value and fortitude of Melissa’s old barriers.

‘I’m going. Give me two seconds to make them take cover.’ Then she pulled Teleport to mind and jumped through nowhere to the other side of the door.

Rochester had already told them that the terrorists were almost ready to start their attack. The first thing Nava saw on arriving outside was a pair of fireteams advancing, two of the men carrying what looked like blocks of plastic explosives. She lifted a hand and unleashed Magic Burst at one of the armoured men some ten metres away. The man she hit, in the head, died instantly as the wash of corrosive magic blasted outward. The other seven survived thanks to their armour and their distance from the epicentre, but the sight of their compatriot’s head disintegrating and the sudden appearance of a defender resulted in a break in discipline. Two of them lifted their weapons to open fire; the remaining five turned to run back toward the main group of troops. Bullets hit Nava’s Armour and the shutter behind her, none of them penetrating anything.

Nava ignored the assault and focused her mind to cast a bigger, better Magic Burst, aiming it out into the courtyard past the breaching team. Improvising, she could more than double the power of the magical explosion, and what she was aiming for right now was suppression. She wanted her opponents to be too busy diving for cover to do anything else. Thirty metres away, a sphere of light blossomed and, sure enough, men dived for cover in the face of the sphere of annihilation.

Melissa appeared beside Nava, shook her head, and stretched out an arm. A metre-high, translucent wall appeared just in front of them both and Melissa dropped behind it. She immediately began concentrating on making the next wall in the sequence Nava wanted.

Their concentration in fireteams was working against the terrorists now. Beyond a couple of metres, Nava’s Magic Bursts were not enough to harm anyone through their armour, though that armour was being degraded with each hit. Inside that circle, however, the blast was enough to kill anyone she directly hit and take everyone else out of the fight. Most were not dead, but they were in no fit condition to do anything aside from rolling on the floor in agony.

Then Courtney appeared, crouched behind Melissa’s barriers. She turned almost immediately, raised her right arm, and launched a Fire Blast spell out into the courtyard. Flame exploded from the impact point, briefly filling the entire area. Those closest to the point of impact died instantly, cooked to perfection inside their suits. The blast left everyone out to almost two metres from the centre crippled with pain from their burns. Courtney dropped back behind the barrier just as Mitsuko appeared beside her.

‘This is going to take a lot of time at this rate,’ Courtney commented. ‘There are a lot of them, and we can’t take out many at a time.’

Carina appeared and immediately launched a Fire Blast of her own. It was a little bigger than Courtney’s, but it had much the same effect.

‘Wow,’ Melissa said. ‘Remind me not to get either of you two angry at me. You know, Courtney, I’ve never actually seen you cut loose like this.’

‘It’s not like I get to very often. Or ever.’ Courtney fired off another blast. ‘I’m worried about running out of juice.’

‘Don’t know Gather Quintessence? Shame on you. Nava can recharge you, if you need it.’

‘Yes, I’m just an unending supply of energy,’ Nava said. ‘Keep firing. It may not be taking them out fast, but it’s taking them out.’

~~~

‘So, the traitor makes her appearance,’ Jenna said. She was smiling, despite the situation.

‘She’s appeared and she’s destroying our forces,’ Simon replied. He was on the verge of panicking again.

‘It’s her and a couple of schoolgirls. Just how much damage do you think they can do before we overwhelm them?’

‘Are you looking at the same screens I am, DH-ten? Our weapons aren’t even touching them. We can’t get close enough to breach the building. Meanwhile, each of those blasts is reducing our forces. What do your predictions have to say about this?’

Jenna sighed. Did she really have to do everything? ‘Put up the force screens and use indirect fire. The rifles aren’t much use against their protection, but the force screens can stop their spells and explosives should take them out quickly enough.’

‘Right. Right, that’s what we’ll do…’

~~~

A translucent wall three metres high appeared stretched across the courtyard for around twenty metres. It was followed by a second and a third. Courtney’s Fire Blast hit one of them and exploded immediately. None of the flames made it past the barrier.

‘Great,’ Courtney said, ‘what now? I guess we know they have magicians over there.’

‘Those are military barriers,’ Melissa said. ‘We know they have people capable of activating magitech. On the other hand, they can’t fire at us either.’ Bullets had been hitting her barriers, and occasionally Nava’s Armour spells, throughout their time outside the refectory. None of them had had any effect, but they were a little annoying.

‘Don’t be so sure.’

As if on cue, something flew over the barrier, hitting the ground to their right on the other side of Melissa’s Force Wall. There it exploded, tossing fragments about, but causing no damage to anything aside from the paving. On the other hand, it looked like a direct hit might hurt.

‘Damn,’ Nava said. ‘Enough of this. I need seven seconds. Keep them off me for that long.’ She stretched out an arm, aiming high, over the barrier the terrorists had erected.

‘What are you going to do?’ Mitsuko asked.

‘Concentrating,’ Nava replied. Above the courtyard, a ball of light appeared, spreading out and thinning into a disc.

Three grenades flew over the barriers toward them in high arcs. The first hit a Force Wall Melissa had put up in mid-air, detonated, and blew out Melissa’s barrier. One of them stopped in its arc about ten metres above them as Carina caught it using Telekinesis. The third hit the ground a metre behind them, exploding. The blast buffeted them, but it was too weak at that point to get past their Amour spells, and Nava’s concentration did not waver. The glowing disc of light grew steadily even as Carina tossed the grenade she had caught back the way it had come to explode uselessly against the enemy barrier.

Three more grenades arced over the barrier, but they did not even come close to their targets. One of Melissa’s barriers fell to an almost direct hit and she immediately put another up to replace it.

At sixty metres across, the disc stopped growing. ‘Now,’ Nava said, ‘Armageddon.’

Beams of brilliant white light began to rain down from the disc. A second or so later, the screaming started.

‘What is that?’ Melissa asked.

‘Armageddon,’ Courtney replied. ‘I’ve never seen it actually used. It’s an area-denial spell. Basically, for five minutes, everything under that disc is subjected to a laser artillery barrage.’

One of the barriers the terrorists had put up collapsed under the lancing beams of light. It was followed quickly by a second. The screaming was starting to die away as the people doing it lost consciousness or died. It took another few seconds for the last barrier to fall, and by that time there was no one on the other side to make a sound. The barrage stopped with no more targets to fire at, and silence fell.

‘That’s a stupidly complex spell,’ Courtney said. ‘It’s normally deployed using magitech. Is that as big as you can go?’

‘The first lieutenant sent me the schema because she wanted to know if I could do it,’ Nava replied. ‘By my calculations, I could double that radius. It’s energy-hungry too. Even with Gather Quintessence running, I could only do one every couple of seconds.’

‘You could decimate armies, Nava. You could cover a battlefield with those things and nothing in the open would stand a chance.’

Carina was beaming. ‘That’s the Champion of the Light for you. Totally awesome!’

~~~

Taryn had decided to be a little more subtle after her first encounter with what she was sure were Redwing Faction operatives. Subtlety was not one of her strong suits, but she could force it when needed. She had cast Invisibility on herself and headed for the centre of the campus.

Now she was standing, staring wide-eyed at the disc of utter obliteration hanging over the courtyard. Armageddon. She had seen the schema and even seen the spell used via a spell matrix. She knew of no one who could cast the spell at any useful size. Even a four-metre casting, the smallest possible, was beyond her capability. Nava’s spell was covering at least a thirty-metre radius. Taryn could not remember the schema well enough to make the calculation, but there was one thing she was absolutely sure of…

Nava bloody Greyling had lied about her sorcerous capacity! The bitch had lied! She had actually claimed to have a lower capacity than she really did! Who the hell did that? Why?

For a brief time, Taryn had known she was better at something than Nava was. And it had all been based on a lie.

~~~

Jenna stared at the screen, not quite understanding what she was seeing and thinking that she really should have seen something like this coming. The indications that Nava’s officially recorded capacity was incorrect had been there in the reports of the Beherbergen incident, but even the largest estimates the Redwings had provided did not allow for a spell like that.

‘What was that?!’ Simon shrieked. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Armageddon,’ Jenna replied. ‘There was no information available that she could cast spells of that complexity. Once again, the Redwing information network proves itself inadequate.’

‘Ridiculous! This is another failure in your predictions.’

‘I can’t do the impossible, Lieutenant.’ She turned his title into an insult, but he was too wound up to notice. ‘Inadequate data produces inadequate predictions. We need to move to plan B. There’s no way we can capture Misaki Himura, or any other hostages, now. We complete our primary objective and make do with that.’

‘Yes. Withdrawing now is the only option.’ Simon raised his voice, turning to his other subordinates. ‘Issue the retreat order. Everyone back to the trucks. Have our evacuation transport meet us at the rendezvous point.’

~~~

‘I have good news and bad news,’ Trudy said as her illusory form appeared in Nava’s sensorium.

‘If it’s not one thing, it’s another,’ Nava said. Then, because her companions were looking at her a little funny, she added, ‘Trudy’s here with some information.’

‘Pardon me if I don’t project to the others,’ Trudy said. ‘I located the woman you asked about. She appears to be some sort of advisor to the commanding officer of these troopers. I heard the term “Redwing” mentioned. Does that mean anything?’

‘It just confirms what we thought. It’s the Redwing Faction we’re dealing with.’ Around Nava, the others made various annoyed faces. ‘One of my sisters is involved. Jenna. She’s a sort of precog, but we seem to be winning, so she obviously doesn’t have the information she needs to make accurate predictions. Having Trudy do some scouting is going to make that worse. Jenna definitely doesn’t know about Trudy. I assume finding Jenna was not the bad news…’

‘No,’ Trudy said. ‘I took a look in the other trucks they came in. Most are troop transports, but one contains something else. I’m no expert in military equipment, but it looks a lot like it’s a bomb. A nuclear bomb.’

‘A nuke?’ That made everyone’s ears prick up. ‘Did you see any form of timer?’

‘No numbers counting down in dramatic fashion, but I think it has a motion sensor attached to it. It definitely has a magic sensor. The truck itself is sealed, locked. I’d suggest that the idea is that it will go off if the doors are opened or someone attempts to deactivate it using sorcery.’

‘It possibly has a command detonator too. If they get far enough away, they can set it off manually.’ Nava’s ketcom chimed and she pulled it from where it was hiding under her dress. ‘Nava.’

‘It’s Lydia,’ Lydia said from the other end. ‘It looks like they’re withdrawing. It’s organised, but they’re retreating to the station. I guess you wiping out most of their force with one spell was demoralising.’

‘Partially. Lift the lockdown on the refectory, Lydia. This isn’t over yet. We’re going to need to start evac– No, there’s no way we can do it fast enough. I need to talk to the first lieutenant. We need a bomb disposal team out here. And then I need to make sure they can’t set the thing off after they leave.’

‘Boss?’ Lydia asked. ‘You’re scaring me. What thing?’

~~~

Jenna sat in the back of one of the troop transports, running a new projection. This time, she was not calculating the results of their operation. That had been done and she was sure of the results. There was a ninety-six percent probability that the nuke would be detonated. It had a nominal yield of ten megatons, which was probably excessive, but they were trying to demolish one of the edifices of Clan Worlds power. It was likely that the main teaching areas would be demolished; they would certainly be left burning and radioactive. And the best part was that the weapon would explode when the truck was opened up to find out what was inside. It was quite possible that Nava would be the one to destroy the school.

Unfortunately, that meant that the timing of the explosion was unknown. It was quite possible that the Redwing force would be hit with the blast and/or the heat pulse. It was highly likely that they would be affected by EMP. Jenna’s calculations suggested only a forty percent chance that they would get away in one piece. Her estimates on her own survival were closer to eighty percent, however, and that was why she was running her current projection.

She was going to survive, and so was Simon Beringer, and he was going to be looking for a scapegoat for the failure to secure Misaki Himura as a hostage. If, by some fluke, the bomb did not do its job, he would be looking for someone to blame for his own complete failure. The operation had cost a fortune and the lives of over a hundred Redwing soldiers. Some losses had been expected, sure, but nothing on this scale. Jenna figured she had a pretty good idea who he would blame, but she was used to trusting her models, not her instincts.

She reached a conclusion and her gaze fell upon Simon. There was an almost infinitesimal possibility that he would not try to saddle her with the blame for their failure. There was an uncomfortably large probability that he would succeed. The Death’s Handmaiden project was considered a failure by most of the Redwings, especially those higher up in the command. Those who might have defended it were largely dead at the hands of its most egregious failure, Nava. So, the chances were high, around seventy percent, that Jenna would find herself on the wrong end of a firing squad being the product of an expensive failure and then having failed to correctly predict the outcome of the operation.

Jenna began running some new projections in an effort to uncover a way out for herself.

~~~

‘I have a team on its way to defuse the thing,’ Fawn said, ‘and a fleet of transports to get everyone out of here.’

‘But that will take hours,’ Nava said. ‘Probably, it will take many hours. My information is that the device isn’t on a timer, but the possibility of command detonation can’t be ruled out.’

‘You’re going to tell me at some point where you’re getting this information, right?’

‘I’ll consider revealing my source, yes. I need to get out there and go after them. If they can, they’ll detonate as soon as they get out of the danger area.’

‘Which we don’t know the size of because we don’t know the yield.’

‘We could probably make an estimate based on their apparent goal, but I don’t think it’s worth it. I need to go, First Lieutenant.’

‘Sure, yes, go.’

‘Thank you, First Lieutenant.’ Nava lifted into the air, rapidly accelerating toward the east. In truth, she was guessing at the direction the Redwings had taken, but she hoped to be able to get a better idea of where they had got to from the air. If not, the best she could hope for was that the bomb was not rigged for command detonation. And there was no way she was willing to risk that.

~~~

It was as the tiltrotor was lifting off the ground that Simon looked around and began to realise that he was possibly missing something. ‘Has anyone seen DH-ten?’

‘I think she got on one of the other transports, sir,’ someone replied. ‘I saw her heading that way.’

‘Why… Never mind.’ With her missing, it would be difficult to judge when to use the remote detonator. He pulled the device from his pocket and flipped open the guard over the red button. Then he closed it again. They were five kilometres from the school. That seemed too close. Would ten be enough? How long should he wait? He took out his ketcom and checked the time. Ten minutes? Fifteen?

Stupid girl. Was she doing her best to make sure this operation would fail entirely? When they got back to base, he would make sure she faced the consequences. There was no way he was going to take the blame for all of this!

But in the meantime, how long should he wait to press the button?

~~~

It took five minutes for Nava to spot the three transports heading north and east about ten kilometres from the school. A tiltrotor and two large helicopters with twin rotors. So, the commanders of the operation were on the tiltrotor which could achieve higher speeds and had a better chance of escaping if they encountered problems. What was left of the Redwing soldiers were aboard the helicopters.

At least, that was her theory. As she accelerated toward the trio of aircraft, she considered what would happen if she did not take out the leader with the first attack. It was possible that he could detonate if he realised what was happening. That would, obviously, be bad. And Nava was uncomfortably aware that it was quite possible that she would survive, knowing that her mistake had killed her friends.

There was no point in second-guessing. She would try to drop all three targets as fast as possible. She was close enough with the sniper rifle, so she pulled up in mid-air and took aim on the tiltrotor. It was time to say another goodbye to another of her sisters. She had no doubt that Jenna was on one of the vehicles and was about to die for the last time.

‘Goodbye, Jenna,’ Nava said, and then she pulled the trigger.

~~~

Simon flicked up the cover on the button again. This had to be far enough. The tiltrotor was shielded against EMP. That was the theory anyway. They were a long way out now. His thumb hovered over the button…

‘Lieutenant,’ said a voice in his ear, ‘we’re picking something up on radar.’

Simon took his hand off the button and flicked the cover closed. ‘What? Have they sent interceptors?’

‘It’s behind us, and it’s too small to be another aircraft. Fast too, but now it’s hovering about six kilometres behind us.’

Simon frowned, wondering what could possibly be there. And then it hit him. ‘Evasive manoeuvres! It’s the traitor. It’s DH-fourteen! She’s–’

Something like a tiny star flew through the side of the cabin as though the armoured hull was not even there. Simon barely had time to realise it was there before it was not, and neither was Simon Beringer Redwing.

~~~

The tiltrotor exploded before it reached the ground. Nava took down the two helicopters by shooting out the rear rotor hubs. One of them burned as it fell. The second exploded when it hit the grass below. She took out her ketcom and made a call.

‘The Redwings are gone, First Lieutenant,’ she said by way of greeting.

‘Well, we’re still here, so we’ll assume you took out whoever had the button before they used it,’ Fawn replied.

‘Assuming there was a button to use, but yes. I am more than a little relieved by that, but now it’s up to you. I have no idea how to defuse a nuclear bomb.’

‘Well, neither do I, but someone who does should be arriving in about ten minutes.’

‘I should be there to brief them then.’

‘Good. Well done, Second Lieutenant.’

‘Tell me that again when we all haven’t been consumed in nuclear fire.’

~~~

‘This time, you’re getting a medal,’ Misaki said. She was watching as the bomb disposal technicians prepared to go in and deal with the device in the truck.

Her security detail had been very determined that she should evacuate. Getting enough transports of any kind to relocate all the delegates, the school’s faculty and staff, and the students still on-site was proving difficult. ‘Difficult’ was what the DPU were saying, but Nava suspected it was a lot harder than that. Given that it was hard to get anyone out, Misaki had elected to stay at the school. She had said ‘elect,’ but what her face had said was ‘you’ll have to drug me and carry me out by force.’ The DPU had backed down.

Some people had left. It was not easy with a nuclear bomb at the station and a smouldering vertol wreck at the heliport, but some people had left. Mostly, they had been rich people with access to private transport. Several of the clan reps on-site had arranged to leave, and a couple of them had, but most had changed their minds when they realised Misaki was staying and discovered that the school’s News Club was on hand to video them rushing off to leave students to their fate.

‘I don’t really want a medal,’ Nava said, her eyes also on the techs. ‘And I hardly did this alone.’

‘I’m aware of that. You’ll all get medals. Even Rochester Hunt, who may not have taken part in the counterattack, but kept his head and did what was needed to gather information. Besides, it’s backpay for last year and your trip to Beherbergen. He did the same job at both of those incidents, did he not?’

‘Chess is our recon specialist. It’s almost a shame that he plans to go down the academic track, but I have no intention of trying to change his mind on that. If we’ll all be awarded, then I suppose I have no objection.’

Fawn appeared at Nava’s side. ‘I’ve got an IRD team at the crash sites. We don’t expect to find much, but we may be able to confirm a few deaths. I’ll have another team out to go over the bodies in the plaza once this matter is dealt with.’ She grinned. ‘So, you can use Armageddon.’

‘I don’t think it quite lives up to its name. It was sufficient for the task at hand, but heavier armour would likely defeat it and it’s of little use against armoured vehicles. The name evokes something more… hellish.’

‘It made around a hundred and twenty corpses in a few seconds. That sounds hellish to me.’

Nava shrugged. ‘Perhaps my view of hell is different from yours. The Secretary General wants to give me a medal, along with the others involved in the counterattack.’

‘I’m going to recommend you for a promotion too. It’ll be a sort of informal promotion, and I’ve no idea how it’ll work when you actually join the ASF, but I’m going to put the request through.’

‘An excellent idea, First Lieutenant,’ Misaki said. ‘If you need some added force behind the request, send me a message.’

‘Thank you, Madam Secretary. Of course, I’m only doing it so that Nava will be the same rank as me. Then she’ll have to call me Fawn.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Nava replied. ‘But I may consider it on a circumstantial basis.’

‘Well, it’s an improvement, I suppose.’