RITZA ACADEMY
LIEGEDEN, EMPORIA
FEDERATED SUNS
13 APRIL 3150
0915 HOURS
“—Yeah, everyone’s twitchy, but with Count Ritza on the move, making trouble over the last couple of days, spirits are high.”
Cadet Nadine Roux jotted down notes as she listened to her contact’s report. He was a janitor in New Exeter and had a good eye for details. The shortwave radio was still the best way to get intel on the ground. “Good work, Steel. I know it can’t be easy with the enemy in the city, but we need this intel. Anything else?”
“No, Tiamat. But keep your eyes and ears open. Big things are happening on both sides. Especially with those damn snakes. Over and out.”
“I hear you. Stay safe. Over and out.” She clicked off the mic and left the communication device in standby mode. Every one of her spies, her “treasures,” knew to leave messages on the secured, encrypted device while the Draconis Combine communications interdiction was in place. It was only by luck and low technology that the interdiction hadn’t blocked the shortwave radio.
She made a few more notes for her report—though she wasn’t completely sure who she was going to give it to yet—and stood. A quick pat over her fatigues told her everything was in place. With the attack on the academy and the resulting death and damage, the returned professors were looking for reasons to vent their anger. The ones who could, that is.
Pain lanced through her heart as she remembered Lady Shannon’s death. Lord Zachary was still alive, but only just. She shook her head, clenching her hands as the faces of her dead friends surfaced. “Not my fault.” But she knew she was wrong. Some of them were her fault. Not the ones from this morning, killed when the long-range missiles struck the ’Mech bay. But the ones from the spaceport night attack were.
Was it only three days ago that they’d run a crazy mission to rescue the captured MechWarriors and their ’Mechs?
Nadine opened the door to head to class and stopped. Leaning against the wall opposite the door with her arms crossed was her least favorite sergeant, Marjorie Placket. Whipcord lean with short black hair and a habit of making cadets clean vehicles with toothbrushes, Sergeant Placket had always been hard on everyone; especially Nadine.
“Cadet Roux, you missed breakfast.”
“No ma’am. I grabbed a protein bar on the way over.”
Sergeant Placket straightened. “Don’t call me ma’am. I work for a living.”
“Yes, Sergeant. Sorry, Sergeant.” Nadine had unconsciously snapped to attention, keeping her eyes forward and her shoulders straight.
“Well? What’s the word?”
It took Nadine a moment to figure out what the sergeant was asking. She glanced at her paper, then offered it to the sergeant as she spoke. “Count Ritza has reappeared. Early morning, right after the attack on the academy, it looks like he’s retaken control of the New Exeter Spaceport from the Seventh Ghost Regiment. But that means they’ve moved. Some into New Ex. Some into the outlying estates and tiny towns. No one knows where the enemy DropShips are now. Well, no one that I know. I’m sure the people at the spaceport know.”
The Sergeant scanned the paper and frowned.
“Sergeant?” Nadine asked.
“There are several guesses and opinions in this report. We work in facts, Cadet Roux. Not suppositions.”
Nadine glanced up. “I don’t understand.”
“This point where you surmise there will be important assets moved.” The older woman shook her head. “This information’s flawed; a red herring. Leave it alone.”
“But...” Nadine stopped at the look on the sergeant’s face. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Still, decent work…especially for a cadet who should be focusing on her studies.”
The backhanded compliment stung and did nothing to cool Nadine’s quiet anger or disbelief.
Sergeant Placket folded the paper and put it into a fatigue pocket. “I expect a daily intel report on my desk by end-of-day. If it’s urgent, find me and report in immediately.”
“Sergeant?” Nadine couldn’t keep the confusion off her face.
“Did I stutter, cadet? You are persona non-grata right now. But that doesn’t mean your intel is all bad. More data is more data. Since Sergeant Major Auger hasn’t returned yet, I’m going to be your liaison. This doesn’t mean I approve. It doesn’t mean I don’t approve. It means we’re at war, and information is valuable. However, this also doesn’t mean I’m going to go easy on you. Far from it. You will do all your assigned tasks. You will obey curfew. You will pull your weight.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t.
Nadine thought she knew why Vale hadn’t returned. He hadn’t made it out of the capital city yet... She stopped the rest of that thought before it could hurt her even more. “Yes, Sergeant. How did you know I was here?”
“Observation goes two ways, Cadet Roux. I’ve always known. Sometimes in the moment, sometimes after the fact.” Sergeant Placket rolled her eyes at Nadine’s open mouth. “The server room has its own security. Including cameras.”
Nadine’s brain didn’t want to work. All this time, Sergeant Placket knew? And did nothing? The woman hated her.
“Look. I’m not Sergeant Auger. I’m not your friend. But I’m not your enemy, either. I’m one of your teachers and I, like everyone else, am doing the best I can.” She pursed her lips and scowled, then relaxed. “Until Vale returns, if you need someone to bounce one of your harebrained schemes off of, I will listen and point out all the mistakes in your plan.”
Nadine wondered if she was in an alternate world. Sergeant Placket offering to help? Maybe she’d been hit in the head during the attack. Her wonder must have shown on her face.
The sergeant held up a finger. “Again, this doesn’t mean I approve or disapprove. All it means is that, as off-the-rails as your rescue plan was, it succeeded. It brought holy hell with it, but it succeeded. So, I will listen. I will point out your mistakes, incorrect assumptions, and your flaws.”
There was the sergeant she knew and understood. “And then?”
“And then we’ll see.” She glanced at her watch. “You have ten minutes until first bell. I’d move if I were you. I’m not going to give you an excuse to miss class or miss repair detail. Dismissed.”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
Jasper hurried to the commons, one of the buildings that wasn’t damaged in the attack. It was filled with cadets coming and going. The returned professors had taken control in short order.
Over the last two days, a new academy routine had emerged. Truncated classes, limited academy patrols, and hard labor made harder by the continued discovery of bodies in the rubble of the ’Mech bay and the administration building. The occasional live but injured person was found and was treated as a triumph. Dame Emma; Dame Ivy Ross, the Physics and Navigation professor; and Captain Mateo Gabrielli, Dean of the infantry cadets, had set up a schedule where half of the students worked on the damaged buildings or helped in the John James Memorial Hospital—another unharmed building—while the other half continued with classes on a truncated schedule.
In the middle was an overlapping two-hour block of cadets moving through the commons for food. Forty-five minutes per wave of cadets wasn’t a lot of time for anyone to receive a lunchtime meal and eat it. Still, cadets met in the middle and shared information, gossip, and facts. It was chaos, but not the bad kind. Overseeing it all was Sir Michael, the Maths professor, and Captain Gabrielli. Both looked like they wanted to chew nails. Sir Michael glared at the cadets while the captain kept a wary eye on the other chaperone.
Of course, all of them waited for the next missile strike, the next ’Mech attack, the next alarm. Two days of silence on the part of the enemy had only heightened the fear. There was movement and combat in other parts of Emporia, but none of it was centered on the academy. Most of it appeared to be centered around New Exeter and the spaceport.
Grabbing a tray of food without looking at what was on it, Jasper looked for people he knew. Delany Menard sat by herself, not looking at anyone. She shoveled food into her mouth in an automatic fueling-herself motion. He walked over and put his tray down across from her. She jerked, flipping the fork over from eating utensil to weapon, then back again as she realized who he was. She didn’t say anything as he sat down.
“You okay?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Want to talk about it?”
She shook her head again then shrugged. “I miss Claire.”
“I know.”
“That night, when everyone was congratulating us, it didn’t hurt so bad. But when the attack came, all I heard was Claire’s last scream. I can’t stop hearing her. Now, all I feel is guilt. People are dead because of me.”
Jasper used food to give him time to think, rolling words around in his head. Everything sounded terrible, but he let them spill out anyway. “Lord Vogel had warned me and Nadine not to let anyone make heroes of us…and that’s what I did anyway. I failed. I’m sorry. People are dead because of me, not you. You were following orders.”
Delany scowled. “Don’t give me that, Roux. You’re not my superior officer. I volunteered. I was on the rescue. I have the same responsibility as you. You may have come up with the plan, but I helped you execute it. Part of this—” she waved her hand in the general direction of the campus that took the brunt of the attack, “—is on my shoulders. The blood of the dead is on my hands. You don’t get a monopoly on responsibility.”
He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. She was right. He shoveled more food—some sort of beef stroganoff—into his mouth, taking a moment to actually taste it beyond “warm” and “edible.” It was really good. The food in the commons always was. “You’re right. I just wanted to, I don’t know, help.”
“You’ve helped enough already.”
Jerking his head up, he saw a small smile on the edges of her lips. The statement had been a compliment, not a slap to the face. He relaxed and nodded.
“You brought my parents home. That’s enough. Even if they, we, none of us survive what’s coming…my parents didn’t die as captives. That’s worth everything to me. The fact that I got to help, to do my duty to Emporia and my family, is a bonus.”
Jasper flushed, a myriad of emotions washing over him. He didn’t have time to process them or to even come up with a good response to Delany’s admission before Nadine and Lyric Hayton appeared and plonked their trays down; Lyric next to Delany, Nadine next to Jasper. Both girls looked bright-eyed and excited.
“We need to talk,” Nadine said in a rough hush. “I’ve got new intel. I know what our next mission needs to be.”
“Mission?” Jasper asked. Now that he saw her, he could see the brightness in her eyes was held back or leftover tears. And what he’d taken as excitement was more like suppressed worry from the tone of her voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Mission. Thing we need to do to help the war effort. I—”
“No,” Jasper interrupted. “We’re cadets. The cadre’s back. They’ll handle it.”
Nadine shook her head. “You don’t even know what we need to do.”
“Right now we need to be cadets.”
Delany touched Jasper’s wrist with a tentative hand. “Let’s hear what she has to say. She’s the one with the intel.”
Jasper looked between Delany, Lyric, and Nadine, then gestured for her to go on.
“The Vengalil estate. We need to raid it. Word on the wire is that’s where they’ve got all their important prisoners. Like the Estburys. And they’re going to move them soon.” Nadine’s voice was almost steady as she spoke.
He could tell there was more behind her words that she wasn’t yet willing to reveal. “How far away is it? How can you be sure that that’s what they’re doing?” Jasper glanced at Delany to see what she thought, but the other cadet kept her face neutral.
“As estates go, it’s the closest to the academy. A couple klicks away. Some of the scuttlebutt is that it’s where they’re keeping one of the ’Mechs that attacked us. That’s why we need you.”
Again, Jasper shook his head. “This is the time to tell the experienced MechWarriors. Dame Emma. Lady Marie. We could even get it to Baron Zachary.”
“As if they’d listen to us. Sergeant Placket offered to be Vale’s stand-in, to listen with a neutral ear. I don’t believe her. She just wants to know what we’re thinking so she can shut us down. When I told her about some of the things I’d discovered, she told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.” Nadine gestured her head at Sir Michael. “Besides, if any of them did listen, do you think they’d actually follow our lead?”
“Which is why you go to someone who will,” Jasper insisted. The pain and anger in his sister’s voice spoke volumes of the grief and guilt he knew she felt and why she needed to do something—anything—to make herself feel better.
“Like who?” she demanded. “I tried before and failed.”
Ethan and Pascal appeared and sat down on the other side of Delany, Ethan nearest to her. He leaned close. “What crazy-ass thing are you planning now?”
“What have you been doing? You smell awful! Both of you do.” Delany pushed away from him, sliding into Lyric.
Ethan looked down at himself and his dirty, muddy coveralls and shrugged. “Digging out part of the admin building. One of the bathrooms.” He paused. “No survivors.” This last was said in a flat tone that told everyone that non-survivors were found and not to continue that train of thought. “So, give. What are you planning?”
“What makes you think we’re planning anything?” Jasper asked. Even though he and Ethan seemed to have come to some sort of an accord after the rescue of the MechWarriors, he still didn’t trust—or even like, for that matter—the older boy.
Ethan sneered briefly before he smoothed his face into something more neutral. “It’s you, your sister, and these two. Of course, you’re planning something. Plus, you had your heads pressed together like a conspiracy. So, what’s the plan? You promised I could be in on the next one.”
Jasper and Delany exchanged a glance. Jasper shrugged and turned back to his sister.
Nadine took a steadying breath and started again. “Right. The Vengalil estate. The snakes are moving their prisoners away from there. Like soon. It’s a good target. We can rescue them before they’re moved. We only need like one or two ’Mechs to escort the tankers. We can do what we did with the spaceport, only it’s a lot closer.”
Ethan punched one hand with the other. “Cool. When do we go?”
Nadine gazed at Jasper, letting the silence grow.
Jasper shook his head. “Tell me again why you’re not feeding this intel up the line?”
Nadine flushed. “I tried and Placket told me to leave it alone. I don’t trust her.”
Lyric leaned in. “The adults are too busy with their own plans. This is something we can do on our own.”
“And get the academy attacked again?” Jasper asked.
Ethan broke in. “Wait, you don’t want to help rescue more people? What the hell, Roux? I thought you’d grown a pair.” He looked at Nadine. “I’m in. Whatever you need, just tell me. You don’t need a coward like him backing you up.”
Nadine nodded to Ethan. “Thanks. I’ll let you know.” She reached out to Jasper. “I’ll try again, but I don’t think it’ll help. They barely pay attention to me unless they’re looking for a reason to yell.”
As if summoned by Nadine’s words, Sir Michael appeared. “Don’t you think you’ve chin-wagged enough?” He looked between Delany and Jasper. His voice was calm in that murderous way that spoke more than words. His hands were down at his sides, his hands not quite clenched into fists. “Next shift is soon.”
Jasper glanced around. Captain Gabrielli had one eye on them and one eye on the rest of the cafeteria. “Yes, sir. Almost done, sir.” He scooped stroganoff into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing, much less tasting, it.
Delany did the same, wolfing down their food while Sir Michael loomed. No one said anything as they all looked at each other. As soon as Jasper and Delany cleared their trays, Sir Michael nodded. “Good. Off you go. No loitering.”
The Maths professor turned away, seeming a touch more relaxed as Delany and Jasper got up. Jasper mouthed, “That’s why I can’t help you.” to Nadine.
She grimaced. “Later,” she mouthed back.