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Sue turns twelve. He spends two months as a twelve-year-old in command of Phoenix Army, and then he graduates to Tactical.
The fantasy game is emptier now. But he finished her castle first. And all the space stations are on the same time zone, so Sue knows when to knock on her glass wall and see if she'll let him by.
Flame changes commanders again. The new one doesn't want a girl in his army - thinks she damages unit cohesion or some kuso like that - and he trades her to Rabbit, which would have been great ages ago, but Rabbit now has a different commander too. This one is clever enough - or has enough inertia - to leave her in toon leader position based solely on seniority (she is eleven, now). He gives her the boys most recently out of launch - the vets go to the toon leaders who curry more personal favor - and she trains them into a squad of formbusters and sharpshooters who inexplicably start coming to her about their personal problems too. She helps as best she can.
When she is eleven and a half, she receives command of Asp Army. She scopes them out and sees that she needs to reorganize the toon leadership completely - Asp's previous commander was an idiot, saved from last place only by good footsoldiers who could take vague or outright mumbled orders and turn them into reasonable objectives. Asp's record is still one of the worst in the school; it's ahead of Dragon (cursed), Echidna (they keep getting matched against the stronger armies but as far as Aegis can tell are intrinsically just mediocre), and Rat (the commander has checked out so completely that he's only still there because they haven't decided whether to ice him or take a chance on graduating him).
She trades the whining Asp toon leaders - one has the good grace not to whine - and their disgruntled seconds. (She doesn't demote them first: she wants good trades, and she can get more for a toon leader than for a former toon leader.) She promotes some of those good footsoldiers, trades in Qiaochu and a few other old friends with solid skills and gives them a week to get to know the boys and settle in, and then - unprecedented - lets them submit requests for their own underlings.
Everyone gets the toon they want, except for a couple of leaders with overlapping tastes in soldiers who she has to break ties on. That popularly requested handful (the ones with good records and charismatic smiles) she sorts by skill, not aiming to keep the toons all the same size: if Qiaochu wants to command fifteen men and Blue Moon wants a surgical force of four, she'll let them. The six soldiers no one asks for, she keeps for her own squad of cover fire and scouting; if she can't make them into something either, she'll trade some more.
Her six-man squad is called the Medusa in flat hours after she starts training them separately - if you so much as look at the Aegis, you'll be turned to stone! her soldiers repeat to each other with hysterical laughter. The other toons have roles too. Qiaochu's boys learn to move like a flock of pigeons, pushing off each other gently en route through the battleroom to make it hard to take steady aim at just one. Blue Moon's boys get Aegis's formbusting training. Emilio's learn hand-to-hand engagements - with strict cautions about how hard a blow a flash suit can absorb without injuring the child inside it - and Screwdriver's are a team of sharpshooters. She makes sure they each have seconds and that Qiaochu's huge toon also has a third and a fourth, so they aren't directionless if something happens to their leader. She makes sure that Medusa can be absorbed into the nearest available toon usefully if she's shot and their cover fire is no longer necessary. She experiments with combining toons, putting Qiaochu's flock around Screwdriver's gunmen or Blue Moon's formbusters on an assisted mission with Emilio's hand-to-hand (the skills are related, but not identical).
She has her army for a month, she gets a battle against Tide, and she wins it.
She doesn't win everything. Rabbit's good, Eagle's good, she gives them a hard fight for their winnings but eventually they both beat her (and she has to face Rabbit twice). But she wins most. Asp climbs the standings steadily from its miserable origins until her twelfth birthday, on which she receives an assignment to Tactical.
She sends Beri a message.
I wish to requisition a copy of my save file for the fantasy game. I have put a considerable amount of time into it. While I don't expect to have the software to run the game at Tactical, it is not impossible that I will eventually be in a position to revive my villagers.
autokinetic
As is usual for Beri, he doesn't waste a word in his reply:
Granted.
The attached file is very large.
Granted.
The attached file is very large.
autokinetic
She doesn't waste his time with a thank-you. She just copies the file to her planetside storage with her mother's teacher access - it's got the space, it's stable, and Renée never uses it - and bids her army goodbye, one by one, and leaves notes for Asp's next commander, and when the time comes she reports to her shuttle to Tactical.
It's cheaper to travel from station to station than between station and planet, but it's not free; she's in a group of three who all graduated at once, the former commanders of Raptor and a kid who never made commander but has graduated into Tactical anyway. They chat, a little, on the flight, but mostly they sleep and read and try to stay out of each other's way on the cramped little craft.
They dock. Aegis is shunted away from the two boys immediately for an infirmary visit. "Birth control implant. You're only twelve now, but we know how long that lasts, and it's cheaper only to do the girls," says a nurse, swabbing her arm inside her elbow where the exo doesn't spider over her skin.
"Any adverse reactions?" Aegis asks.
"Nothing your profile flags for," says the nurse.
After the little chip goes into her elbow and she has a liquid bandage patching the site, Aegis is allowed to catch up with her shuttlemates. They're bunked together in a double. Aegis, though, is asked about her preferences. Girls are harder to assign than boys, and they can't just throw her in with random members of the opposite sex the way they were so comfortable doing when everyone involved was prepubescent; there's flex around the edges.
"Well," Aegis tries, "could I bunk with Sue in a double?"
"Su? Chinese?" asks the officer.
"Sue's American," says Aegis, puzzled.
"Sure, why not," says the officer, and he tries to look up "Sue". "I'm not finding her in the system."
"Sue's not his real name," supplies Aegis.
"Oh," says the officer, clearly finding this sufficient information to identify the student she's referring to. "He doesn't have a roommate right now - they keep soliciting swaps - but - er -"
"You already said I could," Aegis points out. "If he doesn't want a roommate that's fine, but you already said it would be all right."
The officer frowns, and taps some keys, and - there are no color paths to paint, here, but he gives her a list of directions. They're hopelessly confusing. But that's all right. She knows how to find this particular location.
bird, bird, bird
It's cheaper to travel from station to station than between station and planet, but it's not free; she's in a group of three who all graduated at once, the former commanders of Raptor and a kid who never made commander but has graduated into Tactical anyway. They chat, a little, on the flight, but mostly they sleep and read and try to stay out of each other's way on the cramped little craft.
They dock. Aegis is shunted away from the two boys immediately for an infirmary visit. "Birth control implant. You're only twelve now, but we know how long that lasts, and it's cheaper only to do the girls," says a nurse, swabbing her arm inside her elbow where the exo doesn't spider over her skin.
"Any adverse reactions?" Aegis asks.
"Nothing your profile flags for," says the nurse.
After the little chip goes into her elbow and she has a liquid bandage patching the site, Aegis is allowed to catch up with her shuttlemates. They're bunked together in a double. Aegis, though, is asked about her preferences. Girls are harder to assign than boys, and they can't just throw her in with random members of the opposite sex the way they were so comfortable doing when everyone involved was prepubescent; there's flex around the edges.
"Well," Aegis tries, "could I bunk with Sue in a double?"
"Su? Chinese?" asks the officer.
"Sue's American," says Aegis, puzzled.
"Sure, why not," says the officer, and he tries to look up "Sue". "I'm not finding her in the system."
"Sue's not his real name," supplies Aegis.
"Oh," says the officer, clearly finding this sufficient information to identify the student she's referring to. "He doesn't have a roommate right now - they keep soliciting swaps - but - er -"
"You already said I could," Aegis points out. "If he doesn't want a roommate that's fine, but you already said it would be all right."
The officer frowns, and taps some keys, and - there are no color paths to paint, here, but he gives her a list of directions. They're hopelessly confusing. But that's all right. She knows how to find this particular location.
bird, bird, bird
You're close, he pushes, friendly. They graduate you?
autokinetic
Yup. I got bunked with you unless you don't want me. Where are you at? This place is a maze.
Gimme eyes?
autokinetic
She has to bird-bird-bird much harder to do anything but talk, but she can.
As soon as she's sent enough visuals to identify her surroundings, he pushes back a complete walkthrough of the path to his room.
autokinetic
She relaxes the birding and follows the directions. Here I am, she says, and she also knocks for the benefit of any recording equipment.
Sue opens his door, beams, and hugs her.
"Hey, stranger," he says happily.
"Hey, stranger," he says happily.
autokinetic
"Hey, Sue. How's Tactical treating you? It's lucky you're going by a girls' name, I got the guy to say I could bunk with you before he realized who I was talking about."
He laughs.
"Tactical's treating me pretty great. C'mon in, make yourself at home. How's the empire?"
"Tactical's treating me pretty great. C'mon in, make yourself at home. How's the empire?"
autokinetic
"I got my save file, so that's safe. Desks here won't have it, but maybe someday I can start it up again. I'll probably be homesick for it after more than a shuttle voyage has gone by without. I guess I'll get more reading done, unless there's massively more homework here - are they still putting up with you not turning up to classes? Is there anything besides classes at this level? I doubt they have a battleroom." She stretches up on her tiptoes, touches the ceiling. "Low grav, though, is there anyplace with zero-g to fly in?"
"I'm learning everything they want me to learn," he shrugs. "And I show up to tests. Yeah, you can use the docking bays, it's not official but it's fun."
autokinetic
"Not official like you get in trouble if they catch you or not official like they don't have assigned times or anything?"
"No assigned times," he says. "It was my personal combat instructor who showed me how to get in in the first place."
autokinetic
"I wonder if I should start taking that. I took like six classes of it when I was seven but I've forgotten a lot of it and I'm not literally super-fast like I would be if my mutation were directly for that, I can just control myself at top normal-human speed, so I probably shouldn't trundle along expecting that to do the trick all the time."
"I can introduce you if you want," he offers cheerfully.
autokinetic
"Do you suppose they'll put us in the same level class?" asks Aegis.
"If you belong there," he says with a grin.
autokinetic
"Trained or not I bet I'm better than you," she says, putting up her hands and throwing a mini-strike at the air in front of her. "Is the room free, could we put on padding and have a looksee?"
He beams.
"Let's!"
"Let's!"
Sue does!
Personal combat is taught in the highest-gravity areas, of course. It's a bit of a hike.
Personal combat is taught in the highest-gravity areas, of course. It's a bit of a hike.
autokinetic
Aegis slides naturally from low-grav to high-grav walking styles, going from a light dancing gait to a rolling one, and she spins a couple times en route, taking in her surroundings. "What styles are you doing?" she asks.
"Little of everything," he shrugs.