Axira Episode One (8 page)

As I stood there in the front of the class, eyes locked on
some innocuous patch of dirt on the ground before me, I thought
again about how I could help change the future.

That's why I was here.

To guide the Coalition against my master, to take him down
before he could do more damage.

Before I was aware of it, Lieutenant Ma'tovan reached in,
clapped a hand on my shoulder, and shoved hard.

His muscles strained, his feet skidding against the floor,
but he couldn't push me over.

In a second, I snapped back to reality, my body taking
control as all those years of training snapped through my
muscles.

I dropped the shoulder he was shoving, twisting to his side
just at the right moment and letting his momentum pull him
forward.

He stumbled.

I was half a second from snapping towards him – from
attacking.

Then I stopped myself.

In fact, I stopped myself when the lieutenant straightened up
and shot me a challenging look. "It seems Cadet Em here already has
some combat training. Well, that may be the case with some more of
you,” he turned towards the assembled crowd, “But you're going to
have to forget what you learnt and learn to do it the Coalition
way. The correct method of deterring such an attack,” he whirled on
his boot and addressed me once more, “Is this." He demonstrated by
ducking forward, rounding his shoulder, then shoving
hard.

It was a waste of energy. My move was more efficient. I kept
that fact to myself as I looked past his left shoulder and mimicked
his move.

He straightened up and nodded towards Elle. "Push her,” he
said simply.

I turned and tried to calculate how hard I could push Elle
without shoving her right through the floor.

She cowered away from me, wincing, but eventually nodding.
"I'm ready."

I shoved her.

She fell over. Hard.

I'd used approximately the same force I would use to open a
door.

I moved down to help her up, but the lieutenant growled at me
that she had to learn to get up on her own.

As the lesson continued, I tried hard to control myself. I
took cues from the cadets around me, imitating their behavior, even
their reactions as they failed.

The lieutenant kept teaching us moves, and while some of them
made sense, others didn't. I was reminded of the failings I’d
witnessed in Coalition soldiers – failings I’d once capitalized on
to overcome them.

I tried to keep myself contained, and aside from my initial
mistake with the lieutenant, I did. I measured my performance based
on the average of the other recruits around me. By the end of the
class, I was neither the best nor the worst. I was considered
competent enough.

That didn’t stop the lieutenant from pulling me aside as
everyone else was leaving. “Why do I get the feeling, Cadet, that
you were holding yourself back during that class?” He crossed his
enormous arms in front of his chest, the muscles practically
bulging through the fabric of his uniform.

I considered him in what I hoped was a non-challenging way,
ensuring my gaze was directed at the floor by his feet.

“
You resisted my initial throw like a professional, Cadet. You
clearly have experience with combat techniques,” he continued. “I
saw your feat of endurance on the track yesterday too. Do you know
what I hate more than a cadet who tries hard but fails?”

I didn’t shift my gaze.

“
One that won’t try hard at all. You may think you can breeze
through this Academy course. You may think your past life –
whatever it involved – has set you up to get through the next five
years without a challenge, but I’m here to tell you that isn’t the
case. I will learn whatever your limits are, and I will push you
beyond them. Now, never do that again. Never show up to one of my
classes and hold back. Do you understand that?”

I offered a sharp salute.

Ma’tovan glowered into my eyes and dismissed me with a
snarl.

I turned and walked out, containing the frown that wanted to
spread across my face. I was starting to learn that Academy life
was far more complex than I’d envisioned. Rather than do a subspace
jump and flee my new life, I resolved to try harder.

The lieutenant was right, and I had held back, but he was
wrong too. He would not find out my limits and push me beyond them.
I would increase my efforts enough to get him off my back, but I
would never show him or anyone else at the Academy my full
potential, not until the day I had Master in my sights. Not until
the day I could finally dispose of him and his wretched legacy
against my people.

Chapter 5

The next few months passed without incident. I learned to
control my strength and speed, though there were still a few
slip-ups. Enough that I had a reputation around the Academy. I had
already rejected offers from the track team, the wrestling team,
the advanced combat team, and even a curious elite unit called E
Club. By and large, people left me alone. They waited until I was
apparently out of earshot until they started mumbling about
me.

There was one exception. Of course there was one exception.
Cadet Elle Singh. She had latched onto me that first day, and no
matter how hard I tried to shake her, she would always return.
There was a part of me that admired her tenacity, but the rest of
me kept reminding myself she was the daughter of Admiral Singh, and
was a dangerous acquaintance.

She wasn’t the only one of Admiral Singh’s children showing
interest in me. It seemed her brother would make up any old excuse
to see me.

I ensured my grades in all my classes put me in the top
percentile but never the absolute top of the class. I had to
maintain good marks and good discipline if I was to graduate in a
position to influence the Coalition. Yet I had to keep reminding
myself I couldn’t be too good. Too good would bring undue
attention.

For someone who had endured 450 years of internment, I found
the prospect of having to wait for the next five years before I
could begin to make my mark on the Coalition torture. I wanted to
make a difference today. I wanted to start absolving my sins right
now. But unfortunately I had to head to class.

Today there was a surprise guest lecture. I hadn’t bothered
to look up details of what it would be about. It was in xenobiology
class, and I could pass that particular unit without attending a
single lecture. There wasn’t a race in the Milky Way I hadn’t met
before, nor one I hadn’t fought.

I walked up the steps of the lecture hall, spying an empty
seat off on its own. I didn’t take it. Instead I quickly
ascertained where Cadet Elle was, and I walked over and sat beside
her. There was no point in sitting on my own. Elle would simply
move to sit next to me.

I’d learned over the past several months that she was
irrepressible.

She offered me a large smile as I sat down and an unnecessary
wave considering I was right next to her. I returned the smile. It
was getting easier, or at least around her it was. You tended to
get a lot of practice with smiling around Elle Singh. It was about
the only thing she could do right.

Somehow she was still in the Academy, and in many ways, that
might have something to do with me. While she tended to be okay on
the academic side of her study, her physical fitness was still
below par. I had helped her out where I could, even teaching her
simpler throws and attacks more suited to her size and weight
ratio. This had only reinforced to the cadet that I was her best
friend. A term I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“
Oh my God, this class is going to be so exciting. I heard
from my brother the guest lecturer is Doctor Ing.”

I looked at her blankly.

“
You know? The Academy’s foremost expert on
spacers?”

I didn’t move a muscle, at least not outwardly. Inside, I
clenched like someone had hit me in the gut. I forced a smile.
“That sounds interesting,” I said in what I hoped wasn’t the fakest
tone in the galaxy.

“
Interesting? Are you crazy? It’s going to be amazing. You
know what a spacer is, right?” She questioned me. “It’s just that
some people still think they’re a myth. I don’t know how you could
actually think that, considering how much damage they’ve done. I
suppose they’ve been operating for so many years that they’ve
become legendary to so many races.”

I didn’t say a word. I sat there and concentrated all my
energy on maintaining a blank, controlled expression. Fortunately,
soon enough the class started. If I had known we’d be discussing my
race today, I wouldn’t have come. I would have concocted some
infection with my implant so I could skip the lesson.

I couldn’t change that now, and I judged it would be more
conspicuous if I suddenly stood up and raced out. So I would have
to endure this.

I settled my eyes somewhere on my desk, and I did not raise
them even when the lecturer entered the hall.

...

Jason Singh

“
It’s just this way, Doctor,” I said in a polite tone as I
gestured towards the lecture hall. The students were already
seated, half of them looking bored and the other half were
ecstatic. Clearly word of the surprise guest lecture hadn’t spread
through all the recruits yet. If the assembled cadets knew they
were about to get one of the most interesting talks of their
careers, they’d be bouncing off their seats.

“
Thank you, Lieutenant,” the doctor said in a polite tone
before waving and walking out onto the podium.

Kluver, who’d helped me escort the doctor, leaned in to stare
past me. “How come you’re stuck on escort and babysitting duty?” He
asked as he watched the doctor launch into his
introduction.

I shrugged my shoulders, trying to keep my true reaction to
myself. Why was I stuck on escort and babysitting duty, showing
guest lecturers around the Academy or shepherding dignitaries
through town? It was a very good question, one I couldn’t answer.
The fact was, my true mission was going nowhere. It had been
several months since Admiral Forest had pulled me into her office
and given me my new directives. Directives even my mother didn’t
know about.

While the rest of my friends thought I was an ordinary member
of the combat forces, I wasn’t. I was the latest recruit to Admiral
Forest’s top secret intelligence program. While her spies were
often sent out to the Borderlands or to the colonies or anywhere
else they could gain information on the Coalition’s ever burgeoning
enemies, I was still on Earth. Not because the admiral doubted my
ability. Far from it. According to her, she’d given me one of the
most important missions to come across her desk.

There was a spy on Earth, possibly even in the Academy, and
they were passing top secret, highly sensitive information about
the Coalition’s capabilities and defenses onto the Kore Empire or
anyone else rich and obliging enough to pay for it. My job was to
track that spy down, to catch them before they could do more harm.
The problem was, there were no leads, or at least none that had led
anywhere, other than to dead ends.

It could be anyone with sufficient clearance – absolutely
anyone. That’s why Forest had entrusted this mission to me and me
alone. Apparently she even suspected people in the upper echelons
of the Academy. Technically, babysitting and escorting lecturers
and dignitaries was part of my mission – the Admiral wasn’t kidding
when she’d said it could be anybody with a connection to the
Academy. And any one of the VIPs I kept showing around could be a
contact or a potential customer.

Doctor Ing continued to introduce spacers, his voice booming
out across the auditorium as he spoke of how insanely dangerous
they were.

Fortunately, I’d never faced one. I knew people who had,
though – my mother was one of them. She’d almost lost her previous
ship – the Chronos – to them. According to her firsthand report,
they were one of the most brutal, mindless enemies she’d ever
confronted, and she’d been at the forefront of the Rebuilders saga
a few years back.

“
There is little we know about the spacers. Unfortunately
we’ve never been able to capture any to study them. Alive, anyway,”
the doctor continued in a rumbling tone that would have captured
the cadets’ attention even if he wasn’t talking about one of the
most fascinating topics in the Milky Way. “What we’ve learnt is
fascinating. They appear to be a race of subspace
aliens.”

“
What does that mean?” One enterprising recruit piped
up.

The doctor, far from being put off by the interruption,
seemed thrilled.

This guy was clearly big on theatrics.

“
They have some biologically mediated method of interacting
with subspace. From eyewitness reports we know they are capable of
point-to-point transportation over a limited distance. It's nothing
compared to an actual matter transporter aboard a cruiser, but it
is still a significant feat for a biological entity. They can also
store things in subspace, or at least that’s my theory.”