Insignia (39 page)

She waved happily. It was his only warning.

Her ship exploded, taking out Tom, the ship, and the bulk of his Black Flag Fleet.

They met back in the RPG, and Tom slipped into his ogre avatar. Medusa’s Egyptian queen was turning a series of backflips on the couch, celebrating her victory.

“You’re still celebrating?” he asked.

Medusa laughed and spun toward him. “You’d be gloating much more if you ever won.”

Tom laughed. “A hundred times more, at least.” His ogre tromped forward, and they started circling around each other, another duel in the making. “Tell me something.” He fixed his gaze on her avatar, as though a few megapixels could give him a clue to the real person behind it. “Did you grow up speaking Mandarin?”

“Cantonese.”

Tom congratulated himself for weaseling her nationality out of her. She’d conceded the girl issue, since her voice was a girl’s, and he’d figured she was Chinese, but he wanted to be sure. Now he was getting a mental picture of her—shiny black hair, lively black eyes. Short, he thought.

“I figured you weren’t Russian.”

“Russians only train in the Forbidden City two weeks a year, or we go to their underground facility beneath the Kremlin.”

“Only two weeks a year, huh? Some of the Indians train here with us all the time. So do the—” Tom stopped before he could tell her about the handful of trainees at the Spire from the Euro-Australian block.

Medusa was quiet a minute. They always had to walk a careful line between their strange friendship and the treason charges they’d face, giving away military secrets.

“That’s probably not so classified,” Tom said, reconsidering it.

“Everyone knows about the underground Russian facility,” Medusa said, sounding a bit uneasy. “Just like the Bombay facility for the Indians.”

“What about the other countries you’re allied with?”

“They tend to want to live in Moscow, not with us. You have to join our military to be in our program.”

“Really? We’re not military here. Not till we’re eighteen.” Tom’s ogre leaped up onto the couch. His massive weight tilted it, and with a gale of laughter, Medusa’s avatar fluttered off, letting it unbalance and flip on top of Tom’s avatar. “Are the Russians military?” he asked.

“Yes, but they don’t take it seriously. They can quit anytime they want. They have a real problem there, because so many rich Russians buy their kids a place in the program just to get a neural processor in their brains, and then pull them out.” She began taking advantage of the way Tom’s ogre was pinned down to stomp on his head. “Most of the time, they don’t even get the neural processors taken back out of them, even if it’s early enough.”

“Clever. So parents send them there to get turned into instant geniuses, huh?”

“Well, you’d think that’s why they do it. But one time a family got investigated for it, and it turned out the girl who got the neural processor wasn’t even their kid, just some girl they paid to impersonate her. And by the time the military realized this, they’d already had the girl’s head cut open, and sold the processor on the black market.”

“Wow.”

“We just don’t approach things the same way they do. That’s why the Russians hate it when they visit us. This year they kept complaining because they wanted to sleep every single night.”

Tom paused in his struggle to throw off the couch as her boot descended into his face over and over. “Wait, you guys don’t sleep every single night?”

“You do?”

“Sleep is good, Medusa. Sleep is great.”

“We have scheduled slow-wave sleep periods. But daily sleep isn’t necessary with the neural processor.”

Tom waved his gloves and resumed trying to move the couch. “But it’s sleep.”

“We put the time to better use.” She bent down to smile tauntingly in his face, her dark hair wreathing her head. “Maybe that’s why we’re winning.”

Tom laughed. “Maybe that’s why the foreign Combatants would rather live in Russia!” He hurled the couch to the side, and then leaped to his feet and punched her.

“Are you from Texas?” Medusa asked him out of the blue, punching him back.

“Why Texas? Do I seem like a Texan?”

“Texas and New York are the only places I’ve heard about in America. Oh, and California.”

“Not from Texas, but I know a guy from Texas. He’s named Eddie.”

“Did he live on a ranch?”

“Nah. He’s not a cowboy, either. I think he’s a doctor. He and my dad got in a fistfight once, and then they got beer afterward. They’re still buddies. I guess it’s how they make friends down there or something.”

“Isn’t that how we made friends, too? Fighting?” She knocked him through the wall.

Tom found his feet, charged back into the room, and tackled her. “Yeah, but we didn’t just fight. We wrecked the Beringer Club together. Oh, and I died horribly at your hands. Gruesome murder always builds the foundation for a beautiful friendship.”

She laughed, and her Egyptian queen roundhouse kicked his ogre across the room, slamming him into the stone wall and collapsing it. Tom’s ogre got buried, and he couldn’t help the mental picture his brain was forming: a pretty Chinese girl who loved video games, shooting fire from her eyes, and fighting him. Oh, and who also happened to be the greatest warrior in the world.

He was glad Medusa couldn’t see him right now, just his ax-wielding ogre avatar, buried in stones, because he’d feel embarrassed if she saw his huge grin.

T
HAT
T
UESDAY
, T
OM
received a ping as soon as Tactics ended:
Report to Elliot Ramirez for semester evaluation
.

“Oh. Oh, great.” Tom knew how this was going to go.

The plebes were all being evaluated for the promotions to Middle Company, a small but important step up the ladder. The decision was in the hands of Marsh, but their Applied Simulations instructors had a say, too. Tom had been avoiding Elliot, hoping to put off the inevitable lecture about his lack of teamwork, his inability to play nicely with others, and something else like his lack of self-actualization or something. But Elliot was obviously sick of waiting for Tom to come to him on his own time.

He’d never been to the fourteenth floor where the Combatants in Camelot Company lived. He heard rumors the way everyone else did: that the CamCos didn’t have their own rooms, they all slept in one massive barracks-type place. They also had a swimming pool, feather beds, a hot tub where all the CamCo girls romped about wearing nothing, a private bar, and a masseuse. When the doors parted to reveal a common room like on every floor, and private rooms like on every other floor, Tom felt a twinge of disappointment. He stepped out onto the soft carpet, his eyes trained on the massive window overlooking the green expanse of Arlington fourteen stories below them. He turned in a slow circle, looking at the doors.

“Tom.”

Elliot’s voice made him jump. The dark-haired boy stood in the doorway to his bunk, and he gestured Tom inside.

Tom followed him into the private bunk. Single occupant. Nice.

Elliot must’ve been lounging on his bed, because he flopped back down and slung his legs across the sheets, a silent screen running on the ceiling over his head—the battle at Mercury from a few months earlier.

“So, your first evaluation,” Elliot said, eyes trained on the ceiling.

Tom shifted his weight. “Yeah.”

“Sit.”

Tom lowered himself into Elliot’s plush leather chair.

“Sorry to rush this, Tom, but we’ve been busy trying to prep for Capitol Summit. General Marsh keeps sending me messages from India, telling me to urge CamCo along in nominating my proxy. And here I was, hoping maybe I could play as myself this year.”

Tom looked up at the screen, because he wasn’t sure what to say to that. Of the members of CamCo, Elliot’s fighting was the most rote and predictable. There was a good reason Marsh never let him serve as his own proxy.

Elliot was gazing at the image again.

“Tell me something, Tom, what do you think I did wrong here?” Elliot waved his finger and rewound a segment where his ship grazed Medusa’s, swerved at the last minute, then caught a missile she blasted back at him. His ship exploded, a fiery mass of flames streaking toward the surface of Mercury.

“Uh, you got blown up.”

“Obviously. But why did it happen? How did I mess up?”

“You’re asking me to play armchair quarterback?”

“Exactly. Armchair quarterback me.”

Tom shifted in the chair. He’d be glad to tell Elliot why he’d messed up, but it didn’t seem like the right time to rub in his failings. Besides, ever since Elliot let him fight Medusa in Troy, he didn’t feel the need to do it.

“Um, you would’ve gotten blown up anyway. Even if you’d done everything right there.”

“But I might’ve taken Medusa with me if I’d played my cards right. What should I have done?”

“You did everything by the book. You’d know better than me. You’re much farther along in tactics than I am.”

“But … ?”

“You should’ve kamikaze’d her,” Tom blurted. “You had the chance. Knock out Medusa and the rest would’ve been in shock. You could’ve just picked them off.”

“
Her
?”

Tom winced at the slip. “I think of Medusa as a girl for some reason.”

“Me, too. Kind of funny. To be honest, ramming her didn’t even occur to me at the time. But it would’ve occurred to you, wouldn’t it have?” Elliot pondered him, rubbing his thumb across his chin. “That’s something about you, Tom. I’ve seen it time and again, the way you aim straight for the throat. You have the killer instinct. At the end of the day, I don’t. I don’t have teeth and claws and the hunger for it, I suppose.”

“You’re not vicious like me, you mean.”

“I suppose that’s one way to put it. Do you know why I wanted you to pay fealty?”

Tom had theories at the time. Some need for power, some deep-seated egotism. It didn’t feel fair saying anything about that now.

Elliot answered his own question. “Because that’s as much a part of advancing here as your battle performance. All the killer instinct in the world won’t get you anywhere if you’re not willing to play the social game. There’s not a person in history who achieved greatness without choking back some pride, without ever smiling at someone they despised, without playing along even if they hated the very idea of it.”

“I get it. I’m not a team player.”

“You could be.” Elliot leaned toward him. “You can be. A very valuable, effective team player. Exactly the kind of player who leads teams to victory. But you need to play that other game, too. You need to learn to—”

“Suck up?” Tom said before he could stop himself.

“That’s right. Suck up.”

Tom stared at him, caught off the guard, the ships still dancing on the screen overhead.

“You can think anything you want, Tom, but you won’t get anywhere unless you learn on occasion to act like a pathetic little suck-up. The way I do.”

Tom wasn’t even sure what to say to this. It had never occurred to him that Elliot was completely aware of the way he came across.

Elliot went on. “I admire your integrity. I admire how you hold your ground. But I’d also like to see you win some ground, not just hold it. I’d like to see someone with your creativity, your drive, really get somewhere. You’re not going to do that unless you learn to bend.”

For a moment, Tom was too caught off guard to reply. And then he remembered that this didn’t matter. Not really. “I’m not going to get anywhere, anyway.”

“You’re referring to the Dominion Agra execs and the Beringer Club?”

Tom started.

Elliot smiled. “I’ve heard a few whispers. Your new infamy’s an obstacle to getting a sponsor. I’ll admit it.” He rose to his feet. “But there are four other companies on the Coalition that invest in Indo-American Combatants. Dominion Agra is not the only act in town. Don’t give up hope this soon.”

Tom rose to his feet, confused. This hadn’t gone as he’d expected. “Thanks for the advice.”

“Don’t mention it.” Elliot paused by the door. “Tom, I’m going to recommend you for Middle. I want you to think about what I said, though.” He winked. “And good luck.”

Stunned, wondering if he’d never understood this guy, Tom shook the hand Elliot offered. He was reeling when he left Elliot’s bunk and headed back toward the elevator—and that was how he missed Karl where he was sitting on a couch, downloading his homework.

Karl stopped the download and bounded to his feet. “Lassie.”

Tom wasn’t in the mood for this. He hit the button for the elevator, hoping it would get there soon.

“What, trying to ignore me? Taking the higher ground’s so unlike you.” He heard Karl’s slow, steady footsteps drawing up behind him and turned his back to the elevator.

But Karl didn’t attack him. He hung back in an unsettling manner, lips fixed in a strange, lopsided grin.

“What?” Tom blurted.

“Getting my last look at you.”

“You going somewhere? Remind me to throw a party.”