CHAPTER II
SCENE I.
Lord Geste took three hours to justify war at an age of unprecedented abundance. Or, at least, it must have been three hours. It sure felt like three long hours. Gus forgot his watch so he couldn’t know. His daemon did, though, but he wasn’t keen on daemons.
Looking at the blank stares and glazed looks all around him, he was right not to. The only people to stay conscious and present, he could could count on one hand. Which, to him, meant that most of what Lord Geste had to say was lost on minds adrift in a sea of daemonic distraction. And, that those who did pay attention, paid a little too much attention. Which was worse.
Like that girl.
Lord Geste had asked a non-rhetorical question then. He’d actually wanted an answer and she was the only one to give it. Or, at least, paid enough attention to point out the obvious. The kid next to him was about to as well, but Gus shut him down. Poor kid was about to dork up his first day here. The short-stack would have enough problems already with his baby fat and acne. No need to compound it with an eager-beaver bullseye on his back.
As for the girl, Gus forgot her name but not the twist of her face, and certainly not her voice and the colors that came of it. Gus could do that, you see. One of the few reasons why he even ended up here in the first place: seeing colors others don’t. And her colors dripped bloody red and black when she named that needle-craft.
And when Lord Geste told them what happened to Norregh, Gus put two and two together. Norregh, at least a good chunk of it, got saturated before Republican forces could come in and recover orbital superiority. And she, in all probability, might have been on the wrong end of a kinetic payload dropping down from the heavens at a mass and velocity just shy of a deep impact meteor.
Gods, petty and great, fucked and favored; Gus found himself trapped in a prison with inmates either damaged or detached and he had no way out.
Fuck.
SCENE II.
His belly ached and grumbled, prompting a draw at the saltine crackers he squared in a pocket before coming here. General assemblies had a tendency to draw themselves out, and Gus had little faith in succinct ceremony.
“Lorr, you hungry?” he asked the young man seated on the other side of him.
Lorr nodded, so Gus snapped his flakes in threes. Together they crunched on crackers as quietly as they could.
Gus glanced at the short-stack next to him offered him the last third. Kid shook his head. Lorr finished the last of the salty flat bread.
The Geste-talk had just about wrapped up anyway, capped by a buzz of relieved chatter and woken starts as students slowly came to their senses. The assistant-commander, Almyra, had some closing statements to make before dismissing them: something about finding your legionary barracks and reporting to your immediate superior officer at 1600 hours. Nothing of consequence, as far as Gus’s ears could make of it.
He’d already done those things anyway, per advice on his boot kit.
“Plans, Gus?” Lorr asked as they both made their way out of the amphitheater.
“Not sure. You?”
“Was hoping we could just go back to barracks.” Lorr sounded bored and labored. Probably working to smooth the kinks out of sitting for hours. “Maybe just play cards and wait for dinner.”
“We have an entire day to ourselves before they drop full military stricture on us, and you want to play cards until dinner?”
“You got a better idea?”
“How about we look around?”
“What’s there to see?”
“Gardens, apparently. Lots and lots of manicured horticulture.”
“How about we not?” The look Lorr gave him edged on exasperation. “There really isn’t much to see here. I mean, have a look at the map again. What have you got there that’s actually interesting?”
Gus made a show of looking. He’d probably stared at it a hundred times before, as he tried to find the exits, but of course found only gatehouses there. Gatehouses, and guardhouses, and armories, and checkpoints. Their map and pamphlet offered scarce interest, a point he shared with Lorr but kept to himself.
What would they do and where would they go? The Observatories? The Towers? The Scildbol Fields? The Gymnasiums? The Hangars and Armories? How about they gawk at the Baroque-style architecture? Or, how about they pay the corpse garden a visit? Lorr must be wondering about that, having an entire hectare of land specifically designated as the corpse garden. Seemed to be the only place here that didn’t belong. Hell, even the swathes of Drill Grounds—mountain, forest, jungle, trench, and urban—paled in comparison to that. A corpse garden, what the hell is a corpse garden?
As they argued down a stone walkway, an odd thing caught at the corner of Gus’s eye.
The short-stack.
Gus turned his head for a better look, and he did find the short stack. He stopped, and wondered. There the short stack stood, in the shadow of a vending machine, looking up to it in stillness as if wanting for an explanation.
“Mind if we take a detour, Lorr?”
“What?” Lorr must have followed his eyes. He nodded and said, “Sure.”
SCENE III.
Short-stack jumped at the click of their heels. That surprised Gus. Short-stack actually jumped on their approach. Granted, they approached from a blind spot, but that hardly counted as sneaking up on someone or taking someone by surprise. If such had been their intend, why would they even bother declaring themselves?
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“Hey, short-stack, need some help there?”
“What?” short-stack said. The obvious shades of yellow and green to his words ticked all the wrong boxes for Gus—as far as first impressions went. But, it wasn’t like he really got to know the kid during Geste-talk anyhow. Still, he marked it unusual without going so far as to file it under concerning.
“The vending machine,” Gus pointed out, “You having some trouble with it?”
“Oh. Yeah. This, the machine.”
“Yes, the machine. You having some trouble with it, or what?”
“Oh, uh, hmm--”Short-stack flushed, just a little bit, and turned back to the machine. His eyes darted to and fro, a last ditch effort to find whatever it was he thought could help him save face here. Too little, too late.
“Looking for something, kid?”
The risen indignation that came in a puff of hot steam also took Gus by surprise. He didn’t expect short-stuck to wheel and snap on him.
“Quit calling me short-stack, and quit calling me kid. I have a name, and despite my stature, I’m pretty sure you’re no older than me by a couple of months.”
“He’s got you there, buddy,” Lorr said, chuckling.
Gus blinked, before he gave Lorr the stink-eye; but, Lorr had the right of it. He had been a little too bold and a little to free with his manners. So he raised his hands in defeat and made a gesture at backing down. Besides, he had to hand it to the kid. Kid knew when to stand up for himself, and how. The yellows and greens had vanished too, replaced by bright reds and oranges. Kid probably just had strong feelings against surprises—or, at least, being being taken by surprise.
“Easy,” Gus said. “I’m sure you do have a perfectly good name, and that I had no right to take that away from you by giving you a new one. So, how about we reset and do this square and level? How’s about we introduce ourselves like proper lads, yeah?”
Short-stack frowned, but seemed amenable. He nodded and said, “Alright. Sure. Thank you.”
“Alright, well. My name is Korregus, but you can call me Gus. This, chiseled giant of an oaf, here next to me is Loredus. You can call him Lorr.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lorr said, adding, “If I had a hat, I’d tip it.”
“How’s about we scrounge you a hat? Eh, Lorr?”
Giving the kid the respect he deserved seemed the right of it. He soon relaxed and fancied a small smile. Good enough, by Gus’s books.
“I’d introduced myself earlier, during Geste-talk, but you seemed occupied. You must not have noticed,” Gus said.
“Oh, I do apologize. I didn’t realize we met at the talk. How did we meet, exactly? I can’t seem to remember.”
“Well, must have been your first time to see an Empyrean, yes? I gathered as much, being that I sat next to you. You did seem wholly fascinated by our Lord Magister.”
“Oh, well, yes. Yes. I do apologize. I didn’t realize. I certainly didn’t. I should have been more aware. I’m so sorry.”
“No matter, squire. Water under the bridge. So, how might my brother and I assist you in operating this newfangled machine here they call a vendor?”
“Oh. Oh, right!” The pall vanished. The flush returned.
Gus hated to needle, but he couldn’t help but draw a bit of perverse pleasure from it. A tickle to his humors, he thought, seeing the kid reduced to bashfulness right after his rather strong showing of self-respect.
“Well, first off, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wycglaf Mercer, but you can call me Wick.” Turning back to the vending machine, he said, “Secondly, I can’t seem to find a coin slot or bill acceptor.”
Without Wick’s noticing it, Gus and Lorr shared a frown.
They would have gotten along in silence, but Gus decided to ask, “Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Why would you be looking for a coin slot?”
“Well, I’d like a drink. And, I’d like to pay for my drink.”
Again, Gus and Lorr shared a look.
“Why?”
Frustrated, Wick sighed before blurting out, “What do you mean why?”
“Why would you be paying?”
“Well, why wouldn’t I be paying?”
“Because it’s free.”
SCENE IV.
It took a moment for things to register. Wick’s frown did eventually soften and relax from confusion to wide-eyed fascination. But, even as the stuff sunk in, they lead only to more questions.
“Is everything free?” Wick had asked, which, just further took Gus and Lorr aback. Wick even said, further, “Is this like a rationing policy for cadets? A matter of discipline? Or is everything here regimented and heavily monitored for peak nutritional performance and such?”
Gus and Lorr shook their heads, and sort of taken on a silence of disbelief.
“No, not that. It’s just—it’s just free,” Lorr said and more, but Gus cut him off with a gentle hand on his arm.
“Where you from, Wick?”
Short-stack frown, unsure what that had to do with anything. He asked, “Why?”
“Because, me and Lorr here are came over from Lockeswood. Provincial, I know, but it’s been a good home to the two of us. All part of getting to know each other.”
“Oh, well, I gated over direct from Alba Nova. It’s a beautiful place, really. Spare, but breathtaking in that sort of bleak, and stark contrast of colors.”
“Alba Nova,” Gus said, attempting to hazard a guess but couldn’t. “Familiar. I feel like I’ve heard of it before. Mind refreshing my memory for me, squire?”
“Ah, alright. Well, to start, it’s in the Arcturian system. One of Kolverinne’s moons. Shouldn’t come as a surprise, really. We’ve only just been a part of the commonwealth for about a quarter of a century. Haven’t really made a mark on the Republican Gazette, you see. At least, not yet.”
A relatively new colony. Which meant, to Gus and Lorr, that Wick hadn’t yet transitioned to Elysium’s way of doing things: modes of exchange being the sore point of contention here.
“Well, what did you use for currency at Alba Nova, Wick?”
“Currency?” Wick quickly added, “You mean money?”
“Yes, money.”
“Well, don’t tell me my money’s no good here. We went through great lengths to find what Republican tender we could for my stay here. And besides, I thought everyone here was on scholarship.”
“Oh, we are. We are. No worries on that point. We are all on the Republic’s books, square and level. It’s just that, well--”
Lorr jumped in, rather impatiently, “We haven’t used legal tender since the redemption Wick.”
“Yes, yes, that,” Gus said with a side of stink-eye. “Not to say that your money’s no good here, Wick. Just that, we don’t really use it here.”
“Then how do you get things? Like, how do I get what my money’s worth without money?”
“Well, like most things in the Republic, by committee. And when the committee’s done with what it’s set out to do, the daemons follow.”
Dubious. Wick looked dubious, but he seemed to follow. He then asked, “So, instead of money, we just use daemons.”
“Yes, daemons.”
“Oh, alright. Daemons.”
Uncomfortable silence followed.
Lorr sighed, gave Gus a look, and pushed him into the machine, “I’d like a soda, Gus. Please.”
Acquiescing in silence, Gus set out to show Wick the ropes.
An explosion!
They felt it before they heard, raising their hairs on end.
They had just woken up Gus’s daemon when the air changed, sudden and violent. Their tongues tasted lemons and their nostrils stung from sharp notes of chlorine. The rush of air that followed sizzled against their skin, as if the static had been caught dazed and confused when agitated into action. The thunder came seconds later, loud and violent—like an overloaded transformer banging metal against metal.
More bursts followed in quick succession. Screams greeted them. Gunfire answered.
The trio ran for the quad to see. There, on the campus, in bright, sparkling balls of ozone, soldiers in powered armor had just blinked into existence.
“Aw, nuts.” Gus said, putting voice to everyone’s surprise.