House: Thoth, Rank: 1/255, Squad Zero, Squad Leader
M1 Rank: ?/1,275
Term 1, Round 1
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It was the second Friday after the term’s commencement. Each term was ten weeks, which were broken into five two-week rounds. This Friday was the last day cadets could set times or scores in many subjects, as it was the conclusion of round one. Specifically, the Gauntlet and obstacle course would close at midnight for renovations over the weekend in preparation for round two.
Up until that point, if a cadet attempted the obstacle course or Gauntlet every day available, they would have a total of nine attempts. On the weekend, these venues were closed for official attempts. Thoth Squad Zero had nine attempts of the obstacle course under their belt and their times were as follows:
Obstacle Course
Score R1 A9
Squad Rank
M1 Rank (1275)
Daedo
59.58
6
842
Barran
35.45
1
3
Gaumont
61.02
7
855
Picard
39.32
3
37
Axel-Zero
48.51
5
292
Vannier
41.14
4
87
Mace
39.01
2
29
During the week, Daedo had worn the weights provided by Picard. They had slowed him down, but even with the added weight, he almost beat his time of fifty-nine minutes on Thursday morning. Ten kilos was a relatively massive burden for Daedo; he only weighed thirty-two kilos.
Today, he would run with no weights and aim for his best time possible. Looking at the curve of cadet results, there was a major hump between forty minutes and sixty minutes, with Daedo near the ass end of the curve. For every minute he knocked off, he would jump numerous ranks. It was almost fifty ranks per minute, with the biggest glut of cadets around forty-nine minutes.
There were slightly more than forty cadets with times under forty minutes, which showed how good Daedo’s squad was, with three members in the top echelon.
The beeps counted down his last ten seconds, and Daedo became more nervous than if he was in a world championship match of CyberMech. This was his worst subject by far, at least of the easily measurable subjects. Who knew what he ranked in AI nurturing or reference and philosophy – cadets weren’t even graded on those subjects.
But his gut confirmed that this was his weakest link. He had only taken physical training seriously in the last six weeks after years of sitting on his ass doing nothing. Fortunately, he was young, and the sedentary lifestyle was still able to be remedied, or so Picard told him.
One by one, Thoth Squad Zero ran the obstacle course, spacing out two minutes between start times with Barran leading off with Mace. Picard and Vannier went off second, so it would be nigh impossible for multiple passing scenarios to occur. Not that it mattered, but when a person was going for their best time, the last thing they wanted was a distraction. The course could easily handle two cadets side by side, but when a third came through, they needed to pass in front of at least one.
Axel-Zero and Daedo lined up together. Picard and Vannier only needed the thirty-second start, if that, but they waited the full two minutes.
“Good luck, Daedo,” Axel-Zero said as the last beeps sounded.
If Daedo could keep up with her, he would get under fifty minutes, assuming she ran her average pace. And at first, it was no problem at all.
“Don’t hold back for me,” he said between breaths as they ran up some large steps after a downhill sprint. Daedo had an inkling she was pacing herself with him. “If you don’t run your best, then how am I supposed to get under forty-eight?”
Axel-Zero picked up her pace. She was probably still taking it easy. Although, it was a long course with almost eight kilometres of running, jumping, dodging, and climbing. So a slow start would not affect her time as long as she pushed as hard as possible through the slowest portions.
She hit the rock climb wall just ahead of him. They both scaled it quickly after connecting their carabiner to the ropes in situ. Even if they fell, a robot attendant would extract them into medical in mere seconds. The fall was not high enough to injure someone too badly, and with the medical facilities at the academy, most injuries were remedied in hours, if not minutes.
They were halfway through, and Daedo felt good. Navigating the maze of moving blocks was an area where he could pick up time. Myrmidon was able to predict the path correctly every time using his analytic skill and the information available to him from the sensors onboard the bodysuit.
Myrmidon: You are on schedule for a time under forty-seven minutes, Daedo.
Daedo: Great! I feel good. No weights!
Now it was Daedo’s turn to inspire Axel-Zero as he pushed harder and harder as the end drew closer.
In his mind, he knew that the closer he got to the end, the less he needed to keep in reserve. Which meant he could throw caution to the wind. He wasn’t like the other cadets who knew what they were capable of and improved incrementally with each run. Daedo was in unknown territory.
“You are killing it!” Axel-Zero said, gasping for air. “Don’t wait for me,” she added as they climbed thirty-metre ladders before the long slackline down circuit. Although the ladder climb was thirty metres, the slackline was barely a metre off the ground, but if a cadet fell, they had to go back and repeat.
Daedo completed the slackline and slid down the opposing ladder rather than use the rungs, in the style all the sub-forty runners used: hands and feet grasping the outside of the ladder rails and using friction to slow their descent. The crazier the cadet, the less friction they applied.
Daedo was not at Picard’s level; he still controlled his descent to a slow fall, almost stopping every ten metres. Picard almost fell the entire thirty before applying force in the last four metres, then jumping the final metre once she’d slowed to an acceptable level.
Daedo lost sight of Axel-Zero in the last part of the circuit. It was a five hundred-metre run. Too long to sprint, too short to jog. The length itself drove a cadet crazy. When Daedo reviewed Picard’s tactic, he noticed she would power the first hundred metres before resting into a steady gait that was as fast as she could go without tiring. The only problem was, her steady gait was faster than his sprint.
With so many talented cadets in his squad, Daedo didn’t need to look further for information. And although Barran was the fastest, at rank three overall, he was naturally gifted. Picard was not; her time was earned through hard work and application of techniques and strategy. She was his role model. There was as little point of him trying to emulate Barran as there was of a noob trying to emulate Daedalus playing CyberMech.
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After the five-hundred-metre almost-sprint, there were the holes and trips. Going at the same pace as before would likely mean falling face-first. This section required concentration and agility to ensure correct foot placement, especially if maintaining a fast speed was attempted.
Before the finish, there was a forty-degree spiral ramp. The incline was rough. Even if the first ten metres felt good, it was killer after a hundred. And stopping to walk made it extremely difficult to start running again. The fact that it was a spiral killed the momentum. Daedo thought that whoever designed it was extremely sadistic.
Once at the top, there was only a hundred metres to the finish. This was the section where cadets could leave every ounce of strength on the course. Daedo felt like his lungs were bursting, his legs were like rubber, and his vision was becoming blurry from sweat and exhaustion.
Myrmidon was quiet, not making any sound in Daedo’s head as he pushed himself past his limits. His heart rate was peaking above anything Myrmidon had ever monitored before, even without the ten-kilo weights.
Picard was right; as soon as Daedo had taken off the weights, he was able to fly through the course. It was not just physically better, but the missing weight gave him a massive mental boost. He would thank her for the torture; it had worked wonders.
Daedo had forgotten all about Axel-Zero as he crossed the line and collapsed. His squadmates came to his rescue with water and got him to sit and then stand.
“Up, up,” Picard ordered. “You can’t recover lying down.” She pulled him up from under the shoulders. “And you have to arrive ready to fight. A prone Daedo would be cannon fodder.”
“Not too much water,” Vannier said, “just small sips.”
“Wow, you really tried to kill yourself, Daeds,” Barran laughed. Daedo was too tired to correct him about the nickname, but there was no way he would allow Barran to keep calling him Daeds.
“Good time!” Picard said proudly. Axel-Zero had crossed when Daedo was still on the ground, and she knelt, breathing heavily before Picard told her to stand as well.
“My … legs … are … jelly,” Daedo said. He felt light-headed. He hadn’t even looked at his final result.
He had finally recovered by the time Gaumont arrived.
Obstacle Course
Score R1 A10
Squad Rank
M1 Rank (1275)
Daedo
46.39
5
235
Barran
35.44
1
3
Gaumont
60.22
7
855
Picard
38.58
3
30
Axel-Zero
47.01
6
244
Vannier
40.52
4
82
Mace
38.56
2
28
Their performance and overall rankings were outstanding for a House Thoth squad. There were thirty-five cadets across all Squad Zeros, and if they were equal to all of those houses, they would have all seven cadets in the top thirty-five. On the other hand, they were Thoth, after all – a house that excelled in calculation and research. This result was by far the best from Thoth across all year levels M1 to U3, which did account for the fact that most of U3 Thoth completed PT under protest.
Picard bounced up and down. She was more excited with Daedo’s result than her own rank of thirty-three. “You dropped from 842 to two-thirty-five!” she exclaimed.
“Wow, if only you could help me do the same thing in math,” Barran said loudly.
“We still have the Gauntlet tonight,” Vannier reminded them. “It’s our last chance to protect our results.”
“I have so much work to do on the weekend … if I’m still rank one at 2100, I’ll probably give it a miss,” Daedo told them.
Barran laughed. “Oh, to be so talented. But you forget one thing, Mister D. What if I achieve rank one at 2100? I have my new exo, you know.”
Daedo shook his head. “It’s still a heavy, the grappler does not have enough strength to pull you up buildings, and the reactor is way underpowered. I am sorry, but despite all your natural talent, you have no chance.” He didn’t mention that Barran had also not planned the Gauntlet tactically. He just ran through as fast as he could, shooting anything in his path. It worked. But the few tactical manoeuvres he and Myrmidon came up with cut minutes off their time.
“What about me?” Mace asked.
“Well it is true, you could pass me; you aren’t far behind,” Daedo said. “But really, rank one and rank two in our squad – who cares? I’m more concerned with improving our exo. There are mountains of programming to be done even before we start testing and adjusting.”
Mace smiled. “Okay, if you don’t run, I won’t I have so much work to do also.”
“Are there any groups coming after us that could pose a threat?” Vannier asked.
“No,” Barran said. He was watching the rankings of the obstacle course and the Gauntlet like a hawk. “Horus, Osiris, and Shu Squad Zero all have theirs in the middle of the day. I guess they picked primetime.”
Daedo skipped the gunnery range and spent time recuperating. He had knocked off an incredible amount of time on his obstacle run in two weeks, dropping from seventy-six minutes to forty-six minutes. It was a combination of training focus, conditioning, practising the course, and working out ways to complete certain sections efficiently – especially the slackline and climbing aspects. He had nothing left in his reactor after his last attempt and needed some rest before ploughing back into tech studies.
He’d been preparing for the weekend in the workshop. His plan involved setting up a system of remote design, automated manufacture, automated testing process, and data with the results informing strengths, weaknesses, and the next design.
Before accounting for accessories, their standard exo had over two thousand elements in the digital design that could be tweaked. Not only could they tweak the design, but they could also change the material used in the design. Or, in the case of an encapsulated system, the part.
A major change would be testing different graphene compounds for the fibrous underlay. Daedo had a plan for testing over a hundred types with different thicknesses and compounds. The plan was that they would manufacture a sheet that resembled the chest structure closely, take it to the gunnery range in the testing bay, and try it out with different types of weapons. The weapons would have different impact effects, from miniguns to railguns or plasma and blaster bolts.
The work was not only in setting up the design and manufacture but the testing process as well. How were the tests measured in terms of the test structure and measurement instrumentation? How were these results quantified? Anecdotally, the armour that put up with ten railgun shots was much better than the type that caved after one or two.
Then there was the competing aspect of power delivery. At the moment, the most innovative part of Daedo’s design was the tubes that made up the armour. Albeit tiny in size, they acted as conduits for the hydraulics. He had to design a test for power delivery, efficiency, and speed of activation.
After both the amour value and power delivery aspects were measured, he could closely correlate to see if any of the design and material combinations were a clear leader. At least, that was a problem for when he had all the data. For now, he had to purchase the required instrumentation and design the tests and manufacturing process. Not to mention that he had to start filling the manufacturing queues with different design options.
His father had been invaluable in setting up the robots during the week. Once Daedo had put the work into the coding and designing, it would all happen without him whether he was there or not. It could run all week, 24/7. And thanks to Barran, they now had three new machines that increased the speed of manufacture by five hundred per cent and allowed better materials to be made.
Other than his coding and designing workload, the only other issue that remained was creds. All the raw materials and instruments he was purchasing cost bitcreds. Even his vast savings were being depleted from over twenty thousand bitcreds down to just over three thousand. He could sustain spending for a little while longer; his Spacebuild shop still brought in a thousand creds a month thanks to Myrmidon keeping it going.
But if spending continued at this rate with no income, he would run out of creds before term one was finished. Daedo was concerned because he expected spending to increase as he pushed the envelope further. What if he wanted to bring Cisse on board to develop a ZPE reactor? Hopefully, something would pan out soon where some of their schemes would start bringing in creds.
Daedo was sitting in the main M1 cafeteria as Squad Zero liked to do for lunch. It could get claustrophobic in their quarters if they ate all their meals there. And it was nice to have food prepared by the robots in the cafeteria; the chef’s AI excelled when it came to feeding young cadets, making their required nutrient intake tasty.
“Hey you, cheater,” an M1 cadet from Osiris said, rudely interrupting Daedo’s contemplation. Thankfully, he was sitting with his entire squad, which usually dissuaded aggressive intruders.
“Fark off,” Barran said just as aggressively.
“Everyone knows you’re a little cheating bastard,” the cadet said loudly.
“If it wasn’t against the rules, I’d smash your face in so hard you’d have to take in your nutrients through your ass,” Barran snapped. Barran was smart; he was careful to not actually threaten the rude individual by qualifying his statement. Daedo could learn a lot from Barran by observing him. He may act stupid, but he was wise in his own way.
“I’d like to see you try, tough guy. But I’m wondering why the short-ass needs your protection. Is it because he’s a cheater and can’t actually defend himself?” The Osiris cadet now had an Osiris entourage behind him.
Vannier stood. “If you have an allegation, go and make it through the proper channels,” she said. “And be sure to provide proof.”
“I have a question for you,” Daedo said to the Osiris cadet.
“Oh yeah, this will be good,” the cadet said. “But you need to answer mine first. Why was your score with a legal light exo at the bottom of M1 if you’re so good?”
“Oh geez, you are dumb,” Axel-Zero said. She couldn’t stay quiet. “Only one score for the fortnight matters, you idiot. He wasn’t trying to get a score in the light exo, because we were working on our improved version. He was just exploring the Gauntlet and mapping it.”
Osiris Squad Three just laughed at her answer like it was a lie, and the cadet sneered, “Yeah, right. Don’t expect me to buy that lame excuse.”
“My question is,” Daedo said, and then paused, waiting for quiet. The entire crowd shut up, waiting for his question. “Is there such a thing as cheating in war?”
“Of course, you feckin idiot,” the Osiris cadet said without listening to the question properly.
“Oh, move it, dogbrain,” said a voice used to being obeyed. Their small dining table was surrounded by twenty Osiris cadets, and ten Horus cadets pushed their way through, all of whom were in Squad Zero, some of them in M2 and M3. They all followed Karine Fortescue, who had just spoken.
An M3 stood in front of the Osiris troublemaker. “I suggest you move on, boy, before I get you written up for demerits. I’ve witnessed quite a few and have them recorded. It’s just a matter of sending it to your master and boom. Watch your ranking sink because of your stupid mouth.”
The Osiris cadet turned and walked quickly away in a huff, and the other members of his house followed after a short bout of staredowns from the Horus entourage.
“I see you’re going to make our wager more interesting than I first thought,” Karine said, looking at Daedo. “However, you have a long way to go before you challenge Horus. You can’t even handle an Osiris brat who won’t make the top one hundred.”
“Why are you here?” Daedo asked.
Karine glared at him for his impudence. She had a sphere drone hovering over her right shoulder, and it quivered in seeming distaste at his words. “I came to see what the commotion was. I wanted to break up any inter-house fights before they began … only to see you at its centre. So you could say I’m here because you lack leadership. Being good at math is not everything, Thoth.”
Barran laughed. The Horus cadets just stared at him. He was about to speak when Vannier stopped him by laying a hand on his shoulder and squeezing.
“See you Monday night, Karine,” Vannier said formerly.
Karine gave an imperceptible nod, turned, and made for an exit towards the Horus section of the academy. Her entourage followed her like a crowd of sycophants.
“I think you have her worried, Daedo,” Barran said with a chuckle. “Your math ability scares the crap out of her!” He broke into uproarious laughter at his own joke.