Attendance at Fortescue Military Academy M1 Y:2142
House Thoth, Squad Leader, Squad Zero
M1 Rank: 1/1275, Tier 3 M-Rank: Null
Term: 2, Round: 1
Daedalus Operating Capital: 130,000 bitcreds
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The new recruit introduced himself. “Jensen. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” He held out his hand, first for Daedo, and then Vannier, to shake.
“Daedo,” Daedo said to the tall English cadet. He was already in a Thoth bodysuit with the Squad Zero label on the left, but no indication of rank. He had light brown hair and a clear, fair complexion. He was almost as tall as Barran, probably only a centimetre off.
“Vannier,” Vannier said. “We have breakfast in the main cafeteria at 0730. The squad spends every meal together.” She shared the squad template with him.
It was only 0705. They had time to talk before the squad gathered in the main cafeteria.
“What made you decide to come to FMA?” Vannier asked Jensen as they walked.
“I haven’t yet,” Jensen said. “I will take this week to assess. This was arranged with your master.” He paused and then added, “Cambridge thinks I’m taking an extra week with the family.”
“What are you assessing? The academy or us?” Vannier asked.
“Both, to be honest,” Jensen said slowly and emphatically. “Master Nader convinced my parents that I would excel here far beyond what I could at Cambridge. I wasn’t sure. I wanted to see. So here I am. Looking.”
“Master Nader said you were a chemical engineering and propulsion specialist,” Daedo said. “Can you tell us a little about your work?”
Jensen stiffened. He stopped for a moment, and when they turned to look at him, he began walking again before saying, “I don’t like to share what I’m working on, but I can validate my reputation.”
Jensen told Daedo and Vannier about the prizes he had won in the chemical and general science fields. He had won the junior medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry, based in London.
“Your medal is for toxicology?” Daedo asked after looking it up.
“Yes, it’s a really interesting field,” Jensen said.
They sat down in the cafeteria without ordering. The rest of the squad would arrive at 0730.
“What about polymers and synthetic fluids?” Daedo asked. “Have you done any study or much work in those areas?”
“That’s all basic stuff for me,” Jensen said, clearly confident in his own knowledge.
“I’d like to make a trade with you, Jensen,” Daedo proposed. “I’m not sure what you are in need of – you just need to ask – but I want you to provide a new hydraulic fluid design or product recommendation for our exo. You can examine one after breakfast, and I can send you through the dimensional details of the mesh underarmour and micropumps.”
“Don’t you just use a UHVI fluid?” Jensen asked.
Daedo quickly looked up the acronym. UHVI stood for ultra-high viscosity index, in relation to hydraulic fluids and lubricants. “Yes, but the issue is the size of our aperture. We need smaller particles, less than five microns,” he said.
Jensen scratched his head. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”
Daedo sent a message to Mace, which turned into a full-on conversation.
Daedo: Need you to work on something with a deadline. Come up with a recommendation to improve our hydraulic fluid this week. Either off-the-shelf or tweaking a known synthetic compound.
Mace: On our way now. I’m guessing this has something to do with our new recruit. Is there anything you need to tell me?
Daedo: There is something, and I don’t want to tell you.
Mace: Spit it.
Daedo: Master Nader didn’t get us a metallurgist. She got us a chem eng and propulsion expert.
Mace: Ah, that makes sense. Did you think I would be mad that I just did close to one hundred hours of study over the break? Only to find Master Nader got a chem expert, and I now need to start studying metallurgy – another U1 specialisation field.
Daedo: Yes.
Mace: Normally, I would be livid. But what can you do? It’s not your fault, is it?
Daedo: Let’s not change just yet. We have until Friday to assess Jensen. He’s from London.
Mace: So it’s a guy from Cambridge. English?
Daedo: Yes.
Mace: Snob?
Daedo: Unsure at this stage.
The other cadets were chatting politely with Jensen, asking questions about his likes, dislikes, and his old academy.
“So you like rockets, but not fast bikes or VTOLs?” Barran asked Jensen.
“I like VTOLs just fine, but I would rather fuel a drone and send it than ride one,” Jensen said.
“So you don’t like bikes? This is important,” Barran pressed.
Jensen frowned. “No. Didn’t I say that already?”
Barran: That’s a no from me.
Daedo: Barran, you don’t hold that against anyone else.
Barran: Good point. But you like bikes, right? You just don’t have one because you’re poor.
Daedo: Sure. That’s the reason.
While the rest of the squad questioned – and in turn answered questions from – Jensen, Daedo listened. It would be hard to suddenly be thrown into this squad; although they had only been together for three months, they were closely knit.
As planned, the squad went as a group to stretch and work on their core strength during yoga for a session before sparring in martial training. Picard was in charge of training the squad in martial. She would review the coursework, edit, tweak, and implement adjustments during their sessions.
During term one, Picard, Mace, Daedo, and Axel-Zero worked together with a bo staff and kendo shinai. This term, the entire squad would attend daily martial arts training, which not only included the staves but several hand-to-hand combat techniques. It was expected in term three that these would count towards physical grades, and if it was the same as the previous year, there would be martial tournaments during the rounds.
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“Really? Two sessions of martial arts every day?” Jensen asked.
“Yes, although technically that first session is working on flexibility and core strength,” Picard said. “We also do the obstacle course in the morning followed by a circuit.”
“Not to mention on weekends we go for long runs,” Axel-Zero added.
“And then there’s sparring on weekends too,” Picard said as she engaged Daedo and Axel-Zero. Jensen was using augmented reality and learning forms. Just as Daedo when he first began, Jensen was nowhere near ready for sparring.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Jensen said. He was met with dead silence other than the sound of bo staves clashing.
Jensen kept trying to learn one of the basic forms with the kendo shinai while the rest of the squad continued to practice in silence, their normal exuberance ominously vacant.
He relented after ten minutes of contemplation. “I guess you know what you’re doing. Master Nader showed me your scores and the results of the M3 tournament.”
Picard nodded and put a hand on his back after watching for a moment. “Keep your feet apart a little more. Bend your knees slightly. That’s right. Balance and centre come before everything else.”
Daedo monitored Jensen for the rest of the session. His initial negativity was not carried through the workout with a bad attitude. Jensen worked hard during the entire session.
After martial, there was the midday meal where the squad continued to get to know Jensen.
“What was it like at Cambridge?” Vannier asked.
“Cambridge is much more academically focused in M1 than you seem to be at the moment,” Jensen said. “It has its roots as being a university for centuries before becoming a military academy in 2110. Even now, there are streams of learning that are purely academic outside of the military structure of exos and mechs.”
“Really? So there are students who are not cadets there as well?” Axel-Zero asked.
“Yeah, there are business degrees, accounting, philosophy, you name it,” Jensen said.
“It must have more than seven thousand cadets then,” Barran remarked.
“It’s forty thousand when you count every student and cadet,” Jensen said.
A few of the squad whistled at the number.
“What made you come here?” Mace asked.
Jensen moved in his seat uncomfortably. He’d this conversation with Daedo and Vannier, but not the whole group. “I haven’t yet. I’m still deciding.”
“It’s a big move,” Vannier explained to the squad. “It’s understandable that you’re taking your time to evaluate.”
“And it’s a step down from Tier 2 to Tier 3,” Barran said. Daedo could see the wheels turning in his head and sent him a message.
Daedo: Don’t.
Barran: Don’t what?
Daedo sighed.
Daedo: Don’t try to talk him out of it. I could literally see the thought pop into your head.
Barran: Really? Shit. Is that your AI? Or some other skill you have?
Daedo: I’ve gotten to know you really well. I can predict what you’re going to think and say most of the time.
Barran: Fark, that’s insane.
Daedo: I knew you’d say that.
Barran: Stop it!
Daedo: Only if you stop trying to talk Jensen out of joining. Let it happen naturally. We get to know him and he gets to know us. The most important thing is not if we like him. It’s if he can be a valuable member of Squad Zero and Daedalus.
“It’s free time now,” Vannier told Jensen. “Work on academic tutes, rest, or whatever you like. You have the main schedule. The next squad activity is dinner at 1715 and then arena at 2015. The exo is in your room storage. You should check to see if you can fit into it comfortably, and inspect the mesh underneath the plating as Daedo requested.”
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Jensen: This exo is amazing.
He said over squad comms a few minutes into arena combat drills. Daedo handed him some beginner drills for the libero role after seeing his martial and gunnery skills.
Mace: What rank were you at Cambridge?
Mace was normally quiet, but she had been subtly testing Jensen. Daedo wouldn’t push her to leave Jensen alone like he did Barran. If Jensen stayed, she would have to change from chem eng to metallurgy. The change inconvenienced her the most.
Jensen: In academic, I was rank one but fourth overall.
Barran: Do they separate out subjects?
Jensen: Yes, we’re given scores for each subject, and they aren’t the same as here. Gunnery and piloting are part of the same subject. There is no ‘Strategy’ and ‘Reference,’ but each term has a different subject in the eighth slot. The first term, it was military history. Second and third term it’s philosophy. And tactics has its own subject – it’s practical as well as theoretical.
Barran: There are a lot of differences then.
Jensen: I can’t be the judge of what is better, and I don’t think it matters. Capability and application matter more in my opinion.
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Mace pulled Daedo aside after the arena combat session. In an hour, they had their first Gauntlet.
In three months, Daedo had seen all his friends frustrated, stressed, sad, tired, and angry at different stages. Mace was the most stable of the squad. Daedo couldn’t include himself in that judgment. He thought he was always too busy to be any of the negative – yet normal – emotional states, but he was sure his fellow squad members would have a different opinion.
Mace was tense, to say the least. “He can’t shoot, he can’t fight. Who knows how slow he will run. Even if he is a chemical genius, is it worth it?”
“All these skills can be learned,” Daedo said. “May I remind you that three months ago, I couldn’t run or fight, and I was hopeless in the exo.”
Mace stared at Daedo a moment then shook her head. “Okay. I’m going to work on that assignment you gave me,” she said seriously before she flicked her hair back and strode off down the corridor.
Daedo hoped she didn’t exhaust herself trying to outperform the new recruit who had talent – and a lot more experience – with chem eng.
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Daedo entered the Gauntlet for the first time in term two. The difference from the term one Gauntlet was noticeable instantly. This was the same Gauntlet the M3s were running, which had been incrementally increased in difficulty each term for nine terms. For an M1 cadet, it was a massive leap in difficulty.
As the first wave of alien bugs charged him, Daedo wondered how the rest of M1 fared. How had Master Nader talked the brass into this? he thought. Gone were the relatively benign human enemies from term one that only reacted when they were agroed by proximity or weapons fire.
These bugs hunted him, and when he ran from them, they chased and searched. They never gave up, even when they lost track of him. It wasn’t long before he had forty ugly, two-metre tall bugs searching for him.
It was possible that he would need to kill them all to get to the finish. The goal itself was to secure three bases. When all were secured, the Gauntlet would be over. This Gauntlet was scored for the time it took to secure all three bases.
Daedo cleared out the first base as one of the waves hunting him caught up. He decided to take them out, kiting away from the base towards the next. The short-barrel railgun was superb for this type of action; one or two headshots took down the mutant bugs.
They looked like giant cockroaches, except they ran upright on two legs. Daedo surmised that if he got into melee with them, they would use their four arms to rip him apart – in augmented reality, of course.
Shots to the body were ineffective, and grenades were almost useless. Other than headshots, it took a massive amount of damage to the body to stop the bugs. AR goo splashed everywhere, and they kept coming. Daedo almost felt sorry for the cadets in slower exos. Almost. If he couldn’t kite the bugs, it would have been exponentially harder.
Early ideas for strategically taking down the course began to form. He would have to work out which was the most efficient order to take the bases … what would be the path of least resistance.
There would be some groups that had to be taken down, while others were sufficiently left behind and never crossed his path again. Once the base was secured, it stayed that way when he left it, which was a positive. Otherwise, there was a possibility this scenario would never be over.
His usual tactic of researching a Gauntlet would lead Daedo to trial loadouts for effectiveness. A shield would slow him down too much, so he didn’t consider it. Getting too close to the bugs was dangerous also. If he couldn’t impale them with the swordlance while charging, he would drop that as a tactic. It would most likely be a pure railgun-and-headshot run, keeping his left hand free for grapple while bringing as many hooks as he could economically carry.
Daedo ran scenarios and tactics through his head as he took the second base. He wasn’t pushing this run; there were still nine more attempts this round after that night.
Daedo left the simulation and thanked the Gauntlet gods that it was AR as all the goo disappeared.
One by one the squad finished, with Jensen receiving a DNF due to AR death.
“What the hell was that?” Jensen bawled when he came out.
“The Gauntlet,” Barran said, smirking. He was just behind Daedo in time. There were no points for bug kills; this Gauntlet was purely about time. Otherwise, cadets would farm the hordes of bugs to game the scenario.
Barran pulled up the ranking and laughed. “In M1, we hold down the top six places. I guess the other exos aren’t up to it.”
“Look who’s seventh,” Vannier laughed. It was Gaumont.
“They’ll be asking for seven more railguns,” Barran quipped. “Or has he already?”
They had provided Gaumont with a railgun and eight exos. Everyone shrugged. No one had received a request yet.
Daedo shook his head. “He hasn’t messaged. He should probably drop his railgun, or we provide him with seven more. There’s no point unbalancing his squad’s armaments like that.”
Vannier waited for Daedo to make a decision, holding her palm upward to indicate he should make a call right then.
“Okay, send the message, and offer him seven railguns,” Daedo said. “But that’s it. They need to start working their butts off. No more handouts.”
“He said he’s sending his back,” Vannier reported after sending a message and receiving a reply.
Daedo smiled. “Good on him.”
Jensen still hadn’t gotten over the difficulty. “Is this what you had to contend with last term?” he asked, impressed.
“No, it was much easier last term. They have us on M3 Gauntlets this term,” Vannier said.
Jensen moaned. He didn’t ask why.