Chapter 16
Opportunity Vs. Chance
“The difference between an opportunity and chance, is that with opportunity you tried to take advantage of the situation presented, while the other you let the situation unfold without any resolution on your part.” – Teachings of Marcon
The preparation and setup of the room was simple. Each officer candidate was assigned to a two-person room that was connected to a joint bathroom that connected to a second conjoined but identical two-person room. Each group of two rooms and one linked bathroom was called a suite. Both candidates of the shared room were responsible for cleaning and maintaining their room, while also maintaining the conjoined bathroom.
Each cadet was offered one twin size bed, a mounted wall locker for all military gear and effects. A table and chair to conduct their studies at, and a second personal dresser that could house any additional clothing or materials. It is the second dresser that would house personal clothing, items that were not regulated but authorized, and personal toiletries that would be needed for proper grooming standards.
For Arla, the personal dresser was the most obvious choice for where she would hide her personal items. As of now there were only two personal items of any importance to her, that of her authenticated orb that gave a detailed star chart for where to find items left behind by her biological father. Then the hard drive containing the funds from her last con job with Marcon.
Given the gravity and importance of both items, one for practical purposes and one for sentimental purposes, Arla decided to purposefully avoided blatant areas like the personal cabinet.
Knowing what was at stake with the finding and loss of adequate control over her two items, Arla began making plans.
The first thing Arla did was send out an energy burst-scan. This was a simple task of flooding the room with an ample burst of Spirit Infusion. Normally such a burst wouldn’t do much, but given her hidden strength, marked only as A-Ranked, Arla felt that her burst would temporarily fuse with any electrical devices and temporarily disengage them.
Better still, the burst could be felt, as she was in enough control over her power that she could feel where the energy collected.
In this case, the moving supply of electricity to a device could be immediately noticed and felt by Arla. This was felt in the overhead lights, the nearby desk lamp, and even the ready to use but not active wall heater. With everything with an electrical current responding in some way, Arla was not surprised when she felt her energy respond to not one, but two sets of recording devices in the room. The first was over the beds from just above the wall lockers. The second was over the beds to the wall lockers. Knowing where to look, Arla realized that there was likely a cut off. The recorders were likely meant to show the cadets using or hosting any illicit substances. Good for getting rid of drug mules and the like early on.
Arla made note of these devices, particularly if she was going to be a supplier for Lyria and her band of cronies. For Arla still intended to get paid, but now she knew that she could not use her room as a staging point for such actions.
There were of course options she could do, like setting up disruption runes around the area that would temporarily disable the cameras while she worked but she didn’t want that to be an everyday occurrence. Instead, she wanted today to be an anomaly, which was why she began moving quickly.
This was when Arla began focusing on her second important task, namely finding a decent hiding spot. The most obvious spot would be the desk lamp that had already been removed, no doubt as a way to hide items by the previous set of students. This didn’t work either, given that it had clearly been found and marked.
Looking around the room, she took in inventory. At the end of the set of mounted wall lockers that were standing side-by-side was also a sink used for personal grooming. Complete with a mirror. Seeing that, Arla felt her senses going off as she realized she had found a perfect spot. No one looked under the sink. Well, everyone would look there, particularly for cleaning supplies. But rather, Arla realized that no one would look in the under-side of the sink.
Working quickly, as she did not know how long it would take for a roommate to be applied to her room, or how long it would take for the natural flow of energy to the cameras to wear away at her protective layer of Spirit Infused coating that temporarily disabled the cameras from recording accurately, Arla began disassembling part of the sink.
Her enhanced strength made the process easy. After turning off the water supply, her vice-like grip made grabbing the bolts and turning them simple, particularly as she applied Cerusian runes of lubrication and other sources of energy to quickly remove the tubes that connected the sink to the wall. From there it was a matter of using her fingers to gently fold and warp the dual layered compressed sheet metal into an open compartment on the bottom. This was made just large enough to fit her hard drive on one side, and her orb on the other side. Then gently pressing, she moved the layers back together, so that it had more of its original shape. There was still an odd bulge in the back of the sink, but not many would stoop down low enough to see the bulge. At least, that was what Arla was banking on. Then working quickly she put the pipe back into place, reattached it to the wall, then turned on the water. Arla even tested the sink to see if it worked. Fortunately, the top layer, the one that was firmly welded to the top of the access piping was still firm, smooth, and flat. The water rolled down and washed away easily.
Making one last check, Arla checked the pipe to ensure it was not leaking in any way and was somewhat relieved to find that nothing had ruptured.
Feeling confident with her design so far, Arla closed up the cabinet housing the sink’s inner workings and began thoroughly washing her fingers. As dirt and grime stains stained her hands and fingers, making her work hard to remove the stains.
For a moment she thought about space rations of water, needing to lather up, wait, rinse once, wait, then rinse a final time for cleanliness. Then she realized that that was not a concern here, particularly as the sink didn’t automatically cut off after a liter of water was used.
Thunderous slam.
The metal door erupted inward, as the door crashed against the wall mounted locker, creating a deep reverberating sound that could no doubt be heard from a few rooms down.
“Oh, sorry about that!” A tall thin girl long black hair with purple streaks exclaimed as she grimaced, while wrestling with her giant square suitcase with wheels.
Seeing the suitcase Arla realized by the bag that it was one of the newer mid-range bags. One that was designed for traveling, and able to be folded down to smaller sizes. Perfect for Academy students. The fact that it wasn’t personalized in some way also said what strata the person who was assigned as her roommate was.
The clumsy girl, most likely her roommate, had the lowest model of the travel bag. Indicating that either she was either rich and pragmatic with money, or middle class but liked to travel securely. Or poor and her parents scrimped and saved long enough to afford her this dream luggage carrier that would immediately be compressed into its smallest form and packed away until the next holiday or campus break.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Dropping the giant box of a suitcase by the door, the girl merrily skipped over to Arla and presented her hand.
“You must be my roommate. Pleased to meet you, I am Chloe,” she exclaimed jovially as she all but radiated positive energy.
Seeing her, Arla smiled and turning off the water, shook her hand once, trying to get the dark soot into the sink before presenting her hand.
“Name’s Arla, Mechanic track,” Arla explained, while offering her hand.
This was a test, judging by Chloe’s reaction to the dirt, Arla could see what type of background the girl in question had.
While Chloe did offer a slight grimace and momentarily pause at the sight of Arla’s still slightly dirt covered hand, Chloe still pressed forward
Looking at her hand, the roommate, Chloe paused for only a moment, before grimacing slightly before putting her hand forward, where she gently clasped Arla’s hand and shook.
Not the firmest of handshakes, but clearly one that was meant to show she acknowledged Arla.
The use of handshakes was also indicative of a few early to middle Federation planets. Planets where the threat of flesh-eating bacteria was rare, or planets where proper UV protective measures were commonplace.
Not that it mattered here, for the Military Academy was a sanitized network of biomes and facilities that were designed to negate just such pathogens. Still, to have the inclination to shake hands immediately meant that the response was ingrained in the student’s upbringing.
None of these things changed Arla’s perception of the girl, but each part gave her better insights into who this person was, and most importantly how they were more likely to react.
Given her upbringing and demeanor, Arla felt it was likely certain that this girl never came into contact with Cerusians, or if she did her interactions were limited to only a handful of them.
Again, no judgements, at least Arla was trying not to make judgements, just observations.
“Which side would you like?” Arla asked.
While she had been the first person here, she had yet to lay a claim to any of the spots. Instead, she spent the entire time fixing her contraband hiding spot, and not much else. The only thing Arla really had on her now was her two cans of black shoe polish.
“I don’t know, where is your stuff?” Chole asked.
Arla just shook her head, “got lost in transit. Besides everything I need will be provided for me by the Academy.”
It was a lie, likely the first of many that Arla would tell, but one that would make things easier to stomach.
“Oh,” was all Chloe responded with, then trying to salvage the conversation, she quickly and awkwardly changed subjects. “Well, if you don’t mind, would it be okay if I chose this bed and locker set as my own? That way I can go to the bathroom easier at night?”
Hearing the unbridled honesty of the girl, Arla couldn’t help but smile slightly, as she found herself nodding, “sure.”
And like that Chloe began taking time to quickly unpack all of her gear into her locker. No sooner had she finished, then both cadets received a ping on their communicators.
Ping.
Assembly outside in 15 Minutes to go over to CIF to get your Uniforms.
***
Morning began as it always did for Arla, she slept two hours, cleaned and made up her bed, then began to first stretch, before doing a light workout in her room. Planks, one-legged squats, wall chairs, crunches, and various other exercises that she could perform quietly from the corner of her room. Under her bed and hopefully not awaken her roommate.
Fortunately, her roommate seemed to be a deep sleeper and easily avoided waking up at Arla’s pre-workout routine. There was also the benefit of having more time to make any last minute touchups to her hair, in order to hide her blue streaks. Ever since her awakening, Arla could feel more and more of her head tingling to life as she felt the change slowly overtaking her.
This was why, when the alarms buzzed indicating that it was 0400 and time to begin getting ready for workouts, Arla would be up and ready to go.
On the first day, she did not want to be the top, the best, or in anyway shine above her peers.
This was why, she made sure to do her exercises slowly, at the pace of others. Then as more and more fellow cadets began to fall out or break, she continued, but took longer to do each exercise prescribed. This had the added effect of fully stretching out her muscles and letting her focus on areas where she felt she was weak.
Still, even while doing this, she felt that she had many sets of eyes on her, but then again everyone did as the other instructors were right there to yell at and call out any cadet who failed to finish the exercises.
By the end, Arla did exactly as she wanted, she neither stood out for excelling or failing, but keeping that equilibrium.
As a comparison, nearly all of the S-Ranked cadets fell out. With their platoon being stationed right next to the A-Ranked Squad, it was easy to see when they dropped. Everyone of them dropped, aside from the one that did not have a direct symbiotic link to her.
It was also clear that he knew he was strong, and apparently had it in for Arla as the two would occasionally look at each other. Though every time Arla turned to inspect the S-Ranker he would just smile and smirk, before giving a quick wink before going further into the exercise that was being called out for the entire formation of incoming Freshmen to complete.
Amongst the downed bodies, Arla couldn’t help but feel, then see the connection to Lyria. Being this close, her connection was different, more complete if she had to find a way to describe the sensation, while the others felt like they were sort of ephemeral.
Finally, after a certain time, the training was called to an end as everyone was sent off to their perspective rooms to shower, change, and prepare for their first day of classes.
***
Classes went by relatively smoothly.
Being dressed the same, forced to walk the same and given the same set of classroom equipment to record and take notes with, Arla found blending in to be rather easy.
This was why she was able to keep her head down and easily breeze through math, science, and history.
The trouble for Arla came with her afternoon class, where she was forced to sit in on Basic Cerusian. This was the class she had been assigned by Lemishov, her apparent course advisor for Advanced Mechanical Engineering, the actual name of the degree program that Arla was now working her way towards completing.
This was the class that Arla had to take so that she could access the hidden star chart that Lemishov assumed would lead her to a hidden AI Legacy that once belonged to her biological father. The same star chart that now rested comfortably under her dorm room sink.
Sitting in the classroom, a few things were apparent.
First, there were a lot of scrawny males who wanted desperately to learn Cerusian. No doubt in some likely attempt to either pretend to watch terrible Cerusian movies and claim they are filled with culture. They weren’t cultural at all, bearing nothing about Cerusian life or abilities, they were just a cheap way to make money by having humans and other humanoid races who were only drawn to pretty images, rather than content. This, or the other reason was this was all an attempt to try to get assigned as a liaison or cultural translator for Cerusian delegations that might contact a particular military settlement.
“Space elves are so hot,” the junior cadets chuckled to themselves. Though they all instantly stopped chatting as they saw Arla walk in.
“Hey, are you our new professor?” One of the gaggle of students asked. This one had dark curly hair that barely met regulations. Seeing him, Arla just shook her head no, before moving to the center of the seats, and sat down.
Immediately, the boys who had been clustered towards the far wall, all slowly wormed their way forward until they were sitting adjacent to Arla.
For her part Arla just sat stoically not wanting to engage with anyone.
There was another female, who came in, saw the gaggle of students surrounding Arla in the direct center of the classroom, at which point she ducked her head down and sat along the front row.
For a moment Arla was surprised that the boys didn’t intend to go down and sit next to her, but before anyone could move their seats again, the instructor came in.
“Greetings class,” I am Dr. Juric, and will be your instructor for Basic Cerusian. Know that just by being here you will have met your language requirements for any degree path you choose. Also, know that after this class there is an Intermediate and Advanced Cerusian class that you would need to complete in order to be assigned a role as a Cerusian liaison, Instructor, or any other career path involving Cerusian. Given that, know you will all pass, so long as you come to class and focus. Though know getting my recommendation to further your education will require a lot of work and dedication.” The instructor, Dr. Juric explained.
With that, the instructor began writing in what could only be described as Cerusian gibberish on the board.
Judging by the letters and patterns used, it was clear that the instructor either had no ability to see the stressed and unstressed characters in Cerusian, or he was purposefully trying to make it so students attending the Academy had no chance of actually passing the material and moving onto the next round of classes.
While she didn’t have enough to form her thoughts on either, she did find one extra thing that made her realize that this professor was also hiding his true heritage. For as soon as she saw him and stared at him for a few moments, her Cerusian interface activated, showing her a message that she didn’t know could be seen by others.
Hybrid Subject detected. Subject lacking adequate potential to awaken Cerusian system.
There it was, words confirming that someone else was also hiding their true identity. That or this person never had to dye their hair, or use contact lenses to blend into society. Seeing him, Arla found herself wondering about many things, chief among them, was could he somehow tell if she too was awakened? If so, what would it mean for her academic career?
Then almost as if reading her thoughts, he pointed it out to her.
“You there, Ms. Proma I believe?” He asked.
Hearing his question, Arla nodded.
“Perfect, had a fifty-fifty shot. Going off of what I just said, what is this symbol…” He said while pointing to a non-highlighted symbol, one that could take on one of four tones depending on which energy pattern was used to highlight the pictograph in question.
Seeing the symbol, Arla could only pause and shake her head.
“Not paying attention, I see… well this will affect your participation grade for today…”
And like that, Arla had to sit through one of the most annoying classes of her life. One where the instructor was clearly wrong, but one where she was unable to correct him, for how would she truly know he was incorrect, without opening a whole can of questions that she did not want to answer.
Then like that, a class that seemed to be an easy A, suddenly turned out to be anything but.