Schism: Part One of Triad (23 page)

“I can give it a good try, sir,” she said.

“A good try.” His voice had an edge. “Is that what you will do in combat, Cadet Valdoria? Give it a good try?”

Soz tried not to stiffen. “I’ll do my best in all situations, sir.”

“Good. Go.” Kurj motioned toward the course. “Show me.”

“Sir! Yes, sir.” Soz took off, jogging toward the course.

“Cadet.” Kurj’s voice rumbled behind her.

Soz swung around, wondering if she had violated some rule. She didn’t think so. Every other cadet had responded in the same way when Kurj sent them to run a course.

Her brother was watching her with a closed expression.

“Yes, sir?” Soz asked.

“I want you to run the course in eight minutes.”

What? Soz stared at him. The record time for that course was over nine minutes, and that by a senior who had spent four years training on it No way could she come close to that record, let alone beat it by more than a minute, especially given her unfamiliarity with the gravity on this planet Yes, she could run now without mistiming her steps or stumbling, but jogging a mountain trail and executing the Echo were two very different matters.

Secondary Foxer started to speak, but Kurj held up his hand, stopping her. His posture, body language, facial expression—nothing showed any sign of his relenting. “Well, Cadet?” he asked Soz.

What could she say? “I’ll do my best, sir.”

“See that you do.” His voice brooked no excuses. “I hope your best is good enough.”

“Sir! Yes, sir.” Soz waited a moment, but he said no more. So she set off toward the Echo. Eight minutes. Hell, maybe he wanted her to create a few new universes, too. And she had feared he would show her special consideration.

Right

At least she felt good now, her muscles warm from her workout this morning, her body healthy and fit. She veered toward the entrance to the Echo, a simple dirt path. As she reached it she started her wrist timer. From her research, she knew the path hid numerous sensors that would evaluate her stride, weight, pulse, brain waves, and any other data it could glean as she ran along its length.

Soz didn’t run down the path. Instead she went along the narrow bar that bordered it moving fast to keep her balance on the precariously curved surface. The less the Echo knew about her, the less effective its obstacles.

It could still glean

information with her running along the bar, but it wouldn’t be as accurate.

Every small advantage she gained would help.

A vaulting horse blocked the end of the path. Soz jumped back onto the path and ran hard. She leapt into a vault, her palms hitting the horse as she flipped over it like a gymnast. It was an awkward flip. She hit the edge of the path when she landed and tripped, losing time. Then she caught her balance and sprinted for the scaffolding, a multistory structure of metal struts that resembled the climbing gyms her father had built for her when she had been a small girl.

At the thought of her father, Soz felt dizzy. Her sight clouded over until she couldn’t see. She had tried these past days to push away thoughts about her exile; now, it hit hard.

As her sight cleared, she ran harder, hit with a drive more intense even than her usual determination. She had to master this course, every course at DMA, every demand they threw at her, so she could go out and defend her family against the Traders. Why it hit her so hard now, she didn’t know, but it pushed her to sprint faster than she would normally have done this early in a course.

Soz reached the scaffolding and jumped up, grabbing a bar. It immediately bent, trying to throw her off, the mesh components in its structure acting with rudimentary intelligence. She compensated, grabbing new bars as the ones she held sagged, vibrated, and jerked. She made it to the top, but when she tried to cross the scaffolding, the bars shook until she lost her balance and slid down among them, into the lively center of the structure. They bent and rebounded like kinetic echoes, throwing her this way and that. Soz swore, grasping at the chaotic pipes. The harder she tried to regain her grip, the more entangled she became.

Pah. She tried the opposite approach and let her body go limp. The scaffolding quieted a bit, but she fell faster, hitting crossbars on the way down. She managed to grab one, wrenching her arm as she jerked to a stop. Instead of climbing the scaffolding, she went through it, scrambling as fast as possible, trying to outrun the echo. The bars hummed and vibrated all around her like crazed tuning forks. She barely kept her grip.

In desperation, lest she lose her hold, she slowed down. The echoes eased.

Finally she reached the end and threw herself out of the cursed thing. She hit die ground hard and set off running. The path bucked under her, trying to throw her off balance, but it had trouble judging her stride, probably because she had evaded its sensors at die beginning. She lost more time but she managed to stay on her feet.

She was approaching me lake, a pool with oil covering its surface so it resembled a mirror. If she hadn’t looked up this course, she would have plowed through the water, covering herself with oil. Instead, she tried running around the edge of me pool, staying on the stone lip. She could see herself in the water, a sort of visual echo. Keeping her balance on the uneven edge proved almost impossible, though. Her foot slipped and hit the water, sending out an oily ripple. She started to fall, but she was going fast enough that she reached the other side of die pool before she lost control. As she toppled sideways, she tucked and rolled, but her arm still hit die rim of the pool.

She grunted as pain stabbed through her elbow.

Tired now, Soz climbed to her feet. She wanted to walk and probably would have, except Kurj was watching. For all she knew he wanted to prove that die heir die Assembly had forced him to choose, die daughter of a man he hated, wasn’t up to me title. Soz had no idea what he thought, given how well he guarded his mind, but it killed her to know mat her estrangement from her famer came as a direct result of her new status. She would be damned if she let Kurj add insult to mat injury by humiliating her on me Echo.

So she kept on, too proud to falter before her indomitable bromer. She approached die aural labyrindi in a stumbling run. It rose up before her, an enclosed maze of tunnels and passages mat echoed, making it hard to judge direction. It didn’t matter. This was an old configuration, one posted for cadets to study. Soz had memorized die maze for the heck of it. She kept running, pushing herself hard, gasping in the thin air. It took only moments to clear the maze, but she came out staggering.

The rebounders crashed and bounced ahead of her, a series of gates that operated in complex patterns, snapping open and slamming closed again. She had a vague idea of the timing mat would let her traverse the rebounders without hitting the gates, but her body wasn’t responding well now. Only sheer orneriness kept her going. She was too damn stubborn to drop.

Soz dodged and feinted as she reeled through the clanging gates, but they caught her anyway, over and over, slamming closed on her body. The only reason she didn’t fall over was because they hit her from both sides, holding her up.

She gritted her teeth and kept going, die endless gates bouncing, snapping, bouncing, snapping. After an eternity she found herself before the last one, her chest heaving, her body aching. Twice her height and as thick as her body, the black portal thundered open and smashed closed. She recalled the key to this one; it opened and closed five times, rapid fire, men paused for a few seconds before repeating the pattern. When the pause came, she stumbled through and out into the sunlit stretch of sand beyond.

As Soz collapsed onto the sand, she hit the stop panel on her timer. Sweat was running into her face. She lay sprawled, gasping for breath. After several moments, she rolled onto her back and saw Stone standing above her, his face creased with concern. He offered her a hand.

Soz took his hand and pulled herself up, acutely aware that Kurj was waiting at the edge of the sand trap, watching, always watching. She dropped Stone’s hand and squinted at her timer. Gods. Fourteen minutes and forty-three seconds. That was truly appalling.

“Cadet Valdoria.” Stone spoke quietly. “You may return to the formation.”

“Sir.” Soz heard how tired she sounded. “Yes, sir.” She couldn’t read him well; like most officers who worked with

Jagernauts, he knew how to guard his emotions. At least he didn’t seem dismissive of her paltry effort here.

Soz turned to Kurj and saluted tiredly, raising her arms straight out from her body, her fists clenched, her wrists crossed. He nodded, his eyes hidden behind their gold shields. Dismissed, Soz set off at a walk, skirting the edges of the Echo.

It took her ten minutes to trudge back to the quadrangle where the rest of the cadets waited. Everyone was staring at her. Well, how the blazes was she supposed to break an academy record on a course she had never done before?

She glared at the first cadet she passed and the girl averted her eyes. When Soz reached Jazar, she glowered at him for good measure. To her surprise, he smiled.

“What are you smirking about?” she muttered. She knew Stone and Kurj were coming back, but she didn’t think they would hear her from so far away and she doubted they bothered to monitor cadets in the quadrangle. “I didn’t break the damn record.”

“No. But you completed the course.”

“So what?”

“After you left, Foxer told Imperator Skolia that no cadet in the last ten years has ever finished the Echo on their first try.”

Whoa. That hadn’t been in the specs. Damn Kurj. He had set her an impossible task, knowing she would fail. It served him right that she had finished the course.

Stone and Kurj were crossing the quadrangle now. Foxer called an order and the cadets fell into a new formation, shifting their four lines into two columns.

Then they marched across the plaza to a wing of the academy building. Although Soz was recovering her wind now, her legs ached. Despite die pain, she refused to limp.

They entered into one of the large common rooms, with tables where cadets could sit and socialize in their nonexistent free time. The paneling on the walls was genuine wood accented with holo-panels of landscapes that showed scenes

of Diesha and the academy. Very attractive. Too bad none of them ever had time to enjoy the place.

Kurj was standing behind a console on one side of the room, speaking with each cadet as he or she filed by him. Soz had never realized he took such an interest in the incoming class, but she supposed it made sense. The Jagernauts would be his elite pilots, officers with rare talents, crucial to ISC operations, the empaths who melded their minds with their ships to become human weapons. He would want to meet the novices, see who was who. He took the time to talk to each person. As she drew nearer, she heard him asking about their homes, families, simple facts that transformed a stranger into an acquaintance. A known quantity.

When Soz reached his console, she stood stiffly, aware of the mess she presented compared to the other cadets, her face sweaty, tendrils of her hair hanging out of her braid and curling wildly about her face, her foot covered in oil, her domes torn and crusted wim sand.

Kurj’s inner lids came up for some reason, so she could see his eyes, with their gold irises and black pupils. He spoke quiedy. “Still think you’re ready for me academy, Valdoria?”

She met his gaze defiantly. “Yes, sir.”

“You failed in the mission I set you.”

Screw him. “Yes, sir.”

“Why then, should I let you stay at this academy?”

Foxer was staring at Kurj with undisguised shock. It gave Soz a modicum of satisfaction. She spoke evenly. “Because I’m the first novice in ten damn years to complete the Echo on my first try.”

One of his eyebrows quirked. “So you are.”

Soz waited, wondering what the bloody binges he wanted.

“How is your father?” he asked.

So. They came down to the chase. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Why not?”

She spoke flady. “He disowned me.”

That clearly caught him by surprise. “Good gods, why?”

Why do you think? She was painfully conscious of everyone listening. “For coming here.”

He let out a long breath. Then, incredibly, he said, “Soz, I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know what she had expected, but mat wasn’t it Her voice almost cracked. Almost. But she held it steady. “So am I.” That barely touched what she felt.

He spoke in an unexpectedly gentle voice. “Dismissed, Cadet.”

Soz saluted and went on, out of the common room. The other novices watched her with curiosity. She hid her turmoil. Bad enough she had failed Kurj’s test in front of everyone; now she had admitted her exile as well. The Echo didn’t matter compared to the scab Kurj had picked off her emotions by asking about her father. His sympathetic response confused her. Apparently the mighty Imperator wasn’t as much of an impassive machine as he would have people believe.

They had time for lunch now, but Soz had no desire to go to the canteen with her classmates. Instead she went to the dorm. In her room, she dropped into her bunk and lay on her back, too exhausted even to change her clothes. She stared at the bottom of the bunk bed above her.

“What the holy hazoo was that all about?” a voice said.

Soz turned her head to see Grell sitting on her bunk across the room, her newly cropped red hair sticking up the way it did after she had exercised, making her look like an urchin.

“Hazoo?” Soz blinked. “What is that?”

“I dunno,” Grell admitted. “Everyone says it back home. And you’re avoiding the subject. What happened with Imperator Skolia?”

Soz mentally shuttered her mood. “It’s nothing.”

Jazar appeared in the doorway. “Nothing?” He came inside and touched the wall panel, closing the door. “I’ve never heard of him going after a cadet that way.”

Soz wondered what her father would do if he knew she was bunking in the same room as two men. Probably have heart failure. He would never believe the truth, that they never violated the ban against fraternization. As if cadets had either the time or the energy even to look cross-eyed at each other, let alone misbehave.