“The Co-op test, as in the cooperative or cooperation test. It’s the end of the semester test.”
“Oh, right…that,” Kaiden muttered. “I wasn’t gonna bother with that. I’ll simply run it alone. Plus, Chief is big enough to count as a second player anyway, right?”
“You better be talking about my personality, boy,” Chief warned.
“That too.” Kaiden shrugged.
“Are you trying to rewrite the rules?” Laurie asked, exasperated. “Good luck with that. You’d have an easier chance of taking on a trio of those war machines from the Division test than getting the board to bend on any changes to their tests.”
“So it’s non-negotiable, huh?” Kaiden huffed his annoyance.
“Oh, it’s quite negotiable. You can negotiate that you will do it, or that you cannot do it and get booted from the Academy and saddled with all the debt that you owe thus far without a guaranteed job.”
“Might wanna toss that extra point in debate if you wanna go that route,” Chief jeered.
Laurie moved over to stand behind Kaiden, who was still focused on the screen in front of him. “Speaking of which, how goes the talent selection?”
Kaiden looked at him, confused. “You’ve been standing here all this time. You haven’t seen me make my selections?”
“My hologram has been here. I had to step out for a moment and deal with the real Schrodinger. He requested a few treats. My fluffy little snack vacuum.”
Kaiden rolled his eyes. “So the cat is more important to you than this? Gee, thanks.”
“Oh, don’t be so envious. It’s never a good look,” Laurie admonished. “Besides, you are in my pod. It’s not like I could forget you and leave you here.”
Kaiden stopped and turned, looking up at the professor. “You know, that wasn’t something I thought about until you brought it up.”
Laurie waved him off. “Oh, stop being so dramatic and show me what you’ve chosen so far.”
Kaiden shook his head and sighed. He turned back to the screen and changed the search filters. The view changed as the unchosen talents disappeared and the ones he had chosen appeared on the top of the screen.
Strategic Mind: Learn dozens of strategies per upgrade and how to apply them in the field. Increasing your ability as a leader.
Status: 1/10
SXP Boost: Allows for a 15% percent boost to SXP Gain with each point.
Status: 1/4
“So you did take a boost,” Laurie observed. “But only one point?”
“I decided to go with a little variety,” Kaiden stated. “Try out a few things while gettin’ levels is easier.”
Laurie smiled. “I’m happy to see you’re so enthusiastic about this. Up until now, getting you to do this was like pulling teeth.”
“I said I would get around to it eventually,” Kaiden mumbled.
“For you, ‘eventually’ and ‘indefinitely’ don’t seem to have very different meanings.” Laurie chuckled.
Martial-Judo: Increases physical defensive form and teaches throws and parries from the Judo martial art.
Status: 1/4
“Finally adding a little finesse to your repertoire,” Chief chirped. “See if there’s a talent for breakdancing while you’re at it.”
“Why Judo out of all the options?” Laurie inquired, looking at the screen. “Or did you choose another that I missed?”
“Nah, just Judo. I’m pretty good at kicking and damn good at punching, but I needed something that will give me a bit more edge against larger opponents. You know, use their strength and momentum against them and all of that.”
“Wulfson give you the idea?” Laurie smirked.
“You might be able to fling him to the ground for once,” Chief declared. “But I bet you won’t break the big guy’s record for dumbass toss.”
“Should I even ask what that is?” Laurie grimaced.
“It’s what Wulfson dubbed the moments he sends Kaiden flying in the air. It’s become something of a regular occurrence.”
“What’s his current record?” Laurie asked.
“That’s not important.” Kaiden scowled.
“Twenty-four feet and seven inches. Probably could’ve slid farther, but Kaiden hit a dumbbell rack.” Chief cackled.
Kaiden grunted as he glared at the EI, elbowing Laurie to get back to looking over his choice of talents.
Xeno Hunter: Increases knowledge of alien species and instructions on how to best incapacitate or kill them.
Status: 1/3
“An…interesting choice,” Laurie mumbled. He looked at Kaiden and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Have the Tsuna or Mirus not been playing well with you?”
Kaiden brushed Laurie’s hand away. “It was in the Ace tree. I thought it was weird to have the choice at all. You think the other races are gonna like that we are already learning how best to stick them in the ground?”
Laurie folded his arms. “If you're so worried about how it looks, why did you choose it?”
Kaiden stood up. “To be prepared. Jaxon said that they have rebels and traitors just like we do. Plus, I figure it’s only a matter of time before I gotta deal with alien enemies in the Animus, so I thought it would prove useful. I also learned some rather interesting things about the Mirus, like I can kill one with a pint of rocky road.”
“Their metabolism does not process dairy very well, and the low temperature would indeed cause some of their organs to slowly lose function if introduced to their internal system. But you seem to forget that they have no mouths, how would you get them to ingest it?”
“Injection?” Kaiden shrugged.
“You going to inject them with ice cream? Specifically with nuts and marshmallows? Must be a large needle,” Laurie said, both amused and bemused.
“It was a joke, Prof. Back to the main point, though. How is this a problem? Jax is a Tsuna, and this is in the Ace tree. He’s probably seen it.”
“You forget that we are aliens to them. The talent works both ways,” Laurie reminded him.
Kaiden considered this for a moment. He nodded slowly as he began to think about what that meant.
“I wondered how that bipedal dolphin got so good at killing meatbags,” Chief admitted.
“He’s probably got this stacked to full,” Kaiden observed. “Need to remember not to get on his bad side in the future.”
“What else?” Laurie asked, leaning in.
Tinkerer: Gain knowledge about field gadgets and how to fix or increase output in the field and best modify them.
Status: 1/4
“Before you ask, I use a barrier in the field. It takes a beating each and every time,” Kaiden explained.
“A practical choice, then. Well done. That leaves you with one point. Where will that go?”
“I could think of a few places it could go.” Chief chuckled. “See if there’s a talent for common sense, or manners, or maybe proper diction and get rid of that accent.”
“You mean like the one you have?” Laurie asked.
“I didn’t choose it.”
“Nothing like that for me.” Kaiden smiled, looking at Chief. “But I think we can do something for you.” He canceled the filters and typed something into the search bar.
Next-Gen: Increases EI processing, scanning, and hacking capabilities.
Status: 0/3
“So you’re gonna give me a tune-up, huh?” Chief eyed his host. “Wonder if I’ll come out with go-faster racing stripes or a flame decal.”
“Guess we’ll see.” Kaiden moved to select the talent.
“Actually, Kaiden, I would wait for us to—” Laurie began, but the caution cut off when Kaiden activated the talent.
Chief began to glow brighter and brighter. His eye grew bigger as sparks began to shoot off him.
“Chief? What the hell? Are you all right?” Kaiden demanded. He’d barely said the words when Chief exploded in a ball of light. The windows disappeared, Laurie’s hologram vanished, and the light above hi
m went off, leaving him in a dark void.
“Uh…was that supposed to happen?”
Chapter Fourteen
“Hey, Akello.” Mya greeted the advisor as she walked into the bar. “How are you doing?”
“Pretty good, all things considered,” Akello said and sat. She ordered a glass of wine from the bartender before turning back to her friend. “I’ve been working with Advisor Tali on the Horde test for the second years. It’s been exhausting but fun.”
Mya gave her a reassuring pat on the hand. “Well, don’t work too hard. The Co-op test is coming up soon. I bet they have you running that too, huh?”
Akello sighed. “Yeah, me and fourteen others. That’s gonna be a long week.”
“Did any of your picks for the league get together?” Mya asked.
She shook her head. “No, they all grouped up with others. It means I won’t get the Coop bonus, but I still feel pretty good about my chances.” She looked up at her friend. “What about you? Any luck?”
Mya took out her tablet and activated it, revealing her league team. “I wasn’t that lucky either. Sandra and Yvon both went with different people. I was really hoping they would band together as they are friends from prep.”
“That’s maybe why. The Coop test is grueling, so they probably didn’t want to potentially damage their friendship if things went south during the test,” Akello suggested.
“That and the fact that one is a surveyor and the other is a surgeon. It would be an odd test.”
Akello thought about it for a moment. “How would that work? The surveyor would find a body and the surgeon would operate?”
Mya giggled. “Maybe the surgeon could only operate with the equipment the surveyor found?”
“I doubt there are many rocks in the shape of scalpels.” Akello laughed. “What about your first choice? Chiyo Kana?”
Mya held out her hands as if scaling items on a triple beam. “It’s a mixed bag. On one hand, she’s got some of the highest scores in the entire year.”
“But on the other?” Akello asked.
Mya's shoulders slumped. “She doesn’t have the greatest track record of working with others, and she hasn’t even chosen a partner for the tests.”
“You might wanna get on to her about that,” Akello prompted. “She’s only got a week until she’ll be forced to get a random partner.”
“Honestly, I might have made a mistake in choosing her,” Mya admitted.
Akello sat back with a surprised look on her face. “That’s rather bleak of you, especially considering you are her counselor.”
Mya waved her hands frantically. “I’m not trying to say she isn’t a good student, far from it. But…I mean, the league is supposed to be made up of a trio of students, and the final test is a three-student team that has to work together for the finals.”
Akello gave her friend an apologetic look. “And since those teams are created using our choices…”
“I have a surgeon, a surveyor, and an infiltrator, two of whom are mid-level and the other doesn’t play all that well with others,” Mya concluded.
“What made you choose those three?” Akello asked. “I wouldn’t think that would make for a good final team on paper. We don’t even have any wildcards you can swap out for this year. Everyone got snatched up.”
“I was hoping I could trade later, get some early points with Chiyo and the Coop bonus with Sandra and Yvon before trading one of them for a soldier or someone in engineering.”
Akello chuckled. “You’re rather ruthless when it comes to this, huh?”
“I won last year, remember?” Mya declared proudly with a clap of her hands. “I look to win again this year and make it a back-to-back victory.”
The bartender gave Akello her glass. She thanked him and took a quick sip before replying. “Even with Sasha in the running this year? Didn’t he have a hot streak at some point?”
“Five in a row. That’s why he ‘retired’ for a few years. He was getting bored.”
Akello gave an appreciative whistle. “No wonder he gets the nice office.”
“But I still think I can win. I mean, he’s gotta be rusty, right? I can take him.”
“Shooting for the stars. I like it.” Akello smiled. She looked at Mya’s team for a moment. “Speaking of the commander, Sandra is paired up with Jensen Lovett in Engineering. I think Sasha actually has him on his team.”
“You think he will trade?” Mya asked hopefully. “Lovett has some pretty good grades, but maybe I can convince him to trade for him?”
“I think he’s already got a medic, so I doubt he’ll want another one.”
“His first choice was Kaiden Jericho. He gets blasted all the time.”
“It’s a bit unnerving that you say that with such glee.” Akello deadpanned. “Aren’t you his counselor too?”
“I care deeply about my students,” Mya assured her.
“But you care about your League score more?” Akello snickered. “It is certainly not a bad plan, but I think you’ll have to sweeten the deal.”
“I don’t think Sasha likes sweets,” Mya lamented. “I’ve made him some deserts before, but he never touches them. Must be trying to stay fit.”
Akello grimaced, remembering a cake Mya had made previously—far too sweet, with unripe fruit. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s why,” she whispered. “But don’t play naïve. You know what I mean.”
“So you saying I should try to trade Chiyo?” Mya queried. “I mean, I do have a lead because of her…”
“But if she doesn’t do well on the test due to her being…stand-offish, then where will you be? The tests are worth the most points.”
“I know but…” Mya trailed off, thinking furiously for a moment. “Do you think he’ll even want to trade? He’s already got Kaiden, and he doesn’t exactly have an ‘all for one’ mentality.”
“Doesn’t hurt to ask,” Akello commented. “What do you have to lose?”
Mya sighed, taking another look at her current team. “I guess you’re right. I should probably see what he thinks.”
“Why don’t you give him a call?” the advisor asked.
Mya shook her head. “It’s pretty late. I’ll ask him later. I’m not sure if he’s even in his office anymore.”
Sasha gazed out of the large windows in his office, staring out into the dark night sky. He looked up to the corner of his display, activating the clock. It read twenty minutes past midnight. The commander sighed. Despite such a dire message, Laurie apparently still didn’t see the need for punctuality.
At that moment, he heard the doors to his office open, and Laurie walked in. He was impeccably dressed in a white dress shirt, silver vest, and pants tucked into his white boots. His hair, however, looked a little windblown, and his breathing was ragged.
“Long night, Laurie?” Sasha inquired, motioning to the professor’s hair.
“I had a bit of a hang-up at the lab…Kaiden paid me a visit,” Laurie explained, pushing the hair out of his eyes before he pulled a comb out of his pants pocket. “I had him activate his talent points. He’s been training this whole time without them,” he exclaimed, his vocal cadence quickening as he moved to a chair behind Sasha’s desk and began to straighten his hair. “It went well, but the boy activated an upgrade for his EI’s processors while in the Animus. It caused a temporary blackout while his EI installed the upgrade and came back online—my fault, really. I should have mentioned that it was better to apply that outside the Animus.”
“He learns better from trial and error, as I’ve discovered,” Sasha admitted, taking a seat at his desk. “Your message was rather vague. What did you discover that you needed to talk to me about right away?”
“Well, that also involves Kaiden, actually.” Laurie withdrew a handkerchief from the chest pocket of his vest and wiped the comb. “He ran a victor-level mission this morning, along with a few of his friends. It was cleared for him by unknown means.”
Sasha sat back in his chair a
nd crossed his arms. “And you believe this is related to the previous incidents?”
“Absolutely. You can’t simply clear a mission like that for personal use. An advisor must also be present, and worse, the equi scale was at nine.”
“Tell me what you know,” Sasha demanded. Laurie gave him a quick synopsis of what Kaiden had told him along with a bit of information he had gathered in the meantime. Sasha remained silent and still, for the most part, listening intently. “Are you sure there is no other way for a student to get access to a high-level test? Perhaps through a glitch? Or maybe a hacker was able to bypass the clearance and activate it for him? We do have a very talented crop among all years.”
“Please remember who you’re talking to, Sasha. I would obviously have covered all those bases,” Laurie sneered. “I was able to placate Kaiden with an excuse about it being a glitch, but the system should have recognized that the mission was not appropriate for him or any of his group, closed it out, and sent an alert to my Animus Technician group. They would have then informed me well before Kaiden did.”
Sasha tapped his fingers on his desk. “So what are you suggesting?”
Laurie placed a small circular pad on the desk. “Aurora, please bring up the mission code I downloaded earlier.”
“Understood. Displaying,” the EI acknowledged. Holographic streams of coding for the mission floated above the desk.
“See this?” Laurie asked, pointing to various segments. “The way it is designed—redundant segments, quick changes, re-routes and new triggers—this is some skilled work.”
“True, but this is something almost anyone on your team would be able to do, correct?” Sasha observed.
“Any technician at an Animus-sanctioned academy would have the proper clearance and ability to do this, but they would have to add their signature before it was uploaded.” He scrolled down to the bottom of the code. “There is no signature here.”
Animus series Boxed Set Page 42