There was a pause in which Connelly looked to be considering his next words carefully.
“For those of you who do not manage to achieve your goal on this day, you are of course welcome to try again in the future. That being said, I would also encourage you to consider other careers within the structure of the ISCM, including assignments in piloting, ship combat, command management—”
“He’s trying to shake us.”
It was Viv who spoke, and Rei nodded in agreement at once, having come to the same conclusion. As the major rattled on about the merit and value of other paths those who failed could take, it was possible to see a myriad of reactions in the faces all around them. Some, like he and Viv, watched the speech impassively, waiting for an explanation on how to proceed. Others, however, responded differently, a number of people paling as the possibility of their not passing was so strongly harped on, others cheering up when they realized failing wasn’t the end of their hopes of a career in the military.
One by one, Rei watched people fail before the testing even began.
No… That wasn’t right…
If anything, the test had clearly already started.
“Now, regarding today’s proceedings.” Major Connelly’s return to the pertinent subject had Rei giving him his full attention again. “There are a total of 521 applicants at this venue today, all of whom will be taking the written, physical, and final parts of the exam in tandem, assuming you pass each portion. We will—as stated—begin with the written evaluation. As you pass through the doors behind me—” as the simulation spoke, the double entrance to the gym floor slid open behind him “—you will be assigned a seat number. Please find the correlating desk. You may keep all items you have in your possession, including neuro-optics, pads, and any other devices. I will say that it is not recommended you use any of these in an attempt to search for answers to the written questions, but my warnings don’t tend to have much of an impact, I’ve discovered over the years.” There was, then, the subtle flash of a grim smile on the aging man’s face. “Now, without further delay: best of luck.”
With a blip of light, the simulation winked out.
“What? We’re allowed to keep our NOEDs?”
The question came as a whisper from a dozen different places, and Rei frowned, watching the brave souls closest to the gym doors start to make their way up the stairs.
“How many do you think will go in the first 5 minutes?” Viv asked him quietly, sounding a little too excited.
“Too many,” he answered, watching people pulling pads from bags and pocketing them, or fiddling with their neuro-optic settings. He gave Viv a glance, eyeing her as she played with her hair for a moment. Despite her amusement, she was still nervous. “I don’t need to remind you not to cheat, do I?”
She scoffed, hitching her bag a little higher over her shoulder and motioning with her head that they should join the crowd as it started to move. “After what you told me you’d found out researching the test? As if.” She brought a finger to her temple, and the bilateral glow of her display blared an off-grey, different from its standard red or green or blue. “Locked it this morning. Set to unlock in three hours, around the end of the written time limit.”
Rei stared at her for a moment as they walked. “Huh.” Pretending to finish his coffee, he looked away and locked his own unilateral NOED for an hour and a half.
By his side, Viv laughed, then the two of them were in the throng, passing into the gym together, the number 221 and 222 popping across their vision as they did.
*****
As expected, more than twenty people failed within the first 5 minutes of the written test starting. Major Connelly—in the flesh—walked up and down the aisles of plasteel desks that took up half of the gym floor, joined in his circuit by a some dozen other evaluators in their own black-and-gold regulars. At first the interventions were frequent, one or more of the military officers pausing in their pacing as information flit across the frame of their NOEDs, then converging on the unfortunately involved applicants. There were protests, initially, shouts from the guilty parties that they weren’t doing anything wrong, but after the first score were escorted out, people smartened up.
“Idiots,” Rei muttered to himself, bent over his test, and he thought he saw Viv fail to hide a grin on his right.
Sure, he’d had the sense to look up as much about the exam as possible in the weeks prior to it, but to have discovered that anyone trying to cheat on the exam were the first to fail had hardly surprised him. One in twelve passing meant the military was satisfied only with the best making it through to actual assignment of CADs, and one could hardly imagine someone willing to cut corners for information would qualify.
Still, even Rei had been taken aback by the level of entrapment opportunities offered. Aside from being allowed to keep their devices, Rei realized that his and Viv’s proximity had been more deliberate than chance when several of the students pulled left in pairs, sometimes even trios. Friends and acquaintances had been grouped to encourage temptation, which couldn’t have been hard to succumb to given one final astounding fact:
The written test had been provided to them on paper.
This was such an odd event that Rei was only one of hundreds, he suspected, to have run his hand across the top sheet of his exam in amazement upon sitting down. Paper was worthless in a modern age of neuro-optics and pads, sure, but it was also exceedingly rare, and this was the first time he—and likely most people in the room—had ever seen any. They’d been offered “pens”—not unlike the styluses used for writing on tablets when taking notes in class or at lectures—and Rei hadn’t been able to stop himself from running the tip of the fascinating apparatus down the center of his left palm, marveling at the line of black it left behind on his skin.
Then, though, major Connelly had called a beginning to the exam, and Rei had been forced to focus.
It started simple enough, of course:
In order of highest to lowest, list the 7 tiers of CAD-Rankings, and all relevant sub-rankings.
It had taken him a moment to get used to the pressure he needed to apply to the paper to get the answer to come out clearly, but eventually Rei managed it.
S
A
B
C
D
E
F
The values of 9 to 0 are applied as sub-rankings to the Ranks of A through F, with an A9-Ranked individual being the highest-level User before achieving S-Rank, and F0 being the weakest. In the S-Ranks, however, sub-rankings are applied using a Class system derived from the game of chess. In descending order, these Classes are: King/Queen (depending on the gender identity of the User), then Rook, Bishop, Knight, and Pawn.
Moving to the next question, Rei felt his confidence begin to grow a little.
List all Specifications relevant to CAD-combatants, separated appropriately, as well as their broad definitions.
The middle directions made him smile, and he wondered if the other examinees would be tripped up by not reading the questions fully.
User-specific specs include:
1) Strength - measures a User’s physical ability to push, pull, lift, carry, and throw weight.
2) Endurance - measures a User’s physical ability to perform strenuous activity without fatiguing.
3) Speed - measures a User’s physical movement and reaction speed.
4) Cognition - measures a User’s speed of cognitive information processing, and amount of information able to be processed at once. Due to concerns over long-term cerebral damage, Cognition is only active when deliberately applied, most commonly during a CAD-call..
CAD-specific specs include:
1) Offense - measurement of a CAD’s direct offensive power.
2) Defense - measurement of a CAD’s total defensive ability.
4) Growth - measurement of a CAD’s ability to adapt and upgrade itself and its User over time with in
put of combat information.
These measurements are Ranked in the same fashion as CAD Rankings, though standard 0 to 9 values are applied in the S-Ranks as well, rather than titling. In these measurements, a Ranking of F0 is akin to the ability of an average 30-year-old male citizen of the Intersystem Collective.
Rei second-guessed himself after writing the last line, given that it wasn’t exactly relevant to the question, but discovered in searching for a method of removing it that his pen wrote in what appeared to be permanent markings. Sighing, he decided to move on, resolving to keep to the questions.
List the 7 CAD-Types.
Brawler
Mauler
Lancer
Saber
Duelist
Phalanx
A-Type
It was in this fashion that the test continued for several pages, Rei ripping through the more basic questions in the span of a quarter-hour. After that the exam steadily grew in difficulty, and before long he found himself gnawing at the end of his pen as the inquiries shifted from asking for the abbreviations of the likes of Simulated Combat Tournament and Combat Assistance Device to requesting a detailed molecular breakdown of carbonized steel, what the recommended Type matchup would be against a three-man team consisting for a Mauler, Saber, and Phalanx, and what the electrical input difference between a phantom-call and a true-call was, as well as the partial calls of each.
An hour later, Rei reached the final page, letting out a breath of relief as he saw that only two questions remained to him. Inadvertently, he looked them both over at once, and found himself staring at the last for several seconds. He read it again, then twice more before understanding the question was, in fact, apparently asking for an opinion rather than a fact.
Eventually, Rei forced himself back to the top question.
CADs offer their User a variety of physical advantages over non-Users, all of which improve over time with a Device’s progress and evolutions. List as many as you can, and their broad definitions.
Another few seconds he sat there, staring at the question, then at the follow up. It seemed so… odd. Odd, to pair these two specifically, and at the end to the test. For a second, he almost looked to his right to glance at Viv’s exam, wondering if she’d reached the last page and was puzzling over the same thing.
Catching himself—and suspecting she was probably a ways behind him—he started to write.
1) Neuroline - synthetic axonal growth in the white and grey matter of the brain and spinal column, allowing for significant improvements in mental faculties while a User’s Cognition spec is applied.
2) Synaptic override - artificial synaptic replacement in the limbs and core muscle groups, reducing delay between thought and action.
3) Cross-density optimization - reassignment of trained muscular and tendon growth for strength and speed, allowing for significantly improved levels of physical power and agility.
4) Oxygen de-dependency - reduced dependency on blood-supplied oxygen, sharply increasing muscular and mental endurance.
5) Osteopathic integrity maintenance - increased density and size of skeletal tissue, allowing the body to bear the stress of CAD use and combat.
6) Genetic correction - a repairing of individual DNA imperfections, resulting in varied positive physiologic changes over time.
Finishing, Rei lifted his pen and moved to the final question, already knowing what his answer would be.
Of the physical advantages listed above, which is most important to you?
CHAPTER 4
“Ma’am? I was told I deliver my test to you?”
The woman seated at the single table facing the examinees stared at him in surprise. A warrant officer—judging by the insignia on her left breast pocket of her uniform—she’d watched Rei approach warily from the moment he’d stood up and asked what to do with his papers from one of the other soldiers patrolling the rows. Clearly this question was not what she’d anticipated—maybe she’d thought he was coming to complain about the unfairness of some part of the exam?—and it took her a second to look from him to the holographic display of a running timer hovering a few feet over their heads, clear for all test-takers to see.
“Are you… Did you complete all the questions?” she asked, trying to regain her composure as she stood up, holding out a hand for his carefully ordered papers. He nodded, passing them over as requested, and she flipped through them quickly to make sure he hadn't skipped any pages and wasted her time. Her eyes widened just a little as she saw that every answer was indeed there, and she moved at once to a small, rectangular machine at the edge of the table he hadn’t even given a second look. Sliding the test into a slot on her side of the device, there was a quiet whirring of sound, like the sheets being scanned and processed, and not two breaths later a display Rei couldn’t see illuminated for the warrant officer to peer at. She did so, and there was no hiding it this time.
Her eyes definitely widened.
“Uh… yes. I can consider this a passing grade. You’ll move on to the physical assessment next.” She paused to look him up and down—some of the surprise leaving her face in favor of what could only have been doubt—then stepped around the table and motioned him to follow her. “I don’t know if they expected anyone to finish so quickly, so I’ll escort you and check.”
Rei fell in smartly behind the woman, a little warm in the face, though he couldn’t decide if it was because he was pleased at her disbelief at his speed and obviously decent grade, or downcast from her obvious qualms regarding his stature. Whatever it was, she led him out of the combat gym through a smaller entrance between the south and east lobby doors he knew well.
“They’ve set up in the medical facilities, then?” Rei asked once they were out of earshot of those still taking the exam.
The warrant officer looked around at him curiously.
“I’m a student at the school here,” he explained the unanswered question. “Part of the combat team, actually.” He tried for a grin, but thought it likely came out tense. “I’ve spent my fair share of time in a recovery bed.”
The soldier relaxed, letting out a polite laugh before answering as they took a short set of stairs and turned left along one of the narrow back halls under the amphitheater seating. “They have. It’s a smaller space than we’d like, but the written exam is where we’ll lose the most applicants, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Am I allowed to ask what my grade was?”
She gave him a warning look, and Rei brought both hands up in surrender. He was about to apologize for pushing when they reached the door to the medical facilities, and the warrant officer pressed her palm to the plasteel. It opened sideways silently, and she stepped inside, motioning for him to follow.
Whereas the chamber usually consisted of nothing more than several exam spaces and beds separated by automatic privacy curtains that could change from clear to opaque on a whim, the space Rei walked into now looked more like something out of an army base camp. Medical officers and attendees were bustling around, and six black tents, about 10’-by-10’ each, were lined up in two rows along either wall, leaving only a modest walkway of space between them to allow for passage. As Rei and his escort walked in, one of the workers caught sight of them, frowned, and hurried over.
“Is there a problem, warrant officer?” the man asked. He was clean-shaven with thick black hair, and had on a white lab coat with a surgical mask pulled down around his neck. “Has someone taken ill?”
“No, lieutenant,” the woman answered sharply, saluting the man. Rei looked closer, and the worker indeed had the insignia of a lieutenant in silver over the pocket of his coat. “I’ve brought your first passing grade from the written portion.” She motioned Rei forward. “This is Reidon Ward. He completed his first section ahead of our expected schedule, so I thought I’d make sure you were ready for him rather than sending him along on his own.”
The lieutenant did a better job o
f hiding his surprise than she had, reaching into the pocket of his coat and pulling out a small pad to peruse.
“Hmm… Yes. We can take him.” He nodded, waving down another individual in similar vestments, who approached at once. “We typically try to get at least one assessment suite up quickly in case of situations like this. Ward, Sergeant Valenti will be your examiner, if you’ll follow him.” The lieutenant glanced back at Rei. “Good luck, son.”
Rei nodded, then turned to thank the warrant officer. She beat him to the punch, though, leaning in as her superior walked away, leaving the sergeant waiting expectantly.
“About your test. Let’s just say you did just fine, okay?”
The way she said it made Rei believe he had done better than “fine”, and he stammered out a thanks. The smile he got in return was a little too encouraging—like a mother pretending to be proud of a child’s finger painting—but he appreciated the gesture nonetheless. As the woman left, the sergeant stepped forward to introduce himself at once.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 4