“Valenti,” he repeated, holding out a hand in greeting and motioning over his shoulder with the pad he had in the other as Rei shook. “We’re in the back corner, if you’ll follow me.”
Navigating through the bustle of teams still setting up their own spaces, Valenti led the way. He was a younger man, maybe mid-20s, with a streak of blue hair down the middle of his head that gave him the look of one of the orbital racing pilots whose sport was the only one that still held any weight against the SCT feeds. Reaching the last tent, the officer pulled the flap open to gesture Rei inside, then let it drop behind him as he followed. Almost all excess sound ceased the moment the entrance was sealed again, and Rei whistled.
“Dampening cloth. You guys aren’t messing around.”
Valenti chuckled, moving to a small lift-desk docked in its station in the corner and tossing his pad down on it with familiar casualness. The desk spun into its active mode at once, floating up out of its dock and drifting over to follow the examiner within arm’s reach as he approached Rei again. “Not for these exams, no. Results are confidential until released. They even keep things blind between the first two test portions, just to avoid influencing our results.”
Rei nodded absently, looking around the space, impressed at the equipment packed into the relatively tight area.
An examination table stood off-center from the middle of the suite, with a zero-grav treadmill mirroring it. All kinds of tubes sprouted from a mask hanging off a hook on the arm of the running machine, and a complex-looking computer with several ports and windows for what could only have been samples had been set up against the back wall. A series of solar lights hung overhead, giving the entire space a warm, welcoming orange glow that was definitely deliberate, but just the same Rei could feel his pulse quicken as he studied the contents of the tent.
One in twelve… he thought yet again.
“So. Straight to it.” Sergeant Valenti’s matter-of-fact voice interrupted Rei’s trepidations, and he was grateful for the distraction as he looked around. The examiner was studying the pad before him with interest, having taken a seat on an adjustable stool that had slid to him from the corner with a flash of his NOED. “Room sensors have your estimated height and weight as reported—five-foot-five and 132 pounds—but I’ll need you to remove your shoes and everything but your underwear for an accurate measurement. Do you have a concept of what we’re getting done today?”
Rei nodded. “Vitals and reflexes. Lung volume. Lactic acid buildup. Red and white blood cell count. Pathologic and neuropathy testing, too, among other things.”
Though he never glanced up from the tablet, Valenti’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve done your research. That’s always good. Makes things easier.” He paused in his scanning of what had to have been Rei’s submitted profile and other collected data. “This is a pretty extensive medical history, kid… And a lot of surgery… What—?” He cut his own question off, apparently finding the answer he was looking for. The officer read for a long moment, undoubtedly taking in the layered explanation written within, and said nothing for a while after finishing. Rei started to get worried again, and when the sergeant looked up his face was set.
“Roll up your sleeves, please.”
Rei’s heart fell. He hesitated, then did as he was asked, pulling up the sleeves of his black shirt to reveal the scars he knew Valenti wanted to see. The officer stared for a moment, eyes tracing up both limbs, his gaze lingering a little while on the new, redder mark on the inside of Rei’s right elbow.
When he finally spoke, however, it was measured, and lacking any of the pity or disappointment Rei had been afraid of hearing.
“It’s not up to me to ask questions. I’ll leave that to the final portion of the exam, if you pass my assessment.” The sergeant paused, studying Rei’s face intensely. “You ready for this, kid?”
Feeling not a small amount of gratitude, Rei managed a real smile.
“Absolutely.”
******
In the end, it took him less than an hour to fail.
Sergeant Valenti was—to all his credit—encouraging till the end. He pushed Rei through the endurance and lung volume assessment, and took his reflexes three different times. The man even drew his blood twice when his cellular counts came up sub-optimal. Valenti didn’t tell Rei his numbers were less than ideal, of course, but some of the readings were easy to make out on the medical computer at the back of the tent, and Rei had memorized the minimum thresholds of expectation front and back in the weeks approaching the exam.
It turned out he just wasn’t physically good enough.
The last of the tests—a simple flexibility measurement—was done in a subdued tone. Rei still worked for his best, thinking he might at least be able to make a request for his results to see what could be improved on for next year’s exam, but Valenti’s words of encouragement came less-heartily. Once they finished, the sergeant motioned to the final corner of the tent, where an ion shower rose and lifted as soon as Rei approached it. Within a minute he was clean, the varied particle waves first drying him off, then scrubbing the stickiness of the salt sweat left on the skin, and finally he was told to put his clothes back on.
“Come sit, kid.” The sergeant told him after he was dressed, motioning that he should hop back up on the exam table. Rei did so, feeling a lump build in his throat as the officer refused to meet his gaze, instead scratching at the back of his blue strip of hair while perusing the pad, as though looking for an easy way out.
Eventually the man sighed, gesturing for his stool with one hand as his neuro-optic flashed. It rolled over to him on command again, lifting to its max height so Valenti could sit eye-to-eye across from Rei.
“There’s no easy way to say this, but… I can’t pass you. Not today. Most of your tests meet the absolute minimal criteria, and a lot of the ones that didn’t can be improved on with time and training. But…”
“You can’t pass me,” Rei repeated quietly, finding himself rather abruptly looking at the floor. Try as he might, he couldn’t lift his head, the lump shifting down to settle first in his heart, then his stomach.
“No,” Valenti confirmed gently. “No. I can’t.” He sighed, lingering there for moment before continuing. “This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you about all the other opportunities you could still have in the military, but I get the distinct feeling whatever I say is gonna wash off of you like water.” Rei could practically feel the man’s eyes pass over his shirt and pants, hiding the scars again, including the longer ones from his several more-major surgeries. “It’s clear as day on a world with no night that you’re a fighter. I can get why a CAD-assignment is important to you. If I had the ability to, I’d shove you through to the next stage, and I could get fired for saying that, so don’t take it lightly.”
Rei could only nod. The lump was spreading, and he could feel numbness start to take over him. It angered him, for some reason. Hadn’t he been ready? Hadn’t he been prepared? He might not have told Viv as much, but he thought he’d at least been set in mind and heart to face down this truth he suspected very well to be coming down the line.
“Listen, kid. You finished your writing test up in what’s got to be record time, which gives us a while before anyone pokes their head in here wondering why we haven’t wrapped up. I need to submit your results, but after that let’s go over your numbers and talk about what you can do to—”
Valenti paused suddenly, and when he spoke again it clearly wasn’t in address of Rei.
“What the hell…?”
The abrupt change in the sergeant’s demeanor finally pulled Rei out of the spiral of his dark thoughts long enough to lift his gaze, and he found the officer staring in confusion at the pad he must have grabbed from the lift-desk. Rei couldn’t see whatever was being displayed—the tablets were clear smart-glass, but data only showed one way for obvious privacy reasons—but he could see a weird orange glow reflecting on and off in the m
an’s eyes, like the blinking of some large notification.
“What is it?” Rei asked him, worried something had happened to the data. At the very least he couldn’t walk away from this kind of day with nothing to show for it. “What’s going on?”
“I just submitted the results and…” Valenti trailed off as the reflection shifted, the display clearly changing to something new. The sergeant read whatever was written quickly, mouth falling open ever so slightly.
Then, abruptly, he stood up.
“Wait here. Do not move. Do not leave this tent. Is that understood?”
The brusqueness of the order took Rei so aback, he could only nod. Without another word Valenti dropped the pad back onto the desk and swept from the assessment suite, the sounds of bustling activity sneaking in for a breath as the flap opened, then disappearing again when it fell shut once more. Rei was left confused, not understanding what was going on, staring after the examiner with a clenching in his gut he didn’t understand. What had happened? If it was only that his data had been wiped, would Valenti have acted like that? Was it something else? Maybe the examiners suspected foul play because of the speed at which he’d finished the test…?
That thought made Rei angry, and he clung to it for no reason, needing an outlet for the daze the officer’s departure had left him in. How was that fair? He’d known he would have to make top marks on the writing to balance out his abysmal physical scoring even if he passed the evaluation. He’d had to grind out every spare moment of study he could between school, combat team practice, and his job at the Academy! If they were going to hound him for that, then what the hell was he doing here in the first—?
A light had Rei stop, then, and he looked slowly around. In his hurry, Valenti had knocked the lift-desk a little too hard, because despite its suspension stabilizers the floating table was rotating steadily in the air. As it did, the pad came into view, the orange light of the data bright even in the well-lit confines of the tent.
There, the last message the sergeant had seen blazed against the glass.
CANDIDATE REJECTION: OVERRULED
CHAPTER 5
“Based on a very impressive written test score, Mr. Ward, I’m going to make the assumption that you are attentive enough to already know my name and who I am. Is that fair?”
Rei, who had snapped up from the table the moment the man had entered the tent, answered at once. “Yes, major.”
The quick response seemed to please Major Albert Connelly, because the aging man nodded. “Good. Then I’m also going to pretend that—despite Sergeant Valenti’s careless abandonment of his pad when he rushed off to get me—that you also have no idea why I am here.”
To this, Rei could give no good answer, so he chose instead to stay silent. From over the major’s shoulder, Valenti broke attention to give Rei a quick thumbs-up and mouth the word “thanks” behind his commanding officer’s back.
“Excellent,” Connelly said after a moment, moving to take a seat in the very stool the sergeant had vacated not 3 minutes before and motioning Rei back up onto the table. “Sometimes silence is the best response. You’re going to keep pretending you have no concept of what is going on, and I’m going to act like I believe you. Understood?”
“Yes, major,” Rei replied as he pushed himself back up to sit.
Connelly waited for him to settle before speaking again. “Sergeant Valenti would have me believe he has already informed you that you did not pass the physical examination.” The shadow cast over the higher officer’s face by the short brim of his military cap shifted as someone accidentally bumped into the outside of the tent, sending the solar lights above them to swinging briefly. “I’m here to inform you that is not actually the case, and to apologize for the miscommunication on behalf of the ISCM.”
He paused, giving Rei a moment to speak, and catching him off guard.
“N-No apology necessary, sir,” he stammered, not sure what else to say. His heart was hammering in his chest. So it was true… The rejection had been overruled. By whom, though? By the major? That seemed unlikely.
“It is, and it is not easily given. I do have to clarify, however, that this does not mean you have passed the exam. You are merely being qualified for the third portion, which you will have to take along with every other student given the opportunity. Do you understand?”
“Yes, major.”
“Good.” Connelly paused again, but this time not seeming for any reason other than to look Rei up and down carefully. When he opened his mouth again, his tone was less formal. “I’m going to speak freely, son, so listen up. You’re approaching the start of an exceedingly difficult path at a very fast pace. That has its own value, but you also need to take care not to trip on your own feet.” He stopped, considering, and his NOED lit up his eyes briefly. “You took this exam alongside a ‘Viviana Arada’. Is that correct?”
Rei didn’t ask how the man could know that. “Yes, sir.”
“I see… While I’m not at liberty to share the information of applicants, I have a strong feeling that Ms. Arada is going to end this day a very happy young lady. Do you understand my meaning?”
“Yes, sir.” Rei barely managed to hide a smile. So Viv was crushing her portions. No surprise there, but it was heartening to hear the confirmation.
“Good. My profile on the two of you shows you’ve both applied to the Galens Institute. That’s a hell of a swing, but if you make it, remember that good friends can be hard to find in the world you’re about to share. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The major made a satisfied grunt, watched Rei a moment more, then stood up.
“There’s an officer waiting at the entrance of the medical facilities. You’re in the system as having passed, so they’ll direct you to where you need to go. Dismissed.”
The release was abrupt, but Rei hopped off the table at once. For a second he stood in front of Connelly, considering attempting a salute, then thought better of it. Instead, he managed to get out a shaking “Thank you, sir.” before hurrying out of the tent as instructed.
*****
Even after the short, scarred boy was gone, Albert Connelly couldn’t help but frown at the flap of the assessment suite through which Ward had disappeared. He considered the situation several seconds longer, then turned on his heels and made for the still-floating lift-desk he’d had Sergeant Valenti pull out of the way when they’d arrived. Reaching it, he picked up the pad still laying across its angled surface in both hands, taking in the message with narrowed eyes.
“Sir…?” The sergeant started from behind him. “Permission to speak freely?”
Connelly gave a grunt, which the officer took as liberty.
“Sir… What’s going on? I’ve never heard of an… an ‘Overrule’? I assumed you had something to do with it, but…?”
Valenti trailed off, leaving Connelly to chew on the question for a while, looking over the message on the pad for the tenth time and seeing nothing different yet again.
“No… Not me,” he acknowledged. “As for what’s going on, sergeant, I can only venture a guess. Not in twenty years of evaluation have I seen something like this.” He gave up searching for answers in the tablet’s simple notice, lifting his gaze instead to the northeast corner of the suite above his head where a small, almost-imperceptible camera was set up to record.
No… Not to record… To observe.
“Small, weak, and with a medical history a mile long…” he muttered under his breath. “What the hell is it thinking?”
******
Aside from the lobbies, medical facilities, and several restrooms for participants, staff, and spectators, the space under the amphitheater seating of Grandcrest’s combat gym also housed multiple classrooms for lectures by the school’s coaches, trainers, and instructors on a regular basis. It was to one of these that Rei was directed, and it didn’t take him long to find the place, having attended more than one of Coach Kat’
s heated speeches—though they were usually for the benefit of the members of her team she had greater faith in.
Arriving, Rei was greeted by yet another evaluator—this time a young corporal—who only scanned his NOED for identification before motioning towards the classroom door. Opening it, Rei had stepped all the way inside before realizing the space looked nothing like he was used to.
He’d been expecting a change, of course. He didn’t know exactly what to presume from this third portion—it was the only part of the test kept relatively under wraps even on the feeds—but he somehow couldn’t imagine the final portion of such an important event taking place among shuffled desks, disorganized combat modules, and old holo-projectors.
Still… Rei had even less expected to walk onto a massive, oblong floor of dark steel that had absolutely no business fitting inside the confines of a common classroom, complete with sweeping stands rising up all round him and an open-air roof high above, over which the words “Match Start” had been projected in shimmering black-and-red lettering.
He knew, of course, where he was. At least broadly. He’d known the moment he had seen the silver lines on the black, plated floor. The floor he was sure would extend 150 yards long and 70 wide, with an additional 5-yard minimum buffer around the extent of the space for movement, on-field viewing, media, and medical staff standby. Within that broadest Wargames loop, six other circles were marked as well, two 70-yard Team Battle fields, and four 30-yard Dueling fields.
Rei was standing, for the first time in his life—real or otherwise—on the floor of an SCT Arena…
“Please watch your step as you enter, Mr. Ward. As I’m sure you’re aware, no extent of advances in simulation technology can remove solid walls from a room.”
The voice came simultaneously from everywhere and nowhere. Rei started, casting around for a moment, then jumped again when a shimmering pixilation began to take form not 5 feet in front of him. A second later a person was standing before him, though not any kind of person Rei had ever known. A single shared surface of white from head to toe, it was faceless and without distinct gender. It was clothed in nothing, but at the same time requiring no coverage given all absence of anything that might demand modesty.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 5