“OF COURSE THEY HAVE!”
At long last Rama Guest exploded. He didn’t approach the smaller man, this time, but Maddie thought she could feel the anger the colonel radiated from across the room.
“OF COURSE THEY HAVE!” he bellowed again. “DID YOU THINK HE WOULD GO UNNOTICED?! HIM?! THE BOY WHO HAS CLIMBED MORE THAN TWO TIERS IN LESS THAN SIX MONTHS SINCE HIS ASSIGNMENT?!”
Reese blanched. His shift in expression—genuinely alarmed—was enough to bring Rama back to a more level head. He took several deep breaths, steadying himself.
When he spoke again, he was informal, and in a quieter, almost gentle tone.
“Dyrk, you know I’ve had—still have—my own reservations. Ward is a wild card. He’s been a wild card from the moment he was granted his CAD, and probably a long time before that. But Valera had the right of it. She saw it, and we didn’t. If he continues on the trajectory he’s following right now, the Central analysts think Reidon Ward will be at least a B-Ranked User by the time he graduates his first year of school, possibly an A. That’s incredible. You have to see that…”
Reese didn’t appear to have gotten over his shock, though, and said nothing. After a few seconds, Rama sighed, easing down to perch himself on the edge of his desk before crossing his arms.
“I’m not absent some sympathy towards your logic, major.” He returned to titles smoothly. “You’re concerned about Ward’s character. His fiber.”
There was a pause, but this time Reese managed to find his voice eventually.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re worried he’ll be a stain on this Institution’s history.”
“It’s present too, sir.” Reese hesitated. “All he’s ever done on the field is run. Run and hide, or wall up and let the others come to him. He picks fights, and half his class wants nothing more than to see him dead, while the other half seems to eat out of the palm of his hand.”
Rama’s jaw clenched.
“Are you implying that my niece is ‘eating out of the palm of his hand’, major?”
Reese corrected with record speed, some color finally returning to his cheeks. “No, sir. Of course not. My apologies. I only meant that Ward clearly has a skill for worming his way into many of the student’s graces, all while alienating most of the others.”
“It’s called ‘making friends’,” Maddie muttered under her breath.
Rama’s gaze flicking to her a second time, lingering there in more substantial warning, letting her know she’d most certainly been overheard.
“As far as I can tell, Ward’s relationships with the remainder of his class are nothing out of the ordinary.” The colonel was frowning as he looked back to Reese. “He may be polarizing, but that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. His potential—and the starting place he was positioned in—made him either unworthy or sympathetic, depending on your point of view. As he progresses, those two camps will naturally evolve into jealous and vindicated respectively. But such is the way of children, major.”
“And his fighting, sir? His cowardice?”
In answer, Rama reached back to tap on the desk again, his NOED flashing briefly. All together the still-hovering projections of the SCT metadata displays collapsed inward, transitioning into a single moving image that portrayed the same clip over and over again on repeat.
Two cadets hurtling towards each other, then meeting head-on only for one to come up short, stiffen, and collapse to the ground a second later.
“Tell me, major… does that really look like cowardice to you?”
Reese’s lips were a thin line as he watched Reidon Ward cut down Camilla Warren several more times, eyes following the boy again and again and again.
When he finally opened his mouth to speak once more, however, his words were not what Maddie had expected.
“He’s dangerous, sir.”
Across from him, Rama’s frown deepened, and he looked to be considering his subordinate—his friend—with a careful intensity Maddie hadn’t seen all night.
“… Is that what this is really about, Dyrk?” The colonel finally asked. “Fear? For what? The Institute?”
The major shook his head slowly, not removing his gaze from Ward’s flashing form.
“No, sir. Not the Institute…”
“What, then?”
“Everything.”
*****
It wasn’t long after that that the colonel dismissed Dyrk Reese, though not before extracting assurances that the major would reformulate the remainder of the first year bracket—with automated randomization, this time—and present them for approval. With no hard cause to detain or punish the man further, Reese had been allowed to leave, looking shaken as he departed the room without so much as glancing at Maddie when he passed. It was alarming to see, in a way. For one thing it was strange to witness the hard, unbending officer brought low.
For another, though, she couldn’t tell if this unmaking was the result of Rama’s reprimand, or the concerns which had been forcibly dragged into the light…
When the door shut behind the major with a click, Maddie looked immediately to the colonel. She found him staring at nothing, not having risen from his place seated at the edge of the desk, his gaze distant and his arms still crossed over his broad chest.
She gave him a full 15 seconds before deciding to interrupt.
“Rama?”
The man blinked and came to, turning his attention on her with brow furrowed under the black brim of his cap.
“What do you think of that?” he asked without preamble, like they’d already been in conversation.
“Of what, sir?” Maddie replied, stepping away from the wall and giving herself leave to take a seat on one of the couches set opposite the man’s desk. She’d only meant to poke her head in to inform him of the call from General Shira Abel, and as such hadn’t been carrying her pad or any other materials when he’d waved her in a quarter-hour before, now. Unsure of what to do with her hands, she decided to rest her arms across the back of the couch, making herself comfortable by crossing one ankle over a knee.
The colonel smirked at this casualness, but instead of saying anything contrary stood up off the desk with a grunt to move to the seat opposite her, waving at the place Dyrk Reese had been as he did.
“That,” he repeated before dropping down onto the cushions and assuming much the same position as Maddie, though he started drumming the fingers of one hand upon his knee almost immediately.
“What the major said?”
A nod.
“Which part?”
“Maddison…” the colonel growled impatiently.
Maddie managed a brief grin.
Then she felt it slide off her face as she contemplated.
“He’s afraid of Ward,” she said slowly. “He’s afraid of him.”
“Yes…” Rama agreed, just as evenly. His gaze had drifted again as he listened.
Maddie took in a breath through her nose, considering her next words carefully.
“Maybe he should be.”
To her surprise, it was the colonel’s turn to smile. “Indeed. I find myself of the same opinion…” He paused, chewing on his thoughts. “That doesn’t make him any less in the wrong for his actions.”
“Alleged actions, sir,” Maddie corrected him with a raised eyebrow. “You said yourself we’ve got no proof.”
Rama waved the comment away dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. My point is that even the approach we know for sure he’s taken is in the wrong. I’m of the opinion he’s been making a play to drive Ward from the school of the boy’s own volition. Central—” he pointed at his eye to indicate the call he’d taken “—happens to agree with me. And I say ‘happens’ because I sure as hell didn’t appraise them of my concerns.”
“They’ve got spies in the school.”
Rama laughed dryly. “I’d hardly call them ‘spies’ given we all work for the military in the end. Even you.”
; Maddie nodded, but she was turning over something else as he’d been speaking. She smiled. “Well… I think we can confidently say the major’s plan was anything but a success. According to Valera—uh, Captain Dent—” she corrected herself, feeling her cheeks redden “—according to her, the only students in the Institute to put nearly as many extra hours in are Lennon, Sidorov, and Cashe. Ward and his group—Aria included… If anything, it seems like Reese’s games have only pushed them to work harder.”
Rama nodded slowly, watching his fingers tapping at the black fabric of his pants atop his knee.
“All good things,” he mumbled in agreement. “All good signs. And yet… He’s not wrong…”
Maddie felt a shiver crawl up her arms, then. She didn’t at all like where the colonel’s head was going.
“If you really thought that—if you really worried Ward might be dangerous—you would have made sure to keep Aria away from him.”
Rama grunted, but didn’t say anything more for a moment. He looked to be mulling over the idea, eyes narrowing as he considered.
“It’s not that I don’t worry he’s dangerous,” he got out at last. “He is, Maddison, and if you ask Dent I can promise you she’ll say the same thing. It’s more…” he paused, taking a breath as he pieced together what he was trying to enunciate.
When he managed it, it was with the look of a gambler, wondering if keeping the dice rolling had really been the best idea.
“Do you refuse to pursue something—something so incredible—for fear of the possibility of failure? Do you not walk a path that will likely lead to greatness because it might take you to disaster?”
“No,” Maddie said at once, firm in her belief on this. “You walk the path.”
Rama chewed on his words a moment more.
“Ward has S-Ranked Growth. That’s never been seen. Never, and much less on assignment. His potential could very well be limitless. He may not have a cap to how strong he can get.” Finally, the colonel’s eyes lifted to Maddie. “Think on that, and then tell me what failure could look like for us, in this case?”
CHAPTER 45
“It is surreal for me to look back and consider even my small, brief role in his ascension…”
- Christopher “Lasher” Lennon, S-Rank Knight-Class
Despite a life of pain, despite long months of hard conditioning and Shido to help him with recovery, by the time the following Monday arrived Rei wasn’t sure he’d ever completely recuperate from the beatdown that had been Friday night’s training session. As he sat in class between Viv and Aria—the three of them struggling together to pay attention to Sarah Takeshi’s lecture on “Height Dynamics in Self-Modifying Field Variations”—he could tell that they, too, still felt the weight of the time spent under Lennon’s hand. 2 hours. 2 hours, partially divided among all four of them, including Catcher.
And it had still been more than enough to see every single one of them vomiting at least once before the end of the session.
The A-Ranked third year—it turned out—was a brutal, unforgiving teacher, and he cut none of them so much as an ounce of slack during their time together. What was more, for a second Friday in a row not once had the dark-skinned young man bothered to even partially-call his Device, working them into the ground with nothing but his ingrained Strength, Speed, and Endurance. Rei could still hear Lennon’s snapping orders and feedback, coming quick and fast even as his bare hands had blurred in an infinite lashing of cuts and punches and chops that not even Aria’s Third Eye had had a chance of keeping up with.
Still, whatever lingering soreness might be left over by the time his match came later that same day—he’d been paired up with Gillian North, the Mauler—Rei couldn’t help but smile. Lennon had ended the lesson much in the same fashion he had the last. He’d taken the time, one by one, to point out their flaws, to point out the ways they could polish their techniques and style.
But he had also been careful to tell them how they had already improved in the week since they’d taken his last teachings to heart.
Yes, Rei felt comfortable smiling at that. He was getting stronger, after all.
He was definitely getting stronger.
“Is something amusing, cadet?”
Rei started and looked up from where he’d been staring at the desk to find Captain Takeshi watching him with an eyebrow raised, one hand on her hip while the other held a pad she’d been using to control the smart-glass wall display behind her. As he was called out, several muffled chuckles rose up from the back of the room, though they sounded more like Sense and Kay trying to hide their amusement than anyone having a laugh at his expense.
Ever since he’d taken down Warren, Grant’s crew had been giving him a fairly wide berth, for which he wasn’t going to complain.
“No, ma’am,” Rei answered, sitting up straighter in his chair as Aria and Viv automatically did the same on his right and left respectively. “Apologies. I have a fight this afternoon. I let myself get distracted.”
“You did,” Takeshi agreed blankly. “You and a good portion of this class have a fight this afternoon, Ward, and more will have matches tomorrow. It’s no excuse to be drifting off in lecture.”
“No, ma’am. Of course.”
“I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself. Give me three situations in which holding the low ground is better in a match.”
Rei had to stop himself from grinning again. Ever since she’d witnessed Reese’s asinine lecturing of him after his first fight, the captain had seemed to take a liking to him. It wasn’t a handout, in this case, but it wasn’t a question he thought she’d suspect he’d have any trouble answering.
He held up a finger. “Any Type with a reach advantage would be well-positioned on lower ground. A Brawler or Saber will have a harder time defending their knees and shins against a Lancer or Mauler, for example, and maintaining distance will help keep at bay potential attacks from above.” He held up a second finger. “If you can get under them. It’s probably easier in squad-formats since you can have someone acting as a distraction, but any field that allows you to actually get beneath your opponent can lead to advantage. We aren’t accustomed to have to defend the bottoms of our feet.”
“And a third?” Takeshi asked, looking unsurprised by his rapid-fire answering.
“If they’re dropping down on you.” Rei lowered his hand below the desk again. “It’s a dangerous position to be in—and I’d say most of the advantage is usually on your opponent’s side—but you do have some things working in your favor.”
“Like what?” someone—maybe Adam Jax?—asked from behind Rei, higher in amphitheater.
“Like gravity.” It was Viv who answered for him, half-turning in her seat to look up the incline of the lecture hall. “If you can escape whatever they’re looking to hit you with from above, let them fall right on your sword.”
“Or spear,” Aria added, nodding along despite taking notes on her pad with quick scribbles of her stylus.
“Spear is preferable,” Viv agreed with a snort, facing forward again and making a motion like she was planting a polearm to stick straight up into the air beside her. Then she winced at her own imagery. “Ooph… That would hurt.”
“Yes, it would.” Takeshi was giving the three of them the briefest hint of a smile. “Excellent. You can go back to daydreaming, now, Ward.”
More laughter—from a wider range of classmates this time—and Rei resumed his own notetaking a little abashed.
His fight being later in the afternoon, he told Aria and Viv after class he’d join them for lunch and combat training. It was Monday, and while Dyrk Reese, too, had seemed less blatantly aggressive towards him since his victory the previous week, Rei was still eager to get any and all hours in he could under Valera Dent and Michael Bretz. Catcher had one of the early fights that day and couldn’t join them, making the light meal of chicken and roasted vegetables a quieter-than-usual affair, though they all messa
ged back and forth with the Saber as they ate. It had been his turn to be paired with one of the top students in the class—the Duelist Laquita Martin, from 1-B—and though he’d done a good job of hiding it all week, it had been clear that he was nervous. Rei, Aria, and Viv all worked to bolster his confidence, and by the time they left the mess hall, Catcher’s messages had been more cheerful, brimming a little bit more with his usual self. Upon reaching the Arena, though, the three of them deliberately ducked into one of the northern entrances to the underworks of the stadium, not wanting to distract him by catching his eye from where he would undoubtedly be seated in the south end of the stands, impatiently waiting his turn.
Some 10 minutes and a change of clothes later, they were walking towards the massive floor of the SB2 together among a scattering of 1-A classmates, chatting about Catcher’s chances in the fight. Rei and Aria were of the opinion that he had a good shot of matching up against Martin despite the fact that the C1 Duelist was two ranks higher than him, but Viv had her concerns.
“She’s fast. Really fast. Her Offense never seemed great, but Catcher’s Defense is one of his weakest specs, so that cancels out a bit. I think she’s going to be too quick for him.”
“Catcher’s fast too, though.” Rei pointed out. “I’m pretty sure he’s C1 in Speed?”
“That’s Saber fast, yeah,” Viv agreed with a grimace. “But that’s not Duelist fast. I’m a C4 Speed at a C0 CAD-Rank, Rei. Martin is a level higher than me.”
“Which puts her Speed at C5, and maybe higher.” Aria groaned as they reached the massive entrance to the combat floor. “Damn… That’s a gap for sure…”
“He’s got other things going for him,” Rei shrugged off the concerns, hoping he didn’t let the blow to his confidence at Catcher having a fighting chance show through. “He’s got better reach and perfect technique. If he fight’s smart, he’ll have the chance to—”
He stopped, then, though, Catcher’s upcoming match slipping from his mind like water off glass. The three of them had just turned the corner into the subbasement’s main chamber, and had found themselves greeted with the usual sight of the captain conferring the day’s training schedule with her sub-instructors on a raised platform above Field 3. There, was, however, something different about the view, and for a moment Rei frowned in the direction of the officers, not sure what was strange.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 82