Jennings pointed back down at the wreckage, “In the end, and knowing they were doomed, SHADE Adepts sacrificed themselves by the hundreds to break through Phoenix lines and into the deepest, most heavily protected sections of the Corporation,” Jennings was speaking reverently now, in awe of the courage of the overwhelmed men and women. “They exterminated the Executor caste of Phoenix and its leadership. In one fell swoop, SHADE inflicted irreparable damage upon Phoenix.”
Janus returned his gaze to the blackened ruins.
“Soon the other Corporations learned of Phoenix’s weakness and struck, wiping all traces of it from the earth. This is all that remains of that once mighty corporation, a few blackened and twisted scraps.”
Jennings shook his head, “Many suspected Phoenix had plotted to forever alter the balance of power in the world with their attack on SHADE, and in the end, it did. But not in the way it hoped. After Phoenix was nothing but ash, two major declarations rose from it: The SHADE Continuum, which stated that the Adept Legions, no matter what wars erupted between them, would band together to attack any corporation that attacked one of their own.”
“And the second?” Janus asked curiously.
“The Phoenix Declaration,” Jennings grimaced, “A proclamation of treaty lines for corporate expansion and a set of rules to govern how Corporations attack each other, including the prohibition of nuclear weapons.” Jennings and Janus stared silently while the city finally passed the edge of the ruins.
Incredible.
Janus watched for as long as he could before the broken Corporation finally disappeared in the dark.
The walk back through the flight bay had been a silent one. For reasons unknown to him, Janus felt as if he had heard a speech Jennings had rarely felt compelled to give, and for equally unfathomable reasons, he felt compelled to mull over each and every piece. They soon emerged back into the main hall, and crossed a branch to the trunk. Just shy of the massive column, Jennings stopped unexpectedly, asking, “Do you know how to recognize rank?”
Janus startled from his reverie, and shook his head, “S.T.s? They’re a joke. Why bother?”
Jennings smiled, “I thought not. If you did, you would have realized we have the same insignia system as the Corporations, although the terminology can be very different. You should pay more attention to such things, it can be extremely valuable.”
Janus rolled his eyes, “So I can know which guys not to beat too badly?”
Jennings laughed, “Perhaps. But this is an Adept Legion – you might not find it as easy as you think. Besides, we don’t care for a lack of discipline, or an overdeveloped ego. They tend to get more valuable people killed.” Janus scowled. Jennings continued without notice, “The Praetor of ODIN likes breaking egos – it’s a personal mission of his. You best watch yourself if you come across him.”
“I grew up in the slums – how bad could it be?” Janus asked.
Jennings came in close to Janus at that moment, his face grim and serious, “You’d be surprised.”
Janus held his ground, but grinned uncomfortably.
Jennings smiled and turned away as if nothing had happened, “Come on, it’s time for you to meet your fellow cadets.” At the end of the bridge, a tight formation of Adepts waited on the lift. All were heavily muscled and toned, and their armored uniforms only added to their bulk. Janus felt surprisingly scrawny next to them. Even the female adepts, who were more tone than muscular, were fearsome. And Jennings, despite his age, was no less fit.
As Jennings hopped on, the Adepts stepped smartly to one side and snapped salutes.
“Good morning, Praetor,” the men and women chorused.
Jennings gave them a nod, “At ease.”
An officer leaned over and whispered to Jennings, “Not often I see you with cadets, sir.”
Jennings gave the man a wink, “This one is going to require some special attention, Captain.”
Janus shifted nervously. Jennings bit his lip to keep from laughing.
Chapter 10: Wouris
The lift flew downwards, travelling towards the base of the great trunk. Janus stared at the blur of water and vegetation, while the voice of Clara sounded in his head, Well, that was a great start— the voice chided, next time, try not to stick your foot so far into your mouth..
As the lift slowed and stopped halfway down, Jennings nimbly leapt off, adding, “This is my stop; you’re heading all the way to the bottom.”
Janus wasn’t exactly sure what to do, so he awkwardly saluted in the same way as he had seen S.T.s, “Sir.”
Jennings had a knowing smile, “Your new sergeant will be there, waiting to meet you. Oh, and it’s the other hand – pay attention to S.T.s, don’t learn from them.” Janus quickly changed to the other arm, feeling the heat rise in his face. The Adepts behind him said nothing, but simply saluted the Praetor, “Sir.” Jennings returned the salute as the lift started moving again, and called down to Janus, “And remember, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”
Before Janus could respond, the lift sped up and Jennings disappeared from view.
Janus was the last one on the lift. Without so much as a word, the other Adepts had slipped off and left him alone. As it slowed and stopped at the bottom of the trunk, he caught a glimpse of a woman waiting there. Her body was relaxed. She turned towards him and he could see that her short red hair framed her angular face and that her hazel eyes shone like a bird of prey. It was one of the women from the platform – toned, perhaps even built, but only in a way that suggested a deep well of strength. Unlike the adepts, she wore a red striped suit that bore several stars. Without a second look at him, she turned and started moving away from the lift.
“All right, follow me. So you’re that Janus fellow they’re talking about? I don’t know why the Praetor is so keen on you, and frankly, I don’t care. I saw you that first day, and all I can say is that you still didn’t move fast enough. What I do know is that he is forcing me to put another slack-jawed idiot cadet into my unit who’s as thick as one of those gorillas they call Security Troopers...” Her voice was sharp, with a light accent, as if she came from the Cerberus middle levels.
Despite the comparison to a S.T., Janus immediately felt at ease around the woman. It’s definitely not as reserved, but her accent and voice reminds me a little of Clara…
“…and I’ll be damned if I am going to have some worthless blueback making me look bad.” Janus grinned, well, maybe not that much… She swung about on her heel and stared at him, “Do I make myself clear?”
Janus wiped the grin off his face and stood up straight. “Yes, sir!”
The woman tensed, her eyes narrowing, and her red hair seemed to bristle. Janus took a step back – he had clearly offended her. “I’m a sergeant, not a stinkin’ officer, and you’ll address me as such. Call me ‘sir!’ again and I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.
Janus nodded, “Yes, s—Sergeant,” his eyes took a quick peek at the name on her uniform, ‘Wouris’. “Sergeant Wour-is.”
Wouris stepped forward, putting herself right in Janus’ face, “That’s ‘Worry’, get me? Now say it!”
“Yes, Sergeant ‘Worry’.”
The woman relaxed instantly and resumed her former diatribe, “You’re holing up in Section Sigma of the barracks, with the other new cadets. Everything you need is already there. And one final thing, you’ll meet with your unit tonight. I suggest you make it brief,” Wouris chuckled, “you’re getting up bright and early tomorrow.”
Janus was forced to jog to keep up with the woman. Crossing the shallow canal that surrounded the trunk, Janus watched as water from above cascaded down and merge into the swift creek. To his right, Adepts laughed and joked as they passed into the mess. Recessed lights illuminated their path in the twilight, as shadows crept up the length of the trunk in the setting sun.
Wouris’ path did not deviate, nor did she pause as she passed straight through one of the arched doorways branching from
the great hall. Another strange rune stood above the door. It was two lines with ‘X’ between them, one of the same symbols as “Dawn’ launch bay above, but was also combined with another symbol, one that looked like an ‘M’:
“Men of Dawn,” Wouris said simply, “This is where the cadets’ barracks are based.”
At each intersection, a floor panel would light up with an arrow and display where the branch would go, each of these, too, having a symbol instead of lettering. To his right, Janus passed an armory station, a medical supply room, and a small recreation area – each marked with its own rune upon the floor. To his left, the floor lit up to tell him he was passing ‘α’ section. It all seemed surprisingly quiet.
“Where is everyone?” Janus asked.
She glanced back, her face unreadable, “Legions always grow slowly,” she paused, “and there are just not enough of us, anymore.”
The pair walked further in silence, past ‘β’ section, to the end of the hall, where a floor panel lit up with a big ∑ before a single door and a waiting adept. “This is your stop.”
The Adept opened up a parchment thin tablet, “You’re the one from the hospital wing, right? Go to Sigma 3, that’s your new unit. Just follow the hall, third door on the left, right before it wraps back again. Bunk ‘S’. The others are already there. I suggest you make friends fast, because starting tomorrow you live or die by them,” he added.
“Thanks,” Janus said sarcastically. The man did not glance up, and Janus turned to see Wouris disappear around the curve of the hall. With nothing else to do, Janus stepped through the sliding doors. The lights were dim, and broad windows took up the right wall. He stopped and gazed out at the dark. A tiny pinprick of light held steady above the horizon.
He stared, wondering what it was. Putting his hands upon the glass, he realized that the tiny pinprick was not alone. Hundreds of others shone in the night sky. His breath caught, and he brought his face within a hair’s breadth of the glass. Stars! I can see stars!
Chapter 11: Introductions
When the door slid open to reveal ∑3, or sigma three, Janus found a brightly lit room with twenty-five men and women. He hesitated in the doorway.
Cadets laughed and joked. A few even appeared to be playing a popular slum card game called ‘Mercy’. It was a common room of sorts. Round, soft couches and chairs clustered around a few tables.
Twenty-six smaller doors ran around the outside of the room, labeled A to Z. A single, larger door stood in the middle of the back of the room, labeled “Head”. A few of the cadets noticed him standing in the door. Janus felt a knot in his gut.
“Orders?” It was a man with black hair and a dark olive skin-color which reminded him of Clara.
Janus stepped inside and shook his head, “No -- I’m part of the unit.”
Another voice exclaimed, “Hey, you must be our ‘mysterious’ missing cadet!” Janus turned to face the speaker and his breath caught for the second time that night.
It was a woman, smiling sunnily at him. The most beautiful he had ever seen. Janus was momentarily dumfounded. Just a tad shorter than he, she was thin and curved. She stood on the balls of her feet, as though always ready to spring into action and constantly bubbling with excitement, and her blond hair seemed to bounce up and down with it. But it was her eyes that struck him – bright, blue orbs that sparkled like stars. “Hi, I’m Celes.” She stuck out a hand in greeting.
Janus struggled to collect himself, studying the crowd surrounding him. He took a half-step back, glancing at her hand but not grabbing it, “Celes, that’s a strange name.” The surprised looks from the crowd made him shift uncomfortably.
Her smile became brighter, “It stands for Celestia. What’s yours?” Her hand disappeared without a word.
“Janus,” he replied carefully.
“Nice to meet you, Janus,” she bowed her head, and gave him a grin, “But don’t you think Janus is a strange name, too?”
Janus immediately felt more at ease. “Not really, I’ve been hearing it tossed around all my life.”
“A wise guy, huh?” Celes laughed. The group chuckled.
“Incredibly wise, and modest, too,” Janus joked.
The black-haired man stepped forward, tilting his head ever so slightly, “The name’s Marcus.” Marcus stood half a head taller, straight and proud, but had the same sort of leanness to him as Janus, as if he was used to running. He really did look like a long lost relative of Clara’s, with only his accent creating any discernable difference. It was an odd sort of hardening of consonants and softening of vowels.
“Marcus,” Janus nodded conservatively.
Another woman leapt forward, nearly on top of him. This time Janus made the full step. She too had black hair, but her eyes were dark and almond shaped, and her skin fair. She was decidedly petite in stature, with delicate features. “I’m Juliens but everybody calls me Lyn – nice ta meet ya,” she said in a breathless string. Janus raised his eyebrows in surprise.
She stuck her thumb at the pale man who sat behind her, who must have been head and shoulders taller than everyone else. Or maybe more. He looked like he could be the size of an S.T. “That’s Ramirez.”
He stood up. Janus drew in a breath, a big S.T. Lyn smiled at his reaction.
Ramirez nodded in greeting, his green eyes staring intently and short brown hair waving softly, the hard line that formed his mouth unmoved. “He doesn’t say much,” she added. Ramirez nodded again.
Celes turned and yelled to the rest of the room, “Hey, everyone, it’s our missing cadet!” The remaining cadets tossed waves his way, some nodding their heads at Janus, others coming to meet him. He recognized a few from Cerberus.
The rest of the brief evening was spent leaning against a chair, on the edge of the group, listening to the other cadets talk. Celes did most of it, clearly in her element.
Most of the cadets were from the middle castes of the Corporations, but a few, like Janus, remained tight-lipped about their origins. Surprisingly, this included Celes, who seemed to avoid any questions about her past with more comments regarding what she had heard of ‘Merc Legions’.
By the end of the night, Janus had associated a few other names with faces: Jones, a dark-brown and black haired, short, but stout girl from Minotaur. A man named Valers, with a broad smile and green eyes; Holloway, a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed man; Nathans, a young black-haired fellow who looked more boy than man. And finally, Kirsten, red-haired woman with green eyes and a strange accent that apparently marked her as from Hades Corporation. There were many more, but as the night wore on, they all faded together, and the only thing Janus could be relatively certain of was their origin – he kept track of their origins. Each Corporation had slightly different mannerisms and accents, and a few, like Lyn and Ramirez, stood out because they did not fit the mold at all.
They all had different thoughts of what awaited them, and what life would be like. Many discussed how they had been sent without choice, and that they missed home and its comforts. They floating city had pulled them from their element. Part of Janus agreed.
Eventually, the faces became a blur to Janus, but he figured he would get to know them all soon enough. The lights flashed overhead, and a woman’s voice sounded over the speaker that ‘lights out’ was in five minutes. The cadets speedily broke up, heading for their assigned bunks. But when Janus finally entered bunk ‘S’ for the first time, he couldn’t help but laugh. Not like home…
Bunk didn’t give it enough credit. A fresh bed was made for him, and newly pressed uniforms were already hung inside the sliding wall panels. He suspected there was more to find, but was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. With a bit of figuring, he worked the lights, waving a hand up and down a glowing green strip to flip them on and off, and then slowly to dim and raise the intensity. With a quick wave, he turned them off, and fell back into the new bed.
He slept poorly, unable to relax his back into the soft foam, and uncomfortably cool in the
controlled temperature of the room. Thoughts of Clara drifted uncomfortably in the back of his mind. But mostly because he was more excited and nervous than he had been in his entire life.
Chapter 12: Bluebacks
Janus groggily awoke to the sound of a blaring alarm and bright, artificial sunlight. Wha? Where--? He instinctively glanced right, searching for Clara in her armchair, but only the empty wall of Valhalla greeted him. That’s right.
Stumbling out of bed, the alarm shut off as soon as his feet hit the floor. He flopped back into the bed only for the blaring to begin again. Resigning himself to his misery, he planted both feet firmly on the floor and stood up. He quickly pulled on the uniform that slid from the wall. He took a moment to savor the experience, even in his groggy state. Dressed for the first time in a full cadet uniform – black Adept armor with a wide blue stripe running down his front left side, all the way down his leg, and a similar stripe on the back – Janus felt elated. This elation lasted but a moment, however, as a daedulus terminal popped from the wall and chided him about his poor dress. A button here, a flap there, the daedulus went through a full routine on how to dress, even down to the order of what got put on first. The routine was an ordeal – and almost certainly a waste of time.
Slightly annoyed and rubbing his eyes as he stepped into the common room, Janus watched the others stagger from their rooms as Sergeant Wouris arrived.
With Wouris leading the way, the entire platoon was soon hustling along the hall and out to the grand hall surrounding the trunk. Janus noted that the great seal of ODIN remained dark – the sun hadn’t yet risen. But now that he was moving, Janus felt much better.
A tingling excitement ran through him, confident of his success in whatever Wouris threw at them. A hard path encircled the trunk, and Wouris called them to attention as she stood easily at its edge.
The Phoenix Fallacy Book I: Janus Page 7