Defender of the Empire: Cadet #1

by Catherine Beery

  Jason held up his hand with his fingers spread wide.” Right in the middle of your upper back. Your hair covers some of it.” I gulped as Jason stared at me in concern. “When and how did this happen?” He asked.

  Before I could respond there was a fascinating commotion from the entrance of the outpost. Both Westley and Marius had run out of the doorway one after the other. They had run out in a purposeful line. Westley moved to one side of the entry. Marius followed his movement slightly just before he veered to the other side.

  Shots were fired at an angle to try and clip Marius. I saw him pull out another holographic knife. A moment later he moved as fast as a tree viper. He rolled under a red stun-blast and ran the stunning blade up and under the bandit’s guard. The guy sagged in a helpless numbed fall. The last man aimed at Marius and ended up getting shot numb by Westley. Marius nodded his thanks to Westley and sheathed his stun-knife. Then both guys ambled their way in our direction.

  “That was like poetry.” I said before wincing. Great, now I was using Ace’s common phrases. Just great.

  Westley grinned. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Let’s, ‘cause Rylynn needs the infirmary.” Jason announced.

  “I don’t.” I said hurriedly as Westley lost his grin and Marius stared at me.

  “Why?” Westley asked. Jason raised an eyebrow at me and with a sigh I turned to show the mysterious hole in my uniform. “What the hell!? How did that happen? It looks like you got shot by a real gun.”

  “I think when we were ambushed.” I admitted, I saw the storm in his eyes and added quickly. “I know you asked, but it had been nothing more than a quick flash of pain then nothing. I wasn’t feeling numb, so I figured I had imagined it. We can ask why I’m not hurt after we finish this thing.” I said putting action to words and began to walk back toward the safety-zone.

  I figured since there was no real injury they decided to agree with my decision. That and it would see me to the infirmary sooner if they just went with it. I could see that all of them, including the hostages, were puzzled by the fact that no damage had been done and concerned that a real weapon had been used. Thankfully they didn’t talk about it. Marius helped by chatting with the hostages about their experience of doing nothing while they waited to be saved.

  He was the only other one who knew what must have happened. I just wondered how we were going to explain things to Medical. We didn’t have much time to come up with something since Medical came to us once we stepped into the safe box. How, though, do you explain to a bunch of scientists that the reason your body can heal so quickly is a side effect of having so many of the Empire’s most ethereal citizens connected to you in some limited fashion? Hell, if you told your average person they would think you should be shipped off to the nearest loony bin. Especially if you were a colonist. As everyone knew, only Citizens from the Noble Class could have any contact with Spectrals. Everyone knew… except, it seems, for the Spectrals themselves. Someone must have forgotten to send them the memo.

  In the chaos following our ending the challenge, I began to realize that this next week was going to be insane with medical exams, inquiries, training for the next challenge (since we were one of the three winning teams), classes, and the requisite homework. Pretty much a normal week for me. I still don’t know how I survived it. The only possible explanation I can come up with is God must have decreed that I survive. The Universe obeyed its Creator, but it still had its fun.

  Chapter 21- Mysteries

  “How is she?” Captain Braeden Wingstar asked Dr. Clayton an hour later.

  The dark beauty glanced over her shoulder at the young girl sitting on a patient table. Her friends were around her and she was waving away their assistance. Dr. Clayton shook her head slightly. “Just fine, Captain. Healthy, even, to all appearances. Fit to continue life as normal…”

  Braeden lifted an eyebrow. “But something troubles you.” He observed.

  Dr. Clayton turned back to him. “I never thought I would ever say this, but she shouldn’t be healthy. By the size of the hole in her uniform she should have been in serious trouble.” The usually calm doctor’s voice dropped to hide its stress. “Captain, it was a white blast for crying out loud. At the very least her skin should have been boiled off, the underlying muscle charred. But none of that is true! If it wasn’t for the hole in her shirt I would have thought the shot had missed.” She looked back at the young cadet standing and leaving the medical bay. She had been Okayed to leave, but Dr. Clayton was still distressed by the mysteries surrounding Rylynn. First those random seizures that came without warning and left without leaving a mark. It bothered the good doctor that she could find no cause for the seizures. Nor could she know explain how a humanoid could get hit by a white plasma blast and walk away unscathed.

  “I just don’t know what to make of it.” She finally admitted.

  “A miracle.” Braeden said following with thoughtful eyes as Rylynn left chatting animatedly with her team. Unlike Dr. Clayton, he knew exactly what had saved Rylynn. God had protected the girl by allowing an incredible number of Spectrals to loop their links over hers with a mythic Spectral. The Creator had given Rylynn the gifts that would one day soon protect the Empire from evil. It was the only reason why she had a chance to live despite the energy probably frothing beneath the surface. The same energy that had powered her quick healing. Braeden couldn’t see the energy, but he knew it was there because he could see the ethereal Spectral animals following her. There had to be at least four present now. Two would have killed your average Shade. What Rylynn was could take at most three half links. At least that was what he had read… He was starting to question those accounts though. Rylynn had five links.

  THE OLDER BOY WITH GREEN EYES. Raj whispered in the silent way of Spectrals to their Shades.

  What about him? Braeden thought as he turned to the doctor to take his leave.

  “Do we yet know why someone would bring a real weapon into a simulation?” She asked before he could go out to the lobby.

  He paused and turned slightly back toward her. “No. Not yet.” Braeden said with a shake of his head. Anger born of worry rose swiftly to flash in his eyes and power the determined smile he sent her way. “But we will soon if I know Admiral L’Seral at all.” And with that parting remark he left.

  Dr. Clayton blinked at his expression before nodding in understanding, not that he saw it since he was already gone. She understood his anger, because she was angry too. Someone had tried to harm/and kill one of her wards.

  She sighed and turned back to her work in her office. It gave her a moment to pause and ponder. Why, she wondered, had he been angry like that, though? Was it just Rylynn or would he have been that upset if someone else had been harmed? Frowning she glanced at the picture of her husband and Dev’shawn as she always did when troubled.

  If Dev’shawn had walked away after being shot she would have been angry at his attacker… her eyes widened before narrowing as a strange possibility came to mind. Captain Wingstar wasn’t married, unless you counted to his ship. Nor did he have any children that she knew of. But he had acted like how a father might … if he was trying to hide it. She thought. But one couldn’t hide that kind of thing from another parent. Which begged another question: why would anyone hide something like that? The only possibility she could imagine, in this case, was the man saw Rylynn as a daughter but felt it inappropriate for a judge to show such a parental emotion. It would show that he might have a bias, but what she knew of the captain, he was a hard judge on every team equally…

  Dr. Clayton rubbed her forehead to stop her brain from continuing to tumble around in circles. Unless she was mistaken, she had just run into yet another mystery. “Ah joy”. She muttered with a groan.

  So what was that about Marius? I have the correct green eyed boy, right? Braeden asked Raj on the path outside Medical.

  YES. HE IS THE ONLY ONE WITH THAT EYE COLOR ON THE TEAM. Raj replied dryly. I HAD JUST BRIEFLY FORGOTTEN
HIS NAME. The raven added with some embarrassment.

  Braeden snorted. Luckily the gossiping students were too distracted to hear it.

  WELL. Raj said, ruffling his feathers. AS I WAS SAYING… MARIUS IS SIMILAR TO RYLYNN IN THAT THEY ARE RARE INDEED. ONE IS LIKE A LARGE SPONGE. THE OTHER IS LIKE A BLACK HOLE. THEY WILL NEED EACH OTHER IN THE TIMES TO COME.

  Braeden knew better than to ask what his friend meant. Raj had used that tone. He could ask the raven, but he ran the risk of either being ignored or, worse, being told something without the proper context. It was better to not ask in this instance.

  After a few moments he walked into the administration building. He left the lobby with its intimidating half circle of desks and made his way to the back where the Academy’s personal form of police had their office. Since the ensign who had fired the white blast was one of Admiral L’Seral’s crew, she had the right to question him first. Others were encouraged to watch during her interrogation.

  The young crewman sitting on the hot seat was pleading with the wily admiral when Braeden entered the observation room. The other judges were there as well. Braeden noticed that Admiral Knight looked grim. Being sure not to stand too close to the man, Braeden turned back toward the interrogation. “Ma’am! Please believe me! I did not know it was a real gun.” The lad was saying.

  “Why?” L’Seral asked simply from her position near the corner of the table. .

  The young man stared at her for a moment before saying. “Because I went to the same armory as everyone else. I had no weapon beforehand. I was with the rest of my team the entire time.” For a moment there was silence. The crewman staring straight ahead while his commanding officer studied him. Eventually she sat in the chair opposite him. “Let it be known that I believe you.” Braeden could see the young man’s shoulders relax for a moment before straightening again. L’Seral continued. “Not just because of what you have told me, but because of what your crewmates have told me before you and I had this little chat. There is also a recording that backs up everyone’s story.” She paused for a moment and the young crewman waited. “The problem remains, however. A real weapon was used during a simulation. How and why did it end up there?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I’m not sure about the others, but to me the simulation was more of a game on our side. A real gun isn’t fun.”

  L’Seral nodded. “Stay here until you are dismissed.” And with that she stood and left the room.

  “Well that was fast.” Admiral Knight muttered upon her entrance into the observation room.

  Admiral L’Seral shrugged. “Can’t really argue the point when we have proof that he is telling us the truth. He didn’t purposefully pick up a real gun. He just picked up what was next in line. And the video doesn’t show him, or anyone for that matter, switching in a real gun.”

  “So we are left with a mystery.” Braeden said softly. “It could have either been an incredibly crafty individual with malicious intent, or it had been an unintentional oversight that almost resulted in someone’s death.”

  “Speaking of which,” Admiral Knight interrupted, “I understand that you went to check in on the girl, Captain. How is she?”

  “Exactly as we saw her, admiral. Untouched except for her uniform. Dr. Clayton does not yet understand it. I say it was a miracle.”

  “That, or the girl has some new form of nanite.” One of the other judges said.

  Braeden shook his head. “Dr. Clayton found nothing like that in her system.”

  “I wonder if we should keep her from competing in the next challenge, though.” The last judge remarked thoughtfully.

  “Why is that, professor?” Admiral L’Seral inquired with her head tilted slightly.

  “She has an unfair advantage, it seems.” The man replied.

  Admiral L’Seral raised one steel gray brow. “I don’t agree.” She said before elaborating. “Whatever miracle, as Captain Braeden calls it, it has not given her super strength or any other advantage except for keeping her from dying due to lethal weapon fire.” She turned to her fellow admiral. “What do you say?”

  Admiral Knight folded his big arms over his chest. “I would have to agree with you.” She glanced at Braeden and he nodded his agreement with her. With three against them, the last two agreed that Rylynn should be allowed to continue. But there still remained the double mystery of how she had survived, at least for everyone but Braeden who already knew the answer but couldn’t say anything, and how a real weapon had ended up in the stun-armory.

  ***

  “How the hell could one of you make a mistake like this?!” Admiral Knight roared at his men in the safety of his office off campus with its sound barrier in place. The four men shrinking before him had been the ones to have switched out the real guns for the non-real variety. Since the two looked the same, the men had also been required to check the guns to be sure this situation didn’t happen. But somehow, someway, it had. “If that blast had hit the young prince, our plans would have been over! Is that what you wanted? The Vision to be delayed?!”

  “NO SIR!” The four men said in unison.

  “Then explain to me how a real weapon was in the mix!” Adrian demanded of the man he was nose to nose with.

  “I don’t know sir! I thought every gun had been checked, sir!”

  “Apparently you thought wrong! Because you are the one who was in that section!”

  The man blinked in confusion. “What?” He asked at a loss.

  “Allow me to remind you.” Adrian said gesturing negligently, if royally pissed off, at the view screen. It played the clip of the four men before him checking and replacing the guns. And sure enough it showed the confused man in the section where the real one had been found. His body blocking his actions.

  The man shook his head again. “I don’t remember being over there at all.” His voice was so lost.

  Adrian snarled. “Then there will be a lot that you won’t remember.” And stabbed the man with the black granite knife that he normally reserved for Shades, but figured it worked wonderfully well for traitors too. The other three were pale when he dismissed them.

  Balen stepped forward after they left. The man’s black eyes rested hungrily on the corpse. The body was quite dead, but the soul could still be seen in the eyes. He licked his lips before turning his gaze to Adrian Knight. “How unfortunate for him that he was so stupid to forget something so important.” Balen said with a shake of his head.

  “We are just lucky the colonist girl got hit and not the prince.” Adrian muttered.

  “Oh, is the girl dead then?”

  Adrian shook his head. “No, surprisingly. She walked away without a scratch.”

  “Really? That sounds like a Spectral Shade ability.” Balen remarked.

  Adrian turned to the window. “It does, but she is too young to have been recruited by those scumbags and cursed with a Spectral.”

  Unknown to both Balen and Adrian, they had a witness. Kylesst was, not for the first time, grateful for all the ignorant rumors out there about his kind. They kept Rylynn and his self-rescue plan safe for just that much longer. He turned back to that plan as Balen dragged the dead man away.

  ***

  Elsewhere in the imperial city Lori’a, Marius was entering the home of the Blackmore family. The mansion was timeless in its charm. It fit the family who resided within its walls well. Better than most would think unless you knew the Blackmore’s. Really knew them. It was a manor house built with old Earth England in mind. The builders had believed in understated wealth. The Blackmore’s were like the house in that they had a well-respected charm that hid all the secrets. One of those secrets, of course, was that they were part of the Shade Order and their Patriarch was the leader of the Order.

  Commander Sam Blackmore, a man who could command attention or fade into the background depending on his preference of the day, was the epitome of the family.

  Marius, back in his preferred thirty-seven year old self, followed Ms. Merri
weather into the parlor of the Blackmore residence to wait. He was told the master would be with him presently. In the meantime, would he like some tea? As mentioned before the Blackmore’s’ had an old world kind of charm.

  “Forgive me if this sounds rude, but are you the one brewing today?” Marius asked looking about the beautiful room of hardwood and maroon carpets and drapes framed tall windows looking out into a rose garden. One of the windows was opened to allow in the gentle spring breeze. It ruffled the drapes revealing the thin white curtains under the maroon drapes. Tastefully beautiful furniture with elegant jewel blooms embroidered in the ivory cushion were set in a comfortable and inviting arrangement.

  Ms. Merriweather smiled. It took much more than an innocent question to offend her sensibilities. “Of course, sir.” She answered.

  Marius smiled in relief. “Oh good. I would love some of the empire’s greatest tea.” He said earnestly.

  Ms. Merriweather blushed prettily and stammered something before leaving to fetch his drink. Marius watched her leave with a smile. He hadn’t been lying to her. The woman did make the best tea he had ever had. Sam found him a few minutes later standing near one of the windows savoring Ms. Merriweather’s brew of heaven.

  “I see Ms. Merriweather has made tea today.” He remarked entering the room. “It’s the only time I see you drink tea on Prima Imperium.”

  “If heaven had a taste, this is it.” Marius replied lifting the cup once again to his lips and taking a sip. He saw Sam’s slight head shake and continued. “And the major sin here is you don’t favor tea.”

  “Just because everyone else in this household enjoys the beverage doesn’t mean I have to.” Sam defended himself. “So what brings you to Blackmore Hall, my friend?” he asked. In a softer, more serious tone he added “Have you something to add to our previous discussion?”