36

“Trainee Group One, attention!”

Kira used Milani for many different tasks, but the dragon-armored mercenary also did a fantastic job of projecting their voice through the suit, bringing a semi-chaotic slurry of twenty-year-olds to a halt and focused toward the podium.

Kira gave her friend a nod and stepped up onto the stage, gesturing her other instructors up with her. Cartman, Hersch, Colombera and Michel brought her to five mercenaries. Another five RRF officers spread out around them.

With the intensity and compression of the training course over the last four weeks, she’d barely had time to pick up the names of the trainers, let alone the three hundred recruits she was responsible for. They were a blur of names and ID numbers and test scores—but the top one hundred of them by test score were gathered in front of her.

“All right, people. Welcome to Shadow Ward Station,” she told them. “Thanks to your test scores, you’ve all been assigned to Group One. The overall training cohort has been split into three groups because we have pushed live flight exercises back as far as we can.”

A mental command transformed the wall behind her, changing what had appeared to be plain rock into a transparent window out onto one of the many craters on the surface of Shadow Ward—it was an eight-kilometer-wide asteroid, after all.

This crater had been repurposed and paths of artificial gravity plates led out onto the field, allowing access to the rows upon rows of nova fighters.

“Despite assorted promises, we only have one hundred Dexter-type interceptors to train you on,” Kira told her trainees. “Plus ten Escutcheon-type heavy fighters for your trainers to fly, since I think your government hates me.”

That earned her a few chuckles, as expected. She’d made her preference for the interceptor-style nova fighters clear over the last thirty-five days.

With only twenty-five days left in their training—and only twenty-eight until Bueller and his colleagues said they could deliver mostly functional cruisers—Kira had drawn a line in the sand. They needed as many fighters to put the recruits in as possible, even if that meant stripping the active squadrons supporting the defensive stations.

That had earned her one hundred and ten nova fighters… Enough, she hoped.

“Now, today is not a live-fire exercise,” she told them. “The main thing we’re testing today is that you can actually get a starfighter off an asteroid and back onto it. A landing plain is honestly easier than a carrier deck, because you only have one surface to hit instead of four!

“Both the weapons and nova drives on your starfighters have been disabled, but you will go through a full version of your checklist regardless,” she continued. “Deactivated items will run by local simulator—your headware will interface with the fighter’s hardware. Trust it.

“Anybody who fucks up the checklist doesn’t fly today,” she warned. “But…remember that for all the simulated components and disabled systems, these are very real nova fighters in your hands. Redward only has two hundred of these babies at the moment.”

Which was still hopefully more than anyone else, even including Cobra Squadron. With the blockade, Redward—and by extension, Kira—knew nothing about what was going on outside the system.

It would fall to these kids to help change that.

“Your headware should be receiving your fighter and squadron assignment as I speak,” she told them. “They should also guide you to the right bird. You’re all suited up.”

She smiled at the crowd, tapping her helmet against her hip.

“This is your first chance to do something only a tiny handful of people anywhere ever get to do, people. Don’t fuck it up for me.

“Trainee Group One! Board your fighters!”

* * *

The Escutcheon could have been worse, Kira reflected. It was at least roomier on the inside than the Hoplite or its Dexter clone, though that wasn’t saying much.

She and the instructors had completed their checklists and lifted off on their antigrav and Harrington coils before the first students finished their own once-overs. They might be unfamiliar with the particular starfighters they’d been lent, but all ten of the trainers spoke fluent spaceship.

“Any red flags, Cartman?” she asked her subordinate as she skimmed through the checklist reports. In training mode, the fighters were happy to tell her everything about what their pilots had done—something no active-duty pilot would ever tolerate.

“Nothing… Wait… What the fuck?” Cartman flagged the second checklist complete. “Never mind; someone just pinged a counter-hack flag.”

“Someone hacked their checklist?” Kira asked, making sure she was hearing that correctly.

“Charlie Squadron, Fighter Three,” Cartman confirmed, flipping the data over. “Pilot-Trainee Neha Bradley.”

The name was meaningless to Kira on its own, so she brought up Trainee Bradley’s record. She was consistently the second-ranked or third-ranked…at everything. Never first, never the best, never enough to draw attention to her, but enough to make sure that she was going to get her choice of posting when this was over.

Assuming she had actually learned anything.

“Locking down C-3,” Kira announced. “Hack alert triggered. Milani—secure Trainee Bradley.”

“Yes, sir,” the mercenary replied instantly. “Hold the rest of the fighters?”

“They’re not launching till I give the word,” Kira said grimly. “I’m hoping we’re just dealing with someone determined to look good, but she overrode her checklist and trainee-monitoring software.”

Kira flipped a mental switch and brought her nova fighter’s guns online. If Bradley could override the trainee-monitoring system, she might be able to override the trainee lockdown systems, too—and Kira would rather leave an expensive starfighter strewn across Shadow Ward’s surface than let a potential spy escape.

“C-3 is secured,” Milani reported after a moment. “Trainee Bradley has been detained. No resistance; she’s…very upset.”

“Take her back to Shadow Ward’s brig,” Kira ordered. “We’ll hand her over to Redward Intelligence. Might have been innocent enough, but we cannot have a cheater in this program.”

She exhaled a long sigh.

“Let me know when you’re clear of the landing field,” she told the merc. “This show still needs to get on the road for the other ninety-nine trainees.”

* * *

The takeoffs were rough—but Kira had frankly seen worse. The extra five days of simulator time over what had been planned seemed to have helped, and all of the fighters made it up to deployment altitude without problems.

“Wobbly but acceptable,” Cartman said, echoing her thoughts. “Stick to the plan?”

“Exactly. Instructors, you have a designated squadron,” Kira reminded her trainers. “Pick them up and take them for a run around the region. Don’t get more than half a light-second from Shadow Ward, and have them back in three hours.

“We’re getting them comfy with the birds, not running an endurance trial.”

She waited for acknowledgements and then flicked to her own channel.

“Alpha Trainee Squadron, report in,” she ordered.

Ten young-sounding voices replied. They were more nervous than she’d expected, and she grimaced as she realized that they’d all just watched armored mercenaries march across a landing field and drag one of their compatriots from her fighter.

“Form on my wing and follow me out,” she told them. “Don’t waste your attention worrying about things you can’t control. Pay attention to what you can—right now, getting used to the cockpit and controls of a Dexter-type interceptor.”

Five nova fighters formed on either side of her in a shallow V. It wasn’t as even as it could have been and it wasn’t as intentionally chaotic as a combat formation would be, but it would do. She studied it for a moment, then shrugged.

“We’re in parade-ground mode today,” she warned. “By the time you leave my tender care, you’ll know how to maintain a formation while maneuvering enough to frustrate long-range fire. Right now, however… Six, move up and toward me three degrees and increase accel by ten percent for six seconds. Eight, move down and toward me seven degrees; increase accel by three percent for ten seconds.”

She watched as the two trainees followed her instructions, slotting into their positions in the line. Nine made a quick adjustment on their own before she gave an order, and all ten of her trainees were in perfect parade formation.

“All right, not shabby,” she told them. “Not up to my standards, but people tell me my standards are unreasonable. Now. Stay in formation and let’s put these birds to work.”

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