Insulated in his cockpit, Alek heard barely more than a distant crunch and bark of shattered wood. His rear-view monitor, however, showed the swatch of destruction he left behind. A new path, several meters wide, of tortured branches, uprooted trees, and earth churned over by wide, blade-like feet.
Powerful.
And unnecessary.
Breaking free of the wood, Alek saw that he had already lost the race. Two Strikers pushed by him on a dead run, storming forward as only eighty tons of assault machine could do.
The second of these Strikers cut in close, nearly bumping shoulders with him. Alek wrenched furiously against his controls, avoiding the collision by scant meters. Swinging wide as the third and final Striker gained ground, pulling up even with him.
Less than two kilometers out, now running parallel to a paved access road, Alek saw the ‘Mech hangars squatting up ahead like oversized Quonsets. A tall fenced tipped with razorwire guarded this end of the sprawling Nagelring complex, though a full thirty meters had been pulled back in anticipation of the arriving BattleMech patrol. It was any cadet’s race still. Any cadet but Alek.
Slow but certain, Alek lost ground to the other cadets. According to his instruments, he had his throttles pegged high at the Striker’s maximum speed of sixty-five kilometers per hour. Somehow, though, the others coaxed just a little bit more out of their machines. Striding out just a bit longer. Turning slightly sharper.
Alek fell fifty meters back. Then a hundred.
Still a kilometer out, trailing by two hundred meters, Alek finally slacked off on his throttles. He passed through the barrier fence at a controlled fifty kph, resigned to his last place finish. He knew what awaited him at the hangar. Helping the technicians check all systems shut down on every ‘Mech. Picking up after the other cadets who would all grab a shower and a fresh uniform before the post-training review with Colonel Baumgarten, leaving their sweat-soaked cooling vests draped carelessly over the back of their command chairs or—in the case of any high spirits—hidden somewhere within the hangar for him to find, clean, and turn in for a maintenance check.
Friendly competition. And tradition.
“Dearer to us,” he whispered, throttling back into a walk, “than ten thousand truths.”
• • •
Every school, course and instructor had their system. Routines which a student could adopt, flowing along the path of least resistance, learning, excelling, with a minimum of difficulty. Or, in standing out, making waves and drawing attention.
Leon Trotsky had said that ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever. But his own experience at Tharkad University still fresh in his mind, Alek had no immediate desire to stand out from the crowd. Difficult enough that everyone knew how he had entered the Nagelring, and what those trials had cost four senior cadets: Three expulsions; one on probation and lucky, in the minds of most instructors, to still be enrolled in this prestigious academy.
No one harried Alek anymore—there were no more suspicious visits to the infirmary for him to explain—but neither did they go out of their way to include him. To most of the other cadets he was still an unknown, a social burden to be accommodated while awaiting some kind of final group consensus.
Accommodation was all right with Alek. Accommodation left fewer marks.
So while everyone around him nervously held their breath, Alek bent his efforts toward this new training. Taking on nearly double the workload of an average cadet in an effort to make up for his two year late start. Keeping quiet. Adopting the local routines.
Surviving a post-training debrief with the Nagelring’s Kommandant, Alek merely had to sit up tall in his seat, take copious notes in his log book, and say “Yes sir!” with sufficient confidence whenever asked a question.
Usually the question being: did he understand?
In academics, when Alek had been a full-time student of Tharkad University, instructors had often pushed him to form his own opinions. To challenge any “accepted wisdom,” and seek the higher truths.
Here, they seemed more interested in knowing that he understood exactly what they wanted him to know.
“Dismissed,” Colonel Baumgarten finally said, though he stayed after for a few moments to help the two remedial cadets with some finer points from the day’s exercise.
Alek slipped away quietly, returning to the ‘Mech hangar on his way to the cadet lockers. Still dressed in combat togs and lacking the shower the others had been able to grab, his cooling vest was damp and beginning to smell like stale body odor and his bare skin itched under a scale of dried sweat. What MechWarrior trainees laughing called a uniform wasn’t much more than combat boots, shorts, and a thin tank top worn beneath their cooling vest. Welcome, in the sauna-like heat which often flooded a BattleMech’s cockpit. Not so much after. Especially with Tharkad’s sun in full retreat and the taste of an early winter in the air. The afternoon chill rose gooseflesh on his arms, his legs.
Or maybe it was something else, entirely.
The truth was, Alek often took a chill entering the ‘Mech hangar. Like entering the underworld cavern of some mythological beast. And inside, four massive titans of war. The now-deserted hangar tasted of damp ferrocrete, coolant, and old welding. Gloomy, with the large hangar doors rolled shut, overhead lighting barely held back the shadows. He padded by softly, quietly, as if worried to wake the slumbering giants.
“Afraid of the dark?”
The voice shattered the stillness, startling Alek. He tensed. It was a voice he’d come to recognize. The fourth member of his new training lance.
“A pleasure, as always, Cadet Ward.”
“Stuff the formalities, Alek. Just what are you doing here?”
Resigned, Alek turned to face
