‘But if things get boring,’ Nava said, ‘I’ll nuke the bathroom to give you something interesting to do.’
Courtney stared at Nava for a second and then looked toward Mitsuko. ‘Have you figured out how to tell when she’s being sarcastic yet?’
‘No,’ Mitsuko replied. ‘I generally assume she is if the subject is ludicrous enough. There’s no way she’d actually use her Magic Burst on the bathroom just to liven up a party.’
‘You just keep thinking that,’ Nava said. ‘Courtney, Kyle, what would you like to drink?’ She turned, starting for the kitchen.
‘I’ll come help,’ Kyle said, setting off after her.
‘I’m sure she wouldn’t,’ Mitsuko said, referring to the bathroom nuking.
Courtney regarded her with a raised eyebrow. ‘You just keep thinking that.’
~~~
‘I think at least part of the problem is that I hate mysteries.’
‘Huh?’ Mitsuko gave Courtney a perplexed frown since her assertion seemed a bit odd. They had been discussing various things for the past hour, none of them directly related to Nava, but now they had turned to Courtney’s problem with her underclassman. A hatred of mysteries did not seem to fit the topic.
‘It’s true,’ Kyle said. ‘She really dislikes puzzles she can’t solve. It’s why she wants to go into the policing side of the ASF. So she can solve mysteries with real meaning.’
‘I think you’re underplaying the number of mysteries the ASF doesn’t solve,’ Mitsuko replied, ‘but I don’t get what that has to do with Nava.’
‘You don’t?’ Courtney asked. ‘Seriously?’
Mitsuko turned her head to look at Nava, sitting beside her. As always, Nava’s expression was neutral. She possibly looked a little more relaxed than usual. ‘Well…’
‘When the situation with Devin Girard was developing, I opened up Nava’s records.’
‘And not Devin’s?’
‘I didn’t need to look up Devin Girard. I knew all about him from previous incidents. Nava was someone new and I knew nothing about her. And after I’d read all I could find, I still knew nothing about her. Okay, I found out that she’s on a military scholarship. The ASF is funding her education. She was recorded as arriving on Shinden in June of two thirty-four. Her age then was listed as fourteen standard years. I got basic biometrics and a picture. She hasn’t changed much in the past eleven months. Or at all, actually. Aside from that, I couldn’t access a single document about her.’
‘I’d like to illuminate you,’ Nava said, ‘but as your search will have indicated, the ASF has classified just about everything about my history. Where and how they found me, my circumstances when they found me, everything is hidden behind the Alliance Information Security Act. I can tell you why it’s classified, if you like.’
‘That would be something,’ Courtney said.
‘The operation they were conducting is also classified. Revealing anything about me would compromise the security of that operation. When I arrived on this world, last year, I was put through an education programme designed to bring me up to speed on Clan Worlds society with the intention of sending me to SAS-squared when I was old enough.’
‘Which implies that you weren’t found in Clan Worlds space.’
Nava simply stared back at Courtney, her expression unreadable.
‘You don’t exhibit any signs of emotion. Your attitude to killing is… outside the normal parameters of Clan Worlds society.’
‘She has emotions,’ Melissa said.
‘I’m not actually claiming she doesn’t, but she doesn’t demonstrate them.’
‘I actually think Nava is more restrained about killing than most of the rest of us,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I believe her attitude to duelling is far more mature than most of her peers and a large proportion of adults.’
‘I’m not actually going to argue that last point,’ Courtney said. ‘My upbringing says one thing and my common sense says another. Frivolous duels are more common in school than they should be. It is used as a bullying tool, in young adults and adults alike. But two people have died as a result of her actions in just a couple of months. Most people don’t have that kind of record unless they’re active in the ASF. Even then…’
‘You said yourself that Jesse Audley appeared to have died of shock.’
‘I did…’ That Courtney was unconvinced was obvious. ‘The point is that Nava’s a mystery I can’t solve and that makes me… nervous.’
‘I know how you feel, boss, but does it really matter?’ Courtney looked around at Kyle, her eyes widening a little. ‘So, she’s got a background you can’t look into and she has some weird attitudes. Well, weird attitudes don’t make you a bad person. I think she uses her clanless status as an excuse to avoid duels, but that’s not a bad thing. Given her combat capabilities, she could be the biggest bully in the school if she wanted to be. I doubt there’s a sixth year who could beat her. She’s fast and ridiculously accurate. I’m pretty sure that one or two people wanted to get back at her for Devin’s death, but they’re all pretty sure she’d beat them if they called her out.’
‘Well, that’s probably true…’
‘And you don’t know the background of most of the student body. Recent events suggest that what you could find out would give no indication of criminal intent. Leland Harlow comes from a good family and clan. In fact, his background is probably why he set all this Crystal Mana stuff up. He wanted to increase his own reputation by raising the profile of the school and his clan. You’re never going to see Nava doing something like that.’
‘All I want to do is have a normal life, with a normal education, in a… relatively normal school,’ Nava said. ‘That’s probably going to turn out to be a pipe dream, but it’s all I want.’
‘You’re on a scholarship from the ASF,’ Courtney said. ‘You might get a “normal” life, whatever that means, while you’re here, but they only hand out grants when they see potential.
