Ten Thousand Fleets Chapter 4: 4: Convocation

Read chapter 4 of Ten Thousand Fleets by DavidNiemitz on NovelPedia.

4: Convocation Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum August 12, 2847 Arc very carefully unwrapped the taped bundle of packing foam, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the five centimeter FS-3R Kestrel 'Blood Hawk ,' lovingly painted and based with a bit of green flocking, had come through the trip unscathed. He set it on the windowsill in front of the right hand desk in his dorm room—the same side of the room his upper bunk was on. By all rights he should have been stuck with one of the bottom mattresses, but no one was willing to trust Pika’s weight to a top bunk. “I can’t believe you brought a toy to the academy,” Cal Madine scoffed, from the left hand bottom bunk, where he was seated and already polishing his regulation, high gloss black low quarter shoes. Arc couldn’t see what point there possibly was in trying to shine up shoes which had just been issued and had never been worn before, but he kept his mouth shut, stuffed the handful of tape and packing foam into the trash bin between the two desks, and moved back over to his open suitcase. “That’s no toy,” Pika rumbled. The Alu’kan cadet’s voice was so low that bass didn’t even begin to describe it, and Arc half-suspected that if the big man ever got mad enough to shout, they’d all feel it in their bones. “That’s Beecher Red Crest’s mech, isn’t it?” Arc nodded. For just a moment, the sight of his half-emptied luggage, the tablet charging dock lying on top of an eye mask and box of disposable earplugs his mother had insisted he bring— You never know if your roommates will snore, dear— was replaced by the memory of Lieutenant Red Crest at the funeral, his dress whites perfectly creased, medals gleaming. The feel of the ace’s hand enfolding his own. Then, Arc shook his head, blinked the memory away, and set back to unpacking, tossing his things up onto his mattress one at a time. “It is,” he answered Pika. There really wasn’t all that much to unpack—just about everything a cadet needed at the academy was issued when they arrived, from their socks to their sheets and pillows. “I remember reading the guy who won the imperial tournament this year used a Blood Hawk ,” Pika pressed. “Got it right in behind the other guy’s line and took out his flagship. Rolled half the army up with failed morale checks.” “Yeah,” Arc agreed, fishing the last thing he’d brought out of his suitcase. Once it was empty, he closed it up, lifted it off the desk, and carried it over to the closet that he and Pika would be sharing, where he stowed it away. “Bullshit,” Cal exclaimed, the motion of his hand, rubbing a cloth over the toe of his shoe, finally ceasing. “Utter bullshit. Do not even tell me I’m stuck rooming with a kid who only got here by playing games.” “Wait,” Delvan Beck exclaimed, tossing a mop of dark hair back from his eyes with one hand as he leaned out from the top bunk over Cal’s head. “Are you serious? You won the Imperial Tacticalis tournament?” Arc took advantage of the fact he had to turn his back to the other boys to climb into his bunk, but once he was on the mattress, he was out of excuses. He sighed, then nodded. “Yeah. By the time I decided I wanted to come here, it was too late to make it any other way, and I’ve been playing for years, so—” “What a farce.” Cal Madine dropped his half-polished shoe on top of his mattress, sprang to his feet, and stormed over to Pika and Arc’s bunk. “You know, some of us actually worked to be here, Sandhurst. I was top of my class at Proxima. I’ve been training every weekend for as long as I can remember. I was in the junior officer corps, I put in hundreds of hours of community service—and you think you deserve to be here because you moved a couple of little plastic men around on a table, and got lucky? Bullshit.” “I mean, it isn’t really luck,” Delvan spoke up. “There’s a reason the imperial family sponsors those things.” “Shut up, Beck,” Madine snarled, turning away from Arc and jabbing a finger at his bunkmate’s face. “Let me