Orbital Academy 04

"It was fun, Rook," she said quietly, and then she left, making her way as swiftly as she could out of the hangar and towards her quarters, leaving Marcus to look out at the dark expanse of space.

---

The F.A.C. room of the Academy was officially the "Forward Alert Counteraction" room, but in private Jane always thought of it as "Fuck, A Complication" room. She had never received a summons to F.A.C. for anything less than an emergency, so when the small display just under the skin of her wrist lit up with the letters, a seed of worry settled into her gut immediately.

Minutes later Jane entered the small room, making her way around the horseshoe-shaped metal table. Built into the surface of the table at regular intervals, screens displayed vital statistics on the Academy's crew and residents, ships, and intelligence about the planet below. Although the information represented the life flow of the orbital, the screens were muted and unobtrusive. The focus of this room wasn't the data, but rather on how their minds could use it. Jane slipped into an empty seat next to Captain Winchest, trying to listen in on the low rumbling of conversation throughout the room to get an idea of what was happening.

"Evenin' lass," Winchest said in a friendly rasp, nodding. Grey hair and a matching grey scar across the side of his head gave Winchest a singularly aged appearance, but he was one of the most spry and active captains on the orbital.

"Evening Winchest. Any idea what this nonsense is about?"

"Typically use the F.A.C. for red priority don' we?" The machinery in Winchest's throat booted up after the first two words with a quiet hum. It had been installed decades ago, after his throat had been ripped out on a planetary run, but it still ran perfectly. When he continued, the jagged rasp from his throat injury was smoothed out, and his voice was clear; "but I didn't hear any alarms. I'd think we would've heard about invaders or structural damage before bein' summoned here."

"No alarms that I heard either," Jane agreed, scanning the faces of the assembled captains and majors for someone who looked as if they had a clue. In the open space of the table General Auspus stepped forward, and the room grew quiet.

Auspus looked in his early twenties, with slick black hair tucked behind one ear framed his youthful face. The fact that he had been in the service for seventy years had caused much speculation, and rumors abounded of expensive surgery or biotechnology, although either would've cost far more than a typical citizen could afford. Since the man refused to comment or even acknowledge that there was anything odd about his appearance, the speculation stayed unconfirmed.

"As you've probably surmised, we have a situation," Auspus spoke with the voice of a new recruit, but with the confidence of the commander of the orbital, "if you'll note the data from the terrestrial scanner, it appears we have an incoming Drake."

The room immediately burst into quiet but urgent conversations, and Jane's eyes snapped to the screen in front of her to read the data Auspus was indicating.

"That's impossible," she said aloud, "I was on the team that put the last Drake down, that was two weeks ago."

General Auspus nodded, "I'm not questioning that, Captain Asset. I am aware of the mission and your contributions to it."

"Drake's don't just show up that fast Major," Jane stated flatly, "no disrespect but they just don't. The planet can throw one Drake at us a year, that's all it's ever been able to do. Other things, maybe, not Drakes." The other Captains were nodding, thinking the same things, but they were letting her challenge the General. She might have had a lascivious reputation, but her record gave her words weight, and everyone knew it and listened.

Rather than answering, Major Auspus nodded towards a man to his left, who stood without looking up from the personal screen in his hand.

"My name is Telmach," he introduced himself, "I've been sent over from Orbital Techrider. As the equivalent to your 'captain-level' here, I believe you'll agree that I am qualified to interpret this data for you all?"

The assembled captains nodded their assent, and Jane blinked. To have a tech shipped over directly from another orbital wasn't unheard of, but getting someone this qualified so fast must've cost the General dearly in favors and promises. Jane had to begrudgingly hand it to the Auspus, he was at least giving the situation the concern and attention it deserved.

"Thank you," Telmach continued, "for the unfamiliar, the upper atmosphere of the planet contains a thick ring of unknown composition, you've probably heard it referred to as "the fog". We've been able to determine a few of the chemicals that makeup this ring, enough to confirm that the ring is what obscures any scans and data collection we do of the planet. The complete makeup of the fog, and whether it's naturally occurring or created by tech on the surface, is one of the main questions we deal with on Orbital Techrider. Either way, the surface has always remained beyond the reach of our instruments. That's why we have you do planetary runs."

Jane nodded. It wasn't the only reason they made planetary runs, but information gathering was usually the reason Orbital Techrider requested one.

Telmach began flicking fingers across his screen, sending an image full of numbers and charts to each of the screens along the table, "As you can see here, anything that moves about halfway up through the fog will show up, at incredibly low resolution, on our scanners. This is how Orbital Techrider has been able to provide Orbital Academy with warnings and alerts about threats incoming from the planet. The closer the incoming mass is, the more well defined a scan we can perform, but we can usually tell what is coming to greet us several hours before it actually breaks the fog's "surface". In this case the report is so unbelievable that Techrider sent me over to assure Orbital Academy that we are confident of our assessment."

The screen split into two, displaying identical sets of numbers on each side. "On the left, the data from an hour ago. On the right, the data we recorded during the last exothermic Drake attack."

There was a silence for a moment, before one of the newer captains cleared his throat.

"I'm not sure I understand the significance..." he said hesitantly, "...sure any Drake is bad news, but it's not as if we've never dealt with a Drake before, right? And if it's a flamer Drake that's barely a threat at all right? Hell, we send pilot-levels out to handle flamers."

Jane opened her mouth to explain, but Winchest leaned forward, his voice grave and gravelly even with the voice module.

"The Drake isn't the problem son. It's the timing that's the threat."

"Most Drake attacks pose an element of damage to our resources." General Auspus addressed the entire room, "with the exception of exothermic Drakes, every single Drake encounter has resulted in severe damage before we put it down. It's considered a victory if we can counteract the average Drake with a minimal loss of life and low-level damage to one or two orbitals. Our engineers already have their hands full at our current schedule of repair. Multiple Drake attacks in a year would wear us down faster than we can afford. So yes, this Drake is just as much a non-issue as any exothermic. What it implies is that we could have a situation, very soon."

The silence stretched out longer this time, and the General spread both hands in a gesture that seemed helpless coming from such a young looking man. "For now that is all. I'll be in communication with the commanders of each orbital. Please bring any suggestions or comments on the situation to me, they will be welcome. For now, all that remains is to assemble a team to face this particular Drake. Captain Appet, I believe it's your turn to take point, I'll leave the team selection to you."

A thought had been forming in Jane's head as the General spoke. *Things are changing. This lazy schedule we've been holding to, six years to take a group from rookie to captain...that's not going to work for much longer.* Her treatment of her rookies no longer seemed too intense, indeed, it seemed quite tame. *The orbitals are going to need a new influx of skilled new blood, pilots and engineers and technicians. The Rooks are going to have to advance faster. They can't do that sitting on their asses in the orbital.*

"My current team will handle the Drake," Jane said casually. General Auspus stopped and turned in the doorway immediately, but it took a few moments for the captains to make the connection between her words and the team she was talking about.

"You're on your teaching year," sitting across from her, Captain Doubl spoke as if Jane had forgotten, "your 'team' is just rookies right now."

"My team can handle a flamer Drake," Jane repeated confidently, although her eyes flicked to the Major watching her with narrowed eyes from the doorway, "their rank doesn't matter, what matters is whether or not they can handle it."

"We don't send rookies to fight Drakes, Appet," Captain Leftrain's voice grated on Jane's nerves, "it's possible that your emotional attachments have clouded your objectivity. If we really want to push our newer recruits, we should sent out pilot-levels. They both need the training and are able to handle themselves."

Jane wasn't listening, flicking her fingers across her screen to pull up data in response to the arguments she knew were coming. She synced the various training records for the Academy to the screens along entire desk as she went, and soon the the captains were frowning down at the data in front of them. Training flight records, accuracy ratings, tactical scenario training scores; all of them showed her rookies ranked far above the rest, all of them somewhere in the middle range of the Academy's pilot-levels. Jane purposely didn't pull up the stats for areas where they were still at rookie-level; physical training, engineering tech, navigation and radar interpretation, but even so the statistics were impressive. She noticed with surprise that Alexandria's accuracy scores were actually some of the highest at even pilot-level, only a few spots away from matching the scores of the lower-level Lieutenants.

In the silence that followed as the captains read the screens, Jane spoke.

"I've been accused of being too hard on my rookies, and of being too attached to them. Now that we know about this Drake situation, I hope you'll be glad I've been so rough on them; they don't have as much catching up to do as all the rest. It sounds like we're going to need a lot of top-tier flyers soon. My Rooks have been held to a higher pass-standard than any rookie year in the past decade. They train for sixteen hours a day. They don't even know it's *possible* to set the exercises to 'easy' in most rooms. I've been pushing them to be the best they possibly can be, and they've lived up to every challenge I've set for them. They're ready to step up to the next challenge."

The other captains stayed silent throughout her speech, though more and more glanced in the General's direction. He was staring at Jane, his steely eyes uncomfortably deep and aged compared to his face. Jane steadfastly kept his gaze. The others didn't matter; he was the only one who could technically forbid her from taking the rooks against this Drake.

Without a word, General Auspus turned and stepped out the door, and Jane breathed a sigh of relief. Those gathered began collecting their things and standing, the meeting's business concluded. Jane was too elated to give much attention to the worried looks or the low muttering that followed her out the door. She was so excited that even the voice of Captain Leftrain didn't bother her as it floated from the room behind her,

"We should decide on a backup team to send out once Appet's upjumped rookies make a mess of this Drake."

Jane almost skipped into the barracks, but she focused hard on slowing her step into a measured, professional pace, adjusting her face into a neutral mask before entering. The Rooks were all there, enjoying the brief few hours they had before lights out, some reading and playing games with each other, some just talking. The room quieted the instant she entered, the rookies not snapping to their feet, but still giving her respectful attention. Jane allowed her gaze to rove across the room, feeling proud and fond of each one at the same time. She felt a momentary stab of disappointment meeting Marcus' eyes, knowing she wouldn't be able to have any celebratory sex, but she didn't let it show on her face. She took the whole room in as a whole, and took a deep breath.

*This is going to be the most amazing, frightening, valuable experience they're likely to get...and they'll have no idea until it's over*

"Alright Rooks," she said good-naturedly, "seems like the Academy has decided you all don't hate me quite enough yet. Suit up, we've got a new assignment..."