The Academy Post #2

Notes:  And our first day, part two!  Wherein nothing goes quite according to plan.  Oh boys…

 

PS-check out the Christmas Blog Hop post if you haven't already, it's the one right below this.  Possible presents, darlins:)

 

Title: The Academy

Part Two: Smoke and Mirrors

 

***

 

 

Cody had gotten better at managing the flow of information that the neural implant brought through his brain, but it was still dizzying while in motion.  He’d started his walk to Hephaestus Tower with the route clearly mapped out in his mind, but the way the mental pathway overlaid the actual walk made him so nauseous after a few minutes that he had to stop and lean against a wall.  His head hurt, but Cody gritted his teeth and managed to shut the directions down after a few moments.

“Do you require assistance?”

“Shit!” Cody opened his eyes and flailed for a moment.  There was no one there, though; the walkway he was on was momentarily empty, probably because so many people were converging on the fourth class quads.  “Who is this?”

“This is Hermes, the Academy’s virtual concierge and messaging system.”  The words seemed to pop into existence in Cody’s ears.

“Oh.”  Right, the AI.  Cody had been told about it, but he hadn’t expected it to talk to him.  The Hermes system was overarching database for the entire Academy, linking everything from each student’s personal schedule to planetary weather patterns that might affect classes.  It was both highly individualized and blandly homogenized depending on the moment’s need.  “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Your biometrics indicated distress.  I can have a medical team to your location in two-point-four standard minutes.”

“It’s all right, I just got a little disoriented,” Cody assured the AI.  “Do you monitor everyone like this?”

“Only those unfortunate enough to collapse against my walls, Cadet Helms.”

“Right.”  Well, that was the last collapsing Cody would be doing for a while.  It was one thing to be coddled by his dads; when even an AI thought you needed help, you might as well resign yourself to a life wrapped in a cocoon.  “I’m fine now.”

“Confirmed.  Do be more careful at how you access information, Cadet.  It would be unwise to provoke your brain in this way consistently.”  Cody rolled his eyes.  “Your cheek is not appreciated.  Continue straight down this path for another five hundred meters, then turn right.  Hephaestus Tower is noticeable thanks to its perfusion of ventilation ducts.”

Holy shit, this thing could tell when he rolled his eyes?  Cody pushed away from the wall so he wasn’t touching it any longer.  The faint ringing in his ears went away immediately.  “Thanks,” he muttered, then continued along the path. 

Hephaestus Tower was shorter than all its neighbors, with a reinforced exterior and, as the AI had said, plenty of ventilation.  Older cadets were going in and out of it, but Cody was stopped at the door by a husky man with orange and green striped skin.  “No fourth class cadets allowed inside,” he said.

“I’ve got a meeting with my sponsor,” Cody told the man, trying his best not to stare at his coloration.  Could it possibly be natural?  Didn’t the Academy have rules about how a cadet was supposed to dress?

“And who’s that?”

“It’s me,” a woman called out, walking quickly up to the door.  “Good grief, Marcys, stripes?  Really?  How is sitting out here in that getup forwarding your cromatophore research?”

“You only say that because you can see them!” Marcys replied, lowering his voice and staring fixedly at her.  “This isn’t about coloration, this is about coupling light wavelengths and modern human biophysiology to open up a whole new type of disguise.  You can only see it because you lack the morphing effects of Regen in your ocular cones.  To everyone else  I look totally normal, I’ve gotten no reaction all day until you.  I’d call a .001 failure rate acceptable.”

“Well, please refrain from writing secret color messages on your ass and pretending you’re sunbathing, because I don’t need to see that,” she said, then turned to Cody.  “You must be Cody Helms.  I’m Philomela, but you can call me Phil.”  Phil was tall and strong, with a square jaw and beautiful dark almond eyes.  Her hair was brown and pulled back in a bun, and the hand she shook with was liberally scarred across the knuckles.

“Nice to meet you,” Cody replied.

“You too.  Here, come on in.”  She guided Cody through the front door and teeming lobby and down a side hall, where a long row of metal doors extended almost as far as he could see.  “The tower’s labs.  This one’s mine.”  It was the tenth door on the right, which opened at a touch of her hand.  “I’m here ninety percent of the time, so if you ever need to find me, check here first.  I tend not to hook into Hermes if I can help it, so don’t expect a lot of messages.”

“That’s no problem,” Cody assured her, glancing around the lab.  It was a lot of automated fabrication machinery; a few things he recognized from Wyl’s workshop, but most of it was completely new to him.

Phil smiled.  “Hermes can be kind of intrusive, but it means well.  Pull up a chair.”

The closest thing resembling a chair was a low robot with a flat top.  Cody sat down, and Phil sat across from him.  “First off, it’s great to meet you.  Tamara was my sponsor here, and she talked a lot about you and your dads.  Especially Garrett.”

“Garrett helped get her into the program,” Cody said.  “How is she?  She hasn’t been home in years, and the last message I got from her was months ago.”

“Tamara’s on assignment, which means her communication ability will be erratic at best.”  Phil smiled again, but it wasn’t a happy sort of smile, more resigned.  “And now’s the part where I ask you if you really know what you’re getting into, coming to the Academy.  The Federation military thrives on continuity and regulation, and naturals are like bits of sand in that machinery.  We can’t be part of the regular military because we impact its smooth functioning and effectiveness.  Naturals require special consideration, and normally the Federation has very little time for those who don’t go down the well-worn path.”

“I know,” Cody said.  Tamara had talked to him about this.  “I know I can’t be a soldier.”

“Not just a soldier, Cody.  You can’t be a military medic, you can’t be a military pilot, you can’t be anything that requires you to be part of a unit.  The only place for a natural within the Federation’s military sphere is in covert operations.  Working alone, or with a small team, but never more than that.  We’re not here to become shining standard bearers of the Federation, we’re here to be part of the shadowy network that supports it.  Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

“I think so.”  And it was strange, because Cody had known that this was what he was getting into, he’d known that this was going to be his path, but for almost all his life he’d been a part of something larger, openly valued and praised.  The colony on Pandora was designed to be welcoming and inclusive for all naturals, and everyone who lived there understood that.  His family was amazing, and had never made him feel like anything lesser or different; even when his dad was freaking out, Cody knew it was out of love, not out of lowered expectations.  And now here he was, exactly where he wanted so badly to be…but not quite.  The differences he’d always treated as minor suddenly seemed enormous.

“The only reason that naturals are accepted into the Academy is because we are an ideal choice for subterfuge.  We’re weaker than normal people, we’re more fragile, we live short, hard lives.  These aren’t my personal opinions,” Phil added, holding up a hand when she saw the objection growing on Cody’s face.  “I’m just repeating what I hear constantly.  Naturals are always underestimated because of all the things we don’t have.  It makes people thing we’re stupid, useless, ignorant.  Their perceptions of us are something we can use to our advantage in the field, and it’s vitally important that we do.  You see why?”

“But it’s not really true,” Cody said.  “People here don’t believe that, do they?”

Phil sighed.  “Oh, boy.  No, of course it isn’t really true, but the vast majority of people don’t know that.  Most people have never met a natural, they only know what they get shown, and the popular depiction of us in the media is exactly like I said.  We’re the throwaways.  We’re the pathetic figures on the sidelines, waiting for rescue or dying horribly or being irrepressibly tragic.  We’re not strong, smart and capable citizens with something to offer society.  Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“I’m not…are you saying that I shouldn’t tell people what I am?”  Not that Cody had been planning on introducing himself that way, but still, not at all?

“Yes, and not just because it would affect your social standing here.  Very few students know about the Academy’s special program for naturals, and those who do are actively involved in the program, or in research that directly affects us.  That’s how Marcys knows me; I was a test subject for his chromatophore research project.  He’s meant to keep quiet about it, and wouldn’t have mentioned anything concerning it in front of you if he didn’t already know that you had to be a natural, for me to be picked as your sponsor.  To almost everyone else, I’m just another engineer, and that’s good.  The fewer people who know, the fewer the ways it could come back to bite me once I go out into the field myself.

“So yes, I advise discretion.  Don’t tell anyone what you are unless it’s absolutely unavoidable, a case of life or death.  Convince your quad that you’re just like everyone else, just like they are.  Don’t do anything that could give you away.  That means no sports, Cody, no opportunities for you to be injured, and just enough work with your neural implant not to give you away.  Fortunately their use is circumscribed in cadets, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I want to go out for bike racing,” Cody said, because if they were going to fight about it he was going to get it out of the way right now.

“I don’t think…”

“My bike is already here.  I’ve already listed it as an extracurricular, I’m already signed up for tryouts.  It would be strange for me to back out now.”  There was no way in hell Cody was backing out.  Sports: fine, whatever, he’d never played a lot of them.  But that bike was a gift from Wyl, it was amazing, it made him feel free, and he wasn’t going to give it up.

Phil didn’t look happy, but she nodded.  “Fine.  But nothing else, all right?”

Cody nodded.  “Nothing else.”

“Keep all your appointments with medical.  Your class load is pretty full, every plebe’s is, but your training as an operative starts immediately as well.  You and I have a meeting scheduled every Friday evening.  We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so try not to stand me up, okay?”

“How many of us are here?” Cody asked.  “Other naturals.”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Phil admitted.  “The only person who knows for sure is the chief medical officer and Admiral Liang.  We’re kept apart even from each other, for security reasons.”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

Phil shrugged.  “If you wanted a support group, you should have stayed on Pandora.  The Academy is only for those who can function and perform on their own.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t do it,” Cody snapped, responding to the implied criticism in her voice. 

“Good,” she said.  “Then it’s all going to be fine.  Look, I’m not trying to make you angry, I’m just trying to be honest with you,” Phil added.  “All right?”

“Fine.”  It wasn’t, but she didn’t need to know that.

“I’ll code my lab to open for you.  Our first meeting is this Friday at six.  Message me if you have any questions.  Otherwise I’ll see you then.”

“Fine,” Cody repeated.  He stood up and left before Phil could say anything else.

The walk back to Hebe Tower was brisk and angry.  It wasn’t that Cody didn’t know what was going on; he’d had a long talk with Miles, his grandfather, about it before he left.  He knew he was going to be going into covert operations, he knew it was the best use of his particular birth defect that the Federation could offer.  He knew that if he wanted safe, he could have stayed on Pandora and lived close to his dads and had as normal a life as possible.  But that wasn’t what Cody had wanted, and so he’d applied to the Academy.  He’d gotten in before they knew he was a natural, too; it wasn’t exactly a standard question on the entrance form.  And now he was here, and now what had been something to keep to himself was now morphing into something more secretive.  Something that would be perceived as shameful, something that would change him in the eyes of his peers.  Phil had been pretty fucking frank about that.

Not her fault, Cody reminded himself, but he was still upset.  The excitement and thrill was starting to wear off now, and all he wanted was to get back to his quad and call his dads.  He’d promised, after all.  They were probably waiting for it.

Cody wasn’t expecting to see green smoke wafting out the first floor windows of Hebe Tower.  A closer look make his walk become a run, as he realized that those windows were the ones attached to his quad.  It took some pushing, but he managed to get inside and make it back to his rooms, where a massive shouting match was already underway.

“You shouldn’t have touched it!” Ten was yelling at a young man with dark skin, broad shoulders and about five inches on hir.  “Heat and caustic chemicals in a delicate balance!  How much more obvious could it be?  Did you need a big bloody sign that said “Don’t touch!”?”

“You shouldn’t leave unauthorized chemical equipment on the common spaces in our quad!” the young man yelled back, completely undaunted.  “You shouldn’t be doing experiments outside of a lab, and you definitely shouldn’t be doing them with caustic chemicals!”

“What are you, my mother?”

“What are you, a fucking sociopath?”

A third person stood by the far wall in the room, watching the scene with wide eyes.  It took Cody a moment to realize that it was the Perel cadet.  He had milky white skin and long, sharp quills that ran from the crest of his head down to the small of his back, which his modified gray cadet uniform left open.  He turned his huge amber eyes toward Cody, and Cody gravitated over to stand beside him.  “Hi.”

“Hello,” the Perel said quietly.  “Are you our fourth member?”

“Yes.  I’m Cody Helms.”

“Grennson Kim Howards,” the Perel replied, holding his hand out to shake.  He did it perfectly naturally, and Cody shook without somehow focusing on the fact that he was shaking hands with an alien, oh my god.  “I’m to be Darrel’s roommate.”

“Right, sure.  I’m Ten’s.”

“Ten?”

“Um, Tiennan’s.  Hirs.”

Grennson’s quills perked up.  “I thought the quads were assigned by sex.”

“Yeah, they are, but there’s a difference between sex and gender, and…you know what, ze’ll explain it to you.  Once ze stops yelling.”

“Once they both stop, perhaps.”

“Clean your shit up!” Darrel shouted, still going strong.

“You’re the one that made the mess, you clean it up!”

“Cadets!  Attention!” 

All four of them looked at the door, and all four of them snapped to parade rest, although Ten’s posture was somehow still sullen.  When the Master Sergeant called you out, you responded.

He surveyed the room with a frown.  “What’s this all about?”

“Sir, this cadet—”

“Sir, this idiot—”

Master Sergeant Jessup held up a hand.  “Actually, you know what?  Never mind.  Is the smoke poisonous?”

“Only in very high concentrations,” Ten said with a dismissive sniff. 

“Which probably only exist in our room,” Darrel added.

“You—”

“Both of you, enough!  You’re coming with me to explain this in private, and I expect the truth from you, gentlemen.”  He glanced over at Cody and Grennson.  “Do either of you have anything to add?”

“No sir.”

“I just got here, sir,” Cody said.  The remnants of the smoke tickled his lungs, and he did his best to hold back the coughs lurking under the surface of his skin.  No one else was coughing though; it would seem strange if he did.

“Then you two can stay here and keep airing things out while I talk to the geniuses over here.”  The master sergeant  shook his head.  “This’ll be the easiest vacation I ever earned.  Fall in, cadets.”  He left, and Darrel and Ten followed behind him, backs straight with mortification and anger.  Multitudes of curious people walked past their door before Grennson finally shut it.

“Perhaps we should—”

But Cody couldn’t hold back the coughs any longer.  He doubled over, his lungs aching and itching, and coughed for a full minute before he finally got his breath back.

Grennson looked down at him, his expression concerned.  “Are you well?”

Oh fuck, weren’t these guys empathic?  Did Grennson know what Cody was, could he feel it somehow?  Had Cody given away his identity already?  Phil would be so pissed.  “I’m sorry, I need a minute,” Cody managed, then stumbled over to his room and shut the door.  The air was a little clearer in here, but his eyes were still watering and his throat ached.  He couldn’t go back out, not yet.  Not until he had control of himself.  Which meant Grennson probably thought he was rude, if nothing else.

“Great first day,” Cody muttered, heading for the bathroom to get a glass of water.  “Just great.”

The Academy Post #1

Notes:  Over 4k for your first official installment of The Academy.  What can I say, the spice is flowing.  Enjoy the ride, darlins!

Title: The Academy

Part One:  New Arrivals

 

***

 

                The Academy’s private spaceport was overflowing with incoming students and their families, some of them moving with the assurance of experience but most of them wide-eyed newbies, darting their gazes from the sky-soaring pillars of the Academy towers to the glittering shield of the spaceport to the other wide-eyed, breathless arrivals as they tumbled into each other.   They desperately searched for porters to help parents deal with personal belongings and information officers to help the new fourth class cadets figure out where the hell they were supposed to go.  Today was the official move-in day; orientation and classes didn’t start until tomorrow, but there were still schedules and timetables to adhere to.  This was the Federation Military Academy, after all, not some whimsical civvy school where you could move at your own pace.

                “I’ve never been so glad I gave this a pass in my entire life,” Garrett muttered, looking out over the press of slate-grey uniforms and tearful familial goodbyes with a grimace.  “So.  Glad.  Formal education was bad enough, but this is ridiculous.”

                “You just don’t like the crowds,” Jonah said, hoisting Cody’s duffel bag over his shoulder.

                “On the contrary, I love crowds.  Lots of folks pressed together having a good time, that I like very much.  I just don’t like the hapless crush of hundreds of people all trying to accomplish the same thing and all getting nowhere together.  I see, what, twenty porters?  Nowhere near enough, this could take hours.”  Garrett shook his head, his newly-platinum hair waving softly.  He’d put a few “finishing touches” on himself now that they were back in the Central System, and even Cody could admit that his stepfather looked good.  Not good good, ugh, no, but he looked…sleek.  Like a catterpet that had just come back from the groomer’s.  “I’ll go get us some help, this won’t take long.”  He made his way into the crowd, people turning to follow his progress as they couldn’t help staring at him.

                “Well,” Jonah said, perfectly deadpan.  “I guess we’ll wait here, then.”

                “I guess so,” Cody agreed.  They stood shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall, touching just enough to be comforting.  It wasn’t that Cody wasn’t ready to be on his own, he was; he was looking forward to life at the Academy.  But he felt better having his dad close for as long as he could. 

                Cody glanced over at his dad, checking him surreptitiously for signs of sadness.  Jonah had started the trip from Paradise well enough, able to crack jokes and make plans with Garrett for what they were going to do after they dropped Cody off here, but he’d gotten quieter and quieter the closer to Olympus they got.  Garrett was worried, Cody knew, and had a long list of things to do to distract Jonah as soon as they were through here, at least half of which Cody was convinced he didn’t want to know anything about.  It was nice that his parents still really liked each other, and Cody could barely remember when they hadn’t been together, but ugh…did they have to show it all the time?  Even Robbie and Wyl thought it was cloying, and they were almost as bad.

His dad stared out at the crowd, brown hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, his stubble just barely there today.  He looked the same as he always had, the same as he would for decades more.  Cody was surprised to see that they were close to the same height; Jonah had a few inches on him, but he’d shot up last year and was even Garrett’s height now, although he was still skinny, not broad like his dad.  Cody nudged Jonah, and when his dad looked over at him he grinned wide.  Jonah shook his head and chuckled.

“Excited, huh bucko?”

“Yes!”  Cody couldn’t pretend otherwise.  He was here, on Olympus, in the Central System, getting ready to start at the best branch of the Academy there was.  Tamara had gone here, and she’d loved it.  Cody would be lying if he said that her stories hadn’t played a large part in his decision to attend, but it was the chance to do something special with his life.  He might live a fraction of the time most humans did, but he’d go non-stop for the time that he had.

“Good,” Jonah said, nudging him back.  “You better be, after this trip.”

“You act all put-upon, but you’re a liiiaaar,” Cody song-songed at his dad.  “Garrett was going to get you back to the Central System for a weird, adults-only vacation full of creative licentiousness no matter what I did.”

“Creative what?”

Cody held his hands up.  “Hey, his description, not mine,” he said.  “I don’t want to know, seriously.”

“Hell, I barely want to know,” Jonah sighed, but he was smiling now, and that was the whole point of bothering him in the first place.  “Garrett’s got way too many weird ideas for me to keep up with him.”

“I think you’ll have fun,” Cody replied.  “It’ll be good for you, you haven’t been anywhere but Pandora and Paradise since I was a kid.”

“You’re still a kid,” Jonah said, but his heart wasn’t in it.  “You packed the private transmitter, right?”

“Of course I did, you guys spent enough on it.”  The private transmitter would give Cody a way to call home without having to fight for the en-masse student transmitters.  It was barely permissible by the rules, but Miles had cited medical necessity and gotten it included in Cody’s list of allowable devices.

Speaking of which, after weeks of getting used to it, Cody was finally starting to understand the neural implant doctors had put in in Paradise.  Most of its functions were disabled, especially the ones that related to physical or mental enhancement; cadets didn’t get to use props to help them maintain the minimum standards of ability necessary to be in the Academy.  Only once you got through the first four years and became a specialist could you get the implants fully reactivated.  But it let Cody access the Academy’s computers and project information onto a special contact in his eye by just touching a terminal, and that was pretty amazing.

“How about—” Jonah began, but then Garrett was back with not one, but two porters in tow.

“All right!  You.”  He turned to the one on the left.  “Our ship is in berth I-57.  Code 39-plt-22 for the lowest storage compartment, where you’ll find a large and very heavy box that requires careful handling and needs to go to the cadet’s motor pool, into the space reserved for Cody Helms.  I suggest using a sled to get it there.”  He touched the woman’s tablet and typed in a ridiculous tip.  “Thank you.”

Before the first one could leave he turned to the other porter.  “You get the easy job.  Here.”  He hoisted Cody’s duffel bag off the ground and passed it over to the man.  “Take this to Hebe Tower, level 1, quad 8, care of Cody Helms.  Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh no, please don’t ‘sir’ me,” Garrett said with a shudder.  He tapped in another tip and then the porter was off.  Garrett turned back to his family with a smile.  “Voila.”

“You’re the best,” Cody said truthfully.

“I try,” Garrett replied, preening a bit.  Three people turned their way when Garrett so much as moved, and Jonah rolled his eyes.

“I feel like I need to put a tase-field around you,” he said, pulling Garrett close against his side.  Garrett molded to him like liquid glass, batting his overly-long eyelashes at his husband.  Cody sighed and looked away as they started kissing.  Couldn’t they leave off just for a little bit?  Like until he was gone?

A murmur in the crowd drew Cody’s attention, and he looked toward the far end of the port.  The ship sitting there was Federation, but it had a strange emblem on it, a long thorn piercing two interlocked circles.  Three people were walking down the gangplank to meet—oh, wow, was that the admiral?  It had to be, he was surrounded by an honor guard in full Federation regalia, and as Cody looked closer, he could see that two of the three people exiting the ship were—

“The Perelan delegation,” Garrett murmured by his side.  “My father mentioned that the Academy was getting its first Perel cadet this year.  It’s a big deal; he’ll be only the second alien ever admitted to the Academy, and the first graduated almost a century ago.”

“Why is there a human with them?” Cody asked, craning his neck to see better.

“That’s Captain Jason Kim.  He’s a legend in diplomatic circles; he’s the first human to be allowed access to Perelan.  He married one of them after they fell in love during the Perel’s year abroad.”

Cody wracked his brain for the little he knew about Perelan.  “I thought they didn’t allow that kind of thing.”

“Generally they don’t,” Garrett agreed.  “Captain Kim was a special case.  Robbie’s actually met him, says he’s a nice man.  Very calm and composed.  Perels are empaths, so that must have been a nice change from the rest of us humans.”

The crowd was moving toward the delegation, clearing up the space around the three of them.  “This is your chance to get to your quad unmolested,” Garrett decided.  “You remember how to find it?”

“I’ve got the map in my head,” Cody said, tapping right next to his eye.

“Perfect.  Come here.”  Garrett pulled him in close for a hug, just as warm and soft as he always was, and for a second Cody hated the fact that he was tall enough to look Garrett in the eyes now.  He felt loved and safe and protected, and when Jonah joined in and wrapped both of them up, it was all Cody could do to keep himself from tearing up.

It’s fine, you can do this, you want this, he told himself firmly.  He pulled back just a little and Garrett kissed his cheek.

“You’ll do so well,” Garrett said, smiling gently.  “You’ll see.  I love you.”  He kissed him again, then made room for Jonah.

Cody’s dad pressed a kiss to his forehead, then ruffled his curls, no longer the golden yellow they’d been when he was a kid, closer to brown now.  “I’m proud of you,” Jonah said.  He looked Cody up and down, like he was trying to memorize him in this moment.  “You can call us whenever you want, we’ll always answer.  Miles and Claudia too, they want to hear from you at least once a standard week.  And don’t forget Lacey, okay?  She’ll want to talk.”

“I won’t,” Cody promised.  “Dad…”

“Yeah, bucko?”

Oh fuck, tears, damn it.  “I’ll miss you.  Love you guys.”

“Love you too.”  They embraced again, and Cody really, really had to go now if he was going to get out of this with his pride intact. He wasn’t a baby, he didn’t cry just because he was leaving his parents for the first time. 

“I should go.”

“I guess you should.”  They separated and Jonah immediately put his arm around Garrett again, like he needed the contact with someone.  He looked kind of lost, and Cody hated seeing that look on his father’s face.  Garrett squeezed him and gave Cody a reassuring nod, though, and Cody steeled himself.

“Bye, guys.  I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“We’ll be waiting for it,” Garrett said. 

“Okay.  Good.”  Cody turned around and started walking toward Hebe Tower, only barely aware of the map projected against his eye.  Every step was like walking through a hurricane, so hard to move forward that he almost turned and ran back after the first few feet.  But no, he had to do this.  Cody forced himself to keep moving, not to even look back, because then he’d have to go back and hug them again and he wouldn’t make it to his quad for hours.

It took about fifteen minutes to reach Hebe Tower, where all the first and second-year cadets were housed.  Usually the first-year cadets were put in the higher, less convenient rooms, but Cody’s quad was on the ground floor.  He wondered a little uneasily if that was Miles’ influence.  Then again, Cody didn’t know anything about his quad-mates; it could be because of one of them.  Either way, he found the apartment easily enough, one of the coveted corner spaces.  The door was shut, but it opened at a touch of Cody’s hand.  He went inside, and his eyes went wide.

It was a relatively small space, smaller than his house back on Pandora but bigger than the inside of Garrett’s ship.  The central room was split between the kitchen and a living area, there were two doors on either facing wall that Cody assumed led to the bedrooms—two people per bedroom, two bedrooms per quad.  Each on had its own bathroom, so at least Cody would only be sharing that with one person.  Although from the look of this place, sharing wasn’t exactly the watchword.

Every surface was covered with scientific equipment.  Glassware, elaborate piping, a multi-microscope that Garrett would probably kill for, and what looked like a diffuser venting mist into the middle of the room.  In the center of the chaos stood a slim young man wearing a violently-purple lab coat and a full face mask, holding an ion-torch over a glowing piece of metal.  He looked up as Cody entered the room.

“Finally,” he muttered, shutting off the torch.  He pushed his mask up, revealing a heart-shaped face and bright blue hair.  He looked Cody over and sighed.  “Oh, you’re hopelessly binary, aren’t you?”

“Binary?” Cody asked, not at all sure what was going on.

“Binary.  Subscribing to one of the two prevailing genders.  Straight, from the look of your hair and collar.”  Cody touched his collar self-consciously.  “Your girlfriend let you leave the planet looking like that?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Oh?”  The boy looked mildly more interested.  “Boyfriend?”

“Neither.  I’m not…I haven’t dated anyone.”

“Then your parents dressed you like that.  Father and…”  The boy came over and picked Cody’s hand up, looking hard at his nails.  “And another father, judging from the state of your cuticles.  Am I right?”

“Yes,” Cody said, both taken-aback and interested.  “How did you know?”

“You’re Cody, right?”  Cody nodded, and the boy shrugged.  “My guardian knew one of your fathers.  I figured he couldn’t be utterly boring if she was interested, so two fathers made sense, but you still ooze conservativeness, so nothing more exciting than that.  Your hair could be fabulous, with those curls, but you leave it uncolored and dull, so not showing off for anyone—I should have guessed about the dating thing.  Still, your hands are in decent shape, manicured at least.  Your collar is very traditionally done, but not crisp the way a military family or overbearing mother would make it.  It all adds up to, well, you.”  The boy didn’t look at all impressed.

“What’s your name?’ Cody asked.

“Tiennan St. Florian.  And before you start, I don’t care to be put in a box, so don’t assume you know anything about me.  I don’t identify as a boy or a girl, I’m just Tiennan.”

Oh.  Well, Cody had some experience with that, thanks to long talks with Tamara about some of the people she’d worked with.  “That’s fine, but I’m gonna have problems pronouncing your name,” Cody said.

Tiennan looked a little surprised, but covered it quickly.  “It’s easy.  Tiennan.  Ti-enn-an.”

“Still not feeling it.  How about I just call you Ten?”

“A number?  You want to turn me from a person into a number?”

Cody had to smile at the kid’s affront.  “I’m just trying to avoid annoying you every time I get your name wrong.  Ten’s just a nickname.  You could give me one too, if my name wasn’t already about as short as it can go.”

“Why do you want to give me a nickname?” Tiennan demanded.  “You just met me.”

Cody shrugged.  “That’s why.  Did you see where the porter took my stuff?”

“Into the room on the right.  You’re my roommate.”

“Great.  I should probably go unpack, so…”  Cody moved over and held out his hand.  “I’m Cody Helms.  Nice to meet you.”

“I already know your name,’ Tiennan said, but ze shook anyway.

“Just being polite.”

“Oh.  Well, nice to meet you, I suppose.”  Ze let go and pulled hir face mask back down.  “I cleaned your bed off this morning, but try not to disrupt anything, all right?  I’ve got a system.”

“How long have you been here?’ Cody asked, heading for the door.

“Almost a week.  I was the first plebe to arrive.”  The ion-torch started up again, and Cody knew their conversation was over. 

Cody opened the door to their room and just…stared for a moment.  If anything, it was worse in here that it was in the common area.  Trunks full of clothes lay haphazardly on the floor, bits and pieces flung about like Ten had been searching for something but hadn’t bothered to clean up once ze’d found it.  There was more scientific equipment, a high end holographic projector hanging from the ceiling, and on top of all of that were pictures of molecules cycling through the air, complex chemical equations racing after each other across the walls and floor.  It made Cody a little dizzy to look at it.

His bed had his duffel bag on it.  That was all the room there was.

“Can I shut this off?” he called through the open door.

“No!  I’m running a virtual experiment to its end, if you shut it off the whole program will restart.  Don’t touch it.”

Cody shut his eyes tight, then opened them again.  Nope, no better.  “Ten, seriously, at least turn off the visual component, because I’m getting ill.”

“If I turn off the visual component I won’t be able to watch the progress!”

“You’re not watching it anyway,” Cody pointed out.

“Oh, fine.”  Ten didn’t even have to come into the room to make the adjustment.  He must be a lot better with his neural implant that Cody was.

“Thanks.”

“Mmph.” 

Cody looked around at the mess, then touched the wall above his bed.  The storage system came online, and he triggered the openings for his drawers and closet.  They were recessed, thankfully; there was no way they’d be able to project into the room the way the floor was right now.  He hung up his uniforms and the nice suit Claudia had bought him for his last birthday, then put away the casual clothes and underwear.  A space above the head of his bed was for personal items, and Cody laid his personal projector, loaded with all his books and shows and pictures, in it, along with the actual framed one of him and his dads.  The good luck charm from Jack went in there too. 

Jack was Cody’s other biological father, but he and Jonah had split up when Cody was just a baby.  Jack was a Drifter, traveling the universe in a huge ship that housed thousands of people, all of them without a planet to call home.  Whenever Jack and Cody were on Paradise at the same time, they got together.  It was awkward, but Cody appreciated that Jack never tried to act like his parent.  The good luck charm was a strand of wire strung with bits of rock and crystal from dozens of different planets.  “It’ll keep you safe on a long voyage,” Jack had said when he gave it to Cody.  Drifters were superstitious, something Cody really wasn’t, but he’d appreciated it all the same.

The other thing he had to lay in there was the private transmitter, which was bigger than the rest but still, even with all those things in the drawer, it looked kind of barren.  Cody sighed and resolutely did not think of his Space Ranger action figures back at home.  He was way too old for those…although he kind of regretted not bringing the red one with him, just the one.  He missed her monkey.

“How did you get permission to bring that in here?” Ten said from the door.  Ze had a light voice that would have sounded nice if ze wasn’t being so abrupt and demanding with it all the time.

“What?” Cody asked, jolted out of his memories.  “Oh, the transmitter?”  He shrugged.  “Big family.”

Ten nimbly made hir way around the piles on the floor and sat down on Cody’s bed.  Ze held hir hand out imperiously and Cody gave hir the transmitter to look at.  “This is military grade,” ze murmured.  “You could get a signal all the way out to the Fringe with this.”

“That makes sense, since that’s where I’m from.”

Ten looked up at Cody.  “And you wanted to come here?  The Federation presence in the Fringe is minimal at best, what do you owe them?”

Cody had to smile.  Ten got worked up so fast, it was kind of hilarious.  “I just wanted to do something with my life.”

“No no no, science is doing something with your life.  Research is doing something with your life.  Joining the monolith that is the Federation military is what you do when you’re boring and have no other choice.  Even art school would be better.”

“Why’re you here, then?”

Ten looked down at the bed.  “I didn’t have a choice.  My guardian sent me here to keep me out of trouble.  A few minor, very contained explosions and the next thing you know, none of the universities want you.  I’m probably the youngest person in our class.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

Cody grinned.  “Me too!”

Ten looked surprised.  “How did you get in so early?  I was in advanced curriculum and didn’t have anywhere else to go, but you don’t seem so advanced.”

Cody didn’t bother getting offended.  He had the feeling that this was just how Ten was.  “Special dispensation.  Plus I passed the entrance exams.”

Ten huffed.  “You mean your family has connections.  I despise nepotism.”

No, it’s because I’m a natural, Cody wanted to say, but he’d been warned against letting a lot of people know his condition, and he’d just met Ten, after all.  He shrugged instead.

Ten actually understood the social cue and changed the subject.  “Have you met your sponsor yet?”

“No.”

“Check your messages.  There’s probably one waiting for you from whoever it is.  They’re supposed to meet with us on our first day here to answer questions and help us get settled.”  Ten frowned.  “Not that mine was any use.  He took one look at my luggage and asked to change plebes.  I told him to go fuck himself.”

“What, really?”

“Mmhmm.”  Ten looked pleased with hirself.  “He almost got me written up for that, but I convinced the monitor to go easy on me since it was my first day.  Now we avoid each other, but I didn’t need his help in the first place, so it’s fine.  Yours might be better, though.”  Ten waited expectantly.

Cody felt like an idiot.  “How do I check my messages?”

“Really?  Oh my, you are from the Fringe, aren’t you?  Hand on the wall.”  Cody complied.  “Now open the Academy program in your head.”

It pulled up reluctantly, still open to the Tower maps.  “There’s an icon shaped like an arrow.  Look at it.”  After a bit of searching Cody found it in the corner, glowing red.  He looked at it and suddenly a message screen appeared. 

“Oh, got it.”  He skimmed through them until he found the one labeled SPONSOR.  “She wants to meet me in Hephaestus Tower.”

“What?  How did you get a specialist as a sponsor?  Hephaestus Tower is where the scientists and engineers live.  I am so jealous of you right now,” Ten complained.  “Think out a response to her message and send it.  Don’t worry, the program stops spare thoughts from slipping in.”

It was hard, but Cody managed to spell out a simple note to let his sponsor know he was coming.  “Got it,” he said with a sigh after a minute.

“Took you long enough,” Ten said, staring at the bed again.  “You should probably get going now, Hephaestus Tower is on the other side of the Academy compound.”

“I will.  Thanks for the help, Ten.”  Cody slid off the bed and made his way back to the common room.  “See you later!” he yelled, then left the quad with a little sigh of relief.

 

***

 

Tiennan sat silently for a moment, staring at where hir roommate had just been.  That had gone much better than ze’d anticipated.  Cody Helms might be on the dull side, but at least he didn’t seem to object to hir.  That was…surprising.

So was his sponsor.  Family connections or not, plebes just didn’t rate specialists as sponsors.  Even Tiennan had only rated a second-class cadet, despite hir precocious history.  So there had to be something about Cody that made him special.  Tiennan was determined to find out what it was.

Later, though.  Once hir experiment was done running.