I'm also including her character preamble, a blurb about Alice that will appear in the beginning of the book with many other blurbs that provide a basic overview of recent pertinent events with regards to each major and secondary character.
This can't be overstated: This chapter and the preamble blurb before it contain MASSIVE SPOILERS for anyone who has not read Broadcasts 0-9 and possibly the Expendable Few. You've been warned!
Enjoy!
PREAMBLE
Alice Valent
After undergoing a drastic transformation that removed all
framework technology from her body along with all the advantages and
vulnerabilities it brought, Alice Valent is preparing for the qualifier tests
that will allow her to begin the intense curriculum offered through the Triton
Fleet Academy. Her mind is sharper than ever now that the filter imposed on her
by the framework is gone, but with cognative clarity comes a new emotional
awareness. Alice also has to deal with being a more mature young adult while
lacking the physical advantages in strength and speed the framework body she
once had provided.
PREVIEW CHAPTER
Alice Versus The Obstacle Course
The Ranger obstacle course was the most intimidating
thing she’d ever seen when Alice started practicing. It took her only minutes
to get permission from the Sergeant in charge to attempt to take it on. Without
framework enhancements, stimulants, and no idea what she could do in her new
body, she made her first attempt with trepidation. Countless bruises, sprains
and one knock out from a long fall were her rewards.
It frightened her that she couldn’t finish the course
at all on the first day. Instead of asking for help, she stubbornly kept her
mouth shut, and tried again. On day two she made it all the way through, but
she had no energy left, everything hurt, and the next morning was even worse
when she woke up with aches and pains. Lacey had her on recovery medication
before they were through their first hour of tutoring on the topic of Common
Galactic Law.
The memories of finishing the course with little
effort as a framework construct made the effort all the more frustrating as she
tackled it again the next day. The course was different when she practiced it
as a framework, it was much shorter, but familiar sections were still brutally
difficult.
Sargent Piprayn Markase, or Pip as everyone called
him, watched from the side lines as she did the most problematic sections of
the course over and over until she was at the end of her two-hour session. So
many parts of the course required everything of her; concentration, the
willingness to push her body, take risks, to reconsider the method of passage
from completely different angles. Alice came out of every two-hour session
clear headed, but well beaten. No one but the Sargent was there, so she could
have tried another round, but the sore muscles in her legs, arms, shoulders and
back protested.
He didn’t offer advice, just made sure he was there to
pick her up if she fell for the first week. The time she took on the course was
solitary for that whole period, she knew when the Ranger trainees used it, in
the early morning, so she crammed her other studies in around it.
On day seven she turned up in her thin vacsuit and
deactivated the systems that would save her from all but the worst breaks and
lethal falls then looked at the entrance to the course. “I’m going to beat my
worst time as a framework today, you son of a bitch.” She told it.
“Hope you weren’t talking to me,” Pip said as he came
out from under the platform. He had pieces of netting in his hand and a few
tools at his feet.
“No, sorry,” Alice replied. “This thing just seems
alive sometimes, and it hates me.”
“Anyone who has fallen into an electrified net in
section five might think so. You’re doing well, by the way.”
“Not really,” Alice said. Her gaze was drawn back to
the dark entrance, a blacked-out gauntlet with metal posts that moved around
the hallway randomly. It forced the entrant to forget they had eyes, and find
their way as quickly as they could with their hands outstretched.
“I remember seeing you take this course before you
changed,” Pip said. “It seemed like cheating to me every time. You never really
had to use your head, you just pushed through. Finishing the course means much
more to you now, yes?”
“That’s the truth.” Alice stared at the entrance for a
moment before asking; “any advice?”
Pip finished picking up his tools and nodded. “Stop taking
the course the way it wants you to.”
“What does that mean?”
“Take it even slower this time, you’ll see,” Pip said.
She did exactly as he said, looking for ways around
the more complicated sections of the course, the ones that threatened to slow
her down the most, and found several alternative routes along the way. Every
one of them required some thought, and often some extra effort for a few
moments, like a tight squeeze or a short climb up a post, but most of the
alternate routes rewarded her by cutting precious seconds off her time. Some
obstacles she could not complete without falling and climbing through netting
or triggering traps she knew were there but had to press through became
possible as she noticed unconventional solutions.
Climbing over monkey bars and running along the side
rails over top was safer, and cut her time down. Staying against one wall until
she ran into an obstacle, then returning to the same wall once she was past it
in blacked out sections of the course made her progress easier. Climbing most
of the way up a steep incline then swinging around the top instead of over
saved her energy and again, reduced the amount of time it took. In the whipping
gauntlet, where dozens of arms that were hard enough to hurt but not so hard
that her vacsuit would protect her, she found a tripping arm that was loose
enough for her to pull off, so she could block most of the arms as they came at
her from the walls and ceilings. There was even a hole on the outside of the
course where she could return the arm to its actuator when she was finished.
There were hand and foot holds disguised as parts of
the course everywhere, once she knew how to look for them, the course was less
linear, and more a series of physical multiple choice questions. Alice approached
Pip the third time she finished running the course that day. Those were also
the first times she’d finished the course without having to drop out of a few
sections after several attempts, skipping parts that seemed impossible. “It’s
cheating,” she told him.
“No, you are problem solving. This course is made to
shape soldiers’ bodies, true, but also their minds. Three-dimensional thinking,
an understanding of efficient movement, and basic problem solving are all
critical to any effective soldier. Besides, you are just as well exercised
today as you were yesterday, when you took that course as though there was only
one way through, didn’t even make it through some sections after throwing
yourself at them as hard as you could. Completing the course at all on your own
is an accomplishment for anyone, you must feel better today than you did
yesterday, a little proud.”
“I guess so, I ran it three times before calling it
quits,” Alice replied, towelling her face off. Stray curls made the act more
complicated than it had to be, and she decided to straighten her red hair
before trying the course again.
“Good,” Pip said. “We’re adding a new vertical
tomorrow, a five-part segment, go rest up.”
“Just wondering, did Lacey have anything to do with
you helping me out here?”
“No, but she did tell me what your day away from the
course is like, and I’m not surprised that you try so hard when you’re here.
Impressed, maybe, but not surprised. If I had to go through legal and
regulation tutorials for six hours a day, I’d be throwing myself into that
course every chance I got.”
Alice’s preparation regimen for the Triton Fleet
Academy kept her busy for most of the day and into the night. Law, history,
Triton Fleet regulations and common technology study sessions were only interrupted
by testing sessions and her time on the obstacle course. She liked the
challenge, but by the end of each day her brain and body were equally tired, so
much so that she looked forward to the regimen that would be imposed on her
once she got in to the Advanced Officer Training Program.
For days she thought she was the only one following
the preparation routine, but she found out that there were eleven more people
doing the same thing, only they didn’t even look in the obstacle course’s
direction. From that moment on she couldn’t help but be curious about who the
other students were, and how their scores compared. She wasn’t allowed to see
that information, so she only worked on her studies harder. They were ghostly
critics and competitors, who she pictured watching her succeed and fail through
Crewcast even though she knew that wasn’t possible.
The vertical section of the course, which included
sections of metal netting, rope netting, climbing areas with various types of
handholds – including break-aways that were made to fail – and a forty nine
degree inverted top, defeated her. Her exercise suit saved her from a broken
neck on her second attempt. She finished the course without completing the two
tower section and returned to her studies.
The next day she moved through the five segments of
the course that she’d grown to know then stopped at the first tower of the
vertical section. Alice knew why she didn’t complete it the previous day.
Thinking about it kept her up all night. She attacked the vertical section the
day before, afraid to stop mid obstacle and inspect her surroundings. With a
slower approach, she started climbing the chain net that led to the first
climbing tower, and she made her way up, testing her hand holds, working her
way sideways when she wasn’t sure her reach was long enough. The first tower
presented its own solution when she made it almost all the way to the other
side and found a seam in the wall. That was the key hand hold for someone her
height, and she finished getting to the top of the ten-metre tower easily. By
the time she was crossing to the second tower, she was completely focused on
carefully finding her way to the top. Her fingers hurt, and her shoulders
ached, but she didn’t feel weak, so Alice decided to press on.
Alice was half way up a rope net when she realized
that there was a short cut up the last few metres of the second tower. The
surface she was climbing towards had three handholds on the far side, and one
edge of the rope swing was loose, really loose. She made her way to that loose
end and looked down. Those slim hand holds would get her several metres across
one face of the tower, saving her long minutes. The risk was clear, if she
missed she would fall twelve metres. The reward? She’d be within two metres of
the top, close to more hand holds, and around the forty nine degree incline.
Pushing off from the wall in front of her, she began
swinging towards the three hand holds on the far edge of the side wall of the
tower. Alice was able to swing within half a metre of them. “No way,” she said
to herself, mentally picturing herself making the leap, clearing the half
metre, only to have the hand holds crumble in her fingers.
Instead of trusting the course, she swung again,
lashing out with her foot to kick the top handhold. It was solid. She repeated
the act with the one below it, and it burst as though it were made of dry clay.
It would have been the easiest one to grab if she jumped. Her foot landed a
blow on the third handhold, the lowest, and she found it was solid.
Alice took a practice swing, her palms were starting
to sweat. She held her breath as she swung out as far as she could, then let go
of rope as it reached its apex and almost went right past the handholds before
she caught one with both hands. Her fingers ached at the shock and the
pressure, her suit not helping at all. “Holy crap, I got it,” she whispered to
herself hoarsely, securing her grip. A drop of sweat ran down her nose and
dripped off the tip.
It took all her strength to pull herself up so she
could reach the handhold above. With a curse at her height, or lack thereof,
her fingers curled around the top handhold and she kept pulling. There was no
way she could reach the top of the tower using those two handholds, so she
secured her grip, resting a foot on the lower hold as she checked around the
tower’s next corner.
A crack in the edging of the wall was the only way she
could see herself getting up. Alice realized she’d have to hold there, get her
foot up on the top handhold she was leaving behind, then push up the rest of
the way, a three step move to the top.
It took her entire reach to get her hand to the crack
and she wedged her hand into it. “Oh, God,” she said as she pulled and swung
against the edge of the tower. She was almost there, high enough to reach out
with her foot to the handhold she just left and make the rest of the distance
to the tower top. Her hand protested as she swung her legs back towards her last
handhold, staying on the wall with the grip of one hand in a crevasse. Her
whole body almost swung free of the tower when her legs pendulum swung back and
away from the corner of the wall, but Alice managed to hold on.
One more swing of her legs got her foot back to her
last hand hold, so she could push the rest of the way up the tower. That trick
had saved her a trip up a forty-five degree incline that would have tired her
out just as much, and slowed her down even more. The first time she stood on
top of that tower, she couldn’t help but grin at herself and take a moment to
enjoy the view over the cliff side. The sandy beach, lush jungle bordering it,
and ocean beyond was being lit by the first dawn that week. The ruddy red light
shed by Kambis as it burned was overpowered by the yellow hues of dawn.
A week later she found an even better way to best that
tower, and she had mastered that changing course. Pip made sure there were
Rangers around during those last three days when she was practicing. In the two
hours she had on the course, she could run it seven times before she had to
quit for the day. The only parts she was wary of every time was the third
segment – the floor and all the obstacles were constantly moving – and the
vertical segment. That last segment taxed everyone’s endurance, regardless of
how good they were at climbing.
On the seventh day Pip had most of the Ranger trainees
there, at least six hundred fifty by her count, and a new group she hadn’t seen
before. There was an army of them in white vacsuits with a yellow stripe down
the sides. Alice ignored them, and ran her three practice runs through the
course, then lapped around to the front, took a drink of her blended citrus
juice and burst into a timed run. It would be her last attempt at the course as
a civilian.
The course was once an elaborate torture device that
reminded her that she was less than she once was, but fourteen days later she
had mastered it. The course, her physical condition, and her method of approach
were important, but the crucial thing was the mind behind the changing obstacle
run. Pip was a master designer, and was responsible for all two hundred and ten
metres of the course, but he only had one mind. He was her real opponent, and
learning the course was a way of learning how he thought, where he would hide
advantages, and what surprises he might set up for someone who isn’t as wary as
they ought to be. The most common habit Pip had was his tendency to install
obstacles that punished the unwary. He was a brilliant trickster who understood
what kind of soldier his contraption was made to produce.
The course was well on its way to conditioning her
physically, the progress she made was staggering but she also had to take
recovery meds every night so she could do it the next day. Her flexibility and
strength were on the increase, and by the time she did that timed run in front
of over two thousand young people, she felt light, confident, and powerful.
Alice finished the course to the sound of applause,
and didn’t feel like bowing or smiling at the people who gathered there. There
were some black and yellow suited people in a small group standing separately
from the rest. She knew who they were immediately – they were about to enter
the regular Fleet Academy Officer’s program. Nine months of gruelling training
awaited them, and she was about to begin the fast track version of the same
thing, where she was expected to do the same thing in six months.
“Can I have a moment, Officer Trainee?” Pip asked,
gesturing towards a spot on the speaking platform beside him.
“Yes, Sir,” she said as she joined him, towelling the
sweat off of her face and neck.
“This is Alice Valent, you may not recognize her
because she recently underwent serious medical treatment. All of her framework
technology was removed using the latest technology, so she is as human as any
of you. She has been running this course every day for two weeks while prepping
for the Triton Fleet Officer Fast Track Program. The one you did not qualify
for. Her qualification trials begin tomorrow, and I expect to hear good
things.”
Alice looked at the two thousand assembled,
stony-eyed, standing perfectly straight. Setting an example wasn’t her purpose
that day, what she wanted to do was set a record, and she had. A glance at the
command and control surface on the forearm of her exercise suit told her
everything she wanted to know. Her timed run put her three minutes and fifty
seconds faster than any other human on the new course. She was forty-two
seconds behind the best nafalli time set by Iruuk Murlen.
“You will notice that she is much shorter than
average, just over one point five metres, but she is in excellent shape. Seeing
all of you people here did not distract her from her purpose, she did not show
off, but took her practice runs before a timed trial. The course was not
adjusted to suit any of her shortcomings, and it kicked her ass for the first
week. She has never had a group or partner on this course, and makes the co-op
section look like a walk in a meadow while she’s taking it solo. I encourage
you all to try to solo the co-op section once in your off time sometime in the
next month, just to see how good she is.”
“There’s a co-op section?” Alice asked in a whisper.
“Fourth segment,” Pip replied.
Alice could have hit him, there was nothing marking
that long section of the course as a co-op segment, and it was the most
puzzling area. She wasn’t able to finish the obvious path through without
falling into shock netting. Instead, she learned to go around in not-so-obvious
ways, climbing posts, crossing supports, and doing a horizontal ladder climb
underneath the last obstacle for that segment on bars that were so far apart
she had to catch two of the middle ones with her feet and use her momentum to
finish, something she still hadn’t mastered.
Pip continued. “Valent is officer material. This is
the kind of person who gets into an advanced program and will outrank you when
you finish training. By the time you graduate she will have already seen things
you cannot believe, have experience in command, and be able to kick your ass
back into place without breaking a sweat. I do not expect you to surpass her
example, but I will send you straight home if you stop trying. You just saw her
set a record, and if it’s not beaten by the end of the month, I’m going to hold
your class back until I’m satisfied that our new crewmembers are not soft. The
good news is that you will not have to beat her record alone. You will have
teams to practice this course with,” he said to the gathering. “You have six
hours to complete it over three days, anyone who does not is rejected from their
program. You will have to apply again next year. I’m going to make sure that
you’re good enough to serve under Alice Valent by the time your finished here,
or you won’t serve at all. Now, group one, head in slowly.” He pointed at the
group of Officer Academy Trainees and five of their vacsuits blinked white
several times before they headed down to the dark entrance of the obstacle
course. “Your goal is to finish together, you will not finish this course solo
the first time out, I guarantee it. Be careful, your suits will save you from
most broken bones, but it won’t save you from the beating this course will give
you if you do not pay attention.”
“Enjoy your last day as a civilian, Alice,” Pip said
to her quietly, offering his hand. “I didn’t think you’d finish when I saw you
here the first day, but you changed my mind on the second.”
“Too short?” Alice said, shaking his hand.
“No, I’ve never seen anyone take a beating that bad
and come back unless it was a direct order. You must have a little masochist in
you.”
“Just trying to measure up to my own expectations,
Sargent,” Alice replied. She pulled the tie from her straightened red hair and
shook her mane loose.
“Keep it up, you’re going to make one hell of an
Officer,” Pip said.
“Thank you, Sargent Markase. I’ll be back for my
physical qualifier,” Alice said. “Install a few surprises before then if you
can.”
“Count on it.”
