i command armies

[autokinetic]

Sue graduates from Tactical School a year early, he's barely fifteen. He's toned down the flirting - he treats Aegis completely platonically, in particular - and has cut down on the unhealthy amount of sleeping-with-everything-that-wants. And he's apparently, via his independent study, gotten far enough through the curriculum that they're nudging him along to Command.

They've given Sue a strange old man for a tutor, who appeared in his room and started a physical confrontation, which Sue won; Sue related this story to her with something between amusement and irritation.

And a quicker-than-average flurry of notes has been piling up in the psych data since about that time, according to the timestamps.

Aegis knows before they tell her that they're going to send her to Command early too. She's just barely fifteen herself when she gets another update of the psych files and sees that Sue's had - well, the files aren't terribly clear, some of the communication is happening via in-person conversation and memos that don't get stored in these folders, but Sue's had some kind of breakdown and the only things they can think of to get him out of it, get him back into shape to train and fight, are her friendship and Howlett. They have mixed feelings about both - Howlett's insubordination problem; their bewilderment that Aegis and Sue can be so close when "she's the one person he can't link!" - but they're desperate.

Bird? They don't talk as often over the long distance, just as there was a lull when he went to Tactical ahead of her; their schedules have nothing in common and their contexts less. But he knows her, and he can reach this far if he tries. And she wants to know what's wrong.

Comments

[pythbox]

"Don't look at me," shrugs Sue. "Maybe they didn't think of it. Maybe they didn't care."

[autokinetic]

"That's - I've been updating a lot in favor of the I.F. is run by amoral idiots lately, but that's just staggering even after all that. Why send people? The expense - the difficulty of keeping it quiet, all those families back home who'd have to be told that their soldier relatives were dead - even if they thought they might not find their genius commander and wanted to be able to turn over the battles to non-geniuses, there's no reason to have those non-geniuses physically with the fleet. They weren't expecting you with your particular mutation to make it potentially invaluable to have brains over there, and even if they'd seen you coming it'd be just as easy for you to link brains over here. The unconventional inputs wouldn't be a tremendous loss, not compared to all those people. So - what do they need the people for -"

She thinks.

"To land," she speculates finally. "Colonies. We're gonna wipe out the buggers and take all their stuff."

[pythbox]

"Maybe," says Sue.

[autokinetic]

"If it's not that, then the I.F. are such amoral idiots that I might puke the next time I see a grownup," says Aegis frankly.

[pythbox]

Sue laughs.

You should take over, he sends cheerfully. I'd back you in a second.

[autokinetic]

If we win this thing they'll probably make us all admirals and give us desk jobs and then I will fuck some shit up.

[pythbox]

Aegis is the beeeeeeeeeeeeeest. He sends to that effect.

[autokinetic]

But first we have to win. The I.F. might be amoral idiots but they're not the only ones in the line of fire if we don't get the buggers before they get us.

"Can you link up Ahmed? I want to see if he's up for talking to Rackham about buggers for us," says Aegis.

[pythbox]

He shrugs, and does that.

[autokinetic]

Ahmed is up for talking to Rackham (holy shit, Mazer Rackham's alive?). He is appropriately stunned about the reality of their fight, but he's game.

Aegis names others to link up and inform, one at a time.

[pythbox]

Sue runs through them all.

Nobody snaps immediately, anyway.

[autokinetic]

"I wonder why they only gave us six," Aegis murmurs when they're through. "I wonder why only two are yours. You had more toon leaders than that, they worked with you fine."

[pythbox]

"Don't look at me," he says again.

[autokinetic]

"Well, you could speculate. Is there something special about those two?"

[pythbox]

"...They weren't such big shit-disturbers, compared to the rest of my army when I was done with 'em," he offers.

[autokinetic]

"For mine they picked the smartest Medusa and the toon leader with the most transferable specialties," muses Aegis.

[pythbox]

"I think," he muses, "out of all the people who weren't shit-disturbers in Phoenix, Orion and Henrik were the smartest."

[autokinetic]

"What d'you mean by 'shit-disturber', here?"

[pythbox]

"I mean... like me," he says. "Like you, kinda. People who won't take shit from a superior officer."

[autokinetic]

"I guess they didn't want to damage unit cohesion but they couldn't get you in without me so I don't count," muses Aegis. "Or they just don't think I'll countermand you - or they think it doesn't matter since they gave me the button anyway."

[pythbox]

He shrugs.

[autokinetic]

"Not in the mood to play guess-the-intention-behind-this-command-decision today?"

[pythbox]

"Amoral idiots," he reminds her.

[autokinetic]

"Yes, but not random number generators."

[pythbox]

He laughs. "Maybe that's how they picked our staff."