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]

Anything. Sometimes he just stares at me for a while, or says something about how the enemy ever waits, and then lets me go back to sleep. He hasn't done it since I quit, but it hasn't been that long, so I don't know if it's just not time yet in his nasty old fart schedule.

[autokinetic]

Well, we'll see if I can run interference. Let him read my psych file if he wants it and decide what to do from there, they're less confused about me than they are about you, they have a few years of me reading my own mind and laying it all out in English for them.

[pythbox]

You're the best, he says happily.

[autokinetic]

I am!

[pythbox]

You aaaaaaaare.

[autokinetic]

My orders didn't specify an ETA. I'm gonna ask the pilot. Aegis hops to her feet and knocks on the door to the control room.

[pythbox]

It opens.

"What," says a familiar voice from the pilot's chair.

[autokinetic]

"Oh, it's you. Hi, sir. I wanted to know when we expect to arrive at Command School." It's Howlett.

[pythbox]

"Classified," he says. "And by that I mean, I don't know either. They're feeding the course into the computer piece by piece."

[autokinetic]

"Well," says Aegis reasonably, "how much food's listed in the ship manifest?"

[pythbox]

...He laughs.

"More than we need, I damn well hope."

[autokinetic]

"Sure, but we can still tell the difference between a month's supply giving us leeway for a week and a year's supply giving us leeway for eight months."

[pythbox]

"We have enough food for two years," he says. "And I know it doesn't take two years to get to Command School."

[autokinetic]

"Harrumph."

How long did it take you to make this trip? It's feeding Howlett little bits of course, it's apparently so classified they can't tell him where he's flying all in one go.

[pythbox]

I don't remember, he says. Do you? I told you when I left and when I got here, right?

[autokinetic]

You didn't tell me right when you got there, you'd been there a few days before we talked again and I don't know how many, so I only know it was ballpark of a week.

[pythbox]

Well, that's more than Howlett knows, he points out cheerfully.

[autokinetic]

Yeah. "Why's the location so secret, or is that as secret as the location itself?"

[pythbox]

Howlett spreads his hands. "Above my pay grade, kid."

[autokinetic]

"Do you know why they're reassigning you?"

[pythbox]

"I could guess."

[autokinetic]

"Oh, please do, we could be here for as long as two years for all they've told either of us and if we don't chat however shall we pass the time?"

[pythbox]

He laughs.

"Last I heard, we've got a friend in common," he says. "And he goes to Command."

[autokinetic]

"Sue," says Aegis, and otherwise she waits for Howlett to go on.

[pythbox]

"So if the two of us got pulled out of the middle of a term at Tactical to go to Command, I bet something's wrong with him," says Howlett. "And knowing that kid, it could be just about anything."