autokinetic | i command armies

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

autokinetic

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

From:

pythbox

"Amoral idiots," he reminds her.

From:

autokinetic

"Yes, but not random number generators."

From:

pythbox

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

From:

autokinetic

"Maybe they booted up the old fantasy game and got it to pick," snorts Aegis. "Maybe they were having a good day on the 'moral' axis and polled everybody and these are the volunteers."

From:

pythbox

"I miss that game," he sighs, and hugs her.

From:

autokinetic

"I miss it too," she says, hugging back.

From:

pythbox

Hug hug hug.

"Bird," he mumbles, smiling.

From:

autokinetic

Bird bird bird, she replies, smiling back.

From:

pythbox

He sends her the remembered image of bird-hugs.

Actual hugs are superior.

From:

autokinetic

They are!

From:

pythbox

The battle schedule is relatively light; their next engagement is almost a day later.

As Sue settles himself in front of the simulator, he tries to scrutinize it with his power, looking for minds.

From:

autokinetic

Aegis takes over much of the work of getting their forces divvied up and assessing the field of engagement while Sue works on that.

From:

pythbox

He pushes himself. With a little work, he can see Earth, lit by the glow of billions of minds. But he needs to go much, much farther than that, to a pattern that looks like the ships glowing in the simulator, to... almost, almost, he's almost got it, just a little farther, if he could just reach...

A sparkle of golden light by the side of his neck, and then there's a housefly zipping into the lights of the simulator, dancing from ship to ship. Sue flips the perspective of his display, rotating through the formation twice, then slides out to an expanded view that shows all of them. He feels like he's there, all of a sudden, like he is literally, physically present among the fleet.

He finds commanders and taps his mind across theirs like a child dragging a stick along a fence.

From:

autokinetic

Hell yes.

Processing power for the win.

The buggers never know what hit them.

Blue Moon's flagship has a scratch on it at the end. A literal scratch; he was doing a tight formation and one scraped along another. Nobody dies.

When the simulator goes dark Aegis throws herself across the room to fling her arms around Sue.

From:

pythbox

Sue flings his arms around her right back. There's a golden flicker in the air, and his link to the far-off commanders wavers, then steadies. He lets them go one at a time, then the local staff, and finally Aegis.

From:

autokinetic

"Beautiful," she exclaims, hugging him tight. "We're golden. Just gotta keep it up."

From:

pythbox

He laughs and, in the spirit of celebration, kisses her forehead.

From:

autokinetic

She takes it as a chastely meant gesture, and grins and lets him go. "Okay, I have to pee, and I have to eat something, and then I have to dance up and down a long corridor about six times because I am manic right now," she says, and she races for the nearest bathroom.