Chapter 25: Room Temperature

"I received a report that you are breaking him, colonel."

"He is not breaking, general. If you spoke to him yourself you would see that. He is hard working, delighted to have been given a chance."

"I'm also told that he only responds to you."

"I would not call it that, but I spoke before of his fondness for his father and his need for approval. However, his father is not here, and I am. He has someone he respects, who respects him in return. Therefore he listens to me."

"You don't respect him. You've set yourself up as a mentor, but you stack the deck against him."

"I am doing what you requested of me, general. You gave me two years to turn him into a skilled pilot and an officer. That does not mean I do not respect the materials I've been given, even if I've had to rebuild him from the boy he was into the boy he is."

"And you do not think he will later become an embarrassment to us?"

"What is this really about, general? Where did this 'report' come from? On second thought, never mind. I know who sent it."

-GC-

Daryl scratched his way through his Japanese essay on the tanka poems he'd been assigned in class. The words came more quickly in his head than to his fingers on the touchpad, and sometimes the autoselector didn't settle on the right kanji and he would have to change it.

His tutoring session was quiet tonight, outside of when he asked Harada for assistance with constructing a complex sentence. The lieutenant was more fluent than he was, though Daryl though he was catching up quickly. Sometimes when he wasn't paying attention, he would find himself thinking in Japanese instead of English, which Harada said was a good sign.

After all this was over he still hoped he would be assigned to the GHQ in Japan. His Japanese studies should make him a good candidate for working there, and then he could see his father again. Assuming his father would want to. But if he didn't go back, there was no way to know for sure, was there.

He also missed Japan more than he thought he would. Though the menu at the academy mess offered international foods from time to time, they didn't have the kinds of meals he remembered from his time in Tokyo. He hadn't had a good plate of soba noodles since he left, and he didn't even hope for dim sum.

Daryl glanced at the clock on his tablet and decided that he had enough. The essay was not due for another two days, and it was time to go. He powered down and pushed back his chair.

Harada looked up from own his own tablet and said, "Are you done?"

"I'll finish tomorrow. I just have some editing left."

He worked a lot faster now that he no longer needed to worry about his general requirements.

Harada nodded. "All right. It seems there's less and less that I really need to teach you."

It was true. Daryl's simulator training against Harada had ended entirely now that he used the Insect as part of Panther Squad's regular practice, and the lieutenant's skill level was no longer above his own, or even that of the better Panther Squad members.

But Daryl still came to his study sessions, because Brandt expected him to, and because on the occasions he did need help, Harada still good for that.

"Listen," said the lieutenant, "I want to ask you something."

"What?" Something in the lieutenant's tone had changed. It was tentative, and not the voice of an instructor.

"Are you happy with where you are?"

"Well, it could be better, but for the most part yeah." It wasn't as though anyone could actually help Daryl with his father. "My grades are passing and I know I'm a pretty good pilot, probably one of the best at the academy."

"But you didn't ask to come here, and you didn't ask to become Kill 'Em All Daryl."

He rubbed the side of his head, confused. "No, I didn't, but that wasn't my choice, right? I'm sorry about the name. I hadn't realized it had gotten to the staff. Is Colonel Brandt upset?"

Maybe she thought it was immature, that he was being uncooperative with the other students. But he didn't think his behavior was out of line, and it wasn't as though he had chosen the name himself.

"No, she's not. It's... just me," said Harada. "You seem like a nice person, Daryl. I've been working with you over a year now, and I know how hard you've struggled not just to catch up with everyone academically, but to surpass them in the neural pod as a pilot. It must hurt to see how far everyone's pulling away from you."

"But it doesn't. Really." Daryl held up his hands, palms turned up. "The other cadets... They don't matter. They aren't the ones in control of my life. The ones who make the decisions are the people above me; the colonel, the instructors, my father."

"Do you want to be a puppet?"

Daryl stared, and something told him that what Harada was asking was out of line, that there was something he wasn't seeing. The lieutenant's voice was tight, and he was standing half out of his seat.

"Aren't we supposed to be?" said Daryl. "I may be a kid, but even I knew that as soon as I became a cadet my life wasn't going to be my own. They point me in the direction they want me to go, and I do my job and do it well." He thought about it and added, "Very well."

"It's fine to do your job," said Harada, "but you're not supposed to be getting off on it. That's not how an officer is supposed to act on the battlefield."

Daryl scowled. "I'm not 'getting off' on it. I'm making it clear exactly where I am in the pilot hierarchy, because there is one here, and it's not connected with rank. An enemy is not going to cut me any slack because I'm fifteen. But if he's afraid of me, he'll think twice about attacking. He'll doubt his own ability."

"He'll do crazy things to try to take you out."

Like the Cheetah pilot, was what Harada was saying. Daryl stood and tucked his tablet under an arm. "And we know how well that turned out. I don't know what you're getting at, Lieutenant Harada, but I get the impression that it's not what Brandt assigned you for."

"It isn't, but I'm trying to make you understand that you don't have to act this way."

"Who's acting? Nothing about what I'm doing is pretend."

Something in Harada's behavior annoyed him, and Daryl had just about enough of it. He turned and walked to the door.

A chair scraped behind him. "You might not be pretending, but you have to have noticed that you're not the same person you were when you entered the academy."

"I know I'm not," said Daryl. "I'm stronger."

"Because you are being made in what you are. None of it has been your choice."

Daryl opened the door, irritated, and said, "I don't think it's ever been, but the thing is I have a purpose, I have something I am good at, I am someone, and I have respect. It doesn't matter to me if it's through fear."

He saw the stunned look on the lieutenant's face as he left the room and he grinned. Harada didn't know him. The lieutenant only thought he did.

-GC-

Victoria Walters was waiting for him the next time he went to join Panther Squad for practice. She stood outside the simulator room, back to the wall, swiping through her tablet until he came up to the door.

"We need to talk," she said, before he could walk past.

"Are you my command liaison for the final?" he asked.

"Yes. I requested you, and thankfully, I got my choice this time."

Daryl frowned. "You should have been moved to high command."

She chuckled and lowered her tablet. "That's how I know you don't have the power most people think you do. If you did, I would be."

He shrugged. "So what do you need?"

"You're the only pilot assigned to this Insect and I need to design the strategy for the command team. Ever since the new Endlaves were put into play, everyone's been trying them out in the simulators. The Gautier is a breeze. I'd be happy to trade up from my Jumeau if I was going to do another round in the cockpit before graduation. But the Insect... I can barely crawl in that thing."

"I can pilot it," said Daryl.

"I know you can. Your squadmates have said as much, and they're impressed that you can handle something with six legs and no wheels. It'll be a game changer. But we don't know how to incorporate it yet."

That he could answer.

"Ambushing. Climbing," he said. "I'm not hampered by terrain like standard Endlaves are. I could get all of Panther Squad on a roof now, just by carrying others on my back and then lifting myself."

Victoria nodded approvingly. "That's added mobility we didn't have before." She paused. "This is something you were trained for? Considering that no one else can pilot it..."

"Yeah."

"Hm." But Victoria said nothing else on that note. Instead she asked, "Has anyone spoken to you about the setup for the other team?"

"Official news should come from you, right? We haven't had a strategic meeting yet for the squad commanders."

"That's true, but sometimes rumors spread, especially unfavorable ones. I don't like this new format for the final. The instructors said something early enough for us to prepare, but still, for someone like me who's on the tail end of four years here, it's quite a shift in expectation. I mean, we're future officers, so why is our decision making being called in question with the set squads?"

Daryl shrugged. "Maybe because they think we won't get as much of a choice in a real world situation."

"There's a degree of truth in that, but if that were the case you think they would be fairly balanced with who they place where. The instructors have access to all our grades and win statistics after all."

"What do you mean?"

Victoria looked down and manipulated the display on her tablet. She handed it to Daryl. "It's not immediately obvious," she said, "but the data is there. Look at the breakdown."

He saw what she meant. The way the teams were divided up was unbalanced. It wasn't to say that the squads that made up his and Victoria's team were a complete loss. There was Panther, obviously, and he recognized Orca, which was still solid team, even if they were perpetually undermanned, but over half of the better yearling squads and all but two of the highest ranked plebe squads were on the opposing team. There were just enough strong squads on Daryl's side that at first glance no one would notice just how drastically lop-sided the team allocation had been.

"You think the instructors did this on purpose?" he said.

"They're not stupid. And I hope they don't think we are as well."

He handed the tablet back to her. "If you're right on both counts, then they expect us to do something about it. They would not be setting us up to lose."

"Is your Insect so strong that they need to stack the better squads against us?"

"No. It's just an Endlave. It has additional mobility, it's bigger, but that also makes it a bigger target. It doesn't move as fast either, given its weight."

"There's something else too."

He cocked his head, not likely the sound of her voice. "What?"

"All the firsties were told that the Insect and the Gautier would be debuting in this final. We know how the Insect handles, so I'd be surprised if the opposing team has more than one or two people who can also pilot an Insect. That makes it easy to factor into our team's overall strategy. But the Gautier is so smooth anyone with Jumeau experience can easily step into it."

"Why's that a problem?"

"Because..." She sighed and held the tablet to her head. "None of the pilots on our team have been assigned one."

"How can that be possible?"

If the final was supposed to include both models, would they really only give the Gautier to one side? He began to wonder if perhaps the other side did not have an Insect either, and that was supposed to be the balance. Maybe it was one new Endlave for one new Endlave, but that did not explain the rigging of the squad assignments.

Victoria lowered her tablet and shrugged. "I don't know. But we know that the opposing team must have at least one, otherwise why bring it up at all? I just wish I knew how many. I'd like you to keep your ears open when you're in the mess, see if you can figure out which of the other cadets are Gautier pilots. It's not really something we'd ordinarily worry about for a final, but in this case I think a little intelligence work is on the docket."

Privately he agreed, but he asked, "Is that against the rules?"

"Who knows?" She smiled as if it didn't matter. "They didn't say it's not and by looking at the roster we know that someone's not playing fair. If they think this is balanced, then let's bring other weapons to bear."

A/N: The graduation final begins next chapter! Thanks for all the reviews, everyone, and for sticking with the story this long.

By the way, Spectre is the Insect's in-development codename. Insect is what it's called to avoid leaking the plans to people outside the Spectre Program since Brandt has to call it something when speaking to Daryl. Assuming the Spectre makes it from prototype to production it would be probably given a new name (one reader guessed earlier) so the Spectre Program records could be sealed without connection to the final product.