TAC 22.06.3595 — H-1030 | [Overgate City, Kellao]

  The private rail wasn't all that surprising.

  Given Knight's vocation, it also wasn't uncommon. Draven's uncle rarely took public transportation, and for good reason. While not necessarily vulnerable, stations weren't impregnable fortresses, and anyone stupid enough to try their luck could still cause tremendous collateral damage. They'd likely fail, as Knight's A-rank was nothing to scoff at, but civilians would suffer.

  Draven, conversely, was just glad for private bathrooms.

  "Forgot what it was like to be rich," sighed Wardell as their ship shuddered off the ground.

  Draven, studying his tablet Glass, snickered, "Oh yeah. How's the mud? Can't imagine how dilapidated the capital of the Systems' most affluent industrial powerhouse must be."

  Wardell made a face. "Very funny. If I'm not standing somewhere stupid doing nothing, I'm waiting to be sent somewhere stupid for nothing. Sometimes Summoned, sometimes not. Sometimes outside, sometimes not. I mean, even my [Fort] is straining from swimming through all this money."

  Shanelle, seated beside him, glanced over Draven's shoulder. "What's that?"

  "Firebirds are dropping Gleason." He tilted the screen to let her see better, then, in a nasally, pretend-aristocratic voice, narrated, "'A mutual conclusion to an exceptional partnership due to diverging creative vision'."

  Wardell, a bit more up-to-date on Scion League gossip, blinked in amazement. "No kidding? Who'd they bring in?"

  Draven winced.

  "It can't be that bad."

  "Morikubo."

  "Ouu." Wardell cringed theatrically, almost laughing. "That's horrendous."

  Shanelle looked between them. "What does any of that mean?"

  "Firebirds," Draven explained slowly, as if to an infant, "ran the Hol's T-S for three straight seasons thanks to this insane coach. It was… cartoonish. Like… rezzes, Shan. It was so, so stupid how much better he made them." Draven paused, groping for sufficiently impactful examples. "Oh! So they had this kid, Moeri. Joined in ninety-one, and he was terrible. Twenty-three years old, B7 [Fleet] freak. Garbage rookie season. Staggeringly garbage rookie season. I think he actually ended the year with four takes and basically no caps. Keep in mind, they'd coined him as the team's ticket to Ra contention. They'd kept a pretty decent sixty-one without—"

  "Slow down!" Shanelle massaged her temples. "Takes, caps, Ra, and sixty-one what?"

  "Eliminations." Draven's lips pursed tiredly. "When you killshot an opponent, it's called a take. You know how Games have flags to capture? Right, Shan? The castle things—"

  "Yes, Dray." Shanelle eyed Draven warningly.

  "That's a cap. The Ra is the award for the team with the most points by the end of the regular season, and sixty-one was their win rate."

  Wardell's features pinched reflectively. "Moeri... Weaver, right?"

  "Yep. So—"

  "Hold on!" complained Shanelle. "Hol T-S?"

  Draven rubbed his eyes. "I blame myself." He took a breath. "The Horus System's League is the Hol. T-S is the Team Bracket, also called War Games, Silver level." He dipped his voice patronizingly. "That's B-ranks."

  "I know what the Silver is," she snapped.

  "Thank the stars," he muttered. "Anyways, everyone was gearing up for the hardest carry job of all time. We're talking high velocity wing play. Blindside lifts, smash and grab mayhem. The hype was so loud, Javion Ackerman, the old coach, had the gall to talk seed targets ahead of training camp. That's three weeks before the season opener, by the way. Again, this squad finished seventeenth out of twenty. The sheer magnitude of their arrogance would've been breathtaking had Moeri not been that much of a messianic signing."

  "Seed being…"

  "Playoff placement, Shan." He shook his head dejectedly. "Surely you've had Net connection at some point in the past decade?"

  "Not really, no." She waved for him to continue. "So, gardening, and this Weaver."

  "Right." Draven quickly queued up a highlight reel on his Glass and handed it to his cousin. "Like I said, prodigious. He's got S-Iron [Fleet], Shan. At B7. And his academy clips were ridiculous. Obviously, that lopsided of a split killed his [Fort], leading to innumerable gank attempts that simply could not get around this guy's insane fyzzing spe—" Draven caught her expression. "Ambushing in numbers."

  "Ah."

  "By every known metric, failure was simply not possible. It ran counter to everything we knew about War Games as a concept." Draven shuddered. "It was awful. You could see his confidence imploding live on Feeds, and no one knew how to help him."

  "What does this have to do with your... Gelson person?"

  "I'm getting there." Draven snatched back his Glass. "So, ninety-one? Disaster. Ninety-two-three rolls around, and everyone thinks he's a bust. Firebirds are days away from demoting him to one of their affiliates for 'development' when they hire this Joel Gleason guy. Younger dude, thin resume, though it did include the absolute hell he wreaked in the Ann T-B."

  Shanelle frowned. "Ann... Anubis League?"

  "See? You're getting it."

  He expanded Gleason's profile as their ship rocketed through Kellao's atmosphere, spreading exit fires over their shields and painting the windows gold. A few moments later, they stabilized in the sea of open space.

  Draven continued, "Gleason tells them, 'nah, keep him. We'll straighten him out in the offseason'. Everyone thinks he's lost it. I cannot properly articulate how unprecedented Moeri was. The gap between his expected and actual output was probably six or seven times larger than the next three worst underperformers combined. But then the season starts up again, and something crazy happens."

  Shanelle joined Wardell in watching his screen, where a dark blue blur danced through dozens of attacks and Abilities from three larger, powerful Scions.

  "He's class." Draven shook his head. "It took The Scribe two weeks to figure out why. Ackerman profiled him all wrong. He'd started him as a clamp harrier, rushing alongside the initial assault before gaping to nick the egg, but that's a specialization, and not his. Never managed to crack it because, surprise surprise, he's a full-throttle winger. You can't truly weaponize speed without space, and the second he got some, he went wild. Moeri hadn't lost his mojo, they just never let him find it. This guy thrived out wide, and when really locked in, was an eel."

  He paused as their ship adjusted, found its trail and bulleted into warp. The slight nausea faded, and Draven unbuckled to stretch beside his relatives.

  "Long story short," he concluded, "Gleason turned him into the monster everyone expected. Quick, dangerous, and completely untouchable. He was so good, they started using him as a primary prod to crash courtyards and soften blocks for a trailing guard. As a harrier." He scowled. "You're not amazed enough. Non–[Forces] are basically never primaries because you're too outnumbered to do anything other than tank. Unless, of course, you move like greased lightning. Something we only learned because of Moeri. Stars, Shan. They were so lucky his teammates were garbage. So lucky.

  "Anyways, he cleaned up with the Victoria and Daiko, then carried them to the second round. All this, mind you, with an invisible vanguard, aged-out captain, and zero defensive depth. Gleason brought in four new guys six days into the postseason window and dragged them to a second seed. Plus final. Final, Shan. I said final. With an F. It was insane. His turnaround is unreal. The fluke allegations completely stopped this season when he, with only one offseason pickup, dozed the league at a ninety-one rate and swept the Novas to snag the Grail."

  He looked at his Glass.

  "And they just dropped him."

  Shanelle, enraptured, blinked uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

  Draven grimaced. "He's too expensive, and they know it. He should be, at the very least, working in the Sci Bronze. It was a contract year that he did seem open to negotiating extensions for, but there is literally no way Firebirds could afford him. At all. They'd have to front, at the very least, three million, and that's on a low end. He's already linked to the Crocks and Sliders, and they'll break bank for silverware."

  "Thought the Crocks were doing okay," sniffed Wardell, looking sad.

  "A bushman behind on the times? Who would've guessed?" scoffed Draven. "Tratis retired."

  "No!" gasped Wardell.

  Draven made a face. "He was washed. It was inevitable. Add deployments, and he completely burned out. You could see it."

  "Damn," muttered his cousin. "That sucks. Loved what he did with Proton."

  "Of all Abilities," snorted Draven, "that? Ward, his A-touch rate was awful."

  "I am going to hit you," warned Shanelle.

  "And if you manage to hurt him, it'll be statistically recorded as a 'touch'," supplied Wardell. "Ability-related stats are prefixed with an 'A', such as success frequency, also known as rates." He faced Draven. "Laugh all you want, but every touch forced a drop. Every one."

  Draven paused. "Eighty-nine ninety, week twenty-three, Stingrays away. Servin split it with No Ground and proceeded to do unspeakable things to him and his controller."

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Wardell deflated with a long-suffering sigh. "If you put this much energy into speaking to women…"

  "I'd be mediocre and unfulfilled." Draven shrugged. "But on a real note, Gleason is going to scorch. I won't be surprised when the Sliders start making waves."

  Shanelle cocked her head. "Not the Crocks?"

  "Too stifling." Draven mimed a weighing motion. "They've got more money, but the owners micromanage. Byzantine acquired them in... ah, rezz. Think it was eighty-eight? Somewhere around then. They're more about style than success. They'd overrule every decision and kill his vision."

  "Enough of that," interrupted Eliza, stepping into their compartment. "Ready to see the streams?"

  She was referring to the strands of warp energy that would ripple across windows as they rocketed through folded space. It lost its novelty after the fifth or sixth viewing, but they knew Eliza loved it.

  "Just about," said Wardell as they clambered upright.

  Draven joined his cousins in looking out at the light funnel cocooning their vessel, then retreated back to the ship's dining area to study for the psychological. A few hours into it, Knight appeared with a disapproving look.

  "You know that's pointless," he chided, pulling cheese from a cupboard. "It's not a traditional exam."

  "Maybe, but I can think about my answers."

  "Which defeats the purpose of the Assessment, guaranteeing safeguards, leading us right back to square one."

  Draven bit down a reply, instead choosing to examine his uncle. "You good?"

  "Hmm?" Knight fished fruits from the freezer and glanced backwards. "What's wrong?"

  "You look like you missed your coffee." Draven nodded pointedly at his plate. "And you're eating. Actual food."

  "Ha!" snorted Knight. "I'm fine. General stuff."

  "General stuff or general stuff?"

  "Second." Knight popped a grape into his mouth. "Once again, Bulgan is fooling around and thinks we don't know."

  Jukha Oz'Bulgan was the reigning monarch of the Yorgan Empire and a routine detractor to their few family dinners. While Knight remained personally indifferent to the greater race, the same could not be said for its ruler, who, as the descendant of many warring, conquering leaders, still held onto the dream of his people razing the Allied Systems in a glorious, unstoppable crusade. Fortunately for everyone, he'd also undergone basic political education (Treaty-mandated, of course), leading to a rudimentary grasp of reality. No feasible scenario involving his Empire, in its current state, engaging the Terran Fleet in a pronounced campaign would end without catastrophic damage to their Armada and almost certainly his death. Even outside the Republic's colossal economic, political and social influence, the Corps would assure it.

  In fact, the marketing for Scion combat sports implying contests existed primarily to entertain and connect civilians to their military elites was intentionally misleading. SCS Feeds were the only Net service offered free to non-Republic planets.

  And why wouldn't they? Every match, no matter the bracket, repeatedly reinforced an incontestible level of superiority. Maintaining morale against a legion of functional demigods was, at best, an exercise in futility.

  Insurgence died a birth.

  Saboteurs were chased out of the room.

  War? Jokes are supposed to be funny.

  The Fleet had successfully devised the galaxy's most effective scare tactic. And for the low price of nine hundred billion chips a year.

  Bulgan, however, would not be deterred and continued to sneakily try and set himself up for conquest. Unfortunately, Yorgans were about as good at subterfuge as Moeri in narrow positions.

  "It's not bad," Knight assured Draven, "but definitely has the capacity to be. We're working it now."

  "That sounds like damage control," guessed Draven.

  Knight nodded. "Preemptive, but yes. We're finalizing the operational budget on an A-rank deployment."

  Wardell whistled, sauntering in from a side entrance. "A? Goodness. We all know the man's a glutton, but for punishment? Strange appetites, those Yorgans."

  Knight finished his snack and turned to head back to his office. "You should get some sleep," he told Draven. "We land in three days, and studying is pointless. Take an edge off and breathe."

  Draven mock saluted as Knight glided out. Wardell watched him go, then faced Draven and said, "Olo. Talk to me."

  "That's a tall order," warned Draven, eyes twinkling eagerly. "What's the last you read?"

  True to Knight's word, their ship dropped out of warp just under three days later. The commercial timeline claimed it should've taken four, but there were pros to commanding a military division.

  A small party awaited them on the ground. They were flown to their hotel, where Knight and Eliza, unsurprisingly, left to address work matters. They didn't visit the Republic capital often, and for officers of their calibre, such opportunities had to be taken advantage of.

  Wardell and Shanelle, well-connected themselves, offered to bring Draven to a concert with friends. He declined. Anything with the potential to impact his Assessement was dismissed immediately.

  "That's not how it works," sighed Wardell, but they'd left him in peace.

  Draven spent hours connecting his Glass to Boards and browsing bookmarked resources. He reread articles for the hundredth time on the transition from Terran to Scion, and what to expect during the first few months of Installation.

  It'll be fine. You'll be good. Maybe even with a cool class. He shuddered. Anything but a prime. Please not a prime.

  Draven's reservation wasn't unfounded. Unlike hybrids, primes only possessed a single focal Attribute. That meant their growth potential plateaued much earlier than hybrids, as later down the line, the Attributal disparity would grind progression to a halt, lest they destabilize their Xeno.

  Wardell's Marauder class, for example, elevated his [Fort] focal to an impressive S-Silver, miles above even his most slanted hybrid rankmates. Unfortunately, that also meant he had almost no chance of reaching A-rank. Granted, he was already twenty-seven, so his chances were near nonexistent regardless. On the other hand, Shanelle's Phantom class carried a [Fleet]-[Fort] focal, meaning at B2, they sat closer to low A-rank. Quantitatively incomparable to her brother, but were she younger, offered a much higher global ceiling.

  Draven needed an astronomical ceiling.

  Sleep was elusive. Eliza dragged him out to explore malls and attractions, trying to get his mind off the impending evaluation.

  She failed miserably.

  "Draven, when this is all said and done and you have your Core, you're going to realize how much you should've stopped and smelled the roses."

  "I don't like roses."

  "You don't know what you like," she warned sternly. "That will change."

  The morning of the Assessment, Draven was up by five. He scrubbed his teeth, showered quickly and was dressed in uniform before either Wardell or Shanelle even twitched awake. In fact, by the time Wardell stumbled out from the bathroom, he'd cleared his breakfast.

  His cousins met his zeal with indifferent eye-rolls.

  During the ride to the Hall, Draven did not budge from his Glass. Currently, at the highest level Osiris-based Scion League, Azibo Galarza, commonly known by his Xeno designation of Olo, was in the midst of a public, ugly renegotiation with his branding sponsor, Alpite.

  After four-peating the Sci's A-rank Bracket with a ninety-three percent win rate, Galarza had seared himself into the annals of SCS history. There were very, very few athletes with a more consistent, methodically devastating record than he. Alpite, however, felt they'd played a big part through training partners, facilities and equipment and were demanding a bigger slice of his commercial pie.

  And while Draven wouldn't necessarily say they were in the wrong, Galarza held all the cards. His current reputation and name power guaranteed assertive negotiation as a suicide run. He had too many options, and the instant they really began to push, he'd find someone more malleable.

  Warren McCarty, The Scribe's primary liaison with Olo's team, was giving a live, detailed breakdown when Knight shut off Draven's Glass.

  "What?" he exclaimed, aghast. "Why?"

  "You're addicted. Focus."

  Draven stared. "But he was getting to the good part! They were about to interview his coach!"

  "And you're about to do your psych." Knight wrinkled his nose. "Kids these days. Can't go a minute without their damn devices."

  Draven rolled his eyes and slumped to pout in his chair. He ignored his cousins' laughter at his expense as they pulled into the Hall lot, then filtered out to head inside. He'd been there once before for Shanelle's psych, but that was years ago. That being said, everything was still the same, with curved, looming walls and bright, hovering drone lights to paint the floor in fluorescent colour. Similarly to his school gym, the Hall's exhibition zone covered a massive area that ended, near the front, in another huge stage.

  That one, however, was built to showcase new Scions when they first Summoned, somewhere Draven would hopefully be in short order.

  Hundreds of prospective greens littered the floor. Draven recognized almost none. Almost.

  Some faces, everyone knew.

  One such individual was tall, powerfully built and very blond. He swept his surroundings with slow, assured passes. From the small crowd gathered around him, Draven spotted a handful of Glasses blinking in camera mode.

  "Oh, Jerry." To his horror, Knight moved towards the group. "Let's go say hi."

  "Have fun." Draven almost escaped, but Shanelle had A-rank [Fleet].

  Jerry turned out to be the boy's father, apparently another general. He looked like a forty-year, AI time-lapse of his son. Beside him, a small brown-haired woman who looked nothing like either of them hovered in the background.

  "Damien Knight!" cackled Jerry, meeting his colleague's hand in a firm grip. "You son of a gun! What are you doing here?"

  Knight nodded to his nephew. "Straggler's finally decided to join the family business."

  "You don't say," muttered Jerry, examining Draven approvingly. "Congrats, son."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "This is Douglas," explained Jerry, motioning his son forward. "Big day for you both, huh? Wow! I mean, what are the chances?"

  Douglas met Draven's eyes with indifference, then shook his hand with a respectful nod. Draven, equally detached, mirrored him. Anyone even loosely up to date on the SCS youth scene had heard of Douglas Temple, of course. He'd Tested several months prior, then begun specialized training to prepare for Installation. Feeds refused to shut up, and somehow, his name was already cycling the 'prodigy' and 'generational' spheres.

  Draven thought that to be unbelievably shortsighted nonsense.

  Jerry and Knight exchanged further pleasantries, then blabbered on about work, family and 'the days', allowing Draven to recede into his thoughts. Sometime later, Knight asked Douglas if he was partial to any school, to which Douglas revealed he'd already been accepted to Masters Academy. As that was the third-rated school in the Republic, and he was, once again, not even a Scion yet, Draven was stunned.

  He could be useless! His silent protestations went unanswered, so Draven instead chose a random wall to glare at rather than actually facing the absurdity. How is that even possible?

  The answer was, of course, Jerry. As a general, he had the pick of the litter and likely knew an instructor or two willing to make an exception for what the media described as a 'sure bet'.

  "Tell you what," Jerry declared as he and Knight's conversation winded to a close, "let me send you my guy's details. I'm telling you, Damien, they're sailing a solid ship. Ambitious, too. Don't get me wrong, you could probably get your boy into Cheswell, sure, but they're what, ten points clear? There's no fuel for their fire. Now Masters, at third? They've got hunger. They want those gyms and internships. They wanna rip the chips right off their shoulders and take 'em straight to the bank. Drive, Knight. You won't find a better bang for your buck." He made a face. "Despite how many they'll take off you."

  Knight glanced back at Draven. "How's that sound?"

  Draven paused. "They're prestige for a reason, and typically do perform better in varsity, but there's a tradeoff." He shrugged evenly. "I'd wager the gap lying in theoretical content, as most of their profs were high-performing soldiers, not scholars. Great baseline production at the cost of heavily capped elite output. You need the eggheads and suits to really wring value from your nobility, something their staff isn't really specialized in. So yeah, good for now, but we'll see."

  "Damn," exclaimed Jerry disbelievingly, glancing between Draven and his uncle. "You sure he's yours?"

  "I wish." Knight shrugged helplessly. "Sister-in-law."

  Draven rolled his eyes and turned away, which meant he spotted Douglas now examining him with renewed interest.

  "Masters it is, then," chuckled Jerry. "Oh, it's starting. Let's find our seats. Catch up later, yeah? I know a place with decent ribs and good beer."

  "Count me in," called Knight as they moved to their places.

  Once everyone was situated, the speech began. A Lieutenant Colonel Clovis Bouchard marched up to the edge of the stage and carried out all the necessary introductions. Once he finally finished explaining instructions for the greens, Draven stopped paying real attention.

  Scanning a holographic code in the ceiling led him to a Fleet link that, after requesting consent, used his Glass credentials to autofill information. He was then instructed to wait for assignment to a psych group.

  "Hey," whispered Shanelle, dragging him from his reverie. "You'll ace it."

  Draven nodded mutely and realized he was nervous. "Yeah, sure. Thanks."

  "I'm serious. Stop stressing. This is big, yeah, but you've been ready for years. No one knows this stuff better, alright? Relax."

  "Okay," he said quietly, then Bouchard was leaving with a smattering applause at his wake. Draven's Glass blinked, then told him to find group G.

  Eliza gave him a soft smile. "Ready?"

  "Sure." He rose from his seat and stretched out to spot the relevant corporal making his way to the edge of the sitting area with a neon sign.

  "Good. We'll be here when you're done. And for what it's worth, I hope you're a Phantom."

  Wardell soured. "Weaver, at least. [Fort] is fortuitous."

  "No, it's not. Ignore him." Shanelle shook her fists encouragingly. "Phantom!"

  "Draven," said Knight soothingly, nodding to his rapidly filling section. "Go. And be calm. You will be fine."

  "Thanks," he replied, turning to face his fate.

  Here we go.