Academy 7 (7 page)

“This is
physical
combat,” she continued. “You may use only your body and your environment. Spread out, ladies and gentlemen, and try to topple your partner to the ground.

“Without causing serious injury,” she added belatedly.

Aerin felt nerves zip like static over her skin as she followed Dane to the outer edge of the group.
It’s only a training session,
she reminded herself.

They faced off, his slender frame a mere four feet from hers. His hands rested at his sides; his shoulders slumped, relaxed.

But she had learned too much in the fitness tests to underestimate him.

Moving to the left, Aerin tried to feel the ground beneath her feet. The slick grass nullified the traction on her boots, and she longed to undo the laces and slip free the leather weights.

Her opponent, however, moved with ease, also circling left. She staggered her steps to see if he would adjust. He did. In his own time, without shuffling or losing flow. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said, breaking the silence between them.

Trying to break my concentration.
She switched direction, wanting to see him react.

His face remained calm as he shifted the other way, keeping his center squarely across from hers, not letting her deter him from talking. “About what you did in the lab.”

Without warning, he spun in a quick turn, aiming a kick at her side. She stepped close to lessen his power and thrust his leg away with her hands. He smiled, leaping back out of reach. “In Zaniels’s class,” he continued, “that was something: the way you avoided the password. I’ve never seen anyone break through security like that.”

Horror trickled down her shoulders like sweat. She had thought of sidestepping the password as only a shortcut, not as breaking the rules. Was he threatening to turn her in?

Instead of gauging her reaction, his eyes watched her body, their depths flashing from dark to light as he circled into the sun’s path. When he did meet her gaze, they held only a strange look of curiosity. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share where you learned that trick?”

She whirled left, moving in for a hit.

He blocked with his right arm. “Guess not.” His mouth twitched with humor.

What was this? His way of entertaining himself? She backed off, forcing him to make the next move.

It came once again without setup. He stepped in for a sideways blow to her chest. This time she countered, curving around and jabbing her elbow toward his abdomen. He danced away.

But she had learned what she needed to know. All his moves were predictable: blocks, hits, kicks—all things she had learned from her father when she was young. Before Vizhan. Before she’d had to fight for every meal and learned that creative violence was the only defense against starvation.

Once again she waited for Dane to attack. He took his time, choosing instead to waste his breath with more speech. “You had a point this morning, in debate.”

Hadn’t he derived enough pleasure from that episode without using it here? Aerin reined in her temper.
He’s trying to goad you into moving first,
she told herself.

Then it came. A quick rotation and a kick toward her hip.

She dropped low to the ground, used her right foot as a pivot, and swung her left leg under his feet. To his credit, he reacted with speed, jumping over the leg. But she had him anyway. His jump was all defense with no counter.

He was barely out of the air when she hooked his knee with the inside of her elbow and pulled forward. Hard. Down he fell. His leg came out from under him, and his back hit the ground with a solid thud.

Aerin waited, crouched at his side until she saw the first rise and fall of his chest. The maddening smile was gone, replaced by something she could not read. She straightened, a single fist clenched in triumph.

Chapter Six

THE FIRST TWO WEEKS AT THE ACADEMY TAUGHT Aerin to fight past her fear, at least during classes. Despite the constant dread that she would give herself away, she forced herself to raise her hand and speak up. She
would
make the most of this opportunity and prove that she deserved to be here, for however long it lasted.

And prove it she did, consistently earning the top spot on the daily posted rankings for every academic class. Except debate.

Not that she didn’t try to lead that course as well. She spent hours combing the library and searching the network, hoping to fill the gaping holes in her background knowledge about the Alliance and current events. She pored through history books, news bulletins, and instant postings. Nothing helped.

Because nothing prepared her to defeat Dane Madousin.

He had won every debate thus far. And today was unlikely to be an exception. Aerin watched him from the corner of her eye with irritation. As always, he appeared relaxed. The rattling of his pen against his chair was the only sign he was even awake.

The rest of the class, meanwhile, waited in stark silence, anxious over the looming announcement of the day’s topic. Hands gripped the sides of desks. Teeth gnawed on fingernails. Gazes fixed on the teacher at the front of the room.

Xioxang also waited, his infamous stare pinned to Dane’s pen. For a moment the rattling grew louder, then came to an abrupt stop. And the teacher’s stare lifted, now taking in the entire class. Aerin hated that stare, the way those gold eyes dug into her skull. Prying.

Finally Xioxang announced the topic, carefully, as though presenting his students with a tube of nitroglycerine. “Has the Alliance achieved its objective in Wyan-Ot?” he asked, then glided into a corner.

Again with Wyan-Ot.
The military action on that one small planet had already taken up four class periods. “Yes,” Aerin said, not quite keeping the indifference from her voice. “The Allied military began withdrawing troops a few hours ago.” She had checked the network that morning and read the most recent postings.

“Yeah,” added a tall boy who was clearly anxious to prove he had read them as well. “We forced the infiltrators out of power.” A grin stretched across his pasty face. “And we’ve started sending diplomats to help set up a new government.”

Dane, of course, opened his mouth.
Two people with the same opinion,
Aerin thought sarcastically.
He couldn’t allow that.

“I fail to see how winning validates the decision to invade a planet,” he said, letting his pen fall to his desk with a thud.

“Will you get off that, Madousin?” The pasty boy made a rude gesture under his desk. “It wasn’t an invasion.”

“And you’re not the hind end of a—”

“Enough.” Xioxang emerged from his corner long enough to send a glare in Dane’s direction. Though the teacher’s voice was stern, Aerin could not help but notice the faint glimmer of a smile at the edge of his lips. “The topic is not whether the Alliance was correct in sending soldiers to Wyan-Ot but whether the objective has been met.”

“It hasn’t,” Dane replied.

“How can you say that?” argued Aerin. She felt too ignorant to either reject or condone the Allied action on the planet, but it seemed pointless to dismiss the success of the mission. “The entire conflict lasted less than eight weeks.”

“I’m not saying the military lost.” Dane leaned his head back, tilting his face toward the ceiling. “I’m saying it hasn’t met the objective. And it’s not going to meet it. Not in some minor battle on Wyan-Ot or any other little planet.”

Protests suddenly filled the room. The other students thrust themselves into the conversation all at once. Their chairs scraped across the floor, and comments hurtled in Dane’s direction. Aerin looked around, startled. How could a simple remark cause such a strong reaction?

Dane, himself, appeared neither surprised nor disturbed by the protests. If anything, he seemed to enjoy them. Instead of trying to field the barrage, he waited for it to subside, then picked up the earlier thread of the debate. “Look, why did the Allied soldiers go there in the first place?” he asked.

When no one else responded, Aerin replied, “Because the Trade Union tried to take over the Wyan-Ot government.”

“Exactly. The real conflict is with the Trade Union, not the Wyannese. We all knew the Allied military could defeat the Wyan Army. But Wyan soldiers didn’t cause this problem, and defeating them hasn’t solved it.”

He had a point.

Yvonne, her eyebrows arched, turned around in the front row. “So you think we should attack the Trade Union?”

“No.”

“Madousin, you don’t make any sense,” said the pasty boy. “You can’t say the Trade Union is to blame and then argue against attacking them.”

Was he kidding?
One thing Aerin had learned over the last two weeks was that Dane could argue against anything from any side. It was impossible to tell where he really stood.

“Look,” Dane said. “The Trade Union is the source of the problem. They’ve been sending representatives to convince other planets to join them for the last three decades.”

“Spies,” said Yvonne.

“Whatever you want to call them—”

“My parents say there’s no doubt about what to call them,” she cut in. “They use bribes and blackmail.”

“Miss Entera,” Xioxang interrupted, “when your parents join this debate, they can make their own points.”

Yvonne stiffened.

“There’s no doubt the representatives use questionable practices,” Dane continued, “and that once a planet joins the Trade Union, the planet cuts off all ties to the Alliance.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the pasty boy. “None of us are disputing that, Madousin. Get to your point.”

“I have two points. One is that this is nothing new. The Trade Union has been doing this for three decades, and not once has the Alliance chosen to act until now.”

He was right. Aerin remembered reading about the Trade Union’s startling growth, especially in the last sixteen years, during which it had expanded from one to three star systems. Begun by a handful of wealthy planets incensed at the Alliance’s moral restrictions on trade, the Trade Union, with its shady political practices and emphasis on privacy, had grown to become the largest single nation outside the Alliance. And frankly, she found it hard to blame the Council for being concerned.

“Why now?” Dane kept talking. “Why salvage a planet like Wyan-Ot when we’ve ignored the same type of corruption on twenty or thirty other planets.”

Because this planet is right outside the Allied boundary?
Aerin hypothesized. Though the Trade Union’s leaders had never openly threatened the Alliance, it was clear their biggest goal was to crush the nation they viewed as their main competition.

“Because Wyan-Ot is our primary source of ironite,” said Yvonne. “And we don’t want to lose access to another mineral-rich planet like Mindowan. Our resources are already thin.”

Aerin frowned. Over the past two weeks, she had learned that the black metal used to build the Wall and the rotating tower known as the Spindle was called ironite, but until now she had never associated the substance with the conflict on Wyan-Ot.

“All right,” the pasty boy said to Dane. “So what if we want to protect our access to ironite? It’s vital for space age construction. Without it we lose economic and, therefore, political power against the Trade Union. Since when is it a crime to protect our resources?”

“It isn’t,” replied Dane. “But it doesn’t solve the real problem. The Trade Union is still sending out its representatives and still refusing to work with us.”

“So why not go after the Trade Union?”

Aerin felt a chill run through her body at the thought of an armed conflict between the two strongest nations in the universe.

“Because,” Dane said drily, “we could all die.”

Anger ricocheted off the walls. The room fairly boiled with passion, something Dane took no small amount of credit for. Gone were the raised hands of the first day of debate. Shouts sailed toward him, missed their target, and cascaded off the ceiling.

Enjoying the uproar, he shifted in his seat, trying to lessen the contact between the back of his chair and his most recent bruise. His gaze landed on the culprit. For sixteen days Aerin Renning had knocked him on his backside every afternoon in physical combat.

The bruises were nothing. He could handle the school’s physical toll.

What had surprised him was the mental one.

He had
intended
to slide through his stint here. It was one thing to slack off when he could have been at the top of his class. But it was quite another to do so when someone else had the upper hand. Aerin had earned the top scores on the first science and lit tests of the year, due in part, he suspected, to a photographic memory and the fact that she seemed to live in the library. But that failed to explain her ability to analyze. Or her performance in technology, where she blew everyone away. Zaniels had even named her his assistant and given her the access code to the precious tech lab.