Authors: Andy Holland
Daniel followed his direction and sneered in appreciation. "Nice idea. I want to be the one to do it. How do we pull this off?"
Jerome nodded, moving closer to them. "I'll go and top up my inkpot from the classroom one and I'll make sure I leave the lid partly unscrewed and positioned near to the edge. Wait for a few minutes, then go over and when you're there, Joel, you call over and ask Daniel to bring over the ink bottle. Pick it up by the lid, and let the ink bottle drop on John."
"Won't that look deliberate?" Joel asked.
"Not at all," Jerome replied. "Just complain loudly that the lid wasn't tightened, and I'll stand up and apologise for forgetting to screw it back on properly. The Professor will believe it was an accident; it's in his nature to trust people. I'll go now."
Jerome walked over to the ink bottle and decanted some into his own jar, putting the large bottle back near the edge of the shelf, directly above John. He walked back to his place without anyone commenting or paying attention to what he had done. He turned and smiled at Joel and Daniel.
Daniel couldn't wait more than a minute before getting up to pretend to fill his water flask, clearly impatient to carry out the plan. As he filled it, Joel called out to him to bring the ink bottle.
"Sure, Joel, I'll bring it for you. Bit too far for you to walk is it? Anything else you need?" he asked sarcastically.
Crystal watched as Joel shook his head, struggling to keep a straight face. Jerome's face was completely blank, giving nothing away. She held her breath as she watched Daniel reach for the large ink bottle holding it by the lid and pretending to lift it, but tipping it straight onto John, leaving him holding just the lid.
John jumped to his feet, looking more shocked than angry. The ink bottle had a wide mouth, and had splashed ink all over John's neck, back and trousers as it fell, before hitting the ground and smashing, spraying Daniel's legs as well as John's. The class burst into loud laughter.
John looked at Daniel, who was trying to look shocked. "Hey, the lid wasn't screwed on. Look, I'm really sorry, it was a complete accident."
John knew better than to believe him. "That was deliberate! Don't lie to me."
"No, I swear, I picked it up by the top and it just fell."
"Daniel, what happened here?" The Professor looked at him suspiciously.
Jerome stood up and cleared his throat. "Sorry, sir, I think this may be my fault. I must have forgotten to screw the lid back on."
John looked him straight in the eye, and Jerome held his gaze without blinking. He was an excellent liar, and had Crystal not heard their conversation she might have believed him. "Sorry, John. I wasn't thinking."
Something in John's cold expression told Crystal that he knew this was planned. He glanced at her, and without thinking she looked away, knowing that guilt was written all over her face. The Professor also scrutinised Jerome, but came to the opposite conclusion.
"Very well, this was just an accident. John, I'm sorry about this. I'm sure Daniel didn't mean to ruin your clothes. Have you any clothes you can change into?"
John shook his head. His restraint was remarkable, considering he knew that Daniel loved every moment of this.
"Well, you can't wear these clothes; they're covered with black ink and you'll get it on everything you touch. Go to the school office, tell them I sent you and explain what happened. They'll give you some clothes to wear for today. The ink should wash off your body quite easily. Run along now."
John gave the Professor a hard look, but didn't object. The class were still laughing at the situation. Crystal found it hard not to laugh, even though she knew that the whole thing had been planned. She might have sorry for him, but he had called her a fool just before this lesson. Who looked the fool now? He shot her another quick look before leaving the room, and this time she triumphantly held his gaze. Yes, I knew, and no I didn't stop it she thought to herself. Perhaps he will get the message now and stop bothering her.
Still, he seemed to be managing his new unit reasonably well, which was more than he could say for his other Squadron Commanders. Perak had twelve Squadron Commanders in total, each responsible for ninety nine dragons, so he had twelve hundred dragons in total. This was the standard structure for a Wing: twelve Squadrons of fourteen Flights of seven dragons, although the internal army, which was effectively the military police, operated using a different structure. Perak, newly promoted to Wing Commander, had the task of training all twelve hundred dragons in the methods he had developed over the last year. The problem was that neither the Squadron Commanders nor the Flight Leaders they commanded were keen on this style of warfare; of sneaking up on the enemy and slaughtering them before they had a chance to react. It was a style that was ill-suited for attacking the big cities, which could never be caught totally unprepared or approached unobserved. Attacking the big cities was where the glory was, and where the decisive victories would be won. It was also where losses were largest, and most attacks were doomed to failure, costly exercises leading to huge numbers of deaths. Only very well prepared attacks had a chance of success, and the work of his troops was to lay the foundation for the success of any attack on a big city. His troops would eliminate all the Red Dragons in the numerous surrounding settlements, a threat often ignored in previous attacks, leading to coordinated defensive attacks to their rear, trapping their attackers between the City defenders and the enjoining troops from the smaller settlements. They also tended to provide an early warning system for the cities, sounding bells at the first sight of the advancing Blue Dragons, ensuring that when they reached the cities the air was already filled with well prepared and deadly defenders; Red Dragons were larger, stronger and when in their cities had the reinforcing effect of their Dragonstones on their side. Every city
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Blue, Red, Brown and even those of the less numerous races
—
were protected by Dragonstones, large, gem-like objects made from specially treating chest scales from dragons of those cities. These Dragonstones affected all the residents of the cities within a certain distance from the stones, increasing their speed, strength and the power of their flames. It tipped the odds in the favour of defenders, often decisively. It was a wonder any of these attacks had succeeded when he thought about it, and in truth, few had. Of course that was true for attacks on their own cities as well, and despite their smaller size they had repelled countless attacks from the Red Dragons over the years. Most of their growth had been from defeating weaker foes.
The next attack on the Reds would be different though. Perak's troops would eliminate the settlements in advance of the main attack. At first light, they would attack every settlement between their border and the target city. There would be no early warning for the Reds, and the main attack force would advance upon an unprepared city. Perak's men would then join the attack, a little late to the party but if they had any sense they would realise that this would increase their chance of survival, and only marginally diminish the potential for rewards and glory at the successful conclusion of the battle. The first wave of the attack would almost certainly be annihilated, as they always were, which was why the offspring of the captives, the red-headed half-breeds, were always sent in the first wave. His men should eventually recognise this and be grateful for being part of his command. Unfortunately, they had yet to recognise this.
Perak believed that the half-breeds were never intended to survive any war. He suspected if any of them did miraculously survive, despite being thrown in where the fighting was most intense and when the enemy was still fresh, they would not live long after the war's end, disappearing quietly without any explanation. He would have felt sorry for them if he not despise them, the product of a disgusting union between celebrated members of his military. Females of their enemy, the hated and soon to be eliminated Red Dragons. Theirs was an inferior race, which had thrived only due to being surrounded by even weaker and less sophisticated neighbours that they had brutally swept away. Their expansion had been checked as soon as they came up against the mighty Blue nation, and their decline had already begun, but their arrogance prevented them from seeing it. How any self-respecting officer could enjoy a physical relationship with these captives was beyond him. True, the offspring would be a Blue Dragon, as the father's race was passed on rather than the mothers, but their hair could be from either parent, and served as a reminder of their mixed and therefore despised heritage. He understood the military advantage of their existence, but viewed it in the same way that Zygar saw Perak's methods: a necessary evil.
One of the good things about Pan was at least he shared Perak's views on the Red Dragon captives. He referred to them as cattle; to be slaughtered once they no longer could bear children. When Perak had voiced the suggestion that the red-headed offspring could have an advantage in their surprise attacks (not his idea of course), being harder to recognise as Blue Dragons, he was pleased that Pan voiced his own concern, that these half-breeds would not have the intelligence to complete this sort of mission, and were better used in the simple, suicidal methods of fighting that Kessick championed. Indeed, Kessick now had over half of his division populated by these men, if one could call them that. Perak half suspected that Kessick harboured sympathies for these sorts, and would even consider allowing them to creep up the ranks. He had heard that Kessick had hung on to two of the captives far longer than necessary to merely impregnate them, suggesting he had committed the treasonable crime of forming emotional attachments.
Although Kessick and he were no longer reporting to the same unit, he kept track of his activities through Pan, who maintained friendships with Squadron Commanders who had remained in Kessick's division. Apparently Kessick was working on a short term project himself, an attack on a big city rather than one of the towns, but it was really nothing more than a provocation of no strategic importance. He was amused to hear this, and almost wanted to see him so that he could rub it in that he, Perak was planning and preparing for a mission on a scale that even his masters were envious of, while Kessick was preparing for the sort of mission that a Squadron Commander could have been assigned to. However, he had heard a rumour that the target was of such significance that only a Wing Commander could lead an attack against it, rather than a Squadron Leader as was customary; that it was an unprecedented target. That could mean only one place, which if true, would give Kessick an opportunity for boasting, but also hopefully an opportunity for his glorious demise he seemed too long for. The one area where Pan was failing him was providing any information on the third member of the group of Wing Commanders that had been pushed up the ranks, Wing Commander Tarek. Indeed, Perak was a little irritated to discover that not only was Tarek a Wing Commander, but had been promoted ahead of Kessick and him. Tarek was a real rival to Perak; although quiet and almost humble on the surface, Perak knew him to be highly intelligent, determined and incredibly well organised, paying meticulous attention to every detail. Zygar had something in mind for each one of them, but he had no idea what Tarek was working on and that bothered him.
Perak's own focus at the moment was on his training plan, something that Pan was little help in progressing. Indeed a man like Tarek would have been very useful to him. The troops were being trained in a way that was very new to them, focussing on skills utilised while human rather than dragon. Physical fitness, survival skills, armed combat and the various other vital abilities that they would require to master the method of attack he intended them to employ were alien to them, and they were proving slower learners than he had expected. His previous Flight Leaders had reported directly to him, and he knew most of the men they commanded and it was he who was directly overseeing their training. Now he had to delegate this task to his Squadron Commanders, who were at best half-hearted champions of his approach, with the exception of Pan.
Perak had been finding it difficult to determine how each Flight of seven dragons was progressing, as there were just too many Flights and the Squadron Commanders were distrustful of him and always gave him incomplete reports. As usual, they complained that reporting on so many dragons was a difficult task, responsible as they were for fourteen Flights, which Perak privately agreed was a poor ratio, but he had managed it as a Squadron Commander so had little sympathy. They did however always have a second-in-command, effectively a Flight Leader without a Flight, who should have been able to assist them in these sorts of tasks. Eventually, Perak side-stepped the reporting problem by making the second-in-charges accountable for monitoring progress of the Squads in their sub divisions, which was effective but undermined the Squadron Commanders, alienating him even further. He had half a mind to execute half of the Squadron Commanders and promote their second-in-commands, but wasn't sure if they would be significantly better.
After two weeks of monitoring their progress, out of the one-hundred-and-fifty-six Flights, less than ten were progressing at the pace that he had hoped for. He decided to take a ruthless approach. He assembled his entire Wing, all twelve hundred dragons, and explained to them how their performance would be measured, giving a score out of a hundred, with a pass mark of fifty. For each Flight that failed to meet the target, the Flight Leader in charge of the Flight with the lowest score would be either retired, or if they were still in their period of mandatory military service, court marshalled, and there would be no option to transfer. If they had dragons that were truly not up to the job, they had better put in transfer requests now while they still had the chance.
A week later, Pan approached him with the report that he had compiled. "Commander," Pan said, a stickler for observing military etiquette. "I have the report prepared for the progress of the training this week. I'm afraid it's not that good."
Perak frowned. Pan was prone to understatement so this did not bode well. "Be specific, Pan. How many Flights failed to reach the target?"
"One-hundred-and-twenty, sir," he replied. "Only thirty-six were successful."
"What! That's pathetic. Are they not taking me seriously?" Perak had not anticipated failure on this scale.
"They're not used to this sort of training, sir. Long distance running, navigation on the ground, problem solving… they're just not happy doing it. It doesn't make sense to them to be doing this in the day when they could be flying. Improving their air combat skills."
"Fools! We train in the daytime at the start; then we'll move to training at night. How could they fly then?"
"Of course, sir. I understand, sir. But the men, they are not happy with this approach. I have heard many of them grumbling about it."
Perak seethed. This was not to be tolerated. "What was the lowest score for a Flight?"
"Zero, sir."
"Zero? How is that even possible? Just completing one of the six daily runs would have given them a point. They would have had to try to get a score that low."
"It is hard to comprehend, sir, but I'm afraid ten of the Flights managed a zero score."
"Ten! This is simply intolerable. Are they all under one Squadron Commander?"
"No, sir, although one does have half of them. I am pleased to say that none of my Squads were in that group."
Perak fumed quietly, declining to ask how many of his passed the mark, knowing the answer would disappoint him. Perak decided that harsher methods were called for.
"Go, assemble the men. First though, send me your entire Squad."
"Of course, sir. May I ask what you require them for?"
"No, just carry out my orders," Perak snapped, and Pan nodded before scurrying away.
Within half an hour, the entire Wing of twelve Squads was gathered, and the men spent half an hour watching in silence as Pan's Squad constructed a large metal cage. Perak stood on and watched, glaring at his dragons menacingly. When they had finished their work, he sent them to stand to attention with the rest of the Wing. Perak moved to the front and surveyed them, with the setting sun behind him, still glaring at them all in silence, until he could sense that they were getting uncomfortable.
"So, my orders were not taken seriously. I set an easy target of fifty, and only a quarter of you managed to meet that. I ask myself, are you all just incompetent, unworthy of the air that you breathe? Is it possible that such a useless, incapable group of Blue Dragons could exist, and be all gathered under my command?" Perak paused for a moment, before continuing. "Then I realised that there is another possibility. Ten Flights among you failed to score even one single point. I had anticipated that some of you may struggle at the start, so established a scoring system that would make it easy to get at least a few points, to prevent you becoming demotivated. To score zero, means only one thing; that you tried to score no points. Flight Leaders of these ten Flights, approach the front."