Chapter 2095: Separate Paths

Naysha chose Piloting and Research.

Several of the cadets at the table looked surprised by the second half of her choice. Research was not a common field for cadets who wanted to become pilots.

It focused on the development and study of new technology, and the cadets who chose it usually went on to work in laboratories and testing facilities rather than in the cockpits of Mechas.

"Research?" one of Jason’s friends asked. "Why research?"

Naysha shrugged. "I like knowing how machines work."

It was not a complete answer, and Ning knew it.

He knew exactly why she wanted Research. Research classes would give her legitimate access to machines that ordinary cadets would never be allowed near.

Experimental technology, prototype equipment, damaged machinery brought back from the front lines for study. Every one of them was something she could scan, repair, and record.

Every one of them would add to the schematics stored in her helmet, and every one of them would bring her closer to whatever her System had waiting for her next.

He also knew there was another reason, one she would never say out loud.

Her parents had died in a research facility on the moon, working on new weapons. Whatever she found in the field they had once worked in, whatever she learned, and whatever she built, Ning suspected that part of her wanted to understand the work that had taken them from her.

The new year began after a short break, and with it came a new schedule for every cadet in the academy.

The change was immediate. Where the first year had kept the entire batch together in the same classrooms and training yards for nearly every hour of the day, the second year split them apart according to the fields they had chosen.

Cadets who had sat beside one another for a full year now found themselves walking in different directions every morning, toward different buildings, different instructors, and different lessons.

Ning and Naysha still shared some of their classes.

Piloting was the larger of their two fields, and most of its lessons took place in the same wing of the academy, in classrooms filled with detailed models of Mecha frames and simulation pods far more advanced than the one they had used during their first year.

They sat together in Mecha handling and advanced flight theory, trained side by side in the piloting simulators, and spent long afternoons in the hangar wing learning how the machines were maintained and repaired.

But even with each other, their schedules did not overlap entirely. Ning spent several hours each week in Battlefield Tactics, a small class of a dozen cadets who studied historical battles and argued over strategy and logistics, while Naysha spent those same hours in the Research wing on the far side of the academy, a place most cadets never set foot in.

Jason was in a different wing entirely.

The Technology and Communication cadets had their own building at the edge of the academy grounds, a long, low structure filled with workshops, laboratories, and communication arrays.

Jason spent most of each day there, from the early morning lessons until well into the evening, and on some days, Ning did not see him at all between breakfast and dinner.

They still shared a room, and they still ate their meals together whenever they could. But it was clear that things had changed.

The room was quieter now. Jason often came back late in the evening, tired but cheerful, his arms full of new tablets and devices borrowed from the Technology wing, and he would spend an hour or two working on them before falling asleep.

On other nights, he did not come back until long after Ning had settled in for the evening, having stayed behind in the workshops with his new classmates.

Jason seemed happy.

Ning could see it in the way he talked about his lessons, with an excitement that had been almost entirely absent during their first year.

He had found people who shared his interests, people who did not think he was strange for caring so much about old protocols and forgotten machines, and who wanted to spend their evenings arguing with him about signal processing and circuit design.

For the first time since Ning had known him, Jason seemed to belong somewhere.

Ning was glad for him.

Even if the room was quieter, and even if their conversations at dinner had begun to drift toward subjects Ning had to listen to rather than join, he could not begrudge Jason any of it.

The first few months of the new year passed quickly.

Within the first month, Ning received word that he had been scheduled for another session in the True Simulation.

It was an unusual honor. Most cadets who passed their first True Simulation session were lucky to be granted a second within a full year.

Ning had been given a second within months, and he soon learned that it was not by accident. Greeves had requested it directly, citing Ning’s previous score.

He traveled to the facility alone this time, escorted by a single instructor from the academy, and when he arrived, Instructor Varga was waiting for him in the waiting hall.

She recognized him on sight.

"Ning," she said, before he could introduce himself. "Good. You’re here early."

The simulation dropped him into a battle across the surface of a shattered moon, with low gravity, long open plains, and a sky filled with the drifting wreckage of a destroyed fleet.

The enemy came at him in waves from the debris overhead, dropping down onto the plains around him with almost no warning.

Ning spent the first minute watching the debris. He noticed that the Mekharans always dropped from the denser clusters of wreckage, using them as cover for their approach. Once he knew that, he began positioning himself and his allies beneath the open sky, where nothing could fall on them unseen.

When the objectives shifted, from holding a crater to escorting a damaged supply vehicle to destroying a Mekharan relay hidden in the wreckage above, he was ready for each change before it came.

He lasted a long time, and when the simulation finally ended, his score was high once again.

<381 Points>