Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

The debrief ran ninety minutes and eleven gates got graded in front of everybody, which Jin thought was brutal and effective in roughly equal measure.

Gate 2 had the highest kill count in the exercise and finished seventh, because they had spent their ranged ammunition in the first hour and lost two civilian markers in the second.

Gate 5 got a long, patient, extremely uncomfortable review of how a rear sector gets breached.

Gate 4 finished first.

The evaluator read the reasons off a slate in a flat voice, which somehow made it worse and better.

"Gate Four. Aerial breakthrough intercepted before target contact, at 1146. Irregular subsurface threat detected prior to emergence and engaged at the emergence point rather than at the mechanism. Gate mechanism undamaged. All protected markers intact. Ranged ammunition at thirty percent remaining at all-clear, which is the highest in the course by a wide margin. Functional reserve maintained throughout, and tested at 1319. Assistance rendered to Gate Five within a defined objective and withdrawn on completion, without compromising own sector."

He looked up.

"Command structure remained functional across three changes of threat type. That’s the part most of you should be writing down."

Cassia gave the team report herself, standing at the front, and she did not soften anything.

"The porcupine held the sky and the front. Six students held a line for four hours and it did not break." She read from her own notes. "The subsurface detection was Astor’s beast. The count, the emergence estimate, and the interception plan were Astor’s. He set the reserves in staggered positions and deliberately left the emergence zone open so the pack would not turn underground, and it worked, and I want to be clear that I did not think of that."

Somebody in another gate team turned to look at Jin. He kept his eyes on the middle distance.

"The Gate Five response was also his. Three reserves, narrow objective, no pursuit, withdraw on completion." Cassia turned a page. "I authorized it. I did not design it. When we were hit again at 1319 we still had a reserve because he refused to send more, and I’d have sent more."

She closed the slate.

"That’s the report."

It was, Jin thought, an unusual thing for a proud First Class student to say out loud in front of eleven gate teams and four evaluators, and she said it in the same tone she used for everything else.

She found him afterward, briefly, while the assembly ground was clearing.

"Astor."

"Venn."

"My group trains Thursdays and Sundays. Sixth hour." She was already half turned to leave. "Bring the lizard."

"For what?"

"Because a Razorquill Porcupine that can force something to commit and a beast that can be standing where it lands is a better pairing than either half," Cassia said. "I want to know how far that goes. Whether it works against three attackers. Whether it works when I’m out of quills. Whether it works at night."

"That’s a lot of Thursdays."

"Yes." She glanced back. "You’ll want the practice more than I will. If they ever build a permanent Tide unit out of this year, they’ll build it out of people who’ve already run a gate together."

She left before he could answer, which he suspected was deliberate.

Professional interest, Jin thought. She’s not being friendly. She’s requisitioning me.

He found he did not mind.

The exercise result reached his academy file before he reached the dormitory.

There was no new placement notice attached to it. Jin was already Fourth Class, and the gate exercise had not changed Glitch’s Rank, his Star, or anything else that could be mistaken for power. What it had changed was smaller and probably more useful: his record now said he could coordinate a reserve under First-Class supervision, and Cassia Venn had put him on her Thursday and Sunday training schedule in front of witnesses.

Fourth Class had opened better rooms. Gate Four had given him people worth using them with.

Jin checked the Engine anyway, because old reflexes did not care about administrative distinctions.

[Glitch — Rank 1 Novice, 3-Star (94%)]

Ninety-four percent. Close enough to be tempting and not close enough to mean anything tonight.

The academy had added a line to Jin’s record. Glitch would cross his own line when the Quarry, the training, and his body had earned the remaining six percent. Jin had spent too long learning what happened when he treated an estimate like a promise to start doing it now.

He sat on the floor of his room that evening with the savings figure open on the slate. A tiny herb lot to Vann had added forty Credits since the sale to Kass, which was not impressive enough to feel like progress until he put it beside every other unimpressive amount.

[Personal Savings: 2,180 Credits]

Between the Fourth Class support taking the pressure off feed, Vann handling the occasional herb lot, and Kass willing to test beast parts in small legal batches, the line finally went the right way. Not fast. Two or three hundred a week on average, sometimes less, occasionally nothing when a run went badly and he refused to manifest more than the batch could bear.

Twenty-eight thousand for an ordinary Iron-quality egg from a licensed hatchery.

Twenty-six thousand short. At this rate, two years.

Two years was a real answer, which was the entire difference between tonight and four months ago. Four months ago the answer had been never, and he had not even bothered to calculate it.

He would not be buying an ordinary egg anyway. That was the other thing he had worked out, sitting in a basement grading damaged nodules while a man in his fifties explained that a talent tells you what a thing is and not what it will be. Somewhere in this city there was a case with something mispriced in it, because whoever graded it could see quality and could not see potential.

He was not going looking yet. Two thousand Credits and a good eye was a reliable way to find something extraordinary and stand in front of it with empty pockets.

Patience. Small batches. Keep looking at things nobody else looks at.

Glitch nosed at his elbow.

The impression that arrived had nothing to do with money. It was a rush of open sky, the remembered drop of a controlled hawk, and the satisfying instant when it had discovered Glitch waiting at the bottom. Beneath all of it sat a hard pull toward repetition.

"You want to do it again."

Confirmation came back total, immediate, and accompanied by Glitch planting both foreclaws on Jin’s leg as if the next attacker might already be above the bunk.

"The exercise is over."

Glitch looked toward the door, then back at him.

Jin glanced at Cassia’s training schedule. Thursday, sixth hour. Three attackers next time, if she meant what she had said, followed eventually by darkness and an empty quill reserve. More angles for Jin to read, more discipline for Glitch to resent, and a combination neither of them could reproduce alone.

It also gave shape to the distant second contract. Glitch controlled the ground inside his reach, but Gate Four had shown how much stronger that control became when another beast could pressure the space beyond it. Jin did not need a second Glitch. He needed something that changed where an enemy could safely move.

That was a problem for later. For now, he closed the savings screen and put one hand on Glitch’s head.

"Thursday," he said. "Apparently, we’ve been requisitioned."

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