I Choose the Skills Everyone Else Rejects

The Anchor Resin came in two sealed glass tubes.

Nate collected them the morning after Greyhook.

Thin amber strands drifted through the liquid whenever he moved the case. The quartermaster checked his terminal before handing it over.

"Ninety-four merit."

"I know."

"Most new Field Rank Ones buy armour."

Nate closed the case.

"I needed this first."

The quartermaster shrugged.

"Your merit."

Nate stored the tubes in his locker and left them there.

He could not use them yet.

His medical restriction still had almost three days remaining, and trying to build another Node with a damaged Circuit was an easy way to ruin everything he had already gained.

So he trained instead.

Kellan found him in the yard that afternoon with a wooden blade.

"You’re not supposed to circulate."

"I’m not."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Trying to use the Step without it."

Kellan looked interested.

He picked up another practice blade.

"Show me."

Nate took position.

Kellan approached slowly.

Nate watched the front foot, then the shoulders.

Nothing.

Kellan stopped.

"Well?"

"You didn’t commit."

"Good."

The second approach was faster.

Kellan shifted his weight forward.

Nate stepped in.

Both practice blades landed at nearly the same time.

Nate touched Kellan’s ribs.

Kellan’s blade rested against Nate’s throat.

Nate stepped back.

"I saw the opening."

"You saw one."

Kellan reset his stance.

"Again."

This time Nate waited.

Kellan came forward, planted his front foot and turned his shoulder as if preparing a strike.

Nate moved.

The strike never came.

Kellan pivoted off his rear leg and hit Nate across the side.

Nate lowered the blade.

"You had already committed."

"To moving forward."

"Then you changed direction."

"I changed what the movement was for."

Kellan pointed at Nate’s feet.

"The burrowers wanted to reach you. That made them simple. People can give you the movement they want you to see."

Nate looked at him.

Rovan’s memory had shown him the moment an opponent could no longer correct a decision.

Against an animal, reading that decision had been enough.

A person could lie before making it.

They trained until Nate’s shoulder began to ache.

Kellan won most exchanges.

Sometimes he gave Nate obvious openings that disappeared as soon as Nate moved. Other times he shifted his balance so little that Nate only understood the commitment after the wooden blade had already reached him.

Near the end, Kellan stepped forward and exposed his right side.

Nate stayed where he was.

Kellan waited.

Then straightened.

"You saw it."

"You wanted me to take it."

Kellan nodded.

"Better."

Nate lowered the blade.

"You’ve done this before."

"Fought people?"

"Trained them."

Kellan picked up his coat.

"Not recently."

Nate waited, but Kellan gave him nothing else.

They walked back toward the barracks.

A new intake was crossing the yard under guard.

Several wore suppression collars. One man had both wrists restrained and a second chain running to his waist.

Nate watched them pass.

His first day at Last Contact, he would have stared longer.

Now the sight barely interrupted the conversation.

"New replacements?" he asked.

"Some of them."

"What happens to the rest?"

"Other penal units."

Nate looked at Kellan.

"You know which ones?"

"No."

That answer came quickly enough that Nate almost believed it.

Almost.

Three days later, the medic scanned Nate’s shoulder again.

"Pathway irritation is down."

"Enough?"

"For normal circulation."

Nate waited.

She frowned at the display.

"That does not mean you get to test how close you can come to tearing it again."

"I wasn’t planning to."

The medic looked at him.

Nate added, "Immediately."

"That is exactly why I hate signing these."

She cleared the restriction.

Nate left the medical wing and checked his terminal.

Cade had sent him a mission notice six minutes earlier.

RELAY C-19

COMMUNICATION FAILURE

TWO MAINTENANCE TEAMS UNACCOUNTED FOR

RECOVERY PRIORITY: HIGH

Departure was in ninety minutes.

Nate opened the attached map while walking toward the mess hall.

Relay C-19 sat northwest of the capital on an old supply route. The current road ended several kilometres before the installation. From there, the team would continue on foot.

The reward estimate was higher than Greyhook.

Nate noticed that first.

Then the casualty risk.

Kellan was eating near the back.

Nate sat opposite him and pushed the mission slate across the table.

Kellan stopped chewing.

"C-19."

"You know it?"

"Not personally."

Nate had learned to pay attention when Kellan answered that way.

"What do you know?"

"It’s old."

"That much is in the file."

"Older than the file says."

Kellan pulled the slate closer and enlarged the site map.

The relay was a rectangular structure buried partly into a ridge, with two maintenance buildings above ground and several access shafts marked beneath it.

Kellan pointed at the main block.

"That section wasn’t built by the kingdom."

"How can you tell?"

"Shape."

Nate looked at the plain rectangle.

"That tells you something?"

"It tells people who had to work in them something."

Kellan moved the map aside.

Nate caught the wording.

"Had to?"

Kellan reached for his drink.

"You want to ask about C-19 or me?"

"Both."

"Pick one."

Nate chose the relay.

Kellan looked back at the plans.

"Old imperial supply branches had stations like this before the current border was drawn. Communications above. Storage below. Sometimes personnel transfer."

"What kind of personnel?"

Kellan hesitated.

"Anyone being moved where the Empire needed them."

Nate remembered the academy exercise.

The black Conductive bridge beneath the control grid had been newer than the surrounding equipment, but the housing had carried an old military stamp.

"There was a component at the academy."

Kellan looked up.

Nate described the bridge.

Black housing. Conductive material. Installed beneath the training system where it should never have been.

Kellan’s expression changed slightly.

"Any mark on it?"

"I saw one near the base."

"What did it look like?"

"Three lines, maybe. Something in the centre."

Kellan reached for the slate again.

He searched through the mission photographs.

Most showed the outside of the relay.

Concrete walls.

A collapsed antenna.

A service entrance left open.

Then he found an image of an electrical cabinet near the eastern maintenance block.

He enlarged it.

A faded stamp sat near the lower hinge.

Three narrow lines curved around an empty centre.

Nate leaned closer.

"That could be it."

"You’re sure?"

"No."

Kellan looked at the photograph for another moment.

"What does it mean?" Nate asked.

"Procurement mark."

"Imperial?"

"Originally."

"Why would it be on academy equipment?"

"Old equipment gets sold. Reused. Stolen. Rebuilt."

"So it could mean nothing."

"It could."

Kellan did not sound convinced.

Nate watched him.

"Where have you seen it?"

Kellan pushed the slate back.

"You’ve got things you don’t explain. So do I."

Nate said nothing.

Kellan glanced toward his shoulder.

"I haven’t asked how a Variant Kinetic Recall Class showed you exactly when to step into a burrower’s throat."

Nate’s hand stopped on the table.

Kellan continued eating.

After a few seconds Nate asked, "You think I’m lying?"

"I think your file is incomplete."

"And that doesn’t bother you?"

"It would if you were trying to kill me."

Nate looked at him.

"I’m not."

"Then we’re fine."

For now, apparently.

Cade entered before Nate could push further.

He placed his terminal on the table.

"Departure moved forward. Forty minutes."

Kellan stood.

"Team?"

"You two. Me. Dax. Sol."

Nate looked toward the mission notice.

"Five?"

"Command wants a small recovery team until we know what happened."

"What about replacements?"

"Not cleared yet."

Varek appeared at the entrance as if he had heard his name.

A new cutter hung across his back.

Nate noticed it immediately.

Varek noticed him noticing.

"Loaner."

"You got one fast."

"Unlike you, I bought something useful."

Nate let that go.

Cade opened the mission map.

"Two maintenance crews entered C-19 over the last six days. First stopped reporting after reaching the lower relay. Second entered yesterday morning."

"No contact?" Nate asked.

"None after sixteen minutes."

"Bodies?"

"None confirmed."

Kellan looked at the route.

"They sent the second team after the first disappeared?"

"First failure was treated as equipment loss."

"And now?"

"Now it’s ours."

Cade closed the map.

"Primary objective is personnel recovery if possible. Secondary is finding out why the relay went dark. We do not restore power until we understand the site."

Kellan nodded at that.

Cade noticed.

"Problem?"

"No."

"You’ve been there?"

"No."

The answer was immediate.

Cade studied him for a moment before continuing.

"Gear in twenty."

They left the mess hall.

Nate returned to his locker.

The two Anchor Resin tubes were still inside the padded case.

He checked the seals, then closed the locker again.

The next Node could wait.

Outside, Dax was loading equipment into the transport.

Varek checked the replacement cutter.

Kellan stood beside the open rear door with the mission slate in his hand.

Nate climbed in.

"You still looking at the plans?"

Kellan turned the screen toward him.

"I was looking at these."

Two layouts were open side by side.

One came from the kingdom’s current records.

The other was an older structural scan attached deep in the relay archive.

They were similar.

Not identical.

The current plan showed three underground rooms.

The older scan showed five.

Two had disappeared from the official layout.

Nate pointed at them.

"What are those?"

"No labels."

"Storage?"

"Maybe."

Kellan enlarged the old scan.

A narrow corridor connected both missing rooms to the lower relay.

Beside the entrance was the same three-line mark Nate had seen in the maintenance photograph.

Nate looked at Kellan.

"You said you hadn’t been there."

"I haven’t."

"Then why did you know the plans were wrong?"

Kellan locked the screen.

The rear doors began to close.

He looked at Nate.

"Because I’ve seen another one."

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