The colonel seemed almost resigned to her position, remaining eerily silent as Jason stepped over her, though he heard what might have been a chuff of amusement as the MCU ground to a sudden halt, forcing him to grab a nearby console to stabilize himself.

As he was cursing the design of the vehicle, he belatedly noticed the convenient handrail attached to the ceiling, presumably put in place to allow the crew to move about a bouncing vehicle without being thrown all about the place like he was. Grumbling, he grabbed the bar and made his way to the front compartment.

“What?” he asked without preamble as he stuck his head inside, making sure to grab the bar above the door as he did.

God, that’s a lot of buttons, he noted as he took in the bay of controls opposite the two driver’s seats.

“As I said, we’ve got a problem,” Raisha said worriedly, inclining her head towards one of the many nearby screens. The vehicle didn’t have a windshield, instead relying on its exterior cameras to give vision to the driver which Jason only noted in passing, most of his attention being taken up by the exo parked menacingly on the road ahead of them.

The hunchbacked mecha was an imposing sight, the rotary barrel on the suit’s forearm spinning idly as it aimed in their direction. Raisha flipped a switch and suddenly the compartment was filled with sound.

“Repeat,” an entirely calm feminine voice filtered through the compartment’s speakers. “The occupants of the stolen Interior property are to lay down their weapons, step out of the vehicle and release any captured personnel. You have sixty seconds to comply.”

“That’s generous.” Jason glanced at Raisha. “This thing got any weapons?”

“No.”

He figured as much.

“Can we ram her?”

“What!? No!” the woman said, sounding scandalized by the very idea. “It’s a command unit, not a Hover-Racer. She’d just dodge and then light us up.”

“Any chance the armor’s too tough for her to handle?”

She shook her head glumly. “That’s a Vertex-repeater on her arm. The only reason she hasn’t sliced us up like a winter Turox already is that she’s hoping to keep the unit operational while also getting the colonel back.”

That those hopes wouldn’t hold the pilot back for long didn’t need to be stated. The Interior probably wanted both of those assets back, but they were probably also reasonably confident of winning without them.

Jason sighed. “Which button do I press to use the external speakers?”

Raisha looked alarmed, but pointed to one of the innumerable buttons, which made him wonder how she knew how to drive this thing at all. He knew for a fact that the average Shil’vati car wasn’t this complex.

“Press this and talk into this.”

Doing as she said, he spoke, interrupting the exo pilot’s countdown from ten. “How about this? You let us go on our way, or we blow your superiors head off?” He paused. “…or at least simulate it for the purposes of the exercise.”

He didn’t miss the way Raisha’s head turned to stare at him and while he couldn’t see her face, he got a vague sense of affronted horror from her body language. He ignored her, focusing on the exo’s response.

“From what my superior says, she’d be happy to be a casualty for the cause, so long as it meant you three went down with her.”

Well, at least now he knew that she definitely had been chatting on her comm unit this whole time. Unfortunately, he didn’t really know how to stop her. According to the rules of the exercise, he wasn’t allowed to take her helmet off. Between that and being unable to ‘kill’ her, he didn’t really have many options.

“You’ve got that right,” the colonel called from the back of the vehicle. “You peasants might have been lucky enough to get this far, but I’ll be damned to the Sea of Souls before I let you get away with this MCU.”

“Sea of Souls?” Jason called back.

“That’s what you’re focusing on!?” the woman shrieked.

“It’s, uh, a bad place you can go to after you die,” Tarcil tentatively put in from where he’d strapped himself into one of the chairs.

So, it was basically Hell. Nice to know.

Ahead of them, the exo’s weapon system started spinning faster and for the first time since they’d made it out of the hospital compound, Jason felt the beginnings of panic.

“Right, so if there’s nothing else to say.…” the pilot trailed off.

“Let’s not be hasty here,” he didn’t quite shout as he flipped through the channels on his HUD. “Your colonel here says she’s ready to go, but are you sure you’re willing to be the one to do it?”

For the first time since the conversation began, a hint of puzzlement entered the pilot’s voice. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Feeling a sense of relief, Jason continued. “As in, don’t you know who we have here? This is a high-ranking woman. After all, she’s the daughter of a.…”

He trailed off as he realized he didn’t know. He also felt a slight increase in his heart rate as he realized that his entire plan could be based on a fundamental misconception.

“Whose kid are you again?” he asked, turning back.

“I’m the second daughter of High Governess Satella D’saari, and if you expect ignorance of my lineage to save you from….”

Relieved and vindicated, Jason ignored the rest of that diatribe, as he turned back to the comms. “See? She’s the daughter of a High Governess. Do you really want to be the one to pull that trigger?”

Even as he spoke, he pondered that title. Where had he heard it before?

…Wait.

Wasn’t the ‘ruler’ of Earth a High Governess? M’Pravasi… or something? Well shit, that was a little higher up the totem pole than he expected. He’d taken some planetary governor’s kid hostage.

“It’s a game,” the pilot scoffed. “Somehow I doubt the honorable High Governess will hold it against me.”

“It’s not a game though,” Jason shot back, a smug grin forming on his face. “It’s a simulation. A hypothetical scenario. And what do you think is more important? The life of the daughter of a High Governess or some pissant rebellion on a two-bit mining colony?”

The pilot sounded irritated now. “You talk too much.”

“And you keep butting in… after all I’m not talking to you.” Jason grinned. “Am I, Instructors?”

Silence reigned across the comms. For just a moment, Jason thought he might have made a mistake. Then a voice came through his comms – and everyone else’s too apparently, given how they twitched.

“This exercise is now officially over. All participants are to move to the designated evacuations zones for transport back to their staging areas. I want all staff to meet in meeting Room Five in twelve minutes.” The voice trailed off and there was a sigh. “Recruits are also to return any stolen property or…enemy personnel.”

The comm clicked off and silence reigned once more. Then it was broken as dozens of confused voices started asking questions through the comms. Jason simply smiled as he switched the channel.

“I thought…I thought we were being jammed?” Raisha finally whispered.

Jason shrugged. “Not the ‘official channel.’ After all, what if someone was hurt because of a training accident? The instructors would never let anyone interfere with that.”

He glanced back as he heard shuffling from behind him, and was unsurprised to see Colonel D’sarri clambering to her feet, the paralysis imposed by her armor now removed.

Smiling, Jason reached down to unclip Raisha’s seatbelt. “Come on, I imagine the colonel will want to to drive her MCU back to base.”

Ignoring the colonel's stunned silence, Jason walked past her, pressing the button to lower the vehicle's ramp as he did. He and his pod were just walking down it when the colonel finally managed to speak.

“This isn’t the end of this, human.” The woman was clearly speaking through gritted teeth. “The D’sarri will not soon forget this insult.”

Jason just shrugged as he kept walking. It wasn’t like the woman had any power over him. The Marines and the Interior had entirely different chains of command after all. No, rather than dwelling on some vague nebulous threat from a sore loser, he chose to instead focus on the long forgotten sensation of success that was swelling in his gut.

“I wonder what they’re serving for lunch today?” he asked his still silent teammates. “I’m hoping it’s something meaty. I could really go for a steak right now.”

---------------------

Einashu watched the sun slowly start to set from her office. While she was convinced that not a single sunset in the ‘verse could beat the beauty of those of the home world, she could concede that those of Horizon made for a reasonably palatable alternative.

Sighing, she turned back to her computer, where messages were continuing to stream into her account. She didn’t need to read them. She already knew what they’d say, albeit written in a great many more words.

The bluebloods weren’t happy about the outcome of yesterday's exercise. Not that she could blame them. If she’d been whooped as badly as that D’sarri girl had been… Well, she’d have trouble accepting it, too.

Brought down by a single pod of plucky recruits, the general thought as she looked out the window towards the training grounds.

Training grounds that were empty right now. The recruits – all of them - had been let loose to celebrate their victory and imminent graduation. She didn’t begrudge them that, though as she saw another message from the D’sarri estate arrive in her inbox she did begrudge them the piles of complaints said victory had brought her.

The D’sarri girl had no one else to blame but herself though. They’d always known the human would be a wildcard. The Imperium’s time on Earth had taught the Shil’vaati that much, if nothing else. While the censors had done an admirable job of keeping the appearance of stability on the world and out in the greater Imperium, the occupation of Earth had been and was anything but smooth.

Certainly none of her training staff had been able to say exactly what the human would do, but many had suspected he might do something. Though just as many had been quick to point out that while the earthling had been an excellent recruit, he hadn’t done anything particularly outlandish.

On the training field, at least. To hear her instructors giggling like maidens behind closed doors, he had apparently pulled off some quite spectacular things with his fellow recruits in his off-hours.

Still, the D’sarri girl had ignored all of it. She and her cronies had been the ones to insist that regular recruits be included in the exercise. For what reason, Einashu didn’t know. Something nefarious no doubt, but when you reached the rank of general, you learned to pick your battles. Sending out a bunch of fresh recruits to get trounced by the Interior was hardly the end of the world, and a small price to pay for a favor from one of the D’sarri line.

It hadn’t earned her a favor though.

It had gotten her the D’sarri’s enmity, all because the recruits didn’t get trounced. Or rather, a single pod of them didn’t. The rest had gotten trashed, as expected, stumbling straight into an ambush before being hunted down piecemeal.

One group had escaped and turned it all around in a rather spectacular manner. She doubted the boy would be able to buy his own drink tonight even if he wanted to. Though given how exotic a reputation humans had already garnered in the galaxy at large, she doubted that was an uncommon occurrence.

Though with any luck, with half of his graduating cadre and half the local militia with him when he left, there wouldn’t be another incident like his first night out on the town.

“Still getting ‘concerned’ messages from the aristocrats?”

Einashu looked up to see her aide had poked her head into her office.

“You know it,” the general said. “None of them quite have the tits to out and out accuse me of cheating, but plenty of them are insinuating it.”

Janere moved in, sitting on her superior’s desk as she swiveled the computer screen around. In different circumstances, that kind of action would warrant some serious disciplining, but the two had worked together for a long time. In public, Janere was as respectful to the general as her position demanded, but in private both of them were far more relaxed.

“Ooh, ‘to suggest that the Imperium would bow to the demands of rebels is a statement bordering on treasonous.’” Janere smiled. “I’ll have to remember that one next time one of Nyer’s spawn gets herself captured by pirates while partying out in the Periphery.”

Einashu just grunted. Prisoner exchanges were a tradition as old as dirt for the Shil’vati. At least for the nobility. To suggest that the D’sarri wouldn’t negotiate for the release of their daughter was patently absurd. They would have pulled in every favor and leaned on every official they could to get the brat released.

She knew that and that was why she’d called an end to the exercise. Plenty of people could dislike that decision, but no one could argue that it wasn’t realistic. And that was the whole purpose of these exercises, to simulate a real event. The human just so happened to be the only one smart or crazy enough to remember that fact and factor it into his strategy.

“They’re calling him the next Asedraux T'neli,” Einashu said, keeping her voice deliberately even.

Janere scoffed, which was really the only thing a reasonable person should do when they heard a statement like that. Unfortunately, the Imperium seemed to have a deficit of reasonable people recently.

“His plan was clever,” Janere said. “Using the storm drains was unexpected. Using the D’sarri girl as a bargaining chip was good too. The rest of it though? I can count four separate points where a half decent garrison would have caught him.”

Einashu nodded. The Interior had some pretty decent soldiers, incomparable to the regular military of course, but some decent troops. D’sarri and her ilk though? Little more than bravado backed up by fancy toys bought using mommy’s money.

“D’sarri – the big one – is trying to save face,” she growled. “It wasn’t that her little girl was incompetent, it was that the human was some kind of tactical savant.”

“Poor human,” Janere said simply.

Einashu couldn’t argue. That kind of attention wasn’t good for anyone. The politics of the Imperial nobility was a Hesk pit at the best of times, and the human would soon be just the kind of novelty that attracted them.

“It’s always the cute ones,” she said mournfully.

Janere made a so-so gesture. “They can last as long in bed as they like, I’ll take a Shil’vati boy over a human any day.”

Einashu glanced at the woman. “Really? Not even once?”

Her aide shrugged. “I just can’t get over the hair, ugh.…”

The general laughed as she moved through the files on her desktop. “Such a prude. The hair’s the best bit. Just the sensation of bristles running along your skin.…”

Eventually her cursor hovered over a fairly innocuous video file labeled: Helmet-Cam.BlueTeam.PodSeven.Unit1.

She already knew what it showed. She’d seen it within a minute of the events depicted within occurring, when a concerned Instructor had sent it to her. It had shown the human kicking a sleeping recruits helmet under her bed. Attempted murder, given the inferno that later engulfed the building. She mentally tuned out the sound of her friend chastising her for her ‘Raikiri Fetish’ as she deleted the file.

If anyone tried to find it, they would get a report that would inform them that the file had been corrupted due to a fault with the camera, a lie that the Instructor would back up. Einashu wasn’t usually one to forgive attempted murder. Under different circumstances the human would have already been arrested. These weren’t the usual circumstances though.

You can thank Recruit Nuiy for this human, the general thought as she filled out the form.

The general could ill abide traitors, but she could abide attempted rapists even less. She also well understood the need for vengeance. While political realities meant those women would likely never see punishment for their crimes, Einashu’s position at least allowed her to shield her recruit from the repercussions of his attempt to garner some small amount of justice with his own two hands.

Perhaps an official attempt for a real punishment might have been possible if the victim and witnesses had come forward the night of the crime…but privately the general doubted it. While she couldn’t condone it, she well understood why the human hadn’t done so. Which was why it was fortunate for him that one of his friend’s had.

“It’s not a Rakiri fetish,” the general said, turning back to her friend without missing a beat. “It’s called taste.…”