Act I, The RecordChapter 1
Chapter 1: First Place
Selrick Academy, Terrinia. Fourteen years later.
A transfer student breaks a record on her first day, and the girl she beat starts racing her at everything.
Fanny stopped inside the Academy gate at sunrise and looked up at the dome of light over Terrinia. Above the western wards one patch shone brighter than the rest: new light over a tear from the last attack.
In 978 the Catastrophe came. In the years after it, the Enders were everywhere. These huge living machines came from the sky with one purpose: to wipe out humanity. They nearly did.
Soldiers formed the Shield of Dawnbreak, named for their planet, Dawnbreak, to fight them. The survivors drew back to Terrinia, humanity’s final bastion. Its dome, the Defensive Bubble, kept the Enders out.
Then people learned to rebuild dead Enders into armored mecha suits. The suits ran on belief. Everyone called that belief aspirant power. Those with enough of it to pilot a suit were called Aspirants.
When the first suits were born, Selrick Academy was founded to train Aspirants. It took children of about fourteen.
Fanny was eighteen, a third-year transfer, two years late.
Her family were Shield soldiers and had trained her from the start. Her hands were callused. At sixteen she had asked for real battle instead of school. I’m not good enough for an elite school, she had thought. Battle is faster.
The Shield kept her off the front. For two years, soldiers without suits taught her how to hold ground. Now she had passed the entrance exam. She meant to get strong enough to beat the Enders.
Meet
Fanny
Blade of Kibou
A soldier turned transfer student. She flies with blades and a cable.
In the courtyard, half the students wore headgear: ears, horns, visors. An Aspirant thing, Fanny decided.
A billboard covered one wall: two girls back to back, one with a long pink ponytail and a red bow, one with long black hair. Big letters named them: GUINEVERE and VEXANA. “Their undefeated record has made them legends even among the Aspirants!”
A machine shaped like a dragon came through the gate, blue sparks running along its seams. A blonde girl walked along the top of the wall beside it, late, a horned crest on her headgear. She jumped down and landed running.
“I can’t stand waking up early, the sun in my eyes, and taking orders!” she told the whole courtyard.
Taking orders is the job, thought Fanny.
“She built that herself,” said a girl beside Fanny. “Nobody else can even get it to move.”
A bell tower of white stone rose over it all. Fanny marked it as soldiers do: high ground.
The placeSelrick Academy
The assessment was in the VR Battlefield, where students fought simulated Enders. On the big screen above the pods, someone’s run was ending.
A girl with long pink-red twin-tails swung a long cannon up to her shoulder. She charged it until the muzzle burned blue.
The Chief Combat Instructor, head of all combat training, signed Fanny in. She was young and cold, with a dark visor over her left eye.
“Fanny. Transfer. Two years with the Shield. You asked for the front.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And they didn’t give it to you.” Her one visible eye went to Fanny’s hands. “One without the Aspirant spirit is like a gun without bullets.”
Inside a VR pod, the hall vanished. Fanny stood in a broken street, in her suit, blades at her hips.
A man shouted under a fallen sign. “Simulated civilians are not scored,” said a voice.
“Understood.” She pulled him clear first. It cost eleven seconds.
Then she fought the soldiers’ way, her back to a narrow alley. The Enders had to come one or two at a time, and they fell that way.
When she climbed out, a crowd stood under the rankings board. At the top it said LAYLA, 3:41.
The girl from the screen stood in front with her arms folded. Up close she wore a frilled black uniform nobody had issued her.
Meet
Layla
Miss Hikari
Top of the Combat Division, with a cannon she built herself.
“Layla, you rock! You’re always No. 1!”
The board blinked. A new line slid in above hers: FANNY, 3:39.
“Look! The rankings just changed!”
Nobody cheered. A thin boy at Fanny’s elbow said, “She’s never been second. Not once, since first year.”
The twin-tailed girl looked at the board, then at Fanny. “Humph!” She walked out.
What’s wrong with her? thought Fanny. She shouted at the closing doors.
“Hey! Layla! If you want, I’ll show you the alley thing. It saves a lot of time!”
The doors shut. The thin boy opened his mouth, then closed it.
Fanny kept the Shield’s hours. At a quarter past five each morning she drilled alone in the drill hall’s one narrow doorway, blades lit, her back to the dark corridor.
At seven she took the white spiral stair up to class. Halfway, pink-red twin-tails flew past her on the inside.
Fanny took the next turn two steps at a time. Layla took it three. She reached the top first and walked into class as if she had not been running.
The next morning Fanny started a minute early. Layla was already on the stair.
Fanny reached the top a step ahead. She had been thinking about her drill.
“I wasn’t racing,” said Layla, out of breath.
On the third day the duty board put them on the same hall. Fanny filled a bucket. When she turned round, Layla was already mopping, fast.
“Is this a race?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Layla mopped faster.
So Fanny mopped faster too. Then they threw down the mops, grabbed floor cloths and ran the hall bent double, side by side, pushing the cloths with both hands.
Even the weapons bench was a race. At “Gear check,” Layla had her cannon open, a hot pen at its cells, and shut again before Fanny had oiled her second blade.
That evening Fanny passed the third-year lounge. Layla sat alone on the sofa by the window. One finger held down a slat of the blinds. She was watching the sun go down over the city.
Down the corridor, other third-years were laughing, and Layla did not look around. Gold light lay across her knees in stripes.
Fanny stopped in the doorway. Every race that week had been Layla’s idea.
She’d only race me to the sofa, Fanny decided, and walked on.
Behind her, the slat clicked back into place.