Chapter 241: Your Strongest Asset Is Reserve

The notice came on day thirteen, with one day of consolidation left to run and Glitch’s readings stable enough that Doyen had cleared gradual resumption of ordinary training.

[MERIDIAN ACADEMY — THIRD-CLASS TACTICAL DEVELOPMENT ALLOCATION]

[Astor, J.]

[Basis: E-9 Exterior Service Assessment (Strong); noted developmental requirement]

[Assignment: Advanced Command Practicum]

[Role: Acting Sector Coordinator]

[Evaluating instructor: HOLT, N.]

[Commences: 4 days]

[NOTE: This allocation is a development practicum. It does not constitute promotion or a command appointment.]

Jin read it twice and went to the briefing.

Neris had the sector map already up when he arrived and she did not spend any time on preamble.

"Four zones," she said. "Incomplete information, independent local decisions, and a team you’ve never worked with. You’re acting coordinator."

"Understood."

"Three participants." She brought up the profiles. "Odell Vance — Third Class, Rank 19. Silver-quality Cragmaw Boar, heavy control, holds ground. Sela Ruiz — Third Class, Rank 51, Bronze Skitterhawk, aerial scouting and harassment. Tomas Berne — Third Class, Rank 38, Bronze Ashvein Serpent, ranged and area denial."

Jin looked at the first name for a second.

"Vance is nineteen."

"Vance is nineteen and you’re forty," said Neris. "Your authority in this exercise is procedural. He does not have to like it and he doesn’t have to be a problem about it either, and from what I know of him he won’t be. He’ll do the job and he’ll ask you why once."

"Understood."

"You didn’t pick this team and you’re not going to. That’s part of the assessment." She moved to the map. "Four zones, and you will not be able to see all of them."

Then she got to the actual point.

"Glitch is your reserve."

Jin waited.

"Designated commander’s reserve, first phase. You may deploy him when a defined trigger is crossed. Not when a zone gets difficult, not when somebody sounds frightened on the channel, and not because you personally think you can solve something faster with him than without him." Neris looked at him levelly. "You’ll agree the triggers with me before we start and they’ll be written down."

"How many triggers?"

"Two. You choose them."

Jin looked at the four-zone map and did the arithmetic on what two triggers meant, and did not enjoy it.

"You’ve read my E-9 debrief."

"I wrote your E-9 debrief." Neris folded her arms. "Do you want to hear the reason or would you rather be irritated about it?"

"Both."

"Then here it is. We know your beast can carry a line. He carried one through the redirected pressure at E-9 with a strained foreleg, and he’s just moved to six-star, which I’ve read, and congratulations." Her congratulations was as matter-of-fact as the rest. "That question is answered. The open question is whether you can build a sector that doesn’t need him."

"And if I can’t?"

"Then you’ll be a Tamer who’s very good at holding one position personally, which is a useful thing to be and is not a coordinator." She pulled up the trigger sheet. "Every cross-zone emergency between E-8 entering your boundary at minute fifty-nine and relief at one-forty-one was answered by you and your heaviest asset. Forty-two minutes, no exceptions. That’s a habit, and habits get people killed when the asset is unavailable."

She’s not wrong. She’s specifically, annoyingly not wrong.

"When do I meet them?"

"Tomorrow. And Astor — you’re going to want to spend that hour telling them what you can do." Neris closed the file. "Spend it finding out what they can decide."

He met them the next morning in a briefing room and spent most of it listening.

Odell Vance was broad and quiet and looked at the map for a long time before he said anything at all. When he spoke, it was to ask exactly one question.

"Why you?"

"Because I ran an exterior sector at E-9 and my evaluation says I over-used my own beast doing it," said Jin. "That’s the whole answer. They’re not testing whether I’m the strongest person here. They’re testing whether I can run a sector without spending my reserve in the first ten minutes."

Vance considered that.

"Fine," he said, and went back to the map, and that was the entirety of it.

Sela Ruiz talked considerably more and most of it was useful. Her Skitterhawk could scout three of the four zones and none of the underground, which she said immediately and without being asked, and she wanted to know what her reporting triggers were going to be before she wanted to know anything else.

"Give me a boundary and something that makes me interrupt you," she said. "I’ve had two coordinators this year who wanted running commentary and I could not hear myself think."

"You’ll get a boundary and two triggers."

"Then we’ll get on."

Tomas Berne was the hardest to read. His Ashvein Serpent did area denial, which was extremely useful and entirely inflexible — once it committed to a zone it was slow to leave — and Berne knew it and said so with the resigned air of somebody who had explained it many times.

"So I’m a wall you place once," he said. "Place me well."

"Then I’m going to need to know how long it takes you to move."

"Six minutes to relocate. Four if the ground’s clear."

Jin wrote it down.

Six minutes. So he’s not a reserve. He’s a decision I make early and live with.

He spent that evening building the sector out of what they had rather than what he wanted.

Vance held ground and could not cover distance. Ruiz covered distance and could not hold anything. Berne denied an area and took six minutes to change his mind. And Glitch — a hundred and forty kilograms of Bronze 6-Star beast who had spent a fortnight becoming denser and steadier and who could brace against a measured force hard enough to move a test rig — sat behind all of it under two triggers Jin had not yet chosen.

Every one of them can do exactly one thing well, so the sector has to be built so nothing ever needs a second thing.

He wrote the trigger sheet three times before he was satisfied with it.

The first trigger authorized Glitch only when a threat crossed a zone’s declared fallback boundary after its local pair reported that containment had failed. The second applied when the designated withdrawal route came under direct threat. Difficulty was not a trigger. Fear on the channel was not a trigger. Neither was Jin seeing a faster answer that happened to have black plating and gold eyes.

Neris approved both without changing a word. That felt less like praise than having the lock click shut.

The panel went up on his slate that night, short and unambiguous.

[ADVANCED COMMAND PRACTICUM — ASTOR, J.]

[Role: Acting Sector Coordinator]

[Personal combat asset: Reserve]

[Deployment condition: trigger authorization only]

Jin lay on the floor with a beast who had just spent five weeks becoming the most capable thing he had ever commanded, and looked at the line that said reserve, and had to admire the timing.

Fourteen days of measured feed, a written medical opinion, five smaller meals a day, and a controlled advancement I planned for seven days — and the first thing the academy does is tell me I’m not allowed to use him.

Glitch, who had picked up something from the bond and did not know what, thumped his tail against the floor twice.

"It’s fine," Jin told him. "You’re going to stand behind a line and be extremely bored, and if I do this properly you’ll stay there the whole time."

The bond conveyed that this was the worst plan Jin had ever produced.

"Yeah," said Jin. "That’s the test."