Chapter 2105: Kessrin Command

Lorna was waiting for him at the academy’s main gate.

She stood beside the transport that would carry him to the shuttle port, her hands clasped behind her back, and when Ning approached with his bag over his shoulder, she straightened and gave him a crisp salute.

Ning returned it.

"I don’t have any advice for you," Lorna said. "I suspect you’d find most of it useless anyway. So I’ll just say this."

She looked at him for a moment, and her expression softened.

"Come back alive."

"I’ll do my best, Instructor."

She nodded, and stepped aside to let him pass.

As Ning reached the door of the transport, he glanced back across the academy grounds one last time.

Near the corner of one of the academic buildings, a short distance away, a familiar figure stood watching him.

Liam.

He stood alone, without any of his friends around him, his hands in his pockets and his expression unreadable. He did not move toward Ning, and he did not call out. He simply stood there and watched.

Then, as Ning looked back at him, Liam gave a single, slow nod.

It was a small gesture, barely noticeable from that distance. But it was the first civil thing Liam had ever done toward him in two years, and Ning understood it for what it was.

He nodded back.

Then he climbed into the transport, and the door closed behind him.

The journey from Truimal took the better part of two days.

A military shuttle carried Ning up from the planet’s surface to the great space hub where he had spent the previous year, and from there, a larger transport took him on to the system’s edge.

It passed through one of the glowing teleportation matrices without slowing, and in an instant, Truimal’s sun was gone, replaced by the light of a different star.

Several more jumps followed, each one carrying the transport deeper into the heart of Federation space, until at last it arrived in a system Ning had never seen before.

Kessrin Command was one of the largest military installations in this region of the galaxy.

It was not a single station but an entire network of them, a vast cluster of fortified structures built in orbit around a barren, rocky planet. They were linked by transport lanes and defended by more warships than Ning had seen gathered in one place since arriving in Crownus’s galaxy.

The planet below was covered in sprawling bases, training grounds, and shipyards, and the space around it hummed with constant traffic.

It was, Ning learned on the way in, the command center for Federation forces across several neighboring systems, including Truimal. And at its heart, in a large office overlooking the planet, was General Choo.

Before the transport docked, Ning quietly asked the System for one thing.

"What does General Choo remember about me?"

The System answered at once, and a stream of fabricated memories settled into his mind, the same ones that had been placed in Choo’s head two years earlier.

According to those memories, General Choo had first encountered Ning during an inspection of a small military training program on Rossin, the world where Ning’s fabricated parents had supposedly worked.

Ning had been one of a handful of young candidates taking part in a basic aptitude assessment, and Choo had happened to be watching when Ning completed a simple simulation with a result far beyond anything the program had ever seen.

Choo had been impressed, had spoken with Ning briefly afterward, and had kept an eye on him from a distance. When Ning’s family moved to Truimal, Choo had personally written the recommendation that secured his late transfer into the academy.

None of it had ever happened. But General Choo believed every word of it.

Ning was escorted from the docking bay through a series of heavily guarded corridors to the general’s office, and the moment he stepped through the door, a booming voice filled the room.

"Ning! There you are!"

General Choo rose from behind his desk and came striding around it with his arms spread wide.

He was a big man, tall and broad, with a thick neck and heavy shoulders that strained the seams of his decorated uniform.

He was somewhere in his sixties, his hair gone mostly gray and his face lined and weathered, but he moved with the vigorous energy of someone half his age. His face was broad and ruddy, with a wide mouth that seemed made for smiling, and right now it was stretched into an enormous, delighted grin.

Before Ning could salute, Choo had seized his hand in both of his own and was shaking it vigorously.

"Look at you," Choo said, stepping back to look Ning up and down. "Look at you! The last time I saw you, you were barely tall enough to see over the simulator console. And now look. A pilot. A real pilot, two years out of the academy!"

He clapped Ning on the shoulder hard enough that an ordinary young man would have staggered.

"Sit, sit. You must be exhausted after the journey."

Ning sat.

Choo did not return to his own chair. Instead, he leaned against the front of his desk with his arms folded, beaming down at Ning with an expression of such open, unguarded pride that Ning found it almost difficult to look at.

"I’ve been following your progress, you know," Choo said. "Every report. Every result. Greeves sent me your scores after your first True Simulation, and I nearly fell out of my chair. Three hundred and ninety-six! In a blizzard! I told my staff I’d known it all along, and they didn’t believe me. Nobody ever believes me."

He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that filled the room.

"Do you remember that day? On Rossin?"

Ning hesitated for only the briefest moment.

"How could I ever forget, sir?" he asked with a hint of a smile. "It was thanks to you that my life has changed in the way it has. I will always remember what you’ve done for me."