The Emperor's Wings
an excerpt

The Imms had really screwed this one up.

This academy was one of the most prestigious in the world. Three out of the four fleet admirals had come from this academy. Before them, all four. Every known hero from Earth had come from the Utsoyovich Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And this year’s graduating class, of all the eight thousand students, had three who were outstanding to any degree. Normally, every one of those eight thousand would be top-notch elite.

They thought it had something to do with the management.

The Imms, or Immortals, were the three generals commanding each faction of the military. Odin ran the navy overall, although rumor had it that he never saw battle himself. Athena was head of the army, and it was almost dead certain she’d never seen battle. The third was Loki, the head of intelligence. Now he HAD been a spy in his day, but his day was long ago.

In short, Earth was starting to lose the war. The aliens were gaining more and more territory outside the solar system and were closing in. Their sages were far more powerful, far more trained and experienced than any from Earth. That might have made all the difference.

Falcon didn’t think so. Falcon could see all kinds of problems with the strategies of the Daghda, head of everything military, just under the Emperor himself. She could fix them all, too, in her head, easily as fixing a button that popped off of a flannel shirt. She knew exactly what the military had to do in order to start winning this war, this neverending conflict that would result in the destruction of SOMEONE’S race if things were at their worst, and as things looked at the moment, that race would be humanity.

The problem with Falcon knowing this was that Falcon hadn’t even graduated yet. She was actually one of the three outstanding students from the North American Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her major was tactics and strategy. That was ironic, because while she was brilliant at it, those who major in tactics are placed in positions of command. That was problematic because Falcon had never lead anything in her life, and didn’t think she’d be very good at it.

Her professors were inclined to agree.

Nevertheless, she was so brilliant, so outstanding a student that she graduated with top honors. Some labeled her a genius. Some said she could save the human race, but never would. Actually, most people said that. But she ignored them. That wasn’t her job. Her job was to do what she needed to do, and well, she would be told what she needed to do, right?

She didn’t even look like a commander. Commanders were supposed to be tall and broad, stately, like Captain Picard from those old shows. Falcon was five feet and two inches off the ground, absolutely petite, with brown hair, brown eyes, and few curves. She looked rather childlike, too young to be graduating from the top military academy in the world, and was the only student she knew who had to show identification to get into R-rated movies. It was humiliating.

She sounded like a child when she talked, her high-pitched, light voice doing nothing for her appearance. She had been told that her voice would change as she got older, but at age nineteen, her voice was still immature, and it was doubly humiliating.

She was a geek, really. When she had been growing up in a military boarding school, she had read tome after tome after tome of war history, watched countless documentaries, and could eventually detail most any major war in human history, complete with commentaries on tactical and strategical choices made. She was a child prodigy. There was nowhere for her to go but the military, and seeing as how she wouldn’t stand a chance in the army with her small size, she chose the navy.

“Once you get her to start talking about war and tactics and history,” Professor Lieutenant Lark said softly to the visiting commander, “she doesn’t shut up. You can’t get her to stop. She knows everything. She reads everything. You can’t make her stop. Her eyes shine and spark and you can’t help but be draw in by what she’s saying because she’s so fascinated with it, and you become fascinated with it. She loves it so much.”

“But can she apply it to new situations?” the commander asked, skeptical.

“She’s amazing, Commander. You have to see this girl in action, she’s brilliant.”

“Let’s see. Cadet Falcon!”

Falcon trailed over from her table at the cafeteria, looking a little overwhelmed by the presence of a commander. If she was this starstruck by a commanding officer, how would she feel about being one herself? The commander frowned.

“Tell me. You’re in the middle of a nebula with zero visibility. Your engines have been shot out, and the enemy is getting into rowers to board. What do you do?”

Something in Falcon’s eyes sparked, like the reflection of light of a gear in a machine as something behind her eyes was set off. “Unscrew the bunkers in the rooms, weld them together and form barriers. Are our weapons offline?”

“Yes.” The commander wished he’d remembered to mention it.

“What about our hand-helds?”

“They’re fine.”

“IN that case, we’ve got barriers, we’ve got weapons. As they board, we’d take them out from behind the barriers. Granted, if I had my way, any ship of mine would be installed with emergency force fields every ten meters, which would mean toting home some nifty POWs rather than killing a lot of useful prisoners, but if I had no other choice, that’s what I would do.”

The commander was speechless. He had been mulling over that situation for months now, and hadn’t been able to come up with something so efficient. “That…would take a long time, Cadet.”

“In zero visibility?” The cadet’s mouth twitched. “They wouldn’t be able to get over there and find our docking bay that quickly in zero visibility, either. There’d be time. Granted, like I said, if I had my way…”

“Yes, cadet. Where are you from?”

“Manawba, Kansas, sir.”

“Never heard of it, cadet.”

“Neither has anyone who lives there, sir.”

The commander laughed. The cadet had delivered the line with a calm expression, like she hadn’t known it was funny. He knew otherwise when a small smile twitched her lips before her face straightened out. She was clever, this one.

“Go back to your lunch, cadet, and good luck on the exams.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The odd thing was that Falcon didn’t seem to have a lot of close friends. She had a few, but seemed to prefer spending her free time reading in her room. When she was seen elsewhere, she was usually playing tennis or practicing hand-to-hand combat with one of said few close friends. She had had a short relationship with a boy early on in her academic career before apparently realizing that it was difficult to manage a relationship and an academic career at the same time. It was a short relationship, and she was the one who broke it off. The boy hadn’t been too devastated—he dropped out of the academy shortly afterwards, and not because of her, but because of his grades. The military hadn’t been for him, whereas it had been her life.

The exams were coming up soon, and Falcon was expected to do well. She and two other students were already expected to graduate with high honors. The other two, a navigation major and an engineering major, were not as renowned as she was. Falcon didn’t know it, but word of her had leaked to the fleet admirals, to the Imms themselves, and perhaps as far as the Emperor. As was said before, many thought it possible for her to save mankind. Few thought it was likely. She was no Phoenix.

Hope springs eternal, though, and Admiral Phoenix had arranged for a post-graduation assignment that would make or break Falcon. She would come out of this a leader, or she wouldn’t come out of it at all. That was the plan.

The exams determined post-graduation assignments. It was already know how Falcon would be assigned. As a new ensign, she would, like any other ensign, be assigned to a squadron of ensigns aboard a ship. These squadrons were made up of two or three ensigns of each specialty—tactics, engineering, navigation, medicine, weapons, and security—and assigned to special tasks that taught them teamwork and hands-on things about their trade. It was a good system, but the need for warm bodies in the military had left a desperate need for warm bodies in the academies, and the lack of pickiness in choosing students had led to a lesser crop of them. The classes were large, the education was diminished. The military might actually suffer from having more warm bodies.

That was one thing Falcon was thinking of. There needed to be more academies. Having one per continent wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. But the education system wasn’t anything she would ever have control over.

The exams came and went. They were boring. They were nothing. They were everything Falcon had thought they would be. Nevertheless, she was nervous as anything while taking them. Most students broke a sweat. In that academy, three didn’t. Falcon was one of those three.

The exams were still tiring. Not tiring enough. Falcon thought they should be harder, but she supposed the point wasn’t the difficulty. Better students were given better assignments. What she wouldn’t give to work under an admiral like Phoenix. In fact, she was pretty sure that’s where she would be assigned—the Phoenix Flame. It wasn’t a matter of pride for her. It was objective—she knew she was the best tactics student in the academy. That was the way of things. She had been told that her entire career. She got the best grades. This was simply the way of things.

She had no idea.

There were two other students who had her same assignment. She hadn’t predicted that, either.

No way she could have known about an assignment that didn’t exist before her.

“Grey Squad?” Falcon blinked. That wasn’t right. Every ship had four squads—Red, Blue, Green, and Gold. Just like the colors of the fleets. Red, blue, green, gold. None of them were grey, not on any ship, at least, as far as she knew. She scanned over the assignment sheet. Two other students in the academy had been assigned to Grey Squad on the G.E.S. Carroway under Captain Crow. Carroway, Captain Crow. Sounded like a pirate ship, almost. She knew about Crow, at least. He was far from the best captain in Red Fleet, but he was by far the most ruthless, just like his piratical name suggested. It was almost absurd. Like something in a teen novel.

Grey Squad. The same ship had the other four squads, she could see them on the list, but this additional fifth squad was…strange. It didn’t make sense. She had never heard of Grey Squad.

Beside her, Cadet Sparrow appeared to be having the same dilemma. Sparrow was someone Falcon had known from nav classes, but hadn’t seen much otherwise. She was part of a different crowd, had more friends, was a little more selective about company than Falcon, who seemed to make friends with boys more easily than girls. Not that Falcon didn’t LIKE Sparrow. In fact, Sparrow was a kind, gentle girl, but a little reclusive, someone who might spend hours and days with friends and then wall herself up for days on end and refuse to talk to anyone. The third name assigned to Grey Squad, Raven, was familiar—Raven from the Engineering department. She’d seen him around, heard people muttering about him being bipolar. Apparently, it was a recent development, and physicians were still trying to find a medicine that worked for him.

That would be relevant eventually. Mainly, she was wondering what the heck her assignment was. Grey Squad didn’t mean anything at the moment. Then she noticed the star by the term, and scanned down to the bottom of the page to find its answer.

“Report to Headmaster Lieutenant Lapwing’s office for more information.”

Therefore, there was nothing much to do besides report to Headmaster Lieutenant Lapwing’s office for more information.

Lapwing’s office was pristine and organized, like any office of a member of the Emperor’s Wings (the navy), the Emperor’s Hands (the army), or the Emperor’s Eyes (intelligence). Lapwing himself was a narrow man, with sharp cheekbones and a cleft chin like two spears held back to back. He looked like a cartoon character, actually, or at least Falcon thought so. The sort she would watch as a child, only Lapwing would be the villain, scheming to trip up the hero’s plans. Back in those days when she still had parents. Back in those days when she was still Helena.

Named for the face that launched a thousand faces, and her face wouldn’t be recognizable amongst a thousand.

She sat in Lapwing’s office patiently with Sparrow as Raven himself arrived. Sparrow’s white-flecked blue eyes glanced up at him as he entered. Sparrow was pretty, with a round face and a cloud of frizzy auburn hair and a host of freckles—well, at least some people thought she was pretty. Falcon was inclined to draw glasses on the girl herself, like a naughty child doodling on a picture. That would complete the repressed nerd look. Maybe she needed pigtails, braided auburn hair like Anne of Green Gables.

Don’t be mean, Falcon.

Raven was of obvious Indian origin, with that skin the gorgeous color of slightly creamed coffee, dark, deep-set eyes, and hair like black silk. His face was strong and his shoulders broad, and he sported a well-trimmed beard that not all nineteen-year-old-boys could manage to grow. He would have been gorgeous but for the somewhat vacant look in his eyes, like he wasn’t quite sure what was happening in his life or who was in front of him.

She hated to think it, but she thought it anyway. It’s probably the meds. She was actually surprised to think he’d been allowed to graduate while his bipolar disorder was still out of control.

What surprised her most was that the figure behind Lapwing’s desk was not Lapwing himself. Rather, it was someone she’d seen on television and idolized for most of her conscious life. Which didn’t help make this situation any calmer for her. She stared at the man behind the desk, who was idly picking at grime beneath his fingernails with a pocket knife.

Admiral Phoenix.

He was a legend. He was the modern-day Lancelot, except much older and not very attractive. The man was well past his sixtieth year, his belly was starting to sag, his skin was drooping, and his hair was pure silver in the areas where it was indeed there. But none of that mattered. This was Admiral Phoenix, of the G.E.S. Phoenix Flame, the flagship of Red Fleet. He was beyond genius, beyond prodigy. He was the thing that had kept Earth from going under during the darkest part of this endless war, and Falcon could only stare blankly at him, quite unconvinced that he was there at all, leaning back in Lapwing’s chair and resting his feet on his desk.

It was said that he’d been Phoenix so long that he didn’t remember his birth name anymore. THAT was hardcore.

Falcon’s eyes blinked back and forth between him and various objects in the room to see if he would still be there when she blinked back. He was. Never gone. Still there. Holy. Crap.

Phoenix didn’t look up as Raven, just as starstruck as Falcon, sat in the third chair. “Hokay, cadets,” he said casually, with all the power and command in that casual tone that any other captain only dreamed of and fought their whole lives to attain a reflection of. “I’m sure none of you know why you’re here.”

That was the truth. Falcon glanced at her fellow cadets, and nodded along with them.

Phoenix glanced up, eyes latching on to Falcon. He didn’t have to say anything for Falcon to realize her mistake. “Yes sir,” she barked, and her voice cracked under anxiety. Sparrow and Raven glanced at her in horror before repeating her sentiment, with results just as embarrassing. They waited for their reprimand.

Phoenix only laughed, a deep, belly laugh that set the others smiling. This was going to be fine.

“To get right to it,” Phoenix said, folding the pocket knife and sliding it into a pocket hidden in his uniform, “you are three members of the first and only Grey Squad. There will be Grey Squads after you, but you are the only one of your kind. No one has told you WHAT Grey Squad is, so here’s the deal. Each of you are brilliant. You are the best members in your fields of the world’s graduating class this year. All of you. Geniuses. Sparrow, I understand you skipped first year nav. Not an easy feat.”

Sparrow cleared her throat. “Sssir,” she croaked, the ‘yes’ somehow getting lost.

“Raven. You’re working on projects engineers before you have been putting off for years due to their impossible nature. Internal shields, for example.”

“Yes, sir,” Raven said softly.

“And Falcon.” His cool green eyes latched onto her like fish hooks. “You gave Commander Owl quite a lesson in tactics the other day.”

Had the commander been an agent? Falcon was suddenly nervous. “I answered a question,” she said modestly, trying not to make a big deal out of it in front of a commanding officer, although it was a situation she’d been very proud of.

“Excellent work,” Phoenix said with a nod. “Now. The other three members of your squad have been chosen from other schools.”

“Three?” Raven piped up out of line, making his classmates extremely nervous.

Phoenix let it slide. “Yes, three. One from each specialty. You’re going to be an elite team used for special ops missions. You have the minimal requirements for running a ship. Your weapons specialist is coming in from South America. Your physician is up in the European Academy, and your security officer is from Africa. You’ve got the best of the best with you. You’re going to be a great team.

“Now, in addition, there will be a member of the Brethren joining your team. I don’t want this to make you nervous.”

That DID make Falcon nervous, actually. Quite nervous. The Brethren were like a cult, almost, only it wasn’t about religion. They lived in a monastery in Seattle, Washinton. They were men and women of strange abilities, mind powers, telepathy and sometimes empathy. Falcon had only met one, back when she was still at the boarding school, and he had been old and crotchety. No one outside of the brotherhood had ever met a sage younger than fifty. It had something to do with their powers, how they grew with age and the expansion of the mind. She didn’t understand it. But the Brethren were a reclusive bunch, and no one who didn’t work with them knew quite what their powers entailed. Some rumors existed that a sage could rape the mind, tearing from it whatever information he wanted and leaving horrible damage in his wake. It was a terrifying thing to think of, but she doubted the veracity of rumors in general. She would find out from the sage himself what he was capable of.

“Contrary to popular belief, only fifty sages in human history has been able to forcefully read minds,” Phoenix said seriously, “and only one has been able to actually control someone’s actions for any period of time whatsoever, and it was very short before the sage passed out from exhaustion. The Brethren have no hostility towards anyone, and you have nothing to fear. They have been our allies for decades, absolutely indispensable to us in this time of war.”

Sages served aboard ships sometimes. They were able to detect the presence of anyone within…well, the vicinity was determined by the sage’s natural powers and age. When the enemy discovered the technology of cloaking, sages became a necessity. They were also able to perform simple, painful, and effective attacks on the mind that weren’t damaging—like a very intense, very short migraine—that could be used against other sages, or as a self-defense against anyone else. Falcon had learned all this in class, but only what was relevant to a commander working with sages. They hadn’t even learned about the limit of a sage’s telepathic ability. Falcon thought now that it seemed like an important thing to know.

“You will, of course, be free to ask the sage any questions you have. Now. Cadet Falcon, upon your graduation, you will take command of your squadron.”

Falcon had been afraid of that. Not afraid of command or responsibility, just of…well, it was unfamiliar territory already, being an ensign, and stepping right into a command role in her squadron was not a happy thought. Granted, being in the military stripped its members of any real comfort zone after a while, and she’d had a taste of that at the academy. This was nothing compared to what the members of the army went through. “Yes, sir,” she said as firmly as she could. Drat, her voice was so childish. Things weren’t supposed to be this way!

“Captain Crow will be there for any questions you have. You’ll be leaving for your assignment the day of your graduation, so make your parties quick, ‘cause that evening, you’re becoming adults.” Phoenix rose to his feet, and so did the cadets, quickly, out of respect for their commanding officer. “You are dismissed.”

That was abrupt. Altogether very strange, nothing Falcon had expected. Her disappointment at being unable to work under Admiral Phoenix was oddly at conflict with her pride in her special assignment. Leadership wouldn’t be so bad. The Emperor’s Wings, his navy, were trained to follow their commanding officer. It wouldn’t be a struggle to keep a small group of ensigns under her command. That couldn’t be the problem. The problem wouldn’t be in figuring out her commands—that came naturally.

No, this wouldn’t be so bad after all.