The cadet captain turned around and faced him, a look of pure loathing and anger on his face. Alexandros nearly took a step back, eyes opening wide in shock as he recognized the face.
“Well, Cadet Alexandros, I see you’re trying to ruin a perfectly good airship with your sabotage.” Cadet Captain Kretarus stared at him.
He would be in charge of this airship right now, wouldn’t he? Alexandros asked the gods as he steeled himself for what was to come.
“No response? Why did you deliberately damage the engine? Because of you we are now dead in the air, and we will be lucky just to get it working again!” Kretarus slammed his fist down in anger on the arm of the command chair. Several of the other cadets in the room flinched, but Alexandros stood steady.
“Sir, I was nowhere near the engine room at the time of the fire. I…”
“Liar! I’m certain it was you, trying to prevent me from gaining my rightful place,” he raged onward.
Alexandros looked past him at Profias, willing him to help stop this lunatic, but the man merely observed passively.
This must be part of the training.
Then another thought.
I wonder who is being assessed here.
All of a sudden it clicked into place. The set up, the preparation, the verbal attack.
His brain spinning from this thought, Alexandros didn’t hear much of the rest of the verbal haranguing being dished out by the “captain.” The other boy had moved closer, baiting Alexandros into responding. Contempt practically oozed off him.
“I did not do it, sir. I was not in the room,” Alexandros choked out. Kretarus laughed.
“Of course you were, you pathetic excuse for a Roman. Your family should have been exterminated decades ago. Why they let you, a festering little worm of a man, enter this institution, I’ll never know.” Kretarus chuckled at him. “Do you really think you belong here? You will never be one of us. Even the scholarship students have more balls and brains than you.” He paused again, obviously waiting for Alexandros to react.
Alexandros fought to control his anger, biting the inside of his check until he tasted the iron tang of blood in his mouth. He is trying to get you to screw up your chance, stay calm.
“Nothing to say, traitor? I knew you should never have been allowed on this vessel.” Kretarus struck him, leaving his ears ringing for a moment.
Blood boiling, Alexandros turned and hit back, a hard punch straight to the other cadet’s stomach. Kretarus doubled over, wheezing and gasping, before falling to the deck on his hands and knees. Forcing himself back under control, Alexandros saluted the prostrate captain.
“Thank you, sir. I will return to my post.” He turned smartly and stepped away, making it to the bulkhead before a voice stopped him.
“Guards! Arrest this traitor,” Kretarus cried out, voice rasping. The two cadets stationed at the doorway hesitantly moved to stop Alexandros.
“Belay that order. Return to your posts,” the instructor said quietly. His voice carried his authority throughout the room, and the guards immediately stepped back.
A bell rang, interrupting the tense situation on the bridge.
“Sir,” a cadet called out from the communications panel, his ear pressed into a speaking tube. “It appears as though they’ve discovered the cause of the fire. A grate was repositioned incorrectly inside the engine. The only people who could have done that were the maintenance crews while the engine was shut down. It allowed the coal and fire to fall back into the main intake flue instead of staying in the combustion chamber.”
The instructor nodded, as if he had known this all along.
“And the wounded?” Profias asked.
“All are recovering fine, just as you said they would, sir.”
“As for you, Cadet Kretarus, your posting as captain is up. Cadet Lormanis, you are to assume the captain’s position. Please allow… Cadet… Kretarus… a moment’s respite perhaps. He just had a hard spill after tripping over the chair.”
Profias looked at Alexandros with a stern gaze.
“That will be all, Cadet Alexandros.”
Alexandros saluted and left quickly. How did Profias know so much?
Unless…
Had Profias purposefully changed the alignment of that grate to test the crew? Alexandros shivered slightly with the thought of his head instructor being a saboteur.
I seriously hope he doesn’t try to test us when I’m captain.
Chapter 5: Captain
Alexandros scanned the horizon with his spyglass while standing on the small bridge of the training vessel HMAS Arcus. The well-worn instrument was smooth in his hands, testifying to the generations of academia cadet use before his own.
From stem to stern, the small vessel was no more than a hundred feet long, the battered decks showing years of use. The hull was suspended from the long, oval gasbag above, the heavy canvas tapering to points at the ends. Unlike more modern airships, this one had a completely exposed deck, with the gasbag tethered to six points around the hull and large chains attached to sturdy rings holding both hull and gasbag in place. A simple, square command room sat aftwards amidships, protecting the vulnerable wheel and communications equipment. At the base of the stern, the single engine rumbled, propeller pushing the airship forward through the cloudy skies over the Mare Mediterrane.
This is a far cry from the HMTS Imperio, Alexandros conceded as he zipped up his uniform overcoat tightly against the brisk breeze.
The mission had been routine so far, if you could use routine to describe their first independent mission, absent of any trainers, observers, or teachers. In fact, the mood on board was one of glee, with the senior cadets positively quivering with excitement. Alexandros felt particularly lucky, as he had managed to draw the short straw for captaincy. Several of the cadets had clapped him on the back, and others gave him jovial mock salutes before embarking on their scout mission over the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
However, some cadets grumbled, and Alexandros knew he would have to gain their trust. Although he had been cleared in that nasty fire incident on the Imperio, things kept happening on that ship. The ammunition locker was broken into at one point, and noxious fumes filled his sleeping cabin at another. He was nearly pushed off the gantry during a nighttime patrol by an unknown assailant. He could never pin the blame on Kretarus, but he believed that the other boy now held a blood vendetta against him.
Even in the best of times, the Mediterranean is full of pirates, cutthroats, and brigands. It doesn’t help that I have some on my own ship, Alexandros thought as he swept his spyglass from one end of the horizon to another. I wish I had been able to pick my crew, instead of getting stuffed in with this lot. In an unfortunate, and probably intentional, turn of events, the Arcus’s new crew was the worst the academia had to offer. Putting down his spyglass, he watched as two cadets attempted to readjust a stabilizing sail the wrong way. The cadets pulled fitfully at the crank. With a crack, the linkage snapped, causing one end of the metal chain to strike one of the cadets across the torso and arm.
“Medico,” Alexandros called across the bridge, shaking his head as the injured cadet was helped away.
Mentally kicking himself for not attending to all his other duties, he stood abruptly and nearly collided with his acting first officer, Furtis Ionia. The two men exchanged salutes.
“Captain, we’ve got a message from airfleet command.” He paused, a big smile coming to his face.