Chapter 8: Chapter 7 - Visitors

The knock on Cliff’s door brought a sigh of relief. He slapped his textbook shut, stretching his shoulders and standing up from his desk. His last two hours had been spent struggling through history readings, and there was still no end in sight. It wasn’t that the material was boring, exactly, just that he had far more interesting things to think about that weren’t tied up in a thousand years of names and dates.

He was surprised to find Jenna waiting for him at the door, notebook clutched in her hands. Her hair was in a loose tail behind her head, and she’d changed from their green and brown uniform into a matching set of pale blue sleeping clothes. Cliff himself had ditched the uniform top for his sweat-stained undershirt, but he was still wearing the pants – honestly, they were more comfortable than any of the clothes he’d brought to the Academy.

“Jenna!” he said, “What can I do for you?” The women’s rooms were on the other wing of the dorm. As far as he knew there weren’t strict rules against the women visiting the men and vice versa, but the dorm was already proving to be a rumor mill, so most seemed to want to keep their distance after the sun went down. Things like that didn’t bother Cliff, though.

“Hey, Cliff, sorry for coming by so late,” she replied with a tired smile, brushing a stray hair behind her ear. “You mind if I pick your brain? I’m working through the Engineering homework, and, well – I was wondering if that offer to help me was still on the table.”

“Sure, sure,” Cliff said, opening the door for her, “come on in.” She stepped into the room, cautiously looking around. “Welcome to my kingdom.” He waved a hand towards his desk. “Feel free to grab a seat at my throne.”

“It’s not as messy as I expected,” she said as she sat down, still looking around the room, “though you could use some decorations.”

“You wound me,” he said, ‘I’ll have you know I’ve got a reputation for cleanliness back home.” He glanced up at the bare walls. “Maybe the place could use a bit of brightening – but cut me some slack! We just moved in a week ago. I’ve hardly had a chance to go shopping for things to tack on the walls.” He sat down heavily on his bed. “You can’t tell me you’ve had much time to spend thinking about making the place look pretty.”

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding? My parents brought a suitcase of decorations – we had the place looking nice the day of the entrance ceremony.”

Cliff frowned. “What about Loria?” he asked. She didn’t seem quite the type to worry about room decorations, though he wasn’t exactly an expert on reading her.

Jenna shrugged. “We’ll just say that her side of the room looks a lot like this.” She tilted her head. “Speaking of roommates, where’d Thalos run off to?”

“He’s at dinner with – ah – his auntie,” Cliff replied.

“Oh?” Jenna said, “he’s got family in Westholden? He hadn’t mentioned it.”

Cliff shrugged. “Something like that.” He’d managed to work the secret out of his roommate, that his grandfather was old friends with the headmistress, but his friend had made it clear that Cliff wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. He liked Jenna and all, but he wasn’t about to betray his roommate’s trust for a bit of small talk. “Anywho,” he said, standing up from the bed, “you said you needed help with the Engineering assignment?”

“Ah,” she said, as if she’d forgotten, “yeah, right.” She spun towards the desk, flipping her notebook open. He came up behind her, leaning forward to look at her notes. “I didn’t bring the textbook, can I see yours?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, grabbing the book from the little shelf above his desk and handing it to her. Honestly, he probably wouldn’t need it to help fix her mistakes – they were still working through extremely basic circuits, the type of stuff he’d figured out back when he first took apart his father’s lamp. Still, it might help her better understand.

“Let’s see here,” she said, flipping through the book until she found their assigned problems. She tapped her finger on the page. “Here. Can you help me with this?”

Cliff skimmed the page with his eyes. They were supposed to draw a few basic diagrams of simple Magetool circuits. He vaguely remembered sketching a few down in his notebook at the end of their last class. “Sure,” he finally said, “what do you need help with?”

“Well,” Jenna said, flipping open her notebook, “I gave it a try, but I’m not that confident. Something about the symbols, they just bounce off my head as soon as I read them.” She pointed at a trio of sketches on her paper.

“Hmm,” Cliff said as he looked over the drawings. The first was a simple light, little more than the Prime stone, light emitter, and switch. The second one was the kind of thing you stuck in a sewing machine or any small machine that required motion – it was basically just a little motor. The third, though… “The first two are fine,” he said, “but the third, it’s supposed to shoot a fireball, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, “is it wrong?”

Cliff clicked his tongue. “Kind of? It certainly doesn’t shoot a fireball, but the circuit you drew could work, in theory.” He pointed at the first mistake. “The direction of this filament is wrong – it’s pointed towards the Prime Stone, not away from it.”

“They have directions?” Jenna asked with a frown.

“Yeah, that’s what the arrows are for.” He moved his finger to the second spot of trouble. “Here, you’ve drawn a fire absorber, not an emitter.” He frowned as he explained. “Those two mistakes together, and you’ve actually made a pretty basic cooling circuit – though, you don’t have anything to store the energy, so it’d melt as soon as things got a little hot.”

“Okay,” Jenna said incredulously, “how do I fix it?”

Cliff flipped a few pages back in the textbook. “Check this part again.”

“Right,” Jenna said, comparing the example diagram to her own. Cliff nodded along as she worked to fix the two mistakes. When she finished, she looked at him. “How’s that?”

“Looks good to me,” he said, standing back up and ruffling her hair with a hand. “Nice job.”

“Hey, watch the hair!” She said, giving him an annoyed expression.

“Sorry about that,” Cliff replied with a smirk, collapsing onto his bed. “It’s what I used to do to my sister whenever she finished her homework.” He leaned back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Did you often help her?”

“All the time,” Cliff said wistfully, “her, my younger brother – sometimes I even helped my older sister, back when she still had schoolwork.”

“Huh,” Jenna said, surprised.

Cliff looked at her. She’d propped her arm on the back of her chair and was leaning on her palm, giving him an odd look. “What?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have expected you to be the doting type,” she said.

Cliff shrugged, though it hardly worked while he was lying down. “Why? Because I’ve got an independent streak? I was a wild child, sure, but when my Gift showed up, well – let’s just say my momma and poppa didn’t really know what to do with me. So they took the reins off, let me try to find the best use for my brand new skills.”

“And that was helping your siblings with their homework?”

“And fixing things, and doing the math for seeds and harvests. Helped out other folk, too, when they couldn’t afford to hire someone to come fix whatever was broken.” He’d gotten a quick understanding of plumbing, engineering, woodworking – really anything that his Gift gave him an advantage at, plus a few things it didn’t. He looked over at her again, and she was still giving him that odd look, so he decided to change the subject. “You figure out what club you want to join yet?” It was a requirement that every student at the Academy join one of the recreational clubs. Something about balancing work with play – though, considering it was required, Cliff wondered how the clubs could be considered recreational at all.

She blinked. “Hm? Ah, yeah, I think so – I’ll visit next week, but I’m probably going to sign up for the dueling club.”

“Oh really? I thought you were done with dueling.”

She shook her head. “I just didn’t want to take the class – I figure the club will be a little more relaxed than the course would be.” She shrugged. “Besides, our PMT teacher told us we should hone our combat skills without using our PMTs. Something about forging a sword from steel instead of dirt.”

Cliff scoffed. “I wish our PMT teacher had anything useful to say – it’s been a week and he’s already lectured me three times on safety.”

Jenna smirked. “Well, are you being unsafe?”

“Not according to anyone besides him,” Cliff said indignantly, “I’ve done way more dangerous stuff with way less thought.”

“Cliff,” Jenna started in that warning tone he recognized from when his mom was about to scold him, “You know PMTs are not toys, they’re-”

“Weapons, yes, I get it,” Cliff said with a huff. Lieutenant Ulster’s class was already proving to be a massive disappointment. For one thing, they weren’t even allowed to take their PMTs out of the classroom, let alone customize them. And for another, Cliff couldn’t go a single class period without doing something to make the big gorilla see red.

“What about you?” Jenna said, “your club, I mean.”

“The engineering club,” Cliff said immediately, “our class is moving too slow for me – and don’t even say anything.” He glared towards his classmate. “I know you warned me, I don’t need the reminder.”

“I told you so,” Jenna said with an exaggerated huff. Cliff laughed, and she grinned at him.

A beat of silence passed before Jenna stood up from her seat. “Well, it’s getting late, and if I stay much longer, people will start to talk.”

“Right, right,” Cliff replied, “can’t give the gossip mill any more fuel.”

“Exactly... Say – did you hear what happened with Percy and that cadet?” She shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t.” She glanced at him, lips drawn to the side. “Though, it might be a little funny if some people started to talk – just to see their reactions, I mean.” Percy had been spotted crawling into bed just before the sun came up one morning, and a reliable source said he was on his way back from a cadet’s room. Speculation had already dominated three mealtime conversations, though the man himself remained admirably silent.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Sure,” Cliff said absently, “Though you have to be Percy, cause I’m too comfortable to go anywhere, and far too much of a gossip to keep my mouth shut.” He chuckled at his own joke – though really, a night in a peer’s room was hardly the type of rumor to worry about. Farmers were a gossipy type, and he doubted whatever the students here could churn out would compare to some of the imagined scandals of Minton’s countryside.

Jenna cleared her throat. “Uh – right. Give Thalos my best,” she said with an odd tone. He wondered if he’d pushed too far – maybe she had different standards for scandal.

“I’d tell you to give Loria my best, but I expect she might not appreciate the gesture.” Cliff hadn’t spoken to the girl much since that first day, but when he had, he’d earned himself nothing but a few grimaces and one word responses.

Jenna sighed. “Oh, stop it, Cliff, she’s not that bad. You two just got off on the wrong foot. Good night, and expect a few more late night visits from me.” She paused. “-for engineering, of course.” Finished speaking, she stepped quickly out of the room. He waved after her, snickering at the tinge of red on her cheeks as she left. He shut his eyes, pushing the thought out of his mind. He’d rest a few minutes, then he’d get back to his history reading.

Thalos got back ten minutes later, but by then, Cliff was already asleep.

***

“Scout, Quartermaster, Technician, and Commander. These are the four standard non-combat roles of a Courier squad,” the tall, stocky man said. He’d been introduced to them as Byron, a second-year Courier apprentice. Roose had brought him, along with three others, to give the new first-years an example of what a Courier squad looks like. Byron himself looked more military than Courier with his rigid posture and overbearing chin. The rest, though, could have fit right in with the first-years. “I believe the names are self-explanatory, but I’ve been asked by your advisor to give a quick rundown.” He paused to nod at Roose before launching into his explanation. “The Scout is in charge of information gathering and route-planning. The specific duties of a scout vary the most from contract to contract, and can include a wide variety of roles, from cartography and orienteering to infiltration and espionage. The Quartermaster is in charge of supplies. Of course, each person has some responsibility for their own possessions, but when it comes to long-term trips in high-pressure areas, the Quartermaster is responsible for calculating the supplies needed and divvying the weight. For urban jobs, he or she will usually be put in charge of accommodation and budgeting. The Technician takes the lead on tuning the squad’s PMTs. Additionally, for long-term contracts in high-pressure land, the Technician is responsible for mitigating overexposure to Magic and preventing their squad from suffering from The Sickness.” Cliff swallowed. Overexposure to magic, he’d learned from his history readings, was potentially the single most deadly disease in human history. There was no cure, and it seemed to have a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Thalos’s grandfather had died from it. “Finally, of course, there is the commander, who is in charge of high-level operational decisions. Often, the Commander will be able to serve as extra hands for any role that needs it, but their main duty is to coordinate the others, negotiate with the contract holder, and keep the mission running smoothly. Scout, Quartermaster, Technician, and Commander,” he said again, “Any questions?”

Their upperclassman scanned the room rigidly as Cliff considered the information. They would not be assigned their own squad for another week, but when they were, he figured he would be the natural choice for technician. At the moment, other people were probably more familiar with the inner-workings of PMTs, but he had confidence that, soon enough, he’d be the best choice. That’s not to say he didn’t have any interest in the other roles – he had enough of a mind for numbers that he figured he would be a serviceable quartermaster, and who didn’t want to be in charge? But, bluntly put, with his Gift, he doubted anyone would be close to as good of a technician as him.

Satisfied that there were no questions, Byron continued his spiel. “As for combat, things are a little less rigid. Generally speaking, combat roles are also broken into standard types. For direct combat, Couriers generally refer to people by their preferred fighting distance – Strikers for short range, Run-And-Gunners for mid-range, and Marksmen for long. Additionally, nearly every Courier squad will run with a Medic, whose PMT is largely keyed for first aid and healing. It’s Academy policy to have one medic in every squad, or at least it was for us.”

“It is for them as well,” Roose chimed in from the side.

“Right,” Byron said with a nod, “as for indirect combat roles, aside from the Medic, they tend to be much narrower, and are often tailored for specific Gifts or strategies – Trappers, Trackers, et cetera. Any questions?”

Deb’s hand shot up. “What’s your squad’s combat composition?” she asked.

Byron nodded. “Good question. We have a balance of ranges – one Striker, one Run-and-Gunner, one Marksman, and of course one Medic. Anyone else?”

Percy’s hand rose, more tentatively than Deb’s had. “So, if you’re a Medic, you won’t be doing any fighting?”

“It depends,” Byron said, “The medical node is quite large and will take up half of the space in your PMT. Because most people like to run with a martial node – and the Academy requires you have at least the smaller, defensive version – there is very little space remaining for other circuitry in your PMT. Of course, if your fighting style relies primarily on a Gift, you could effectively double your role as a Medic with whatever fighting style your Gift enables. Augments, however, are limited to whatever circuitry they can cram in their PMTs.” He paused. “Does that answer your question?”

“Ah – yes, thank you,” Percy said.

Byron nodded. “Anyone else?” Cliff stopped himself from raising his own hand. He wanted to interrogate Byron on the specifics of the medical node, but he doubted the second year student would be able to give him the information he wanted. He’d seen the Martial node in Barry’s PMT, so he knew, more or less, how it worked – the medical node, though, that would be a fascinating thing to see. Already his mind had invented half a dozen possibilities on the specifics of how it was put together.

“Alright, thank you Byron!” Roose said when it was clear there were no more questions, stepping forward with a clap of his hands. “Now, we’re going to split up into smaller groups and give you a bit more time to chat about each member’s responsibility in their squad. Start to think about what role you could perform in your own squads – you’ll have plenty of time to decide when I split you up, but there’s no harm in getting a head start.” His eyes scanned the room until they settled on Cliff. “And Cliff, if you even try to get them to let you take apart their PMTs, I’ll be letting Lieutenant Ulster know personally.” Cliff clicked his tongue. So much for his plans for the rest of class.

***

The engineering club called a squat one-story building home. It was all the way on the eastern side of campus, just about as far from the dorms as possible. By the time Cliff actually found the warehouse-slash-workshop, the Club open house had long since started.

Half a dozen students were gathered out front of the building, each person tinkering with a different part of what Cliff immediately recognized to be some kind of vehicle. It was in several pieces, and he started to frown as he assembled the thing in his mind. It was some kind of miniature car, maybe a quarter of the size of his family’s tractor and designed for one passenger. Almost immediately, he recognized a few problems with the design.

He walked over to one of the working students, a seminarian who’d ditched her cassock for a white working shirt. She was fumbling with one of the wheels, trying to fasten it on to a motor. “Did you all make this design yourselves?” Cliff asked. Their design was completely different from how most Magetool vehicles were put together. It was both simpler and more complex, but in different ways. His family’s tractor, as well as just about every Magetool vehicle he’d ever seen, relied on a single, powerful Magetool for propulsion attached to a complex drive-train that controlled the wheels. In some ways, it was a relic of a time when they couldn’t cram so much complexity into the Magetools and had to pull the finer movement out of the rest of the design. In a different way, though, it was elegant – when one Magetool controlled everything, all you had to do was slap a single, big power source, and the thing would roll.

“What?” the girl said, wiping a bit of sweat off her face as she looked at Cliff over her shoulder. “Yeah, it’s, uh, our project from last term.” She dropped the wrench she was holding and stood up, dragging her hand along the front of her shirt before extending it to Cliff. “You one of the first years? I’m Iona.”

“It’s a pleasure, Iona. I’m Cliff,” he replied with a smile. “Yeah, an Apprentice Courier first year. Took me a while to find the place.”

“You’ll get used to it – It’s fourteen minutes from our dorm at the rate I walk, which is average by the way.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Cliff said. He liked Iona already. He’d met a few engineers back in Minton, and she matched the stereotype in his head perfectly. She had a frazzled look about her, but it didn’t extend to her eyes – they were perfectly focused and intelligent. Nearly everyone he’d ever had a conversation with about this stuff looked just the same way.

“Paulo’s inside with the other first years, doing a show-and-tell of the junk we’ve got lying around in the warehouse. You can join them if you want.” She said, flicking her thumb towards the open shed behind her.

“You mind if I watch you work out here instead?” Cliff asked. He had a little interest in what they were doing inside, but actual physical work excited him much more than looking at things stacked up on shelves.

“I guess not,” she said, turning back towards the engine she’d left on the ground, “come here, I’ll explain what I’m doing.”

“No need,” Cliff said, “That’s the front left motor, right?” He pointed towards another one of the club members, hard at work, “he’s on the steering, it looks like, and she-” He pointed at a third member. “seems to be rewiring the rest of the motors.”

Iona’s eyes widened slightly as she followed his finger. “Spot on,” she muttered. “Here, come take a look.” Together, they squatted down next to the motor she was tinkering with. “We burnt through the filaments in our last test before vacation, so I had to replace this motor before we get the whole cart bolted together.”

“Right,” Cliff said with a nod, “it’s an interesting design – you know most vehicles rely on a single motor, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but we came up with this one – it’s modular, so it should be easy to tweak individual parts of the design. Plus, this way we can put it together piecemeal – gives us all something to do.”

Cliff nodded hesitantly. “Right, that makes sense.”

Iona turned to him, brows furrowed. “It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming after that sentence.”

Cliff smiled sheepishly. “But I can see a few problems with the design?”

She frowned. “Problems?”

“Yeah,” Cliff said with a shrug, “Just a few, though. I’ve got a couple of solutions that might work.”

“A couple of- Listen, Cliff, I appreciate you coming by to check the club out, but we’ve worked on this design for months before we started testing it.” She knelt down beside the motor, grabbing her wrench off the ground and continuing her work fastening it to the chassis.

“And how did those tests go?” Cliff asked, hoping he didn’t sound smug.

She didn’t reply, but her glare was enough to let him know they did not go all that well.

“Who’s this, Iona?” Cliff turned to see a teacher dressed in similar robes to Roose, but trimmed in silver instead of Roose’s red or the normal green.

“A new kid,” Iona said without looking up from the motor. “Says there’s problems in my design. Tell him he’s wrong, Paolo.”

“Brother Paolo, please, Iona,” the priest said. He extended a hand and Cliff rose to greet him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, sir,” Cliff said, “My name’s Cliff.”

Paolo grinned. “Ah, I’d hoped you might stop by. I’ve heard all about you from Templar Roose.”

Cliff’s eyes widened as he remembered when he tried to convince Roose to let him disassemble the Magimeter, when he tried to take apart Roose’s lamp to prove he should be in the advanced engineering classes, and most recently when he had gotten in trouble for tinkering with their air conditioner to make it run quieter – he’d started to do the same in every room until Roose caught wind and made him undo his changes. “Whatever he told you, I’m sure it was an exaggeration,” Cliff said with a forced chuckle.

“He said you have the best mind for Magetools he’s ever seen,” Paolo said. Cliff blinked, surprised, and Iona glared up from her work. “Come on, Cliff, let me show you around inside. We should leave Iona to get her work done.”

“Oh,” Cliff said, looking between the priest and the girl, “right, of course. Thanks for the warm welcome, Iona, and, uh, you’ve got your wiring backwards on your motor, there. She might fry again if you attach her like that.” Another glare from Iona, and Cliff and Paolo just about dashed away.

“Sorry about her,” the priest said when they were out of earshot, “she takes a lot of pride in her designs. The cart is sort of her baby, and most don’t take it kindly when people say their baby’s got problems.”

“I get it,” Cliff said with a nod, “Honestly, she should take pride. I’ve never designed anything like that.”

“But you could still spot its problems.” Paolo said.

“Right.” Cliff’s Gift made it easy for him to understand designs – he could fix or tinker with things, take them apart and put them back together, but actually creating new, inventive designs? That was well out of his wheelhouse.

“And?” Paolo asked with a raised eyebrow.

“And what?”

“What are the design’s problems?” He had an amused grin.

Cliff clicked his tongue. “You mean aside from the fact that she was attaching the motor wrong? Power mostly.”

Paolo led him into the warehouse. Shelves filled half of the space, but the other was relatively open aside from a rack of tools and a couple of workbenches. “What about the power?”

“There’s not enough of it,” Cliff said as he rummaged through the tools – he’d never seen so many differently-sized wrenches. “Most Magetool vehicles work with a single motor. It’s efficient that way. One power source, one motor. From what I saw out there – and I only got a glance, so I could have missed something – the motors are drawing their power from the steering. There’s not going to be enough draw. They won’t get enough traction, or the motors will stall, or-” He recalled that Iona had mentioned that one of the motors had burnt out. “All the power will go to one motor while the others seize up and it’ll break from the overcompensation.” He compared two wrenches. The difference in size was less than a quarter of his pinkie nail. He shook his head – ridiculous.

“Roose was right,” Paolo said, “you are good.”

Cliff grinned. “It’s my Gift, mostly. Gives me perfect insight on the process of things.”

“Right, he mentioned that too,” Paolo said, “it’s an odd Gift, for sure, but Gaeon works in all ways. Come on, these are the club’s old projects.”

Cliff dropped the wrenches back onto the rack, following Paolo towards the shelves. There were a handful of other students around, but Cliff knew this wasn’t a particularly popular club. Engineering in general seemed to have the reputation of work for people who couldn’t actually fight, and so it was below the students of the Academy. Cliff thought it was a bunch of hogwash, but then, he’d grown up with farmers, not soldiers.

“You already knew about the power problems?” Cliff asked. The shelves were full of half-finished projects, mostly things Cliff couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“Of course,” Paolo said, “it’s a well documented problem with trying to make vehicles with individually-driven wheels.”

“You could bootstrap a solution,” Cliff countered, “slap a smaller power source on each motor to supplement the power from the steering. It wouldn’t work for something much larger than this, but for a single-passenger cart, it should get the job done.”

Paolo nodded. “That’s exactly what I concluded.”

“Then why haven’t you told them?” Cliff said as he looked over a half-melted machine. He turned it over a few times in his hand and decided it had been a too-effective attempt at some kind of space heater.

“I’m a teacher, and this club is as much my class as any of my actual classes. I’ll try to lead them to the solution, but it’d be better if they could figure it out themselves.” He pointed at one of the old projects. “Take a look at this – two years ago a cadet tried to make a Magetool lockpick.”

Cliff grabbed the metal cube off the shelf. A spindly protrusion stuck out of a slot, and he figured you were supposed to stick it in the lock. He scanned the circuitry. “This thing is a brute – seems more likely to break the lock than open it.”

Paolo laughed. “That’s what happened with every test.”

“What happens if they can’t figure out about their power issues?” Cliff asked as he set the lockbreaker back onto the shelf.

“I’ll give them a few hints,” Paolo said, “but they’re pretty good – Iona especially. I’m confident she’ll figure it out.”

They walked through the shelves for another few minutes before returning to the workshop area, where they found Iona waiting for them.

“Cliff,” she said, scratching at her neck, “sorry about snapping at you before – I get a little protective, you see, and-”

“Don’t worry about it, Iona,” Cliff said with a wave of his hand, “I’d get defensive, too, if some new blood came out and immediately started criticizing my design.”

“Right, of course,” she said with a smile. She coughed awkwardly. “That’s the thing, though. Paolo, I was looking over the design after Cliff said there were – ah, problems, and I realized he’s right. We won’t have enough power from just the steering. That’s why the motor fried before break.”

Paolo and Cliff shared a look. “See?” Paolo said, “she’s good.”