The Admiral and the Assistant

Kinnit sat in the cafeteria, finishing her meal. She'd been enjoying all the strange foods of the Imperium. She'd been here for several weeks already, and every day, to her delight, there were still new foods for her to try.

Today she was eating something called "meat loaf," which sounded alarming but tasted delicious. The meat didn't taste like any meat she was used to. It did in a way, but it tasted like... more. In the Imperium they had "spices" that made the food taste more.

Kinnit didn't quite have the vocabulary to describe it, but everything tasted different, but good, and there weren't even any bones to spit out.

The food of the Imperium was amazing.

She'd studied her etiquette long and hard. She didn't want to stand out as some primitive backworlder who didn't deserve to be at the Naval Academy. In the cave, she'd even carved a crude fork and plate to practice with, since Kobolds didn't use any utensils beyond a knife.

Once she was finished wolfing down every scrap of food on her plate, she carefully licked the cafeteria's fork clean and tucked it in her breast pocket. Then she ran her tongue across the plate. She stood, tucked the plate under her arm, and marched briskly out of the cafeteria.

She nodded to people as she passed. When she arrived at her quarters, she paneled in.

The quarters were extremely tight, even for her small stature. There was barely room for the narrow bed and tiny desk. They'd managed to cram in a small closet and a tiny sink as well.

She appreciated the sink. The communal showers provided a minimal privacy, and they were always crowded. Simpler tasks, like brushing her teeth, were so much easier with a private sink, even in her cramped room.

With brisk efficiency, she set the plate in the sink and washed it off. She washed the fork as well. Turning her body sideways, she scooted over to her desk, carefully placing the clean plate on a stack of other clean plates on her desk. She placed the fork on a pile on her desk as well. She nodded with satisfaction.

There. Now she should have just enough time to get to her next class.

Kinnit bustled in and sat at the front of the class, eagerly watching the teacher. This was her favorite class so far, Introduction to Jumpspace Vector Analysis.

Her teacher was Professor Vunkret, a long, sleek Dominarch. She was massive and intimidating, with a long, ridged snout and scales covering her entire body. She was nearly ten feet, tip to tail, and stood over seven feet tall.

This morning, as she did every morning, she swept into the room in a sinuous swoop, then sat at her oversized desk, put on her little glasses, and began teaching.

Kinnit shrank in her desk a little, as she always did. Professor Vunkret looked like a predator, and she was bigger than any cat-bear Kinnit had ever seen. She was so stern that Kinnit felt certain she must be munching on any students who misbehaved. But she never ate anybody that Kinnit saw, she only talked about jumphole algebra and interliminal physics.

The professor cleared her throat.

"Today, students, we have a test," she said. Her voice was high-pitched and clear. "I hope you have all been keeping up with the required reading for the course."

A collective groan rose from the assembled students. The professor arched one spiked eyebrow and looked disapprovingly around the room.

"This test should not be difficult if you have been studying according to the syllabus," she said.

"Yeah, that would be easy if I didn't have eight other classes to study for," muttered a male Terran behind Kinnit.

Kinnit tried to steady her nerves. This was going to be her first test at the Academy. She had to do well.

Professor Vunkret activated the test from her console. The surface of Kinnit's desk lit up, displaying rows of equations and questions.

"Please read each question carefully. Begin when ready," said Professor Vunkret.

Kinnit read the first question and began to panic. She couldn't even parse the words. The problem didn't make sense. None of it made sense. She couldn't fail. Not now. Not so soon.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Focus. One thing at a time.

She looked back at the problem slowly, carefully. There, right there, that was a formula she knew. Working out from there, she unwound the problem.

"Oh," she said quietly to herself. This was something she knew. Her test panic had just made it hard for her to understand the question. She marked down the answer.

The next question was another one covering the same formula. She marked it and moved on.

Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, she slowly relaxed. She was marking answer after answer. She knew all this stuff! It was just like the professor said, it was just questions about the material in the book.

Kinnit buzzed through the rest of the test and got ready to submit. She glanced around the room. Everyone else still had their heads down. The average facial expression was one of worry, bordering on panic. Her anxiety ratcheted back up. Everyone else was still so concerned. Had she missed something? Professor Vunkret had said to read the questions carefully.

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With her brow folded in worry, she went back through the questions on the test. They made sense to her. Her answers made sense to her. What was she missing?

She glanced around again. People were still anxiously working away.

Kinnit's heart was racing. She must have missed something obvious. She spent another fifteen minutes going through every question in detail until she was nearly in tears.

She couldn't figure out what was wrong with her answers.

At last, in despair, she submitted her test while everybody else was still working. She laid her head on her desk. It took everything she had to keep from blubbering all over the pale blue "SUBMITTED" message.

She'd been foolish to ever think she belonged here. She was too dumb to even pass the first test of the first class in the Academy.

The rest of the hour crawled by with agonizing slowness. Other students slowly began submitting their tests. Professor Vunkret sat behind her desk, going through the results.

It was only a small comfort to Kinnit that nobody else in the class looked any happier about the test than she did.

Finally, there was the chime that signaled the end of the period.

"The test is concluded," said the professor in her dry, lecturing voice. "If you were not finished with your test, it has been auto-submitted. You are all dismissed."

"Aw, man, I was in the middle of the last question!" said the young man behind her.

With her lower lip trembling, Kinnit gathered her things. She stood to leave.

"Not you, Miss Kinnit," Professor Vunkret said. "I need you to stay behind for a minute."

Kinnit was stricken. Had she done so poorly she was going to be expelled already?

The rest of the class cleared out and Kinnit shuffled up to the professor's desk, her head hung low.

Professor Vunkret regarded her sternly for a long moment.

"Miss Kinnit, I imagine you are new to the Imperium, correct?" she asked, looking pointedly at Kinnit's collar.

"Y-yes, ma'am," she said quietly.

"Then it's possible that you're unaware of how seriously some things are taken here."

Kinnit winced. Fat tears filled her eyes but didn't fall. She braced herself to learn how badly she had screwed up.

"Miss Kinnit, honesty is very important here in the Academy. We are all responsible for our own work. I will tell you only this once, I will not tolerate cheating in my classroom."

Kinnit's mouth dropped open in shock. Cheating?!

"Fraudator non sum!" she cried, unconsciously falling back to Old Imperial in her dismay.

Professor Vunkret raised her eyebrow. She pulled up Kinnit's test on her console and swiveled the display around so Kinnit could see.

"Miss Kinnit, you finished your test well ahead of everyone else in class, and made a perfect score. I've never had a student pass the first exam with a perfect score without cheating." She leaned forward across her desk. "I have seen many cheaters in my time here, and none of them ever came to a good end."

"I never cheated!" Kinnit bleated.

"Really? Then perhaps you wouldn't mind doing another little jumpspace calculation? Right here with me?"

Professor Vunkret tapped into her console, and a dense, complicated interliminal equation popped up.

"Please, reduce this equation and calculate the relative traversal rate across these two jumpholes."

Kinnit's jaw set and her brow drew down. She was furious that the professor thought she was cheating! Another thought slowly trickled into her brain, past her outrage.

She had made a perfect score on the test!

A determined grin crept onto her face. Kinnit began shuffling the equation under Professor Vunkret's disapproving glare.

After several minutes of tense calculation, she stood back with a smile that was just barely shy of smug.

Professor Vunkret glared at the equation for a long minute.

"It is correct," she said slowly. She narrowed her eyes. "Tell me, why did you compute the translateral physics calculations before you reduced the function?"

Kinnit's confidence crumbled a little.

"It... I mean, it just makes sense. Right?" She looked at the equation. "How else would you do it? You'd lose resolution if you reduced it first. Wouldn't you?"

"For tests, we only require six significant figures of accuracy. The resolution loss would be irrelevant."

Kinnit looked at her aghast.

"But then it would be wrong!" she said.

Professor Vunkret quirked a small smile.

"Well, we don't have you calculating jumpspace vectors for real ships just yet."

"But it would be wrong!" Kinnit repeated.

Professor Vunkret carefully removed her glasses and set them aside.

"Miss Kinnit, I owe you an apology. I don't believe you cheated on the test."

"Dixi tibi," Kinnit said. "I told you so."

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what, ma'am?" Kinnit asked.

"You speak in Old Imperial sometimes. Why?"

Kinnit blushed heavily and dropped her eyes. She mumbled something.

"What was that, dear?"

"I learned it on accident," she said. "When the Imperium visited our planet, I was so excited to learn the language. I'd never learned a different language. On Takkar, we all just speak. Kobold, I guess. We don't even have a word for our language, it's just talking. So I'd never learned another language before. I... I thought it was like physics, or math. I thought you had to learn Old Imperial before you could learn Common. So Old Imperial is my first foreign language. It-- it's the sound of the Imperium, to me. Sometimes I forget myself and still use it."

Professor Vunkret threw her head back and laughed, her voice making high, crystalline notes.

"Professor Tam Huff is going to love you," she said.

"I'm sorry. I know it's stupid."

"It's not stupid, dear. It's actually quite charming. Professor Huff is our chair of Languages, and Old Imperial is his specialty. He is forever complaining that students don't want to learn Old Imperial. Now he'll have one that learned it as a side project."

Professor Vunkret smiled warmly.

"If it makes you feel any better, Old Imperial was my first foreign language, too. Though I learned it when it was still the language of the land, so to speak."

Kinnit's eyes grew round.

"But Professor Vunkret," Kinnit said, "Old Imperial hasn't been used for hundreds of years! How long have you been in the Imperium?"

"Another bit of etiquette for you, Miss Kinnit. In the Imperium, you should never ask a lady about her age."

"Y-yes, ma'am."

"How are you finding classes so far?" Professor Vunkret asked.

"Oh, they're wonderful!" Kinnit said, her eyes shining. "There are so many things to learn!"

"Very good. Well, when you find that my Jumpspace Vector Analysis is too slow for you, let me know and I can let you work on some secret advanced exercises."

"Secret advanced exercises?" Kinnit said breathlessly.

"Now don't tell anyone else," Professor Vunkret said, "or they'll want extra exercises, too. Now, you should get to your next class."

"Oh, yes ma'am! I won't say anything! Thank you ma'am! I'll work hard on all my studies!"

Kinnit dashed out the door, followed by Professor Vunkret's indulgent smile.