Yellow Jacket

The door to the hall opened, and Vaeliyan stepped out.

The others were already there, Class One, fully assembled. They stood in silence, dressed in fresh, pressed Citadel blacks. Every trace of swamp stench, every smear of blood, every scratch, welt, and surgical puncture had been wiped away. No bruises remained. No swelling. Not even a scar. Just clean uniforms and cleaner skin.

But they looked worse.

Not broken. Emptied.

Their eyes tracked slow, like they had to remind themselves how. Their breathing was shallow, synchronized in a way that felt more like sedation than discipline. Movements came late. Blinks came slow. It wasn't just physical shock. It was neural silence. Like their minds were echo chambers, still ringing from the drill and the gel.

Vaeliyan joined them without a word. No one looked at him because they just hadn't notice him. They weren't seeing anything. There was no eye contact, no spark of recognition. Just blank gazes fixed forward, as if anything more than basic standing would unravel what little composure they had left.

Dr. Lambert's voice crackled over the overhead speaker, sharp and controlled, clear as ever. It came with that same antiseptic certainty she'd carried in the lab.

"You may all take the pad at the end of the hall to your next class. Instructor Sarn is fully aware of the procedure and of any lingering side effects. Your next class should be… slightly less traumatic."

A pause followed. Not long enough to invite questions. Just long enough to make the room remember her authority.

Then her tone shifted. It didn't grow warm, just fractionally softer, as if she'd turned down the blade's edge by one degree.

"I'll see you all in an actual classroom in two days."

The transmission ended. A soft click. Silence resumed.

No one moved. No one muttered. Even Fenn, who usually had some half-sarcastic jab waiting under his breath, didn't twitch. His mouth was closed. His stare was glazed. Everyone's posture screamed compliance, not rest. Even the way they breathed was mechanical.

There was no shuffle toward the pad, no eager lurch for freedom. Just a slow, unified realization that they had to keep going. Because that's what the Citadel demanded. Not motion. Obedience.

Vaeliyan stood among them, observing the line not as a peer, but as a witness. They'd all come through it. Every one of them. The pain. The drill. The gel. The exposure to their own thresholds. And they had come out looking… polished. Presentable.

He knew better.

The forest had bruised their bodies. Dr. Lambert had refined the bruising into something deeper. Something cellular. What had been bent had now been sharpened. Their nerves had been carved into something useful.

They all looked whole.

But they seemed more dazed now than when they'd left Alorna's forest of nightmares. Back then, they were still human: furious, humiliated, alive due to spite and spite alone. Rage had kept them upright. Pain had been their oxygen.

Now?

Now they were still.

Clean bodies.

Ghosted minds.

Disassembled, then resealed. The parts were all in the right places. But the instructions had been rewritten.

And Vaeliyan knew, whatever Instructor Sarn had waiting next… it wouldn't matter. Not right away. Because the damage wasn't in their muscles anymore. It was in their silence. And silence, in the Citadel, was the first symptom of surrender.

He stepped forward.

"Everyone," he said, and for the first time, the room reacted. Heads turned. Eyes lifted. Slowly. Carefully.

"Everything that happened today has been... mostly fucked," Vaeliyan said. "And I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to say it gets better. Because I'm sure it won't."

The words hung in the air, dry and sharp. But there was strength behind them, clarity, even.

"But we... we can beat this. Together. We can do this."

He gave them the faintest smile.

"Just like that log beat Fenn's ass like it was trying to put a baby in him."

It drew a few light chuckles, and Fenn groaned.

"Are we going to keep talking about that?" he muttered.

"It's either that or Ramis sucking face with the twins," Jurpat offered, perking up.

"Why not both?" Elian asked.

"Let's not forget Lord Sarn's perfect practiced scream as he got roped," Fenn said.

"Wait, the rope carried you this time?" Jurpat said. "What do we need you for now, rope boy?"

That drew laughter. Honest, ragged laughter. The kind that felt like medicine, even if it hurt.

"What the fuck, you guys?" Elian said. "I thought we were bullying Fenn."

"It's because you made yourself a target," Sylen replied, calm and dry.

Roan and Rokhan nodded solemnly.

Then the twins, perfectly synced, spoke in a voice that was neither one nor both.

"Did you all feel your armor calling to you?"

Torman nodded. "Yeah. It was like... it was part of me. Like something I'd just never met. But it knew me."

"We could feel each other's as well," the twins said.

"That's just a you two thing," Ramis replied. "Exactly as weird as I said."

The twins looked at him, unblinking.

"So you don't want more kissies? We see. Xera, can you mark down that Ramis is cut off?"

"Wait, I didn't mean it like that," Ramis stammered.

"It's done," Xera said, already scribbling in her notebook.

"You know he just keeps putting his foot in his mouth," Lessa added.

"At least it was his foot this time," Varnai muttered, shuddering. "Unlike in the lounge."

Fenn glanced around with mock horror. "You mean... that actually happened? I didn't really get a good look at what was happening."

"No comment," Varnai said quickly.

"What happens in the lounge stays in the lounge," Chime chimed in, grinning. "Except infections. Those stay with you."

"Okay, that's enough," said Elian, rubbing his eyes. "We're definitely still broken. Just... now we're loud about it."

Sylen stretched his neck until it popped. "Loud is better than numb."

Roan nudged Rokhan. "You good?"

Rokhan nodded. "I remember the pain. So good enough I guess."

A breath passed through the group. Not quite relief. But something close.

Then Rokhan cleared his throat. "Maybe we should head to class."

Vaeliyan didn't say anything more. The ice was cracked, and something warm had seeped through. They weren't healed. They weren't fine. But they were real again.

And for the first time since the surgery, it felt like Class One was alive again.

They stepped off the pad one by one into the next room.

This time, it was a classroom. An actual one.

No mud. No gel. No screaming trees or restraint beds. Just polished black floors, high white walls, and a series of tiered benches arranged in a semi-circle around a sunken central stage. The air smelled faintly like sterilized plastic and scorched wood. Stark. Unforgiving. Clean enough to make their skin crawl.

Instructor Sarn was already there.

She stood alone at the front of the room, arms crossed, gaze locked on the entry point like she'd been calculating every possible trajectory of their arrival. Her uniform was immaculate, creased, perfect, crisp in a way that felt weaponized. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it looked like it might cut through steel. Not a thread out of place. Her eyes flicked over each cadet with a surgical chill, the kind of dissection that made your spine straighten before you realized you were reacting.

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Then she saw Elian.

And everything in her face melted.

"Oh no," she said, stepping forward fast, voice snapping with worry. "Did she hurt you?"

He blinked like she'd thrown a book at him.

"What?"

"Dr. Lambert," she said, moving quicker now, already checking him over with her hands hovering near his arms but not quite touching. "Did she lay a finger on you? Because I swear, if she hurt you, I will file a formal grievance, send a copy to the High counsel, and then kick her in the face. Twice. Possibly three times. Depending on the damage."

The rest of the class froze mid-step.

The cold-blooded Citadel instructor had just gone full overprotective family minder in front of everyone.

Elian turned a deep, painful shade of pink. "I'm fine."

"You look fine," Sarn said, narrowing her eyes, "but that means nothing in this place. You would say that if your spleen had been replaced with a stress ball and a whisper of hope. I know how you are."

"She didn't… do that," He muttered, visibly shrinking.

"She's done worse."

"Theramoor," he hissed under his breath. "You're doing it again."

"Good," she replied, unapologetic. "Someone has to do it. If I don't harass the medical staff on your behalf, who will?"

The rest of Class One exchanged glances ranging from confusion to awe to silent horror.

Ramis leaned toward Sylen and whispered, "Wait. Are they related?"

Sylen didn't blink. "Definitely main branch. Maybe a cousin. Maybe an aunt. Maybe both. The bloodlines blur at that level."

"Oh," Ramis said, blinking. "That explains everything. And also absolutely nothing."

Chime snorted softly. "Theramoor. Of course that's her name. Sounds like someone born holding a lance and an opinion."

Sarn had already turned back to the rest of the class, face snapping back to neutral like it had been slammed into place by code. The moment vanished. No warmth. No softness. Just the cold edge of professionalism.

"I am Instructor Sarn. This is Adaptive Combat Environment Analysis. Sit. Now."

They obeyed. Instantly.

The benches were unpadded and slightly too narrow for comfort. Everything in the room was designed to keep them alert without ever allowing rest. The lights above were angled to leave shadows in certain corners, forcing them to watch both the center and the periphery. A long digital screen lined the back wall, currently black. The floor of the stage was matte metal, embedded with motion sensors and barely visible seams, equipment hidden beneath.

But before Sarn took her place at the center, she moved with deliberate purpose toward one of the benches. Elian, already trying to fade into the background, flinched slightly as she approached. Without a word, she reached beneath the seat, snapped something loose, and swapped his bench with one from the far side of the room. The one she brought over had a slight curve in the seat, a padded backrest, and enough room to actually relax his shoulders. It stood out like a velvet throne in a field of folding chairs.

"Theramoor, stop," Elian growled, face going redder. "I'm not..."

"You're sitting," she cut in sharply. "You're doing it without complaint. And you're doing it in the good chair because I said so."

He opened his mouth. She raised a single eyebrow. He shut it again and sat.

Only then did she return to the center of the room.

The warmth that had briefly surfaced vanished like it had never existed.

Sarn stood at the center again, hands behind her back, gaze sweeping across them like they were terrain to be mapped. Tactical. Clinical. Efficient.

But they all glanced at Elian on the way down. Some smirked. Some stared. No one said anything.

And for once… he looked more embarrassed than royal.

Instructor Sarn stepped into the center of the stage. The motion sensors registered her presence. The screen behind her flared to life: red and black tactical overlays of a city in collapse, feeds blinking from satellite footage, drone captures, and thermal bleed.

"This is what's left of Telnar Three. A fortified Imperial city. Or it was. Now it's a case study in how urban defense collapses when doctrine doesn't evolve fast enough."

The footage cycled. Breached outer walls. Drone strike footage. Falling towers. Utility nodes flaring before failure. Streets heaved open from sub-surface detonations. A slow-motion image of a tower's spine cracking as infantry tore through the city.

"The Twelve Princedoms still stand. They shouldn't. But they do. Not because of spirit, not because of culture. Because of tech. They still field operational mech warriors. Machines that can go blow-for-blow with our Imperators. They manufacture these things, and more importantly, they train pilots for them in numbers we can't match."

She paced once, hands behind her back. Deliberate, clean, without wasted motion.

"We are not the Nine. We don't peddle promises. We don't sell narrative. We enforce reality. The Nine sit in towers. We bleed in streets. If they are the myth of safety, we are the cost it runs on."

Click. The map shifted. Overhead insertion pattern. Wave deployments tracked across city blocks. The screen rippled with new labels.

"First wave: suppression pods. Shock and awe. Flood basements. Collapse load-bearing zones. Vent accelerant and ignite. If there's cover, remove it. If there's structure, unmake it. Terrain is the enemy's first ally. We turn it into their grave."

"Second wave: light lance infantry. Agile. Fast. Sacrificial. They disorient and destabilize. They break rhythm and sow panic. They don't expect to live through the opening salvo. Their purpose is to make it impossible for any formation to hold."

"Third wave: the main body. Legion proper. Drones. Droids. Heavy infantry. Full artillery walkers. They advance and secure. They stabilize the forward line and serve as the wall the rest of us build behind. This is the engine of war at full throttle."

"Fourth wave: Command Squads. Strategic intelligence. They set the rhythm of the warfront. Live-adapt orders. Feed Imperators intel from inside the fire. They keep the plan on life support when everything else is screaming."

She stopped in front of them.

"Fifth wave: That's you."

The screen dimmed. Then brightened again. A single word: ADAPTIVE. Below it, smaller text appeared: NO PLAN SURVIVES FIRST CONTACT.

"You're not here to follow a path. You are the break-glass option. You are not the spear, nor the shield, you're the hand that throws both when the everything else fails. You are on the Imperator track. The ones we forge when we need wild cards that bleed command reflex without the structure of command itself."

She stepped down from the stage. No barrier between her and the cadets now. No podium. Just intensity.

"You are not leadership. You are not front line. You are not support. You're the fifth wave, the ones we send when the front collapses, the plan dissolves, and the objective is unknown. You do not follow doctrine. You rewrite it. On the field. In motion. Under fire."

Silence. Then her voice again, sharper now.

"This is the Imperator track. Not because you're owed anything, but because no one else can do what you're being built to do. You drop into broken terrain, half-dead squads, shattered objectives, and you finish the mission anyway. Not because it's clean. Because it's necessary."

She glanced to the side as the screen changed again. Battlefield overlays. Data chaos. Distortion maps.

"This is Adaptive Combat Environment Analysis. It's not a tactics class. It's not simulated wargames. This is situational chaos training. It's blood, instinct, and technical read on the fly. Alorna will teach you to be a squad. I will teach you to break cities. If you don't know the difference yet, you will by the end of this term."

New screen: heat signatures. Drone scatter. Acoustics.

"You'll learn to pull directional threat vectors from static. Identify false negatives by auditory vacuum. Read heat warps off chrome fragments. Predict sniper nests from the absence of wildlife. Sense field distortions by shadow displacement. This isn't magic. This is pattern recognition under pressure."

She paused.

"The sixth wave is High Imperators. Walking armies. We don't send them unless we plan to erase the field. When they drop, cities don't survive. But that's not your job. Not yet. Maybe not ever. High Imperators are rare. Born, not trained."

She gestured again. Another image appeared. A towering silhouette in reinforced steel and kinetic shielding: a mech knight.

"These are why we even need High Imperators. Mech knights. The only real counterweight left in the Princedoms. They are relics of a dying age, but they still walk, and they still kill. No Imperator survives them in fair combat. High Imperators can. Not always."

The screen faded. Instructor Sarn looked at them all. Nothing soft in her gaze.

"We built this class because we can't wait for that kind of power. We need solutions before the burn. We need you. All of you."

A longer pause now.

"Maybe one of you gets there. Maybe. One. That's not the question. The real question is how many of you survive long enough to find out."

No one moved. Not a whisper.

She looked at Elian, but no one else did. He didn't even shift. Didn't blink. Didn't breathe different. The others kept their eyes forward, locked in, as if whatever passed between him and Sarn didn't exist in their airspace. If anything, their stillness deepened.

Because if High Imperators came from this class, it wouldn't be because of him.

It would be because of all of them.

Together. Or not at all. They had already decided.

"Let's take a trip back in time," she said. Her voice was calm, but the weight behind it made every cadet sit straighter. "Let's go to Telnar Three. Let's see what it was like on the ground. What the situation was. And how the environment shifted... because of one squad of Imperators."

The lights dimmed again. The room lurched, subtly at first, then completely. The cadets' chairs clicked down into the floor as the ceiling tiles above shimmered with activation light. A full combat sim snapped into place around them, immersive and visceral. What had been a lecture hall was now war-torn rubble, dust-hung streets, and the thunder crack of distant artillery.

They were inside the mission.

A HUD flickered on—first-person. They weren't watching a screen anymore. They were riding with the squad, eyes synced to live reconstruction pulled from the surviving mission data. Instructor Sarn's voice came not from in front of them, but from the comms. Like she was there too. Because she had been.

"This was my squad," she said over comms. "Urban conditions. Civilian remnants scattered, but mostly cleared. Anti-air was still active. Legion drops couldn't punch through. And the walls... well, Telnar Three's outer fortification was meant to be a deterrent to anything short of the gods."

They moved through back alleys. Blown-out shopfronts. Staggered formations, heavy-plate boots thudding against broken stone. Everything rattled with tension.

"Until I got curious," she continued. "Because the heat signatures weren't matching expected layouts. Something felt off. And then I saw it, a drainage valve half-covered in debris, venting the wrong direction."

On the sim, one figure broke from the squad, tagged COVENANT-1. She sprinted ahead, knelt near the drain, scanned it, then waved the squad forward.

"I bolted," Sarn said. "Dropped into the sewers alone. Mapped the grid by memory. Confirmed the path. The old sewer ran directly beneath the southeast support pillar. Right under the outer wall. Unreinforced. Forgotten. Because no one expected an assault from below."

The visuals surged forward. The squad followed her into the dark. Tight tunnels. Low oxygen. Ambient noise pounding against the audio feed. The tunnel had been flooded long ago, abandoned and forgotten. But recent artillery fire had cracked sections of the upper pipeworks and blown out blockage downstream. The path wasn't clear, it was barely survivable. Parts of the route were only half-passable, the walls closing in around their armor with inches to spare. Any wrong movement, and the entire advance could have collapsed.

"We made it," she said. "Barely. I wouldn't risk that tunnel twice. But once was enough."

Once they cleared the final length, the squad surfaced into a forgotten service corridor just beneath the primary support brace.

"It took a single shaped charge to make a gods damned city break open like an egg. Their anti-air meant nothing after that. No overhead defense can stand when the gates are already ripped out from the inside."

Up above, explosions. The sim bloomed with overpressure and fire as the outer wall gave way.

"Infantry rushed in," she said. "We flooded the streets. And the entire warfront tilted. A fortress became a coffin. And all it took was one Imperator deciding to ask the right question."

She let the silence stretch, even as the sim played on around them. The city burning. The momentum irreversible.

"This mission would've been my promotion to High Imperator," she said quietly. "The brass was ready. The paperwork was signed. But I'd already made my choice."

A pause. Just enough to let it sink in.

"I took the Platinum Ring instead. Chose to come here. To teach you. Because I'd rather build the next squad that ends a war... than spend the rest of my life winning one alone."

"You don't have to be the strongest. You don't even have to be the fastest. But if you see the weakness first... you win. That's what this class is. That's what you are."