Void Dragon by William Kephart

Author:William Kephart [Kephart, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-08-14T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“Cadet Wen. Cadet Wen.”

Ugh. Her head hurt. She’d stayed up late reading one of the rare messages from her mother over and over. Wen Guiying had barely managed to stumble into astrogation class, and that was with well-over the recommended daily dose of caffeine and stims.

“Cadet Wen, are you paying attention?”

She plastered a winning smile on her face. “Of course, Professor Xiao.” Evil old bat.

Professor Xiao was her least favorite by far, one of the dinosaurs that wrote their deep space fleet theory, theory that had never been tested, and was radically changed just as soon as contact with the Enemy taught them better, Wen would like to add.

“Don’t get cocky, Cadet. Just because you’re the top in your class now doesn’t mean anything. Neither does your name,” Xiao reprimanded her.

Nima smirked at that, not that it would keep him from eating her dust.

“These lessons could save your life one day,” he whispered to her.

Not bloody likely. She ignored him and kept facing the front of the class. “Of course, Professor Xiao.”

Cadet Wen couldn’t be more bored. Astrogation was dry, the driest. All useless anyway, or so it seemed to Wen. She wasn’t interested in fighting like this. She wanted to fight like her mother, the Victorious Admiral. Admiral Wen, who blunted no less than three Enemy offensives, who cut off the invasion of Polaris Three and allowed the marines to retake the planet, that was who she wanted to be.

Admiral Wen didn’t rely on staid linear battle tactics. She won before even seeking battle, like Master Sun himself. She used a fleet in being, raider groups, and cunning diversions to tie down Enemy formations, draw them out into smaller groups, and defeat them in detail.

She loved her mother. She wanted to be her mother. But of course getting any kind of information out of her was next to impossible. Mom never likes discussing military matters, she thought.

As for her father, she didn’t think about him much at all and felt ashamed, well, a little. He had been a mid-ranking civil servant who died on Chengdu at the start of the war. Wen never spent much time with him. Mother loved him though, or so she said, so the younger Wen went along with celebrating his birthday and her parent’s wedding anniversary whenever her mother was home, which wasn’t often to be honest.

The war had put some distance between them, to be sure. Admiral Wen was often away, and even between operations could be called away at a moment’s notice to put out some fire or other. Wen decided she didn’t hate it. Her mother’s absence had really allowed her to spread her wings once she reached the Academy.

She was popular and the top of her class, didn’t have many friends though, just sycophants, and a few ankle-biters like Nima who fancied themselves her rivals. Ha. That’ll be the day.

Astrogation class was dismissed, mercifully, a few minutes later, and Wen made her way to xenostudies, a class she loved.

The

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