April 1906 E-10
—
“So let me get this straight.”
Errison tossed his empty battery pack up in the air another time and sighed, settling into his bunk. “Go for it.”
Ev opened their mouth, closed it, then tried again. “At the top of the chain of command is me, the Emperor, and you, the Emperade. But not really, because the Council is above us with the First Councilman at the very top, then the Second and Third Councilmen, then the twenty-one members of the Upper House, then the Lower twenty-one. Then us and the top five generals in each IAF branch—the military High Council. Right?”
“Correct.” Toss, catch.
“Then ranking in the ASMC goes general, lieutenant general, major general, brigadier general, colonel, lieutenant colonel…”
“Major, captain, first and second lieutenant,” Errison filled in. Toss, catch. “Then there’s the enlisted specialists, then—”
“Then the hyperion sergeant classes one through four, then staff sergeant, sergeant, corporal, the lightblades, private first class, and private,” Ev rattled off. The lower ranks of the Satellite Maintenance Corps were easy enough; they were similar to the ranks of the Averonian military, except for the Lightblade corps. “And the AHDC is structured the same way, but with more transport divisions?”
“And they get micromanaged by the MMD a thousand times less, for some gods-forsaken reason,” Errison added, giving something between a smirk and a grimace. Ev had learned over the past few weeks that he had worked in the Home Defense Corps and the Satellite Maintenance Corps for about a year each before being "commandeered" by the Imperial Vanguard for elite work. He had been in the Vanguard for years before becoming the commander of the 7th Battalion (he still hadn't explained how a sergeant was the commander for a battalion in the Vanguard), and more recently becoming Emperade.
Ev snorted and finished slotting the pieces of their new rifle back together. Their first one had been cut in half by one of the Starspawn betas they had been chasing. Its tail was like a plasma torch.
“And the other branches?” Errison prompted.
“The Home Defence Corps call their soldiers ‘defenders.’ They work like the ASMC except they operate on a rule of three instead of five, with generally the same rank heirarchy—”
“Except?” Toss, catch.
“Except the AHDC has more void- and hovercraft, so they have a separate grouping system for their aviation divisions.”
“Which are?” Toss, catch.
Ev sighed. “Flight squadrons, made up of three or four ae- aerokan?” They looked up and Errison nodded. “Which are led by lieutenant aerokade. Then Kana, groups made up of two or three squadrons, which are led by aerokade. And wings, three groups commanded by an aerokade major.”
“You’ve got it.” Toss, catch, toss...
Ev ducked as Errison’s battery pack narrowly missed their head. It hit the bulkhead beside their bunk instead. “Asshole," they snapped.
He laughed and sat up. “Come on, what are the other branches’ differences?”
“The Neutral Interference Corps operate under a rule of four, so they’re squares.” He grinned and they flicked a plastic fragment from their busted shin guard at him. “And they call their soldiers ‘ensigns’ or ‘journeymen.’”
“For some reason,” Errison sighed. “I like the Aetherian terms better.”
Ev didn’t know those terms yet, so they didn’t bother. “The ANIC also has diplomatic divisions for those no longer fit to fight to transfer into, or if that’s their skillset, or if they majored in interdimensional affairs, or something else you said that I don’t remember.”
“Close enough. What does each branch do?” He reached for another battery pack and Ev clicked their rifle into the lowest stun setting, which was just strong enough to knock him back into the wall and dazzle him for a minute.
“The ANIC runs interference and plays arbitrator at the request of other dimensions or parties within them, and they’re the second biggest branch to accommodate that. The ASMC is the largest and maintains occupation and patrol of the satellite dimensions. The AHDC protects Aetheria centra and is the smallest branch other than the Vanguard, which is still bigger than the Maintenance Management Division.”
“Which does what?”
“Runs interference with the leaders within and between branches, reports back to the Fourth and Fifth Councilmen, and busts your asses about everything.”
He grinned and picked up the next battery pack. “And what does the Imperial Vanguard do?”
“Keep the ASMC and ANIC from getting too stupid too fast,” they smirked.
“Bingo!” He launched the battery pack at their head and they dodged to the side, pulling the trigger and blasting him with a subsonic stun blast. He hit the back wall with a thud and went boneless for a few seconds, the air knocked out of him, then blinked back into mobility and glared at them.
“You deserved that for conking me in the head with that knee plate earlier,” they told him.
“Keeps you on your toes though, doesn’t it?” he asked, sitting up again and rolling out his shoulders, cracking his neck, and shaking out his hands and feet to disperse the lingering sensation of the stun blast.
“Sure,” they drawled, disengaging their rifle, removing the battery pack and lobbing it at him. He caught it and added it to the crate next to his bunk. “Still makes you an asshole, though.”
Errison snorted and kicked the crate closed. “So much for being professional.”
Ev leveled him with a purely unimpressed glare. “Two hours ago you were talking about my ass to INCOM, and five minutes before that you called me—what was it? Ka teranna siir beau’de?—to General Uruduk’s face.”
He grinned as he ran an anxious hand over his face. “A dirt-loving son of a bitch,” he translated. “Yeah, I did say that.”
“You have dirt here in Aetheria,” they said. “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you bite it after getting your ass kicked in a spar.”
“[ x ] is made of dirt.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s other stuff in there too, like Svarantium. And magma. And a molten planetary core.”
“Dirt planet.”
“At least we have a dimensional Core!”
“You’re from a dirt planet with a dirt Core, Vans, shut up already.”
They flicked another plastic shard at him. “You shut up!”
In the six weeks since the portal incident, Talis Errison had made it his mission to teach Ev everything there is to know about the Aetherian military corps and their purposes. Something about that precise level of knowledge keeping them alive longer. He had simultaneously decided to be an absolute ass any chance he got, and had recently decided that it was funny that they were from [ x ], “the dirtiest dirt planet to ever have dirt.”
It was like bunking with a teenager.
He had also weaseled Ev’s full name out of them: Evansen Stark. He’d been appalled they had no middle name, so they didn’t tell him their parents had given them a second name: Rekore—freedom in whatever language his dad had spoken as a child. They never used it anyway, except for ceremonies. He wouldn’t need it. They had a feeling, based on what more they learned about the New Aetherian Empire, that telling Errison their second name meant “freedom” would just make him sad.
Regardless, Talis Errison thought “Evansen” was a weird name and started calling them Vans instead of Ev, saying that "Vans" was the cooler nickname. Other times he would call them by their family name, Stark, and reference some character they didn’t know from the Time Vortex public entertainment archives.
So, again, like a teenager.
Errison was older than them though, if not by much. He hadn’t told them in as many words, but Ev had managed to learn he was in his mid to late twenties. After they had properly met, he started calling them “kid.” They had set him right the same day they properly met by telling him they were twenty-two. He had still called them “kid” ironically for the next two days, but when they pulled him out of an acid-covered dropship, he finally stopped.
For better or for worse, after six weeks of bunking together in various states of safety and dryness, they were what Ev would consider friends. Mostly.
Currently they were on their way back to Terrace Outpost, an defensive island on the northwestern edge of Aetheria centra, after chasing large a pod out into voidspace. The outpost housed an AHDC watchtower, a small base, and a docking port for incoming warships to check in and forward maintenance requests to the capital shipyards. Ev and Errison—he kept asking them to call him Talis, but since he was still determined to be an ass, so were they—were going to be disembarking the 7th Battalion flagship Erajae to catch an outgoing destroyer called the Ranidon.
In their last report call with the Imperial Council, the Third Councilman had requested they make an interdimensional trip to Verdonia, a satellite outside of the Empire’s quadrant of voidspace, to deal with the repercussions of Ev’s portal and coronation. Apparently Ev’s breach of zio’cerual, the blue void, had resulted in the largest Starspawn breach event in centuries, and the beasts were just starting to reach Verdonia. Now, they had to go and face the consequences.
Errison stood to toggle the hover setting on his crate of battery packs and slung his battered duffle bag over his shoulder. He looked up at the intercom speaker just before the announcement was made that they were making landfall.
Ev slung their rifle over their shoulder and double checked their bunk for anything they didn’t want to leave behind, then followed him out the door. They lingered in the hallway for just a moment before the door slid shut, memorizing the dinks in the walls and floor of the room they’d spent the last six weeks living out of. Then they followed Errison to the docking bay.
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