X. SPECIAL CADET GABRIELLA
THINGS, SHE THOUGHT, HAD STARTED OUT WELL ENOUGH WITH THE WORLD'S GREATEST WARRIOR. Well, that was if you didn't count the first ten years of her life when he totally ignored that she even existed. And then the following year that he had spent in and out of the comas induced by the doctors.
Her grandmother, Gaia, had tried to explain to her from an early age, each time she had bawled into her soft arms, that Captain Solomon 9er had the most difficult job in the world, watching over from the sky, keeping bad at bay so that they could all live safely, sleep peacefully, yadda, yadda, yadda.
She therefore had to 'make allowances' when he didn't reply to a single one of the voxes that she had sent every Sunday for the best part of five years to his personal ID (which, to stop her pleading, her grandmother had requisitioned from the Generalissimo's desk-diary). So making allowances and putting all that history aside she allowed her mind to drift back to the day they had first met.
It had been about a fortnight into her second year at the Academy and he had walked into the lecture theatre with a slight limp, like it was any other sunny Monday morning and she was like any other eleven-year-old cadet. As if he was just any other instructor. Well, except for the scraggy mutt healing alongside him and the large rectangular object he was pushing along on a set of squeaky old wheels, maneuvering it around the various obstacles in his path thanks to the aid of his iVisor which was already rumored by the cadets to give him the ability to read other people's voxes without their knowledge.
Draped in an old dust-sheet, the object he was wheeling was taller than his height and twice as wide but with less than a thumb's thickness so it was sufficiently intriguing an entrance to calm the voxes that were bouncing between the cadets.
Neatly parking the object next to the class podium, his dog curled up at his feet with the plastic box it had carried in by the handle firmly gripped between its teeth.
<Good morning cadets> he had started to voxcast, stepping on to the podium and casting what appeared to be a cursory glance in her direction, but before he could continue with his introduction one of the other cadets stood up and began clapping, followed by another and another and another until all the cadets were on their feet, sucking her up with them. After the applause had finally died away and everyone had sat down, the Captain continued.
<Well, it seems you all know who I am... Hopefully not just from those action-bots they've been giving away with your breakfast cereal.> A few chuckles passed between the cadets, prompting him to pause before continuing. <So, as there is no further need for introductions...> Then, off his dog's sharp bark and perked ears, he added, <Oh excuse me. Indie, cadets. Cadets, Indie,> prompting another round of chuckles before he continued in a more serious pitch. <I would like to kick off by dispelling the rumor which I understand has been voxing around the campus. Contrary to popular belief, my visor can not help me intercept cadets' voxes without their authentication... I figured that out a long time ago just by tweaking my PlayStation.>
Once more, open laughter echoed between the cadets.
In a couple of breaths, The World's Greatest Warrior had won the affection of his students, making it look so easy that anyone could see why the Generalissimo's daughter had fallen for him all those years ago. And in her own way she had fallen for him too. It really was as if those first eleven years of broken dreams hadn't counted. She had a crush on her teacher and her teacher was her father.
After the laughter had subsided he continued: <You are all here because you are quick... and you think that makes you special. But I have brought some news for you through time from a wise man named Landor who lived nearly five hundred years ago. Quickness, he once said, is not one of man's great qualities. On the contrary, it is the talent most open to suspicion by the rest of the world. The liar has it; the cheat has it; the con-man has it. Education does not give it and valuable reflection takes away from it. Quickness is seldom a partner with virtue, and morality seems to get along just fine without it. they find it in the gambling casinos and gaming arcades, and even the mad retain it when they have lost all else. A quick mind can easily become a disorderly mind and doom can easily fall on the individual that takes personal amusement from it or relies too heavily upon it.>
He took a moment to scan the class of cadets to see if his voxcast was hitting home before continuing. <I have come here to teach you not how to become good pilots but how to become great pilots. In spite of your quickness, not thanks to it.>
Stepping down from the podium he pulled the rectangular object to the front of the class with a protesting squeak as he picked up the pace. <So I would now like you all to turn to screen-one of the curriculum you have been voxed for this class on the art of war.> Pausing, he flipped down a flat grid-screen in front of an empty seat in the front row to sit on it unceremoniously before continuing, <And delete it. Along with every other screen that follows it. When you study with me it is off the Grid. With no rules and no automatic pilot. So listen up and you might just get through your service alive.>
And with that, he pulled the dust-sheet off the rectangular object to unveil a smooth black surface the likes of which the class had never seen before; a surface he then began to cover with chalky-white markings that gradually revealed the mysteries of mach-10 flight combat tactics, the mesmerized cadets absorbing the Captain's every vox as if it was oxygen to their lungs, preparing them for discipleship in worship of the sky he flew upon.
AT THE END of that first class her father had voxquested that she remain seated and limped up to her while the other cadets bustled out of the theatre, exchanging excited voxes, energized by the revelations they had just been a party to.
United at last, they then sat there together for the rest of the afternoon, munching on the picnic he had magically produced from the plastic box that his dog had brought over to them on its master's simple hand gesture. Alone with their voxes, they remained undisturbed by any of the other scheduled classes as the instructors and cadets alike took one look through the theatre's glass doors, thinking better than to disturb The World's Greatest Warrior from catching up with his daughter after ten years of double terror-purge shifts and one year of surgery.
Together they voxed about her mother; about the love the Captain had shared with her and about how the dog, Indie, had been presented to them by the Generalissimo as a wedding gift; about the day it had rained in January; about growing up with her grandparents; about the vacations she had spent with her other grandmother, Governor Dancs; about the voxes he had ignored every week for five years but now seemed to have memorized by heart; and finally they voxed about the get-well cards she had hand-made and hand-delivered to the clinic where he had laid in his coma.
Together they voxed about everything and anything, except his one-man campaign which was said to have sent over 50,000 of the enemy to their graves.
That day, in The World's Greatest Warrior, she felt as if she had discovered the caring, loving, romantic father she had always longed for and who she had never lost hope in finding, despite the inevitable silence that followed each vox that she had sent. There in the autumn's afternoon sun, filling the huge theatre with a golden light she had never before appreciated, he made her laugh and made her cry, not tears of sadness but for the joy that she was being given the chance to know and be loved by this man; the man that her mother had planned to grow old with; the man that she too could now never imagine not sharing her life.
And as the sun began to set over the land they were sworn to protect, he held her face in his hands and lowered his vox as if to share a sacred secret. <You know, the doctors think it was their machines that kept me alive. But it was the thought of you that really kept me going. My angel Gabriella.>
He then took her in his arms, holding her so tightly she thought that she would be crushed like a bird but it was a death that she would have happily submitted to, for her heart was so full that she couldn't believe herself ever being any happier than at that precise moment in time.
After what seemed to her like an eternity, they gently released each other and she voxquested if she could remove his visor so she could see his face more clearly. He nodded his consent and she carefully pulled it away to reveal such a divine gentleness in his glistening eyes that, even though she knew he was blind, it appeared to her that his gaze was penetrating her very soul; as if it knew exactly what she felt; exactly what scared her and what pleased her; exactly what made her tic and what made her toc; exactly who she really was and who she would one day become. For her, he was the wisest and most beautiful man that had ever lived, right down to the tip of his eyelashes. He was her God and she would have followed him anywhere. Even into the furnace of war.
Solemnly she held his hands, the criss-crossed scars of countless battles and operations unable to disguise their sensitivity; more like those of an artist than the Academy's most decorated veteran.
<Promise me we'll never be kept apart again,>she voxed into his kind eyes.
<Not by anyone. Or anything,> he replied.
<Promise me,> she pleaded, trying to contain the pitch of her vox, needing to hear that one simple word as if her entire life depended on it
<Promise,> he replied with his understanding smile. Then, as if reading her mind, <Happy?>
<Happy,> she beamed, her smile dissecting her tears.
<It's important to me that you trust my word,> he voxed, removing his hands from hers and pulling a silvery, dragon-shaped amulet from around his neck.
<I would trust you to the end of the world,> she replied, open-eyed and open-hearted as he placed the amulet over her head.
<I want you to have this. It was given to me by a wise old warrior. It will keep you safe in the air.>
And with that sacred bond, theirs became the most beautiful and purest of relationships: A father romancing his daughter, setting the standard for the boys who would later come courting. He was now placing the bar so high it was difficult to imagine that any would ever come close to measuring up.
<Tell me more about your life. And hers too,> she voxed, tracing the amulet's fine engraving with her thumb, taking care to avoid the sharpness of its jagged tail.
<Where to begin?> he revoxed, wiping the last tears from her face, his blind gaze seeming to settle on the horizon through the theatre's huge windows, his eyes pricked by the last drop of the sun.