Chapter Text
Chapter One: Contents Under Pressure
Jaeger Academy, Kodiak, Alaska, Class 2016-B, Term 1.
June 2016...
"'No pressure,' you said!" Raleigh snapped a towel at his brother as they exited the shower, but his arms were so shaky that his aim was off. "'We won't make the first cut,' you said!"
"Blehh, shut up, brat!" Yancy mumbled into his hands. "Christ, and I thought football tryouts were bad."
One week into the first trimester at the Jaeger Academy, and there wasn't a single recruit walking the halls whose legs weren't wobbling. Raleigh and Yancy might not have been star athletes, but they had been athletes and in good physical shape - so they thought. But wrestling and hockey training hadn't required being able to run three miles carrying double your body weight or mastery of a completely new martial art. Even the genuine star athletes among the class - and there were several - were staggering.
"We will grind you to dust," the C.O., Pentecost, had warned. "And only when we fail to do so will we find the stuff of legend."
That guy had not been joking.
There had been over three thousand applicants to the Jaeger Academy for this class, 2016-B. About four hundred had passed the initial screening tests. Raleigh and Yance had been reasonably confident that they could meet those physical requirements, but less so about the written tests. The written screening exams turned out to be easier than expected. Most of the knowledge material had been no worse than the S.A.T., and heavy on the kind of basic logic and spatial puzzles that they did for fun on long trips. The only really difficult thing about the screening was how incredibly long it had been, grueling and repetitive and frustrating. Everyone had emerged drained and proud when they were admitted, but the opening address had cut that thinking off in a hurry.
Marshal Pentecost had informed them, "You are not to be congratulated for being here. By passing the application screening, you have shown only that you meet the most minimal requirements to demonstrate that attempting this will not be a waste of everyone's time."
"Ouch," Yancy had muttered.
It wasn't just a physical meat-grinder either. The days began at seven a.m. for workouts, then spending most of the morning being drilled at "Jaeger Bushido," the new hybrid martial art that had been developed. The afternoons were devoted to classes: military officer school, tactics, K-science, and Jaeger engineering. They finished classes at five p.m., then had another round of Bushido drills and workouts before dinner at seven.
Raleigh and Yancy were both a little doubtful of whether they could learn the martial arts. High school Greco-Roman was nothing like this Asian-heavy stuff, though Yance had experimented with MMA one summer. He certainly was memorizing the fifty-two positions faster than Raleigh, but that was par for the course at every new thing they tried.
Raleigh wasn't really sure why they didn't just give up. Quite a few people did that first week. But Yancy didn't suggest it, and Raleigh couldn't bring himself to. He decided that they would just... see how far they could take it. That was really what it was all about. Just to see what they could do.
The course work was not as bad as Raleigh expected. He had feared the kaiju science and Jaeger mechanics would be completely out of his league, but found it wasn't so hard to understand. More surprising still, it was actually interesting.
"Predicting their movements is of the most important aspects of kaiju science - after finding ways to kill them, of course," their Kaiju Oceanography lecturer said, smirking as the students laughed. The scientists were a lot more laid back than the military guys. "No doubt you've noticed how relatively short the time frame is between the warning and the kaiju making landfall. It can take forty-eight to seventy-two hours after movement in the Breach before we're able to deliver a warning."
She brought up a map of the Pacific and projected it to cover the entire wall. "I don't have a hologram projector nearly big enough to give you a feel for just how vast the Pacific Ocean is. The Breach really couldn't be located in a worse spot. We have instruments installed that can identify movement there, but once the kaiju is several miles away, we can lose it very quickly."
A tall black man raised his hand. "Are there theories of why they all attack big cities?" he asked in a Caribbean accent.
"Several. One of the prevailing ideas at the moment has to do with the currents." The projection shifted in color to show the movement of some of the currents. Raleigh could recognize the jet stream, but that was about it. "Environmentalists have been tracking urban runoff for major cities for about twenty years. When we started combining that data with the current positions at the time of each attack, we noticed something interesting."
K-Day. 8/10/13. Colored streams ran from major cities all around the Pacific, rippling and swirling through it, but one, bright green, originated in Southern California - and ran straight across the bright red blip that indicated the Breach.
"Crap," someone murmured behind him.
Manila. 2/5/14. The currents were different six months later, and one of them had brought a bright yellow stream from the Phillipines close to the Breach.
Cabo San Lucas. 6/1/2014. The streams were closer to what they'd been on K-Day. Summer pattern, Raleigh supposed. But they were a little further south, and the line led directly to Baja California.
"We've noticed that during hurricane season, the delay between movement in the breach and offshore detection is much longer - the water is much rougher then, and the current patterns are disturbed."
Sydney. 9/2/2014. A time-lapse ran, the Breach flashing red to indicate MOVEMENT, then hours passed by in which a blip was briefly picked up in various locations... as if the kaiju had meandered for awhile before honing in on the current stream in the Southern Hemisphere that led straight back into Sydney's runoff.
The room was very quiet as everyone digested that. "Yes, you can see that this a rather disturbing possibility. Our invaders could be honing in on our major population centers like hounds to a scent."
Raleigh's throat had gone dry. He shot a quick look to his right, and saw Yancy sitting as stiff and serious as he was. Sure, no pressure... not for Raleigh and Yancy Becket in particular, no. But for the people running this operation? It had to be something else.
April 2015…
K-Day had been a brain-straining eye-opener, changing everything they all thought they knew about the world.
Each subsequent attack had turned life a little grimmer, turned the world a little darker and uglier and scarier.
"We've got nothing to worry about," Yancy had reassured Raleigh and Jazmine. "We're way the hell beyond where these things are going." By Sydney, many experts had observed that the kaiju were going into major cities. "Yeah, Anchorage is a couple million, but it's nowhere near the size of the places kaiju go, and we're up here in the frozen north."
Even when the civil defense offices and NOAA had circulated Preparedness Plans, and new sirens had been added to the tsunami warning drills already installed around town, Yancy had still brushed it off. They would be fine. Anchorage was the middle of nowhere as far as Pacific cities went. They'd be fine.
They had dutifully taken part in the emergency drill ordered by the newly-formed PPDC in November 2014, put together their emergency kits and escape plans just like they did for tsunamis. It was pretty much the same plan - keep medical supplies and food supplies stored and ready, fresh water, some cans of gas, and run inland. Follow the signs. The Kaiju Alert System tested every Tuesday evening, and the Tsunami Alert System tested every Wednesday.
They had believed Yancy when the next kaiju headed towards Chile. The military had managed to kill it while it was still offshore, though it had bowled over a couple dozen islands in Micronesia and the South Pacific on the way. It seemed like the kaiju preferred the tropics and sub-tropics. Alaska was a long way off from their hunting grounds.
Then had come April 2015. Raleigh and Jazmine were fighting, as usual. He'd posted a YouTube video of her working out (retaliating for her nominating him for Homecoming Queen, insisting he was too pretty to be king), then she'd dumped a soda on his laptop. He was trying to get into her room, breaking his usual restraint on physically going after her or her stuff (unlike Jazz - she never thought twice about hitting him), and she was yelling and crying as he was trying to shove the door open...
The sirens went off. For a minute, he stood in the hallway in confusion. Was it a test day? And those weren't the tsunami sirens, the pattern and the pitch was different, more like an old World War II air raid...
Jazmine opened her door and stared at him. They'd forgotten all about their feud. "What... what..."
A sense of unreality crept over him, like in 2013 when they'd first seen the pictures out of San Francisco. They'd laughed at first. Everyone had laughed and scoffed. It was a joke. Some kind of hoax, like the zombie thing in Texas a few years back. Then it had been on every news channel. A mass hack, someone had suggested? Finally, as the day that would be named K-day had wound on and on, this strange, unpleasant detachment had come down over Raleigh. It had felt like his head was trying to stay in one place while the world was spinning off its axis.
In the hallway with Jazz in 2015, he felt that way again. But... but... kaiju don't come here. This is Alaska. Middle of nowhere. Yancy said. So many people said we have nothing to worry about.
Mom and Dad had a NOAA radio in their bedroom, to warn them of storm alerts and the like. It came on automatically when there was a severe weather alert, and also when the tsunami and kaiju alerts were tested. It was annoying as hell, but it had stopped Yancy from trying to leave for a game in a major blizzard, and warned Dad of a road closure a few times.
Now it was going off too. "This is an emergency warning from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps Kaiju Alert System. This is not a drill. A kaiju has been detected approaching the Western Seaboard of the United States and Canada. Areas under alert include: northern California. Oregon. Washington. British Columbia, Canada. Alaska. If you are currently in any of these areas, please take immediate action and prepare to evacuate the coastline. The kaiju was last detected thirty minutes ago by an observatory platform four hundred miles south of the Aleutian Islands. It is moving north-northeast at an estimated fifty miles per hour."
"Raleigh?" Jazmine's voice trembled.
"TV," he croaked. His head was swimming. There were things they were supposed to do, plans they were supposed to follow, but they were whizzing around in his head so fast that he couldn't begin to focus on anything.
Every channel on the TV had been running the alert, with that little red blip on the map of the enormous ocean. The newscasters were drawing arrows to show the direction it was moving. Northeast. Straight towards Alaska or Canada, maybe the US Cascade states.
One of the reporters was drawing circles around cities on the map. "So far, we have seen kaiju heading straight into major cities, so if you live in the Pacific Northwest, please, plan for the worst and evacuate now! Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Anchorage, Juneau, Kodiak - just - just, if you're on the coast, especially the islands, get to shelter! Alaska, you are a peninsula, get across the border into Canada or as far inland as you can! I can't stress this enough - this is the sixth kaiju attack and so far every one has taken thousands of lives! Every time these monsters have turned up, it has taken nuclear weapons to stop them! Pacific Northwest, evacuate now!"
There were sirens outside. The fire station down by the little civic center was rolling everything, only adding to the cacophony from the alert sirens. Jazmine started to cry and clapped her hands over her ears, and Raleigh wrapped his arms around her.
Dad was somewhere in Utah on a project, not due back until the weekend. At least he's safe, Raleigh thought dully. Mom was down the street at Diane Saunders's house. Yancy was at the park, a going-to-college barbecue for one of his buddies.
What do we do... I don't know what to do...
Then he heard Yancy's voice. His brother was yelling. Raleigh stumbled to the door and as he and Jazmine came onto the porch, they saw Yancy tearing down the street as if, well, as if a kaiju was chasing him. He must have sprinted the whole mile from the park, and he looked like his feet hadn't touched the ground. He was already yelling their names, and Raleigh almost dropped. Yancy was back. It would be okay. He'd tell them what to do.
He did. He was pointing at them when still halfway down the block. "GET THE KIT, NOW!"
It snapped Raleigh out of the shock, and he went to the storage room for their emergency box. Jazmine too obeyed their brother's shouted instructions and went running across the street for Mom.
"Do we call Dad?" Raleigh croaked as Yancy began checking over the box's contents and dug back into the crawl space for their camping supplies.
"I already tried; cell network's already down," Yancy told him. "He's safer than we are. Go get Mom's medications, all of 'em, and put 'em in here." He dumped his old backpack's contents out on the sofa and went into the living room desk, pulling out the lock box with their important papers. "GO, Rals! We have to get on the road fast before traffic gets up!"
It would be okay, Raleigh chanted to himself. Yance would take care of them. He always did when Dad was gone. Hell, he did that when Dad was here.
When he came back down, Mom and Jazmine had Diane with them. Raleigh's racing mind processed that Diane didn't have a car at the moment; Yancy had called a tow truck for it yesterday. "Of course, you'll come with us," he was saying. "Raleigh, put this stuff in the trunk," he ordered, thrusting the backpack and supply boxes at him. "Jazz, help him, and get the gas cans from the shed - make sure the lids are sealed. Let's get your stuff," he told Diane, and ushered her out the door.
When Yancy declared them ready, locked all the doors, and they piled into the car and pulled into the road, Raleigh looked at the clock and realized it had been barely thirty minutes since the sirens had gone off. It felt like hours had passed, and surely the kaiju would come ashore any minute.
Yancy had Raleigh sit up front next to him with the tablet that had been a graduation/"thanks for not going to college and staying to take care of Mom" (as he'd once bitterly remarked) gift from their dad. The signal kept dropping out even from the phone lines, and the web page was slow as hell, but there wasn't much new information beyond what they already had. The map showed the kaiju's location where it had been picked up in the North Pacific, and hurricane-like projected paths of where it might be going based on its speed and direction.
"There's still far too much we don't know about these things," the radio announcer was saying. "They can change direction, change speed - frankly, if you're in the Pacific coast of the planet, you should think about heading inland now. If you're in the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada, you should be on the road now. This thing could make landfall in the Aleutian islands in six hours."
Jazmine was slumped across Mom's lap, sobbing softly. "Jazz," said Yancy quietly, calmed down from his frenzy once they were on the highway. At least it wasn't at a standstill yet. "It's gonna be okay. Any luck texting Dad?"
Their mother scowled at her phone. "I think the message went out, but I have no idea whether he got it. We had a signal for a little while, now it's gone again."
"I talked the plan over with him months ago. He should know what we're doing."
There weren't that many roads for the entire coastal population of Alaska to take inland, and it was frustratingly, terrifyingly slow going. Military trucks and ambulances when rolling straight down the median; drivers got impatient and went speeding down the shoulder. Cars broke down and had to be pushed off the road so everyone else could keep moving. Military choppers and fighter jets roared overhead, and the radio blared endlessly with the same alerts.
At one point, they wound up next to a minivan with a bunch of military stickers, and Yancy rolled down the window to shout to the middle-aged man at the wheel. "I don't suppose you've got any updates?"
"No news, son, sorry! I've got my grandson on the ham radio in back, but the last anybody saw of this thing, it was still a thousand miles offshore."
"How the hell do they lose a kaiju?!" Raleigh demanded.
"The ocean's a lot bigger than you think, kiddo," said the driver, giving him a rueful grin. "Remember how long it took to find that plane a few years back? We may not know anything until this bitch - " he caught himself, glancing at the back seat of his van where Raleigh could see some smaller silhouettes. " - this thing is almost to shore."
"Thanks anyway," said Yance.
"No problem. Godspeed!"
"You too!" Yance sighed and rolled the window up. "Well, it was worth a shot. Mom!" he glared into the rear-view, and Raleigh saw Mom with a cigarette in her mouth, pulling out her lighter.
"For heaven's sake, Yancy, at a time like this - " Yancy just glowered at her, and she scowled but relented and put it away. Diane gave her a stick of gum. An hour later, they were at a complete standstill, and Mom got out of the car to join a few other people smoking on the side of the road. Raleigh saw Yancy's black expression whenever he checked on her. They'd all long since given up trying to persuade her to quit, even after her diagnosis, but Yancy still glared at her sometimes.
They'd been on the road for eight hours when the next alert came in: the kaiju was off the US-Canadian border, now heading east on what looked like a straight charge for the city of Vancouver. All five of them gasped in relief, with Yancy and Raleigh dropping their foreheads onto wheel and dashboard. When Raleigh looked at their neighboring vehicles, a lot of people were doing the exact same thing.
On the other hand, everyone still in Vancouver had hours to get to safety. People in Seattle or Portland had maybe a little longer if the kaiju decided to jog south. "God help them," murmured Diane.
"Can we go home now?" asked Jazmine. Some drivers were already pulling over, trying to figure out how to turn around when all lanes were eastbound.
Yancy beckoned to Raleigh to show him the tablet. "Let me see the map. Let's just go with the flow for awhile. We're not too far from Barnhart Airport - at the rate we're going, we'll get there about the same time the kaiju gets to shore. We can stop, stretch our legs, maybe find a place to stay overnight until we know what's happening."
Raleigh set the tablet back on his own lap, and was embarrassed by how much it shook in his hands. Yancy smiled at him. "You did good, kid."
Not really, I just stood in the living room like an idiot until you got home.
At dawn the next morning, they were packed along with hundreds of other people in an airport sports bar, staring at TVs and tablets in shock and awe. There really was no other way to describe the reaction as the military deployed a gargantuan robot thing that went into battle with the monster. Buildings still fell, people still died - but the mechanical monster was beating the alien monster back.
"We finally have a name for this extraordinary creation: the PPDC is calling it a Jaeger. German for hunter, it's been under rushed construction since the conference last year in Seoul!"
"There are two pilots inside of it. It's armored with massive iron plates, and they are using it like a - like a virtual reality game - the machine takes commands straight from the pilots' brains!"
"It has all kinds of weaponry - it's firing mortar shells straight into the kaiju's face!"
"Did you see that?! It punched it!"
"This has to be the most incredible thing I've witnessed in all my years of broadcasting, and that includes five of these monster attacks! Human ingenuity and courage has answered this new threat in the most spectacular way imaginable! They are beating it back towards the Georgia Strait!"
"The kaiju has fallen! They've thrown it to the ground! There are... some kind of rockets mounted on the Jaeger's shoulders - OH! Oh my god! I can't see in the smoke, they look like they're on top of it!"
Raleigh had been three on September 11, 2001. Yancy had been six, and Mom and Dad had made him take his brother and sister into the then-playroom and stay there, away from the TV. Raleigh didn't remember it, but Yancy told him when they were older that Dad had sat down next to him and quietly said, "Always remember where you were, son. The world changed today."
He'd remembered that story on K-Day, and again with each subsequent attack. But on this day, in April 2015, when the broadcaster shouted, "It's dead! It's DEAD! They've killed it!" and burst into tears, and the little airport terminal exploded into screams of joy and wild embraces and sobbing all around, he made a mental note to always remember where he was.
A tiny little airport in Gakona, Alaska on Interstate A-1, running for our lives with everyone else from Anchorage. We thought if the kaiju didn't get us, the nukes would.
There hadn't been a nuke this time. There had been a... Jaeger.
He leaned over to Yancy as the noise died down. "Dunno about you..."
"... That is the by far the most awesome thing I've ever seen," Yancy finished. Then he laughed and hauled Raleigh over to Jazmine and Mom for a group hug. Considering he'd been awake for a full twenty-four hours, spending most of that time driving, he was in a crazy good mood, but his eyes were starting to look burned into his head. Everyone except him had managed to doze in the car a little.
Raleigh got to take the wheel for the long, slow drive home, and Jazmine switched to shotgun while Yance fell asleep in the back with his head in Mom's lap. Raleigh and Jazz sang along with the radio and did victory dances with other drivers, all without waking Yance up.
Maybe, he thought, the world isn't ending after all. I wonder if this is what V-E Day felt like.
July 2016…
"Psst! Rals!" Yancy elbowed him and jolted him out of his musings. Raleigh blinked and blushed, but to his relief, the instructor hadn't noticed him daydreaming. Hell, a few people in his line of sight had fallen asleep, and she didn't seem to care. He glanced at Yancy's tablet to see what notes he'd missed. As always, Yance made to cover it up, but then grinned and let him look.
You better. I'll bet every model plane in my collection that you'll be zonked out in class at some point. The only debate then would be whether to draw something on him before waking him up.
"What were you thinking 'bout?" Yancy asked when they changed for the evening's workout-drill-torture session.
"When we got the warning for Karloff and had to evacuate. Seeing Brawler Yukon take him down. It's so vivid, that fight. We've had, what, three or four since, but that's the one I remember the most."
Yancy stretched and hissed, rubbing a big bruise on his shin. They were all pretty well marked-up six weeks in. "Y'know... I don't. I remember the drive, where we were when we found out it wasn't coming this far north, and being in the airport watching. Everybody cheering. But the fight itself is just a blur."
"Well, you were tired by then, man. You hadn't slept since the night before." Raleigh yawned heavily as they walked to the Kwoon and remarked, "Kinda like I feel right now."
"Tell me about it. When I realized we get almost no weekend time, I almost said let's throw in the towel."
The only down time they were given on weekends was being able to sleep one hour later, with drills starting after and special long lectures, and workouts focusing more on recovery and limbering up. Almost half the population of the Academy had quit over the first weekend, and with each subsequent weekend, that seemed to be when a lot of recruits cracked.
"I didn't," Raleigh replied, smirking.
"Who's all motivated and shit?" Yancy swatted him, and they laughed. "Are they inspiring you, kiddo?"
Getting to watch the launch of Yankee Star on the Fourth of July… okay, that had been pretty damn inspiring. The first of the Mark-2 Jaegers had come out earlier in 2016 to great fanfare, but the second American Jaeger had been ceremonially rolled out of the Assembly Building right there on Kodiak Island before the eyes of the Academy and the world. Her pilots were instant celebrities, junior Marine marksmen until they'd been assigned to the brand-new Jaeger Program, and when everyone and anyone had been tested for drift compatibility, they had succeeded. Yankee Star was equipped with incredible fire power for her sniper Rangers, and she was now on her way to California to stand guard over the half-finished LA Shatterdome and middle Pacific Coast.
Raleigh observed, "The truth is... it's not as bad as I thought. I mean, it's brutal, no question, but... not in a bad way. And, hey, come on! I've never been team captain - got benched, got cut a few times, but have I ever dropped out of anything?!" he demanded.
Yancy tilted his head as he considered that, then smiled. "No, you never have," he agreed, his voice getting a little softer, to that tone that always made Raleigh feel proud. "So, it's a plan: we go home if we get cut, but we don't bail."
"Deal." They sealed it with a fist bump and headed into their break-out class.
Morning drills were held in the main combat room, the entire population of the Academy. Raleigh preferred those, since it was easier to blend in, and usually there were a few people who bungled the positions worse than he did. In the evening workout and for some of the lectures, they were broken down into smaller groups of twenty to thirty.
Their break-out group's fightmaster was a Japanese man named Anjin Tessori, whose appearance and manner fit just about every stereotype about Asian martial arts masters. Raleigh had to bite his tongue hard not to add "Grasshopper" whenever Tessori was giving someone directions. But the man knew his stuff, and Raleigh had more sense than to get on his bad side. One of the guys had bragged about his various black belts and asked a lot of pompous questions, only to get kicked around the mat six ways from Sunday without landing a single hit of his own. He hadn't even made it to the first Friday before dropping out.
He took them through the fifty-two position drills again, and to Raleigh's pleased surprise, he didn't find himself making any major mistakes. Yancy actually bobbled one, and Raleigh tried not to cringe as Tessori honed in on him.
"Show me your irimi again, Becket-san."
Yancy bowed and obeyed, and Raleigh saw the problem: that bruised shin was bothering him. Tessori knelt and examined it. "Visit the infirmary this evening and have that treated. You will prove nothing by injuring yourself."
"Yes, sir."
The fightmaster put them to work on the stretching and limbering drills, and lectured as he went. "The purpose of this training is not to destroy your spirit - whatever you may think at this stage," he added dryly. "Nor is it to destroy your body. In the west, you have a saying: what does not kill you will make you stronger. Rangers must be as strong as any human being can possibly be, so we must take you to your limits. You will fall. That is our intention. The ones who stand up again are the ones who may be Rangers." He smiled faintly as they all worked and chewed on that. "I know that you have questions by now. Ask."
Over the top of his legs, Raleigh eyed the others, then the big guy from the Caribbean raised his hand. "Is that why the ones who get eliminated can try again?"
"Exactly. Those that we decline who have the perseverance to improve themselves, we welcome them." Tessori smirked. "But you will have noticed, we do not extend that privilege to those who withdraw voluntarily." When he turned his back, Yancy winked at Raleigh.
"Have I ever dropped out of anything?" Raleigh knew he was recalling their earlier conversation. In all fairness, Yancy never had either. He hadn't even made the J.V. football team, (and had only tried out at Dad's urging) and Dad hadn't even bothered to nag Raleigh to try, but they'd both made wrestling. Their standing in those competitions and on the hockey team had been middling at best, but they'd enjoyed it, and neither of them had ever given up.
One of the more gung-ho, competitive guys raised his hand. "What percentile will make the first cut?"
Raleigh managed not to roll his eyes. Brandon Whatshisname had been asking everybody that, and the instructors either didn't know or just didn't feel like telling him.
Tessori folded his arms. "There is no 'percentile' here, Pines-san. If your intention is merely to out-perform a certain number, you will fail, because you miss the point." He smirked as his students exchanged confused looks. "There is no set number who shall pass, or who shall fail. Just over two hundred remain in this class. If at the end of this term, all of you have met every challenge that we set, then two hundred shall advance. Of course, that won't happen. But if none meet the standards we set, then none shall pass."
They finished the flexibility drill. Tessori eyed them and gestured for them to start again. It was tiring in its own right, but felt incredibly good on Raleigh's stiff, sore muscles.
Another guy asked, "Why are some of the standards subjective, then?"
"You know some traits can't be quantified - like attitude, creativity, and respect. Willingness to learn, ability to change and adapt. Your instructors will be watching for all these things."
"Is that why there are so many women admitted?" asked another guy. Their break-out group was all guys, but Raleigh wasn't the only one who shot him a disgusted look. Don something-or-other had been grumbling from Day One that the only way so many female recruits could have passed the screening tests was that the Academy had male and female sets of standards.
Raleigh and Yancy supposed he was probably right. On the other hand, brute strength couldn't be the only qualifier - and speaking of attitude, it was "subjectively" obvious that Don was just a sexist ass.
But their fightmaster just nodded. "And some of you are smaller than others. That is taken into account, as are the differences in age." That startled Raleigh; he hadn't considered that being younger made have been deemed an edge - or maybe a handicap. "For example, we are now on the sixth week of the first term. When this term began, four hundred nineteen recruits were enrolled. Of that number, ninety-one were female. In the past five weeks, two hundred six have voluntary withdrawn. One was female."
It was all Raleigh could do not to laugh at the look on Don's face.
To be continued...