Cavalon wet his lips, reflexively ironing the anxiety from his expression. “Everyone has them?”
“Only those who came aboard at the rank of oculus, or who’ve been demoted to oculus since. Which happens, like, a lot, honestly.” He shook his head. “Anyone higher than that gets a free pass. The excubitor, obviously, and our fearless second-in-command, Optio North … a couple of the animus, and the centurion that captains the Tempus. That’s really it, that I know of.”
Puck’s back straightened as a thin, wisp of a woman approached. She wore the proper Legion navy blue, but in the form of a dress made of silk folds accented with glimmering threads of silver. An embroidered silk hood had been drawn up over her black hair, shadowing her warm beige skin. It was certainly no uniform.
Puck rubbed his hands together. “Oculus Cavalon no-last-name, meet Animus Mesa Darox, our resident Viator expert.”
The woman’s withdrawn face and sharp, overlarge eyes swept over Cavalon. From afar, her irises had seemed almost black, but up close they shone a deep brown, dappled with tiny flecks of metallic blue-green. “Pleased to meet you, soldier,” she said.
“You’re a Savant,” Cavalon said.
“You are observant,” she replied flatly, her humorless gaze unimpressed.
“I didn’t know Savants enlisted.”
“They do not.”
Cavalon rubbed the back of his neck. “So … Puck said you run the research lab?”
“Correct. I am an animus,” she said, as if that alone explained everything. Cavalon looked to Puck for help.
“A science officer,” Puck explained. “Often contracted, not enlisted.”
“Ah.” Cavalon looked back to Mesa. “What kinds of things are you studying?”
“Most of what we do is classified,” she said curtly.
“I heard the System Collective finally released the salvage from the exosphere of Paxus to the Legion. Did you guys get any of that?”
Mesa opened her mouth to respond before cutting herself short. She narrowed her large eyes at him, clearly surprised at his knowledge on the topic. “Well, yes. We received all of it, in fact. Or will.” She let out a small huff. “They are sending it slowly, crate by crate. It is infuriating.”
“Get anything good?”
She regarded him placidly, and he wasn’t entirely sure she intended to respond. Finally her shoulders slid down and she drew her neck up straight, then gave a curt nod. “We did recently begin study on a very interesting weapon. I have not completed my final assessment, as yet, but it appears to be fusion-powered.”
Cavalon quirked a brow. “Fusion? What kind of weapon?”
“It might best be described as a pistol.”
“A fusion-powered pistol?”
“Yes,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Its design is quite fascinating. Despite the nature of the power source, the time required to prime the weapon is surprisingly short. It is very unlike the typical plasma and electromagnetic weapons their standard troops carried during the Viator War. This must have been a weapon reserved for elite units, or possibly an advancement developed while they were in hiding for two hundred years. I think we may have initially underestimated their understanding of microfusion…”
Mesa clearly attempted to remain formal, but her passion leaked through in her eager tone. Cavalon found it a little infectious, and he couldn’t stop from smiling. He’d always been impressed by the Savant capacity for knowledge. Of the two attempts Viator geneticists had made at crossing themselves with humans, he’d always thought Savants had received the far better end of the bargain. Sure, Drudgers were freakishly strong with an impervious constitution, but they’d been stuck with the worst of the Viator looks. Though as far as interspecies hybrids went, he supposed it could have turned out worse. Either way, Drudgers definitely had none of the intellect or ethereal grace Savants exhibited. Also, they smelled.