Arcturus didn't deign to furnish him with an answer as he stepped from the groundcar, taking a small measure of satisfaction from the withering glare his mother shot his father.

As satisfying as that was, it was small recompense for the bitter seed planted in his heart.

Still, once he had graduated, he could go anywhere.

Somewhere that was as far away from Angus Mengsk as he could get.

Three months later, his promise to see out the term was being tested to the limit.

Principal Steegman had made it clear that Arcturus remained a student of Styrling Academy thanks only to his father's generous patronage of many of the school's facilities, and repeatedly informed him that he was skating on thin ice, walking a tightrope, balancing on a knife's edge, and performing numerous other well-worn cliches.

Lessons had continued much as they had before, and with all the extra attention being lavished upon him (no doubt at his father's insistence) Arcturus could not even find a way to relieve the crushing boredom of the academy by escaping into the city for an evening.

Arcturus Mengsk was, it seemed, a marked man at Styrling Academy, and even his former cohorts appeared to have been warned of the dangers of associating with him.

As a result, Arcturus spent the majority of his time during his last term at Styrling Academy in the school's library, reading and rereading every digi-tome he could find on geology, politics, psychology, and warfare. Many of these books he had already memorized, but each rereading brought fresh insight and understanding.

Arcturus wrote to Dorothy as promised and her return letters were among the few sources of comfort and amusement left to him. In these letters his mother informed him of the workings of the world beyond the walls of the academy, and he was surprised at the frankness of them, talking as they did of revolts in the outer colonies and fringe worlds (of which there was a growing number) as well as relating the latest society gossip. Her letters skirted carefully around the subject of his father, but Arcturus needed no letters from home to know all about Angus's dealings.

The UNN broadcasts were replete with stories of his fiery speeches denouncing the corruption of the Old Families and the Council. Though Angus publicly condemned the rising tide of violence engulfing Korhal, which had seen hundreds of Confederate marines dead in rebel bombings and ambushes, Arcturus knew his father had to be pan of it.

The objective part of Arcturus actually admired the skill with which Angus was able to distance himself from the violence while subtly implying that it was the inevitable result of the Confederacy's oppression and engendering sympathy for the rebel cause.

As much as he was now regarded as something of a pariah at the academy, this did not stop his fellow students from making their feelings about his father plain to him. Many of them came from wealthy families with close ties to the Confederacy, and were suffering dally embarrassment thanks to the withering scorn of Angus Mengsk's rhetoric.

Though Arcturus wanted nothing to do with his father's politics, he was savvy enough to recognize that what he said made a great deal of sense. Still, the retaliatory humiliations heaped upon him by his fellow students only served to further his resentment toward the Mengsk paterfamilias.

But Arcturus's resentment was made bearable by the stimulating diversions offered in the letters he was now exchanging with Juliana Pasteur.

Within a day of his arrival back at the academy, Arcturus had received a letter from Juliana, politely inquiring after his health and the possibility of setting up a meeting during one of the periods he was allowed off the campus. With the precision of a razor, Arcturus had dissected the true meaning within her letter and seen the naked interest beneath the platitudes.

Clearly the rapport established in the short time they had spent in the refuge of his father's summer villa had blossomed despite his absence. Or perhaps because of it.

In return, Arcturus replied with a missive brimming with the foibles of his fellow students, the foolishness of the masters, and his trials within the prisonlike walls of the academy.

His words were well chosen, witty, erudite, and filled with enough self-deprecation to puncture any sense of self-importance his letters might convey that might make him seem arrogant. That such self-deprecation was entirely contrived did not strike Arcturus as false in any way, and the effusive letters he received in return were proof positive of the success of his writings.

As they corresponded over the course of the term, it became increasingly clear that Juliana Pasteur was smitten with him. In marked contrast to their initially frosty meeting in the refuge, it appeared that Juliana now appreciated his brilliance and was assessing his suitability as a consort.

Though he remembered her intoxicating beauty, it had become a detached memory to Arcturus, and he indulged her letters as an outlet for his polemics and occasionally grandiose predictions of his future power. Truth be told, his desire to maintain the friendship had begun to wane, yet Arcturus continued to write to Juliana in the interest of eventually bedding her.

It would be the final act in the completion of a challenge that had once seemed difficult, but which he now knew had been simplicity itself.

The weeks and months passed in a gray blur, lectures boring him and insultingly easy assignments completed with barely a hint of effort. The end was in sight, and with only two weeks to graduation, Principal Steegman summoned the entire senior year to the grand assembly hall in the main block of the academy.

The assembly hall was a grand, vaulted chamber of cedar-paneled walls, gold-framed portraits of illustrious former students, high ceilings, and soaring oak beams. Every morning, Steegman would mount the stage to stand behind his lectern and address the entire upper school, announcing the results of the academy's sporting endeavors and notices of supposed importance.

Occasionally the assembly hall was also used for scrupulously chaperoned balls or played host to visiting dignitaries who would speak to the student body on the virtues of civic service or some other similarly dull subject.

The identically uniformed students filed drearily into the hall, and Arcturus briefly wandered what manner of speaker they were to be subjected to today. As he drew closer to the assembly hall's doorway, the excited hubbub of voices from within told him that whatever awaited them was something beyond the run of the mill.

He passed beneath the arched entrance to the assembly hall and the academy's motto of Alen Apisteyein, which meant “ever to be the best” in one of the dead languages of Old Earth.

The vast floor space in front of the stage was filled with uncomfortable chairs, each one occupied by an excited student. Principal Steegman was at his lectern, looking very pleased with himself, but it was the three hulking figures standing at attention behind him that captured Arcturus's attention.

They stood several feet taller than Steegman, their backs ramrod straight and their bulk enormous, thanks to the heavy plates of neosteel armor they wore.

Arcturus recognized the armor from the technical manuals he'd read in the library.

They were CMC-300 Powered Combat Suits, a brand-new design that was replacing the dated CMC-200 series.

Powered Combat Suits...

As worn by soldiers of the Confederate Marine Corps.