His boys had been superb students and athletes, according to all reports, respectful and obedient to their teachers. They had participated in several types of amusement both individually and as a pair, though the individual activities were replicated in mirror image of one another. Donovan had taken an interest in the sims, and Dominic the computer system. Then Dominic had suddenly become enamored of the simulators, and Don had taken a turn at playing hacker. Even during playtime, they had followed their indoctrination to the letter.

That is what this data told him. What the date did not tell him was how they had been damaged from that ideal state to the current one. There was Donovan's admission to the infirmary prior to the fight in the Engineering Bay, no details provided. There were several indications that the person they had been fighting had lived at least long enough to make it to the Infirmary, but he had disappeared from there, no details provided. In a very short amount of time, the Command School infirmary admitted a very severe burn, multiple broken bones and a stab wound, with no details provided.

What the hell was going on here?

Donovan and Dominic had been caught up in something larger than themselves. Other than that, he was having a hell of a time trying to put these pieces together to form the big picture. Neither twin had faltered during their separate interrogations when asked to tell the story, and they displayed no discrepancies. Nathan Terrence, a student at Command School, had picked a fight with them and Jordan Windhaven after lights out in the Engineering Bay.

Right.

He did what he could to straighten this pile before moving to the second and even more confusing lot of information. These were the student records for Anjelice Iddantel and Roxinne Natano that he'd pulled some very delicate strings to get. He could find no similarities between the two at all, aside from their enrollment in Command School. "Dante" appeared to be reserved and quiet, whily "Rox" was entirely the opposite. The only link he'd found between the two piles was that Dante had been very badly beaten in Battleschool by one of her soldiers while in command of Fox Army.

Nathan Terrence.

What was the connection? The obvious seemed unlikely. Terrence had quarrelled with Donovan over Dante and Dominic had come to back him up, and their friend Windhaven had joined in? Possible, but not likely. Donovan and Dominic simply didn't form attachments to females - or hadn't, in the past. The more secretive of their observers had indicated a normal expected level of sexual activity until the last week or two, when they had apparently inexplicably formed simultaneous attachments to two extremely different girls.

Yet another puzzling bit of information was the contrast between the twins themselves; Dominic, the primary reserved twin, had chosen Rox, who, according to his records, exhibited at least three different kinds of mania and hyperactivity and didn't appear to sleep. At least, that was what he gathered from the collection of evidence the IF had on her under-the-table trade in stolen goods.

Donovan, the primary outgoing twin, had chosen Iddantel, who had exhibited little or no emotion since the encounter with Terrence in Battleschool, and who had no disciplinary record of any kind. They seek out what they admire in each other. That makes some sort of sense. But why?