Astra

August 1, 2465:

Who do you call when your stolen spaceship is careening off of Intergalaxy Road 29?

I gripped the handlebars with white knuckles and attempted to steer it back into traffic. Sweat dripped from my skin onto the blazing, holographic warning flashing out at me.

“Intruder, you are on a collision course. Re engage autopilot,” the synthetic monotone said from the dash.

“What, and have you drive me straight to the authorities? Not a chance.”

A sudden jerk from me on the handlebars sent the craft completely off the rails and into free space. My eyes widened as we got closer and closer to the weigh station, aka point of collision. It spun out of control, sending me flying around the cabin. My head knocked against the anti-gravity control, activating it. I held onto the ledge of the control panel tightly as my custom made boots and the rest of my body soared above my head.

“This craft has no free space capabilities on manual pilot.”

“Clearly!”

I slapped the gravity control again and winced as my feet hit the ground with a bone jarring thud. I took hold of the steering bars, tugging against the locked controls. My movements became more frantic as I looked up every couple of second to see the weigh station getting bigger and bigger.

“Advisement: an attack on a weigh station is a galactic crime.”

I looked around frantically. There had to be a way out.  “I’m not attacking. And what do you care? You’re the one who’s trying to get me arrested. Where’s the escape pod on this thing?”

“Galactic regulations don’t require an escape pod on vessels not exceeding thirty square meters.”

I forced the elevation lever up with all my might. The ship gave a shudder and rose a couple of feet, right onto the path of a huge hunk of stone above the station.

“Warning: new collision course.”

I searched wildly for the large red button.“Computer, emergency stop.”

The cruiser jerked, throwing me forward. I’d definitely have bruises from this ride. The craft slowed marginally.

“At this velocity, you will not stop completely before reaching the point of collision.”

Well, a good captain does go down with her ship.

I didn’t close my eyes. That would have ruined all the fun.

_____

I sat on a cot not too far from the burning remains of the stolen cruiser, wishing for the millionth time in the past hour that I was still in the wreckage. A pudgy older man in a red medics’ suit was somehow managing to scan me for injuries and send disapproving glares my way at the same time.

I love people who can multitask.

The scanner in his hand spoke up. “Astra Alkaev. Citizen of Earth, New York. Fifteen years of age. Minor concussion. A fractured rib. Multiple, shallow lacerations.”

I ignored the gadget and, instead, glanced up at Isra Earhart, hero of the Galactic War, notorious supporter of equal rights and cooperation amongst the species of all four planets, a universe wide adventurer, and woman whose face I’d smashed the craft into. It wasn’t actually her just a statue erected in her honor by the weigh station. And, just my luck, the hideous thing was erected by the United Universe. Which meant defacing it-- literally or otherwise-- was a galactic offense.

My, making this go away was going to take a pretty penny from Daddy’s pocket.  

“You’re incredibly lucky, Miss Alkaev.”

I nodded, ignoring how dizzy it made me. “Very lucky. So lucky, in fact, I can feel it right here in my side. Oh, wait, that’s the broken rib.”

He shook his head vigorously, his cheeks flapping like a drooling dog’s. “You could have died. You would have if the ship’s safety protocols hadn’t kicked in and ejected you from the pit.” He took another rueful glance at my last name. “I hope you learned something, at least.”

“Learned something? Did I ever! When my dad finally caves and gets me a craft of my own, I definitely won’t buy a Cruiser XI. That piece of crap couldn’t even hold its own against one tiny statue.”

“This isn’t a joke. Apart from what could have happened to you, you’re facing serious charges here, young lady.”

He clearly didn’t know how this worked.

“Could you just fix me already? Isn’t that what my parents are paying you for?”

He smiled tightly. “I work for the government.”

I winced as he prodded my side with a little more force than the situation required. Peasants. They were basically useless.

I returned his smile. “And my parents own the government.”

Drusus

 

August 1, 2465:

Find the weakness. Look for it. Look for it....

There.

I lunged in with the sword, slicing at the side that my opponent was favoring. I bolted back, on the defensive, and pulled my wings closer to my back. It didn’t prove necessary. As his shirt turned crimson, he grit his teeth and knelt in surrender. I pressed the tip of the blade into his throat while I eyed the Notatai I’d cut through.

I felt a pang of regret at destroying it, though he was old and probably had dozens of markings commemorating a life lived fully. All Tundrians did.

As I looked closer, I recognized the swirling lines of the Notatai as one honoring a veteran for their service in the war. The one war worth remembering. The Galactic War.

I removed my sword from his throat, cleaning it off on my combat pants. I inclined my head in the man’s direction in a motion of deference and respect. He returned the gesture.

I turned away from him, stalking off the practice courts with a slight tremor in my body. My hand twitched unconsciously towards painfully bare spot of skin on my forearm. Soon it’d be filled and then....

Then I’d be worthy.

The halls leading back to my quarters were dark, lit only by the computers on the walls and the faint light from holos in my fellow students’ rooms. The floor was dirt, left over from ancient times, and was silent under most feet. Still, I was trained to know when someone was sneaking up on me.

I swung around with my hands out stretched, ready for whatever opponent dared come at me from behind. I was almost disappointed when it was only a Gorci.

It was only a couple of feet high and stood on its hind legs, covered in mossy colored fur. The creature also had two tube like nostrils that almost fell down to its paws.

It hopped a little closer, eager as always to deliver its message. “Drusus Accia?”

“That’s me.”

It reached in its little stomach pouch and pulled out a small microchip. “Congratulations, young Kverian.”

My black, featherless wings fluttered of their own accord. I clenched the chip in my grasp and hurried towards my room. I ran over a few of my winged brethren on the way there, both Scalan and Kverian. It didn’t matter as long as they were in my way.

I snapped my finger causing the panel to slide shut behind me. My room was as bare as any soldier’s and devoid of color besides neutrals. The lack of presence calmed my spirit as I slipped the chip into my personal hologram emitter.

A plain letter popped up in front of me. It was gold embossed and rang of officiality.

Congratulation, Drusus Accia, Kverian of the planet Tundris, you have been admitted into the Interstellar Academy for the Cessation of Quandaries. Classes start September 3rd, and the shuttle leaves August 30. A list is enclosed containing your equipment requirements and instructions on how to accept this admittance.

Welcome to the family,

Isra Earhart

I leaned back on the stool, feeling the tips of my wings brush against the floor. The room felt suddenly cramped and stuffy. I stood and paced around, trying to focus solely on the clunking of my boots.

She was never going to allow it. Her first born son going off to a segregated school? The idea was laughable. Add in the fact that going meant I wouldn’t participate in the Battle of Rites, the fight that would introduce me as a full fledged warrior to the community, and the whole thing became ludacris.

Who knew what kinds of foolhardy courses they offered there: ethics, philosophy, economics, art, music.

Music....

I walked back out of my room, cruising through the halls. She’d be in a meeting, naturally. The Tundrian council members were always in meetings now-a-days.

After a couple of minutes and a bit of a trek, I leaned against the cool wall outside the Gathering room. I stood there cracking my knuckles for the next hour, getting more and more tense as the moments continued on.

She was last out of the room, so I had to avoid the eyes of all the intimidatingly strong and wise men and women flowing out the door. Luckily, they barely paid me a second glance.

She was as tall as any of them, easily six and a half feet. Her arms were burly and covered in Notatai. We had the same dark, curly hair, but her eyes were a deep blue, mine a bottle green. Mine were my father’s eyes.

“Drusus. It’s not like you to interfere during council business.”

“I apologize, Mother.”

She frowned. “Walk with me.”

We crossed through the silver arches and into the courtyard. It housed many of our most exotic plants, like flytraps from Earth and swarming lilies from Kalid. The multitude of colors almost hurt the eyes, and you had to be very careful where you stepped. You never knew what was worth millions of galactic credits.

“I’ve been accepted into the Interstellar Academy.”

I didn’t look at her. I instead inspected the dome covering the garden, keeping the warmth in and the constant sub zero temperatures out.

“Of course you were. Your credentials are exceptional. Any school that lets in Animarians, Syrenies, Parvulian, and humans is bound to accept you. Any less would be an embarrassment.”

There. I saw my opening.

“I think it would be a good idea to attend.”

An eyebrow rose and there was a tick in her cheek. “Why is that?”

“The school is known throughout the galaxy for its academics, especially battle wise. An education there could set me apart for positions in the military.”

She looked at me as if I’d said something clever, and she wasn’t happy about it.“True. But the answer is no. I don’t want you going to school with.. others.”

I deflated a bit. “That’s one of the reasons why I should attend.” The expression on her face prompted me to explain. “It’s not like I want to rub shoulders with the other species, but you’ve always stressed knowing your enemy inside and out.”

She was silent for a good long while, just staring into the many patches of hundred of plants all fighting for ground space.

“War is coming, Drusus. Only a fool or sentimentalist would disagree.”

Since I didn’t want to be filed under either, I kept my mouth shut.

“You should be prepared.”

Astra

 

August 2, 2465:

I sat outside my father’s personal office, waiting to get the diagnosis on how monumentally--literally, since I crashed into one-- I’d screwed up in their eyes. The downside to my latest adventure was that it was surely going to land me a oneway ticket to Correctional Camp. Again. The plus side? I’d cut my parent’s vacation to Earth Colony Gamma short by a couple of months. I was almost more impressed by that than my ability to hotwire a XI Cruiser, a supposedly impenetrable craft.

Igor, a mountain of muscle who doubled as my dad’s lap dog and my bodyguard, opened up the aged, oak door and said, “Mr. Alkaev will see you know.”

The study was circular and deliberately fashioned to resemble to Oval Office. The plush, blue carpet was the finest money could buy, hand woven in the underwater cities of the Syreni on the planet of Kalid. The immaculately maintained, striped furniture had been in the family for generations. It would have been worth thousands more than my life if I was just any slag on the street. Since I was me, I’d say it was about even.

A man with my dark hair and freckles stared at me from a beautifully carved wooden desk. “Astraea.”

Wow. Wreck one stolen vehicle, don’t see him for a few weeks, and, suddenly, he’s calling me by my full name.

“Daddy.” I nodded to him and the frozen faced woman sitting on the couch. “Mommy.”

I sunk into the nearest arm chair. “You both look fantastic. Dad, the crows feet are barely noticeable. If we extinguished all the lights and the sun, you wouldn’t look a day over 600. And Mom, I’m loving the new orange tint to your skin. It’s like a neon sign reminding us all to never go for the bargain price on genetic tanning.”

Dad ignored me. “You stole a cruiser.”

I opened my mouth to confirm that, but that clearly wasn’t what he was looking for.

“You then proceeded to crash the craft into a statue of one of the most influential humans ever born. A statue built by the United Galaxy. Which, you are well aware, is a council I’m a member of. Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is?”

Embarrassing for him? He wasn’t the who picked a dud craft to steal. I just had to hope none of my friends would hear about it. That kind of rep could ruin a person.

“I would’ve have had to review your actions with my peers and decide whether or not to prosecute. That would damage my standing with them. Perhaps irrevocably.”

I picked at my nails. “Good thing you made it all go away then, isn’t it?”

He pursued his lips. “You’ve gone too far this time, Astra. The other stuff--that was local. In my jurisdiction so to say.”

“Nothing’s out of your jurisdiction.”

“I can’t have you smudging the family name on a galactic scale.” He ran his fingers across the desk. “No, you’ll have to be punished.”

Great. I said my silent goodbyes to my holo privileges. I wondered why my parents had to fly back to ground me. They’d never had any trouble before doing that halfway across the universe.

“Your father and I have given this a great deal of thought.” My mother had a musical voice that sounded pure even when she was lying through her teeth.

I’d never known my mother to give anything much thought.

“We’ve decided that you’d benefit from some time off planet,” Dad said. “This place... well, if it can’t whip you into shape, I don’t know what will.”

They were sending me away? I smiled, mentally packing what I’d need for an extended stay on Earth Colony Gamma. Swimsuit? A couple of those, at least.

“--won’t be returning to Haverson this fall or studying with your private teachers.”

I blinked. “You’re taking me out of school?”

This kept getting better and better. Not only would I be getting an extended vacation, I wouldn’t be expected to pretend to care about algorithms and Shakespeare. I needed to demolish spaceships more often.

“We’re not taking you out of school, Astra,” my mother said. “We’re enrolling you in a different one.”

 

Drusus

 

August 2, 2465

I spread my wings, basking in the glacial blast of wind against them. The air rushed at them, biting at the delicate skin but also stretching the tiny muscles connected to the feather light bones. The cramped feeling of being grounded for too long evaporated, leaving a glorious kind of elation that only high altitudes could bring.

It was a perfect moment. And then it wasn’t.

“Why are you flying so slow?” A voice beside me whined. “You’re supposed to take me hunting, not bore me to death.”

His scrawny body twisted in the air, spinning up into the sky. He beat his wing’s harder, procuring a lead over me. He had the same thin, leathery wings as I did, marking him as Kver instead of Scala, a race that had feathers on their aerial appendages.

“Can’t keep up?” My little brother called over his shoulder, the wind almost swallowing his words.

Other boys my age have mousy brothers who do as they’re told, I told myself. Lucky them.

I dove, increasing my velocity. The air cut at me with brutal swipes. I laughed, letting the sound die out before it got farther than my own ears, and luxuriated in the feel of the cold against me. It tousled my hair violently, and I realized that it’d be a long time until I’d get to feel this way again.

Hyperextending my feet and head towards one another and using my arms as anchorage, I swooped out of my descent, doubling my earlier speed and height. I hurtled right past Akakios, only glimpsing his outraged expression for a scant second.

“How’d you do that?” Kios demanded when he caught up to me.

“It’s simple physics. Maybe if you showed up to class, you could do it.”

“I don’t need to. I’m going to be a great warrior,” he said proudly. It almost made me smile until he added, “Way better than you.”

I lowered our altitude a bit, scanning the barren ground for any hint of movement. “Unfortunately, you’re nine. No one cares whether or not you think you need it.”

Kios wasn’t listening. “When you’re gone, I’ll be able to prove myself. I bet I’ll have Notatai of my own before you get back. Then I’ll be the first heir, and you the little brother.”

Power hungry, little git, I thought.

There. I spotted movement on the ground.

Tucking in my wings, I dropped so fast Kios let out a gasp of surprise. When he finally saw what I had, he groaned in frustration. I smiled, the wind against my face.

The small, scrap of fur I’d spotted from the air grew steadily bigger as I descended, revealing it to be a wild korro. It was covered in thick, brown pelt that made it look twice the size it actually was. Still, it easily outweighed Kios and me combined. It’s formidable tusks were marred and scored. This was an old fighter, a beast who had survived many seasons filled with dominance battles.

Perfect.

I landed behind the cover of a couple trees, crouching to absorb the force. The korro had stopped running, choosing to graze on some lifeless grass. It flicked its tusks about in a quiet show of aggression, probably sensing the presence of predators even if it couldn’t see us.

Kios made an audible thud, smacking against the ground next to me. I looked over, and he was a heap of awkward wings and elbows. He snapped the latter in, holding them off the ground in correct posture that took a lot of muscle strength.

His eyes locked onto the korro, and he smiled. “Well? Are we hunting or not?”

Kios took off at a run moving smoothly and silently through the tree line towards the korro. Despite his silent approach, the korro’s head snapped up before my brother was halfway through the trees. It pawed at the ground, puffing air from his nostrils in open hostility.

“Kios, use your--” I broke off when I noticed his bare calf. “--stun stick.”

Which you didn’t bring. Naturally.

I sprinted after him, sliding my own weapon from the strap on my lower leg in the same movement. The trees were closer together than the ones surrounding the city, and I had to weave in and around them to make space for my wings. The barren looking trees scraped me with the exoskeletons the protected their leaves from the climate.

I was a few yards behind Kios when his and the korro’s paths collided. His small body dove to the side at the last possible moment. The beast charged on ahead, leaving me to jump over him.

While the korro stopped and righted itself, Kios sneered at my stun stick.“You need a weapon to take down a korro? They’re walking, domestic meat factories.”

“This is a wild one; he still has his tusks and temperament. Standard procedure--”

But Kios wasn’t listening. He ran back towards the korro, attempting to find the vulnerable spot on the base of the skull. It surged forward in a movement even Kios wasn’t fast enough to counter. The tusks rammed into his abdomen, throwing him through a air, landing a few feet away on his back.

I let the korro charge me, waiting crouched with my stun stick ready. When it was close enough, I drove the weapon up and under his rib cage, sending a powerful pulse of electricity into his stomach. He convulsed, his tusks missing me by scant millimeters. After a moment he was motionless.

I ran over to Kios, not really worried despite the fact that korro tusks could kill a grown Tundrian. Facts were facts but Kios would never die like that, especially so young. It’d be too convenient for me.

His eyes were open, and he watched me open the chest of his suit and look for lacerations. I whistled at the giant, multicolored bruise forming over most of his stomach and chest.

“That’s prime. Maybe you can tell people you got it fighting off a battalion of AIs.”

“Taken down by robots?” he wheezed.

I helped him to his feet. I grinned. “This is way less shameful.”

Astra

 

August 30:

“This is shameful, Igor.” I tried to maneuver myself in front of him. Not an easy task in spider heels on the crowded platform. A fellow New Yorker bumped into me and cursed in my direction.

“And a pleasant morning to you too, sunshine.” I stopped--really the only way to stay upright in shoes with eight stiletto “legs” sprouting in every direction-- in front of Igor. He didn’t plow over me, good body gaurd that he is. “Really, this behavior is below you,” I told him.

His grey eyes held no sympathy. “Your parents don’t want you informed of the school you’ll be attending yet.”

“But we’re headed there now. I’m scared and uncertain about my future.” He didn’t even blink. “Is a little loyalty too much to ask for? Who signs your paycheck?”

“Your father.”

“Think long term, Igor. In three years, I’ll be legal, an adult, and if you don’t play your cards right, you’ll be out of a job for the first time in fifteen years.”

The smell of hundreds of people all packed into a dome like tunnel leagues above the city continued to assault my nose. I tapped my foot impatiently and almost fell over. The one of the dozens of holo screens said the train would be arriving in 43 seconds.

“Your parents just don’t want a repeat of the--” He flicked dark hair on the top of my head. “--incident when they sent you to remedial camp this summer.”

“This?” I motioned to my head. “This is art.”

“You shaved half of your head,” he said dryly.

I huffed. “It’s called an undercut. I can show you sometime. It’s fairly simple, even a commoner like yourself could have some success with it. Make sure you comb the rest of your hair to the unshaved side, or you won’t be able to see the designs in the shave.”

“I’ll take that into consideration.”

The ground rumbled with the force of a metal tube moving at speeds so fast it almost appeared invisible to the human eye. I watched the blur of white and blue solidify into a twenty car train as it slowed to a stop in front of us. There were no windows, the glass wearing out too quickly with the regular wear and tear of thousands of rides a day.

“Vehicle 875B to Houston, Dallas, United States now boarding. Priority members may board at this time.”

I flicked my wrist at the AI checkouting our bands as we stepped through the doors. It was humanoid in its body shape, though it was made of metal and had no skin to hide the programing and engineering that made it run. It even had a face. That was the part that got a lot of people; the complete lack of emotion where there was human like intelligence was very apparent on the faces.

The AI was still examining my band for what should have been a second long scan. I rolled my eyes, annoyed. “Clearly, my taxes aren’t going to the upkeep of public transportation. Remind me to write a letter, Igor.”

The Artificial Intelligence being’s head moved up and towards me. It felt almost as if it were looking at me, a feat that would’ve been enough to send the phobics screaming.

I smiled. “I’d watch it. That kind of behavior’ll land you in a scrap heap.”

Igor grumbled at me to stop talking to inanimate objects, and I joined him against the wall of the train. The interior was completely barren of seats or handles, nothing to hold onto. When I leaned against the wall, inside my personal bright blue lines, metal bracelets emerged from the surface. They looped around my wrists, arms, thighs, and calves, effectively strapping me down.

I tilted my head towards Igor. “You didn’t ask what the designs shaved on to my head are.”

“They’re celtic ruins.” I blinked, and he said, “It’s my job to know everything you do and everything about you, especially what you carve into your skull.”

The automated voice said, “Please prepare departure.”

I was pressed even harder against the side of the train, feeling the force of the train getting up to speed. My heart beat increased along with it, and I grinned ear to ear.

No matter the vehicle, I liked going fast.

_____

Unlike in New York, the station platform in Houston was outdoors. The steamy Texas air hit me like one of Igor’s oversized fists. My heels scratched at the pavement in a predatory sound that made people dive out of my way.

“Love these shoes,” I said. We walked along with the crowd of sweaty people to the tubes--airtight capsules that would race down to the ground with all the speed and force that gravity offered. Igor hated them. “Speaking of shoes, where is my luggage?”

We squeezed into one of the dozens of tubes. There was barely enough room for me and Igor’s ridiculous body mass. “You packed  too much. Some employees are re-packing the essentials and sending it to the school. It’ll probably arrive before you do.”

“And where, exactly, are they sending it?”

He shook his head. “Nice try.”

“I thought so. What do you mean re-packing? Everything I had in there was absolutely essential.”

Igor grabbed onto the walls when the capsule was released. It didn’t shake like the train, but gave the feeling that you’d left your organs floating back where you started. “We have different ideas of what’s essential. You’ll be allowed to keep some of your clothes for jaunts outside the institution, which I’ve been assured will be few and far between, but the school provides a mandatory uniform.”

“A uniform? How soul crushingly unoriginal. Do you expect me to stay in a place that’s a threat to my individuality?”

The ground approached at frightening speeds, making you feel like you were going to smash into it and disintegrate into so many pieces they’d never find them all. Igor tensed and grabbed on harder to the sparse railing and my arm.

The capsule hit an invisible field, slowing its descent like it was falling through pudding. We touched the ground with a feather like touchdown.

He leveled a no nonsense stare at me. “Yes, I expect that. This won’t be like camp, where you could escape whenever it tripped your fancy.”

“You obviously never saw the inside of that camp. The security system was state of the art, and some of the obstacles--precautions weren’t even automated. That barb wire fence was practically medieval. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little pleased with myself for figuring it out.”

A sleek, black hover car was waiting for us when we stepped up to the busy road. Igor always insists on going fist. Body gaurd thing, I guess. So I made sure to beat him to the car and climb in the back before he could stop me. By the time he sat down in one of the plush seats, I was already pouring myself some fruity concoction from the bar.

He smiled--actually smiled-- at me. “Oh, I think you’ll find this school a little tougher to break out of.”

Intriguing. A challenge was just what I needed to relieve the boredom of the last few weeks. I’d felt my missing holo like an amputated limb, one that used to bring me hours of entertainment.

“Astra,” he said, calling me to attention. His face was serious. “Just stay put. If you give it a chance, you might like this school. Who knows, you might even find some friends.”

I peered out the tinted window. We were leaving the city steadily behind, the building becoming smaller and sparser. “I have friends. Not that I’ve been allowed to see them as of late.”

“You have people who amuse you, who you use, not friends.”

I shrugged, not seeing any difference between the two.

 

Drusus

 

August 30:

My holo buzzed, telling me I had an incoming message. I set down the small sack I’d finished packing a few minutes previous and grabbed it off the nightstand. The sphere computer fit easily in the palm of my hand. I pressed the power button, and the pale metal exterior receded into the center of the ball, bringing out the inner touch sensitive screen.

The holo projected my mother’s virtual face into the air in front of me. It had the strange transparent quality that come from portable holograms. The larger ones looked like flesh and bones, because they didn’t have to conserve power to have a longer charge life.

“Good morning, Drusus.”

I didn’t reply. It was a message, not live.

“Your passes for transportation to the ship that will take you off world to the Academy’s shuttle are on your dresser. I have no doubt you’ll make me proud and excel at everything the school throws at you. I expect to see you home over break.”

Her face vanished, and I closed up my holo, slipping it into a pocket. Picking up the bag, I did a survey of the room. It was just as bare as it had always been, so there was nothing to take down or clean up for the next occupant. I picked up one last item, my most valuable, and tucked it safely away in my breast pocket.

I’d already said my goodbyes to Kios and my mother, who had been called away on Tundris Council business.  Kios was in class, not that I’d want him to escort me to the city limits. I wanted good memories to last me through the year.

I locked the bedroom door with me still inside and hit a switch. A panel slid open on the ceiling and a ladder shot down. I attached the pack to myself, hooking the straps around my upper and lower thigh, and then I climbed up and out of the room for the last time.

Since it was one of the upper rooms, it opened directly to the rooftop instead of more ladders towards it. It was early, before even the other students would of risen, and too cold for pleasurable flying, so the roof was deserted.

I secured my fur coat over my thermal suit and breathed in the thick city air, before stretching out my wings and diving from the roof. It was tall enough to allow more than the needed time to catch the wind currents and flap your way away from the rapidly approaching ground. That couldn’t be said for all the Salaac, or any of the other cities on Tundris for the matter, but this was a training facility. Parents might not raise a fuss if their child was killed in combat, but falling to their deaths? Disgraceful.

I kept my altitude as low as possible, wanting to see the city. Salaac was amazing for more than the fact that it was the Capital of the whole planet and housed millions of Tundrians.There were no doors in the city. All the buildings were three walls, sometimes even two, stacked on top of each other. These one floor apartments started a couple stories up, everything below that was storage and recreational areas that could be reached by elevators outside the building, and soared to the clouds.

Force fields covered where there were no walls, were used to keep the apartments relatively insulated, and could be turned opaque, making it look solid, for privacy. Each field was programed to the genetic code of anyone with rights to enter. Once that happened, Kver and Scala alike would just fly right through the field as if it were air.

It was a unique feature that no other city in the universe could boast of. Certainly not the rest of Tundris, who would see such openness as disgusting weakness, like showing your injured limb to an opponent. To attempt to rectify this, the city was completely enclosed by a giant, dark wall made from the toughest metals in the solar system. It was hundreds of yards thick and the unbreachable, the pride of Tundris.

As I got closer to the Divide, I had to fly higher, because the top of the wall was stories higher than any building within the city. It curved slightly inwards, making it almost dome like. I landed near one of the departing stations on the edge on the wall.

I scanned my papers at one of the many booths. A Scala with dingy colored feather grimaced at me from behind the counter, looking over my documentation with a little more scrutiny than the situation warranted. I schooled my face to be smooth and unaffected.

He finally grunted at me, unable to find anything wrong with my passes. The other side of the wall was a bit of a walk, but I didn’t want to board a shuttle vehicle with a bunch of Tundrians I didn’t know, not to mention there’d be more Scala on board.

“Drusus Accia.” A voice called from behind me.

“Maeve Spada.” I nodded in greeting.

Her hair was the color of the pale, Earth fruit my mother was fond of. I searched for the word before coming up with peaches. She had dark skin that marked her from farther north. With wings of brown, her’s were lighter than mine, but still featherless like a true Kver. Her mouth was thin, making it look like she was constantly unhappy. Typically, she was, but her lips made it impossible to pretend otherwise.

“Why are you leaving the city?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be preparing for your Zrel? If you don’t win the fight--”

“--I won’t be an adult. I’m leaving for the same reason you are, I assume.” Her voice was monotone, like always. It made it difficult to pay attention to her if you weren’t used to it. It could have been intentional. I’d never quite mustered up the courage to ask.

My hand smoothed over my breast pocket of its own accord. “What reason would that be?”

She raised an eyebrow, but somehow managed to still look completely uninterested. “To gain an advantage on our fellow trainees by learning battle techniques collected from all around the galaxy. That’s why you’re going, of course.”

Passive aggressive without crossing any lines of etiquette. I was reminded of why my mother loved her.

“Of course,” I searched for something else to say, something to take suspicion of why I was going. My mother would’ve had no trouble, my brother either, for that matter. I was the only one in my family cursed with poor communication skills. “It doesn’t hurt that we’ll be light years away from my brother, either.”

Her lips twitched. “How is Akakios? Still a blood thirsty nine year old?”

“Bent on killing me in my sleep, yes. And I’d prefer if you called him Kios. He hates it.”

She dove from the take off deck first, stretching her wings to their full wingspan. The wind catching the underside and propelling her upward. I joined her after a miniscule moment to make sure the object in my pocket was tucked securely.

It’s a chore to yell over the rush of air, so neither of us made an attempt at it. Instead, I watched as the wall disappeared, and with it, the last sight of civilization. Outhere, there were no cities, only a few scattered towns. Most of those settlements were poor and lived off the untouched land that surrounded them for hundreds of miles.

Off-world take off was strictly prohibited within the city walls, so anyone wishing to travel had to travel to the nearby station, where Mae and I were headed. I’d never been aboard one of the wicked fast rockets, but I’d seen my mother off on many trips to meet with her fellow members of the United Universe. My stomach turned over at the thought of riding one. Put me in a fight, and I was in my element, but aboard a spacecraft, if anything went awry, there would be nothing I could do.

A small paved surface came into view after we passed a large hill. It grew in size as we descended, seeming to be almost as big as a city. There were no ships in sight, only large holes in the ground with retracting metal doors. Most of those doors were closed and would only open a few moments before take off.

We landed not far from one of the openings and followed the path to a pair of elevators that would take us underground. They were made completely of glass, allowing us to oggle the rockets from top to bottom on our way down. They were tall and thin and came to a point at the nose. The metal they were forged from was dark and colorless, scientifically engineered like on many crafts to blend seamlessly with the inky space around it.

“Do you know how many Tundrian students were accepted?” I asked.

She didn’t turn away from the sight of the rocket. “A lot. More than any other planet, except maybe from Kalid. I heard there were record low applicants from Earth, and that there were no Parvulians admitted for this term. Sounds like it’s going to be a diverse school without the diversity,” she snickered.

I shrugged. “The one drawback to the Academy was that I’d have to rub elbows with all those dregs. Fine by me if none of them show up.”

We sat in a waiting area that was walled with glass, making it easy to sit and be bewitched by the crafts taking off. Their ends erupted in a cloud of smoke and sparks, and they propelled out of their holdings with speed I’d never before seen.

Not long after one would exit, another would shift up, seemingly through the ground, to take it’s place. My mother told me once that they had a landing facility a few miles from here, and from there, they would ship back the passengers and ships for future take offs. I repeated that fact to myself when the rockets too strongly resembled plants sprouting from the dirt.

As the waiting room filled up with more and more Tundrians, some students that would join us, our time to board came. My insides did flips and turns as Mae and I climbed down a set of stairs to get to the main floor where the rockets were held.

Seeing them there, infinitely and impossibly taller than they’d looked from the elevators or the waiting room, I wanted to flap my wings with all my might all the way home. The training center would accept me back in a heart beat. I was a protege.

As I got closer and closer to my rocket, I couldn’t remember why I was doing this. I could learn everything I needed on Tundris. There was no need to go off in search of new battle strategies; the ones I had were good enough to pulverize any species in the inevitable war.

My step stuttered, and I gripped my breast pocket with pale fingers. I felt the slight but reassuring weight there, and ran my fingers along the cylindrical shape. I looked up and Mae had gotten a few strides in front of me, I kept my hand where it was and caught up with her.

An AI showed us to our seats after checking our identification. It stayed around long enough to yank roughly on the harnesses, ensuring we wouldn’t slip out and splatter everywhere. I tried to focus on my breathing.

The rocket vibrated with the power of the multiple engines. I leaned my head back against the fluorescent headrest. I could feel the shaking getting worse and worse till I could feel it deep in my bones. As the captain announced the countdown, I squeezed my eyes shut.

I didn’t want to see this part.

 

Astra

 

August 30:

I had to see this part.

I gripped the edge of the widow with shaking fingers. The driver was angling our Cruiser-- of the same brand I crashed a month ago-- towards the Intergalaxy Road. The road part was a bit of a misnomer, as there was no pavement or rails with automated microchips embedded in them to keep the car hovering on the right path. Satellite generated holos gave you a sense of being on a giant interstate, but you weren’t actually touching anything.

Instead of chips, the “road” was a field of radio signals that interacted with your vehicle--if it had off-world capabilities. The illusion of a road removed the extra axis in traveling in space, making it like moving your own body on land. The radio signals actually kept your car on the imaginary road, a feat impossible for a regular space ship, because it operated with that extra axis.

As soon as we had holographic pavement beneath our tires, I braced myself for the same result as last time, that we'd go flying off into free space. But after a second, I realised the driver was just as smooth on this road as he was on the ground.

I pressed my lips into a thin line, but reminded myself that we hadn't even left the atmosphere yet. I'd made it much farther than this.

“When did we get one of these?” I asked Igor.

He raised an eyebrow. “Your family is one of the richest in the galaxy, and you didn't think they had off-world capable cruisers?”

Frowning, I thought back. “I never saw any.”

“That,” he said. “Was deliberate.”

The car autopilot took over, speeding us out of the atmosphere at speeds that a human couldn't hope to pilot under. The car shook, and the window was a collage of violent reds and oranges, and then finally, the purest black you could imagine.

I tapped on the divider that separates the driver and us. He turned around to give me his attention. “Why are you still in autopilot?”

He looked surprised. “The Cruiser XI can't be manually driven off-world, no cruiser can.”

“Well, that wasn't in the manual.” At least I didn't think it was. I'd been a little busy enjoying myself to worry about instructions. I smiled at the driver. “I made it past the weigh station under my own power, you know. I wouldn't trust everything the manual says.”

Igor coughed. “If you'll remember, Astra, you didn't actually clear the weigh station.”

I waved that comment away. “Semantics.” I tried to peer farther into space to see our destination, but saw only darkness broken up by the occasional star. “How long till we're there?”

“We'll reach the shuttle in just a few minutes, it's close to Earth this year.”

I smacked the holo out of his hand, monopolizing his full attention.“Shuttle to where?”

“The school.”

“Right. Which one would that be again?”

He picked the palm sized computer back up and continued reading whatever fascinating story was on the screen.

“If you won't tell me the name, I demand to know where it is.”

He kept reading, not even blinking at my haughty tone. He was more than used to after all these years. “It's in space.”

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously. But which planet?”

My parents were always looking for a new prison that could actually keep me in. Apparently, I'd used up all the ones on Earth. I wondered if I'd be going to Tundris. I'd heard they had great security measures; it'd prove to be a wonderful challenge if I didn't freeze to death. No, they were probably sending me to Parvu, a world with a bunch of geeky scientists and no possibility for fun. I didn't even want to consider that they might be sending me to Kalid. I wouldn't last one week on the backwaters world without my holo.  

Igor chuckled. “I didn't say planet.” He went back to being engrossed in his article.

I blinked, all the schools and scenarios pouring out of my head like sand in an hourglass. If it wasn't on a planet, then it must actually be in space. I leaned back in my seat in disbelief.

Well, that certainly narrowed down the possibilities.

“So, let me get this straight. I broke galactic law by stealing a cruiser and crashing it into a statue in space, so you've decided to punish me with more time in space-- the place I wanted to go in the first place?”

“Correct.”

I grinned. “I'll have to be naughty more often.”

He stretched out his legs in a way that was far too self satisfied for my taste. Only I was allowed to be that pleased with myself. “This is going to be just as hard as any camp you've been admitted to in the past—harder probably sense it's academic. Private tutoring has ruined you.”

“I love private tutoring. We learn at my say so.”

He pressed his lips together. “Exactly. Your teachers are so afraid you'll fire them that they don't push you, a fact you're well aware of and take advantage of.”

“Bad Astra, very bad Astra.”

He went back to his hollo. “I think you'll find this won't be anything like that. The security at this school is legendary, and you'll be floating in the middle of space, a combination that'll slow even you down.”

I had a smart retort on the tip of my tongue, but it was squelched by my short attention span. I gasped and got closer to the window, trying to get a better look, because my eyes had to be deceiving me.

In the middle of the inky abyss, was a school bus. A real, live, not in the movies from decades ago, school bus. It wasn't yellow like I'd seen, but a cosmic green that had to make it visible for lightyears. Other than that, it looked exactly like something that rolled out of a 2050 flick.

“Igor, do you see that?”

He made a noncommittal noise, and I went back to ogling it.

As we got closer, it got impossibly bigger. I'd had reservations about how a bunch of students were going to fit on a cruiser sized ship, but those were gone now. It had to be as large as long as a train and three times as tall and wide. It was clear now that it wasn't exactly like a bus, more like a bus shaped ship. You could see the multiple floors from the windows in the body. The nose was a little more oval shaped, because it housed the cockpit. It had drivers stationed upside down at the bottom of the bus and right side up—both relative terms in space.

It wasn't attached to any planet or station, meaning it had state of the art anchoring tech. On the side of the bus where the door would have been, there was a temporary docking station. A myriad of cruisers and larger ships—probably carrying a bunch of kids from one geographic location—were already parked.

Every few seconds a couple crafts would pull away and head back to wherever they came from, and new ones would take their spaces. There were more cruisers than spots or people leaving, so we were left waiting, a situation I was not used to. By the time we got a spot, I think Igor was just as relieved as I was, having told me to shut up and be patient at least ten times.

We pulled up to the docking station, and our cruiser locked on. A hole wide enough to cover the door opened, and I could hear the air lock whoosh as it closed the door, making sure we wouldn't drift off into space or suffocate.

Both Igor and I piled our. He got to go first this time, because I was a compromising kind of person. Or, it could have been, because he jumped out the door quicker than I could blink.

The dock was just a square, plain rectangle that led up to the green entrance. It was clearly made of degradable material that'd be left to burn up upon entry of some nearby planet, probably Earth. It wasn't noteworthy enough to hold my attention for more than a scant second.

I grabbed Igor's hand and dragged him towards the doors, looking around wildly for the name of the school or at least a hint. There were kids all around me of all different ages. It started at mine-- a new fifteen-- and went all the way up to adults and almost adults, the seventeen to eighteen range.

The most notable difference between them, however, wasn't the age. They were different species. I saw a cluster of Tundrians-- easily spotted by their wings-- on the way to the door. The Syreni from Kalid were just as easy to spot with their vibrant scales, webbed feet, and gills. They stood away from the crowd, looking at people's holos and lavish cruisers with wide eyes.

 Inside the green monstrosity, there were compartments with couches and beds. I passed one with a anti-grav Foosball table on the way to the check-in desk. A bunch of kids were crowded around a few harrowed looking AIs. They were checking identification with enrollment records.

I figured I'd done enough waiting-- how much can be expected of me in one day?-- and shoved my way to the front. A couple of Syreni gave me dirty looks, their gills raised on their neck like hair on the back of an angry dog, but they didn't say anything or make any moves to stop me. I smirked. That was the difference between beings from Earth and beings from Kalid.

I slapped down my Galactic Identification-- G.I. for short. The AI didn't pause, not programed with the higher function to differentiate situations and adjust (like someone cutting in line). Some were little more than robots, they're owners choosing to buy them that way or downgrade them for monetary savings.

When it was done with my G.I. The AI handed it back with a creaky smile and said, “Enjoy your time aboard the shuttle, Astra Alkaev of Earth.”

It hadn't said that to any of the other students, a flaw in it's programing. I shrugged it off as a probable glitch. If it'd been one of my personal Ais, it would've been it's way to the incinerated, but not everyone had the same dedication to quality that I did. It was sad.

In the excitement, I'd almost forgotten that I had no clue where I was. Then I looked up, and the school emblem was right there. A large eagle appeared to be flying right at me. It was a minimalist design, made completely from silver you could only make out the body of the great bird and a few feathers. It's wings rested on the school names translated into a myriad of different languages.

The Interstellar Academy.

I stormed over to Igor. He was standing with his arms crossed, watching me with heavy lidded eyes. “You're sending me to military school. Could you be anymore cliché?”

“It's not a military school, though it's curriculum will probably be just as challenging. The Academy is the opposite of a military school. It was created--”

“--by the UG after the Galactic war, I know.” I walked out of the corridor, towards where the map I'd been given said my quarters were. “Look, this has been fun, but I'm not staying.”

Igor didn't say anything.

“We'll grab my things and head back to the car.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Afraid you won't be able to cut it?”

I squawked indignantly. “I'm an Alkaev. I can do anything the peasants can do, and I can do it ten times as well.”

“Except fly a cruiser.”

I opened the door to a small room with a few brightly colored couches and pinstriped wallpaper. “It was dysfunctional. And don't think I don't know what you're trying to do. I'm not falling for it, and I'm not staying.”

“Probably for the best. This school has one of the most prestigious flying programs in the galaxy. Most of the kids have been flying crafts since before they could walk. You'd be so far behind.”

I snorted, walking over to the paltry, single bag that was in the room. “What is this? Did you actually expect me to live out of this for a school year?”

“It would've been a challenge for you, that's for sure.”

We stared at eachother for a moment. I pursed my lips. “I want another bag, and I want to be able to come home whenever it pleases me.”

“I'll mail you the second bag. That's it.”

“Who works for who here?”

“Fire me later.” He smiled. “I'll see you in April.”

He shut the door behind him, leaving me alone in the pint sized room. I gave the space a disdainful once over and then sank into a plush, green couch. It wasn't the kind of thing I'd ever sat on before. For one, it didn't have a designer label or any worth as a conversation piece. It was probably even ordered in bulk.

I was sitting on it of my own free will, though. I had to hand it to Igor; he might have been a commoner, but he was clever on occasion. He'd given me a reason to stay, for a time anyway. I let my mind drift, thinking of flying a free space capable craft, soaring through the dark void with nothing but steel and my wits keeping me from disaster.

A slip of paper attached to the door caught my attention. Hardly anything was in physical form anymore, all of it electronic. I went over to it and scanned the contents. On it, there were four names written. The first, naturally, was mine.

Kavi of Tria

Maeve Spada

I had no idea what Tria was, only sure that it wasn't a planet or a well known city. I'd certainly never been to it. None of the other names had a place next to them, so I wondered if it was one at all.

The next name, Maeve, sounded female to me, and I groaned inwardly. I didn't get along with girls my own age. I only had one female that I spent time with back home, and, as a professional underworld wrestler, she didn't exactly act like your typical delicate flower.

The paper was ripped after Maeve, and I had to squint and place the pieces together to read the last name.

Drusus Accia.

Drusus

 

August 30:

Astra Alkaev.

My eyes stayed glued to that particular name on the list of people I'd be rooming with on the shuttle and once we got to the Academy. I was relieved to be with Mae, though she was gloomy and montone. The Animarian, Kavi, didn't hold much interest apart from the fact that his species didn't often stray from home. No, it was this Astra that had me frowning.

It sounded like a human name.

I shook my head. This year's class was supposed to have few humans, though I'd seen an alarming amount of them in the upper classmen crowd. Even I couldn't be so unlucky to get one of the sparse Earthlings in my room.

The last name Alkaev, though.... I'd heard it a million times. Some from my mother when talking about the UG. I knew it was a family name, an influential and wealthy one, but I couldn't remember where it came from. Not Earth, I prayed silently to Agrona, the goddess of war, and Fabius, the god of tactical reason.

I turned onto the corridor that held my quarters. I passed quite a few open doors. The sounds of friends reuniting after a long summer assaulted my ears. I sped up my pace, wishing I hadn't left Mae at the registry.

The door to my room was closed and no sound emitted from it. I breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door. I frozen upon seeing who was inside.

There was a girl sitting on a couch, looking very put out. She appeared to be a few inches shorter than me, average height for a Tundrian, but tall for what she was. She had dark hair that hung artfully down the right side of her face. I blinked when I realized the left side had been buzzed, curious designs circled and twirled on her scalp. She was wearing the most dangerous shoes I'd ever seen, with eight, sharp legs erupting from them. Deadly as a weapon, I couldn't see how one could fight in them.

She was human.

“Nice wings.” Her voice was high and abrasive.

I waited for her to say more, but she had seemed to dismiss me as quickly as she had noticed me. The farthest couch in the room was still too close to her, and I deliberated where to sit.

My holo buzzed, postponing the decision for me. I walked back out the door, shutting it firmly behind me. The hallway was too noisy, so I put the caller on hold and found a quite spot on the nearest stairwell.

I pressed the receive button, and a hologram projected into the space right above the tiny computer. The man's face that appeared there was scarred and lined with premature aging lines. He had silver in his brown hair and a decisive, proud air about him. I recognized him instantly.

“Commander Rike. It's an honor, sir.” I stared wide eyed at my mother's boss in the Tundrian military. I put the Commander on hold, I thought numbly.

“The honor is mine, cadet. Your mother speaks highly of you.”

I kept my face smooth, but felt a spark of surprise. “I strive to make her proud in all my endeavours,” I said automatically. The standard response had been beaten into me over and over again since birth.

“I apologize, cadet. I meant to speak with you before you departed, but business got in the way.”

“There's nothing to apologize for, sir.” My heart was racing and my face felt hot. I didn't know why he'd want to speak to me. I'd never met the man before he initiated this commlink.

“I understand you'll be attending the Academy this year.”

I heard a couple of students coming up the stairs and slipped into a supplies closet. “Yes, sir.”

“It's an honor to be accepted.”

“No more so than at the training center, “ I said quickly.

He smiled. “Of course. But in this case you'll be far away from home, surrounded by...others.”

“Yes, sir. I'm hoping to learn a diverse range of battle skills here to use during my service.” I didn't know what else to say.

“It's admirable that you would undertake such a hardship for the good of your world.”

I caught myself right before my hand would've touched to contents of my breast pocket in guilt. An understanding of the enemy would help me and my people in the coming war, but that wasn't why I was here. I tried to keep that off my face.

The Commander continued. “That's why I feel confident I've made the right decision coming to you.”

I halted in my thoughts. “With what, sir?”

He looked me right in the eyes, a little frightening in his intensity. “I have a problem, Drusus, and I was hoping you could help me.” A pause. “This is the kind of favor that could really burgeon a young man's career.”

I tripped over myself answering him. “Any—anything, sir.”

I sank down against the wall. The room smelled heavily of chemicals and was making me light headed. My right boot was suspiciously damp, and I wondered what I'd stepped in.

“The Academy is a very noteworthy school, security and curriculum wise. The training center as well as the military could learn a lot from it. Unfortunately, the school is one of the few blind spots Tundris has in the galaxy. Myself and my esteemed colleagues were hoping you rectify this for us.”

“You want me to spy?” My throat felt scratchy. “Sir,” I added hastily.

He said slowly, “If you like. I simply want a layout of the school and it's security measures. However, while you're there, if you happen to hear anything of import....” His head moved up like he was shrugging his shoulders. “I'd be interested in hearing that as well, of course.”

I was silent for a moment, and he asked, “What do you say, son?”

I flinched at that, but reiterated what had been drilled into me in grammar school. “I'd be honored to serve my world in any way possible.”

“Good. I look forward to your reports.” He disconnected not long after exchanging pleasantries.

I sat in the closet for a while longer. Running the conversation over and over in my head. Part of me did feel honored, like I'd told the Commander. I was one of hundred of Tundrians attending the Academy, and the man was a legend, a hero from the Galactic War. My mother had earned her status, but I was nobody. And yet he'd reached out to me to help him. It was an honor.

But I was apprehensive as well. There was a reason why the school was so private, why it was a gap in all the world's—not just Tundris'-- knowledge: to keep neutrality. With a school that accepted all the species, it was important that no one world was favored above the other. Which meant they were probably pretty secretive about information leaks. If I were caught, I'd be sent home, disgraced. And I wouldn't be able to do what I'd really come for.

This school, I thought with a frown, might be more interesting than I'd counted on.

Astra

 

August 30:

This school might just hold something of interest, after all, I thought. I grinned at the crispy looking, green skinned boy standing in the doorway. He was a least a foot shorter than me and wearing a light blue toga. It consisted of a rough, burlap like substance.

He held his Academy issued suit at arm's length, as if it might infect him with it's lack of individuality. Which-- with it's silver, boring coloring, black lining for insulation, and plain Academy emblem on the chest-- was completely possible. The only positive thing that could be said for the suit was that it wasn't baggy, actually fitting like a second skin.

Still, I wasn't planning on changing into it.

The boy—the one from earlier that left-- hadn't come back, but I wasn't concerned. He didn't warrant much notice. He was just your typical Tundrian: all muscle, no brains. Perfectly good for manual labor, but lacking in the conversation aspect. Focusing on him for longer than a millisecond gave me a serious case of boredom.

“Kavi, right?” I continued on, not really caring about the answer. “What's Tria?”

He was taken aback and stared at me.

I rubbed my forearm absently. An AI had come in a few minutes previously and given me a patch that'd disintegrated into my skin as soon as it'd slapped it on me, like the slicer back home that gave people parts of animal DNA. It'd said something about the patch being a mandatory upgrade for all students. I was sold at upgrade. Igor hates when I mess with my DNA.

I said impatiently, “I read it on the door. What's it mean?”

“It is the third order of the monks. I am of Tria.”

Though all his words seemed to run together, I had to say, “Your English is great.”

He shook his head and pointed to a small, square shaped piece of tech on the wall. “It's the translator. I am not very good with the Earth languages.”

I got up and moved over to the box. I ran my fingers over it, feeling the smooth ridges and grooves of complex programing. “A universal translator. I've only ever heard of them.” I grabbed my arm where the patch had gone. “That's what the upgrade was! So now I only think you're speaking English, right?” I tapped my head. “It's happening up here. And you must think I'm speaking....”

“Catur, yes. It's... strange.” He smiled youthfully, holding nothing back. “We don't have such things on Kalid.”

“Right. Forgot who I was talking to.” I rolled my eyes, thinking of how the whole planet had forsaken most modern technology to live “purely”. “What's it like being a monk? Crazy parties all the time or is there downtime for your special lady friends?”

He shook his head. “We uphold the spiritual values of our people.”

“Note to self: sarcasm does not exist on the planet Kalid. What's it mean to be in the third order?”

“It's the lowest of the orders, Unua being the highest. As you grow in your dedication to the universe, you go up in the order.”

I thought that over for a moment. Probably not for me. I needed heated water and the instant, unlimited movies on my holo.

Just then, an announcement came on. “Welcome, new and returning students alike! Upper classmen, you know the drill. Freshmen, please exit your compartments and introduce yourself to the students in your hallway. These will be the other tenants in your apartments.”

When Kavi and I shut the door behind ourselves, about twenty students were in the hall. A handful were human and an equal amount were Tundrian. There were quite a few Syrenies, most looking like literal fish out of water. Kavi was the only Animarian, and I didn't see any Parvulians, at least not in our hall.

I didn't shake any hands—you could rarely count on the commonwealth to bathe regularly. But I was practically a ray of sunshine otherwise. I even told one upperclassman human that I liked her hair, which looked like seaweed. It rolled off my tongue like a pound of Calamari.

Our two missing roommates were in the corridor, as well. They stood over by the other Tundrian's. Drusus, the tall, Kver looked at every outstretched hand as if it was a personal threat, flinching whenever someone approached him. The girl, Maeve, had light, caramel hair and dark skin that held rippling muscles. She shook hands, but her face never changed, seeming bored by the whole procession.

The only student of any real interest was a blonde upperclassman from Kalid named Kai. I wasn't sure what I liked about him. He was good looking, but utterly too respectful. There was nothing about him--apart from the gills-- that would make Igor wince, make my mother go stony, cause Dad to ground me until the second coming.

I moved on pretty quickly after coming to that conclusion.

The voice that had ordered us into the hall came back on. “We'll be taking off momentarily, so please steady yourself and hold onto any personal items.“ I couldn't see any speakers, so I resolved the sound must be coming from the walls.

The upperclassmen all had similar looks in their eyes. It ranged from smug to amused to downright malicious. They stood with their legs arm's length apart and gripping the railing on the wall . I pursued my lips as my fellow freshmen chattered on, oblivious and excited.

I walked over to where Kavi was bouncing around Drusus and Maeve, practically wetting himself over the fact that we were all going to share a room. I didn't share his enthusiasm by any means.

The ship lurched powerfully, sending us all crashing into each other. At the same moment, the anti-gravity switched on, giving us the feeling of really being in space. The younger kids drifted around aimlessly, bumping into things and people. The older ones moved their bodies in slow increments, using their surroundings to keep from bouncing out of control.

I watched all of this upside down, hanging onto the railing, and feeling the strongest sense of deja vu. The only difference was that I wasn't about to crash into a statue and get sentenced to a year at Camp Get Along.

A kid drifted towards me, and I kicked out with both my feet, sending him flailing through the hall, bouncing from wall to wall like the ball in a pinball machine. I laughed, my mood suddenly lifting.

Maybe this school wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Drusus

 

August 30:

This school was going to be worse than I could have imagined.

The human girl was kicking students, sending them crashing into each other and solid walls with bone crunching impacts. She was giggling too. It made me nauseous.

The slightest movement made me cascade into the nearest wall, my wings serving as a catalyst. My head smacked against the railing and black spots dotted all over my vision for a minute.

The anti-grav kicked in the next second, and we were all left sprawling on the floor. Some of the younger kids were a little bloodied up, a few were crying. The upperclassmen were guffawing, slapping each other on the back, and reminiscing with their friend’s about their first Academy warp jump.

I overheard one senior say, “That was a short wait. I wonder where they parked the ship this year.”

“Hopefully not in an asteroid belt! What a year. Hey, do you know what our itinerary is?”

The Syreni shook her head. “No, but I heard they’re letting each teacher pick one destination now. We could be all over the place.”

“I wish we’d go back to the lithium mines. Those sand crabs were the size of my little sister!”

“Shocking resemblance too....”

The students all piled out of the hall, joining people from other sections in a huge migration towards the exit. I stuck with Mae, but even her dull vibe couldn’t soothe me. I didn’t like all these people crowded around me, making it next to impossible to see an attack coming or counteract it. It seemed like any minute my instructor’s or Mother’s voice would ring out, telling me I was leaving my left side open again, and it was going to get me impaled one of these days.

The door out wasn’t that large. It fit about five uncomfortably through at a time. Somehow, without anyone really being conscious of it, the seniors were at the front of the line and the freshman at the back. The girl tapped her foot and crossed her arms in a way that was purely human and annoyed me.

When we got to the exit, all thoughts of the human fled my mind, leaving only a kind of shocked awe. I’d never seen any picture of the Academy campus. As far as I knew, none actually existed. So, seeing it for the first time was indescribable.

First and foremost, it was a ship. It was long and thin with multiple engines. That you could see on the way in, and now if you looked below where the shuttle was docked.

But on top of that ship was a town.

I knew the rough layout of the campus from the stories my aunt told me. It had five apartments for student living, shaped in a pentagon with the classrooms, training fields, and miscellaneous buildings in the center. The apartments looked like enormous sticks with over twenty leaves pierced on. They were supported by a large tube which served as the entrance to all the levels. Each level was separated and was like a wheel lying flat.

I knew all that, but the reality was so much more. My aunt never told me about the sculptors littering the sidewalks, thousands of them at least, all completely unique, forged by a different artist. The field that formed a dome over the top of the campus was clear and showed the farthest expansions of space, casting everything in a surreal glow.

Then there was the grass. I couldn’t stop myself from plucking a strand. The only place on Tundris that is grew was in the Imperial gardens by the Council’s rooms, and even there, it wasn’t this green.

Tiny cruiser soared through the air, piloted by AIs going out their duties. They looked like bugs buzzing about on a lazy afternoon in the gardens. I felt a sharp pang, wishing it didn’t remind me so much of my favorite place at home.

Being one of the last ones off, we had to run to catch up to the seniors, who were already almost out of sight. The four of us ran to catch up, and I shook off my stupor.

“Do you see any of the upperclassmen we shared a hallway with?” The Animarian squeaked at Mae and I.

The human pointed directly straight, through the heart of the town. “Kai went that way.”

The Animarian looked relieved, but asked, “Who’s Kai?”

She didn’t answer, rudely taking off in the direction she’d pointed with the Animarian--Kani?-- prancing happily after her. Mae shrugged and followed. I hesitated, but my need to find our room outweighed my dislike of the girl.

We  had passed the line of the apartments and were walking through the commons. Each apartment, though we were only close to number two with number three far to the right, had an area in front of it with grass and tables. A few upperclassmen were sitting out there already, lounging in their chairs and watching something pocket sized whiz around their heads. I didn’t recognize any of them from our hall, so we kept walking.

As soon as the grass stopped and the pavement began, the town erupted in full force. They had so many buildings I didn’t know how the few hundred students I’d seen could occupy them all, even given a whole year. No two buildings were the same either, one shaped like an orb and the other a strand of DNA stretching up towards the sky. They were made of varying materials too, gathered from all over the universe.

Walking past a dome shaped building made entirely of glass, the girl shouted, “Hey, they have a zero-grav Tak Raw court!”

A couple of students were in there, floating around and kicking the ball from foot to foot and person to person.

“I’ve never played, “ the Animarian said.

The next apartments (one and four) that we saw were even farther off in the distance than three, forming the two points of the pentagon.

“Maybe we’re in one of those,” I said.

“Maybe,” Mae said, yawning.

The Animarian piped up, “Astra said Kai went straight.”

“And then he could have turned to go to one or four,” I said.

The girl came over to us, putting her hand on the Animarian’s shoulder. “It’s alright, Kavi. You can’t force people to be right.”

I grit my teeth, but followed when they took off towards the top point of the shape, number five. I thought about sharing a room with those two and wanted to hit my head against something.

We reached five after a couple minutes more of uncomfortable silence. It looked exactly like the others, with the tube going straight up and the dozens of wheel shaped rooms impaled on it. Up close, I could see that the rooms were completely surrounded by window’s gone opaque.

Annoyingly, I recognized a few of the senior hanging outside in the artificial light. They waved and motioned us towards the dorm, saying that our stuff was probably already in our room.

We stood outside the entrance to the tube, just looking at each other. Even the smug, Earth girl seemed at a loss.

“There aren’t any buttons to control it,” Mae said without any real interest.

Kavi frowned. “But how will it know which room is ours? How will it start up?”

The human shrugged. “That’s probably half the fun,” she said and jumped in the tube.

It lit up almost immediately and she began to float as if weightless. Kavi was the first to join her, followed by Mae and then me.

For the second time that day, I felt the effects of no gravity as we soared upward. “How are we going to stop?” I called up.

The girl answered, “Not sure! But the first door is coming up. Think it’s us?”

Sure enough, we were fast approaching a large hole in the tube, probably the first of four.

Mae said, “Maybe. It’s the first entrance and we’re in our first year. Of course, they’re twenty-five floors....” She flapped her wings, using some of the air currents to gain ground on the human, beating her to the door. “Let’s try this.” Mae lunged against the opposite wall and used to momentum to spring herself through the door.

The human, who was almost past the door at that point, hastily copied Mae’s motion. Kavi tried to, but missed the door by a few inches and had to hang on to the edge of it to keep from floating up towards the next level.

I placed my feet against the opposite wall, ready to spring shot myself in the door, and made a face. The Animarian was looking at me, needing my help to get in the room. I pushed off and shot towards the door, reluctantly grabbing the dreg on my way in, pulling him with me. I released him like he was on fire as soon as we were on solid ground with gravity acting as it should.

On the bottom most portion of the apartment there were chairs and couches and shelves hosting a wealth of books. The floor was a glowing white that lit up the whole room the moment you stepped on it. The windows, though shaded on the outside, allowed you to see everything from the inside. We weren’t up high, so the the view of the town was very personal, like being a part of it.

The ceiling was quite high, because the living room was only the first layer of the apartment. Floating in the middle, probably suspended with fields, was a thin, metal circle with a diameter about half as big as the whole room. It was a few feet above our head, leaving me wondering if we were supposed to get up there. If so, I wasn’t sure how. There weren’t any ladders attached to it.

“Hey, guys, what do you think this do--”

Gravity flickered off again, leaving us wafting through the air in the apartment. As I got higher, I saw that there were two bunk beds on top of the circle. Our things were laying on them, and I could only assume the enormous, pink bag was the human’s. I tried to move my body towards the bottom bed on the left that had my pack on it. My wings tipped me too much, and I spiralled off to the side, bumping into a blue couch on the lower level.

Kavi was pressed against the ceiling. “What did I do?”

The girl was trying to do a flip by one of the book shelves. “I think this is how we’re supposed to get around in here, like it’s constant practice. And I didn’t want to come!”

She tore what I assumed to be a priceless painting off the wall and placed it beneath her feet. “Check it out: zero-grav surfing!”

The Animarian laughed at that and attempted to mimic her actions.

This was going to be a long year.

Astra

 

August 30:

This year is going to fly by, I thought, still catching an imaginary wave. The painting was probably compromised, but it was barely worth a few thousand credit anyway.

A holo, on of the four placed on our prospective beds, buzzed. It was right by my puny suitcase, so I figured it was mine.

I bumped into a myriad of things in my dash to grab the sphere shaped computer-- namely the moody guy with wings. He gave me the odorous of stink eyes. Oddly, he reminded me a bit of Igor: the muscles, the lack of a sense of humor. I guess I just attracted stick-in-the-mud personality types.

I levitated a few feet off the mattress, but since I was the top bunk, I didn’t have to worry about hitting my head. The message on the holo was just text, no video or image attached. I didn’t bother turning on the hologram feature, reading it on the surface screen.

Please report immediately to Professor Earhart’s office. Directions have been enclosed in this message.

I’d only been here an hour, and I was already being called to the Principal’s office. That was probably my personal best. Even better than the time I’d gotten kicked out of a camp for crashing the bus. It’d taken hours to sort out who was responsible from the literal wreckage. I couldn’t wait to tell Igor.

I studied the little map of campus that had been attached to the message. It was practically microscopic, but I could make out the main faculty building. It wasn’t far from apartment five, right by one of the libraries.

It was one of the stranger buildings on campus, shaped like a flowing spiral, large at the base, and ending with a sharp point at the top. There weren’t many lights on, and I wondered if it’d even be unlocked. When I tried the glass door; however, it  slide open immediately.

My spider heels scratched against the smooth floor as I wandered around the base level. When I looked up, I realised the building was hollow, with a large fluctuated shaft swerving through thee shape, getting thinner and thinner until it reached the top. The doors went right up to the edge of this space. I briefly pictured some stuffy professor hurrying out the door without look and falling with a great splat a few feet in front of me.

I grinned while scanning the barely lit room for a way up. Professor Earhart’s office was supposed to be on the top floor, and at this point, I was almost certain they wanted me to scale the inside of the building to reach it.

The moment I thought about physically going up, a small disk descended from the shadows. It was as flat as paper and made from a shiny, silver metal. It wasn’t large, barely big enough for a single person to stand on comfortably. And that’s exactly what I’m supposed to do with it, I thought, as it hovered a few scant inches above my feet.

When I stepped onto it, it bobbed slightly under my weight, making me wince. But I didn’t hop off, and as soon as I was fully on, it took off into the air.

“Woa!” I said, spreading my feet out as far as possible on the little circle and holding my arms out for balance.

On way way up, a couple of the doors were open, revealing a few teachers--of varying species-- bent over a desk or hanging up educational decorations. Peering through the windows of the unoccupied classroom, I saw loads of equipment. These rooms appeared to be already set up, sporting extra mass spectrometers, holo projectors, simulators, and other high tech, teaching extravagance.

I wondered then how much my last minute admission had set my parents back and smiled when an outrageous figure came to mind.

Before I reached the top level, I flew past an open classroom with the tiniest professor in the world. He was obviously Parvulian-- just over three foot high with pale peach fuzz covering his entire body, what else could he be? He was on top of a Parvulian sized desk, trying to push around textbooks that had a greater combined height than he did. I stifled a giggle as he vanished from sight.

I flew through a hole big enough for a couple people and came to the end of the spiral. The office was shaped like an irregular triangle. The opening that I’d floated through wasn’t directly in the center of it but off to the side and railed off. On one side of the hole, the one with less space, sat a couple of shelves with books, gadgets, and the largest collection of paperweights I’d ever seen.

The larger side had an even larger array of them, but also housed a desk made of some kind of obsidian rock and a few uncomfortable looking seats. Uncomfortable because they were just floating slabs of metal a little larger than the thing I flew in on.

A space that doesn’t want visitors, I thought.

When I  finally noticed the elderly woman sitting behind the desk, my eyes threatened to pop out of my sockets, and I choked a little on my spit. She was tall, from what I could see, and had shoulder length, gray hair. Her face was well wrinkled, like a dress shirt shoved in a bag for too long. She had the bushiest pair of eyebrows I’d ever encountered. Bushy enough to deserve an award of some kind, but my extensive collection of trophies had probably been taken out by my mutinous servants.

“Didn’t I crash into your face?” I asked.

Isra Earhart, hero, adventurer extraordinaire, and figure head for equal rights and cooperation amongst all the spies, smiled. It wasn’t exactly happy, but still a smile. “I wondered if you’d recognize me. From what I hear, you crash things on the regular.”

“Igor is a vicious liar; don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.” 

She leaned back in her chair, folding her fingers together. “And your rap sheet? Should I disregard that rather long document as well?”

I took a seat, and my butt squealed in protest. “I don’t have a rap sheet.”

“Not an official one, no. But that is a glaring oversight made by the law enforcement of Earth--”

“And the United Galaxy. Don’t forget about them.”

“--that will not be fostered here.” She looked at me for a moment, and I felt a tendril of unease. “Can I be frank, Miss Alkaev?”

“Give it your best shot, but can I still Astra?”

She pressed her lips together and adjusted an Earth shaped paperweight on her desk. “I assume we are both aware that your parent’s intervention, not your credentials, secured you a place in the roster.”

“Intervention,” I tested the word out on my tongue. “That’s a funny way to say money.”

“But money, Miss Alkaev, will not help you to succeed here.”

I shrugged. It didn’t really need to be said that money would help me succeed anywhere. Money, specifically from my trust fund, was going to buy me a ship and a small crew of lackies. Money was going to fuel that ship to the farthest edges of the universe, just me piloting through the wonders of Galaxy forever. Money, unlike parents or friends, had never failed me, and it wasn’t going to start now.

“Do you know what we do here, Miss Alkaev?”

The last name bit was getting on my nerves, but I answered, “Goof around on the government’s dollar? A worthy cause if I ever saw one.”

She didn’t indulge me by commenting on that. “The students in this academy are some of the finest in the world.” She eyed me. “With a few exceptions.

The staff and I expect the best from each and every student. And when they have given us that, we expect the best of someone better, of the person they aspire to be. Our curriculum is known throughout the galaxy as one of the most challenging course loads in existence. The pace is fast, with years worth of learning crammed into a couple of months. Along with straight academics, we are a battle school. Every student is enrolled in battle and flying courses, all with heavy hands on training.”

She paused, probably to gauge if I was still listening. “It’s tough, and it takes more than hard work to make it here. Every year we have dozens of drop outs, kids who just can’t cut it. You will be one of those.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve reviewed your past accolades, grades, and curriculum. You’ve led a very pampered life on your parents’ curtails. But here, there are no last names, species, or races. You are judged purely by what you have inside of you.” She smiled again. “And I think we both know, on the inside, you don’t have what it takes.”

She looked at me, waiting for me to say anything, and I searched my empty brain for a sarcastic comeback I always kept handy. Nothing came. “You think I’ll drop out?” I asked in a small voice.

“In all likelihood, but as I’m sure your guardian has explained to you, you’ll be on thin ice here.” She elaborated after a moment of silence. “While I could not deny you entrance to the school, I do have the power to put you on academic probation. Which means that if you get into any trouble, or your grades inevitably slip, you’ll be off this ship so fast it’ll give you whiplash.”

I tried to smile. “Define “any” trouble.”

Her expression didn’t change. “One toe out of line, Miss Alkaev.”

She retrieved a piece of paper from the edge of her desk and pulled out a pen with a large feather, purple on the end of it. She began scribbling furiously, and after a moment, said, “That will be all, Miss Alkaev.”

I got to my feet in shock, not used to being dismissed. I ground my teeth and walked with stiff purpose back to the silver disk that was floating by the railed off hole. I climbed up on it. I was a little less cautious than I’d been the first time.

It started to rise into the air, getting ready to clear the railing. I turned back to Mrs. Earheart. “My name’s Astra.”

She glanced up for a brief moment, surprised that I was still there. Smiling, she said, “I won’t need to learn it.”

Drusus

August 30th:

When the human left, I was almost tempted to stay, even with the Animarian there. I had the sickening feeling that I wasn’t going to get much time in the shared room without her in the coming months. I should’ve stuck around and soaked up the unhampered solitude. All it took to get me out of the building was picturing the look on my aunt’s face if I was late.

A few blocks later, I was still shuddering from the fright my imagination had given me. I passed a few fellow classmates on my way to the arena. But, even the hundreds of students, the town had the feel of privacy, something I revelled in after living in one of the most populated cities in the galaxy for all of my life.

The arena was one of the largest buildings at the Academy. It consisted of oval shaped walls that stretched half as high as the sky scraping apartments. It reminded me of a picture I’d once seen of the ancient, Roman Coliseum. It was completely revamped, made of the same indestructible materials of the arenas back on Tundris. It was wider than them, though, needing room for the housing of crafts for the students in flying classes along with battle.

Unlike most of the other teachers, Eidel Accia, my aunt, prefered to room in her office above the arena instead of in the faculty building. I’d never been, but after years of stories, I felt like I knew the path to that office like the back of my hand.

I took a tube, similar to the one in my apartment, and soared upward. I passed, flights upon flights of seating. Outsiders were allowed onto the ship on occasion to break up the air of seclusion. One of those occasions was sporting events, both student run and professionals using the field.

I stepped out of the tube and frowned. I’d be expected to enter, to win. But that wasn’t what I had in plan for my year, so I put it far from my mind for the time being.

As soon as I came to a stop in front of panel in the wall it slide up, and I stepped through the newly formed doorway. My aunt’s room was just as bare as my barracks back home. There were no personal effects, everything was spotless, and the furniture all looked uniform, probably bought in bulk by the school.

My aunt, hearing me arrive, entered the main room from the only other door in the place. It shut quickly behind her, not giving me a chance to see the contents. I guessed it was the same as what I had already seen.

“Drusus!” Eidel said in our native tongue. “You look practically of age.”

My aunt was tall and muscular like my mother, but much younger. She had dark skin, almost black and the same shade as Mae’s. Her white hair fell just below her ears and was sharp like a weapon. Her wings were the same as mine, leathery and dark, marking her a Kver. She had fewer Notatai than Mother, noticeably one that would have marked her as a veteran of the Galactic War. She had been too young to fight during it.

“Just a year away from it,” I said.

“You’re fifteen already? Great Agrona, I’m getting old.” She motioned for me to take a seat on a floor mat. She didn’t like plushy furniture, so this was her alternative.

She crossed her legs underneath herself. “How was the trip?”

I hesitated.  “A lot more...colorful than I could’ve imagined.”

“Ah, they have you rooming with a dreg from another planet, then?”

“Two.”

She laughed loudly, her whole body getting into it. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Chances are they’ll be gone within the week. The month for sure.”

Certainly, the human and the Animarian were unpleasant bunkmates, but they weren’t on the forefront of my mind just then. Getting them out of my rooms and off this ship would have to take a backseat to the Commander’s orders.

“Commander Rike contacted me on the shuttle over here.” The words shot out of me like rapid laser fire.

She grinned. “Trying to convince you to go back to the training center? Every year, Rike gets his feathers all ruffled that the Academy’s taking so many of his best recruits. Don’t worry about it, Drusus. When we give ‘em back, all shiny and competent, fresh off the chopping block, he’s ecstatic.”

“No, it wasn’t that.” I fixed the length of one of my sleeves, pulling it down to match the other. “He wanted a favor.”

She leaned back slightly. “I see. And you said?”

“I told him I’d help him.”

She nodded absently, staring at a spot right above my head. “Commander Rike in your debt.... Something like that could sky rocket a young man’s career.”

I shifted. “I know.”

Was she going to ask what the favor was? Should I tell her? On one hand, she was my aunt and a loyal Tundrian. I wanted to be able to trust her with anything. But she worked for the Academy, the place I’d been instructed to spy on. I couldn’t be sure how she’d react. If you don’t know the opponent’s next move, you’re better off not to engage him.

“Not to mention your mother’s.”

I snapped to attention. “My mother’s career? But she’s on the Tundrian council and in the UG. Why would she need any help in the military?”

My aunt pursed her lips. “I didn’t mean to say anything. Emeree wouldn’t want you to worry.”

I sat forward. “Why would I worry?”

She sighed. “Your mother’s footing in the military isn’t as...steady as it once was. True, she holds an important role politically, but since your father--may Fabius curse his soul-- left her, she’s lost some of her standing.” A pause. “Her subordinates and colleagues just don’t respect her as they once did.”

My innards shriveled into a cold, hard ball at the mention of my father. I could’ve forgiven him the abandonment, if that had been all he’d done. But I couldn’t forgive his betrayal of my mother, our family, and his species.

“That was years ago.”

“People remember things like that,” she said softly.

Eidel stood, the liquid, graceful movement of a trained warrior. She kept her wings loftily off the ground as she walked to the kitchen, an apparently effortless display of strength. “You want anything to eat?”

I followed her, far less elegant but with my own brand of power in my movements. “Yes, please. I didn’t want to eat any of the sludge they were serving on the way here.”

She chuckled. “Right. I almost forgot they serve all cuisines on the shuttle too. You’ll have to get used to it, kid. You’ll be eating all manner of Earth, Kalid, and Parvu ‘delicacies’ during your stay. Kalid’s the worst. They’re all tree huggers, no meat, not even fish, and everything’s so bland. Earthling food is so...over the top. By the end of the year you’ll be begging for just a simple plate of meat. Parvu’s dishes aren’t bad, just a little scientific for my tastes.”

I didn’t ask what she meant by scientific, or how food could be over the top. Wasn’t food just food? You ate it when your body needed it and stored it for later use when you were done. Trust the humans to mess up something as beautifully basic as that.

If I had to suffer bad food and bad company, there was no way I was going to make it.

 

Astra

 

August 30:

She doesn’t think I’m going to make it, I thought, slamming my numb foot into a nearby building. Every time I thought about Earhart, her speech, or this stupid school I kicked whatever was around me without really thinking about it. I didn’t seem to be able to control it, so I just enjoyed the temporary exuberation of hurting something before the pain crushed the feeling.  

“...thinks I can’t cut it...hasn’t got what it takes...I’m an Alkaev!” I mumbled to myself, thoughts surging forwards and then fading out just as abruptly. “...certainly not going to stay in a school...woman like that.”

“Astra!” Kavi came running up behind me. “I’ve been looking for you. We got a message that all students are supposed to report to the dining hall for start of the year announcements.”

I kept walking, not really registering the tiny, insignificant blip that was Kavi on my radar. I needed to get back to the apartment and call Igor. When he heard how that woman spoke to me....

What would he do? Find some other school to shove me off on? Somewhere else where I could coast by on my last name. I thought, that’s what I want, without very much conviction. It’s a low point in one’s life when they can’t even lie to themselves. And I’ve always prided myself on being a galactically renowned liar.

I realised Kavi was still at my heels. I spun around to face him. “I don’t think I’ll be attending the meeting, Kavi. Infact, after the encounter that I’ve just had with Miss  Earhart, I’m not sure whether I’ll be attending this school.”

His eyes widened, and he took a step back. “What did she say to you?”

I turned my nose up. “Nothing that’s any concern of yours.” 

“Oh.” He seemed to accept that at face value. For most people, it was no fun kicking someone who didn’t fight back. I didn’t have those hang ups. “But I thought you loved it here.”

I opened my mouth to tell him to shut his, but then I stopped. An hour ago, when I could still feel the weightlessness of the no gravity, I would have said hell yes. When I first exited the shuttle and saw all the magnificent buildings, each one a different challenge to be had, it’d seemed too good to be true.

And now I was going to let some shrew through me off the trail of my new adventure.

“Not in this lifetime,” I said.

“What?” Kavi asked.

I tucked my arm around him. “Don’t worry about it, Kavi. How about you show me the way to this dining hall?”

He grinned, nodding enthusiastically. “So you’re staying?”

I smiled, but mine had a hard edge. “Looks like it.”

 

_____

 

The dining hall wasn’t far from the arena--which, in my opinion, looked like gladiators were going to sprout from it at any moment. It wasn’t really a hall or a building, but an expanse of trees and plants in the shape of a triangle. Path’s crisscrossed through the area, but they were the only interruptions in a sea of pure nature. Instead of tables and chairs, students sat on the ground eating off trees (of all different colors and nationalities) that had been grown at a peculiar angle. They looked like they were bending over, bowing down, so the students could eat off their backs.

The next thing I noticed was that, unlike the sleeping arrangements and the transportation here, the seating order was completely random. No one was sitting only with their roommates or fellow tenants. It was like a cafeteria in any high school on Earth; kids choice where they wanted to sit. And a pattern formed from that behavior.

“Isn’t this supposed to be a segregated school?” I asked Kavi, a faint smile tugging at my lips.

“Sure. Don’t you see all the different species? There’s a bunch of Syreni over there, some Tundrians just past them--”

“Yes, yes.” I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just sit.”

Kavi flittered around a large bed of flowers and stepped in some mud, but I didn’t bother, trampling over them. They were easily replaceable, and, looking up at Earhart’s beaming face (a giant holo resting several feet above the heads of all the students), I wasn’t in the mood to be merciful.

“Drusus and Maeve are right over there. Are we--”

“I’d rather die.”

I plopped down at the available seat next to Kai, the junior I’d met on the shuttle. Like the rest of his kind, his scales didn’t cover his whole body, but were spread out in patches that faded into skin in places. Kai had a large spot of vibrant, blue scales on his left cheek.

He turned away from his friends--all Syreni-- and looked at me. “Astra, right?”

“For the past fifteen years.”

Kavi sat down on my other side, not saying anything to the older kids at the table. If he’d been a wild animal, he would’ve been burrowing into my side for protection against the predators that might decide to eat him. I smiled. Yes, this was exactly like high school.

“You’re a bit late.” He nodded to Earhart. “She started the announcements over twenty minutes ago.”

Right after I left her office, I thought. It would’ve been all too easy for her to tell me about the meeting, to send me in the right direction. My blood boiled, and the steamed out of my ears like in an old cartoon. She wanted me to quit, alright. Sooner rather than later.

Kai continued. “You’re lucky an AI didn’t notice. Tardiness gets you demerits.”

Or maybe she wanted the pleasure of kicking me out herself. I was used to people taking a sudden dislike to me-- jealousy, mostly. But now the roles were reversed. This woman had power where I had none. It made my stomach uneasy to think that she could kick me out even if I wanted to stay. I didn’t like the sensation.

I forced a smile. “Thanks for the heads up.”

Kai shrugged. “No problem. You’ll learn pretty fast that almost anything can get you a demerit around here.” He laughed, turning back to his fellow Syreni juniors. “Or you won’t.”

One of his friends, a girl with dull, green scales, jumped in. “Then you get to see your mommy for Christmas, and every day in between.”

“Cadets!” Earhart’s voice boomed throughout the clearing. “Now that you have finished eating, we will continue with the beginning of the year announcements. First of all, I would like to welcome you all again and convey my sincerest hope that you will all succeed in this coming year.”

I snorted and incurred a funny look from the Syreni girl that had told me about being home for Christmas. I wasn’t about to be goaded like Kavi. That just didn’t happen to Alkaevs, simple as that. I smiled back at her with all teeth.

“For the freshman, there are many rules and regulations here, so many that it could make your head spin.” She handed out a compassionate glance. “I won’t explain each one in great detail now--that would be painful for everyone. Just follow the example set by the older students, and you’ll make it through just fine.

Your class schedules will be posted in your rooms when you return. Any questions you have can be directed to myself or any faculty member before September third, which is the start of term. All students are required to participate in extracurricular activities. Most choose more than one such as dueling and art or zero-grav Tak Raw and debating. It is, however, only required that you do one. Sign up sheets will be available right back here by the end of the week  Additionally, all students are automatically enrolled in battle classes and flying courses--no exceptions. Don’t bother bringing me a note that says you’re allergic to sweat and the sun.

Lastly,” she paused, looking over every face. “We expect nothing but the best behavior here at the Interstellar Academy. Any foolishness or rule breaking will be met with harsh punishments--or possibly expulsion. Leave the monkey business at home, because you will be caught. Remember, anything you could think of trying, I invented.”

She let that sink in for a moment. “Also, as I’m sure most of you freshman have noticed, the entire campus is run by AIs. It’s been this way for years, and they seem to hold a certain allure to children. Under no circumstances are any of you tamper with an AI. They are delicate pieces of machinery and can be compromised very easily.

Enjoy the rest of your meal and have a wonderful year here at the Interstellar Academy.”

AIs spread throughout the clears, holding multiple plates of desserts. Most were from Earth and Parvu-- the only worlds that had dessert--, but there were a few dishes from the other planets as well. I saw a plate of raw meat sprinkled with some kind of red powder. It wouldn’t have looked too awful if it hadn’t been for the strange, greenish color to the meat. Still, I saw a Tundrian happily digging into it.

One of the sleek, metal AIs placed a pile of seaweed in front of me. It was varying hues of greens and purples. The artificial light reflected off the slimy residue covering the plants. I pushed the plate back, not about to put some second rate, gag inducing dish into my mouth. Eyeing the squishy looking texture, I wasn’t even sure if I could swallow it.

Kavi, on my left, was sporting a large piece of chocolate cake. I didn’t want to take it from him, really. But survival of the fittest and all that. I switched our plates. He watched me do it, not stopping me. Which was why, in the wild, he’d have been worm food, and I’d be leading the pack.

He dug into the seaweed platter enthusiastically, his dainty, green face beaming up at me. “Thanks, Astra. How did you know I liked calpi?”

Never make an enemy when you can put someone in your debt.

“Lucky guess.”

Drusus

 

August 30:

A lucky guess had led me to the dining hall when I’d exited in the opposite direction from my aunt’s office at the arena. I was especially glad I’d found it when I realised I wouldn’t have to sit with the dregs from other planets. The next few hours passed at warp speed, and, all too soon, Mae and I were busing our dishes and saying goodbye.

The students eventually wandered away from the dining hall as the artificial lights started to dim, signalling the approach of night and our curfew which was when the lights went completely out. The campus would be in complete darkness until a couple hours before classes were to start, and anyone caught out of bed during that time would receive enough demerits and detentions to last them through four years here.

Though I hadn’t seen them all day when Mae and I made to leave, the human girl and Kavi were suddenly right behind us. We didn’t exchange pleasantries. I had none to give anyway. But we walked all the way north to apartment five together.

We entered the tube the same way we had before, floating and then vaulting ourselves into the room. Both the human and Kavi misjudged their catapult, and the girl crashed into the floor, the Animarian a chest of drawers. I turned away from the scene to hide my smile of satisfaction. My aunt was right; I wouldn’t have to deal with these two for long.

 

_____

 

September 3 (Monday):

A couple days after our first day on campus, I rolled out of bed just as the first of the lights came on outside our windows. Classes were starting, and I had to fit in an early conditioning. Unlike in the training center, my days would not be dominated with battle simulations and skill development. I shuddered to think about the look my mother would give me upon returning if I’d gotten soft.

The weightlessness the tube provided lifted my loose clothes slightly off my body. Upon my boots touching the damp grass, I set off at a run towards the arena. The smell of wildlife and steel coursed in and out of my nose. I focused on that and the feel of the patterned, uneven pavement beneath my feet as I pushed myself to reach the arena even faster than the day before.

Passing a statue of some great, philosophical Parvulian, I tightened my wings, bring them closer to my body. I wouldn’t be getting a lot of flying time, my schedule too rigorous, so it was important to do maintenance on the muscle groups.

In one of the rooms above the seating in the arena, my aunt had set up an obstacle course to excercise my wings and keep my technical fighting skills at peak. A lot of the latter involved an Earth sport called boxing and a punching bag. At first, I’d scoffed at the idea of hitting an inanimate object. Then, the bag started to dart across the room and shoot laser beams at me.

I activated the offense in the special room, letting all my thoughts flow from my mind until I was empty. This was one of my favorite parts of fighting. You just get to react, no thinking or feelings. You’re acting on a set of orders that has been burned into you. When they thrust forward you parry their attack. Simple. Easy. Freeing.

I wailed against the bag, doing heavy damage, until a round of beams sent my rolling away. I dodged them with quick, quick movements, getting a little closer the the target each time. I worked myself back to my opponent and repeated the process, running through a series of drills I’d long ago memorized.

By the time the hour was up, sweat was dripping off my skin like rain, and I was heaving. My muscles protested every movement, and I revelled in that feeling. At the training center, you weren’t going to get any praise, just confirmation that you were doing it right. This, the ache, is your standing ovation. Knowing I pushed my body to new lengths and would emerge stronger was a high that kept me looking forward to the next workout.

I didn’t run back to the apartment, cooling down. A couple blocks from number five, I heard shouting. I moved closer to the buildings, using the lingering shadows to mask my approach.

A couple of human boys, older than me, surround an AI. The robot was slightly bent over, body twitching in an obvious system malfunction.

“You just can’t find good help these days,” one of the boys sneered.

The other laughed and kicked at the machine. It toppled over, crashing to the ground with a horrible crunch. A faint tendril of steam rose off its circuitry. It started chanting, “How can I help you, sirs? How can-can-can I help you, siiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrsssss....”

Its eyes, which a moment ago had been alight with elaborate coding, cut to a desolate black. They were more empty than a solar system without stars or Tundris without skies.

I shook my head, backing away from the two destructive boys. It wasn’t any of my business how humans wanted to amuse themselves, though I wondered why they didn’t beat up people instead, like Tundrians did. There was little glory to be had in picking on a lesser, one reason why we hadn’t rushed into war with the Earthlings.

The campus began to come alive as I slipped back into apartment five. The anti-grav in our room was turned on, so I knew my roommates were awake. Floating through the door, I saw the Animarian glued to the ceiling like some kind of moving, green mold. He begged the human girl to turn on the gravity as he wiggled around.

The girl was hovering above her monstrous suitcase, a serious expression on her face, like a commander about to charge into battle. Her voice, however, was light when she spoke. “Now, Kavi, if I did that you’d just end up a pancake on the floor instead. Shush. I’m trying to pick out an outfit.”

The glided past them to where I’d stored my clothes and moved out of sight to pull on the required uniform. Luckily for Mae and I, since the rooming was co-ed, and we were stuck with a couple of dregs, there was a private bathroom.

As soon as I was done, Mae and I switched spots. She didn’t take any longer than I had, keeping her grooming to the minimum, something I suspected the human would have trouble with.

“Tech studies first?” Mae asked in a monotone, waiting for the other pair to quit goofing off and join us.

“Yes. I believe there’s a new teacher this year. A human.”

“Joy. Perhaps he’ll enlighten us in the ways of frivolous, overpriced technology.”

I had been schooled in the art of patience my entire life, but I couldn’t stop my foot from tapping with annoyance. I had to remind myself that she wouldn’t be here long, and, besides that, only freshmen were required to travel with their roommates to and from class. Next year, I’d be free to accompany Mae or walk by myself.

The girl emerged from the bathroom, finally. “Alright, aliens and cretans, let’s get a move on.”

She charged on in front of us, Kavi struggling to keep up. To my surprise, she was wearing her uniform, a silver bodysuit with the Academy crest on the chest. A little more to character, she wore a pair of nauseously pink boots and a jacket of the same color. There was also something strange hanging from her ears. It sparkled in the light and had spikes on the edges.

The letters that had been sent to our holos with important class information a few days ago had said that there was no formal Technology classroom. We were going to be a traveling class, taking field trips off-ship and around the campus to take things apart and watch how certain machines worked.

We were supposed to meet outside holo lab for the first day of class, so the four of us set off towards the east side of campus. The dome on top of the ship showed the inky abyss beyond it, but also glowed slightly, giving us the light and UV requirements we’d need.

A couple of students were already standing outside the block shapes building with no windows. The metal it consisted of had swirls and intricate designs not unlike the ones buzzed into the side of the girl’s hair. The few students that had arrived before us were in our grade, as the entire class would probably be, and were a mix of Tundrians and Syrenis. I even saw a pair, one from each of these species, standing off by themselves. My nose wrinkled in distaste.

When a group of forty or so had gathered, the door was open by a young, lanky human with old fashioned glasses. That was strange in itself, as there were few cases of bad eyesight serious enough that couldn’t be fixed with laser technology. The man, dark in complexion, also wore strange clothes, a formal suit the color of dead grass.

“Come in, class.” He opened the doors wide, and the crowd of students piles in. “My name’s Professor Talib. Take a seat--anywhere, doesn’t matter, you won’t be using the holos today.”

The room was filled with desks, all very plain, nothing to look at. Each desk sat two and had at least as many holos on it. There were computers of all different sizes, shapes, and uses scattered across the classroom. There were also tables that sported other tech as well. I spotted a laser printer, an expensive piece of machinery that cut into any kind of material you brought it. One of the teacher’s back at the training center had a tiny diamond that had been cut into the shape of a flower on his desk. It was one of my favorite examples of technology.

“Unfortunately, the first day is always boring-- I remember. I graduated from the Academy not too long ago--”

The human girl was sitting next to me, and I heard her whisper, “Like last week.”

“--so I’ve sat right where you’re sitting. Apart from tech related issues, I want you all to know that you can come to me. My door’s always open.”

That sounded like a security risk.

“Now, on to the not so fun stuff: the syllabus. Since you’re in your first year, we’ll be learning primarily about what’s inside the tech that we use everyday, what mechanisms make it work. Programing, building, designing, and such won’t come till you’re all a little older and have the basics down. Which, incidentally, is the name of the class. Basic Technology Studies. Fitting, right?

In class work will consist of tests and labs. Since we only meet three times week, you’ll be expected to do a heavy course load outside of class. That include reading, finishing labs, and-- cue the groans--group projects, for which you will not be choosing your partners. Get used to that part. Professor Earhart likes to mix up the population, and every teacher here would like to keep their job-- hence the group projects.”

I found his personal and friendly approach unnerving. It wasn’t how any teacher had spoken to me before. It set my teeth on edge, so I was glad when he let us go a couple minutes early, even though he gave us copious amounts of reading to do before the next class, on Wednesday. As he released us, he’d laughed and said to savor the sensation, because we’d never experience it again while aboard.

Usually, we’d have a bit of time before our second class: Life Studies. Today was an orientation day, however, and we weren’t doing any real work, just meeting with teachers. Life Studies, a miscellaneous class that was supposed to cover everything about present, past, and future living on all of the planets and their colonies.

The teacher, an Animarian who went by Professor Adal, was waiting for us in the globe shaped building that only contained this one room. His skin was pale, green and delicate like Kavi’s. He dressed like a conservative human, slacks and a shirt, but wore a traditional Tundrian hat. It was made entirely out of fur and sloped to cover his neck and ears.

I could see that Kavi tensed upon seeing him, but followed Astra to join us in the back of the classroom. I grumbled silently under my breath. It was bad enough I had to walk to class with them, let alone share a bench. It was a good thing Mother couldn’t see me then, and I didn’t even want to think about what my little pest, Kios, would say.

Professor Adal was seated atop his desk with his legs tucked under him. “Hello, all. I am Professor Adal, and I will be teaching you all about life in someone elses shoes, as the Earthlings would say.”

He went on to explain that we’d be studying cultures, wars, everything from what people eat to how the species is most likely to die out. I tried to take notes, but I kept looking at his hat. He shouldn’t have a Tundrian hat. He was an Animarian. I grit my teeth thinking about it.

“Are you coming?” Mae asked, already packing up her books.

All around us students were piling out of the the classroom. Professor Adal was still perched on the desk, though now he was looking in our direction. I shifted uncomfortably and nodded at Mae, gathering my things.

“Did we get any homework?”

Her eyebrows rose. “To read the first couple of chapters in our text books and be ready to test over the primary religions and origin stories of each world tomorrow.”

I’d missed all that? My mind whirled with incomprehension. Perhaps, this school would prove a greater challenge than I’d expected.

Astra

 

September 3:

I walked along with Kavi in front of the gruesome two-some we boarded with.“Why would I want to know all this?” I thumbed through the electronic text. “My own origin story is bad enough.”

Kavi asked, “So, you don’t believe that--” He squinted at the text. “--God created humans and everything on Earth?”

“Nope. Even if it weren’t the least likely explanation, Christianity goes against everything I believe in. I mean, the whole doing no evil thing is no way to get ahead in life. Who ever heard of an honest business man? If the Alkaevs adhered to that crap, I’d be no better off than you. Shudder at the thought.” I paused. “When’s our next lesson?”

“Our Aerial Studies will not take place for a couple hours. Do you want to get a start on our assigned work?”

“No, but that comes in at a close second.” I grinned. “I want to go find some ships.”

We walked on for a bit. I deliberately put more distance between Mae and Drusus and us. Something told me that tweedle bored and tweedle uptight wouldn’t be keen on any plan to bend the rules.

After dropping our books off at apartment five, Kavi followed my lead in sneaking out through the tube while our counterparts were bent over their books. Drusus’s eyes flickered over in our direction as we left, but he said nothing, and his expression didn’t change from looking like he’d smelled something foul. Mae didn’t even look up.

“Are we going to ask Professor Accia if she can give us a tutorial on the crafts before class?” Kavi asked.

My feet hit the well trodden grass before his did. I headed towards the middle of campus. “Not exactly.”

We passed Kai, who was looking far too studious squinting at his work in the artificial sunlight. He leaned over to one of his Syreni friends, pointing out something in the text they were both looking at. He caught sight of me and shook his head, tapping the watch on his wrist. He had a wry smile on his face.

When I turned back toward the object of my pursuit, I actually heard Kavi’s words for the first time. “Hang on,” I said. “Did you say Professor Accia?”

“Yes, she is our flying and battle instructor.”

We passed a couple upperclassmen who sneered at my outfit. It was sad, really. That they’d let this institution beat the individuality out of them in just a few, paltry years. “Isn’t the moody one’s name Drusus Accia?”

“I believe she is his maternal aunt.”

“Goodie. I bet she’s all smiles.”

The arena’s side doors were wide open, inviting anyone to step into the practice area. I walked inside, but this wasn’t the section of the coliseum that I wanted. There were smooth steel walls with fighting dummies, battle AIs, and lasers attached to the walls. There was a small door that I knew would lead out to the sporting area, but that wasn’t where I was headed either.

It was the only path that wasn’t exciting the way we came; however, so I took it. As expected, it lead to a large expanse of artificial dirt floors, true Roman style. A story or two up the wall, the thousands of rows of seating began. With no one sitting in them, it felt like ruins, not almost new. I expected to see a lion and a couple hundred skeleton gladiators at any moment, baring down on me with the furious intent of defending their burial grounds.

Where the battle half of the giant circle ended, opposite from the large entrance doors, was a metal exit on the great wall that cut the area in half and didn’t fit completely with the decor. The wall had no seating and extended almost all the way up to the top of the ceilingless colosseum.

“If I was hiding an airfleet, that’s where I’d put it,” I told Kavi. “I don’t think they’re hiding it,” he said. “That was probably just the best place for it structurally.”

“No, it was the best defensible position. Don’t forget this place was put into effect by the United Galaxy twenty years ago, right at the end of the Galactic War. Architecture had nothing to do with it.”

The dirt got all over my lovely, magenta boots, but I barely noticed. I practically ran to the door, Kavi at my heels the whole way. My heart was pounding at my rib cage like a teenager at their snooze button. They were in there. Dozens of them. Maybe more. Definitely more than the entire Alkaev armada combined. Not that I’d ever seen it.

I ran my fingers over the surface of the metal.

“Is it locked, Astra?” Kavi asked, breathless.

The doors slid open in the moment to reveal a large hangar with nondescript wall and floors. If it hadn’t been for the rows upon rows of beautiful, aerodynamic crafts, someone might have thought it a storage space. But they were there. There were so many. I felt my attention span being pulled in the direction of each ship and then snapping painfully back when the stretch of concentrating on all that was too much.

I walked up to the one closest to me. It was a white Cruiser, but of a different sophistication than the one I’d crashed, able to drive off roads. Looking closer, I realised the gorgeous machine wasn’t able to go off-world, however.

I stepped to the next one, looking for the tell tale star emblem that meant it could fly through free-space. Nothing. The next one sported nothing as well. I ran around the hanger, checking each and every ship. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

“None of these are off-worlders. Where are the off-worlders?”

“Not here, human.” I spun around to find the source of the voice. “Underclassmen aren’t allowed to even set foot in one until their junior year, so we keep them in a different hangar,” a woman with muscles and wings just like Drusus’s said.

“Students have to wait two years before they get behind anything worth its salt? What kind of school is this?”

She grinned, all teeth. “One that doesn’t like its kids crashing billion dollar machines.” Professor Accia pitted me with a piercing stare. “Or escaping with them into free-space.”

I gasped. “Do people actually do that? The galaxy we live in....”

She turned away, exiting through the doors we’d entered in. “Come along, human. The rest of the class is waiting outside--where they’re supposed to be.”

I dragged Kavi, who was standing, shocked, staring at the spot where Professor Accia had been, along. He trailed after me without a word, his mouth still slightly agape. We’d have to work on that if he was going to have any potential as a lackie.

The class was the same size as the first two--about forty. A mix of races, species, genders, and backgrounds, the only thing we had in common was our age. That, and the fact that no one was completely at ease with their companions from different worlds. This was especially true for the Tundrians, who wore their distaste like a heavy trenchcoat--obvious and for everyone to see.

When she was sure she had our attention, she said,“My name is Professor Accia, and I am not your friend.” She locked eyes with everyone of us, and she held mine just a fraction longer than the others. “I’m not here to be. I will expect new heights of achievement from all of you. Fail to provide me with the best I could possibly expect, and you will be left behind. Do I make myself clear?”

There was a soft chorus of yeses. Most of the students--even the Tundrians--were afraid to make eye contact. They said their confirmations to their shoes or the ground beneath them. Neither Mae nor Drusus looked down, I noted. But Mae hadn’t been looking at Accia to begin with, staring at the equipment around us with expressionless features.

Drusus the Cheerful, however, was looking at me. I gave him a finger wave which caused his frown to deepen. Though the curriculum was turning out to be a little harder than what I’d anticipated--but still nothing I couldn’t handle, no matter what Earhart said-- I was happy to have such friendly roommates. It’d make the moment that much sweeter when I came out on top, and they scraped the bottom.

“Alright, then. Let’s stop messing around.” Accia walked over to a craft I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed when I came back into the arena. It was larger than the majority of the ships in the hangar, able to hold half a hundred people easily. It wasn’t a passenger stylecraft, meaning it had sleek lines not made for comfort and no seating. The straps to keep people secure were on the walls, where you would stand until takeoff or landing was finished.

My heart sunk to the ground-- where most the students were still staring. I saw no star emblem. It wasn’t off-world capable.

“Everyone who can stomach it, get in,” Professor Accia barked.

Off-world capable or no, I was first onto that craft. It required a lot of shoving, some indiscriminate tripping, and insulting someone’s mother to get there, but Alkaevs took what they wanted. No excuses. No exceptions.

We lined up against the walls. Mechanical tendrils slid out of the surface, coiling around our arms, legs, and midriffs, securing us for takeoff. The metal was cold was cool against my feverous skin, and I could feel my blood pumping against the restraints.

Kavi was greener than usual, and, standing next to him, I had reason to fear for the purity of my boots. Across from us, Mae was--you called it-- bored. Drusus next to her was examining the cabin with just about as much excitement as Mae. I couldn’t believe it. How could someone not be loving every second of this?

The engine roared to life, and we shot into the air, straight up. Gaining altitude, my ears began to pop like wild, and the ship vibrated with a force that shook my body in continuous spasms. I heard someone get sick, and a few more started crying. I laughed, guffawing into the cacophony of the takeoff.

All too soon, the ascent slowed and then came to a stop, hundreds of feet above the ground. The students caught their breath, and the tendrils released us, slithering back into the wall until it was time for the descent.

“That...that was awful,” Kavi said.

I shook my head. “That must not have come through the translator right, because that was amazing.”

Professor Accia swung around in her seat in the cockpit, beckoning us all forward. “Get in here, Greenies.”

We all filed into a room at the nose of the ship that had more buttons and knobs than I’d ever seen in my life. The cover the walls by the window expanse, and below that, there were even more on the giant dashboard the wrapped around the whole outer half of the cockpit.

“This is what’ll be learning on,” she said, stretching her arms out to encompass the whole show. “It’s exclusively a training ship, nothing automated. You can’t always trust Artificial Intelligence to tell you what’s acceleration and what’s your own behind. In my book, you can’t fly if you can’t do it the old fashioned way.” She slapped a stabilizer, causing the craft the stop the rocking it’d been doing up until that point. “And, unfortunately for you, my book is the only one that matters.”

After watching us for a moment, she returned to her chair and motioned for someone to take her place by the controls. “So, none of you Greenies think you’ve got the hang of it yet? Come on, now, there’s always one.”

I blinked. Surely, she wasn’t serious. Was she really going to let one of us dive in, skipping all the boring instruction and going right to the fun part. I could feel the machine surging underneath me, feel the wind flying past us, the freedom, the exhilaration.

I stepped forwards. “I’ll give it a whack.”

She leaned back. “Figured. Alright, go right ahead. Remember, if you crash it, you bought it. Well, not you, of course. You’ll be a pile of mush and pulverized bones, but your parents will have to cough up the change.”

I strode up the the control, letting my fingers slide weightlessly over them. I could feel the power in those tiny button. It got the blood pumping.

In more ways than one, I thought, frowning. The controls weren’t anything like the Cruiser, and there was no AI voice screaming instructions at me. Still, I’d piloted that thing on auto...for a time. How hard could it be to do it again?

I hit the stabilizer that I’d seen Professor Accia hit, turning off the “emergency brake”. The ships shuddered, swaying again like a pendulum with no strings attached. I could emphasize, feeling a bit like a puppet with the strings cut. I shook that thought off as quickly as it had appeared.

I could do this. I would do this. I was an Alkaev. I could do anything. But this--this I was born to do. I just knew it.

I tried the handles, the universal control for turning. They were stuck. I pulled on them with all my might, but they remained as immobile as a block of cement.

“This, Greenies, is a prime example of biting off more than you can chew,” Professor Accia said. When I didn’t back off, she sighed. “Try getting it moving, first, human.”

I slammed thee acceleration lever to its farthest position, and we shot off like a bat out of hell. My grip on the handles was the only thing that kept me from flying backwards out of the cockpit. The shrieking and thuds behind me said that my classmates hadn’t been as lucky.

While the ship was doing its best impression of a bucking bronko--a pretty good one, too-- I risked a look back at Professor Accia. My eyes widened as I realised with a terrible knot in my throat that she wasn't there. I could hear her, though, bellowing from beneath a pile of students.

I turned back and tried to straighten out the ship, pulling on the handlebars like they were still locked. They weren’t. I overcorrected, sending the craft swirling through the air and narrowly avoiding one of the only buildings for miles.

The craft kept turning over and over again. I felt my sweating fingers losing ground on the bars. My head was spinning along with the ship, and I was going to be sick.

“Drusus, take the controls!” Accia shouted, unable to detangle herself.

Calloused hands pushed me out of the way, pushing buttons in the quick fire series and holding the handlebars steady. Drusus looked calm and assured, like he was acting through a scenario he’d mastered a thousand repetitions ago. Maybe he was.

The ship leveled out, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I leaned against the nearest wall, not sure my legs would hold me up for much longer. My mind was running a thousand miles an hour though the craft no longer was.

Professor Accia stormed up the hallway into the cockpit. “That was the worst five seconds of flying I’ve ever witnesses, Greenie.”

It had been.

She continued, “I should march up to Earhart’s office and have her kick you off this ship.”

I’d failed. The thought was shocking one. I’d never expected to fail at anything, let alone flying. I was supposed to be a pilot, and I could even keep a ship from tail spinning for a few seconds.

“But why bother? If you’re as good at academics as you are flying, you’ll be gone within the week.” She turned to the class and motioned to Drusus. “Take note, class. This is the example of what you must become to pass my class: a competent pilot.”

I looked over at Drusus with the rest of them, and he was staring right back at me. His nose was turned up, and he had the tiniest curves to his mouth that grew when he noticed me looking.

In that moment, I started to hate him.

Drusus

 

September 3:

She hated me then. I could tell. But it only made me grin wider. Fitting, that we should both feel the same thing: loathing.

Eidel landed the ship with an easy grace, and the class piled out, dismissed. I watched the human storm away, thinking back to her failure on the ship. Though it pained me to admit it, I hadn’t been that much better my first time. The difference, however, was that I hadn’t attempted to fly a whole craft manually and by myself.

Still, this would make her quit, I was sure of it. I knew willpower, and the human possessed none. She would quit or be kicked out, and then I wouldn’t have to share my room with vermin. Except for the Animarian, of course. But he wasn’t made of stern stuff either. I gave him an expiration date just slightly longer than the human’s.

We all followed the girl back to our apartment and even the Animarian was quiet. It was blissful and a preview of what was to come. Once inside Mae and I went straight for our bunks, opening the books we had left strewn there. The homework load was intense already, so there was no time to gloat over my victory.

I glanced at the human and the Animarian. Kavi appeared to be trying to help the girl study and finish her work. The human wasn’t interested, and she continued staring at a spot on the floor. Then, running her finger over it. Staring again.

How pointless.

“What’s this?” Mae asked, pulling me away from my observations.

I turned back towards her and almost choked when I saw her holding a small, rectangular box with old, rusty latches on the sides. It was once green, but had been handled so much that the material looked more like a mossy grey now.

I snatched it from her hands, cradling it against my chest without even meaning to. “It’s mine.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Obviously.”

She was going to ask again. I could see it in her eyes, the rare flash of curiosity. I couldn’t avoid the question twice. It would just interest her further.

I stood. “I’m going to take a walk.” 

I tucked it into my breast pocket, where it was safe. I could feel it there, a steady presence against my heart. I never felt quite comfortable with it anywhere else. Lying around, anyone could pick it up, could open it and see what was inside. That would be a disaster.

I sped away from the apartment, seeking out a secluded place in the shadow of two outlying buildings. I’d seen it while searching for the arena, and it struck me as the perfect spot to... practice, to be myself where no one could see me.

Which was the only place I could be myself.

Pulling out the box, I turned it over, running my fingers over the surface like I’d done a million times before. I clicked open the lid, revealing a Piccolo. It was a small, flute like instrument, barely bigger than my hand. The thing was ancient, the silver worn mostly away from the brass, only appearing in a few isolated spots.

It’d been in my possession since I was a child, having found it left behind in one of the visiting diplomat’s rooms’. It didn’t know much about it other than its name, which had been in the case, and how to play, a skill I’d honed over the years through use of holos. I also knew it had once been a popular instrument galaxy wide, before the war, and now was mostly forgotten.

Forgotten by everyone but me.

I place the tiny mouthpiece against my lips, blowing a tuning note into the straw sized wonder. It blew out a middle range sound, bright and clear. I listened to it echo and ring out into the night, but felt no fear. No one was around to hear.

I realised I didn’t have my sheet music and shrugged it off. I wasn’t often able to acquire more, so most of what I had I could play by memory. I selected one of my favorite pieces from my mental vault, a song with opposing forces in it.

It started off soft with long notes all connected. The melody was present here, in a delicate, unobtrusive way. Vibrato made each notes special, shaping and growing it before moving on to give the next one its chance. It was like each note was its one piece, with its own theme, dynamics, and tension.

The second half brandished a new, faster speed. The notes were bouncy, spaced apart as if on their own island. I tapped my foot along with the beat. The music lifted my spirits, making me feel as light as the notes.

The buzzing of my holo snapped that lightness in half. It wasn’t my school issued one, so I knew who was calling. Simple elimination: Mother would have no need, there was no reason for the Commander to check in so soon, and Kios would rather eat his own foot than call me.

It was him. And probably her. Along with their two whelps. I steeled myself, schooling my expression into emptiness.

I pulled out the holo and turned on the projection. My father’s face, aged with too many laugh lines and not enough Notatai, appeared, followed by my stepmother. She was cheerful and distastefully human, just like her round son, my step brother who wore a perpetual smile and was a few years younger than me.

Thankfully, Felix didn’t join them on the screen. I didn’t know if I could stare at his happy face without betraying my hatred. My half sister--I would never call her this out loud, of course-- didn’t appear in the projection either. She was far too energetic and talked a million miles an hour. It was always a relief not to see her. Crina insisted on telling me how old she was, to the day, every time I talked to her. It was a constant reminder of how long it had been since my father had left.

My father spoke first. “Drusus! You look so grown up.”

It was the same sentiment that had appeared in my aunt’s words, but I bristled this time. “I suppose that’s what will happen in five years.”

He winced, but went on as if he hadn’t heard that. “And it’s only been a few months since we talked. Linda and I just wanted to check in and see how your first day at the Academy.”

My stepmother hopped into the conversation at that point. “Did you make any friends, Dru?”

I ground my teeth. “No.”

“Oh.” Linda blanched for a moment. “Not to worry, honey. I’m sure they’ll warm right up to you. And if not, well, don’t worry about it. Next year you’ll have Felix to keep you company.”

I had been nodding along absently to her well-wishing which was the best I could do under the circumstances. But that part about Felix stopped me cold.

“What was that?”

My father said, “We’re sending Felix to the Academy next year. Surely we told you.... No?” His picture shifted uncomfortably. “Well, it’s not good to keep the boy locked up here on this tiny Earth Colony. He needs to explore, spread his wings.”

Realising what he had said, his face colored. “Metaphorically, of course.”

“Felix...is coming...here,” I said stupidly.

Linda’s head bobbed enthusiastically. “Isn’t that great? You two have never gotten to spend much time together, what with you living so far away from us. This way you can really feel like brothers.”

“Great.”

My father seemed to catch on that I thought it was less than great. “Well, we don’t want to keep you.”

“Oh, but, honey, I haven’t heard about his first day yet! I’m sure Felix will--”

“I’m sure Drusus has homework and would rather spend time with his friends,” my father said softly.

After saying goodbye but before my stepmother could remind him that I didn’t have any friends, he disconnected the call. I sat there in the dark silence for a moment, hardly believing my own ears. That oaf would be invading my sanctuary before I knew it, and I’d only just gotten here.

I put my head in my hands, groaning at my misfortune. Was there no place in the galaxy I could go and be alone? Just me and my music. That was all I wanted.

Astra

 

September 4:

“A few more minutes of sleep,” I grumbled. “That’s all I want.”

Kavi and I walked a few paces in front of the chuckles heads, but didn’t lose them in the crowd on other freshman heading to their first class. Much to my chagrin, Kavi was turning out to be a huge stickler for the rules of the ship and of common decency.

Which was just no fun at all.

“But you don’t want to be late to Life Studies--”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s like you haven’t been listening. So I’ll say it slowly.... All. I. Want. Is. Sleep.”

He patted me on the shoulder, looking so cheery I thought I’d have to stab him. “You’ll thank me for this once your body adjusts.”

In one ear and out the other.

Once inside the holo lab, I pushed a couple of dilly-dalliers out of the way of my seat. The cool metal felt nice against my skin, so I layed my head down, hoping to catch a few more minutes before the class started.

Professor Adal, with his Animarian green skin, walked right past my desk on his way into the classroom. He slapped it with a loud thud, causing me to almost leap out of my seat. “There will be no napping in my class, Miss Alkaev.”

He was wearing a strange pair of pink pant that were as undoubtedly human as they were female. Again, he said his fury, Tundrian hat placed loftily on top of his head. He sat on the desk like it was a cushion on the floor: legs crossed under him.

“Well, who wants to hand in their homework first? No volunteers? Hmmm.” He tapped his finger against his chin. “Miss Alkaev, you must have been so tired from staying up all night to do the assignment properly. Perhaps, you would like to turn in your masterpiece first?”

“My masterpiece is yet unfinished I’m afraid,” I said from the back of the class.

“Unfinished.” He seemed to test the word in his mouth.

The classes’ eyes flickered from Professor Abal to me and back again. I was glad I could facilitated this important moment in every teacher/student relationship: figuring out how far you could push them before they pushed back.

“Very well. The rest of you will put your work on my desk.” They all went running to do as he bid. “And, Miss Alkaev?” The students froze, waiting for the axe to come down on my head. “See me after class.”

My bravada drained like bathwater. Nobody ever got called to stay after class for a well done or a gold star on their homework--especially since I didn’t do mine. But surely they wouldn’t kick me out for that? It was only the second day, after all. There had to be some kind of adjusting period.

I spent the next hour picking at my nails--something I never did because it was like chipping away art-- and tapping my foot. I tried to console myself with thoughts of what I’d say to him. I was actually considering the truth: that I’d stayed up late, but it was too much work for one night. I couldn’t be expected to read half a book and fill out an entire packet as thick as my hand, could I?

I pictured Earhart’s smug face as she waved from the docks, watching me drive off with Igor. She didn’t even last the week! Then Professor Accia was there, towering over Earhart but laughing just as jollily. That’s where the smart money was. Now you owe me fifty credits.

The class filled out after being assigned another assignment. This one was easily ten times as large, but due when we had class next, which wasn’t for a few days. I wrote it down in my holo agenda, taking the time to draw little frowny faces next to it.

“You may approach, Miss Alkaev.”

I walked to the front of the room, feeling very much like a man on the way to the gallows. There was no uncomfortable seat like in Professor Earhart’s room, so I stood. Professor Adal stared down at me from his perch on the desk, his face giving nothing away.

“You are from Earth, are you not?”

“Uh--yeah. Yes.”

He nodded, shuffling around a pile of papers from a different class. “Good. We get so many applicants from the Colonies and none from the actual home planet. Your views on some of my curriculum could be very interesting and valuable for future Earth studies.”

“Sure,” I said, not really knowing if agreeing was what he wanted or not.

He didn’t smile, but his face soften a little when he said, “So it’d be a shame if you were forced to leave before I could learn anything.”

I blinked. One teacher in this place actually wanted me to stay.

He pulled out his holo and sent me another packet. “This, along with the new assignment, will be due on Friday. I trust you’ll have it done this time.”

I nodded, leaving the classroom before he could change his mind about punishing me, and rushed to my next class: battle. I ran all the way there, feeling a little inspired despite myself, but I was still late.

Luckily, Professor Adal had provided me with a friendly face and an excused slip to get me out of any demerits for being tardy to my next class. So, when Professor Accia stomped over to me, steam shooting from her nostrils, I waved the small piece of paper like a white flag of surrender, thinking, don’t shoot, don’t shoot!  

Her lips curled, obviously still peeved that I was here after almost crashing her ship. I didn’t point out that it had been her idea not to turn me in, believing it’d be more entertaining to watch me drown. I could be very sensible when I wanted something.

“Now that we’ve been graced by Miss Alkaev’s presence,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

She paced back to the front of the class and then started pairing students off. Professor Accia stopped in front of a pair of burly, Tundrian fraternal twins. “Borko, you go with the scrawny Animarian. Borna, with Gyatso.” She named off one of the Syreni boys.

Those two pairs separated from the group, giving themselves enough space for God knows what. Kavi looked back at me nervously while Borko, his partner, cracked his knuckles and put on the dull grin of someone who had taken one too many blows to the skull. Next to them, Borna and Gyatso squared off, hanging out in a loose, vaguely threaten manner.

This did not bode well for me.

I watched people walk off in twos after their names had been called. My head snapped to watch each one, and, by the time it was over, I was pretty sure I had whiplash. While I massaged my neck, I was deliberately not noticing who was left besides me.

Professor Accia stood in front of us, smiling so widely it hurt to look. “Well, Greenie? Waiting for a royal invitation?”

“How else will I know if it’s black tie optional?”

She flexed her wings, and I couldn’t help but gulp when the muscle rippled through the movement. She pushed me towards my opponent. “What you have on works just fine for a spot of ass kicking.”

Professor Accia made her way back to the front of the class. “Now, how many of you are familiar with the concept of sparring?” A lot of hands went up. Mine wasn’t one of them. “That’s good. Because this class will serve as a workshop more than anything. The partners I’ve just paired you with will be your sparing opponents for the next couple of weeks.

We’ll get into some technique later in the period. For now, let’s just see what you’ve got.” She waved her hand, and partners started approaching each other, throwing blows and trading blocks.

I turned back to my partner, expecting him to be already on me or to find a fist in my throat. He was still standing a few feet away, where I’d left him, staring down his nose at me. His mouth was pressed down into a hard line, but I’d bet he was just prolonging the moment--one he’d probably been dreaming of since he first laid eyes on me.

“Ever been in a fight?” he asked.

“I prefer to use my words or Daddy’s money.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He still didn’t come at me, and I was starting to get paranoid. The waiting had to be the worst part. I put my fists up like I’d seen one of my friends do in wrestling. I bounced around a little too for effect.

When he just shook his head, I said, “What’s the matter? Scared I’m gonna knock your teeth out?”

“If you’re attempting to shield yourself, you should probably put your hands in front of your face, not your chest.”

I raised my hands. “Obviously, I was testing you.... And you passed. Your parents must be very proud.”

“Your parents must be very stupid, to send you out into the world without any way to defend yourself.” He looked pretty pissed off. Like he wanted to punch me--which was the whole point of this exercise. He cleared up his hesitation in his next few words. “There is no honor in beating an unmatched opponent.”

And who said chivalry was dead? Still, I didn’t want to put myself even farther into the void with Professor Accia by not fighting. Enemies were easy enough for me to make; I didn’t need to go out of my way.

“Oh, just punch me already,” I said, gritting my teeth. “You know you want to.”

He came forward, and I didn’t flinch. I told myself I wouldn’t flinch-- no matter what. He brought up his huge fists, and I didn’t flinch. There was also no flinching as he started to circle me like all the other pairs were doing. I even joined him in the movement.

He next move was lightning quick, putting him right in front of me. But the blow was slow--comparatively, and I easily dived out of the way.

“Hit me.”

And he did. It was just as fast as his approach and felt like getting hit by a sonic train going full speed. I collapsed onto the ground, clutching my bruise of a stomach and whacking the back of my head as I rolled back with the force. I gasped, which was a mistake, because I felt it like a second blow.

I stared up at him---all four of him. “Enjoy that?”

“Yes.” The room was still spinning. “Get up.”

I lurched to my feet, swaying slightly. “You know, let’s go back to that whole honor thing, Dru. I liked that. It was endearing.”

“Don’t call me Dru,” he said. “Hands up.”

“Now, Dru--” He swung at me, but I was expecting it--it was a common reaction to most of my jokes. I dove to the ground, avoiding a fist to the eye by narrow margins. I tried crawling away through the chaos of everyone pushing and shoving, but Dru grabbed my ankle and dragged me back through the dirt on the colosseum floor.

He crouched down next to me. “Is this the best the Earth has to offer?”

Back on my feet somehow, I said, “Actually, I’m the best galactically, not just planet wide. Dru.”

I punched him in the arm with all my might. He didn’t even blink, and Professor Accia, who was suddenly right there, laughed. “Come on, Greenie, a real hit. I’ll even have Drusus stand still for you.”

I hit him again. And again. He just stood there, tensing right before each hit. I could tell it pained him a lot more to just stand still while being attacked--even poorly--than any blow I could hope to land.

By the time Professor Accia called everyone to a halt, I was panting and she was shaking her head. “Pathetic, Greenie. You’re cannon fodder at best.” She patted Dru on the back, and they shared a moment of mutual, helpless disgust.

I glared at him. My blood ran hot, and I wanted to throttle him. It surprised me, that feeling. I never got violent. There was no need. I got what I wanted, and people got out of the way. If they were slow doing it, I didn’t need fists to get them to move. My tongue could do the job just fine.

He turned back to me. “I won’t hold back next time.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said through me teeth.

I left without waiting for him, Mae, or Kavi--who was limping. Damn the rules. What I wanted was a hot bath and a long sulk. I didn’t need company for either of those things, so I walked back to the apartment alone.

Drusus

 

September 4:

I walked back to my rooms alone after washing up in the arena’s showers. Everyone else had gone ahead, most, like me, having hours before their next class. That meant I had the room to myself, a rare blessing I intended to appreciate.

The water felt wonderful running over my dirty skin. Almost as good as hitting the girl. But that in itself made me frown. I took satisfaction from hard won battles, but that was not what the sparring match had been. Like I had told the human, there was no honor from beating up a puny girl who hadn’t even known how to block her face.

But I’d enjoyed it, none-the-less.

I dried off, still unhappy with myself.  I wasn’t here to make enemies or hate anyone. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted like that. Especially by a human. It could put my mission from the Commander in jeopardy, as well as my performance at the Academy. Both outcomes would unacceptable. A failure.

My mother didn’t raise a failure.

I took my holo out of my pack, scrolling through it to find a mapping application. I double checked I wasn’t using the school’s before starting a new map. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t being monitored. I didn’t want to get caught a map of the “blind spot” of the galaxy, that was for sure.

I walked casually around a few buildings on campus, noting the size and dimensions carefully into my data. It was mind blowingly slow work as I had to close out of the application and open up a text book every time someone turned the corner. By the time my third class was about to start, I had only mapped one building: the painfully small holo lab where I had Tech Studies.

I ended up running to Chemistry, my feet pounding out my frustration against the uneven cobblestones on the West side of campus. Seeing Mae, I doubled my speed to catch up to her, feeling my heart in my chest. There could be teachers anywhere, and I wasn’t with my bunkmates.

The science building was shaped like a strand of DNA, making finding any room inside of it as complicated as cloning said DNA. The four of us wandered around with the rest of the class for a good fifteen minutes before coming upon a room that smelled like burnt hair.

My first thought when I walked in it was: this is a tiny room.

It wasn’t, in fact, small in anyway, but had had so many objects shoved into it that the room looked like it was defying a couple of the laws of physics. Each lab table was covered with test tubes, stray bottles of bubbling liquids, and strange smoking rocks emitting a faint glow. There were mass spectrometers, centrifuges, scales capable of weighing anything from an atom to a dwarf planet. It was like some had barfed science all over the place.

The second thing I noticed was a large, hand made poster on the wall. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. I shifted uncomfortably.

I sat at a lab table next to Mae and across from the bruised human and her Animarian pet. She didn’t look at me, too busy eying all the machinery in the room. Probably comparing to the state of the art equipment her Daddy bought her back on Earth.

I redirected my focus to something else, almost coming up empty until I noticed to miniature desk up front. It looked like it was built for a dwarf, having all the same features as any other Professor’s desk, just a little more than half the size.

I leaned towards Mae. “Who teaches this class?”

She didn’t answer, instead nodding towards the door where a small alien had just walked in. He was about three feet high with pale, almost see through, white skin. His body was cover in a downy sort of peach fuzz. His nose and mouth were slightly raised, almost like he had a snout. He didn’t have a shirt and wore only a pair of loose fitting, light pants made of a sheet like material and school issued boots.

“I am Professor Iqbal,” he said, sitting behind his tiny desk. “And I will be your instructor in all things science and math related.”

He grabbed a bowl from his desk and tipped it partially, so we could all see the slips of paper inside. “This contains numbers, two of each. Everyone will draw one to find out who their lab partner is.”

A series of groans echoed through the classroom from the kids who had already been bruised once today at the hand of a partner they hadn’t picked.

Professor Iqbal continued, “As most of you have probably guessed, I am Parvulian. This means that I will expect just as much from all of you as I would a Parvulian student attending a rigorous--as they all are--school on my planet. Unlike most of your science teachers up to this point, I don’t care if you can recite the periodic table, though we will test on that. Regurgitation shows me nothing, means you’ve learned nothing.

My planet has a reputation of great intelligence and intervention, making most of the technological and scientific advancements of our age. Do you think we got there by cramming information into our skulls and forgetting it the next day? No. And neither will you. Information is useless without context, without knowledge.

In this class, you will learn by doing. And what you will learn will be entirely up to you.”

He motioned us all up to his desk. “Come on everyone, grab a slip--no trading!” He placed the bowl on it instead of any of the regular sized furniture, so we had to bend for it.

Students discreetly switched slips to have the same number as their friends. I grinned at Mae when I got a three B and her a three A. She gave me her happiest expression, which, granted, didn’t look much different from her bored or angry expression.

Professor Iqbal turned on his holo and project for a class list of numbers. It was a least forty pairs long, with two numbers to each group. “And now, for your first lesson: I lied to you earlier. Never take something at face value in science. Who has the same number as you has nothing to do with who you’ll be partnered with.” He ran his finger down the list. “Move to sit with your partner as according to this listing. The spot you are on the list determines which side and which table you sit at.”

It took a little bit of figuring out as the logic was all backwards. I was almost certain that was deliberate and didn’t like it one bit. I ended up having Mae direct me to my seat where, unfortunately, my partner was already waiting for me. I dropped my pack on the table, and the sound it made was my  protest against cruel and unusual punishment.

“Well, if it isn’t my old pal Dru,” the girl said.

I grit my teeth, almost hearing my stepmom’s voice when she said that awful shortened version of my name. “How’s the stomach?”

He lip curled, and her eyes narrowed.“Just peachy. There’s this lovely imprint of your first, so now, I can always remember our time together.”

Borna and Borko were sitting across the lab bench from us. This was little comfort for even though they were Tundrians, I didn’t really like either of them. Borko was too dense to be anything but a foot soldier, and his sister had always struck me as competition. I could respect her, but she wasn’t my friend.

Plus, they were both Scala, not Kver, with the colorful feathers to prove it.

Professor Iqbal called attention to the class, peering up at us with a slight curve to his snout. “Now that we’re all settled, I want to discuss our first project.”

He scurried over to a large cabinet with a ladder in front of it. He weaved around obstacles like a mouse in a maze, making it look effortless to maneuver around the room. For someone with wings, I figured it’d be a lot like squeezing through an air vent: a tight fit with very little headway made.

He pulled out a tray with a couple dozen glass bottles resting precariously on it. He held it above his head like a waiter, bobbing and weaving around the clutter to the lab tables and giving each pair a bottle.

I turned mine over with careful consideration. It was a typical glass bottle with a rubber stopper, one you could find anywhere on any of the four worlds and their colonies. It was filled with nothing, so I looked around the room for a large vat of some chemical, something he’d be using to fill the bottle. I came up empty.

Astra took the bottle from my hand, swirling it’s nonexistent contents. “Maybe it’s some kind of invisible gas.” She brought it closer to her face. “Possibly deadly. Maybe we’re going to learn how to kill a large group of people without leaving a trace.”

I snatched it back from her, not wanting her to leak her humanness all over something I’d have to touch.

“Before any of you strain yourself,” Professor Iqbal said. “There’s nothing in the bottle. But I want there to be by the time Friday rolls around.” He settled back behind his desk. “I want you to find me something--and it does exist on this ship-- and put a piece of it in that bottle. Here’s your clue: What runs and has no feet, roars but has no mouth? Talk about it with your partner--as this is a group project--for the rest of class.”

I turned the vial over in my hands a couple times, thinking.

“What do you think it means?” the girl asked.

“It sounds like some kind of creature,” I said reluctantly. I didn’t like group projects under normal circumstances.

She snorted. “I don’t think Professor Iqbal is telling us to cut a piece off an animal. It’s got to be a inanimate object.”

I clenched my fists, remembering how good it had felt to hit her. “What kind of inanimate object runs and roars?”

“A machine runs.”

I blinked and almost said that it didn’t, picturing a holo sprouting feet and sprinting towards me. I realized just before I sounded like an idiot that she was saying it ran as is it was on and working. Tundrians took things a little more literal, one of the reasons we weren’t great producers or consumers of art.

“Then...what about an AI? Couldn’t they roar?”

“But they have legs and mouths,” she said.

“Oh.” This was going to be harder than I thought.

She sat back, smiling. The human was obviously enjoying this, probably because I was miserable. “Maybe you should spend a little less time beating up girls and a little more time with your head in a book.”

Definitely because I was miserable.

Astra

 

September 6:

“I’m miserable!” I yelled at Kavi a few days later while the librarian tried to shush me. “Why did I even want to stay and this stupid school?”

Kavi didn’t look up the text book on his holo screen, but said exactly what I’d told him to when this point arose. “You want to be a pilot and because Professor Earhart is an wonderful woman.”

I rubbed my temples. “No no, Kavi, awful, not wonderful. Awful.”

He looked up. “Sorry. I get those two confused. Why does it matter again?”

“I’m beginning to think that Mae hit you a little too hard during today’s sparring session. Because I’m being spiteful. In both instances actually. My parents would rather see me dead than as a lowly captain.”  

He tapped out of his text and opened up the packet that was due in Life Studies tomorrow. “Don’t worry, Mae didn’t beat me nearly as thoroughly as Dru did you,” he said, having adopted my nickname for Drusus--though never to his face.

“Thanks,” I said levelly.

Speak of the devil, I thought, as Dru and Mae walked by the window we were sitting by. They were dressed in their school suits, the extra ones that had been supplied specifically for battle class. They had better ventilation as opposed to insulation in the other suits which were built for space. The pair carried these sticks I’d often seen them with, weapons that emitted electricity.

Bet Dru couldn’t wait till his aunt let him use that one on me. So far it had only been bare hand--which did plenty of damage. I fingered one of my sore ribs from this morning’s beating. He didn’t need any more advantages. Give me the stick, and let him stay weaponless.

He’d probably still beat me.

Kavi, noticing the two receding figures I was staring at, said, “Dru’s a trained warrior, Astra. You are not meant to be better than him any more than I am Mae.”

I thrust the holo away from me. The text had stopped making sense a long time ago. “It’s not even that. I don’t care about fighting.”

“But you care about what Professor Accia thinks of you,” he guessed.

“Yes. No.” I sank back in my chair, rubbing eyes that hurt from too much squinting. “It’s just...he flies so well.”

Kavi nodded. “And you don’t.”

“Thanks. With friends like you, who needs Dru to beat them up?”

Flying class yesterday had been worse than the first one. We hadn’t even been allowed into real ships, all the of students secluded in a simulation room. It looked like an old arcade, with private compartments for each student to pilot his own “craft” alone. The dashboards looked a lot like the one in the craft Professor Accia had taken us up in but with far fewer options.

Upon planting my butt in the Captain’s chair, I’d realised just how similar the simulation was going to be to flying a real craft: I sucked at doing both. Apart from that, the two were completely different, because freshman didn’t start out on the amazing, life like virtual simulators. These were more like trumped up video games.

Still, as soon as I managed to get off the ground--a feat that took me twenty long minutes while Dru was off leading a Battalion, I crashed. And crashed. And crashed. I couldn’t clear more than a hundred feet before running into something or experiencing systems failure. Somehow, I didn’t think that was an acceptable flaw in a pilot.

I dropped my head down to the table.

“You shouldn’t let Dru get you down. His aunt is a flight instructor, he’s had more experience than some of the seniors.”

The librarian came over again, her chest puffed out to tell us to shut our traps. I made a rude gesture at her, and she left just as quickly as she’d come, disappearing behind the stacks of book tags.

“I should still be better than him. Alkaevs overcome obstacles to be the best,” I said, my mouth pressed against the table. “Second is just the first loser.”

“And you’re not even in second place,” he said helpfully.

I banged my forehead against the wood in response.

“Here.” He got up, pulling me to my feet as well. “I saw this section on the way in.”

He dragged me over to a shelf near the entrance. The library was a couple floors and covered in shelf space just like an old fashioned library, though everything was digitalized. Instead of books on the shelves, there were tags. They were square, barely thicker than a piece of cardboard, identification makers that stood in the place of books. Instead of taking a book from the shelf, you found it’s tag and scanned the code onto your school holo, downloading the book onto the device.

Kavi, having to use one of the stools, because he was so short, began to pull down tags seemingly at random. He threw them at me, almost causing me drop them all in a spectacular heap. It was happening so quickly I couldn’t read to titles. A new one would appear in my hands before I could even think to look.

“What’s all this?”

“This,” he said, holding up a particular tag. “Is the Guide to the Cruiser XI.”

I caught that as he tossed it to me, noting the picture of the craft mentioned--looking slightly better than the condition I’d left the last one I’d piloted in. “Hmm. I hear those are easy to crash--rigged even, some would say.”

Kavi continued raining tags down on my head.“The rest of them are every freshman book on flying. Wait--there might be a few more in the biographies and autobiographies section.”

“That’s fine, Kavi. I’m not interested in reading out other people.” I set down the stack of substantial stack of tags--hundreds at least. “Do you actually think reading about it is going to turn me into a first rate flier?”

He shrugged. “On my planet we learn more through theory than actual doing, so this is how I would do it. I’m not sure if it’ll work for a human.” He paused, thinking. “But it really couldn’t make you any worse.”

Drusus

 

September 6:

My fighting couldn’t have been any worse. I was distracted, a deadly state of being that should never happen on the battle field. I could almost hear my mother’s voice in my head, another distraction, telling me to get my head into the fight.

I reacted too slowly and had to use my arm instead of the stun stick to block her blow. Since Mae was using her stick, I felt a sizable bolt of electricity shoot through my arm. It traveled through the rest of my body also, but I rolled with it, having learned a long time ago not to tense. I let my movement carry me out of the way of Mae’s next hit too.

She grinned. One of the few times you can see Mae happy is when she’s causing me physical pain.

“You’re being sloppy,” she said. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with being paired with a human, would it?”

“No,” I said quickly then shook my head. “Or it wouldn’t if it were a competent human. Assuming such a creature exists.”

“It’s a myth. Scientists are moments away from proving it.” She blocked my overhead blow easily. I hadn’t been trying, and I chided myself. “Has she been slowing you down on the chemistry project?”

I rolled to the left just as suddenly as she thrust her weapon towards my abdomen. The move, since I was no longer where I was a few seconds before, left her vulnerable on her right, nondominant side. Right where I saw. My stun stick connected with her ribs, and she winced, but neither of us were using deadly force. The worst she’d have was a couple bruises.

As she faced me, I put my stick back up in a beginning defense stance. “Actually, no. Neither of us has made any headway on that. Have you?”

Mae shook her head. “I’ve been looking through a few encyclopedias but so far nothing.” She drove at me, bring our fight to the ground. “My partner’s...useless,” she said between gasps as we rolled around, both of us trying to land a blow.

“He’s... a Syreni... comes with the... territory.” The air rushed out of me like a punctured balloon when her elbow connected with my diaphragm.

I rolled away from her, caking myself in dirt during the process. We were both on our feet a scant second later, fists up. The batons were laying, forgotten, a few feet away. Mae smiled, a vicious thing but no less joyful for it. I prefered it this way too.

She circled me. “It’s probably not literal, that’s why we’re having trouble.”

I nodded, not dropping my guard. “Probably. That or the clue is deliberately misleading.”

What runs and has no feet, roars but has no mouth? The words echoed through my head for a millionth time since Tuesday. They made no more sense than they had then, but managed to be twice as frustrating.

Mae moved in with a couple of quick jabs to my body. They weren’t hard and were easily deflected. Because they were distractions. The real hit came hard and to the right, hitting me in the exact spot where I’d smacked her with the stun stick. Her knuckles were as hard as mine and had just as much force. I grimaced and spun away from her.

“Theatrical,” I said.

She acknowledged imaginary applause with a flick of her hand. “Has it occured to you,” she asked, moving towards me slowly. “That the human has already figured out the clue and means to make you look like a fool tomorrow?”

“Yes.” I crouched down and went at her low and fast. I landed a couple blows and used the momentum to spin around her, putting my at her back and in the perfect position to hit a few more vulnerable areas.

Mae didn’t turn, using her elbow and visceral knowledge of my fighting patterns to block some of my blows while moving out of range. We’d been dueling since we were very young. Sometimes, I’d find myself reacting to a block or a hit like Mae would.

Thinking of her skills led my brain on the path to the human, Mae’s opposite. Beating her, while satisfying, was not challenging or honorable. I prayed to Argona, not for the first time, that I’d be switched to sparring with Mae in battle class.

I reset my fighting stance, feeling the ground before my feet, centering myself by it. “The human would see me dead, if she could. It’s in her eyes every time I triumph over her. On the battlefield or in the simulation room. She’d relish in my humiliation.”

She dropped her hands at the wordless cue between us and stretched out her muscles. “Good fight.” She turned and started towards the exit of the arena.

We walked in silence towards the apartment for a few moments. Night was fast approaching, meaning the artificial lights were going out. Students all over campus, reading this signal, started back towards their rooms as well.

I spoke first. “I don’t think she knows.”

Mae nodded, deferring to my assessment. “But it won’t do either of you any good to show up to class with an empty bottle. We need to figure it out, and fast. When we get back, you can check the web, and I’ll go through some of the reference books I downloaded.” A pause. “Then what will you do?”

She was asking if I’d use the advantage. The human was grasping to the ledge of enrollment here with just a few fingers. I thought of myself stepping on one, if not all, of those fingers and watching her fall all the way back to Earth. It brought a rare smile to my mouth.

“It’d be a nice change, don’t you think, to have only three in our apartment?”

She threw back her head and laughed, still elated from the fight. “Yes. Yes, I think it would.”

We continued on into the night.

Astra

 

September 6:

The night continued on into day in far too small a period of time. But I was up long before the first rays signaled that it wandering the campus was now allowed for students. I paced around the apartment while my roommates slept, watching the light like a ticking clock.  

We’d all stayed up last night--far too late for how early I got up--bent over books and holos trying to find the answer to what to put in the bottle. Mae had retired first, giving an indifferent shrug after hours of fruitless work. Kavi had lasted an hour or so past that before his eyes wouldn’t stay open.

Surprisingly, the last couple of hours saw Dru and I working if not together, then right next to eachother. Almost like we were on the same team. We weren’t. Not even remotely. I pursued my lips just thinking about it.

As Mae started to stir, I left the apartment, having dressed long before that point. I didn’t know where I was going, just blindly hoping that fresh air would yield what days of studying and brainstorming had not. Even the weightlessness of the tube--usually the best part of my day-- failed to calm my shaky hands.

Walking through the common area in front of apartment number five, the grass tickled my bare feet, making me realize I’d forgotten shoes. I needed to get ahold of myself. They weren’t going to throw me out based on a stupid quest that no one had the answer to. Professor Adal had given me another chance with the makeup assignment--one I’d finished even if I hadn’t understood most of what I’d done.

That sounded perfectly reasonable, but still my fingers shook. Part of that was anger. I kept picturing Earhart’s smug face, hearing the harsh words she’d said. No one treated me like that, and I didn’t think I could bare it if I saw that expression again--this time, watching me leave the ship with my bags packed.

Without realising it, I’d come to the zero-grav Tak Raw court. I’d never been very good at sports--too much sweaty work involved, but I kept ending up here. I pushed open the door to the medium sized dome building made entirely out of glass.

To my surprise, there was a practice going on. The court, which looked a like like a fully closed in hockey rink, was alight, the ground glowing and illuminating the space. The gravity was turned off, making the players float and sway through the air.

The players bounced a ball that was weighed down by gravity around on their feet, legs, and ankles. The passed it from teammate to teammate, trying to get it all the way down the court into the scoring zone before someone from the other team intercepted it.

The group playing now was older and of mixed ages and genders. They weren’t wearing uniforms beyond their school suits, but to mark with team they were on, each player had either a red or blue flag tied around their calf.

They moved with smooth grace, like predators slinking through a jungle or swimming in the water depths. I watched, biting my lip at some of the stunts they pulled in the zero gravity. I didn’t feel any worry for them, though, but plenty of awe and envy.

I recognized one of the more graceful players about the same time he saw me. Kai raised his hand in greeting before driving after a red player that had tried to sneak past his defenses with the hard, woven ball. I smiled and returned the wave, but he was too busy trying to intercept to see.

It felt like I only watched them for a moment, but when I glanced at my holo, it was time to leave for my first class. My insides felt cold as I realized this would also be my first test at the Academy. I ran back to the apartment to grab shoes and my backpack, a knot in my throat the whole way.

The math building looked like a toddler had tried to build something out of blocks with velcro on them. Most of the shapes--rooms once you were instead--that were stuck to the building were squares and rectangles, but I counted a few circles and triangles in the mix. The overall effect was a collage of shapes that seemed barely connected rising through the air to form a moderately tall building.

The calculus room was a circle with all the desks lining the outside of the shape and Professor Iqbal in the middle. Seeing him when I still didn’t have an answer to his chemistry clue made me turn green.

How could a three foot tall alien intimidate me? I could stand up to Igor. Or even my father on occasion, who wasn’t as tall as Igor, but for every billion credits in his bank account added a few inches. He was like a skyscraper.

Professor Iqbal didn’t say anything as he handed out the test, but he gave each of us a snouty smile. My eyes widened when he dropped a large paper packet onto my desk. Looking around for guidance, most of the students seemed as confused as I was, but a few had picked up the pencil on the edge of their desks and started writing.

I reluctantly returned my holo to my pocket and followed their lead. The pencil didn’t feel strange--I used a similar instrument to take notes on my holo, but scratching against the dry paper did. I tried not to let it trip me up, reading the questions carefully and filling out the best answer I could think of.

I set the packet on Iqbal’s desk at the end of the period and walked out knowing I’d failed. I kicked a rock and thought about my schooling at home, working at my own pace--when it pleased me. With my paid tutors, I’d take an assessment when I decided I was ready--usually never.

I’d never failed anything before. Now I could no longer say that. It made the air feel thick, too heavy to draw into my lungs.

I had to fix this.

I slowed down so Kavi could catch up with me. “Have you figured out the chemistry assignment?”

He shook his head. “But I don’t think anyone has. Maybe it’s a challenge in creative thinking, a way to exercise our minds.”

We walked in silence to the the apartment to grab our things for Life Studies. I didn’t want Kavi to be right, because if he was, and there was no answer, there was no way to make up for my poor performance in math. I’d have another teacher who though I’d be better off on the shuttle back to Earth.

Also, beyond having less people on my side--something I’d never cared about before coming to this stupid school, I didn’t know what my academic probation entailed. Surely, they couldn’t kick me out over one bad test?

I didn’t know. But it wasn’t just the one test, was it? I started checking my faults off a list in my head, one I always kept in my mind’s eye. I’d almost crashed a billion dollar ship my first day of class. I had the lowest flying simulation scores in the class. I couldn’t take or throw a punch. I hadn’t even been here a day before falling behind in the homework. And I couldn’t figure out that damn clue.

I sank down onto my bunk, thinking I should just pack up my thing now. Save myself the trouble of trying to stick it out until I got called to Earhart’s office again. My parents would understand--expect it, even.

I shook my head and grabbed my pack. My roommates were already in the tube with the exception of Kavi, who was waiting for me at the door. I joined him and we followed mae and Dru all the way to the globe shaped building.

Professor Adal was waiting for us inside, and, once everyone was seated, he called us up to give him our homework. He used each of our names, motioning us forward one at a time so that he could check that all the work was adequately completed.

He didn’t appear to be doing it in alphabetical order. Or maybe he was--his alphabet. We didn’t start alien languages until next year, so I’d never find out.

“Astraea Alkaev.”

I trudge up and showed him the haphazard work on my holo. He stared at it for a long time, longer than he had the other kids. I started to fidget, picturing Igor’s face when he learned I’d been kicked out of a place that was likely being paid millions just to keep me. You had to be seriously hopeless for that.

He tapped a button on my holo, sending the work to his.  “This is fine, Astra, but work on longer, more in depth answers for next time. It’ll show me you understand and help you on tests.”

I sat back down in my seat, feeling a sigh of relief slide through my body. I stopped the motion short, however, wonding if “fine” was good enough it keep me here.

The staff and I expect the best from each and every student. And when they have given us that, we expect the best of someone better, of the person they aspire to be.

I walked out a classroom with my shoulders hunched for the second time that day. I thought through the clue again, coming up just as blank as last night. Unlike last night, I couldn’t comfort myself with thoughts of blaming Dru or sending him up to give Iqbal our answer of nothing. While that would have made me happier than a pig in the mud, it wouldn’t save me from academic expulsion. I needed something to get me out of the red.

I needed an answer to that chemistry question, or I was as good as gone.

I passed the Syreni upperclassman Kai, but I was too panicked to take any pleasure from the smile he shot me. I moved passed him after saying a distracted hello.

With a little less than a half an hour before Chemistry, I didn’t see how I was going to come up with an answer. I’d plowed through all the books; there was nothing there. And it wasn’t like there was anyone around that I could coax the answer out of, because no one in my class had figured it out.

Nobody in my class....

I spun on my heel and took off at a dead sprint toward the center of campus. I prayed--not something I’d usually condone-- that I was on the right track and that he hadn’t disappeared into some obscure building from where he wouldn’t emerge for hours.

I almost ran right into him. His back was turned, but I could see the vibrant blue scales on his neck, and the golden hair was a dead giveaway. “Kai!”

He had lightning reflexes which almost got me punched in the nose. “Astra,” he said, surprised. “Sorry, I thought--well they’re big on sneak attacks here. Always have to be ready.” He laughed. “You’ll find out.”

Not if I didn’t survive this week, I wouldn’t. “You’re a junior, right?”

He tilted his head. “Right.”

“So you went to the Academy as a freshman,” I said a little breathlessly.

Kai nodded. “Yes. There are very few transfers; it’s a harder admissions process.”

I took a deep breath, barely allowing myself to hope. “What runs and has no feet, roars but has no mouth?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Professor Iqbal still uses that one?”

I nodded vigorously-- so hard I felt my brain shake. “Yes, he does!”

“And you want my help with the answer, huh? You know that almost no one gets it, right? That’s why he keeps using it; people are so focused on a possible literal meaning that they don’t really think about it.” He adjusted the pack on his back. “One girl in my year sent home for a chunk of a rare, gas creature--a being made entirely from non solid material! Professor Iqbal was not pleased.”

Just as he wouldn’t be with me if I couldn’t weasle the answer out of Kai. “So, it’s not literal.”

He shook his head, a slight tugging at the corner of his lip. “It’s like...a puzzle that you solve with your mind. It’s not particularly tricky, but that’s what makes it hard to solve.” Kai shrugged. “But don’t worry about it. You won’t lose any points with Iqbal for not figuring it out.”

But I wouldn’t gain any points either! Before I could explain that to him, however, he had gone on his merry way. It was enough to make me want to pull my hair out--which was ten pounds of crazy; my hair is a priceless asset.

I sat down, right there in the middle of the sidewalk, and thought about what Kai had said. A couple students gave me dirty looks, but mere underlings didn’t warrant my attention. He’d said it was a puzzle for my mind. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense in itself.

“Agh!” An upperclassmen Syreni almost tripped over me. “You Flhubber, get off the road.”

I frowned, not recognizing the word, but you know when you’re being insulted in any language. I gave him a one fingered salute and sent him on his way. Watching him hurry down the path, I absently scratched my forearm, where they’d applied the patch when I was aboard the shuttle, giving me the Universal Translator. Shouldn’t that have translated that boy’s insult into my language?

I brushed the dirt off my suit. “There’s probably not an exact word for it in English.”

I stopped my cleaning, springing to my feet with a sudden revelation. Maybe a mind puzzle was the closest translation of the word in my language that Kai had. Maybe he’d given me the key to unraveling the clue, but I just didn’t understand it.

Mind...puzzle.

A puzzle for your mind.

Eyes widening, I ran all the way back to apartment five on unsteady legs. Kavi and Mr. and Mrs. Happy were already gone, because I was on the cusp of being late. I grabbed my stuff from under the bed and booked it to the science building on the west side of campus. I had to plow down a few people in my way, but managed to rush into the room just as the clock struck the hour mark.

Professor Iqbal looked up from his papers. He was wearing the same thin pants of yesterday, but had donned a jacket covered in a hundreds of patches and buttons. “Nice of you to join us, Miss Alkaev. Take your seat.”

Breathing heavily, I dropped my stuff at the foot of my stool next to Dru, who gave me a look that was three parts hubris and two part suspicion. He was holding the bottle--which was empty unless he’d sent off for a glassful of a gas creature.

I snatched it from his hands. For someone so athletic, you’d think he’d be better at the simple game of keepaway. Maybe it was an Tundrian thing. My lips twitched when I thought of asking if all of his people gave up so easily.

Professor Iqbal instructed us to bring our bottle to him one group at a time. An eager human girl surged to her feet, her partner following reluctantly after. I couldn’t get a good look at the contents of her bottle until she slammed it down triumphantly on Iqbal’s desk.

It was a tentacle, a moving tentacle. The thing was a deep purple color with a million different suction cups all over. It writhed in it’s confines, trying to escape.

Iqbal looked down his snout at it. “Oh, dear....”

Suffice to say that chopping off one of a creature’s limbs--no matter how many they have--is rarely the answer to an educational question. Iqbal kept the tentacle, though he kept glancing at it with abject horror as more students came up to give him empty bottles.

A few kids brought up bottles filled with rare metals that grow on some extinct animals on their planet, tiny machines they built themselves, and other miscellaneous wrong answers. With each pair that set their bottle on Iqbal’s desk, his frown deepened a bit. He didn’t seem angry, more like he’d been proved right when he’d of rather been proved wrong.

It was our turn to go up, and I quickly filled up the bottle with the answer I’d grabbed from our room. It pour in easily enough, though I did get some on my suit. It was quickly absorbed by the fabric, and I didn’t give it a second thought.

I marched up to Iqbal’s desk with Dru on my heels. He’d seen me put the contents inside the bottle, but was more confused than ever. I could almost see the gears turning in his head while he thought of ways to pin this all on me.

“What runs and has no feet, roars but has no mouth?” I placed the bottle on his desk. “Water, that’s what.”

Iqbal was silent for a moment, looking at the vial. I could almost hear Dru fuming besides me. The class snickered.

Then the Professor laughed. “Yes! That’s exactly right!” He clapped his hands. “What’s that Earth expression? Oh--a gold star for you.”

And everyone was dumbstruck. Especially me.

 

_____

 

I had a couple hours to stew in my amazement before I had to face reality: Professor Accia, who was more than happy to knock me off my high perch, free of charge.

"Come to devastate another virtual craft, Greenie?" she asked me while the rest of the class piled into the simulation room.

I hugged the stack of book tags closer to my chest. "Unless you're offering to let me crash the real thing."

She snorted, turning to help a student trying to get her attention. "The only way you're getting back inside another ship is over my dead body."

"Looking forward to it," I muttered and ducked into one of the closet sized simulation compartments.

I activated the game with a voice command, pulling out my holo at the same time. I already had Cruiser Controls and their Functions pulled up on the screen. I'd read through it at least ten times, taking so many notes it felt like I was rewriting the book. I brought up a side tab with the condensed version of those notes.

Taking a deep breath through my nose, I started up the virtual ship according to the instructions: pressing the start button only after I had turned on the stabilizer. I grinned when it didn't make the growling noise I'd become pathetically used to. The ship hummed happily, and it felt like I was already flying.

I clicked off the stabilizer in the same motion that I pulled a notch slowly out of its socket. I had the same view that a pilot would have in the control room plus a corner of the screen was donated to an "upside down" and side views of my surrounds. I watched as the ship rose, and the trees and buildings grew small. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be taking off from, but it definitely wasn't Earth, as it had two suns.

I hovered around the blinking number that told my elevation. It hit seventy-five feet.

"Come on, baby, almost there."

I'd been at it for almost a week, and it never failed, as soon as I reached ninety-nine feet, I careened and crashed. It felt like the ship was revolting against me. I’d even tried only going up to about seventy or so and proceeding from there. I lasted a minutes more, tops. The ship didn’t like to fly that low--or the game didn’t want me to. Plus, it never failed that, even in the middle of the desert, I could find something to crash into.

One hundred. I grinned like an idiot, fighting the urge to run and tell Kavi. And then run and smash it in Dru’s face.

One hundred-twenty. I felt like I was on top of the world--which I might have been. Some world, somewhere. Or maybe it was just a simulation of a colony.

One hundred-fifty. A light headed feeling invading me, like I was actually that high in the air. It was exhilarating. Freeing. Terrifying.

I hit two hundred feet, and I gave it some gas, pushing forward on the lever to increase the acceleration. I whipped my hands over to the handlebars, trying keeping the ship from jerking off into a tail spin. I’d learned that lesson the hard way. Multiple times.

I was too slow; however, and the craft was out of my control. I pulled on the bars and tried desperately to flick on the stabilizers. The screen flashed red with large warning signs. The book tags fell off my lap as I leaped up, pressing everything I could get my hands on and trying to pull myself out of a death spiral.

Game over.

I smiled grimly and pulled back up the main menu for the simulation. I grabbed the tags off the floor and scrolled through my holo for the later notes, attempting to make some sense out of what I did wrong.

“Would you like to play again?” the computerized voice asked.

I took a deep breath. “Run it.”

Drusus

 

September 7th:

“Would you like to play again?”

“No. Close program,” I said, picking up my things off the floor.

When I emerged from my room, everyone else was still busy crashing their ships over and over again. My aunt gave me a questioning look as I left, but I just shook my head. Flying, virtual or otherwise, was a chore. And I felt no compulsion to practice any further when I was already better than anyone in my class.

Instead, I pulled out my holo and opened up my mapping application. I hadn’t progressed any further than mapping out the arena a couple days ago, and it was time I made some real headway. The Commander wouldn’t elevate me in the military for my flying abilities, but for my fighting and this favor. Battle I had under control; it was this I was failing at.

I decided to start with the buildings around the arena since it was in the center of campus. That way, I could start there and make circles going towards the outlying regions, making sure I didn’t spend a suspicious amount of time in one spot. Getting caught was not an option.

I started with a repair facility to the left of the arena. Taking note of it’s dimensions and measurements was easy, but I had to get closer to record the contents. It should have been easy, as all repairing is done by machines, but the place was crawling with AIs. Most of them, strangely, didn’t even appear to be damaged.

I wasn’t worried about one of them seeing me, really, since it was before lights out and not a restricted area. A person might notice someone hanging around a repair building for a long period of  time as a disruption in a social pattern, but AIs wouldn’t. Still, they were set up to record anything and everything, and I didn’t want the wrong person to see me skulking around, seemingly doing nothing.

Actions like that show up on adults’ radars. It means trouble. And I couldn’t afford to be viewed as trouble.

Luckily, it was late in the day and along with the lights slowly dimling, a lot of students were headed back from their last classes, allowing me cover. I was able to hid in the shadows between two buildings and see most of the factory like interior of the repair shop from a window.

I mapped the repair building and one other before the streets cleared out too thoroughly to allow me to continue. I made my way back to my secluded practice area, fingering the package I carried in my breast pocket.

All was quiet and peaceful, prompting me to play something serene and soft. Part of it was practicality: not being overheard by an unlikely passerby. Part of it was that I’d had that kind of music stuck in my heart all day. It felt cathartic to finally release it into the world.

The music came out even sweeter than I’d planned and washed away the worry and stress of the week. Being there, playing, I could forget the holo map at my feet, the challenging course load, and even that human girl who had shown me up with the chemistry question.

A slow clapping started behind me, and I spun around, almost dropping my piccolo in the shuffle. I gripped it tighter in reassurance that it wasn’t bent and broken at my feet.

The oldest Syreni woman I had ever seen stood before me. She was small, bent over with age. She had silver hair that was broken up by three small, purple fins on her head. She had the same color of scales on her in patches. One patch covered her eye and set off her green irises.

The hands that clapped for me were webbed like the rest of her species. Unlike the rest of her species, she had no gills on the sides of her neck. A Syreni without gills was like a Tundrian without wings. I shuddered.

“You play beautifully.” She took a step forward, and I became aware that the map was still open at my feet.

The color drained from my skin at my carelessness. She would see it. She would see it, and I would be revealed. A sweat broke out acrossed my body, and I felt a slight tremble in my fingers. This couldn’t be it.

“Very few Tundrians play well,” she said, a frown on her face.

And therein lies my shame.

“I am Professor Euterpe, the music teacher. I direct the orchestra,” She said proudly. The old woman looked at me for a moment more, nodded, and turned to leave. “I will see you at my rehearsals now.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that she would most definitely not be seeing me at her rehearsals, but years of discipline to respect elders and my near miss with expulsion held my tongue. She didn’t even know my name, so there was no need to protest. When I didn’t show up she would let it go, having no choice.

Still, I thought wistfully as I put away my instrument and holo, it would be...nice. I’d never even heard an ensemble play, but I couldn’t doubt that all those instruments working together would be...nice.

So very nice.

Astra

 

October 15th:

The month passed by at warp speed. One moment, the sign up for activities was posted and Kavi and I were signing up for Tak Raw, the next, our whole grade was buzzing with excitement over the upcoming field trip.

The transition hadn’t been fun most of the time. Despite my efforts, I was below average in almost all of my classes and failing in the others. It was like an anchor around my foot, dragging me down just when my mood was about to drift off into happier waters. All I had to do was remember that at any minute Earhart could call me into her office and, boot to the ass, kick me out. I had no idea why she hadn’t already, and when I thought about it, the only reason I could come up with was that she was amusing herself with my sinking.

But I was still there, for better or for worse. I still handed in all my assignments--most of them I’d score higher if I didn’t, the work was so bad. And a few few days previous, I’d finished reading and annotating the last flying book for freshman--which meant I had over a hundred books of knowledge in my head on the subject and still couldn’t keep my head above water in the class.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t improving. I was. Slowly. But the other students were miles ahead of me and didn’t do half of the extra work I did. I was begrudgingly proficient with the simulator now, but every other kid had mastered the game.

Today, we started some light practicing with a real craft. My fellow classmates were all excited about it. Me? I was dying to get behind the wheel, but not looking forward to showing everyone how pathetic I was. Especially Professor Accia and her golden nephew, Dru.

In the past month, I’d kept calling him Dru, and he’d kept kicking my ass in new and inventive ways on the sparring field. I think he was waiting for me to cry uncle. If that was the case, he’d grow old and die before an Alkaev would admit defeat to a dirty commoner.  

“Astra, flying class.” Kavi poked his head back in the door and patronized me.

As the weeks went on, he’d gotten more and more ballsy with me. I wasn’t sure yet if I was going to continue to allow it, but all I said was, “Kavi, piss up a rope.”

But I left with him and the others, if only to keep him guessing. The air had a little bite to it outside. I had been shocked when I’d gone out one morning and felt the chill. It was one thing to change the light settings; we need UV rays to stay healthy--well, most of us. A change in seasons seemed a bit over the top, but I guess they wanted an experience you could get on a planet based school.

We didn’t waste any time once we were in the arena, all of the students climbing right into the teaching craft Professor Accia had taken us up in the first day. Looking at the controls gave me a momentary bout of PTSD, my breathing quickening and my heart threatening to jump out of my throat. I shook off the feeling and focused on positive thoughts--like how much I’d learned since then on the theory of flying.

Professor Accia was last on board. She gave us one angry glance, then started up the ship and get it into the air--far away from buildings and people. She didn’t waste anytime, a commonality for her, I  was beginning to realize. She called us up one by one to fly the ship a little distance before the next kid would take over.

With each person that went up and flew the ship with competence--shaky and flawed but competent, my nails bit harder into the skin on my palm. By the time Accia called my name, I had half moons decorating my hand with little trails of blood to connect them. I focused on that design I’d made while walking up to the controls.

“Alright, Greenie,” she said. “Just try to keep her in the air.”

I grabbed the handle bars like they were the reins to a wild horse. The ship, already moving forward at that point, only gave a mild jolt and changed its course a couple of degrees to the left.

After a moment, Professor Accia said, “Take her higher.”

I pulled up on the handlebars like I’d done a hundred times, but the craft jerked and did a half somersault and then listed to the side. Before anything else could go wrong, she wrenched my hands off the bars and took over.

She cursed. “Greenie, those books won’t do you an ounce of good; you’ve got no talent, no air-wiseness. Until you get some experience under your belt, you’re not taking control again.”

I wanted to snap something back at her, but she talked over me. “All the theory in the world isn’t going to make you a pilot.”

Dru brushed past me to take his turn, and I slunk away to stand against the way with the other students. A few gave me contemptuous looks--something I was supposed to hand out, not receive. It made me a little hot under the collar, and I spent the rest of the class stewing in my frustrations.

Back at the apartment, I threw my holo and backpack onto my bed with as much force as I could manage. It probably wasn’t half of what Dru could do, and that just made me want to chuck something else. I took off my shoe and lobbed it at the wall behind my floating bed.

Kavi watched all this in silence, then said, “You just need a little in class practice.”

I snorted. “Like I’m ever going to get that. Accia thinks I’m worthless, and I can’t fly with her breathing down my neck.”

“Uh, Astra,” he said sadly. “You can’t really fly period.”

I collapsed onto the bed and chucked a pillow at him. I had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen with surprise and have him dive out of the way. They probably didn’t have pillow fights on Kalid.

He sat down on my bed, legs tucked under him like Professor Adal, the life studies teacher. I wondered if it was a Animarian thing. “She has to let you fly. You’re a student, and she’s your teacher.”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t, though. I’m on academic probation-- basically thin ice. She doesn’t have to anything for me, and she could have me out of here with a snap of her fingers.”

I took his silence for an agreement, though he may have just been trying to decipher all the figurative Earth language I’d used. I sank deeper into the bed, hiding my face in my pillow. It didn’t help me nearly as much as it seemed to the teenagers on TV.

My voice was muffled. “I’ve just gotta get some real practice. Or I’ll never be a pilot.”

He made a sympathetic noise.

I kicked the bed a couple times, still face down on it, and it was then that I had an idea. It was an awful, wonderful idea. Terrible in its brilliance and how fast it’d get me kicked out of the school I’d spent a month trying to cement myself to.

But I was going to do it.

Drusus

 

October 15:

I wasn’t going to do it. I had promised myself that a month ago, and I had stuck to it. It didn’t matter that I’d only signed up for one extra activity: dueling. Loads of students did only one. None of the good ones, however....

  Still, I wasn’t planning in it. But, walking past the building and knowing what was inside proved too much. Like there was a Siren calling me, I careened my boat of course and towards the rocky coast line.

I’ll only pop inside for a moment, I told myself, just a tiny moment of weakness. Then, I would be strong, leaving before anyone saw me. And I would never go back.

As soon as I opened the door and the sugar sweet notes floated into my ears, I was lost, and I rode a wave of sound all the way through the lobby and to the double doors that went into an auditorium. There were thousands of purple colored seats that all lead up to the grand, wooden stage. I was surprised to find that it was all real wood, the material being scarce, regulated by the government, and exceedingly expensive.

There were a hundred of them, at least, on that stage. The rich curtains hid a few dozen of them, but I could estimated. Each of them wore the silver suit with the school’s crest on the chest, and each of them held in their hands something infinitely precious.

The small, elderly, Syreni woman turned around on her podium at the sound of the door closing. Though it had been a month since she’d seen me and ordered me into her band, she smiled like she was expecting me.

Professor Euterpe waved a hand at me. “Sit. We’re almost done with warm ups.”

I couldn’t stop my feet from rushing ahead of me, up the stairs and onto the stage. I didn’t see any other piccolos, but I saw its longer cousin, the flute, and sat in a vacant seat by them.

Mixed in with the flutes were a few instruments I’d never seen before. One consisted of a couple tubes tied together with buttons that contracted and dilated the tubes to change the pitch. The only two of that particular instrument I saw looked ancient and beaten, not unlike my piccolo.

An older, Parvulian girl even smaller than Professor Iqbal but with a longer snout, passed me a paper copy of the piccolo part. Most of the other student were reading off their holos, but I relished in the chance to have corporeal music I didn’t have to burn away, hiding the evidence. I took it without saying anything and placed it on the barebones stand in front of me.

Professor Euterpe didn’t say anything further to any of us. She raised her baton, brought it down to signal each beat of a measure, and, after four beats, we were off. The music was different than what I’d walked in on, fast and accented. It was exciting and involved lots of lightning finger runs and challenging note changes. I grinned while I blew along with my fellow orchestra members.

And I was one of them for that moment in time. I didn’t feel like an outsider. Certainly, I felt like I shouldn’t be there, but at the same time it was the only place in the galaxy that I could be. It felt like a betrayal to Tundris, but I couldn’t stop playing.

The last month had been hard, academically and otherwise. I had entertained the thought of going home, like a coward. I had wanted to attend this school more than anything, but now  that I was here, it had felt like something was missing. And  without that something I couldn’t be happy.

At first I thought it was the human girl. She had invaded my space, after all. I couldn’t be truly content rooming with a human. Now, playing in this beautiful auditorium, next to these people I’d never met before but shared an inexplicable bond with, I felt that piece fall into place.

I still needed that  human gone, of course. If I’d wanted to room with filth I could have gone to stay with my father, his new...wife, and their whelps. But I needed this too, I realized. And I needed to find a way to keep it.

I’d do anything to keep it.

 

_____

I sought Maeve out after the rehearsal, needing a little normal to center me. She was her usual bored, uninterested self, and it was like salve on the wound that playing my instrument with others had caused.

I watched her, though, in a way I was surprised she didn’t notice. I kept studying her face, her body language, desperate to reassure myself that she didn’t know where I’d been for the past couple hours. It was ridiculous, like she’d followed me or could just sense my betrayal. But knowing that didn’t help ease my stomach, and I spent most of our walk to the arena in uncomfortable silence.

“Are we sparring each other or should we find less familiar prey?” she asked at least under the gates into the battlefield.

I flinched at the sudden sound of her voice, though it was as unobtrusive as could be. “Let’s use one of the battle AIs. My aunt says that they can prove to be worthy adversaries when programed correctly.”

I walked up to the first one I saw, as a dozen or so of them lined the walls of the colosseum. They were used for both practice and security, standing on guard at all hours. They were humanoid, though the industrial ones were bulkier, built like a Tundrian. The smaller ones, used for nonphysical jobs mosts, were shaped like the stringy Animarians.

“Fight,” I commanded it, already in my ready position.

It came at me like uncontained aggression, hitting with all the force of a bullet train and with the speed of a rocket. I grinned, relishing the no holds barred fight, but before long my face was a mask of concentration and wariness. The robot had been programmed very well.

I blocked each of its rapid fire blows with my stun stick, but only just. Being a machine, it had no tells in its body or face giving away its movement before it made them. I grimaced as an unexpected blow smacked me upside the head, causing a darkened of my vision and a roaring in my ears.

I stumbled away as the AI kept coming. I could hear Mae behind me, ordering it to cease fighting. That annoyed me. Did she think I couldn’t handle one scrap pile?

The AI moved faster than I could think, catching me on the chin and knocking me flat onto my back. I groaned as I saw the solar system behind my closed lids. The next moment, though, I was moving, barely avoiding a heavy, metal foot stomping down where my head used to be.

I rolled unsteadily to my feet, keeping my hands my hands up to ward off any super human speed attacks. Mae was beside me in an instant, her body in the exact same position as mine. Mae was a worthy sparring partner in more ways than her fighting abilities; I could always count on her having my back.

She moved in towards the AI, swinging her stun stick to right where his ribs would have been on a person, on an AI it’d be one of his power packs. It was gone from that spot as soon as she started the movement, however, ramming into her side with bunch smashing force.

Mae let out a short scream as she landed on the ground, her left arm twisted in a horrible way. I was already moving before she completed the sound, slamming my stun stick into the back of the preoccupied AI’s head before he could move out of the way.

He would have fallen on Mae, but I connected my foot with its side at the last second, sending the robot rolling away from her. I ran over to where it lay, checking for signs of continued aggression and ripping out one of the major cords that connected its power source.

“Go get a medic,” I told one of the inactive AIs. I took another look at the fallen AI. “And a repair AI.”

Not that the AI would ever run again. That would be against galactic law.

I knelt by Mae, who managed to keep her face almost completely inexpressive through the pain. I didn’t have any training, but I’d had a lot of wounds, so I checked out her arm while we waited for the medic.

“Well,” she said, her voice a little thin. “That was exciting.”

“Very,” I said, still carefully inspecting her arm. “But let’s not do it again anytime soon. You only have one arm left. If you hurt that, who am I going to beat up?”

She bit her lip. “Broken?”

I nodded. “In multiple places.”

Mae let her head fall back into the dirt. “Perfect.”

I could see the AI medic coming through the doors, saving me from having to say the right thing which was not my specialty. I hesitated, then laid a hand on the shoulder that wasn’t attached to her injured arm. I didn’t know if that was right, but Mae didn’t say anything, so I kept it there.

The medic began to assess and cast Mae’s arm, and I got up and walked over to the repair AI who was taking a look at the AI that had attacked us. What would send him to the scrap yard was that he had disobeyed orders to stop. AIs weren’t technically allowed to harm living beings, either, but I wouldn’t have made a fuss if I had been hurt during a fair fight. That would’ve been my fault.

“It wouldn’t cease attacking us,” I told the repair AI. Strangely, he didn’t turn around to face me. “It’s been compromised; it’ll have to be scrapped.”

The AI turned around then, and I blinked in surprise. It looked...angry. Which was perfectly impossible, because it was a machine and couldn’t feel that emotion or any other for that matter. It was a robot.

The flicker of emotion was gone as quickly as it came, and I was half convinced I’d imagined it in the fallout of adrenaline and being injured. All the repair AI said was, “The incineration will be scheduled immediately.”

The AI recorded  a few things on its holo, and I realized I recognized it as one of the ones that guarded our apartment building. I didn’t know why is would be a guard and a repair bot, but I shrugged it off and turned my attention back to the pile of bolts that had hurt Mae and I.

It had the back of its head smashed in, obviously. But it had another mark on it, not made by me. It was a scar of sorts, a scratch that started at its eyebrow and went clear down to his chin. It was jagged, and almost look like something a sword would do on a person.

Hanging around AIs was giving me strange thoughts, so I hurried back to Mae. She looked white under her dark skin and was panting as the medic worked on her. She obviously hadn’t been given something for the pain, and I was about to say something when I remembered Mae’s aversion to drugs.

It was my fault my friend had been hurt, and that sat heavy on my chest. I couldn’t do anything for her, so I just sat there and held onto her, wishing I could smash the robots head in one more time for good measure.

Astra

 

October 15th:

I held onto Kavi as we snuck out of the pitch black apartment, wishing I could see four inches in front of my face. The lights had gone off an hour ago, and everyone was safely in bed. Kavi had been too, snoring like a sick elephant I’d seen at the zoo once. I’d been upset about the animal; I couldn’t remember why. So distraught they’d put it down. Upsetting the Alkaevs wasn’t good for business.

Kavi was barely dressed, his suit askew from our surprise departure. I didn’t think he was even fully aware we were outside the apartment. That was probably for the best.

“Where are we going?” he asked, his words slurred and his eyelids droopy. That was probably from the sleeping draught patch I’d slapped on his skin right after our conversation earlier. I’d done it for his own good, of course. He needed to have a little fun.

“To the arena,” I said, watching the ground intently, so I didn’t fall over anything.

I just had to hope Mae and Dru, who hadn’t returned from the medical center, wouldn’t walk into the apartment and notice our absence. I didn’t think they could move around the campus at night, even if Mae broke her arm, but I had taken precautions. I’d left pillows in the shapes of our bodies on our beds. Mine and Kavi’s school holo was under those pillows, making breathing and-- in Kavi’s case-- snoring noises to convince anyone that got too close.

If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was sneak out.

The doors to the arena were unlocked, but there was another obstacle in place: the AIs that guarded it. There was, strangely, only one on guard tonight, but if it saw us, we’d be reported to Earhart for sure. And then I could kiss my dreams of exploring the universe--far outside my parents’ reach if such a place existed--goodbye.

I took a deep breath, thinking how lucky we’d been up to this point; the AI that usually stood watch on our apartment must have been getting an oil change or something. We hadn’t seen heads or tails of it and snuck out easily. Now, it was time to put my talents to work.

Kavi looked at the AI. “Don’t they have motion sensors?” he spouted information we’d had to memorize in our Tech class with Professor Talib.

“Fortunately,” I said, scouring the ground for something.

“For--tun--ately....” Kavi said experimentally. “Maybe that means something else in English.”

“Nope.” I picked up a stone about the size of my hand and hurled towards the other end of the arena. “It means exactly what you think it does.”

The rock soared across the space-- right in front of the robot’s face-- and smashed against a metal expanse of wall. The noise emitted should have been enough to wake the whole campus, but only the AI on guard sprung to alertness. He had an abnormality, a scar on his face.  

“Halt!” Its monotone rang out. “Students are not allowed out of bed after lights out.”

Kavi and I tensed, waiting for it to run over to us and drag us by our ears to the faculty building. The AI shot off towards the other end of the arena, however, where I’d thrown the rock.

I pressed my finger to my lips and nodded at Kavi to follow my lead. I didn’t know whether he’d understand the sign for silence. People said it was universal, but I wasn’t sure if that was an expression or not. When he fell into step right behind me without making a sound, I breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.

The urge to run to the hanger was strong, but the AI hadn’t gone very far away. It was still looking for the out of bed students a couple dozen yards away from where we tiptoed in the darkness. That was way too close to risk any sudden movements or sounds.

One of the camps I’d been sent to had had AIs as guards. They were a little trickier than fences--computerized or not, but as a machine goes up in sophistication, the closer it gets to “human” intelligence. And as anyone will tell you, humans make mistakes. I profit off those mistakes.

The door to the hangar was shut, and I took a nervous breath. There was no way to open it and keep complete silence. No matter what, we would alert the AI to our presence.  I grabbed onto Kavi with one hand and the handle with the other. In one smooth movement, I opened the door, pulled us inside, and slammed it shut behind us, initiating the locks that hadn’t been in place.

I could hear the pounding feet of the AI running towards the door. It shouted at us to stay where we were, that failure to comply would be met with immediate expulsion.

I firmed my grip on Kavi’s suit. “I don’t think so, you old scrap pile.”

We ran as fast as we could in unfamiliar territory, stretching out our legs to full capacity. I stopped at the first Cruiser I saw, practically throwing Kavi into the open cockpit. I hurled myself after him and slammed my fist down on the pressurization lock. The cockpit ceiling closed behind us with a wush.

I sped over to the controls, but hesitated upon reaching them. They were exactly like the ones in the simulation or on the training craft Professor Accia had taken us up in. That should have made it better, but I felt like I was seconds from hyperventilating. In my mind’s eye, I could see every mistake I’d made, everyone virtual ship I’d wrecked.

How could I fly this thing?

“Uh--Astra, not to rush you or anything, but I think if you’re going to do something, you better do it now,” Kavi said, peering out the side window.

I glanced over to see the AI periodically checking every craft in the hanger--and coming this way. I snapped my attention back to the controls, my hands hovering over them. I lunged at one and then pulled back at the last second, unsure if that way right or not. Why, oh why, hadn’t I taken my notes with me?

“Astra--”

I looked over, and the AI was getting closer, only two ships away. “I know, I know!”

Now or never. Now or expulsion.

I switched on the stabilizer and pushed down the power button. The ship purred to life, and the AIs head turned towards us so fast I was surprised it didn’t wrench a screw loose. Kavi leaped forward and pressed a control I’d never even noticed before. The window took on a shaded quality, though I could still see through it perfectly.

“Opaque windows,” he said breathlessly. “So people outside can’t see in. I heard a couple boys talking about it and looked it up in one of your manuals.”

I stared at him for a moment, and he shrugged. “Most people don’t really notice me. Say things in front of me they wouldn’t normally.”

“I could kiss you, Kavi of Tria.” I slapped him on the back.

He tilted his head, and his face scrunched up. “Isn’t that some kind of Earthling mating ritual?”

I wasn’t going to touch that one with a fifty foot pole.

The noise from the engine was still drawing the AI this way, even if it couldn’t see who was piloting. I pulled a lever upward, and the ship rose with the movement--which was a little too fast.

We approached the ceiling at frightening speeds, and I left my stomach behind. The white dome kept getting closer and closer, while the floor, the ships, and the AI got smaller and smaller.

“The dome’s not opening,” I said, looking frantically for a remote control for it or something. “The dome’s not opening! Don’t suppose you overheard anything about how to get out of here without getting flattened like a pancake?”

I was scrambling wildly at that point, pressing down things that didn’t look integral to the flying process. The ship shook a little at my meddling but continued on it’s path to destruction. I would’ve killed for that to happen in the simulation or on the practice flight, but it was going to get me killed here. Not a drop of that irony was wasted on me.

Kavi shook his head. “Is this a dream?”

“If it is,” I said, bracing myself. “I expect we’re about to wake up very soon.”

I waited for the crash with my eyes wide open. Dying painfully or no, I was still flying. I wasn’t going to miss a moment of that.

After a few too many moments of reveling in the flying sensation, I looked at the monitor to see why we hadn’t crashed yet. Above me was the vast expanse of space, and below I could see the dome doors sliding slowly closed again, taking my view of the ships and the AI.

“I think Professor Accia said something about them being automatic to ships with the school’s identification chip,” Kavi said, sitting comfortably in one of the co-captain’s chairs.

My lips thinned. “Did she, now?” I turned off the stabilizers and pushed forward the acceleration lever. “That,” I said. “Would’ve been helpful information two seconds ago.”

The ship soared over the campus at a low height, keeping it just high enough to not be seen in the dark. I was careful not to even breath on the controls, afraid I’d cause it to careen like the countless others before it.

“This is a very strange dream. I never dream about breaking the rules.” Kavi shifted in his seat. “Where are we going, exactly? This Cruiser can’t go off-world, though I guess that wouldn’t matter in a dream.”

I chose not to comment on the dream part. “The Academy is anchored up to a Fuel Colony--one of the few places with enough resources to do maintenance on this monster.” I motioned to the ship affectionately. “We can follow that tether to the colony--and back when the time comes. It shouldn’t be a difficult ride, and it gives me the opportunity to practice. No one will even know we’ve been gone.”

If Kavi thought there was something strange that it was supposedly his dream yet I was running the show, he didn’t let on. And if he wasn’t going to wise up, I wasn’t going to help him. His easy complacence up to this point had been a blessing. He was such a goody good I’d thought I’d have to hogtie him and drag him along. Turned out all I need to do was drug him up a little bit. I loved it when there was a simple answer.  

“It’s...an Earth Colony, right?” he asked. “I think I remember Professor Adal saying something about it in Life Studies.”

I nodded. “Earth Colony Delta. It’s an industrial colony--I think. They make most of their money from their factories. Pretty sure they do this ship maintenance thing for chump change.”

Keeping the handlebars in the same position was more stressful than I thought. Everytime I felt a sneeze coming on, cold sweat broke out all over my body.

Kavi half coughed, half laughed. “Chump change? What you think of as chump change probably feeds these people for months. It’d feed my entire order for years.”

“Well, sure, if you want to live off gruel and canned meat.” I shuddered.

The ship lurched as we moved out of the gravity field around the ship. I hung on tight to the handlebars, willing the craft to stay on its path. I wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction of me crashing the ship and killing myself.

Though technically off-world--something the ship wasn’t equipped for, it wasn’t any harder leading it close to the invisible line of pull anchoring our ship to their harbor. It was like driving along a Galactic Interstate without the holo road to show you where you need to be. And I’d swerved off and hit a weigh station with that road to guild me. I knew about myself, but I wondered if Kavi was too young to die.

His response to that out loud wondering was, “Animarians live just a couple decades longer than humans, usually, and we age at the same pace.”

Too young, then.

The ship was listing slowly out of the line of pull, towards free space. The Cruiser I’d crashed before had at least been designed to go off-world and look what happened there. I had no idea what would befall us if we left the parameters of the tether.

“We’re so close,” Kavi said, pointing out at the a couple hundred yards away. “We must be within their gravitational pull by now.”

I grit my teeth, forcing the bars to stay straight when they would have moved, sending us spiraling out into free space--a death sentence. “Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

But we made it. Barely. The jaunt to the dock felt like it took an eternity, like we were moving through sand. But when I got within a hundred feet, I realized we were going way too fast. I switched off the engine and looked around madly for the brakes.

“How do you stop this thing?”

Kavi shook his head, his eyes wide. “I haven’t gotten that far in the simulation. I just go until I crash, or the time is up.”

The dock and the city just beyond it was getting closer and closer. I could almost make out people--who were no doubt point and shouting at the ship about to run them over. I took a step back from the controls, naming what everything did in my head. I didn’t know all of the switches, but one of them that I didn’t know had to be the brake.

There was a medium sized blue button that had caught my eye on the first scan. It could’ve been a brake. It also could’ve been anything from a self destruct button to a temperature adjuster. Hitting it could have serious repercussions.

I smacked my hand down on it, partly because I didn’t care about repercussions and part because the people I was about to plow down probably didn’t care either. The craft screeched to a halt mere inches in front of the metal edge of the parking station.

Since the dock was a couple hundred feet in the air, and I didn’t know how to keep the ship hovering and turn it off, I left it running. The hatch popped open, and I had to jump onto the hood of the Cruiser and out onto the dock. There was probably some kind of bridge mechanism, but I wasn’t going to risk a freefall to find out.

Kavi--still on standing on the Cruiser-- rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the drugs. “I thought we were flying there and back for practice. Why are we on land?”

The solid, metal platform felt nice under my feet. It was secure and something I couldn’t crash. I missed the Cruiser already.

I motioned him to jump over to me. “Kavi, we’re off the ship--no supervision-- on an Earth colony with a craft of our own and no one to miss us until morning.”

“So?” he asked, looking doubtfully at the space between the dock and the ship and long drop to the ground.

“So,” I said heavily. “I’ve never encountered this much raw potential for fun.”  When he still looked doubtful, I held my arms out. “Jump. I’ll catch you. Probably.”

He hopped down beside me. His jump was a lot more graceful than mine, and I could almost see him leaping from tree branch to tree branch for some reason, like a giant cat on the prowl.

He smiled wryly. “This is not what my people consider fun. This is against the rules.”

He seemed almost fully awake, and he wasn’t running screaming. It was a good sign.

We started down the deck, avoiding the eyes of interested people. “Your people need a re-education, then.”

Most of the people around us were human, which meant Kavi got a few strange looks. I handed him a jacket I’d found on board the ship and put one on myself. Unlike the suits, they didn’t have the school logo on it and would keep us from being recognized as students.

I withdrew a hat from the pocket of the jacket, something I’d brought with me from the apartment. It had a long visor that was easily lowered over my face, concealing it. I took it with me most places, partly because my features were very recognizable--especially when I didn’t want to be recognized as an Alkaev-- and partly because it had a septic tank truck on it and said “Yesterday’s meals on wheels”.

It had been a surprise discovery under a bunk bed at Camp Happy-happy-fun-time, or some such nonsense. I didn’t stay long--the place didn’t even have electric fences or guards to keep me in, can you imagine? But while I’d been there, the only happy time I’d had was blending in with that hat on my head. It was illuminating.

I pulled the hat down, now, a shield between myself and the commoners. It wouldn’t do for someone to see Astraea Alkaev, walking moneybag, wandering around, seemingly defenseless on this backwaters Earth Colony. No doubt there were some shady characters here. The thought made me smile.

Kavi sucked in a breath at the clothing and appearances of the towns people. Every one of them, old to young, looked like they were no stranger to hard work. Most were covered in dirt and grime. I didn’t think it was possible that all those people were just getting off work at somewhere industrial, so the Colony must just be lax with things like hygiene.

A couple people were dressed like us, in suits, but with darker, thicker material. Some had on the well-worn clothes of merchants or people who were travelers by trade. They all had the same boots, however, industrial, cheap, and made to withstand all manner of nasty.

I grimaced down at my own pink, delicate boots--the light of my life since being shipped off to the academy. I couldn’t bare for them to be ruined by the grime of the common folk.

“We won’t stay long, just a quick look about,” I said, whether to myself or to Kavi, I wasn’t sure. “But first, I need shoes.”

I pulled Kavi into the first shop I saw before hitting the dusty, muddy ground off the dock. It was shabby and cramped, but I found two pairs of boots for reasonable prices. They were what everyone was wearing and would allow us to blend as much as was possible for a human Animarian pair.

I pulled out my holo, which was in flattened form so as to easily slip into my clothes and remain unseen. I swiped at it a couple times and transferred the credits to the shop teller’s account. The old woman gave me a toothless grin that I reluctantly returned.

“Thank you for your business,” she said.

Saying thanks wasn’t really my thing, so I just inclined my head and grabbed the boots off the counter. We left the store quietly.

I pulled on my pair, making a distasteful noise in the back of my throat. They were not fashion forward in any way. I tied the laces on my pink ones to make them easier to carry. I threw the other pair at Kavi. He caught them and frowned.

“Put them on, genius.” I nodded to his bare feet.

“You should not have bought me shoes. What is that you called me?”

Stepping off the lower layer of the dock, I was instantly glad for the rough boots. The dust was thick, and enveloped your feet, making it hard to move. My pretty boots would have never survived it.  

“Didn’t translate?” I asked.

He nodded. “Maybe it’s the distance from the ship.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

And I didn’t have any more time to think on it, because in the next moment, a swarm of people flooded onto the dirt road between the rows of metal shacks. Kavi and I were swept up in the motion.

I grabbed onto his hand to keep from getting separated as the dirty crowd marched forward with us in toe. It was like some kind of angry parade, a protest. It seemed so out of place in this no nonsense, working town that I allowed myself to be pulled along in silence, trying to make heads or tails of what they were saying.

Most were speaking English, though a bastardized version that revealed their poor status and education more thoroughly than any dirt or boots could. They were shouting, everything slang and everything touched with anger. It was hard to make heads or tails of anything.

One man shouted in my ear, “Separation is the only equality I care about!”

I dropped Kavi’s hand like it was a red, hot poker. I’d heard that before, if not in those exact words. They were speciesists, people who believed that war, politics, punk music, and all other evils stemmed from the mixing of the species. Some just wanted separation--like the man I’d heard-- and some preached far more radical and violent solutions. I had no way of knowing which way this particular faction leaned.

I didn’t want to risk losing Kavi, but I couldn’t stand too close to him either. I stayed within a few people of him as the crowd proceeded with its march. Curiously, no one had noticed that they were protesting side by side with a green boy--doing the very thing they were protesting by protesting. That was irony if I’d ever seen it.

We flooded into what appeared to be town square, though it looked the same as the rest of the city: little, scrappy houses and shops. Kavi was getting pulled and push every which way the crowd swayed, standing in front of a small podium. I used all my tricks--acquired from years of raves and maneuvering through packed, illegal wrestling fights-- to keep from getting thrown to the front of the crowd. A place where someone was bound to notice me and the pink boots that hung off my shoulder.

A well kept young man got up on the stand. He wasn’t alone up there, but all eyes--even mine--gravitated to him. He had an easy smile and perfectly straight teeth. He could’ve been one of them; he had the boots, but I didn’t think so. He was too clean, despite being covered in the same dirt. He was kind of like me. He’d known the better side of life.

His hand rose, welcoming the crowd, and I realized he was more like my dad than me. “My friends. Please, quiet yourselves.” And the crowd was silent. “We wouldn’t want our... other friends to get the wrong idea about this peaceful protest.”

He glanced to the side, and I noticed the galactic soldiers for the first time. They were standing all about, muscled men with stoic faces that reminded me of Igor. They had weapons, though they were all partially concealed. A bright emblem--the United Galaxy’s-- stood out on their chest.

Seeing how the people reacted to that emblem made me clutch my jacket nervously, making sure my school badge was still hidden. Poor colonies are no friends to the UG, the organization too big to make regulations that wouldn’t tread on anyone’s toes. And I didn’t trust these people to know the difference between the UG and a school it sponsors and created.

The young man wasn’t saying anything, just smiling at us all. It made me vaguely agitated, and I shifted from foot to foot. Glancing around, I could see a few people doing the same thing. I looked over at Kavi, who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Probably the drugs at work.

The young man spoke, “For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Junius Siddhi. And I am a criminal.”

A hush fell over the crowd and they watched him with awe. All the earlier shuffling had been forgotten like it had never taken place. Everyone was focussed solely on him. Even I felt the compulsion to give him my full attention, and it made my skin crawl. Great public speaker or not, nobody got that from me.

“At least,” he said with a small smile. “That is what the United Galaxy would have you believe. I travel to colonies around the universe, talking to people just like all of you. People who are tired and worn down, trying to appease a council of gods” --he sneered at the words-- “that has been in power since long before any of us were born.”

I rolled my eyes. Peasants, so predictable. And they wonder why we rule them? I searched the crowd for openings, trying to find a way out of this maze. I’d have happily shoved people aside--there was nothing more persuasive than a boot to soft flesh, but that would have attracted attention.

A man from the crowd shouted up at Junius, “They tax us, because we don’t have enough god damn dregs aboard our colony.”

Junius nodded emphatically. “Article nine, section five of the Equality Doctrine states that all habitats under UG rule are required to have a certain amount of diversity or face penilation.”

I barely contained my snort. I was all for bashing the government, and there was nothing like a protest to break up the boredom, but these people were too much. If they needed a tax break that badly, they should have just invited more aliens to live amongst them. There were plenty out there looking to relocate.

“I don’t want to live with those animals!” A woman shouted from the crowd, clearing up my confusion. I wrinkled my nose. I really hated speciesists.

But there were more important things than my distaste--hard to believe, I know. I moved closer to Kavi, slowly because it felt like at any moment Junius’s eyes would flick out my way, and this would turn into a witch hunt real quick.

There were frequently protests outside my father’s offices, poor people mostly, unhappy at their lot in life. I’ve joined in a time or two. The security cameras use facial recognition and send the information to the police, and it really pisses Dad off when his security guys point me out.

Protesting--if it doesn’t get out of hand like it so often does in the states--is not a crime in most Earth places. Of course, that’s assuming you’re not annoying an Alkaev who owns the police. That right there is a federal crime. It’s written into the constitution and everything.

Kavi flinched when I grabbed him by the back of his jacket. That was a relief. I wasn’t sure that he’d understood just what kind of party we were crashing. Hopefully, he’d also understand that we had to be careful here--not my specialty in any capacity.

We were about one fourth of the way away from the edge of the horde. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman--the one who’d shouted about animals--push against an officer next to her. She was still spouting crap about the lesser species. Junius seemed to be hanging on her every word, and most heads in the crowd were turned her way. So, when the officer pushed back, all hell broke lose.

People started rushing towards the woman and the UG officer. It started with one person tripping over another in his rush to exact justice on the embodiment of his problems. Then a couple more tripped. And then someone hit someone. And then everyone hit everyone.

Fists and boots were flying everywhere. Mud was being slung around, and a huge pile of it slopped all over me. That was the least of my worries, because the lovely people of this Colony were trying their best to trample me. And their best was pretty good.

I winced as a boot connected with my ribs and almost went down. Spinning with Kavi at my side, I found the guy who belonged to that boot. I implemented a quick combination I’d seen Dru use. The pain on the guy’s face was almost worth using something I’d seen Dru do.  

I looked up, forgetting to bring my fists with me like I always did. I saw it then. A humanoid made of metals and complex computer pieces, all on the surface for anyone to see. It had a long scar running from his eyebrow to his chin, a familiar marring that I’d seen guarding the apartment a hundred times.

The AI was heading into a building not twenty yards from where we were standing. The hut looked like an old saloon, but with less structure and stability. The robot ducked beneath sagging support beams and disappeared from sight. I held onto my aching side and ran after it, weaving between people and outright knocking them down.

“Astra!” Kavi shouted into my ear in protest, but he kept right on my trail until we were on the outskirts of the mob--which was still burning strong in their anger. Then, he grabbed my arm and stopped me from running into the bar.

“What are you doing? The ship’s that way!” He pointed in the opposite direction from where we were running.

Breathing hurt a bit, but I couldn’t help panting from the excursion of getting out of the riot. “I saw...the AI...that chased us...back on...the ship.”

Kavi paled a bit. “Then why are we running towards it? I can’t get expelled.” He squealed that last bit.

I moved closer to the entrance of the bar, trying to peer through the smoke and the dark to get a good look inside. “I don’t think it’s here for us.”

“It’s a school AI. What else could it be here for?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But that just makes it even better.”

The bar wasn’t very full, most of its regulars probably brawling it out in the square. It was also low on seating, a few uneven bar stools were all that sat in the dank room. A pudgy man behind the bar was stacking liquors in different displays. He didn’t look up as we approached.

“Galactic drinking age is eighteen,” he said, still eyeing his bottles. “Come back in a couple years.”

“And every soul around here is the epitome of Galactic lawfulness.” I leaned against the filthy counter, trying not to let my disgust show. I was only marginally successful, but that didn’t matter. I only needed his information, not to be best friends.

“Did you see an AI come in here?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Can’t say that I have.”

I slid a disposable card across the bar at him. It had about a hundred credits on it. My smile had a lot of teeth in it. “Can you say now?”

He went back to his bottles, but nodded to a door at the back of the bar. “Went through that. Not alone, either. But I really couldn’t say who it was with.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed another card towards him. That was why I didn’t like to hang out with commoners. They weren’t even sneaky or clever with their greed. It got boring.

“Kverian. Well off. Never seen him in here before, and I don’t reckon I will again.”

I didn’t bother with any thank yous that he didn’t deserve and that I didn’t mean. The smoke in the room got thicker as you moved through it, and I choked as I ran towards the back door. The bartender’s delay had cost us valuable time, and I wondered if it had been deliberate.

We ran a couple blocks in the only direction the alley had that didn’t end with a wall. About the time my ribs started to twinge again, I was positive we’d lost the pair or they’d turned off into one of the side pathways we’d passed.

I heard the AI before I saw it, and I flung Kavi and I into the shadow of a building before we could expose ourselves to it. Curiously, it was throwing around a large, metal hunk that had probably been trashed by one of the residents. It dropped the metal at the same moment I noticed it.

We pressed ourselves against the dirt and brick hut, barely daring to breath. Kavi looked at me and nodded to where the AI was, but I shook my head. It wasn’t worth risking a glance. After a few minutes of silence, though, we peered around the bend without any signal from the other.

The AI was closer.

I whipped my head back and tried to control my breathing. I rested the base of my skull against the wall and closed my eyes, willing the AI not to hear us or to have noticed our movement. It had galactic class computers, so the probability of that happening was less than being hit by a meteor at that precise moment. And all Earth Colonies have shields against meteor showers.

Kavi’s breathing was ragged, and I wanted to yell at him to shut up--which would have defeated the purpose of being quiet in the first place. Digging my nails into the brick behind me, I wondered what Igor would say if he could see me now. Probably nothing helpful.

Kavi jumped out in front of me with no warning, his hands held up. “Please, don’t expel us!”

I knocked him on the back of the head, but when I joined him around the corner, we were the only ones in the dimly lit alley way. The AI was nowhere in sight. The only evidence that the guard to our apartment had been there was the heap of metal it’d been tossing around.

“Can we go back to the ship, now?” Kavi whined. “I think I’ve had enough excitement for one dream, Astra. Really.”

“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat and staring at the twisted metal. “That might be a good idea.”

Drusus

 

October 16th:

“That might not be a good idea,” I told Mae, who was trying to get out of the hospice bed. “The medbots said no leaving this bed for at least a day or two. It’s barely been twelve hours since you broke your arm.”

The bed was wide, made specifically for Tundrians, but the edges of Mae’s wings hung over. She wasn’t holding them close to her body as was proper and defensible. That, more than the cast and the pale tinge to her skin, said how much pain she was in.

I said, “They left us with a couple pain-patches, Maybe--”

She shook her head. “No drugs.” Mae heaved a big sigh, but stopped the movement halfways through with a wince and a glance at her arm. “I can’t miss our ethics seminar. We only have a few of those per year, and they’re worth a significant portion of our weighted GPA.”

I shrugged. “It’s just a segment of flying class with my aunt. I can get you the notes.”

It wasn’t easy convincing Mae to stay in bed, but convincing Mae of anything is usually an ordeal. I walked silently back to the apartment as the lights started to gain power and illuminate the campus. I didn’t see the human or Kavi, so I changed my suit quickly and left to catch up with them. The last thing I needed was to be caught unsupervised and be late for Eidel’s class.

We were in an actual classroom today, which wasn’t my aunt’s style. Still, the arena was equipped with a few of them. This one was set up similarly to the calculous room, desks in a circle around the outside wall. I somehow ended up between the Animarian and the human girl, something out of a nightmare. They talked. Constantly.

Aunt Eidel walked into the circular room and silence blissfully fell. “Welcome to your first ethics seminar, Greenies.” Her face was grim. “So, how many of you would-be-murders are going into the military? UG, local, or otherwise.”

A lot of hands went up. Mine wasn’t one of them. Eidel already knew my plans, and no one else in the room needed to.

“How about  pilots? Plane crashers would be more accurate.”

Interestingly enough, the human’s hand went up. I barely contained my snort. The idea of her piloting anything was ludacris. She crashed everything she touched. Or looked at for a significant amount of time.

Eidel nodded, like the number was exactly like she expected. “Well, military or pilot, or not, you’re going to need this information. If you want to rise above taking orders and bullets to giving them and pushing papers, you’ll need this seminars. You”--she rounded in on a Scala girl-- “what’s this class about.”

“Um--ethics, ma’am?”

Eidel’s smiles are more unnerving than her frowns. “No. That’s just what is says in the syllabus.” She tucked her hands behind her back and paced. “I can’t teach you right from wrong. For one, they don’t pay me enough. For another, by the time I get you Greenies, you’re already on your path. Where that goes is none of my concern, and it doesn’t keep me up at night.

In this class, I’ll teach you about living on a ship, about the people you’re likely to meet there. I’ll teach you about regulations, complications, and give you tools to deal with those things. How you use the tools is up to you.”

She nodded when everyone stayed quiet, waiting for her next move. “Alright, everyone up. Get into groups of five with the people around you.”

Which meant I was stuck with the Animarian and the human. Borko and Borna, large Scala twins, joined us. It seemed I couldn’t catch a break when it came to partners.

“I’ve sent each of you a strategy driven questionnaire,” Aunt Eidel said. “Fill it out with your group and send it back to me at the end of class.”

We pushed our desks together and pulled out our holos. I whistled through my teeth at the amount of questions my aunt had sent us. The human volunteered to write down our answers and mail them back from her holo a split second later. I grit my teeth and said I’d read them aloud.

The first one said, “Your bunkmate plays music at all hours of the night, and it is effecting your performance. What do you do?”

Borko jumped right in, grinning like a doofus and cracking his knuckles. “I’d make them stop.”

Borna and I nodded, but instead of typing anything, the girl sat back in her seat and crossed her arms. “What good is that going to do? Now you have a bunkmate that hates you.”

“Why should I care what he think of me?” I challenged.

The girl gave me a put upon look. “Because he or she will be less likely to do your bidding in the future. You’ve made an enemy when you could’ve put someone in your debt.”

“How?” Borna asked, eyeing the girl like a bug. It almost made me like Borna, that she obviously felt as little friendliness towards the human as I did.

“I’d sabotage them,” she said. “Tank their grades through the computer system or mess with their tools. Even if it’s temporary, I can tell them that I’ve seen them thrashing in their sleep. I give them the solution of turning off the music to improve their standing, and when it works, I’m the hero.”

I was silent for a moment while she wrote that down. “Wouldn’t work on me.”

She gave me a simpering smile. “Sure it would.”

I didn’t reply, reading the next, “You are in command of a small ship and crew. A popular crew member must be court marshalled. You cannot let him go unpunished, but punish him incorrectly and you will lose moral points and more crew members might disobey you. What do you do?”

“Well,” Borna said. “We must punish them, yes?”

“How about a flogging?” Borko shook his head like he was knocking ideas out of his ears. “A nice public one.”

“That’s what they’d do in the army,” I said reluctantly.

“And the army does everything right,” the girl said sarcastically. “But a flogging is a pointless punishment--it makes him a martyr to the rest of the crew.”

This assignment seemed to fall right in the girl’s area of expertise. If such an area existed, and I had my doubts. I preferred her on the battlefield when I could hit her everytime she annoyed me or set loose her sharp tongue. In this context, I didn’t know how to put her in her place, much as I wanted to.

“And you suggest,” Borna said. “What, exactly?”

The human picked at her nails.“Public humiliation, like cleaning all the bathrooms or assigning him to a below his station duty for awhile. It’d kill two birds with one stone. He’d lose his standing with the crew--a dangerous thing for him to be allowed to keep, because they’re can only be one leader. Hard to respect a man who cleans up your fecies. Secondly, you’ll be seen as merciful and gain points.”

The rest of the class went like that: the girl answering all the question with roundabout answers that I didn’t even understand until five minutes after she said them. She knew how people would react, how to get around that. Everything she said was laced with psychology and sociology (my worst subjects at the training center). And she just knew all about it.

My aunt called me over to her as the rest of the class filed out into the arena to spar for the second half of the period. She waited for everyone to leave before saying anything, which was never a encouraging sign.

She thumbed through the questionnaires on her holo. “You’ve got to do better than that, Drusus.”

“Are the answers wrong?” I asked, barely containing my glee at the thought of knocking the girl down a few more pegs.

“No. They’re perfect. But it wasn’t your work, was it?”

I shook my head.

“You have a lot to learn about people, Dru.” She thrust a thumb towards the window where you could see the human and Animarian walking down the steps to the battlefield. “Greenie over there, much as it pains me to admit it, knows people. Sure, it’s all coldhearted manipulation, but I’ll take what I can get from humans.”  

She stood back and looked at me for a moment. “Work on it.” Eidel went back to her desk and continued grading the responses. “Now, go kick the crap out of her on the field. I don’t like that superior look on her face.”

That, I could do.

I sprinted down the stairs after my fellow classmates. The girl was standing apart with Kavi, who was sitting and looking a bit disheveled. There were dark, green circles under his eyes. He didn’t move when I approached, but the human narrowed her eyes.

“Come for another serving of kick ass?” she asked.

My eyebrows rose, but I made no response, only getting into my ready position. She left Kavi sitting a few yards away and put her hands up in front of her face not far from me. That she had learned that much was a miracle. 

I made my move towards her, striking out at her face. It wasn’t all that fast. I didn’t want this to be over too quickly, before I could savor it. She ducked unsteadily, a hand pressed to her right side. I snorted. She was so out of shape, she had a stitch in in her side already.

The girl teetered back a bit before coming at me with a kick. I let her land it on the outside of my upper thigh, wanting to see what kind of power she could put behind it. My face wrinkled in disgust, because it was like being kicked by a child. She had no muscle strength.

There were AIs everywhere, and at least one of them had to be a medbot, but I held my strength in check, not wanting to call them. Yesterday’s incident and Mae’s broken arm had left me wary.

She slowly brought her hands up, back into the ready position. Planting my feet firmly, I swung my leg at her side. I made it connect with enough force to knock the air out of her, picturing her condescending face in the classroom the whole time.

The girl went down like a rock, gasping and holding her ribs. After a moment’s hesitation, I knelt beside her, wondering if I’d forgotten myself. Agrona knows, I’d thought about breaking a few of her nonessential parts before.

“I barely tapped you,” I said, though I wasn’t altogether sure that was true.

She bared her teeth. “That’s all your kicks ever are. Taps.” But she didn’t get up. “I was just surprised. Fell down.”

Kavi was suddenly right beside us. They were both too close for comfort, so I retreated to my original position. Resetting my position.

“Good,” I said. “Then get up and fight.”

“I told you we should’ve gone to the medbots,” Kavi said quietly to the girl. Not quietly enough to escape my ears, however.

She shook her head at him and struggled to her feet with the Animarian’s help. Pushing him away, she stood there under her own power with labored breathing. Her hands went back up, and she started towards me.

I had been enjoying her pain up until that point, but her approach wiped the smile off my face. If the ribs were just bruised, I didn’t want to take the chance of breaking them and alerting the medbots which could go feral at any moment. If they were broken, a direct blow could kill her, and , fantasies aside, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.

I evaded her, thinking there was something peculiar going on here. My brain did some quick math, adding up the girl’s injuries (the one’s not caused by me), the Animarian’s exhaustion, and the fact that Mae and I had been gone all yesterday, meaning there had been no one around to stop any shenanigans. That all equalled trouble. I just didn’t know what kind of trouble.

I deliberately dropped my guard. “You should listen to your pet and get those ribs checked out.”

She snickered. “Your concern is touching. Sure you’re not just afraid to fight me?”

Maybe a fragment of rib breaking free and embedding in her lung would be good for her, I thought, clenching my fists. At least it’d probably stop her constant yapping.

I forced myself to walk away from the fight and out of the arena. Hopefully, without someone to argue with, she’d just do the sensible thing and get treatment. That way, I wouldn’t have to pull any punches next time. An elated grin invaded my face. I was looking forward to that.

Proud of my manipulation, I was sure she’d get the ribs checked out.

Astra

 

October 29:

I didn’t get the ribs check out, but since the next time Dru and I sparred his punch to the side didn’t kill me, I figured it hadn’t been serious. Kavi was very upset with me over the whole thing--the drugs and the ribs and the putting him in danger, but it didn’t stop him from chatting me ear off or following me around. It was highly annoying, though I wasn’t becoming numb to it, like if a mosquito bit the same patch of skin repeatedly.

I continued to suck at flying and assessments. My grades weren’t flat out dropping, rather they were on a steady slope downward. In fact, the only classes I was doing halfway decent in was ethics and chemistry. The others (tech, life studies, battle, flying, and calculous), however, more than made up for my brief shining moments in those two courses.

Still, I hadn’t given up. I was determined to see this until the very end--or when Earhart kicked my can all the way home. For that reason, I had stayed up most of the night studying for a Life Studies quiz.

When I woke up--late, I might add, Dru and I were the only ones in the room. He’d been up even later than I trying out some new ninja move, so it was no surprise he was still asleep. It was tempting to leave him there, and let him miss the test.

Instead, I dumped my glass of water on his head. He woke up sputtering and reaching for his stun stick. Swing the stick high, he tried to whack me with it. I barely ducked out of the way in time.

But it was worth it.

He pulled on his suit quickly. Mine was already on, including my favorite pair of pink combat boots. Dru gave those a disparaging look, which just made me like them all the more.

We stopped short of going to class, however, because the door leading to the tube was closed and bolted. I’d always seen it shut behind the four of us when we went to class and open back up for us after, but I never dreamed it’d lock two of us in. Feeling the wall for an unobtrusive keypad, I racked my brain to think of a password.

I found a keypad, but the search through my mind proved less fruiting. Glancing back at Dru, I nodded to the piece of tech on the wall. “You know how to get it open?”

He shook his head and looked annoyed with me. Somehow this had become my fault.

Pursing my lips, I punched in a code that I’d seen one of the AI guards use. Excellent eyesight along with the malicious intent to use it are two of my many talents.

The door slide open to the the smooth, dark expanse of the tube. Jumping immediately, Dru and I didn’t give any thought to the anti-gravity, which had always worked before. I left my stomach behind, the air cutting at my flailing limbs as we plummeted. Out of the corner of my eye, Dru made small movements with his wings, but the space was too small for flight.

We were only on the first floor, but it felt like we fell farther than that. My bones, rather than the ground, shuddered on impact. I felt like I swallowed my tongue and tried to choke in breaths while untangling my legs from Dru’s.

I pressed my fingers into the foam we’d landed on. “This mat leaves a lot to be desired.” Getting to my feet, I dusted myself off. “Come on, we’ll be late to class.”

But we weren’t on the ground level. The hole in the tube didn’t open up to the park like area of the commons in front of our apartment. It opened up to a small boiler room--or something that looked like one, as I doubted this state of the art campus had any rooms that antiquated.

There were tables set up around the small, dimly lit room that looked like they were made of cardboard. The piping was all exposed, running along the rounded walls and ceiling. A drop of water dripped from one of the bent ones--there were many-- and landed on my forehead. It wasn’t clear.

Making a face, I wiped it off quickly. “This place isn’t in very good shape.”

“Yes.” Dru walked over to one of the tables, lifting up one of the many piles of scraps burdening it. It was cylindrical shaped with the wires exposed and the metal slashed and dented. “Too bad of shape. The academy goes through renovations every year to keep it in excellent condition.”

I picked up a similar hunk of metal, though it was much smaller, about the size of my finger but a little longer. “Looks like they missed a spot.”

He didn’t reply, but shuffled over to where we’d landed, peering in and up to the tube we’d fallen through. Crouching down, he ran his hands over the sides and bottom of it. The skin of his hands came away filthy, caked in soot and dirt. It made me vehemently glad I hadn’t tried it.

“We’re below ground. Must’ve blown past the exit to the commons,” Dru said. “Which shouldn’t be possible, because there is no below ground at campus. There’s a thin layer of dirt under everything, but that’s it. Under that’s the engines and mechanics.”

That was probably the longest utterance I’d ever heard him say. “This doesn’t look like an engine room--or any room that’s regularly visited by people.”

Nodding, he didn’t turn around when I moved to stand next to him. I really didn’t want to touch anything, but I grit my teeth and felt around for a keypad. If it came down to getting a little dirty or getting stuck down here with Dru forever, there was no contest. Especially since death by boredom happens so slowly.

“Found--”

A rattling noise cut me off.  I’d set my hunk of metal on top of Dru’s and back onto the table. And now, my little piece of scrap was bending in the middle and crawling towards us. It moved at an agonizingly slow pace, like an inchworm. Or like a zombie coming to eat our brains.

Dru got closer, giving it a good once over as it changed direction miniscule to go after him. I didn’t get to enjoy that for long, though, because the other pieces had started moving too.

Most of the hunks of metal didn’t have any way to get around, shaped like logs or big rocks, so they just vibrated maliciously at their spot on the table. One piece, however, was making great headway, already passing the inchworm and it had just started. It reminded me a bit of my spider shoes, though it didn’t have eight legs, only five. But it perched up the similarly, it’s body held above--and slightly behind, not like my shoes--the legs.

I backed up, suddenly not seeing shoes at all. I held my hand out in front of me and made my fingers walk around. It was the same. There were no logs, rocks, inchworms, or spiders. The pieces were thighs, heads, fingers, and mobile, detached hands.

“Dru,” I said slowly. “We should get out of here.”

He nodded, not even seeming to care that I called him by his hated nickname. Obviously, he’d made the connection like I had. I was already at the keypad, so I just spun around and furiously typed in the code.

“Access denied,” the computer system chirped.

My eyes widened. I punched it in again, taking care with each number, double checking it in my head. My breath caught, and I pressed enter.

“Access denied.”

I shot a frantic glance behind me. The hand was just a few feet from us now. Whipping my head back around, I went to type the code in again.

Dru caught my wrist. “Stop. Too many wrong enterings and the system will shut down.”

I wrenched my arm away. “Then, hopefully, we can get someone down here--now.” I pulled out my holo, but the call feature wouldn’t activate. “You’ve got to be kidding me! It’s not working.”

Frowning, he took out his--with a little more urgency than he’d had before. A few clicks later, he said. “Mine either. There must not be a signal.”

I blinked. “Is that even possible?”

“It hap--Ow!” He flinched and looked down at his leg.

The metal hand was wrapped around his calf, squeezing the life out of it, with nails digging into the flesh. He kicked out, trying to shake it off, but it wasn’t letting go, like a raccoon with something shiny.

I screamed--not proud of it, and something rustled from behind a curtain at the edge of the room. Something a lot bigger than the pieces crowding in on us. Most few just a couple of feet away by now. I clamped my mouth shut and turned to the keypad, taking a deep breath before typing in the code.

“Access denied.”

“Deny this,” I said, ripping the panel off the wall to reveal the raw, colorful wires underneath.

Dru inhaled sharply, still trying to free his leg. “What did you do? You’ve trapped us in here, human.”

I pulled wires out frantically, looking to their connections to find the ones I’d need.“Pipe down, Kver. Or I’ll leave you down here with your new friend.”

I felt something at my pant leg, and I moved even faster. I peeled the protective covering off the three wires and pushed the bare, metal tips together, sending a little jolt through my fingers. Pulling my hand back, I let out a little yelp.

The doors above us slid open, and I grabbed Dru by the back of collar, pulling him into the tube after me. We didn’t have time to disconnect the hand, the other metal parts too close to us, so I just had to keep myself away from his leg--easier said than done in the tiny tube.

For a moment, nothing happen. We stood in tube where we’d crashed, watching the body parts crawl towards us. Then, the marvelous, leave your stomach behind feeling of weightlessness kicked in, and we were soaring upward, out of that hell hole.

The tube pitched us out onto the common’s cool grass. I rolled over my shoulder and collapsed into a heap. One of Dru’s wings landed right on my--and it was a lot heavier than it looked. I exhaled all the air in my lungs in a harsh cough. The weight was gone in the next instant though, and we stared at each other with mutual dislike.

There were more pressing matters, however. I gripped the mechanical hand with my human ones, planting my feet firmly. Gritting his teeth, Dru glared at me as I tried to pull the thing off. he cooperated though, holding his leg as still as possible.

“This,” I said while panting from the struggle. “AI part is putting up quite the fight.”

He wiggled his fingers under the palm, trying to help add force to the pulling. “Illegal AI part. Any broken or malfunctioning robot must be sent to the scrap heap for incineration.”

I was putting all my weight into it, but I managed to shrug. The lawfulness of it all didn’t concern me as much as it did Dru. Or at all, really. I liked to think of galactic laws as galactic guidelines--to be ignored or used at my own discretion.

I pulled the hand free and dropped it before it could latch onto me. It plopped down on the grass, wriggling around and trying to get off its “back”. I toppled over not far from it, the force of releasing it knocking me off balance. Scrabbling away, I crab crawled over to Dru.

“Illegal, legal, I don’t care. Let’s just lock it up before someone catches us with it and--”

“--grounds us for the field trip to Parvu,” he agreed.

I nodded, uncomfortable with any moment where we saw eye to eye. “Or worse.”

Drusus

 

November 15th:

The next month flew by in a paranoid haze while I was waiting for the “or worse” the human girl had been talking about. I’d shut away the hand in a titanium box with a thumb print lock supplied by the girl. I didn’t ask why she had something like that among her possessions, didn’t want to know. But, despite the security, I ran home every day, close to hyperventilation that the hand would be gone.

That hand was all the ammunition someone would need to search the rest of my things and find the one fourth of the way completed map. And then I’d be gone. Back to Tundris without finishing...anything. I couldn’t let that happen.

“What to bring, what to bring,” the human mused from the bunk across from mine and Mae’s.

The Animarian on the top bunk hung himself over the side, peering at the girl while upside down. “We’ll only be gone a couple of hours. You don’t need to bring anything.”

The anti-gravity was on, making me float silent above the mattress, meaning Kavi didn’t crack open his skull when the human pulled him down. ‘Have I taught you nothing? You never go on an adventure without supplies. Unless you’re in a hurry. Or it’d be more fun without them.”

I shook my head, heading into the private bathroom and pulling off my night suit in favor of my school suit. Unlike the ones for everyday activities, this one was thicker, completely insulated against the chill of space. It also had a metal rim that would connect with our space helmets.

Upon entering the room, Mae looked over at me from her perch on the top bunk with open animosity. Her arm, though healing quickly, wouldn’t be ready to come out of its cast for another week or two. Meaning she had to sit out the field trip, as the suit material was too tight and unwieldy to get over the arm without risking further injury. She’d been having to sit out of a lot of things lately, and it hadn’t improved her mood.  

“I’ll bring you back a holo and in depth notes of everything we see,” I promised.

She didn’t say anything, choosing to sulk instead.

Only the first years taking the young Professor Talib’s Basic Technology Studies were going on the trip to Keskus, the technological capital of the galaxy as well as the geographical one of the world Parvu. We were taking a shuttle, so we’d been told to meet in the arena. Excitement racing through our veins, the Animarian and I practically ran all the way there. The human skipped.

When we got there, I was surprised to see my aunt was there, tapping her foot. Professor Talib, a lanky former Academy student, was right next to her, looking excited if a little green around the edges. He adjusted his glass, and I found myself thinking that he was alright. For a human.

“Alright, class,” he said, he motioned to the bulky shuttle. “Everybody onboard.”

A little less than one hundred of us started piling on the dated looking ship. It didn’t have the clean lines of a Cruiser, or any kind of camouflage capabilities. It was as flamboyant and ugly as the giant, green, Earth school bus we’d been shuttled to the school on at the beginning of the semester.

My aunt stopped Professor Talib when he would’ve boarded with us. “Dorian, I just don’t feel comfortable--”

“Relax, Profess-- uh, Eidel,” he stammered with a smile. “I passed all my flying examinations. You made sure of it.”

I hung back to hear what else was being said.

“Still,” she said. “I’d feel better if there were more chaperones for this.”

He shrugged. “Me too, but they can’t be spared. Everyone is teaching class, and we can’t stop the other grades’ progress. Earhart sent us a dozen AIs as well.”

My aunt stepped back, allowing Professor Talib to pass, but her face said that was the opposite of what she wanted to do. “That’s not nearly the reassurance to me that Isra meant it to be,” she said quietly.

I let the crowd push me through the hatch, walking to my seat next to the girl and Kavi and buckling in with numb fingers. The fact that school AIs were coming with us was no comfort to me either.

Flexing my calf, I shook off the feeling that hand was still gripping it. It was fear, plain and simple. And I wouldn’t allow that feeling into my heart. Those body parts had been an isolated incident. Two incident, I supposed, if you counted the attack that led to Mae’s broken arm.... But I wouldn’t let that turn me into some child afraid of his own shadow.

Professor Talib wasn’t my aunt by any means, but at least he wasn’t the human girl, either. We got up into the air without issue, and passed through the gravity field with only minor hiccups. Glaring, I watched my bunkmates giggle and bounce around with the bumps.

The ship was already parked on the outskirts of Parvulian space, so the ride didn’t take long. Professor Talib shifted into warp, the shuttle gave a great jolt, like we were splitting in two, and then sped off through the free space.

Unlike when anchoring to a colony, which is just a immobile ship a couple cities wide, the Academy ship couldn’t just go right up to the surface of the planet. The amount of power needed to land without crushing the city we were docking at and then rise back into the sky was more than the ship possessed at any time. But we weren’t on the ship, and the smaller shuttle didn’t have those limitations.

A few minutes made long by Kavi’s and the human’s babbling later, we were entering the atmosphere. Even with the sun shields on, the heat and illumination was almost unbearable. The planet looked like giant, circular san storm. There was no vegetation on the surface, very few animals either. It was all desert as far as the eye could see.

The sun was closer and more potent than on other planets. Particularly Tundris, whose sun was farther away than most, giving us our icy climate. I longed for the sharp bite of the wind now against all this muggy heat.

“Stick together, students!” Professor Talib called over the buzz of kids getting off the shuttle and swarming down the sheltered dock.

AIs were stationed on ours sides and at our flanks. Strategic points, but it made me feel trapped rather than secure. I wished Mae was here, instead of the girl and the Animarian, to have my back. Though, it was probably better that she wasn’t. Mae was running out of arms.

We were covered by yards of steel, insulation, and air conditioning units, but, since the docks, unlike the civilization, were on the surface of Parvu, it felt like someone had stuck me in an oven and welded it shut.

I took a pressurized tube down to the upper level of Keskus. A couple hundred foot drop with the two bumbling idiots was not pleasant, but, out of sight of the AIs, I felt my heart lift with elation. I was in the capital city of Parvu, where all the greatest tech in all the galaxy has come from in the past couple hundred years. I wondered what kind of weapons they were working on and whether we’d get a look.

Our tour guides, tiny specimens like Professor Iqbal the math and science teacher, took us lower, to one of the factories. What we saw there was no simple assembly line, but a craftsman’s workshop. There were scanners, 3D printers, and other machines so alien I had no idea what their functions could be. At least a hundred small, snouted Parvulians were working tirelessly on their projects.

One of them was wearing some kind of formal attire with drapes and shawls instead of suits similar to the school’s uniform. She came over to us, smiling and trying to quiet a hundred kids in a candy shop. Obviously, she was not a teacher or a worker.

Professor Talib whistled loudly and directed our attention to the small woman.

“Hello, boys and girls,” she said slowly. We each had been issued mobile translators, but they weren’t as sophisticated as the ones the Academy gave us, just earpieces coded to our origin language. “My colleagues and I are very excited to share with you the process of invention. Professor Talib has told me you are all part of his tech class, so hopefully this won’t be too foreign.”

She smiled again, and I came to the determination that I didn’t like her. “You’ll be splitting into groups--”

Professor Talib interrupted, “--with your roommates. Each group--except for mine--will be issued an AI escort.”

My blood ran cold, and I didn’t hear what else they said. I didn’t like to pray to my gods for the small things. Mother said that was a good way to invite trouble, but I found myself clenched my fists and saying their holy names, hoping against hope they’d hear me and put us with Talib.

While I was doing that, one of the AIs came to stand by us. I flinched away from it before I could stop myself, earning me a scrutinizing look from the girl. Baring my teeth at her, I straightened, showing the spine I’d worked hard for all my life.

“Each group will be going to a predetermined station.” Talib smiled at our confused faces. “The AI knows where. We’ll rotate stations after twenty minutes until each group has been to every one. Questions?”

Is it too late for me to wait on the shuttle?

“Good.” He tapped something into his holo. “Your time starts in three minutes. AIs, take your students to their first destination.”

The girl followed the AI without hesitation despite our recent encounter with the robotic body parts and their shop. Clearly, she had less intelligence than I’d originally pegged her with, which didn’t seem possible.

The corridors were steel and had no decoration, much like the ones on Tundris. The Academy halls had lots of pictures and bright colors, which had annoyed me at first. Now, I wanted those distractions back, because I was having trouble keeping track of how long we’d traveled.

“Is it much farther?” I asked the AI.

It didn’t turn back or answer.

The three of us were silent for a moment, walking side by side. It was an odd feeling, closing ranks with these two. I guess even a human and an Animarian are better backup than a super strong and intelligent robot that could turn on you at any moment. Still, I’d be glad when I could go back to hating them openly.

“I demand to know where we’re going,” the girl said in a haughty voice that could only belong to someone of the upper upper crust.

No response.

The girl lapsed into shocked silence. It was probably the first time someone had disobeyed a direct order from her. Snorting, I thought how glad I was to be here to see it.

The Animarian, strangely, spoke up next. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he said with more firmness than I would’ve thought him capable of.

The AI made a sudden turn and stopped right in front of a door. We all stared at it for a moment, and then the robot motioned Kavi inside.

“Bathroom acquired,” it said.

“That it listens to,” the girl muttered as Kavi sheepishly slipped inside.

I walked over to the door on the opposite hall. It seems we’ve come to an edge in the construct. The small window hole shows nothing but darkness, but its labeled with the Parvulian word for emergency exit. Stepped closer, I attempted to get a better look at the shoot, though it was pitch black.

“So this just sucks you up and out?” the girl asked, suddenly right beside me.

I nodded. “Yes, but it goes to the surface, which is heavily irradiated. I’d rather risk whatever is down here than certain, painful death up there.”

“More fun that way, anyway.”

I hadn’t been paying attention to the AI, a rookie mistake that I thought had been beaten out of me long ago. I blamed the girl. Still do to anyone who asks.

With the two of us practically pressed up against the pressurized glass, the door opened, and we fell through.

It was nothing like a gravity tube, not being powered by electricity but by air pressure. It sucked as up, squeezing our organs like we were ten thousand leagues under the sea. I screamed but the rushing air took it away. We raced up so high, I was afraid gravity would have its way and bring us crashing back doom to our doom before our organs could be turned to soup.

Lights exploded in my head, and it didn’t help to shut my eyes. I crashed into something hard and a cloud of dust invaded my lungs. I coughed and retched, barely aware of someone next to me doing the same thing.

I sat up, staring at thousands of miles of sand and wind. My throat felt dry just thinking about the lack of water, but I didn’t have to worry about that. That wasn’t what was going to kill us. Even after only seconds of exposure, I could feel a faint stinging on my skin.

“We need to find a way back inside.” I yanked the girl to her feet when she would’ve laid down. While I wasn’t tripping over myself to save her, I also didn’t want to explain why I’d left her for dead. Somehow, I didn’t think “she annoyed me to the point of insanity” would be a good enough excuse.

“Didn’t the tour guide say there’s no access from the outside apart from ships? Last time I checked, neither of us were equipped with a docking station or an airlock,” she drawled.

She thought this was funny. That we were trapped out here, baking in these suits without even a helmet to stave off some of the sun’s rays. I saw red that had nothing to do with a giant star in the sky.

“We’re going to die from radiation in twenty minutes--or less! Can you take nothing seriously?”

“No,” she said, eyes half lidded. “You gonna use that fist or let it idle?”

I realized then that I’d raised my hand as if to strike her. Returning it to my side hastily, I tried to keep a cool head. A feat that proved impossible when faced with certain death from an enemy I couldn’t fight.

The girl walked back over to the tube, rapping her knuckles on the steel sealed entrance we’d been shot out of. “The mechanism that blew us out is activated by the exit opening, right? It’s just air rushing out of the corridor and into the airless tube.”

“Yes,” I said miserably. “That robot tried to kill us.”

“You can only hang one man at a time. Something my grandma says--lovely woman. I’m sure Satan has a special corner reserved for her.” She stomped on the metal. “Point is, let’s focus on not getting executed before we start tying the noose for someone else.”

I moved over to her, ready to break the bad news.“We’re miles from the docks, at least. No way we can cover that distance before the radiation kills us,” I said gently.

Still eyeing the reinforced hatch, she whistled through her teeth. “Right you are. Now, this hole, what would happen if we opened it from this side?”

“We can’t,” I said dully. “It’s held indestructible and held together by thousands of pounds of force. I know good, old Tundrian tech when I see it.”

“But if we did?” She shifted from foot to foot in her crouch.  

“It’d probably suck us back in. Maybe. But even if it did, there’s no guarantee the door would open. We could just be smushed.”

“Hang a man at a time, Dru.” Getting up, she walked away from me, eyes on the ground.

“Don’t call me that,” I said without any heat. I was getting used to the nickname I hated, but at least I wouldn’t be alive long enough to shame myself by liking it.

The girl turned back around, holding our school issued packs in each hand. She had a devilish grin on her face, and I loathed her for getting any enjoyment out of this situation. We were mortal danger. You’d think that deemed a little decorum from everyone involved.

She dumped out all the contents at our feet, and I stared at it numbly. There were two holos, her’s and mine, a few granola bars, and a heap of book tags. I frowned at those. The human didn’t strike me as a recreational reader, too much the real life thrill seeker.

“You know, one of the best escapes I can brag of to this date required me to blow up a sewer pipe system.”

“Charming.”

She shrugged. “I needed out. And people put way more safe guards on doors and windows. I could’ve put two tuns of C4 on those babies, and they would’ve held. But the toilet? No one expects you to go out that way. Not even a camp designed to keep persistent prepubescent kids under lock and key.”

“This isn’t a toilet,” I pointed out helpfully.

My skin was starting to itch and turn red. The suit was well insulated, and that kept me so hot it was hard to breath past it. The sweat would’ve soaked through the suit ten times already if it hadn’t been for the absorbing qualities. It kept the heat dry, unfortunately, and my body tried to keep up with it, losing vital nutrients along the way that I couldn’t replace.

“No, but the same principle applies.” She slammed my holo into the steel, cracking it in half. “The Parvulians are using this as an exit-- in the middle of no-where, buried in sand. They’re not expecting anyone to knock.”

I grabbed at my broken holo, but she snatched it away, flicking me on the nose. Going back to rummaging through the stuff, she looked away from me. “Gotta be in here somewhere,” she muttered, going back to the empty bags.

She ripped open the fabric on my bag. I made a noise of protest, but she paid me no heed and kept feeling around for something. I had the sinking feeling I knew what she was looking for. I didn’t know how she’d figured out about it, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted her to have it. Even if she didn’t know what to do with it.

“Ha!” she huffed, pulling out my stun stick. “Knew you wouldn’t come empty handed.”

I felt a faint color rise in my cheeks. “I was taught never to go anywhere without a weapon.”

She mock gasped. “Even when it’s against the rules? Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Dru.”

“Don’t call me that.”

She carelessly tossed the stun stick in the air, like it was a baton. Snatching it out of the air, I made sure to grab it by the right end. I could only imagine how it would thrill her if I’d shocked myself into unconsciousness.

“This” -- I brandished the stick by her face-- “is not a toy.” It twirled around my fingers effortlessly, but my hands and forearms still remembered the years of stings and shocks to get that sequence right. “It’s motion and touch sensitive. It’s swung in a purposeful way and the tip connects to something--”

“Shocky shocky. Got it. Does it have to be swung?” she asked. “Or would a good flick do it?”

I tried to pull the collar of the suit away from my singed looking skin.“I guess. What are you planning?”

She took the stun stick from me and started banging it against the steel. Sparks flew like cobalt lightning, and the weapon began to emit a strange buzzing sound. I sat back and watched, not lifting a finger or saying a word in protest. Most assuredly, she had lost it, but I was also getting used to her smashing my belongings.

When the girl laid it down on the ground again, there was a dent near the tip that looked like someone had punched in drywall. She then pulled the cracked in half holo closer to us, pulling out of wealth of brightly colored wires. Watching, I tried to fan my skin to normal temperatures. The girl’s looked just as bad as mine, angry, red blisters arising amongst the cooked, pink flesh. By my calculations, we had a matter of minutes left.

She attached the wires to the tips of the stun stick, farther north than the damage. Setting the entire contraption on the steel trap, she stood and motioned for me to do the same.

“Ok,” she said. “The damage to the base of the stick should keep it from electrocuting the holo until we’re at a safe distance. Hopefully. Then the current will short out of the power cell, and the holo will explode, taking the hatch with it.”

“There’s enough power in that thing to blow our way through the steel?”

She nodded. “Since it’s not a steel wall. Should work; it has openings. Problem is we have to be back to the hatch before the pressurization surge stops and the emergency door closes. Otherwise, we’ll be pancakes.”

I nodded, and, before she could talk more and make  me wish the radiation would hurry up, I  kicked the stunstick. Almost feeling the pulse building up like a force inside of my own body, I shoved the girl as hard as I could and dived after her. To outsiders, it probably looked heroic, but, honestly, I’d been wanting to do it since we got shot out of Parvu.

When the holo exploded, my eardrums popped, sending everything into a numb kind of silence. The ground shook in an expanding circle till it passed us.

I sprang up through the dust, dragging the girl who was spitting at me like some kind of deranged animal.The sand whirled around the hatch like a mini volcano as the mechanism sucked it in. Grit invaded my mouth and nipped at my already raw skin.

The hole down was like vortex into eternity, no light only an endless expanse of steel waiting to teach us about our own mortality.

I dove head first.

Astra

 

November 15th:

“You’re both just lucky you didn’t land head first--not that it would’ve done that much damage!” Professor Talib was practically foaming at the mouth. “The search party was minutes away from finding you.”

“And we were seconds away from death by radiation.” I winced as a medbot applied some kind of cream to my skin. They’d already reversed the effects of most of the internal damage done by the sun, but my complexion still looked like a cooked pig.

He sat down putting his head in his hands. “How could you two be so foolish? Messing with the emergency exit, of all the things.... You’ll be getting detention. I’ve already spoken with Earhart on that.”

I opened my mouth to protest--we’d been attacked, after all-- my insides suddenly cold. Earhart had heard what we’d supposedly done, and all I was getting was detention? I didn’t believe that for a second. Dru stopped my mouth, though, shaking his head vigorously. I wasn’t in the business of following orders, but he had helped me save my life. Maybe he deserved a reward.

Professor Talib sat back, looking at us now. “So. What do you think about detention for the rest of the year on cleaning detail?”

_____

February 20th:

“It sucks. That’s what I think about it,” I answered Kavi’s similar question four months later. “How am I supposed to get my grades up--which are in the crapper--if I have to spend three days a week cleaning up after these commoners. They’re disgusting. All of them. Like Earhart needs any more excuses to kick me out of here; I’m starting to lag even in my best classes!”

I peeled a stray wad of gum from my gloves throwing it into the waste basket in our apartment. Lying face down on his bunk, Dru didn’t make any move to join in my lamenting, but that was to be expected. God forbid, he talk for a change. After months of silence for hours on up--except for the sound of scrubbing-- my own voice was beginning to lose its appeal. I never thought I’d see the day on that one.

I pulled off the soiled suit and changed into a fresh one. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for a shower or even a decontamination spray. Flying class was in ten minutes, and Professor Accia was just looking for an excuse--apart from the one she already had: my ineptitude-- to stick it to me.

“Well, Greenies,” the professor said, pacing around a ship parked in the middle of the battle field. “I’m sure this is will be an important day in your otherwise miserable and insignificant lives.”

I froze upon closer inspection of the ship. Not fully believing my eyes, I stepped closer, so close I could almost trace the star emblem on the “bumper”. It was the most beautiful thing in the room--not including myself, of course.

Professor Accia stepped in front of the class. “This is a Cruiser with off-world capabilities. It’s a sophisticated machine, and it’s an honor to fly it.” The whole group was hanging on her every word, salivating at the mouth while they kept their hungry eyes on the ship. “None of you are going to have that honor for a couple more years.”

The balloon in the room burst, and instead of air, the student’s hopes and dreams flooded out into the atmosphere, dissipating as fast as they’d formed.

She wasn’t going to let us fly it. She’d brought it under our noses, like sharks to blood, and she wasn’t going to let us operate it. My head felt like a million angry bees were swarming around, my face heating and my blood rushing.

“Still,” she continued. “That doesn’t mean you can’t look--at the outside.” Professor Accia laughed. “Don’t you all look so down trodden. Before you know it you’ll be juniors, and you’ll be the ones studying it.”

If I lasted that long.

Her face sobered. “The ship won’t be here long, just while the juniors map the controls. And while it is, it’ll be under strict twenty-four hour surveillance.” I didn’t turn to look at her, my gaze still on the ship, but I could feel her eyes burning into the side of my face. “So nobody get any ideas.”

But I had ideas. And telling me to lose them was like fanning a fire--or pouring gasoline on it. It was a bad idea, worse than stealing that cruiser from under the AI guard’s nose. Professor Accia would no doubt be expecting me, but I couldn’t stop myself from creeping out of the apartment that night after all the lights had gone out and my roommates were snoring.

I met no resistance in the alleys and shadows, but that was to be expected. They were probably consolidating their forces around the actual ship. That would make it harder to get in. Smiling, my stomach clenched in anticipation.

The outer ring of AIs--only three--was easily penetrated. They weren’t quite as sophisticated as the guard that night a few months back, only relying on sight. And I could go unnoticed when I wanted to.

The next obstacle came when I noticed the force field generators, little cubes set up in an oval around the ship. My revelation had almost come a moment too late, as I had been about to breach the barrier.

My palms were damp as I examined one of the cubes. I couldn’t tell just by looking at it if it would’ve set off some kind of alarm, propelled me away, or left me overdone like my grandma’s turkey at Thanksgiving. Choose any option, though, and I would’ve been exposed.

I pulled one of Dru’s stun sticks from the holster around my calf. He carried enough of them to supply a small army, so I didn’t think he’d miss this one. Besides, I’d developing a liking to it during our time on Parvu. And what I wanted, I got.

I flicked my wrist and pressed the tip of the stun stick to the cube. Letting out an invisible flair, it overloaded the cube’s circuits. The block started steaming and then went dark.

I didn’t need to hit the other ones. With the circle broken, they couldn’t keep up a force field anyway, and it’d look less suspicious this way, like one of the cubes just went out.

Pushing a concealed button on the outside of the craft, I glanced behind me to make sure the AIs were still content roaming in a circular motion. Luckily, their eyes were outwards, not towards me, because the next moment the hatch sprung open and landed at me feet with a vocal thud.

I winced, but continued onto the ship without any further ado. The AIs might be deaf, but they could feel sound waves on their feet just as well as anyone else. Slowing down only to activate hatch closing, I ran into the cockpit.

There were more controls--the understatement of the century-- in there than on all the simulation ship I’d crashed combined. The whole little oval room was lit up with reds, green, blue, and yellows from the myriad of glowing buttons and readouts.

The stabilizers and altitude controls were, thankfully, the same, just a slightly different color. I breathed a sigh of relief, activating the stabilizers before turning it on and then pressing the altitude. I rose through the air, leaving my stomach behind but gaining a wealth of excitement and the feeling of utter rightness as I took to the air.

The AIs were scrambling below, like chickens with their heads cut off. I chuckled, but turned on the opaque windows so as not to be seen. It’d been a miracle Kavi and I hadn’t been caught, just luck really; we were sloppy. I didn’t intend to be lucky this time. I intending to be skilled.

I took a deep breath, looking for the acceleration. “You can do this. You’ve read all the books, practiced this in a million simulations. You can do this.” The chant got faster when I couldn’t find the acceleration lever.

It off to the side. Thank god, it was off to the side. I allowed myself a brief victory dance, and then I was off into the night.

The off-world ship didn’t feel any different from the other Cruiser I’d piloted. It still wobbled and bobbed while I tried to keep it in the sky. The only notable difference came when I exited the ship’s gravity field, and it didn’t shudder like someone was trying to knock it out of the sky. The bobbing became more prominent, but I attributed that to my shaking hands.

I was about to let off a giddy laugh, when the monitor spotted something a couple miles in front of us. I brought up a screen with scouter cameras, extreme zoom technology. The craft looked exactly like mine--except maybe it was being piloted better. My angles must have been off, because I didn’t see anyone in the cockpit.

Curious, I pulled up the life force sensor, and it came up negative. There were no heart beats on that ship. I pursued my lips, but was about to shrug it off when I noticed something. On the side of the ship, like on mine, was a minimalist emblem of an eagle flying right off the page. The Academy’s insignia.

I adjusted my course with great difficulty and quite a bit of jolting and followed the ship all the way to a colony in the middle of nowhere.

I docked a few minutes after them, keeping a smart distance from it so they wouldn’t recognize the emblem on my ship like I had theirs. Even though my ship was telling me no one was on board. But ships didn’t fly themselves--without someone on board to activate autopilot. I hopped out of the hatch, hat and jacket covering me up, thinking that I loved a conundrum.

I started over towards the other ship, but ducked behind an ancient carrier when I saw a man exit it. He was swathed in a lot of clothes--too many even for the bitter temperatures. The piles of clothes hung off him, and it was impossible to make out his shape or any distinguishing features.

I bit my lip for a moment, watching him going until he was almost completely obscured by a crowd of Tundrians. I hadn’t meant to make any pit stops and nothing could really be gained from following this man. Nothing good, anyway.

Shrugging, I tried to blend in with the crowd as I tracked the stranger. It was a difficult feat when everyone around you had wings. In fact, I hadn’t seen one Earthling, Animarian, Syreni, or Parvulian since setting foot on this tiny, farming community. I was hoping they were just off in the fields or something, and I wasn’t the only human here, the sore toe sticking out.

The man slipped into a bar--which seemed to be the place to go when you wanted to lose me--about twenty feet in front of me. I waited for a moment outside, trying to find a window to peer in, so I wouldn’t be going in blind. Coming up empty, I charged in, optical disadvantage or no.

The area around the bar was surprisingly well lit, but the light end there, causing me to stumble through the rest of the establishment after a man dressed in black. I saw him finally, nothing more than a shape in the darkness, sitting next to a man with large, translucent wings.

I slipped quietly into the booth next to them. The seats were high enough to ensure I wasn’t seen, but I hunched over anyway. Pressing my ear against the cushion, I strained to hear their conversation.

“...would be beneficial to both of us if this were seen to completion...no evidence....” That was the companion. He had a proud sort of voice that reminded me of my father’s. I instantly disliked him.

The man in all the clothes was more clear. I could almost hear everything he said. “My people are eager to do business with you, provided you....”

I bit down on my fist to keep from gasping in surprise. Those words had been said in monotone. Something that shouldn’t have sounded specifically familiar, but I knew that voice.

It was the AI who had tried to kill Dru and I.

The Scala said, “Earhart is a fool...security measures....”

I couldn’t even take a moment to revel in the fact that someone shared my opinion of Professor Earhart, because they were talking about the school and security and performing a service for one another. This deal reeked so bad it was almost an actual stench in my nose.

“Then we understand each other,” the Scala companion said, suddenly standing just in front of me, having exited the booth. He wasn’t facing me, but I tensed up. Rookie mistake. “I will see you at the Galactic Peace Conference. There, we will speak more of your payment.”

The Tundrian left, followed a moment later by the AI. I watched it go. Now that I was looking for it, I able to see the mechanical, stiff movements he was making under the fluid clothing. I waited a lot longer than either of them had to make my escape; I didn’t want to risk running into either character in some dark alley.

After m waiting was up, I sprinted all the way back to the ship, putting it through the motions with a cool confidence I didn’t feel. The ride back was less rocky, filled instead with inner turmoil instead of physical.

I hadn’t realized until entering the ship’s gravity field again, that I hadn’t been planning on coming back. I’d had the chance to fl off into the sunset with the ship of my dreams, and I was headed back to a hell hole. A hell hole that would kick me out--doing the right thing or no--when I told them how I came by this important information, sparse though it was.

I wasn’t sure if this was the “right thing” Igor was always talking about, because it had never mattered to me. I wasn’t even sure if this was the smart thing, the strategical thing, which was supposed to be my area of expertise. I slammed on the brakes and put the craft on the battlefield, thinking that morals were no fun. I’d have to go back to ignoring them straight away.

Stepping off of the hatch and onto the slightly moist dirt, I could feel the difference in the air from when I’d last been there. The the cube field was still disabled, but the AIs were gone, and someone was watching me from the shadows.

A slow clapping started, and I spun to stare in the opposite direction from where I was facing to where my voyeur was lurking. She emerged without further ado, and my stomach shriveled into the size of a kidney stone. If this was the right thing, I would definitely think twice about doing it in the future.

“I must say, breaking the force field was inspired,” Professor Accia said. “But you really should have checked the craft for silent alarms.” She tapped the side of the ship where a small, innocuous chip was stuck. “This alerted me as soon as you set foot inside.”

I rushed over to her. “Professor Accia, I went--”

“--for a joy ride around campus. I expect.” She was still looking at the ship.

I gulped. “Well, not exactly.... But I saw this AI, and it was--”

Professor Accia raised her eyebrows. “You managed to get by a lot of the AIs on campus tonight, then.”

“It wasn’t--”

She spoke right over me again. “It’s a good thing for you, Greenie, that you didn’t stray any farther. Any more than a little jaunt around the ship, and I’d be obligated to report it to Professor Earhart.”

With a sinking feeling in my gut, I realized what she was saying. For some inexplicable reason, she was willing to let me go. But if I actually told her the extent of my crimes, she’d have to expel me. And if I didn’t, no one would know about the threat to the school.

I opened my mouth again, but Professor Accia spoke first, staring up at the sky. “Beautiful night, Greenie. Perfect for flying.” She whistled through her teeth softly, shifting her wings with a barely audible rustle. “There are a lot of those at the Academy. Get out of my sight if you want to find that out for yourself.”

I ran.

Drusus

 

February 20th:

I ran through the streets at full speed, not looking where I was going, because I was too busy staring at the holo alert I’d gotten. It didn’t matter, my feet knew the way to my little dark corner of music.

I hadn’t bothered to be quiet on my way out of the apartment. Mae was a sound sleeper, and that Animarian made noises loud enough to drown out any exit. The was gone, as she was most nights. I didn’t know or care to know where she snuck out to; it was none of my business if she wanted to get expelled. Personally, I was cheering for it.

Sitting down on a dark step, I read through the alert again.

Greetings, music students! This is a reminder to all orchestra members that next month we will be performing at a formal United Galaxy dinner. Dressing up is required, and attendance is MANDATORY. See you all in rehearsal.

So I had a month. A month until I’d be performing in front of the most important and influential people in the galaxy. The Tundrians I’d see there would be the ones offering me jobs--or not, if they saw me playing music--when I graduated the Academy.

And in one month, I’d be playing in front of my mother. My mother, who would die with shame upon seeing her eldest son debasing himself in front of all of her colleagues. I’d have to quit. That was the only thing to be done. I’d couldn’t risk my future and the future of my family over something that made me happy.

I put my head in my hands, thinking about all the practices with the orchestra, each one better than the last. With them, I was amazing, more so than I ever had been. We acted and reacted with each other, a fine tuned machine, making real music, not just a pale, kiddy imitation. I'd miss the people. They were an intoxicating combination of different races, personalities, and beliefs, something I never thought I'd enjoy. And they liked me. Because I could play the piccolo, they accepted me into their midsts, the exact opposite reaction I would've gotten on Tundris.

Despite all that, I knew I had to end it. Or maybe it was because of all that. After all, one person could only stand so much loss, and, as my mother would say, this place was giving my ideas.

And ideas were dangerous.

Astra

 

March 28th:

  “Putting ideas in my head is dangerous, Kavi. I’d have thought by now that most of the galaxy would have figured that out.”

He shifted out of the way to avoid a rampaging Syreni whose midterm grades hadn’t quite lived up to what he had expected. “I’m just saying that maybe you didn’t do as bad as you think.”

I rolled my eyes. “ Professor Accia thinks I’m a serial ship killer, and I almost got myself and Dru killed on Professor Talib’s watch. A few good marks in Chemistry and Life Studies--and a few in Calculous just above abysmal--isn’t going to level that out.” There wasn’t an inanimate object in sight, so I kicked a kid in front of me. “I’ll be in Earhart’s office by morning.”

We were at the back of the line-- by my choice. Hordes of students in not so even rows stood in front of us, moving at a glacial place towards four temporary tables set up in the front. On each of those tables--one for each grade-- was a pile of paper. Actual paper. And on those papers were our grades from the midterm (forever ago in January).

The school put it on real paper, because it’s our personal copy, not something they need back. There’s no record for us students to access until the beginning of the next year. No one said anything, but I figured it was a precaution against grade changing. You get a bunch of techno geniuses together and put pressure on them to succeed-- like the kind of pressure used to break the wills of prisoners of war-- and the people in charge are bound to realize that some of those kids would do anything to win the game.

Like me.

About a half an hour later, Kavi and I were finally at the front of the freshman line. All the other students had left the arena by that point-- either in tears or with triumph, leaving just a handful of kids besides the two of us. I was shaking slightly, seeing visions of ascending that spiral building on the floating circle, up and up, all the way to Earhart’s office. She was sitting right there, same chair as last time, readying to give me the boot. What was worse, she didn’t have a smug look on her face. There was no expression there. She called the outcome, and now it was here. Nothing to get worked up about.

A Professor I didn’t recognize handed me my slip of paper. I didn’t turn it over, just looking at it for a second. It was so small, but seemed to have mass beyond what I held in my hands. It was a big as the ship, as the whole galaxy.

I took a deep breath and turned it over, exhaling slowly. As predicted, my grades were high in Life Studies and Chemistry. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Tech and Calculous were middle range. If it had stopped there, the hard knot in my stomach could have dissipated. But it didn’t.

“I’m failing flying and battle,” I told Kavi, barely registering the words pouring out of my mouth like a runny faucet.

I looked down and read some of the comments.

Astraea’s attitude could use some work. As could her skills on the battle field. With a lot of training in that area, she may one day be able to protect herself against a crippled mugger. As for her flying studies, there is no amount of help in the galaxy that could make Astraea proficient there. To pass the classes, she will need to demonstrate drastic improvement by the end of the year outside of class.  

“Poisonous toad,” I hissed. “It’d serve you right if I let the robots fry your ass.”

But that sentiment just sent another wave of depression my way. I had yet to figure out how to let the adults know about the security risk without getting expelled for my troubles. Though, with these grades, it might have been a non issue.

On the off chance I wasn’t on a shuttle in the next hour, I had to think of something.

Drusus

 

February 1st:

I had to think of something. An excuse, and escape, anything! Everyday for the past month I’d gone into practice with the intention of telling Professor Euterpe that enough was enough, I play in her orchestra anymore. And yet, even with the best intentions, here I stood, my feet planted shakily behind the curtain of one of the most luxurious dining halls I’d ever seen.

Professor Euterpe, looking every bit the petite, crazy, old woman, was running around frantically, trying to fix every minor problem that arose. I couldn’t have caught her if there was enough room behind stage to take flight and hunt her in my natural patterns. So I was stuck trembling a and trying to spot my mother through the break in the curtain.

She was here. I just knew it. And that knowledge made my vehemently glad I hadn’t eaten all day, because I would have been wearing it.

The Professor motioned us all to our seats, and I gripped my piccolo with cold fingers. The girl next to me put up my music for me without saying a word, smiling encouragingly when I glanced at her face. I wanted to thank her and tell her I was perfectly capable of doing that myself at the same time. Not knowing which was the appropriate response, I kept my mouth shut, my default reaction to any foreign situation.

The audience seated themselves in circular tables throughout the hall. There was some buzz of conversation as people remarked on the lusciousness of the curtains and the pristineness of the tables. Silence fell in a cascade until the last person talking looked up and realized he was making an ass of himself.

Professor Euterpe raised her hands, a baton held carelessly between her fingers. I tried to focus on her, but each time my eyes found their way back to my mother who was paying the orchestra absolutely no heed.

The music started, but I didn't. The percussion was accompanying, and I was supposed to have a solo. My absence was a gaping hole in the performance.

I pressed the piccolo harder against my lips, staring at Professor Euterpe with scared eyes. She gave me a stern look and flicked her wrist to signal my entrance. I stuttered in, the notes clashing slightly, because we were in a different spot in the music.

After what felt like an eternity of awkward, the percussion transitioned to find me in the music, and the rest of the band followed. The melody was beautiful, haunting, just like in practice.

I lost myself in the music, and my inhibitions and insecurities didn't follow me into the void.  I closed my eyes, feeling the different parts and sounds flow together to make something exponentially better than any of us could do on our own. And I was a part of that, a member of the orchestra. It was like a high, one I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to quit.

The performance, like practices, was gone before I had time to prepare myself for closure. We were standing, blinking against the stage lights and grinning while Professor Euterpe accepted the applause for us with a bow. The girl who’d set up my music smiled at me again, and I smiled back, utterly sure it was the right reaction.

When we sat back down, the dread set in. This would be my last performance, my last night at the Academy. There was no way mother could’ve missed me. She would have had to be completely oblivious throughout the whole magical concert. I rubbed my ear, thinking about her latching onto it and dragging me off the ship, kicking and screaming.

But she wasn’t looking at me with fury in her eyes. She wasn’t even looking at me at all. Leaning towards a fellow politician, she laughed at something the man said, totally engaged in the conversation. It’s the same man she was talking to before the performance, I thought.

I grit my teeth and gather up my thing to leave. I exited stage with my head held high but feeling like the stupidest boy in the world. She hadn’t heard me, and for some reason, though that meant I could stay, that enraged me. My own mother sat through that entire breath taking concert without taking her attention once off of business.

She’d been doing what I should have been doing all along: keeping my eyes on the prize. But I’d let myself be distracted by the music, which made me feel whole, by the human, and by the suspicious goings ons at the school, which was none of my concern. What did I care if the robots attacked the school or whatever their plan was? This place was just a stepping stone, a means to an end. I shouldn’t have cared if the whole thing was shot out of the sky.

But I did. And I didn’t know what to do about that.

“Great show. Boring, but I’m sure there was ample skill there,” a voice said from behind me.

I flinched, almost dropping my piccolo. Setting it down gently in the case, I made sure it was secure before latching it and turning around. The human girl was standing there, leaning against one of the pillars supporting the stage, like a physical embodiment of all that was wrong with my life right now. I was rooming with a human who wore pink boots.

“What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “I came to hear you play. Professor Euterpe was more than willing to let me tag along and support a friend.”

Snorting, I said, “Right. You came for blackmail material.” I placed the piccolo in the giant case that held the flute like instruments safe during travel. “And we are not friends.”

“I have plenty of ammunition on you if I needed it. Let’s not forget that dismembered hand you have under your bed.”

I remained silent, waiting for her to get to the point. I wasn’t completely certain, but she probably had one. Maybe. Or maybe she was as insane as her flying suggested. Either way, I was impatient to be out of her presence. She wasn’t like Mae, and I couldn’t make sense of half the things she said and did.

We started out walked back to the shuttle, and at the exact moment I was sure she wasn’t going to say anything more, she spoke. “I came to see you when you’re not being a total square--disappointment there, you’re always a square. I mean, classical music? Lame.”

I went out on a limb and decided that a “square” was not a compliment. “What is it you do for fun then? Burn down buildings?”

“A couple of times,” she said. “There’s a lot of set up on that though. Mostly I just settle for ruining peoples’ days.”

Drusus

 

April 20th:

A couple  weeks  later I was sitting in my music corner in broad daylight, though it wasn’t going to be that way for long, lights out was soon approaching. I stared at Commander Rike’s hard face made faint by the hologram. He’d made a show of asking me about my studies, my progress, but I knew what he wanted.

I’d sent him the map weeks ago, woefully unfinished. I’d detailed all of campus, which was what he’d wanted, but now he wanted more. As I knew he would. I’d even planned for how I would accomplish what he desired. What I didn’t understand is why I hadn’t done it yet.

“This is excellent work, Drusus,” he said, holding up the map. “But part of it is missing, yes? The Central Controls room.”

“It’s in the actual ship below campus. Students aren’t allowed there,” I said dully.

He smiled with teeth. “And students also aren’t allowed to map the entire campus, but here we are.” Commander Rike continued in a more compassionate tone. “I’m not unsympathetic. You’re doing this at great personal risk, and it won’t go unrewarded.”

“When do you need it by?”

His smiled was gone, replaced by a smug air. “Yesterday.”

I went to close off the connection, but the Commander said,”Oh, and Dru? Keep a cautious eye out for yourself and your Tundrian classmates.” There was something in his eyes that I didn’t like. “The Academy’s not as safe as it used to be.” He cut the feed, and I was left alone in the growing darkness.

I ran back to the apartment, not wanting to be caught out and get grounded for the night. Somehow, I didn’t think the Commander would think that a suitable excuse.

The girl, strangely, was the only one home. I floated cautiously through the door, the gravity in the room off. She was doing sporadic flips through the air, her expression more concentrated than I had ever seen it. She didn’t even appear to notice my entrance. It startled me to realize I’d gotten used to her one-liners.

I wouldn’t have to worry about that, though, if I gave the entire map to the Commander. I had no idea what his plans were for the information, but people didn’t go through all that trouble to learn the lay of the land for fun. He had a purpose, no doubt. Beyond that, I didn’t like to think about what a man with his skills and resources could do with those maps.

All that mattered was that I would give it to him. Of that, I was certain.

Mae was the next one back, the Animarian right behind her. We all went to bed unusually early, for which I was grateful. It would ensure that no one was awake to see me sneak out.

My aunt had told me, years ago, about an emergency exit tube straight under the arena that led the the ship below. Though I’d had enough of emergency exits, I grabbed my bag and went out to find it none-the-less. It was easily located, being labeled and right in the spot my aunt had said it would be. Luckily, since it wasn’t common knowledge to students, there was no AI guarding it. I released a sigh of relief and relinquished my white knuckled grip on the stun stick, slipping it back into my calf holster. I actually smiled I was so elated not to run into one of those scrap piles. Then I remembered why I was here.

Floating down the tube, I tried to feel some of the joy the human obviously felt while weightless, but it evaded me. Shaking off my peculiar mood, I touched my feet to the ground of the actual ship. It seemed to be a labyrinth of corridors. I liked mazes even less than I liked puzzles, but I started off in the direction my aunt had hinted at.

There was no staff around. Most of it comprised of robots who were only called on to do specific jobs at specific times, but the living component was probably sleeping. That was another lucky break for me, and it made me anxious. I’d never been lucky, and I didn’t see why now, with so much on the line, I was suddenly sprout good fortune.

I was well into the underbelly now. Up top, everything was polished and pretty, but few people ever saw this, so it was left raw and unfinished looking. The walls were dark metal pieces, fitted together loosely in some places so you could see the red wires and pipes that made everything possible.

Pausing in my pursuit, I started a map of each hallway I'd run down. It was far from completely, so I ran down a couple explored corridors, taking note of everything. My foot steps were silent, but I was still tense at the possibility of being caught here. I finished up my exploration quickly and headed towards the front of the ship.

Two men abruptly rose up from a spot I'd thought was solid ground. I drove to the side, throwing myself from their path. They moved past me, not sparing the spot I was hiding by a second glass. Both were wearing a version of the school uniform, but with jackets and identical boots. They sported a myriad of badges on their chests that gleamed even in the dim lighting.

When they disappeared from sight, I moved over to the spot on the floor they'd seemingly fazed through. It looked solid enough, but there was a strange metal ring etched into the material. I brushed my fingers or it. Nothing happened.

Frowning, I cautiously stepped on it, looking around for a hidden switch. That proved unnecessary, because as soon as my full weight rested inside the ring, I began to sink.

My eyes stretched open as far as they could, watering slightly. It was like a silent scream for my face. I grabbed around madly as the floor devoured my legs, moving up towards my abdomen for something to grab onto. There was nothing, and it was up to my chest. The once solid metal felt squishy and gooey, but despite its watery composition, I couldn't flap my arms hard enough to keep afloat. I'd never been a good swimmer anyway, and I was even less so without a water proof covering for my wings.

My neck was gone, and it was lapping at my chin. I breathed in one last breath before being submerged completely. I kept my eyes closed tight as I sunk impossibly deeper, feeling the stinky, warm substance on my skin rush past me.

My feet collided with something solid. The next moment, I could breath and my person was no longer stifled by the goo. I inhaled sharply feeling a bit light headed. I was on the ground in a faintly glowing room. All the wall space was taken up with a surround view of the area surrounding the ship. The floor and the ceiling, too, showed an endless expanse of space. Though I knew it was all a holo projection, meant so one could see all angles of the ships surroundings, I brushed against it gently with my fingers. They met a hard surface, and I stood up.

The glowing in the room came from the wrap around glass counter supporting the holographic controls. I walked over to one monitor, and with a flick of my finger, I brought up stats on every living creature aboard this ship. The dazzling spots on a bare bones map each represented one person, and I blinked against the brilliance.

Still, I couldn't be impressed with all that after my experience. I went back to where I'd fallen in, staring at the ceiling intently for an explanation.

“It's a matter shift,” a voice said from behind me. “It changed the state of matter—gas, water, solid, whatever-- in a specific location. Incognito.”

I spun around and my words were an accusation.“You.”

 

Astra

February 20th:

“You.”

I grinned, though inside I felt like screaming. “Me.”

I stepped away from the master computer—the one that had access to every electronic system on the whole ship, could override anything. It would have been the perfect weapon against certain teachers who didn't think my flying skills were up to par. Sadly, that wasn't why I was here.

I'd been working on it for weeks—weeks. Every time I thought I was getting close to a solution to the imminent threat to the school, I'd find a way that the warning could be traced back to me or be picked up by someone else-- not this time though. From this room, I could hack onto Earhart's personal holo, and it'd be stamped with this super computer's signature. It was perfect.

I glowered at the winged boy. And now it's ruined, I thought.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, having the audacity to sound angry with me.

“There's an entrance under the Faculty building,” I said. “Found it while I was looking for security weaknesses.”

Back on one of the nights I'd been sure I'd be expelled in the morning, I'd snooped around the building, planning out an act of vandalization and retaliation. I wasn't going to share that with goody-goody Dru, though. Who knew when I'd need that plan.

Although, since he had snuck in here just like me, I guess he wasn't so good. The realization made me smile.

I walked over to one of the control displays, admiring the beauty of the holo's blinking lights. “So, what're you doing here?”

His face got a little paler, and I wondered idly if I should get him the name of the guy who gene sliced my mom into tanned splendor. Of course to me, she looked like she'd overdosed on vitamin C. He definitely deserved that number.  

A noise above us captured our attention. Someone was stomping around the matter shift. I looked over at Dru, who was looking at me. We shared a moment of perfect, mutual understanding that seldom comes for people who hate each other.

Springing into action, we took cover in the corner against the tube like entrance below the shifter. It was the only place to hide in the circular room, and it was tiny. I ended up being smushed against Dru's giant wings, prompting me to remember the time a classmate had brought in a pet bird for show and tell. It'd escaped and came after me completely unprovoked. Mostly unprovoked anyway. I shuddered, reliving the feel of feathers and talons.

Two men wearing school faculty uniforms with metals on their chests sunk through the floor, looking way more impressive than Dru or I had managed. My heart was going a million miles a minute, trying to outrun the threat of these men even though my body couldn't move. Both of us huddled closer to the wall, staring at our doom personified with frozen, glassy eyes. Whatever the joke was, the men cut off their laughing upon approaching the main holo screen. It was flashing red--never a good color, unless its painted on my lips-- and reading out some warning I couldn't make out from all the way over here. One of the men flicked his fingers and pressed a few buttons. "Invasion on level six under the center of campus. Time stamped almost an hour ago." His companion cursed and they ran to the shifter without sparing a glance for the nooks and crannies. Only when they had ascended did Dru and I breathe a collective sigh of relief. I raised my eyebrow at him. "That wasn't where I came in. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy."

He stood, waving at me to get up. "Let's go. The last thing I want is to be caught here with you."

We moved to stand under the matter shifter, Dru more reluctantly than I. "Yeah well, ditto. Except I'm more hung up on the thought of being caught at all."

The gravity field turning on moving us up towards the ceiling. I took a deep breath, but didn't shut my eyes. This was all just way too cool to miss a second of. The lack of gravity kept us moving--albeit slowly-- through the sludge. It didn't seem too actually touch our skin, just brush by it, giving the feeling of the squishy mud seeping through our pores.

A few seconds after breaching the shifter area, we emerged on the floor where we'd entered. I kneaded there for a moment, gasping, before the sudden stiffening of Dru's body brought my attention up.

The two men from before we're standing right in front of us.

"Well," one of them said, grim faced. "Looks like we found our security breach."

Drusus

 

Professor Earhart tapped her fingers impatiently on the dark rock of her desk. I shifted uneasily on the flooding slab of metal that had been provided for seating. They hadn't checked my belongs, but at any moment that blessing could rescinded, and they would find the holo. And, by extension, the illegal maps it contained.

"Did it ever occur to you, during your foolhardy quest for entertainment, that breaking into the control room of the entire school would get you expelled?"

The human was pale, but said, "Hardly breaking in when it wasn't exactly locked."

She ignored the girl, turning to me instead. "Mr. Accia, you've been a model student. I can't believe you would go along with Miss Alkaev in this."

I waited for the girl to say something, like how I'd gotten there under my own power and whim, but she didn't. She just sat there with a moody expression on her face that didn't do much to hide the fact that she was terrified out of her mind. Her hands trembled slightly on her lap.

I decided to take her lead and not say anything. She was probably experienced in getting into trouble and being assumed the ring leader.

Professor Earhart pinched her nose in frustration after a few minutes of silence. "Very well. I don't have time to interrogate you all morning. There's school wide meeting at nine, something both were supposed to attend. No matter, I'll just let you stew for a couple hours instead." She rose to her feet. "Maybe then you'll both be in a more forthcoming mood."

An AI rose through the hole in the office we'd flown through on our floating metal discs. It dismounting with far more grace than either of us had managed and motioned for the girl and I to follow it down the spiral.

It had a scar from its eyebrow to its chin, and it was my turn to tremble. I stumbled back against the girl who bit out a curse when I stepped on her foot. She walked around me to join the AI on her own disc. There was no fear in her eye, but, strangely, there was a kind of recognition. She knew the robot that had broken Mae's arm somehow.

After a moment, I followed them reluctantly, not wanting Professor Earhart to have another reason to mistrust me. The AI led us down the the base level of the spiral building where it shoved us in an unoccupied classroom and locked the door behind it.

As the last tumbler turned over in the door, I looked over at the girl. She was sitting up on a desk, legs crossed under her, staring at me with a blank expression that would've done Mae proud.

"So. Are you in on it?" she asked. "I mean, obviously, you're in on something. Good boys like you don't just break into the central control room for no reason."

I chose to ignore her first question. "Neither do heiresses with a lot to lose."

She dismounted the table in one fluid motion and started pacing in loose circles around me. "I had a reason, alright. A good one too. And then you waltzed in and ruined it." The girl glanced up at me. "Was it deliberate? Do you really hate this school that much?"

"I don't hate the Academy," I said numbly, thinking of how my answer had changed since I'd first arrived.

"Then why put it in danger? Or is it patriotism?" She said the last part with a mocking sneer.

I wasn't good with interrogation techniques. I didn't know how to get her to give up everything she knew while keeping my knowledge a secret. So I didn't. "A high level, military Tundrian approached me at the beginning of the school year with a proposition. He wanted me to map out the school and its security measure for him in exchange for a high ranking position for me upon graduation." I kept Rike's name out of it. "That's it."

She waved an angry finger at me. "As if that wasn't enough. I don't know about this "high ranking official", but he's probably the same guy I saw talking to one of the school's AIs about attacking the Academy."

"Why didn't you say anything to Earhart?" I asked harshly. I felt a dread in my stomach.

She scuffed her pink boot against the floor. "I wasn't exactly...following the rules when I overheard that."

"So you looked out for your own skin instead of everyone else's. Sounds familiar," I said bitterly, mad at myself as much as I was at the girl.

A loud bang interrupted our conversation, shaking the foundation of the building. I grabbed onto the metal table to steady myself as the human was thrown to the floor. The vibrating continued until I could feel it in my teeth, a pulse more constant than my own heart beat.

"Emergency stop," the girl said breathlessly.

She ran over to the door, finding the invisible keypad with relative ease. She pulled off the cover and ripped the wires from their original places. I was getting used to seeing her do this. I barely gaped at her dexterous hands pulling off the protective cover and attaching the rise together at the speed of light.

The door slide open, and I was right on her tail running out of it. The exit doors were glass, so I could see that the atmosphere outside was no longer sunny. The air looked thick, like the campus was covered in smoke.

A metal clanking sounded behind us, footsteps coming closer. I spun, my heart threatening to shoot its way up my throat and out my mouth. Reaching for the stun stick, I cursed when I realized I'd left it at the apartment to look less suspicious.

"Fight," the robtic voice relayed my own command from months ago back at me. The scar stood in sharp relief against its ghostly white face. "Fight."

The girl shook her head. "Run."

Before I could stop her she was out the door, coughing in the smoke. I charged after her, taking a last deep breath of clean air to sustain me to the next building. I grabbed her arm with one hand, pulling her towards the medical center across the street. The other hand I used to cover her mouth, hoping she'd get the nonverbal message and hold her breath.

I shut the door behind us, locking the poisonous air and the rampaging AI out on the other side. It wouldn't hold either of them for long.

Running up the old fashioned stairs, I didn't even entertain the thought of taking the elevator, an electronic machine that could be hacked by other electronics. From my stays here with Mae, I knew the emergency supplies were on the third floor. I set the pace, but the girl had trouble keeping up. Too soon to tell if it was her own physical limits or the paralyzing gasses she breathed in.

Handing her one of the two breathers and placing the the other over my mouth, I watched her movements. They were stiff, uncoordinated. Not a good sign.

The lights went out, leaving us in a dark ward filled with tiny, floating medbots and a myriad of empty hospital beds. All the patients had probably been at the meeting like the rest of the school. A meeting that had been held outside. A place that was now chock full of noxious gas.

I shared that revelation with the girl.

She grinned, but it was forced. "Sooting that it should be the best students left standing. And her cranky sidekick."

I let that comment go, leading her down the most lit part of the building now, a hallway surrounded with windows. I wasn't too keen on standing around in the dark with the medbots waiting for the scared AI to show up. And me without a weapon. A bead of sweat rolled down my back.

At the end of the hallway our luck ran out.

"Fight." The AI stepped out from around the corner we were approaching.

The human let out a squeak and attempted to keep up with me. I had to drag her along, her muscles not working right. It cut down on our speed so significantly I had to duck inside a private room, so the AI wouldn't catch us. Its fingers had been inches from our backs.

I ran over to the window, looking down breathlessly at the drop. It was too far, but there was a ledge halfway down. If we landed on that, we could fall the rest of the way without injury. But it'd have to be exact. And we'd have to be quick to avoid the AI seeing and following.

Two qualities the human didn't possess at thIs moment.

She was leaning against the hospital bed a few feet of me when I looked back. Not because she was tired, though that was probably part of it, but because she couldn't support herself. She'd slow me down, no doubt. Maybe make it impossible to escape.

No one would know.

Then there was her knowledge. Or rather the fact that she had too much of it. She was a danger to my future career, to the Commander. Hell, if she could tie Rike to this AI attack, she was a liability to my entire race.

There was no one around. This was survival.

She glanced up at me, her expression grim. The girl knew I'd done the math, knew what decision I'd come to. I'd expected some kind of anger, but all there was was resignation. I guess my actions weren't surprising to her in the least.

I got ready to say it wasn't personal, something I wasn't even sure was true, when there was a banging on the door. Her head whipped away from me and towards the noise, but I could still see the profile of her face. Her features were drawn, her skin pale and damp with sweat.

She was scared.

And I knew then, that even though no one was around to see, that no one would know what I'd done, and that this was life or death, I couldn't leave her.

Because she wasn’t the only one who was afraid.

I slipped my arm under hers, gripping her around the chest tightly. We hobbled over to the window as the angry pounding continued. The first lock gave as the glass slid aside for us. I brought her around to the front of my body so her face was facing mine. That last thing I needed was her screaming at the ground racing up towards us and alerting the AI to our position.

"Hold tight," I said.

And then I dove.

My wings spread out of their own violation, and I reveled in the feeling of the wind rushing through my feathers after long months of being grounded. I angled them back, increasing altitude and my window of time for hitting that ledge.

If it'd been just me, I could've floated myself to the ground, but I wasn't used to passengers. The extra weight and the short drop meant that plan was out. So, since I didn't want to end up squashed, the ledge was our only hope.

I landed and absorbed the shock by bending my knees with the force. The girl flailed like a fish and almost sent us tumbling over the edge. I shot her a dirty look as soon as we were stabilized, but the effects of the nerve gas hadn't worn off. Her body was not her own.

The next jump was relatively easy compared to that, and before I knew it, we were safely on the ground. Well, maybe not safely, I thought, glancing up at the window we'd thrown ourselves from. The door would've given by now, the AI right behind us.

"Well, look who it is," an achingly familiar voice called out from the smoke.

The next moment, Mae and the Animarian boy were right in front of us, wearing gas masks and looking a little worse for wear. I'd never been so happy to see anyone in my life, and I'm sure if the human could work her facial muscles, she would've smiled.

"Let's save the reunion till we're back at base," Mae drawled, looking up to the window I kept giving wary glances. "Come on. The others are waiting in the Tak Raw center."

"Others?"

We ran along through the smoke towards the northern side of campus. With the girl still hobbling, I had to practically drag her along. She cursed me the entire time, and it made my vehemently wish I'd left her for the AI. Maybe it wasn't too late to go back.

Mae peered cautiously around the corner, stun stick at the ready. "Rike sent out an alert to a handful of us, so we were sequestered when the gas dropped."

"Who's Rike?" the girl asked.

I deliberately jostled her more than necessary, but answered. "The high ranking official I told you about. How many students are safe?"

Mae shrugged. "Twenty? Maybe more. The rest are lying paralyzed with the faculty and staff in the dining hall."

Snorting, the girl said, "Looks like this Rike isn't so patriotic. Likely, the only Tundrians he cared to warn are the ones of value."

We hustled inside the building, over to a couple dozen students huddled around the the anti grav rink. They were off varying ages and races. Most of them I didn't even recognize, but they all had one thing in common: the wings on their backs. In fact, the girl and the Animarian were the only ones in the room not sporting them. That knowledge was apparent on the group's faces.

"What're they doing here?" a snide boy in our grade asked. "It's supposed to be--"

"Tundrians only?" The girl shoved away from me, supporting herself on her own two feet. "Yeah, but what kind of party would it be with all you sticks in the mud in one room?"

And then the world lit up in spectacular colors.  The giant holo above the rink used for recording scores now pictured a familiar AI, the one who guarded our apartment. For a terrifying moment, I thought he'd found us, but then a quick glance at the crowd dispelled that. Holos were springing to life in people's hands and back pockets, all showing the same image.

"He's using the master computer to broadcast his signal to every electronic interface on campus," the human said in awe.

"It." I didn't like her giving the robot a gender, making it more like us. More powerful.

"Attention Tundrian remnants of the school," the giant AI head said. "Your counterparts have been neutralized, and Commander Rike has arranged a shuttle to take you to safety. My brethren will take you to it. All you have to do is bring the few among you that don't belong, so that they may join their classmates before the destruction of the school commences." It paused. "You have one hour."

Astra

 

April 20th:

"You have one hour."

Over twenty pairs of beady eyes turned to stare at Kavi and I. The owners looked like vultures in a way that had nothing to do with their wings. I gulped, mentally calculating how many minutes stood between me and full muscle recovery.

Too many for a girl who wasn't good at math. So I went with my gut.

"What a load of crap," I told Kavi loudly, deliberately not looking at anyone but him. "Does that thing think the Tundrians are stupid or something? Granted, that was my first impression, but that message was so obviously a trap. He might as well had invited them to dinner and given them a menu with their name on it."

Kavi eyes were wide and petrified, but he kept them trained on me. I could feel the confusion around us, replacing the predator likeness and turning the crowd back into a bunch of kids. I could control kids.

"Like one name drop is enough to convince us they're on our side, and we'll walk like little lambs towards the robots that "neutralized" our classmates and teachers." I snorted. "And an escape shuttle? How convenient."

By the end, I figured I'd was laying it on a little thick, but if they were all like Dru, they'd need that extra push to get the information through their dense skulls. I needed to be careful, though, if I didn't want to end up hog tied at the AIs feet.

I walked over to Dru. "We shouldn't stay here."

He stared at me for a moment with lowered lids, and, by the end of it, I'd convinced myself that he was going to do the tying himself. True, we'd been less than friendly throughout the year, but I'd thought we'd grown to a reluctant indifference when he didn't leave me for dead at the hospital.

"The building isn't very defensible," he said, not reassuring me but not rushing to hand over my corpse, either.

I shrugged. "I was just thinking that there's no back way out. Where would you go if you wanted to hide from a bunch of robots."

Nodding, Dru acted like I'd answered a question for him. He motioned for the Tundrians to move out, and they did. Without protest or reminding him that they didn't have to hide. They had a way out.

Loyalty. I'll never understand it.

The ship lurched like it had before in the empty classroom. It felt like the ship was being bent and then ripped apart. Stumbling, I held onto the nearest arm to keep from eating linoleum. My ears were assaulted by an unholy shriek.

"Warp drive," I shouted, but the sound was already dying down. "Sounds like they didn't do the prep first. That's deliciously dangerous."

Dru frowned. "First we stopped, now we're in warp. Are they changing our direction?"

"Stands to reason. There's a lot of AIs on this ship, but not nearly enough to show up at the Annual United Galaxy Peace Conference. It'd be suicide," Mae said in a monotone.

I started massaging the numbness out of my muscles. "And they said they were going to destroy the ship, not use it to arrive in style at a party."

Dru shot me an annoyed glance. "The Anual is when the galaxy's worldz get together and renegotiate peace treaties. It's politically charged event, not a party."

"So what happens when the diplomats brats don't show up without a hair misplaced in their pretty little heads," I mused, knowing full well the answer. Saying nothing, they all suddenly became very interested with their shoes. "Bye bye twenty years of peace in the galaxy. Not that we'll be around to see it."

One of the Tundrian boys in our year, who'd been holding back his words so hard he looked like he was constipated, spoke up. "No, you're the one who won't be around to see it. The rest of us have a shuttle waiting for us." He turned to Dru. "Why are we wasting time with this--human? We should be turning them over, so we can leave before the ship is destroyed!"

"What're they gonna do? Run it into a planet?" Kavi muttered.

I grinned at him, amused, before what he'd said hit me like a ton of bricks. How were they going to get rid of a city sized ship with hundreds of people on board? Self destruct was a maybe--if the ship even had that, but it wouldn't leave the AIs enough time to get away. Assuming they meant to....

I pulled Kavi aside. "Is there anywhere else besides the main control room where you can pilot the ship like this?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so."

I swallowed audibly. "But what about course information? Can you get that somewhere else?"

Dru apparently had wings and ears like a bat, overhearing our whispers. "My aunt has a readout in the hangar."

"Show me."

The smoke hadn't cleared and the breathers were running low, maybe an hour left on them. Trying the take in the thin air, we moved towards the center of campus with silent precision. Around every corner was a possible ambush waiting, and it set me on edge, digging my nails deeper and deeper into Kavi's arm.

We didn't run into any, however, reaching the large, arching doors into the colosseum without incident. The light were all turned off, leaving the pale "sunlight" the only force illuminating the large arena. The door to the hangar was open, ripped off its hinges.

The sight inside made me gasp. "Those monsters."

We were looking at a graveyard of ships. Pieces with ragged, raw end laid strewn everywhere. Crafts were left on their sides, crushed in places, and sparking slightly. It was like a rampaging giant had torn his way through all these beautiful machines with extreme prejudice.

"If they destroyed this one, it's likely that the one with off-world capable ships is gone as well," Dru said.

My eyes were watering at the waste of it all. "What do you care? You've got a shuttle."

Dru, Kavi, Mae, and I weaved our way through the corpses, avoiding sparked where we could and getting shocked where we couldn't. He lead us to the back wall to a small, concealed panel. We had the jump over the remains of a vintage Cruiser, and I almost lost my lunch.

The panel open up to reveal a non-holo digital screen, old as dirt. Unlike the rest of the electronic things in the arena, this wasn't shut off or broken. Dru typed--typed-- in a security code and a statistical page was pulled up.

"It says we're headed away from any known weigh stations or planets," Dru said, a frown in his voice. "In fact, it says we're flying towards nothing, just a pair of coordinates with nothing there."

"Maybe they're just going to kill us and ditch the ship," Mae said.

I shook my head. "Then why not use a stronger gas? I can think of a wealth of cocktails more deadly than the one they hit us with."

"Seemed to work on you just fine," Dru said.

"Not really, if I'm still breathing to tell about it."

He turned back to the screen, but said under his breath, "Pure evil doesn't go down that easy. More's the pity."

I chose to ignore that, glancing nervously behind us to make sure we were still alone in the eerily quiet room. "Can you find out anything else about the coordinates?"

"Like what?"

I went out on a limb. "Like energy readings."

"There's nothing until-- woa!" Dru clicked at the screen frantically. "Out of nowhere I'm getting a huge gravitational pull. Astronomical."

Mae moved up behind him, reading over his shoulder. "And there's a significant electromagnetic force in the area."

I took the bait, peering at the readings. "That place is more charged than a couple hundred people in socks on shag carpeting."

"But there's nothing there," Dru protested, though who he was arguing with I had no idea.

Electric charge and gravitational pull from nowhere, I though wearily, wishing for about the hundredth times hat day that Igor was there. It stood to reason that something had to be there, just something that we couldn't detect. Except as far as I knew, there was no cloaking system in the galaxy sophisticate enough to fool these sensors.

So maybe we were picking it up, but what only had the charge and gravity of a planet or star but no visible mass?

"Is there a star nearby?" Mae asked. "Maybe the system's just not seeing it."

"No," I said. "We're seeing it, alright."

Kavi whispered to me, "Astra, it's too big to--"

I waved his words away with a careless gesture, but it felt like my insides were about to come out of my mouth. "Let's think about it for a second. If you wanted to cause a galactic incident by going after the kids of the most powerful leaders in the universe, what would you make sure not to do?"

Mae was the first to answer. "I wouldn't want them to have evidence against me. United, the worlds could do something, but with no leads they'd all blame different enemies. It'd be chaos."

"Making it easy for someone to seize power," Dru finished her thought.

Nodding, Mae said, "But it's not that easy to get rid of a giant ship."

"Sure it is." I shook my head, feeling ill. "All you need is a destructive force the size of a star that won't leave behind anything. Something that sucks up everything. Even light itself."

A blackhole.

Drusus

 

April 20th:

"We're headed towards a blackhole," I told the Tundrians once we were back in the Tak Raw center.

There was a beat of silence.

Two.

Then total hysteria.

People were screaming, lashing out at their friends, trying to figure out how to get to the escape shuttle in the next five seconds. Inside, my mind was doing the exact same thing. I wanted to leave, to run so far I wouldn't even be able to get back.

There wasn't enough time, or space if I knew Rike, to get everyone onto the shuttle. And I had put them in this position. My map had led them to the best point on campus to release the gas. I had sentenced those people to die.

"Quiet!" I barked, and, meraculously, they silenced.

Except for the boy who'd been opening his big mouth all day. "What're you waiting for?" He stepped right up to me. "Lead us to the shuttle! Rike said he'd send the location to your holo."

I gripped the round sphere tightly through the fabric of my jacket, and I noticed my three roommates were staring at me. The girl and the Animarian I had expected, but I was shocked to see Mae looking so anxious, standing close to the other two.

It was down to me. I could see it in their eyes. In Mae's I saw a deep loyalty, telling me shed back my play, whatever is was. Kavi's were pleading, asking me without words to stay and help all those unconcious people. The girl's were defiant. She knew she couldn't take on the AIs without my help, though it would've been like pulling teeth to get her to admit it.

Unlike the Animarian, however, she wouldn't beg.

"Well, it's been fun-- not really, you understand, I'm just trying out polite. Doesn't really suit me, though." The girl pulled Kavi away from the crowd. "Come on, green boy, let's--"

I turned back to my fellow Tundrians. "We could go," I said. "We could get in that shuttle and leave all those people to their fates."

"So let's do that!" A girl in the back of the crowd shouted. There was an accompanying roar of approval.

I looked back, and the girl was raising her eyebrows at me. Shrugging, I realized she was right. Speeches weren't really my forte.

Pulling the holo out of my pocket, I threw it to the ground and smashed it under my foot in one smooth movement. It crunched under the force, a million shards of metal cascading down, electrical sparking sprouting up in a confetti explosion of color.

The boy who'd gotten in my face earlier screamed and fell at my feet, grasping at the pieces and cutting his hands. "Do you realize what you've done?" he wailed. "You've doomed us to die with these dregs!"

He sprung to his feet at swung at me, his aim sloppy. I dodged easily and rammed my fist into his sternum, sending him sprawling and choking to the ground. He layed there sputtering while I looked up at the other Tundrians, staring at me with wide, angry eyes.

"So," I said. "Help or die."

_____

 

Keeping watch at the door, I kept stealing glances over my shoulder into our apartment. We'd left Kavi and Mae to organize the volunteers into formation for the next stage of the girl's plan. This part of it, I was less than pleased about.

"You're going to get us captured," I hissed at her. "What's taking you so long?"

She kept her hands and attention on the task in front of her. "I'm building an EMP bomb out of spare bits. You can't rush this."

"You have five minutes."

I watched her for a second before returning to my guard post. She was dissembling a cluster of stolen holos and the AIs hand from under my bed. The girl seemed calm and assured, the opposite of what she'd been coming up with this idea. I figured that this was her element.

"Where'd you learn to do this?" I asked.

"A buddy of mine at camp was kind of famous for it. He got his kicks bringing down Cruisers and jets within his ten mile radius. Ours won't reach that far."

I didn't question what kind of a camp would house a person like that. "So it won't get the whole school? What if some of the AIs are out of range of the electric pulse?"

She said, "Not my problem. You're security. You deal with it."

Perfect.

More than five minutes had gone by, and I opened my mouth to tell her to get a move on, but she was already up. The human shoved the bomb at me, and I caught it with shaking hands. I held my breath until it was obvious it wouldn't detonate.

The girl rolled her eyes at me. "It has a switch. Besides, it'll give off a pulse of engery that'll shut down all our tech. At the most it'd give you radiation cancer."

"That's not as comforting as you think it is."

With her step completed, it was my turn. I motioned her to move out, and we sprinted south towards the arena. The smoke hadn't completely cleared, but it no longer served as an adequate cover against being seen. The lack made my feel raw and exposed.

I heard the robots before I saw them, a heavy clanking that I'd never associate with anything else ever again. Pulling the girl behind me to keep her from running right into them, we pressed ourselves against the side of the building, barely daring to breathe.

She tapped her forefinger against the stun stick strapped to my left calf, a silent question.   

I shook my head vigorously, miming counting off on my fingers to signal that their were too many. She bit her lip but nodded, seeming to sink further into the granite behind us.

An awful helplessness spread between us as we sat there and waited for them to pass. Each foot step sounded like a strike or a gunshot, causing us to flinch and our hearts to beat impossibly faster. Rows and rows of them marched right past our hiding spot, each second bringing more into our line of sight. A hard grip on my weapon, I waited for the scared one to come around the bend and spot us.

But he didn't. And they passed.

After the AIs were clear, obscured from us by space and buildings, I nodded at the human to continue running. We reached the arena a few minutes later, gasping inaudibly and clutching our sides. We didn't approach the hangar, though I saw her shoot it a wistful glance. I placed the bomb in the middle of the arena, the center of the ship, giving it the opportunity to take out the most AIs, especially the ones in the main control room.

She arranged a grouping of metal cubes around the device that had been lying around the arena. “Okay.” The girl stepped back. “We activate the bomb using this--” she pointed to a blue button “--switch. After that, we have three minutes before it goes off to get down into the control room. If not, we'll be trapped up here, because the pulse will shut down all the systems except the protected ones-- ones necessary to the ship's survival like piloting.”

I was already mentally calculating how long it would take us to get there. It'd be tight. “Can you re-calibrate it to take longer?”

She shook her head. “I have limited materials and time. This was the best I could do.”

I pursued my lips. “So what do we need Mae and the others to be distracting for?”

“After we push the detonate, the real problems arise,” she explained.

“Oh, only then,” I muttered.

“Once activated, the bomb will show up on the ship scanners as a threat, and the AIs will likely pick it up seconds later. Add another couple seconds for them to trace it and then a minute tops for them to get here. That doesn't even come close to adding up to three minutes.” She pointed at the cubes. “Even the force field won't slow them down for long.”

“Mae and--”

“Kavi will help slow their reaction time by distracting them. Exactly.” The girl knelt by her creation. “Get your holo ready, so you can message her as soon as I press the button.”

I did as she bade and then made eye contact. We stared at each other for a silent moment, mentally doing a count down. Then she pressed the detonator and I pressed send. The girl hoped out of the circle she'd set up, slapped the cube until it glowed faintly blue, and we were off.

I took her to the tube leading down into the ship that I'd used last night. She deactivated the safety on the gravity, and we did a free fall to the bottom, landing in an undignified heap. The moment moment we were up and running through the corridors based on my memory of the layout of the tunnels.

“Right here,” I breathed. She turned tightly while I went wide. We didn't even have to communicate it.

I focused on my movements, making them smooth and quick. “If we beat the timer, won't the AIs down there still be active?”

“Your problem,” she panted. “Not mine.”

The matter shifter ring wasn't large, so we had to stand chest to chest while it slowly sucked us down. With each lazy slosh of the strange, gooey material, I could feel the hourglass running out of sand. I didn't want to know what would happen to us if the shifter shut down with us in it. Hopefully a quick death, because no way did I want to be stuck face to face with this human for the rest of my short life span.

We dropped to the floor in the main control room, and it sounded like a cannon blast against the silence. I guessed robots didn't do small talk.

Five of them turned at once to face us, their pale metal faces looking bewitched in the low light. I could count the wires and gears that made them run they were so close. Without communication, they moved towards us in synchronization, like a hive mind. I unsheathed my stun stick, waiting for them at the ready though I was trembling so hard my teeth were chattering.

And then, for the third time that day, the ship gave a mighty vibration, knocking us all off our feet. The lights of the control board went completely dark, the lifelessness swallowing us all whole. I couldn't see the AIs, but in my mind's eye they were everywhere. To my side. At my throat.

Right behind me.

The next second, a faint green glow emanated from the stripes of wall, ceiling, and floor that weren't being used as a surrounding visual of all POVs of the space around the ship. The AIs were lying in a heap we're we'd left them, no movement or gears whirling to suggest life.

The girl was already ten feet in front of me, stepping over their corpses to get to the controls. “Well, we did it. Good work, team,” she said in an absent minded way.

The monitors that had displayed a myriad of commands and recommendations and readings before were completely blank, blending in with the darkness of the free space around us.

“Can you pilot it?” I asked.

It didn't need to be said between us that I had neglected my studies, and that she had surpassed me by miles. I didn't know what half of the manual buttons on the counter were, and they weren't labeled.

There was the whooshing sound of air pressure releasing, and a pair of steering bars emerged out of the counter. She ran her hands along it, testing its resistance. I didn't comment when her fingers shook.

But I didn't have time to baby her. The ship lurched, lagging behind and then it slingshot forward. We were both thrown against the hard glass of the counter, and I winced at the force brought a fiery pain to my ribs.

The human sprung back to her feet, her eye starting to swell where she'd hit it. The ship was shaking as much as we were now, trying to keep the pace that had been set for it, but being pulled along faster and faster by forces outside of its control. The machinery groaned, and it sounded like a scream of protest.

The girl slipped her fingers around the handle bars, holding firm. “We're caught up in a gravitational pull.”

I swallowed hard.“I thought we had another half hour before hitting the danger zone outside the black hole.”

She pointed to the front view screen. “Does that look like we have a half hour to you?”

In front of us, far too close, was a fuzzy circle of the deepest black I had ever seen. It wasn't just dark, it was devoid of color, of life. It was a literal hole into nothingness, so alien it made my bones ache.

I was looking into eternity.

Around the edges were flashes of reds, purples, and yellows, looking so vibrant, because they were cast against the void. I knew they were just gas from a nearby star, burning up, but it looked like the very essence of our universe pitted against the null space. A battle that'd been going on since the beginning of time and matter itself.

“I...I don't think I can pull us out.” The girl grunted as she put all her weight into down and towards her. The nose of the ship didn't each move an inch upward. “There's not enough power, the pull's too strong.”

“Enough that'd it drain all power reserves,” she said. “Even if we got out of the pull for now, we'd float back into it in a matter of hours.”

We were dead.

Astra

 

April 20th:

We were dead.

Dru opened his mouth to say something when I noticed something moving behind him. “Look out!”

He dove out of the way right in time to avoid the bone crushing swing the AI had leveled at his head. It turned its attention on me, slowly limping my way. Biting my cheek, I hung onto the bars with a death grip, staring at the scar running along its face.

A flash of wings soared by my face, and the thing was on the ground with Dru on top of it. He raised his stun stick to give it a shock to the system, but the AI threw him off, sending him flying into one of the screens. The crunch made my stomach churn.

“Just focus on piloting,” he called to me, holding his side like it hurt.

But I did what he said, keeping my rigid grip on the controls, keeping us from gaining speed at an exponential rate. My muscles were screaming, though, and I knew I couldn't keep it up for long.

Think, Astra, think! It was just a puzzle, a riddle, like in Professor Iqbal's class. I made myself think of what I knew.

First off, we were headed for that black hole, kicking and screaming optional. I couldn't change that, so how could I use it to my advantage? Nothing came to mind, and I skipped to another part of the equation. The ship had a significant amount of power in its reserves, but once I used that, we'd be stranded, floating in the direction that gravity pulled us or that I pushed us towards before total shut down. There was no resistance in space, so we could theoretically drift in one direction forever.

That was it.

I wrapped my arm around both of the bars, keeping them in their position with difficulty and freeing up my other arm. I punched in a couple commands on the old fashioned computer screen, one of the few things left working. I got a bearing for the direction the Annual was being held at and did the math from there. Thank god for all those late night study sessions.

“Dru!”

He looked up and almost got his teeth punched in for his trouble. “I'm busy!”

“Get to the manual power override on the wall. It'll look like a big lever. Pull it.” I heard a loud clang that meant the fighting was continuing. “Now.”

I didn't hear him do it, but the next moment the control room was lit up like the Forth of July. I blinked against it and wasted no time. The power surged wouldn't last for long.

I pulled to the left and down on the bars, aiming the ship for right above the edges of the black hole, where I could see the flames of gas igniting.

Then I stepped on the gas.

We accelerated towards the black hole at a speed that threatened to throw me over the counter. I saw oblivion, and I laughed.

After a millisecond, I started to pull with all my might, trying to pilot the ship in a parabola shape. The bars were stiff, the force too much for me to do by myself.

“Stop playing with your friend and give me a hand, wing boy!”

The next moment calloused hands were wrapping around the bars right above my own. We pulled as one and the ship responded. We turned on a dime right at the copse of the black hole, using its own gravity and the force of the redirect to shoot us out of the danger zone.

The ship gain speed. And then it gained speed. The control room shook, but we held on for all we were worth, watching the galaxy race by outside the window.

We were plunged into darkness in the next second, and the ship stopped accelerating, though it was still burning up some of the energy we'd stolen from the black hole. When the green lights came on and the steering bars locked, I collapsed against the glass, my sides heaving.

Dru joined me there, blood running down his face from a deep cut on his forehead. We didn't say anything for a while, our relief and disbelief too great to allow for any kind of conversation.

“Gravitational slingshot,” he said after an eternity. “Did your camp buddy teach you that too?”

 

_____

April 29th:

We arrived at the Annual in style: being toted by a giant, galactic tow truck while on a smoking, power dead ship the size of a city. I loved every second of it, though I didn't know how I was going to top this entrance down the road.

Upon exiting the ship, a crowd of diplomats were waiting for us. I didn't see my parents, but it was probably for the best, because from the outside, you could see the true extent of the damage to the ship.

I winced. “Somehow,” I told Dru. “This is going to be all my fault.”

Once all the students and faculty had been revived, we all parted ways. Some went to be with their families at the Conference, and some just hung around the UG head quarters to get some time away from the school that had almost been the death of them.

Dru was the former, while Mae and Kavi the latter. I, on the other hand, was summoned to Earhart's office before I could decide which camp I wanted to reside in.

The floating metal disc took its time getting down to me this time, and I found myself nervously picking at my hot pink boots. I'd known this was coming since I'd broken into the control room. Everything that happened after that? Just icing on the cake as far as expelling me went. Still, I couldn't help the sinking feeling in my stomach or the stinging of my eyes. I was going to miss this place.

When my feet left the disc, Earhart was waiting for behind her obsidian desk, fingers folded under her chin. None of her paper weights were in sight, packed up with the rest of her things, probably.

“Miss Alkaev.” She nodded to the uncomfortable, floating, metal slab. “Sit.”

“I don't think so,” I said coolly, sounding a lot more put together than I felt. “You may have called this meeting, but I have something to say.”

She raised an eyebrow, and I trudged on. “You were out of line at the beginning of the year, saying all that crap about me being a lost cause. And, yeah, maybe I'm not cut out for this school, but--”

“Peppermint?” She held out a bowl of tiny candies to me.

I blinked, and she continued, “Do you know why I created this school, Miss Alkaev?”

I sunk onto the rock and repeated back to her the same speal she'd given me the first day.

She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Yes, on paper this is just an extremely propitious battle school where kids can be molded into something greater, but that was not my reasoning.”

I waited.

She leaned back, closer her eyes. “I wanted to create a place were diversity could flourish. You must understand, dear, that after all the death and suffering that came from the Galactic War, I was ready to try anything to prevent a second. The Academy was supposed to be a place where we could set aside differences and find a little common ground. Walk a mile in another's shoes, so to speak.”

I was shocked when I didn't immediately jump to point out that she'd been a little off the mark, the school just as segregated as the rest of the galaxy.

Professor Earhart sighed. “Obviously, we've drifted away from that purpose. And not for the better.” A pause. “When you came here, I saw nothing but a spoiled girl who had been handed everything in her life. I saw no potential or diversity there.”

I sunk a little down in my seat, waiting for the verbal beat down.

Her eyes sparkled. “It seems I've forgotten that diversity doesn't always have to wear a different skin.”

She fished around in her desk and brought out a piece of paper, handing it to me. It was a couple of my final grades but altered. The scores in my battle and flight classes had been brought up to sky high numbers. My mouth gaped at the impossibility of it.

“As you can see, you've passed all your classes for the year--”

“I don't understand,” I interrupted. “I was failing battle and flying.”

Smiling, the Professor said, “Perhaps Professor Accia saw fit to change those scores in light of recent events. In any case, you've been taken off of academic probation. Congratulations.” She rose, starting to put away more of the contents of her book case.

I stood too, but I was rooted to the spot.

When she noticed I was still there, she said, “That will be all, Miss Alkaev.”

Nodding, I walked over to the floating disc numbly, not sure what was going on. Why hadn't she said the words? Was she waiting to send me a letter of expulsion?

“Oh, and Astra?” I turned back, but she wasn't facing me, still packing. “Don't forget to register for fall classes.”

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.05.2015

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