Chapter 1: Calm Before the Storm
Victor Vance pressed the back of his left hand against the cool half an inch thick nano-glass, the only thing separating him from the dark oblivion outside. It wasn't the stars he was looking at however, but the back of his right hand lying on the desk in front of him. The tattooed 'V', the signature mark of his family, was etched on the back of its brown skin in deep black ink. It was evidence of a destiny that had been incontrovertibly decided for him before he'd been born.
"Mr. Vance," said the cool, robotic voice of the teaching simulation on the screen at the front of the classroom, "Your family name does not entitle you to ignore instruction."
Victor broke from his thoughts, looking around the room in sheepish embarrassment. Most of the students were busily scribbling notes and didn't spare him a glance. Next to him his best friend, a shaggy haired red headed boy named Alex, snickered.
After class Alex walked with Victor to the mess hall of Nexus for midday meal.
"There's never any telling what that damn A.I. will pick up on, Vance. Try looking up every now and then. I think it's got some sort of sensor that goes off if you're not writing or making eye contact."
Victor shrugged as the two entered the hall, an automated self service station that carefully measured portions to students based on their daily credit and calorie allowances.
"Alex, I'd really prefer it if you called me Victor," he said simply, pleased to note that in vitro beef burgers were on the menu of the large hologram floating above the thirty foot line. The pair grabbed a tray each, designating what food they wanted by selecting the item on the touch screen area of the tray. Victor chose the in vitro beef burger, kale fries, and non-alcoholic wine, then placed the tray on the conveyor line.
"You need to chill out about the name, man," Alex said, chuckling. "Everyone goes by their last name here. You're the only one who prefers their first," he put his own tray on the assembly line. "Besides, do you know how many people here would fucking kill to have your last name?" There weren't many students from the 'E' socio-economic class. Battle school was a place for 'M' and 'X' class people, usually where families sent their best if they were looking to move up in the hierarchy.
"If they want it, they can have it," he said. He was already tired of this conversation. "You wanna hit the sim, later?"
Victor watched the battle school's automated hands assemble his meal, putting each item on the tray where he had selected it. Despite the length of the line, it was an efficient process: in a few seconds they had their trays. Victor frowned in annoyance at amount of kale fries.
"No thanks, man. Me and some of the guys are gonna go for a space walk," Alex said excitedly as he sat at the nearest table, "Then we're gonna go comm diving". Then, noticing Victor's expression: "What's wrong, Vic?"
"Is it just me or is the battle school skimping on the kale fries, lately?"
On Victor's plate were exactly six kale fries lined next to each other neatly on the 'side portion' area of the tray.
"Yeah, it's been like that about a few items, lately. Maybe there was a shortage."
A small rumbling ran through the station. Students held on to their portions, some going so far as to hug them. If you misspent or wasted your food credits, the Nexus' automated station would not feed you again until the next designated feeding window. Alex and Victor exchanged a glance. It was times like these that they realized that they were all alone in space, trusted in the hands of a completely automated station. If anything went wrong there were no adults to save them but the A.I., and no one trusted the A.I.
"Goddamnit," Alex said, hugging his tray until the tremors subsided. Cursing was one of the bad habits that the all-watching A.I. didn't pick up on. Many students took liberal advantage of this. "You know," Alex continued, "It wouldn't be so bad if there were girls here. That would make the whole 'no adults' thing a lot more appealing," he said, grinning. "Sixteen is not the time to be stranded on 'Deep Space Cock Station'. I'm missing my golden years."
Victor laughed. This was why he loved Alex. The guy was always able to put him in a better mood when his thoughts had somehow turned to his family. Even this deep in the stars, separated by the unimaginable distance of space and the significant amount of time spent traveling in hyperbolic sleep, memories of his homeworld still haunted him.
"Well, who knows? There could be girls on the other side of the station," Victor chided with a grin. Alex raised an eyebrow.
"Vic, you know that we've already seen what's on the other side, right? A little thing called comm diving I may have just mentioned? We've accessed portions of the other side's A.I. viewing ports. Cock city."
After midday meal, Victor decided to give his usual speech about going for what the students called 'space walks'.
"I'm telling you Alex, it's dangerous. And who knows when the A.I. will get some funky update that locks you outside or drops your Social Score? You don't want to go to 'the box', do you?" 'The box' was what the boys aboard the station called the hyperbolic chamber in the med bay. Students that suffered injuries beyond the significant healing capabilities of the station were put into cryogenic suspension, freezing time for them biologically until the next supply pod could take them on its outbound journey back to the homeworlds. There was a secondary purpose to 'the box', however. If an attending student's Social, Physical, Mental, or Eco Scores ever reached zero or below then they were automatically escorted by the hall drones to the med bay hyperbolic chambers and sent back at the earliest supply pod.
Alex shrugged at Victor's warning. Sometimes it felt like Alex could shrug off anything. Victor shook his head, but was smiling.
"Well, I tried. Good luck, then. Contact me when you guys go comm diving."
Alex's eyes widened in mock-surprise. "The exalted Vance name is going to grace our dirty comm-diving session? How the mighty have fallen."
Victor was annoyed at the mention of his family, but suppressed it. Alex was his only real friend on the station and Victor didn't want to mess that up by acting sore when his family was mentioned. "That's right," he chuckled, playing along. "What can I say? You're a bad influence."
After they parted ways Victor headed down toward the information rooms in the first quadrant of the station. The Space Station was a loop inside of another loop connected by a hall. It was separated into four quadrants - two on the side which Victor resided and two that were separated and mysterious (whatever Alex claimed). They'd been told upon arrival that their mission during their four years of school was to prepare for a simulated battle against the students on the other side, but they had never met the students in person and had never seen them outside of snippets that some of the advanced tech subscore students had managed to pull from the A.I.'s information bank. The second quadrant held the living quarters on the outer loop and mess hall on the inner. The center most sphere doubled as a testing arena and classroom separated by a holographic force field barrier that suppressed vision or sound from the other side. On the first quadrant were the information room and med bay on the outer loop and training arena and simulation room on the inner.
Victor was already beginning to imagine the additions he was going to make to the constellation chart he was building of the stars surrounding the station when he bumped into the last person anyone at the combat school wanted to bump into, Roger Nettleton.
"Well, well, well, what have we here? Thoughts off in the space clouds, Vance? Watch where you're walking you fucking clown." Roger was already in Victor's face. They were about the same height, but Roger was a solid wall of muscle as opposed to Victor's toned but svelte form. "Actually," Roger said, speaking loudly enough so that other students stopped in the hall and turned toward the scene, "Since your silver spoon fed mind is out in space how about we send your body to join it?"
Follow: @jenkinrocket
