There was a small crowd gathering. Victor cursed his luck on being just out of sight of the A.I. Sometimes he could convince himself that the A.I. blind spots were due to budgetary constraints. Instances like this one made it feel uncomfortably intentional....
"Yo Nettleton, what's the deal, kid?" It was T.J. Pinbrick, another unwelcome addition.
"Nothing much, Pinbrick. Just talking with my good buddy Vance. He was thinking of taking a walk outside."
"Is that so?"
Victor knew better than to say anything. It would only fuel the fire. He could fight, but his Social Points would go down. They were low enough as it is. Any further dip in his points would mean a call via ansible with father. That was the last thing in the universe that he wanted. Roger and T.J. were great at gaming the points system. Victor wasn't entirely sure how they'd avoided being put in the box, but he suspected that they interspersed and alternated on their terrorizing to make sure their points never dipped below a certain threshold.
Presently T.J. grabbed Victor by the arm, and Victor reflexively slapped it away.
"Oh ho! What's this? Since when do you have some balls, Vance? Now that Dixon is gone you're stepping up to the plate, eh?" Roger shoved Victor back, but Victor held his ground. He knew the logical choice was to go for the space walk and catch Roger and T.J. apart when his points were higher, but didn't care.
"Dixon was a sociopath and a murderer. He deserved much worse than the box."
A silence filled the hallway as the throng of students waited for Roger's response in open-mouthed silence. Dixon and Roger had known each other since they were young on their homeworld. Dixon had always been far more dangerous than Roger. Many of the students on board Nexus mysteriously died after standing up to him or pissing him off. VIctor finally lured him into a vicious fight when his threshold was too low and Dixon was promptly put in hyperbolic sleep and sent back to his homeworld. Victor himself had gotten off with a two-hour lecture via ansible with his father.
"What did you just say?" Roger said, stepping forward. Victor felt his heart beating fast, but he wasn't scared. Since Dixon, nothing really scared him any more. But Victor's social score still hadn't fully recovered from the incident with Dixon and he wasn't anxious to fight the hulking wall of muscle that was Roger.
"I don't know," said Victor, shrugging casually and thinking quickly. "Why don't you ask me again outside? That is, after I kick your ass in a race."
Roger frowned, considering.
"Unless you're scared," Victor added, looking to the students around him with a smile that portrayed a confidence he did not at all have. The group's sniggering was putting Roger in an awkward position. If he beat up Victor now it would look like he really was afraid of a race.
Roger laughed, looking to T.J.
"You hear this guy?" T.J. shook his head in response, smirking. "Alright then," Roger said.
"Ladies first," Victor said. Roger had agreed while there was sniggering, but Victor felt sure that the temptation to stuff him in a space suit and throw him out of the airlock would increase with each step if he allowed Roger to walk behind him. Roger whispered something into T.J.'s ear. T.J. nodded.
"Sure thing, buddy," Roger said. He shrugged and led the way.
Some students, disappointed that there would be no fight, went back to whatever it was that they were doing or wherever it was that they were headed. But for every one lost two were gained on the long walk to the airlock, another suspiciously unmonitored spot aboard the station. Victor prayed that they would bump into Alex on their way. Alex might be able to diffuse the situation. Even Roger didn't seem to totally hate him.
When they reached the airlock doors and the space suits were all safely in their nano-glass lockers Victor knew he was out of luck. Alex was nowhere to be seen. It was a little strange that he had finished his space walk so quickly, but Victor had other concerns.
Victor and Roger suited up in silence as the students talked and mumbled amongst themselves. One, a short boy named Bracias, stared at Victor with morbid horror, like he was looking at a corpse.
T.J. was a thug but good with computers. Victor realized, too late, that Roger had probably been teasing when he had threatened to throw him out of the airlock. T.J. hadn't been there when Roger had made the threat - Roger wouldn't have been able to get past the security. Speaking of which, where the hell were the hall drones? Weren't they supposed to patrol the blind spots?
"You're dead." Roger said simply over his space suit comm. As the airlock door hissed shut Roger drew a spacesuit- gloved finger across his throat to emphasize his point.
Space walks were a part of the automated curriculum, considered 'adverse conditions training'. The curriculum was full of such vague, general training. The airlock drained into vacuum and the doors opened to space. Local gravity was turned off and the magnetic mechanism in both Roger and Victor's shoes activated, pulling them to the ground with a thump.
Victor again let Roger lead the way, pulling himself over the edge of the airlock after. He looked around. There was something beautiful and at the same time frightening about the stars peppered all around them. The nearest sun was the blue giant Dharma. They were much further from it than, say, Victor's homeworld from its sun. But because of the size and power of the star the station's outer shell gleamed a brilliant white.
"We race to that relay post," Roger said over the random radio noise. Comms interference on Nexus, even ansible communications, was common and as mysterious as the odd, intermittent, rumbling. Victor nodded at Roger's challenge.
"You guys have quite the audience," said T.J.'s voice over the comm. The outside of the ship was one of the few areas that students could view at any time through the ship's A.I. terminal. Victor imagined the throng of students watching and wondered if word had reached Alex, yet. T.J.'s voice buzzed over the comm. "On my mark. Get ready...Go!"
The two took off dashing at a frantic pace. The only sounds that Victor could hear were his own breathing, the thump of his feet against the 'ground' of the station's hull, and ambient cheering and shouts over the open comm line. The two were even for the first minute, Roger's raw strength matching Victor's long legs, but by the third minute Roger's strength began to give out and Victor began pulling ahead. Their destination, a long, conical pole with a red light blinking at the top, was still around three minutes away.
Victor could feel victory approaching. He knew in his head that he should let himself lose, that Roger would never be able to let the humiliation go, but his heart wouldn't let him. He thought of his father, he thought of Roger, he thought of Dixon. Why were there so many people that wouldn't leave him alone? What was it about him that drew them to him, that made them want to put him down or control him? Victor didn't know and didn't care. He was a approaching a 'Y' shaped antenna, twice or three times his size but still several times smaller than the pole that meant race's end. Victor was huffing hard now, but didn't let up. His space boots pounded the ground. He pulled against the sticky magnetic force with each step. Physical exercise was a part of the curriculum, but he had never pushed himself so hard. He would push harder if he had to. Nothing would stop him from winning this. Nothing.
Then the magnets on his boots failed and the next step sent him hurtling into the abyss.
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