Interstellar Academy by Kennedy Harkins (read books for money .TXT) 📕

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.”

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