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

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.

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