Interstellar Academy, Kennedy Harkins [epub e ink reader TXT] 📗

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,